Бесплатный фрагмент - The Last Podcast

The Last Podcast

Kirill Klepalov

2026

Part ONE: The Last Walk

When another person’s tragedy becomes your voice.

Chapter 1: The Last Walk

That morning, I died.

If you’re listening to this recording, it means my killer made a mistake. And now I’m going to tell you everything.

Strange, isn’t it? The dead don’t usually tell their own stories. Other people do it for them. Detectives, journalists, relatives. Sometimes neighbors who barely exchanged two words with them while they were alive, yet after their deaths can spend hours explaining what wonderful people they were.

My neighbor, for instance, told reporters that I always said hello. That wasn’t true. I generally tried not to speak to anyone. Especially in those last few months. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

My name is Tonya. I’m twenty-seven, a journalist, and I used to host a podcast about serial murders.

More precisely, about one serial killer. Or, to be even more precise, about the young women he killed.

I almost never talked about myself on the podcast. I thought that was what a good journalist was supposed to do. Now I realize it was simply easier than calling things by their names.

It all began with a park.

An ordinary city park, one of hundreds. Playgrounds, old poplars, bike paths, a little pond that froze in winter and smelled of algae in summer.

People walked their dogs there. Went for morning runs. Kissed on the benches. And then young women started turning up dead. The first was Sofia. She was twenty-two.

She disappeared in November on her way home from work. Four days later, they found her in the undergrowth near the old greenhouse.

The second, Katya, was discovered in February. The third in April.

I’m not going to describe the state their bodies were in. I think those women deserve at least one place where the details of their deaths aren’t turned into entertainment.

But there’s one thing you need to know. They were all found early in the morning. And all in the same park. For a long time, the police refused to connect the murders. At least publicly. So I decided to find out the truth myself.

That’s how my podcast, The Last Walk, was born. One hundred and forty-three people listened to the first episode. My mother was one of them. She called and asked why I was involving myself in such terrible things. I told her I wanted justice.

Back then, I really believed that. A year later, nearly two million people were listening to my podcast.

Advertisers were approaching me, television producers were inviting me on their shows, and I was receiving hundreds of messages a day.

Some people thanked me for my work. Some sent me photographs of their dead daughters. Others wanted to know when the next victim would turn up. I deleted those messages. But sometimes I caught myself wondering exactly the same thing.

Chapter 2: The Man Behind Me

The first time I noticed him was in September. At least, looking back, I think it was him.

I was recording a segment near the park that evening. Dusk was falling, and the lights by the entrance had come on.

A man stood across the street. Gray coat. Black hat. Hands in his pockets. I didn’t remember his face. In fact, I barely registered him at all. It was only when I finished recording and headed for the subway that he started walking after me.

I turned toward a café. So did he. I stopped at a shop window. He stopped too. You know that feeling, I’m sure.

When nothing has actually happened, but somewhere deep inside, a tiny alarm bell has already started ringing.

I went into the café, ordered a cappuccino, and stayed for almost an hour. When I came out, the man was gone. I convinced myself I’d imagined it.

After all, if you spend every day reading about murders, sooner or later you’ll start seeing serial killers even in the line at the bakery.

Three days later, I spotted the gray coat again. This time near my building. A week after that, at a bus stop. That was when I first mentioned him on the podcast. Episode thirty-nine.

I called it “The Man Behind Me.”

“Lately I’ve had the feeling someone’s following me,” I said into the microphone. “Maybe I’m being paranoid. But if anything happens to me, I want you to know: I’ve seen this man several times.”

The episode was played four hundred thousand times in twenty-four hours. The comments were ecstatic.

“NOW THAT’S A PLOT TWIST!”

“Tonya, you’re a marketing genius.”

“LMAO, now the killer’s hunting the host?”

“Bet you a hundred bucks he sends her a letter in the next episode.”

I read them and smiled. Probably because I didn’t quite believe what was happening myself. That evening, a letter actually arrived. No return address. Inside was a photograph.

Of me. It had been taken through my apartment window. I was sitting at my desk with my headphones on, typing something on my laptop. The photograph had been taken from outside. I studied it for a long time.

My apartment was on the fourth floor. And there wasn’t a single apartment building opposite my window. Just an old courtyard. And a tree.

Chapter 3: The Warm Mug

I know now that I should have stopped.

Left town. Moved in with my parents. At the very least, stopped telling strangers on the internet where I was, what I was doing, and what I was afraid of.

But fame is a strange thing. It makes you dependent without your noticing.

The first thing I did every morning was check my listening figures. Then the comments. Then the reviews.

I thought all those people were my friends. That they knew me. That if I was ever in danger, they would help. God, I was an idiot. In the middle of October, someone entered my apartment.

I knew it the moment I opened the door. Not because things had been thrown around. Quite the opposite. Everything was exactly where it belonged. Shoes by the wall. Coat on its hook. Laptop on the desk.

But the kitchen light was on. I always switched it off before leaving. Always. I walked into the living room, put down my bag, and listened. Silence.

I opened the wardrobe. Looked in the bathroom. Checked under the bed. Nobody. Then I saw the mug.

It was sitting on the kitchen table. White, with a little crack near the handle. There was tea in it. I touched it with my fingertips. Warm.

The mug was warm. I remember slowly pulling my hand away. Looking toward the door. And suddenly being unable to hear the traffic outside. I was alone in my apartment.

But just minutes earlier, someone had been sitting here drinking tea. I called the police. Two officers came, inspected the apartment, checked the lock, and asked me a few questions. There were no signs of forced entry.

Nothing was missing.

“Could you have left it there yourself?” one of them asked, nodding at the mug.

“I don’t drink tea.”

“Ever?”

“Ever.”

He looked at me as if I’d said something suspicious. After they left, I took out my microphone and recorded episode forty-two. No script. No music.

No editing. I just talked. About the man in the gray coat. About the photograph. About the warm mug. At some point, I began to cry.

“I don’t know what to do,” I said. “I’m genuinely scared. If anyone knows how to help me, please write to me.”

It became the most popular episode in the history of my podcast. One and a half million plays. More than twenty thousand comments.

“LMAOOOO THE WARM MUG.”

“Give this woman an Oscar.”

“When the investigation stopped getting views, she turned it into a reality show.”

“Hasn’t she made enough money off dead girls yet?”

“Embarrassing.”

“First she invents a serial killer, now she’s stalking herself.”

That evening, I deleted the app for the first time. Not for long. Forty minutes later, I installed it again. I needed to know what people were saying about me.

Chapter 4: Listen

The real hysteria began a week later. I stopped sleeping properly. Every night, I thought I could hear someone moving around the apartment. Sometimes I woke to a faint creak. Sometimes to the sensation that someone was standing beside my bed.

Once, at 3:17 a.m., I woke and saw that my bedroom door was open. I was certain I’d closed it before going to sleep. I lay perfectly still, staring at the black rectangle of the doorway.

Then I heard breathing. Soft. Steady. Very close. I snapped on the bedside lamp.

No one. The next day, I recorded an episode from bed. My voice shook. I lost my train of thought, stumbled over words, began the same sentence several times.

“He was here. I heard him. I don’t know how he’s getting into my apartment. I’ve changed the locks, do you understand? I’ve changed every single lock!”

Then I screamed. Just screamed into the microphone. I still don’t understand why. Maybe I wanted someone — anyone — to hear me. The following morning, a clip appeared online.

Someone had cut out my scream, put jaunty music under it, and added a caption:

“WHEN YOU FORGET YOU MADE UP THE SERIAL KILLER YOURSELF.”

Within two days, the clip had three million views. People began recognizing me on the street. Once, a group of teenagers outside a shop asked to take a selfie with me.

Then one of them sneaked up behind me and shouted:

“TONYA, I’M IN YOUR HOUSE!”

They all laughed. So did I. I don’t know why. Maybe it was easier than explaining why my hands were shaking. My mother called that evening.

She said I looked sick. That I needed a break. That the internet was going to drive me insane.

“Mom, someone really is following me.”

“Oh, sweetheart. Who?”

I didn’t know what to say. I genuinely didn’t know.

“Maybe the killer.”

Mom was silent for a long time.

Then she said:

“You’ve spent too much time on these murders. Please, stop.”

Four days before the attack, I received an audio file. It came to my podcast email address.

The subject line contained one word:

“LISTEN.”

