By noon the park had been officially closed.
It did not even look like an attack. That made it seem more dangerous.
Roman Zuev arrived with a commission, two workmen in clean hard hats, a fire inspector and a woman from the town administration who kept repeating the word "safety" as though it could close any door. Security guards followed them. Then the police arrived. Then the local television crews appeared.
No one shouted.
No one made threats.
On the contrary, Zuev had brought fire extinguishers, new hazard tape and temporary floodlights for the walkways. He even told the workmen to shore up a rotten step by the shooting gallery so that no one fell through while they drew up the report.
Once again, the help was real.
The catch was the same.
"We are not disputing your right of ownership, Ilya Sergeyevich," Zuev said for the cameras. "We are disputing your right to let people into a place where a minor was harmed yesterday."
Gleb was kept away from the cameras, but footage from his phone was already circulating around town. Not the whole stream. Only clips. The ones where he stood pale and trembling by the ticket booth, with a streak of grey in his hair. The ones where Ilya stood beside the night ledger. The ones where Varya shouted for everyone to stay away from the door.
The moment when Gleb switched off his phone was missing.
Maya watched the edited footage on someone else's phone and slowly clenched her jaw.
"This isn't the whole file."
Zuev heard her.
"Of course not," he said. "That is why I'm asking for the original to be seized. So there can be no speculation."
He said all the right things. Too perfectly.
Ilya suddenly understood: Zuev did not need to deny the Room. He only needed to turn it into a dangerous site. Not a miracle, not evidence, not a place where the dead were given back their names. Just an unsafe pavilion where adults had allowed a child inside at night.
And that was true.
Ilya could not have said otherwise.
The woman from the administration read out the order. Access to be restricted. Operations to cease. Daytime takings to be sealed pending investigation. The Room of Fear pavilion to be closed under a separate seal. The owner to be warned of his liability.
Every word was dry.
But behind each stood a wet ruler, an empty envelope, a pond that had not been there and Gleb covering his ears at the clink of coins.
When the woman from the administration placed a seal on the ticket booth, the paper lay flat. The red stamp gleamed with fresh ink. The inspector had already turned away, but five seconds later the seal bulged from within, as though someone beneath it had pressed a finger against the paper.
A word appeared across the red circle:
Paid.
The inspector saw it. Maya saw it. Ilya watched the uniformed man silently tear off the seal, take out a fresh one and place it over the same spot without looking at anyone.
Bureaucracy knew how to be afraid too. It simply did it neatly.
Varya stood by the switch room, watching the workmen.
"Don't let them near the main switch," she said quietly.
"On what grounds?" asked Maya.
"Because if they cut the wrong circuit, the Room will lose its daytime power, but the night circuit won't switch off."
Maya repeated this to the inspector. The inspector looked at her the way people look at someone who has spent too long working with unsafe fairground rides.
Zuev approached Varya.
"Varvara Andreyevna, I don't want you to be made the scapegoat."
She gave a dry laugh.
"You always start with the good news."
"I'm serious. You warned them about the switch room. You refused to sign the report because you didn't want to cover up the risk. This can be recorded in a way that leaves the responsibility with the owner."
Ilya stood three paces away and heard every word.
Varya knew he could hear them too.
Zuev did not lower his voice. He had no need to hide.
"You don't have to save me from him," said Varya.
"I'm not saving you. I'm establishing where the boundaries lie. Adults sometimes confuse loyalty with complicity."
The words were almost kind.
That was precisely why they struck more cleanly than a threat.
By evening a chain had been hung across the gates. A seal was stuck across the Room of Fear. The ticket booth was officially sealed. The old machines were covered over as though the park had died and was being prepared for removal.
People stood by the fence.
Not a crowd. A few dozen people. The same ones who had asked to leave notes at the ticket booth yesterday, who had whispered surnames, who had brought old photographs, who had wanted the Room to open especially for them. Now they looked at the tape and said nothing. Each had a silence of their own: angry, frightened, guilty, tired.
Nina Pakhomova arrived with a stool and sat down opposite the closed ticket booth.
"I'll sit here until midnight," she said.
"Why?" asked Ilya.
"Old habit. A ticket booth looks wrong without a ticket seller."
Maya did not make her leave.
Varya was the first to go. She did not say goodbye or slam a door or turn her pain into a performance. She simply took her work jacket off its nail, folded it as neatly as though she were drawing a line not under a conversation but under a shift, picked up the Gordeev folder and walked towards the works gate.
Ilya wanted to stop her.
But all he could see was the Gordeev folder and his grandfather's IOU.
By eleven that night the park was empty. Zuev's floodlights drenched the paths in white light. They made everything safe and dead.
Ilya sat alone in the ticket booth.
The old draft contract lay on the table in front of him. The very one that had brought him to Zarechensk on the first day: signature, account, land, transfer of the property, no further claims. Back then, those lines had seemed like a way out. Now they amounted to much the same thing, only written more honestly: give up the park, give up the book, give up all the voices inside and never hear the till bell again.
He picked up the pen.
Not to sign. That was what he would have told Maya, Varya, himself.
But his hand was already resting on the signature line.
And for a few seconds the desire was simple and shameful: let it end. Let the town hate someone else. Let his grandfather's filth, Varya's look and the grey streak in Gleb's hair become someone else's papers in someone else's archive.
Ilya realised that all this time it was not the land he had wanted to sell.
It was his own guilt.
He put the pen down beside the contract.
Not because he had grown strong.
Because he was frightened by how easy it would have been to sign.
At eleven fifty-seven, Ilya heard a rustle.
Not in the Room.
In his own pocket.
He took out a white daytime ticket. The paper was dry and fresh, with a neatly printed number and the old stamp of the First of May Park.
On the back it said:
Admittance through a closed door.
Maya saw the ticket and reached for her radio.
"Don't," said Ilya.
"This is exactly when I should."
But the door of the Room of Fear opened first.
The seal did not tear. The chain did not fall. The lock did not click. A dark gap simply appeared between the doors, exactly wide enough for one person carrying a ticket.
When Ilya put the ticket back in his pocket, the gap closed by itself.
Someone coughed by the fence.
Ilya turned round.
Beyond the wire stood an elderly man in a grey overcoat. Short and spare, with the face of an old-school accountant and the eyes of a man who never counted twice because he had never made a mistake the first time.
He was not looking at the door.
He was looking at Ilya.
"Your grandfather could never get his till to balance," the old man said evenly.
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