He continued to struggle with temptation for several minutes. His pace became slower and quieter, and he listened to hear if this affected the loudness of the echo. Finally, Artyom stopped completely. He stood like that in the impenetrable darkness and waited, afraid to take a deep breath, lest the sound of air entering his lungs interfered with the perception of the slightest murmurs in the distance.
Silence.
Now that he had stopped moving, his perception of the reality of space again vanished. While he was walking, it was as if he was grasping that reality by the soles of his boots. When he stopped in the middle of the ink-black darkness of the tunnel, Artyom suddenly no longer understood where he was.
And it seemed to him, when he again began to move, that the barely perceptible echo of his steps reached his ears before his own foot managed to step down onto the concrete floor.
His heart began to beat more acutely. But, in an instant, he was able to convince himself that paying attention to every rustle in the tunnels was silly and served no purpose. For some time, Artyom tried not to listen to the echo at all. Then, when it seemed to him that the most recent of the fading echoes were drawing closer, he covered his ears and continued to move forward. But even this didn’t work for long.
Removing his palms from his ears after a couple of minutes and continuing to walk, he heard – to his horror – the echo of his steps getting louder in front of him, as if they were approaching. But all he had to do was stop and so would the sounds in front of him, after a delay of some fraction of a second.
This tunnel was testing Artyom and his ability to withstand fear. But he didn’t give up. He had already been through much too much to be scared by darkness and an echo.
Was it an echo?
It was getting closer. There was no doubt about that. Artyom stopped one last time when the phantom steps could be heard about twenty metres ahead of him. This was so inexplicable and weird that he couldn’t stand it. He wiped the cold perspiration from his brow and, with his voice cracking, shouted into the emptiness:
‘Is anyone there?’
The echo reverberated frighteningly close, and Artyom didn’t recognize his own voice. The rolling echoes chased each other into the depths of the tunnels, shedding syllables: ‘anyone there… one there… there…’ And nobody answered. And suddenly, something incredible happened. They started to come back, repeating his question, the dropped syllables recomposing themselves in reverse order and becoming louder, as though someone about thirty paces away had repeated his question in a frightened voice.
Artyom could not endure this. Turning around, he went back, trying not to walk too fast at first, but then he ran, having completely forgotten about not encouraging his fears, and stumbling. But after a minute, he understood that the reverberating footsteps continued to be heard at a distance of twenty metres. His invisible pursuer didn’t want to let him go. Gasping, Artyom ran without understanding in what direction, and finally collided with a tunnel cross passage.
The echo immediately abated. Some time passed before he could gather up his will power, get up, and take a step forward. It was the right direction. With each passing metre, the sound of steps shuffling against the concrete became closer, moving towards him. And only the blood pounding in his ears slightly suppressed the ominous rustling. Every time Artyom stopped, his pursuer stopped in the darkness as well, for Artyom was now absolutely sure it was no echo.
This continued until the steps sounded as close as one’s outstretched arm. And then Artyom, yelling and blindly swinging his fists, sprang forward to where he reckoned the source of the steps had to be.
His fists made a swishing sound as they cut through the emptiness. Nobody tried to defend themselves against his blows. He flailed the air uselessly, yelling, jumping back, and moving his arms out from his sides in an effort to seize an enemy he could not see in the darkness. Emptiness. There was nobody there. But as soon as he caught his breath and made one more step toward Polis, he heard a heavy shuffling sound right in front of him. He again swung his arm, and again there was nothing. Artyom felt he was losing his mind. Straining his eyes until they hurt, he tried to see anything at all, and his ears tried to catch the nearby breathing of some other creature. But there simply wasn’t anybody there.
Having stood immobile for several long seconds, Artyom reflected that whatever the explanation might be for this strange phenomenon, it posed no danger to him. Acoustics, more than likely. When I get home, I’ll ask my stepfather, he said to himself, but, when he had already brought his foot up to take another step toward his goal, someone quietly whispered, directly in his ear:
‘Wait. You can’t go there now.’
‘Who’s that? Who’s here?’ yelled Artyom, breathing heavily. But nobody answered. He was again surrounded by a deep emptiness. Then, wiping the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand, he hurried off in the direction of Borovitskaya. The phantom steps of his pursuer matched his pace as he moved in the opposite direction, gradually fading in the distance until they fell silent. And only then did Artyom stop. He did not and could not know what it had been. He had never heard of anything like it from any of his friends, nor had his stepfather spoken to him of it at night by the fire. But whoever it was who whispered in his ear and ordered him to stop and wait, now – when Artyom no longer feared him, when he had the time to understand what had happened and do some hard thinking about it – it sounded hypothetically convincing.
He spent the next twenty minutes sitting on the rails, swaying from side to side as if drunk, fighting the shakes and recalling the strange voice, which belonged to no human, that ordered him to wait. He moved forward only when the shivering finally began to pass, and the frightful whisper in his head had begun to merge with the quiet rush of the growing air current in the tunnel.
From that point on, he simply walked forward, trying not to think of anything, stumbling at times over cables lying on the floor, but nothing more terrible happened to him. It seemed to him that not much time had passed, although he couldn’t say how much, because the minutes all ran together in the darkness. And then he saw a light at the end of the tunnel.
Borovitskaya.
Polis.
Then and there, a rude cry was heard from the station, followed by the sound of shots, and Artyom, springing back, hid in a depression in the wall. From a distance, he heard the lingering cries of the wounded, followed by foul language, and then there was the sound of another burst of automatic fire, amplified by the tunnel.
Wait…
Artyom ventured to emerge from his hiding place only a full fifteen minutes after everything had quietened down. Raising his arms, he walked slowly toward the light.
This actually was an entry onto the platform. There was no watch on duty at Borovitskaya, apparently relying on the inviolability of Polis. An access point made of concrete blocks stood five metres short of the point where the circular arches of the tunnel ended. A prone body lay next to it in a pool of blood.
When Artyom emerged into the field of view of border guards wearing green uniforms and service caps, they ordered him to come closer and stand facing the wall. Seeing the body on the ground, he obeyed immediately.
He was quickly searched, asked for his passport, had his arms twisted behind his back, and finally led to the station. Light. The very same. They told the truth. They always told the truth; legends didn’t lie. The light was so bright, Artyom had to squint so as not to be blinded. But the light entered his pupils even through his eyelids, blinding him until it hurt, and only when the border guards blindfolded him did his eyes stop stinging. Returning to the life lived by previous generations of people turned out to be more painful than Artyom could imagine.