I opened the attachment. The first few seconds were silent. Then footsteps. A door opening. The rustle of clothes.

And a voice. Male. Calm.

“Tonya.”

I froze.

“Tonya, you’ve always wanted to know who I am.”

I leaned closer to the screen.

“Well. Now we’ve met.”

Click. End of recording. I played it about ten times, trying to identify background noises. But there was nothing except breathing.

And one more sound. A faint metallic jingle, as if someone were turning a bunch of keys over in his hand. I sent the recording to the police. They promised to investigate where it had come from.

The following day, another email arrived. Text only.

“YOU TALK ABOUT DEAD GIRLS AS IF YOU KNOW THEM.”

And below it, another line:

“SOON YOU WILL.”

I didn’t record another episode. For the first time in a year, I had absolutely no desire to speak into a microphone.

Chapter 5: The Cold Park

The last night of my old life was strangely peaceful. I went to bed early. Didn’t check my messages. Didn’t read the comments. I even switched off my phone.

I dreamed about the park. I was walking down a path strewn with wet leaves. It was cold. Somewhere ahead, a girl was crying. I tried to catch up with her, but she kept getting farther away.

Then she stopped and turned toward me. And I saw my own face. I woke at 5:42. My phone lay on the bedside table.

The screen was lit. Strange. I distinctly remembered switching it off. A message from an unknown number filled the screen.

“THE GIRL IS STILL ALIVE.”

Below it was a photograph. I recognized the place immediately. The old greenhouse in the park. Broken glass. Rusted railings.

A girl in a pale jacket sat against the wall. Her head was bowed. Her hands were tied. There was another message beneath the photo.

“YOU HAVE 20 MINUTES.”

I called the police, described the photograph, gave them the location and the sender’s number. They told me to stay home. I promised I would. Then a video appeared on my screen.

Just seven seconds. The same greenhouse. The same girl. She lifted her head. And I recognized her.

Liza. Nineteen years old. She’d disappeared a month earlier. Her picture was plastered all over the city. Her mother had come on my podcast twice.

On the recording, the girl barely managed a whisper:

“Please.”

I was already pulling on my coat. You can call me an idiot now, of course. Say I should have waited for the police. Say you don’t go running toward someone who may have murdered several women. And you’d be right.

I’d said all those things myself, hundreds of times, in dozens of episodes. But at that moment I was thinking of something else entirely.

If someone had sent a photograph like that to Sofia’s mother a year earlier, would she have stayed home?

I couldn’t leave Liza there. Not after everything I’d said into a microphone about justice. I ran outside.

The park greeted me with fog. It was six in the morning. A fine rain was falling. The streetlights were still on, though the sky was beginning to pale. I walked fast, almost running.

Wet leaves stuck to my soles. My breath came out in white clouds. The old greenhouse stood at the far end of the park. People rarely went there even in daylight. I took out my phone.

No new messages. I tried calling Liza’s mother. No answer. I stepped off the path and saw the greenhouse. From a distance it looked like a huge black skeleton.

I stopped. There was no one by the wall. No girl. No ropes. Only a pale jacket, carefully folded on the wet steps.

I moved closer.

“Liza?”

Silence.

“Liza, are you here?”

A sound came from inside. Metallic. Soft. Jingle. As though someone were handling a ring of keys.

My fingers went cold. It was the same sound I’d heard in the recording. I backed away.

“Who’s there?”

A branch snapped behind me. I turned. A man stood a few yards away. Gray coat. Black hat.

Hands in his pockets. This time I could see his face. Entirely ordinary. The kind of face you forget five minutes after meeting someone. He was smiling at me.

“Hi, Tonya.”

I said nothing. He took a step toward me. I stepped back.

“Don’t be afraid.”

His voice was quiet. Almost tender. I recognized it.

“It was you.”

His smile broadened.

“Of course.”

I took another step back.

“Where’s Liza?”

He looked at the jacket, then back at me.

“You’ve always been more interested in the other girls.”

I wanted to run. But I couldn’t take my eyes off him.

“Why are you doing this?”

He considered the question as though it were difficult.

“You’re a journalist,” he said at last. “You should know you have to ask the right questions first.”

He took a phone from his pocket. My podcast was on the screen. The latest episode. The one where I’d screamed and cried. He pressed play.

My own voice came from the tiny speaker:

“I don’t know how he’s getting into my apartment! I’ve changed every single lock!”

The man laughed.

“See, Tonya? They heard you.”

He came a step closer.

“All of them heard.”

Then he added:

“They just didn’t believe you.”

I ran. I don’t remember turning. I don’t remember what happened to my phone. I remember only the wet ground under my feet. My breathing.

And the footsteps behind me. I didn’t scream. Maybe because I knew nobody would hear. He caught up with me near the old bridge. I slipped.

I hit my knee. Tried to get up. Something heavy struck the back of my head. The world lurched. I fell sideways.

Wet leaves filled my vision. One had stuck to my cheek. Yellow, with dark veins. For some reason, I remember it perfectly.

The man crouched beside me. I could hear him breathing. I felt his fingers brushing the hair from my face.

“There now, Tonya. That’s it.”

He said it almost fondly. I wanted to ask him what had happened to Liza, but I couldn’t. My lips wouldn’t move. He bent close to my ear.

“Know what’s funniest of all?”

I stared at the leaf.

“They won’t believe this, either.”

The last thing I heard was that metallic jingle. Keys. Then darkness.

Part TWO: Beyond The Door

Every door is locked from one side or the other.

Chapter 6: The Basement

That was when I died. To everyone. Except myself.

Sound came back first. Drip. Drip. Drip. I could hear water.

A pipe must have been leaking somewhere. I tried to open my eyes, but my eyelids felt glued shut.

My head hurt as though someone had split it in two and was now slowly trying to put it back together.

I couldn’t remember where I was. I couldn’t even remember who I was. Drip. Drip. Drip.

Then came the cold. It rose from the floor, seeped under my clothes, crept into my sleeves. I was lying on something hard. I tried to turn over and immediately cried out.

Pain exploded in the back of my head. Nausea washed over me. I opened my eyes. A wall stood in front of me. Gray.

Concrete. Very close. I stared at it for several seconds without understanding what I was seeing. Then I remembered the park. The wet leaves.

The man. The keys. I tried to sit up quickly and fell straight back down. The room spun.

I threw up. I didn’t even manage to turn my head. For a while, I just lay with my cheek pressed to the cold mattress. I wanted to die. Funny, isn’t it?

I didn’t know yet how careless a wish like that could be. When the dizziness eased a little, I forced myself to look around. The room was small, maybe ten by thirteen feet. Bare concrete walls.

A low ceiling. A single bulb behind a metal grille. No windows. Against the opposite wall stood a metal table, with a plastic bucket beside it.

In the corner was a door painted dark green. It had a narrow rectangular slot, like the doors of prison cells. I couldn’t see a handle. A thin mattress lay on the floor.

I was on it. Carefully, I felt the back of my head. My hair was matted. My skin was sticky. When I drew my hand away, there was blood on my fingers.

Not much. Enough to frighten me all over again. I looked down at my legs. A metal cuff encircled my right ankle. A chain ran from it.

The chain was anchored to a thick metal bracket set into the floor. For several seconds, all I could do was stare. Then I jerked my leg. The metal clinked. I pulled harder.

Harder still. Until it hurt. Until the iron dug into my skin. Nothing moved.

“No.”

I didn’t recognize my own voice. It was hoarse. Weak.

“No, no, no…”

I crawled toward the door. The chain let me reach almost the middle of the room. No farther. I stretched out my arm. The door was still over three feet away.

I screamed.

“HELP!”

My voice bounced off the walls.

“IS ANYBODY THERE?”

I screamed again. And again. Until my throat hurt. Then I fell silent and listened.

Nothing. Just dripping water. Drip. Drip. Drip.

I began to cry. Quietly at first, then louder. I’d never heard a person cry like that. It sounded like an animal howling.

Maybe that’s why I grew even more frightened. I realized I was making that sound. I covered my face with my hands. And suddenly I thought of my mother. She must have called by now.

Left several messages. Maybe she’d come to my apartment. Found the place empty. The unmade bed. The coffee mug in the sink.

Mom was always scolding me for not washing the dishes right away.

And I always said:

“Mom, are you here to visit me or inspect the place?”

I wanted her to come and scold me again more than anything in the world. I would have washed every dish on earth. I swear.

I don’t know how much time passed before I heard footsteps outside the door. I heard them long before the lock clicked. Slow. Measured. Someone was coming down the stairs.

With each step, another sound grew clearer. Jingle. Jingle. Metal. Keys.

I scrambled back against the wall, pulled my knees up, and dug my fingers into the edge of the mattress. The lock clicked. The door opened.

The man from the park stood in the doorway. No coat. No hat. He wore a navy sweater and ordinary sweatpants. He was carrying a tray.

Food. It was so absurd that for several seconds I couldn’t look away from it. A plate of sandwiches. A glass of water. And a white mug.

With a little crack by the handle. The same one. From my apartment. He looked at me.

“Awake?”

I said nothing. He came in and set the tray on the table.

“Does your head hurt?”

I remained silent.

“I’m asking if your head hurts badly.”

“Where am I?”

He looked mildly surprised.

“Home.”

“Where?”

“Well, you’re not in the park anymore.”

He smiled. I wanted to hit him. Not just hit him. For an instant, I pictured myself lunging at him and pounding his face with my fists. But my legs wouldn’t obey.

And my head was swimming. He pulled an old wooden chair closer and sat down.

“Hungry?”

“Let me go.”

He sighed the way adults sigh when a child asks for the same toy for the hundredth time.

“Tonya, let’s not start that.”

“Please.”

He studied me for a while. Then he picked up the mug and took a sip of tea.

“Do you know what I like about you?”

I said nothing.

“You know how to tell stories.”

He put the mug down.

“You really do. You’re very good at it.”

I swallowed with difficulty.

“What do you want?”

He tilted his head.

“What do you think?”

“Money?”

He laughed softly. Almost soundlessly.

“How much money do you have, Tonya?”

“I can get some.”

“How much?”

I fell silent because I had no idea what to say. He shook his head.

“See? You can’t even lie convincingly.”

Suddenly he stood up. I pressed myself against the wall. But he only walked toward the door.

“Eat. You’ll need your strength.”

“Wait!”

He stopped.

“What’s your name?”

He looked at me. We stood — or sat — in silence for several seconds. Then he smiled.

“Why do you need to know?”

“I want to know who I’m talking to.”

“You’ve spent an entire year talking about me without knowing my name.”

He shrugged.

“What’s changed?”

The door closed. The lock clicked. I was alone again.

I didn’t touch the food. At first. Then I drank the water. Then I ate one sandwich. Then the other.

I felt ashamed. Somehow eating felt like surrender: accepting his rules, admitting that this was where I lived now. But my body didn’t care about my pride.

I was afraid of dying. And, at the same time, afraid of staying alive.

Chapter 7: The Girl Who Died

The next time he came, he brought no food. He brought a phone. Mine. I recognized the clear case at once, with its little cherry sticker.

“Want to know what’s happening upstairs?”

I reached for it. He moved it away.

“First, we need an agreement.”

“About what?”

“No hysterics.”

I stared at him.

I don’t know what a person is supposed to look like when her kidnapper tells her something like that.

Probably pretty stupid. He sat down, unlocked the screen, opened a news website, and turned the phone toward me.

I read the headline. Then read it again. And again.

YOUNG WOMAN’S BODY FOUND IN CITY PARK. VICTIM BELIEVED TO BE TONYA, JOURNALIST AND HOST OF THE LAST WALK PODCAST.

I stopped breathing. A photograph of the park filled the screen. Yellow police tape. Uniformed officers. A stretcher covered by something dark.

Below it was an article.

“According to preliminary reports, the deceased may be the creator of the popular true-crime podcast The Last Walk. Personal belongings of the journalist were found near the body. Investigators have yet to confirm the victim’s identity.”

I looked up.

“Who is that?”

He didn’t answer.

“Who is it?”

The man watched me calmly, almost curiously, as though expecting me to do something amusing.

“Is it Liza?”

He took back the phone.

“You’ve always asked too many questions.”

“Did you kill her?”

He stood up.

“Tonya.”

“ANSWER ME!”

He slammed his palm against the table. The crack was so loud I flinched.

“Don’t shout.”

Then, just as suddenly, his voice was calm again.

“We had an agreement.”

I clapped a hand over my mouth. He watched me for another few seconds, then switched the phone on again. My page appeared. My podcast.

The Last Walk.

Almost three million followers. I hadn’t even known the number had grown that high. But something else terrified me. A new episode was on the page. Number forty-six.

I hadn’t recorded it.

The title read:

“AFTER MY DEATH.”

I reached for the phone.

“What is that?”

The man pressed play. My opening music began. Then my voice.

“That morning, I died.”

I went cold all over. It really was my voice. But I had never said those words. At least not into a microphone. Then came familiar fragments from old episodes.

“I was scared.”

“No one believed me.”

“He was here.”

“I warned you.”

Someone had edited my words together. Assembled them into a new confession. In my name. Out of my life. After my death.

The man stopped the recording.

“Nicely done, don’t you think?”

I stared at him.

“You’re sick.”

He smiled.

“An interesting diagnosis from a woman who’s spent a year studying a stranger’s psychological abnormalities.”

“You’re not human.”

“Now that’s interesting.”

He sat back down and folded his arms.

“Go on.”

I said nothing. He scrolled through the comments.

“Look how many people love you.”

He turned the screen toward me.

“Rest in peace, Tonya.”

“You were the best.”

“I’m sorry we didn’t believe you.”

“I’ve been crying for two days.”

“SHE WARNED US!”

Slowly, he scrolled through the messages. I recognized profile pictures belonging to people who’d called me hysterical just days earlier. People who had laughed at my fear. Now they were posting photographs of me with black mourning ribbons.

Writing long tributes. Telling the world how much I had meant to them. He stopped at one comment.

“I always knew Tonya was telling the truth.”

“This one’s particularly good,” he said.

I said nothing.

“Want to see what she wrote before?”

He opened another screen. A screenshot of a comment from the same woman.

“When is this clown going to stop exploiting corpses for clicks?”

The man laughed.

“People are extraordinary creatures, aren’t they?”

I looked at his phone. At the photographs. The condolences. My own name. And suddenly I understood something terrible.

I had vanished. Not just gone missing. For millions of people, I no longer existed. They had already said goodbye. Mom was probably crying.

My friends were preparing for a funeral. People were choosing which photographs to post in my memory. And no one was looking for a living Tonya. They were looking for the person who had killed me.

“You realize this won’t last, don’t you?” I said.

He looked up.

“What won’t?”

“The police will find out the body isn’t mine.”

“Perhaps.”

“They’ll realize I’ve been abducted.”

“Perhaps.”

He slipped the phone into his pocket.

“But until that happens, you’re dead.”

He went to the door, stopped, and looked back.

“Oh, and congratulations.”

“For what?”

“You have more listeners now than you ever had while you were alive.”

The door shut. I stared at the empty chair. And for the first time, I thought he really might kill me. Just not yet. First he wanted to see what would happen next.

Chapter 8: The Rules

Time works differently in a basement. It doesn’t move forward. It gathers around you. First by the minute. Then by the hour.

Then it becomes an enormous weight under which you lie, trying to breathe.

I had no watch. No windows. No way to tell day from night. The light was always on. Sometimes I fell asleep.

Sometimes I woke up.

Sometimes I thought an entire day had passed, only to discover he’d been gone a few hours.

I began counting his visits. Not days. Visits. First. Second.

Third. Each time he brought food. Refilled the water. Sometimes gave me pills for the pain in my head. Once he brought me a clean T-shirt.

My own. The one I’d left in the top drawer of my dresser. I recognized the tiny hole near the collar.

“You’ve been in my apartment again?”

He didn’t answer.

“Why?”

“You needed clean clothes.”

“But the police are there.”

“Not anymore.”

He said it so casually I shuddered. Another time he brought me a hairbrush. Then a book. My favorite novel. That had also been in my apartment.

I wanted to scream when I saw the cover. But I held it in. I was beginning to understand: he enjoyed my fear. Enjoyed watching it. Studying it.

Like a scientist studying an insect under glass. So I decided to stop giving him what he wanted.

On his sixth visit, I didn’t ask him to let me go.

Instead I asked:

“What do you do upstairs?”

He stopped.

“What do you mean?”

“When you leave here.”

He watched me for a moment.

“Live.”

“Do you have a job?”

“Everyone has a job, Tonya.”

“A family?”

He put down the plate.

“Why are you asking?”

I shrugged.

“I’m bored.”

He laughed, but not as before. This laugh was short and unpleasant.

“Bored?”

“Sure. I sit here all day. No phone. No internet. Nothing decent to read.”

He glanced at the book against the wall.

“I brought you a book.”

“I’ve already read it.”

He said nothing. I realized I’d pushed too far.

But I went on:

“You said you liked my stories.”

He sat down.

“I did.”

“Then at least let me hear yours.”

His expression changed. Just a little, but I noticed. He wasn’t smiling anymore.

“Mine?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“To understand you.”

He leaned forward.

“And what do you think you’ll understand?”

“I don’t know yet.”

He stared at me for a long time, then abruptly stood up.

“You still think this is an interview.”

My mouth went dry. He came closer and crouched before me. Our faces were almost level.

“Look at me.”

I did.

“You’re not a journalist anymore, Tonya.”

I said nothing.

“You have no microphone. No listeners. No newsroom. No police to check your recordings.”

He leaned even closer.

“You’re just a girl in a basement.”

I caught the smell of his clothes. Laundry detergent. And something else. Something sweetish. Familiar.

I tried to place it. He noticed me sniffing.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

He narrowed his eyes. Then, unexpectedly, smiled.

“Good.”

After he left, I sat motionless for a long time. Because I’d realized something. I had managed to make him angry. Which meant he had weaknesses. The problem was, I didn’t yet know how to use them.

Chapter 9: Behind The Wall

One day I woke to knocking. Not dripping water. Not footsteps. A different sound. Three quick knocks.

Knock. Knock. Knock. I opened my eyes and listened.

Silence. I thought I’d dreamed it. Then it came again. Knock. Knock.

Knock. I sat up. It was coming from the wall beside my mattress. I pressed my ear to the concrete.

The cold burned my skin. For a while, nothing happened. Then again. Knock. Knock.

Knock. I froze.

“Hello?” I whispered.

No answer.

“Is someone there?”

Silence. I waited, then carefully knocked three times with my knuckles. Knock.

Knock. Knock. My heart pounded so loudly I could hear it in my ears. For several seconds, nothing happened. Then an answer came through the wall.

Two knocks. Knock. Knock. I covered my mouth. I don’t know why I suddenly wanted to cry.

Maybe because, for the first time since I woke up here, I no longer felt completely alone.

“Can you hear me?” I whispered.

No answer. I knocked again, twice this time. Knock. Knock.

A few seconds later, the two knocks came back. Knock. Knock. I glanced at the door and pressed my ear to the wall again.

“What’s your name?”

Silence.

“Are you a girl?”

Nothing.

“Have you been here long?”

I fell quiet. A faint rustling came from the other side. Then another sound, very soft. Like a sob.

A chill ran down my spine.

“Liza?”

I could barely breathe.

“Liza, is that you?”

No answer. I knocked again. Then, suddenly, footsteps sounded beyond the door. I scrambled away from the wall.

The lock clicked. The man entered carrying a tray. He looked at me, then at the wall.

“Who are you talking to?”

“No one.”

He set down the tray.

“I heard a voice.”

“I was talking to myself.”

He studied me.

“That’s not good.”

“What isn’t?”

“Talking to yourself.”

He smiled.

“That’s how people start losing their minds.”

I said nothing. He waited another few seconds, then went to the wall and knocked on it twice. Knock.

Knock. My heart stopped. He turned around.

“Old pipes in here.”

I didn’t answer.

“They knock sometimes.”

He picked up the empty mug and headed toward the door.

“Don’t go imagining things.”

After he left, I stayed still for a long time. Then I crawled back to the wall, pressed my ear against it, and heard a whisper. So faint I mistook it for running water at first.

Then I made out one word.

“Quiet.”

I clamped both hands over my mouth. Someone really was behind that wall. And whoever it was, she was afraid too.

The next time he came, the man brought a phone. I already knew he never did anything without a reason.

“How are we feeling?”

“Fine.”

“Fine?”

“Why?”

He smiled.

“You’re calmer.”

I shrugged.

“Getting used to it.”

He watched me carefully, then opened a video on the phone. My mother appeared. She was standing outside my building, wearing a black coat.

Several reporters surrounded her, asking questions. Mom was crying. I’d never seen her cry like that. Not even when Dad died.

She tried to speak, but the words wouldn’t come.

Finally she said:

“I asked her to stop.”

Then she covered her face. I reached for the screen. The man pulled it away.

“No.”

“Please.”

“No, Tonya.”

“Let me call her.”

He shook his head.

“She won’t answer.”

“She will!”

“Of course she will.”

His voice was gentle. Almost sympathetic.

“But what will you say?”

I didn’t understand.

“That I’m alive!”

He smiled.

“And will she believe you?”

I fell silent.

“Imagine,” he went on. “She gets a call from an unknown number. Her dead daughter’s voice is on the line, telling her she’s trapped in a serial killer’s basement.”

He tilted his head slightly.

“What do you think she’ll make of that?”

I began to cry. He watched.

“She’ll probably think someone’s playing a cruel joke.”

He took back the phone.

“People don’t much like uncomfortable truths.”

I wiped my tears.

“Why are you showing me this?”

He didn’t answer. I looked him in the eye.

“Do you want me to suffer?”

He considered it.

Then said:

“No.”

I didn’t believe him.

“Then why?”

He stood up.

“I want you to understand.”

“Understand what?”

He stopped at the door and looked back at me.

“How it works.”

And he left.

Chapter 10: The Interview

After that, I began waiting for his visits. Not because I was less afraid. Quite the opposite. The fear never left me. I’d simply realized that he was my only source of information.

Every visit was a chance to learn something. How much time had passed. What was happening in the investigation. Who else the police were searching for. What had become of my family.

And most important of all, where I was. I tried to memorize everything. Sounds. Smells. Words.

Clothes.

At some point I realized that he hardly ever came in the same shirt twice.

That meant he had somewhere to change. He probably lived nearby. Or here. Sometimes there was mud on his boots. Once, dry yellow leaves.

Another time, he smelled sharply of gasoline. But the strangest thing happened when he brought my food in a plastic takeout container. I lifted the lid. Macaroni and cheese. Nothing unusual.

The kind sold in the prepared-food section of a grocery store. A tiny white sticker was still stuck to the lid. I turned the container almost imperceptibly. It showed the store’s name and the time of purchase.

6:42 p.m. The man caught me looking.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

He looked at the container, then at me. Slowly, he peeled off the sticker, crumpled it, and put it in his pocket.

“You really don’t know when to stop.”

I shrugged.

“Occupational hazard.”

He smirked.

“Exactly.”

Several visits later, I decided to try again.

“Can I ask you something?”

He put down the plate.

“You’re going to anyway.”

“Why did you choose me?”

He sat down.

“Why did you choose me?”

I frowned.

“What do you mean?”

“Why did you start making your podcast?”

“Because girls were being murdered.”

“Girls get murdered every day.”

I said nothing.

“Why those girls?”

“Because nobody could find the killer.”

He smiled.

“And you thought you could.”

“I wanted to help.”

“Of course.”

The way he said it made me want to fall silent.

But I went on:

“I really did want to help their families.”

The man watched me for a moment.

Then, without warning, he asked:

“How much money did you make off Sofia?”

My cheeks burned.

“What?”

“On the first episode.”

“That’s not — ”

“How much?”

I looked away. He waited. I said nothing.

“And Katya?”

“Shut up.”

“And Liza?”

“SHUT UP!”

He stood abruptly. I flinched, but he didn’t come closer. He only watched me with something close to childish curiosity.

“See?” he said. “You still think this story is about you.”

I stared at him. And suddenly I understood. He needed me to defend myself. To feel ashamed. To feel guilty.

He didn’t merely want to hurt me. He needed to prove himself right. About what, I still didn’t know. But at least it was something. For the first time, I felt more than fear.

I felt interest. Professional. Dangerous. But genuine. The man I’d spent a year searching for was sitting in front of me.

And he was talking to me. I decided to take a risk.

“Can I interview you?”

He went still, then slowly turned his head.

“What?”

“An interview.”

He laughed.

“Tonya…”

“No name. No face. Just your voice.”

He stopped laughing.

“Are you joking?”

“No.”

I looked straight into his eyes.

“You’ve been listening to my podcast all this time, haven’t you?”

He said nothing.

“You know every episode. Every story. You even used my recordings to make a new one.”

He smiled faintly.

I continued:

“So you care about how the story gets told.”

Silence.

“You want people to hear you.”

He didn’t move.

“Then tell it yourself.”

Several seconds passed. Then he leaned slowly toward me.

“Are you sure you want to hear it?”

A chill crept down my back. But I nodded. He smiled.

“All right.”

And walked out.

Chapter 11: The Microphone

When he returned, he was carrying a small black bag. He set it on the table and unzipped it. Inside was a microphone. My microphone.

The one I’d used to record forty-five episodes. I recognized the scratch on its casing, left when I’d dropped it on the stairs outside the newsroom. He took it out and stood it on the table.

He connected it to a small recorder and tested the sound. Every movement was calm and assured, as though he’d done this a hundred times before.

“Well, journalist?”

He sat opposite me.

“Shall we begin?”

I looked at the microphone and suddenly felt something like hope. Real hope, for the first time since waking in the basement. A microphone meant a recording.

And a recording meant the possibility of leaving evidence behind. I tried not to show what I was thinking.

“You realize a recorded interview can be edited to say anything?”

He smiled.

“Of course.”

“Then why do you want one?”

“I’m curious what questions you’ll ask.”

I paused.

“And afterward?”

“We’ll see.”

He pressed the record button. A red light came on. I stared at it, then drew a deep breath.

“Today’s episode is a little different.”

The man raised his eyebrows.

I went on:

“For the past year, I’ve told you about the young women found in the city park. I’ve studied case files, spoken to their relatives, and searched for witnesses.”

I looked at the man.

“Today, the person I’ve been searching for is sitting opposite me.”

He smiled. I felt my hands begin to tremble.

“Let’s start with a simple question. What’s your name?”

He shook his head.

“No.”

“Why not?”

He leaned toward the microphone.

“Because a name explains nothing.”

His voice came through the recorder’s headphones. I nearly cried. I had a recording now. A real one. Unedited.

His voice. I forced myself to go on.

“How many girls have you killed?”

He watched me.

“Next question.”

“Did you know Sofia?”

Silence.

“Katya?”

He smiled faintly.

“Liza?”

The smile vanished. I noticed.

“What happened to Liza?”

He looked at the recorder, then at me.

“Did you want to conduct an interview or talk about your friends?”

“They aren’t my friends.”

“But you talk about them as though they are.”

He leaned back in his chair.

“As though they belong to you.”

I could feel myself losing control.

“Where’s Liza?”

He didn’t answer.

“Is she alive?”

Slowly, he reached out and stopped the recording. The red light went dark.

“That’s enough for today.”

“No!”

I lurched forward. The chain jerked my ankle.

“You promised!”

He calmly put the recorder away.

“I never promised you anything.”

I watched him pack the equipment into his bag. Then I understood. He’d done it deliberately. Given me hope. Let me believe I was a journalist again.

That I had some control over what was happening. Then he’d simply switched off the microphone. As if he’d switched me off.

After he left, I sat by the wall for a long time. Then I heard the familiar tapping. Knock. Knock. Knock.

I turned slowly and put my ear against the concrete.

“Are you there?”

For a while, it was quiet. Then I heard a weak voice. Female. Very young.

“Yes.”

I closed my eyes.

“What’s your name?”

Silence. I waited.

“Please. Tell me.”

Someone on the other side breathed heavily.

Then whispered:

“Don’t say names.”

I frowned.

“Why?”

“He’s listening.”

I glanced at the door.

“Who are you?”

No answer. I pressed against the wall again.

“Do you know where we are?”

A long pause.

Then a whisper:

“I thought I did.”

“What does that mean?”

Silence. I heard a quiet sob.

“Please,” I said. “Help me.”

Something rustled behind the wall.

Then the girl whispered:

“Don’t trust him.”

I clenched my fists.

“I don’t.”

“No.”

Her voice grew a little louder.

“You don’t understand.”

A pause.

“He wants you to record.”

I went cold inside.

“How do you know?”

Silence.

“How do you know about the microphone?”

Nothing. I knocked on the wall.

“Answer me!”

Then, suddenly, I heard the man’s voice. Not behind the door. Not on the stairs. Somewhere very close. Muffled.

But clear.

“Quiet.”

I froze. There was movement behind the wall. A brief scream. A dull thud. I recoiled.

“HEY!”

No answer.

“WHAT’S GOING ON IN THERE?”

I began pounding the concrete with my palms.

“LEAVE HER ALONE!”

Nothing. A few seconds later came the familiar metallic jingle. Jingle. Jingle. Then footsteps.

Retreating. Silence. I sat beside the wall and cried. I don’t know how long. A long time, probably.

And then I realized that, for the first time since I’d been brought here, I was afraid for someone other than myself.

Chapter 12: How Many Of Us Are Here?

He came again. I don’t know how much time had passed. A few hours, maybe. An entire day. He brought food.

And a small black recorder.

“Shall we continue?”

I stared at him. The girl’s voice still echoed in my head. Don’t trust him. He wants you to record.

“Where is she?” I asked.

He stopped.

“Who?”

“The girl.”

He slowly set down the tray.

“What girl?”

“Behind the wall.”

He looked at the wall, then at me, and smiled.

“Tonya.”

I said nothing.

“You’re a journalist.”

He spread his hands.

“You ought to check your facts.”

A cold knot formed in my stomach.

“I heard her.”

“Heard who?”

“The girl!”

He nodded, as though I’d finally said exactly what he wanted to hear.

“I see.”

Then he took out his phone, opened the camera, and pointed it at me.

“Tell me.”

I flinched away.

“Put that away.”

“No, really. Tell me what you heard.”

I turned my face aside. He kept filming.

“You’re saying there’s a girl living inside your wall. She talks to you. Right?”

I remained silent.

“And you said someone was watching your apartment.”

I clenched my teeth.

“And that a man in a gray coat was following you.”

He came closer.

“And that the police didn’t believe you.”

I looked up. He was smiling.

“Tonya, can you imagine how this will look?”

And then I understood. He was going to show the video to people. My listeners. This nightmare would become a new episode. Another excuse to laugh at me.

Another wave of comments. I looked into the camera. And then, to my own surprise, I smiled. The man froze.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“Why are you smiling?”

I shook my head.

“I was just thinking.”

He lowered the phone.

“About what?”

I looked straight at him.

“You’re trying very hard.”

He frowned.

“What do you mean?”

“All these videos. Recordings. Comments.”

I shrugged.

“You want to be noticed so badly.”

He didn’t answer.

“But do you know the funniest part?”

Slowly, I straightened my back.

“They still don’t know who you are.”

His expression changed. Not all at once. First the smile disappeared. Then his eyes narrowed.

“Careful, Tonya.”

I felt fear. Real, almost physical fear. But I couldn’t stop now.

“You’ve killed so many girls. Followed me. Staged an entire spectacle around my death.”

I nodded toward the phone.

“And still, nobody knows your name.”

He stared at me.

I went on:

“Everyone’s talking about me.”

Silence.

“They write articles about me. My photographs are on television. Millions listen to my podcast.”

I paused.

“But who are you?”

Slowly, he placed the phone on the table. I saw his fingers tense.

“Say that again.”

I kept quiet. He moved closer.

“Repeat what you just said.”

I pressed my back against the wall. He crouched in front of me and looked directly into my eyes.

Then, very softly, he said:

“You don’t seriously think any of this happened by chance, do you?”

I froze.

“What?”

He smiled. But there was nothing human in that smile now.

“Your podcast.”

I stopped breathing.

“Your success.”

He leaned closer.

“All those wonderful stories.”

I couldn’t look away.

“You really think you found me on your own?”

It felt as if the concrete wall behind me had vanished.

“What are you talking about?”

He watched me. Calm. Delighted.

“Tonya,” he said, “do you remember how it all began?”

I said nothing.

“Your very first episode.”

I remembered. Sofia. The first murder. Forty-three minutes of audio. Awkward pauses.

My trembling voice. Interviews. Neighbors. A search-team volunteer. The woman who found Sofia’s bag.

And somebody else. Somebody who’d spoken to me only briefly. I struggled to remember. He watched my face.

“Well?”

I closed my eyes. And suddenly I heard a voice from the past. Captured on a cheap microphone. An ordinary man’s voice.

“Just don’t give up on this case. Someone has to find that girl.”

I opened my eyes. He was smiling.

“Now you remember.”

I stared at him, realizing it was so much worse than I’d thought. He hadn’t merely followed my investigation. He’d been part of it from the very beginning.

After he left, I sat motionless for a long time. Then I slowly crawled to the wall and leaned against it.

“Are you there?”

Silence.

“Please.”

No one answered. I closed my eyes. Sofia’s photograph appeared in my mind again. The first girl. The one who’d started the investigation.

I remembered her mother. Her tiny kitchen. The floral curtains. The cup of tea she’d set in front of me.

And what she’d said:

“Please. Just don’t let them forget my daughter.”

I’d promised. I’d really promised. And then came the advertising deals. The interviews. The photo shoots.

Millions of listens. And now everything that remained of my investigation was a tiny concrete room. I lowered my head and suddenly heard a knock. Just one.

Knock. I froze. Another. Knock. Silence.

Then a weak female voice:

“Tonya?”

I pressed against the wall.

“I’m here!”

“Quiet.”

I covered my mouth. For several seconds, neither of us spoke.

Then the girl whispered:

“Has he gone?”

“Yes.”

A pause.

“Are you sure?”

I listened.

“I think so.”

I heard breathing behind the wall.

Then the girl said:

“Then listen carefully.”

I pressed my ear to the concrete.

“He’ll be back soon.”

“How do you know?”

She didn’t answer.

“Do you know when he comes?” I asked.

A pause.

“I know what he does first.”

I went still.

“What?”

More silence.

Then the girl whispered:

“He turns on the recording.”

My fingers grew cold.

“What recording?”

I heard a quiet sob.

Then the words I would remember forever:

“The one where you beg for help.”

I pulled away from the wall. I didn’t understand. Or didn’t want to.

“What?”

She stayed silent.

“Where did he get a recording like that?”

A long pause.

Then:

“He made me listen to it.”

A chill went down my spine.

“When?”

Her answer was barely audible.

“Before he brought you here.”

I sat against the wall, unable to move. Because I had suddenly understood something. He had planned my abduction in advance. Long before I went to the park. Perhaps long before I first saw the man in the gray coat.

I looked at the door. The narrow metal slot. The grille over the lightbulb. My own microphone, which he’d left on the table. Then I leaned against the wall again.

“Tell me one thing.”

The girl said nothing.

“How many of us are here?”

There was movement beyond the wall. Then a long, weary sigh. And an answer.

“I don’t know.”

A pause.

“I stopped counting.”

Part THREE: Another Voice

The most dangerous questions can sound like kindness.

Chapter 13: The Other Side Of The Microphone

After what the girl behind the wall told me, I couldn’t sleep for a long time. “I stopped counting.” The words needed no explanation. I wanted to believe she meant days, not people.

I ran a finger around the metal cuff on my ankle. The skin beneath it was inflamed. I’d pulled so hard against the chain on that first night that now even a sock hurt. I hated how quickly the body learned not to resist. At first I’d startled at every sound. Now I could tell the footsteps worth fearing from the ones that were only someone moving above the ceiling.

This time he arrived without a tray. He put two plastic cups and the recorder on the table, then connected a cable to the microphone. One cup had a cardboard sleeve bearing a café’s logo. I recognized it: they served terrible coffee there, and once I’d demolished them in a short video. He set the cup nearer to me as though we’d agreed to meet after work.

“You listened to me on the first day,” I said.

“Of course.”

“And you talked to me yourself.”

“Is that a question?”

I straightened up on the mattress. If he wanted to play at interviewing, he could have an interview.

“Why were you involved in the search for Sofia?”

He adjusted the cable. A tiny gesture, letting the beginning of my question pass while buying himself a second.

“Why were you there?”

“I’m asking you.”

“And I’m asking you.”

“Because it was a murder nobody wanted to talk about.”

“Not exactly. Sofia was all over the local news. You decided to tell the story differently. Why?”

I clenched my teeth. He asked questions like a man who had prepared for the conversation. He didn’t interrupt or argue. He knew how to let a silence hang. It was exactly how I used to draw the most important admissions out of people I interviewed.

“You’re changing the subject.”

“You don’t have to answer.”

In a room where I couldn’t even reach the door, his generosity in allowing me to remain silent was especially disgusting.

“I wanted to understand how a person decides to kill,” I said.

“Specifically, how?”

“What happens to him beforehand. What he feels afterward.”

“And what does the person who dies feel?”

I looked up. He sat calmly with his hands on his knees.

“You can’t ask the dead.”

“Did that bother you?”

I wanted to say, “The murders bothered me.” But the familiar response wouldn’t quite form. Because once, long before Sofia, I’d already asked myself almost the same question.

He pressed the record button.

The red light came on.

“And so,” he said, almost ceremonially, “The Last Walk. The episode no one is meant to hear.”

“You can’t force me to talk.”

“We’ve established that already. You talk of your own accord.”

His notebook lay on the table, an ordinary squared exercise book open at the middle. I caught only a few words: “first time,” “ten years,” and a question mark. He saw me looking and closed it.

“Have you ever been with someone?” he asked.

“What is this, a dating show?”

“Was there someone you loved?”

I laughed, partly in surprise and partly because I couldn’t think of anything better.

“Definitely a dating show now.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“What about you?”

“What do you think?”

“I think you lie even when you’re silent.”

He wasn’t offended. He merely glanced at my hand. Without realizing it, I’d been worrying the seam of my shirt. I always did that when I was trying not to laugh or cry. Mark once told me I’d unravel anything if I was nervous long enough. I immediately unclenched my fingers.

“Where did you just go?” the man asked.

“Nowhere. I’m right here in your delightful basement.”

“No. When you smiled.”

I didn’t remember smiling.

He stopped the recorder. The glowing light went out. For some reason, I regretted it. While it was on, the encounter had a shape: question, answer, pause. Without it there was only the room and the man with the keys again.

He pushed the cup toward me. The coffee was still warm.

“You can’t buy me,” I said.

“I’m not trying to.”

I smelled the coffee. Black, no sugar. Exactly how I usually bought it before a recording. It unnerved me that he knew even that. But I took a sip anyway.

“One day, Tonya,” he said, “you’ll stop answering questions as if you’re reading comments under your latest episode.”

“And you’ll stop pretending to be a therapist?”

“As soon as I understand why you’re always talking about death and never about love.”

I wanted to throw the cup at him. Instead I kept both hands around it, because my fingers were finally warm.

He stood, packed up the equipment, and left. Only after the lock clicked did I realize I hadn’t asked a single new question about Sofia.

And he hadn’t said a word about his crimes.

Later I remembered one more detail. When he asked if there had ever been someone I loved, I hadn’t said no. I’d laughed.

For a journalist used to interpreting other people’s voices, that was a very bad clue.

Chapter 14: The Smell Of Salt

The smell came with his next visit.

At first I dismissed it as an accident: a freshly washed shirt, damp fabric, something citrusy. Then he bent over to put a bottle of water on the floor, and I caught the faintest trace of salty air. Impossible, of course. Down here underground, everything smelled of iron, dust, and my own fear. But for one brief second I wasn’t in the basement.

I was on a beach. I was seventeen.

“Are you feeling all right?” he asked.

I moved away so sharply that the chain caught the edge of the mattress.

“I’m fine.”

“You’ve gone pale.”

“It’s the lighting.”

He glanced at the bulb, seemed to make a mental note, and sat down. He had his notebook again, this time closed.

“Have you ever been to the sea?”

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Everyone has a place they wish they could return to.”

“What, are you a tour guide there?”

“Do you have one?”

I saw water too blue to be real. A sky without a single cloud. Sun-baked stones under my feet. Cyprus in July looked painted in colors so shamelessly bright that I felt embarrassed by my happiness, as though it might give me away.

Mom had taken me to the seaside that summer, just the two of us, for the first time. She worked hard, was always tired, and regarded a vacation as a rare event that had to be executed perfectly. Every morning she put on a wide-brimmed hat and asked whether I’d gotten sunburned. Every half hour she reminded me to drink water. I rolled my eyes and pretended to be grown up, even though I never strayed more than fifteen feet from her sun lounger.

Not until Mark appeared.

He materialized beside our umbrella at the least convenient moment. I was trying to tear open a bag of chips with my teeth because I had a book in one hand and a towel in the other.

“You two seem to be in a pretty serious relationship,” he said in Russian.

I looked at him over my sunglasses.

“Don’t interfere. We’re going through a rough patch.”

He laughed. Tall, unevenly tanned, his nose sunburned, he looked like someone who had never once considered how he appeared to other people. A fabric wristband with the name of a local festival dangled from his wrist. Later I learned he’d come with his parents and they were staying at a neighboring hotel.

“Here, let me help.”

“I didn’t ask.”

“I noticed.”

He took the bag, opened it easily, and handed it back, spilling a few chips onto my towel.

“Excellent work,” I said. “You’re a surgeon, I take it.”

“Not yet. But I can feel my calling.”

My mother, who had heard the entire exchange, smiled at him much more warmly than I had. I hated her for it for approximately three seconds. Then he walked away, turned, and called:

“Same place tomorrow? Or will you and the chips have worked things out?”

“It’s complicated,” I said.

He laughed again.

I pretended to return to my book. In reality, I reread the same page for the next half hour because I was watching for him to come back.

“What were you thinking about?” the man in the basement asked.

I startled.

“Nothing.”

“It’s written all over your face.”

“What is?”

He didn’t answer. He merely nudged the water bottle toward me, turned away, and began tinkering with the recorder. To my surprise, I wanted him to turn back. I hated myself for wanting it. His gaze meant attention, and attention down here was the one thing I had no other way of getting.

“On Cyprus,” I said, startled by my own voice.

He lifted his head.

“What about Cyprus?”

“There’s a beach. Beautiful. I went there when I was seventeen.”

I waited for him to ask more questions. He said nothing.

“Mom dragged me on excursions. I pretended to hate everything she loved.”

“Why?”

“I was seventeen. At that age, hating your mother’s hobbies is practically a full-time job.”

He smiled a little.

“And yet you remember the sea.”

“Who could forget it?”

I remember more than his face. It’s astonishing how much room the mind leaves for trivial things when the person connected to them disappears. Mark ate his ice cream before he could decide what flavor to get next. He wore a watch even though he never knew the correct time: it was seven minutes slow, and he couldn’t be bothered to set it. He had a habit of addressing stray cats with the same formal politeness grown-ups use with strangers in elevators.

On the first morning after we’d met, I could still manage not to glance at the neighboring umbrella. On the second, I caught myself turning the pages of my book too quickly so he wouldn’t see I was waiting for him. On the third, I grew furious when he hadn’t appeared by eleven. By noon I’d invented seven explanations for his absence and blamed him in every one. He arrived at one, carrying a pharmacy bag in one hand and two cartons of juice in the other.

“Where have you been?” I demanded, as though he’d violated a contract we’d negotiated in advance.

“Dad asked me to go to the pharmacy. He got sunburned,” Mark said. “Not me. Dad. He thinks his skin should adapt to vacation on its own.”

“Tell him evolution doesn’t offer that option.”

Mark burst out laughing and nearly dropped the juice. The ease of it frightened me — a happiness that required nothing but a few minutes of conversation. I was used to being a straight-A student, a careful daughter, a person who always had an explanation. With him, I didn’t need to explain anything.

Mom pretended to be absorbed in a detective novel, but I felt her watching over the pages. When Mark returned to his sun lounger, she said:

“He seems like a nice boy.”

“You’ve known him for all of four minutes.”

“Sometimes four minutes is enough to tell whether someone cares how you feel.”

“He brought juice. It wasn’t a marriage proposal.”

Mom didn’t argue. She had a gift for falling silent just when I had an elaborate defense prepared.

Later, in the basement, I asked the man whether he always did this — listened until the other person started talking on her own. He moved the recorder closer and said:

“You don’t have to go on.”

And of course I went on. That’s how the most unpleasant kind of coercion works: the one person who can end what’s happening offers you the illusion of choice, and you clutch it like proof of your own freedom.

“Was anyone else at the beach?” he asked.

“Half the hotel.”

“His parents?”

“Of course. His mother wore a white linen shirt. In the heat it seemed impossibly clean. His father always sat under the umbrella, even when Mark tried to get him into the water. I only saw him in passing. I was interested in entirely different people.”

“Which people?”

“One person, to be precise.”

He turned his head slightly. I thought the admission pleased him. I understood now that he wasn’t merely testing whether I could talk about the past. He was quietly forcing me to choose which memory I’d give him today in exchange for a little more time not being alone.

Sometimes I shut my eyes and heard Mom’s voice clearly: “Don’t go too far.” That warning used to irritate me. Now I’d have given anything to hear it once more from beneath the beach umbrella. But all I had was concrete, a trembling lightbulb, and a man whose unfamiliar face was paying such close attention.

He switched on the recorder. The red light came on after I’d already started talking. I noticed, but I didn’t stop. It felt as though, if I fell silent, the beach and the sun and the boy with the sunburned nose would vanish. And I couldn’t bear to lose him again.

Chapter 15: Mark

That summer I worked very hard at not looking like a girl in love.

If I’d been offered a choice between reciting poetry aloud in front of the entire school and admitting to my mother that I liked a boy, I’d have chosen the poetry. Bad poetry. Without rehearsing.

Mark appeared on the beach every morning. Sometimes he brought us cold water from the kiosk; sometimes he claimed the sun lounger beside us and pretended to read a guidebook. Within days, my mother knew his parents’ names, their hometown, and where he planned to study. All I’d learned in three days was that he loved terrible jokes, wasn’t good at freestyle swimming, and hated being called “Markie.”

Naturally, from then on, I called him nothing else.

“Come swimming,” he’d suggest.

“First get authorization from the Water Safety Commission.”

“Are you the commission?”

“Me and common sense. You’re on bad terms with both of us.”

He’d grab his towel and run toward the water. Then return dripping, shake his hair over the pages of my book, and I’d pretend to be outraged while waiting for him to sit beside me. Sometimes our elbows touched. Every time I acted as though I hadn’t noticed.

One evening we wandered along the waterfront while our parents ate dinner at a restaurant. It was crowded, and the air smelled of grilled squid and sweet pastries. Identical blue evil-eye charms hung from souvenir stalls. Mark stopped and bought me the smallest one, a ceramic eye on a thin cord.

“To protect you from the evil eye,” he said.

“You’d be better off buying a map. You’ve already gotten us lost twice.”

“Are you taking it or not?”

I took it, then immediately hid it in my pocket so he wouldn’t see how much I liked it.

Beside a low stone wall, Mark abruptly stopped joking.

“You’re always making fun of me,” he said.

“An accurate observation.”

“Do you make fun of me when you like me, too?”

I went hot. I wanted to invent some devastating comeback that would preserve my dignity and let me escape the subject forever. But he was standing close and he wasn’t smiling.

“What makes you so sure of yourself?”

“I’m hoping.”

Then he kissed me. Awkwardly, quickly. His hand touched my cheek as if he were checking whether I’d push him away. I didn’t. I wanted simultaneously to sink through the ground and to stay there forever.

When we drew apart, Mark smiled.

“Well?”

“Three out of ten,” I said.

“Out of five?”

“Out of ten.”

He put on an offended expression, and I couldn’t help kissing him myself.

That night I hardly slept. I replayed those few seconds over and over, angry at myself for how happy they made me. I never told anyone how frightened I was of that happiness. I thought that if I named it out loud, it would end.

“You’re talking about him in the present tense,” the man observed.

I was back in the concrete room so abruptly my temples ached.

“No, I’m not.”

“‘He smiles.’ ‘He comes back.’ You keep going back there.”

“I haven’t told you about him.”

He nodded toward the microphone.

“You just did.”

I looked at the red light. My fingers clenched the edge of the mattress.

“Turn it off.”

He turned it off without argument. Instead of relief, I felt another kind of trap: the man who had obeyed my one request suddenly seemed, for an instant, less dangerous. I caught the thought and it frightened me more than the jingling keys.

“What was his name?” he asked.

“None of your business.”

“All right.”

He stood to leave. And that was when, for some reason, I said:

“Mark.”

He stopped but didn’t turn around. Waited.

“His name was Mark.”

For the first time in years, I had spoken that name aloud to someone who could use every truth against me.

Mom had an old camera she called a “real camera” because it could take photographs without the internet. She photographed everything: plates of fruit, the market, a flower-covered fence, the impression of my foot in the sand. When she asked Mark and me to stand together, I refused with the outrage of someone being asked to announce an engagement over a loudspeaker.

“We’re just acquaintances, Mom.”

“Then you’ll still be acquaintances in the photograph.”

Obediently, Mark stood beside me, leaving enough space for a whole other person between us. But as Mom raised the camera he leaned in and whispered:

“What if you make me look bad?”

“Your chances weren’t great to begin with.”

In the photograph that remained in a hidden folder on my computer for years, I’m not looking into the lens. I’m looking at him. And smiling with such helpless openness that recognizing that girl still hurts.

After lunch we played table tennis by the pool. I won the first two games only because he kept getting distracted by me. Then Mark pulled himself together, won the third, and solemnly demanded a prize. I offered a glass of water. He said he deserved dinner. I told him his appetites were unhealthy.

That was how we ended up on the waterfront: we kept agreeing to stay just five more minutes, then inventing reasons not to leave. The sun slowly withdrew from the souvenir shops, and long bands of light stretched across the water. At some point he stopped walking and said:

“I don’t know how to talk to you when you’re not joking.”

“I don’t know why you’d want to.”

“Because sometimes I think you want to say something important. Instead you tell me I’m a terrible swimmer.”

“You are a terrible swimmer.”

“See? Again.”

I looked at my reflection in a shop window. Behind the glass stood a bewildered girl with hair damp from the heat and flushed cheeks. I was terrified of saying what he had already understood. Love seemed ridiculous, foreign, cinematic. Something you could discuss with friends, rate, doubt. Being inside it was unbearable.

“I like being with you,” I said so softly I barely heard myself.

“Me too,” he answered.

He didn’t demand anything more. Didn’t ask me to repeat it. He simply took my hand, and we kept walking. It was the simplest thing in the world. That’s why I remember it with agonizing precision: his palm was hot, and his thumb kept gently stroking my skin. I was afraid he could hear my heart pounding.

That evening, after the kiss, I came back to our room and told Mom I was tired from the sun. She offered me tea and wanted to take my temperature. I refused. She checked on me later; I lay facing the wall and pretended to be asleep. In truth, I could still feel the imagined warmth of his fingers in my palm.

“You didn’t tell anyone back then?” the man in the basement asked.

“About what?”

“About being happy.”

I wanted to brush the question aside, but I realized he was right. I hadn’t told anyone. With Mark I’d hidden it in jokes. With Mom, irritation. With my friends, silence. I thought that if someone saw how much I needed this person, I’d be defenseless.

“And now you’re telling me,” he said.

I watched his lips. He wasn’t smiling or pitying me. Just waiting. And suddenly I wanted him to say he understood. To tell me that my awkwardness back then had been normal, nothing to be ashamed of. Wanting that absolution from my captor was more frightening than the awkwardness itself. I bit my tongue and said:

“Don’t mistake a memory for trust.”

He gave the slightest nod, as though I’d said exactly what he’d been waiting to hear.

And I felt relieved anyway.

After the door slammed, I crawled to the wall and put my ear against the concrete.

“Are you there?”

Silence.

“I did something stupid,” I whispered. “I told him something.”

The reply didn’t come at once:

“He knows how to wait.”

The girl’s voice was so weak it sounded as though she were speaking through thick fabric.

“Do you know him?”

“I thought I did.”

“What does that mean?”

She was silent for a long time. Then she said:

“Don’t confuse the fact that he listens with the idea that he cares.”

I wanted to ask more, but I heard a door creak somewhere on the other side of the wall. The girl said nothing else.

Chapter 16: Someone Else’S Yacht

He started bringing me things. Not necessarily things I needed. Once, a lemon. Another time, an old postcard of the sea I didn’t recognize. Once, a small blue-and-white striped towel. It all looked random until the objects began to resemble the set of a vacation he was forcing me to remember.

“You’re looking for coincidences,” I said when he put the postcard on the table.

“And you’re looking for meaning in every object. It’s your job.”

“You realize that’s called manipulation?”

“And when you opened an episode with a recording of a grieving mother, what did you call that?”

I wanted to argue. But suddenly I saw Sofia’s mother’s little kitchen. The woman had asked me to switch off the recorder, and I’d obediently pressed the button. Then I’d spent another half hour memorizing her words, trying to capture her exact tone. I’d stopped knowing where helping ended and harvesting material began long before I reached this basement.

The man pushed the microphone closer.

“I want to ask you one question,” I said. “Were you at the search because you already knew where Sofia was?”

“Which search?”

“Don’t pretend.”

“You said yourself that hundreds of people took part in the first search.”

“You were there.”

“That’s what you said.”

I realized he’d learned my favorite technique: make people repeat their own version of events until they begin to doubt it. In a studio, I would have stopped recording and checked the facts. Here he was the only source of facts.

“Why did you ask me about love?” I said.

“Because you remember losses very well. Everything that came before them, not so much.”

I glanced at the postcard. The sea in it was dark, almost black.

“Mark and I once climbed onto somebody else’s yacht,” I said before I could decide whether to speak at all.

He didn’t interrupt.

That mattered more than any question.

That day, Mom had booked an excursion around the island. The bus was taking tourists into the mountains early in the morning and bringing them back that evening. I desperately wanted to be left alone, but asking permission outright was unthinkable. So I announced that my stomach hurt and I might be running a fever.

Mom felt my forehead, left me medicine, money, and strict instructions to stay out of the sun. I waited until the bus disappeared around the corner and texted Mark: “Patient recovering. Requires observation.”

His parents had also left their hotel that day, on business of their own in Nicosia. Mark turned up with a bag of peaches and the expression of someone keeping a secret for the first time in his life. We wandered along the promenade, hid from tourists we recognized, searched for somewhere nobody could see us, and laughed constantly.

That evening a white yacht was moored at the end of a small marina. Nothing luxurious, no security guard, just an awning over the stern. A rope hung over the side; a step almost touched the water. Mark said the owners seemed to have gone out to dinner. I said he was out of his mind. He said the Water Safety Commission had already established that.

We climbed aboard, intending to sit for five minutes. Then we found a bottle of champagne in a little refrigerator. Mark wrestled with the cork, almost dropped it overboard, and was ridiculously proud when he finally opened it. We took sips from plastic cups we found. The champagne was sour and warm.

“Not exactly like the movies,” I said.

“What’s missing?”

“Music. A captain in a white uniform. A decent man.”

“Last one’s impossible.”

The yacht smelled of salt, warm wood, and some citrus cleaning product. We sat shoulder to shoulder while the sea grew dark. Lights from the promenade drew long paths across the water. He stroked my palm with his thumb. I remember that, at some point, I stopped inventing sarcastic remarks. I no longer needed words to protect myself.

That night was our first time together. I wasn’t nearly as prepared as I’d pretended to my friends. There was awkwardness, trust, and the strange feeling that the world had suddenly expanded, though there was no one I could tell. Afterward we lay together for a long time, listening to the water touching the hull and whispering about trivial things. I knew that if I said I was happy, he’d say he was too. But I never said it.

I described that evening to the man, and my memory kept doubling back, adding details, contradicting itself. I wanted to speak every moment aloud again, as if somewhere in those moments there might have been a different ending.

Before that night, we’d tried several times to get some time alone and failed every time. Mom would call me over for sunscreen, Mark’s father would go looking for him because he’d forgotten his keys, or a tour group from our hotel would appear on the promenade. We joked that the whole world was conspiring against our first kiss, though secretly I welcomed every delay: one more day when I could be brave in my jokes and cowardly where it mattered.

I’d prepared my lie in advance for the day of the excursion. Mom was going to the archaeological museum, then into the mountains and to a monastery. She checked the reservation twice and complained that the bus left too early. At breakfast I put on the most wretched expression I could manage.

“I think I got overheated yesterday,” I said.

Mom placed her palm on my forehead. That touch made me feel even guiltier.

“You don’t have a fever. Maybe you should come? The bus has air-conditioning.”

“I’ll get carsick.”

She gave me a long look. At the next table, Mark pretended to be fascinated by his toast, though I could see him struggling not to smile.