The stairwell of the tenement on Święty Duch Street smelled of damp plaster and boiled cabbage — a smell that seemed more embedded in the fabric of Gdańsk's walls than the brickwork itself. Marta counted the steps. Seventeen to the half-landing. Twelve to the door. Numbers were safe. They didn't lie, didn't shift their meaning depending on tone of voice, didn't conceal a second layer beneath a stratum of silence. They were constant. Unlike the man waiting behind door number four.
She stopped in front of the peephole. The brass fitting had darkened; no one had polished it in years. She pictured her father on the other side — sitting in his armchair, staring at the wall, waiting for the buzzer to pull him from his torpor. Or perhaps he wasn't waiting at all. Perhaps he had forgotten she'd called, or preferred not to remember, filing that information into the same mental drawer where he kept all memory of her mother. She pressed the button. The sound was sharp, electric, boring into the skull.
He opened the door after a pause that lasted three breaths too long. Marek Solak looked as though he had shrunk in the wash. His sweater, a grey, thick-knit cardigan, hung loose on him, concealing the line of shoulders that had once been broad and certain. His face was ashen, mapped with a network of fine cracks, like old porcelain someone had glued back together one too many times. Only his eyes remained the same — a faded blue, always sliding sideways, careful not to meet her gaze.
"You're here," he said. It was neither a question nor a greeting. It was a statement of fact, with a faint undertone of resignation.
"I'm here," she replied. The headphones around her neck felt heavier than usual. She could feel the cold of the metal on her collarbones.
He let her in, retreating into the hallway. The flat was immaculately clean. Not sterile in a clinical sense, but scrubbed of life. No newspapers on the table, no cups in the sink, no shoes kicked off carelessly. The space looked like a scale model in which someone had arranged the furniture but forgotten to add any inhabitants. On the shelf in the entrance hall lay his keys, lined up parallel to the edge of the cabinet. Marta felt a prick of something in her stomach. It was the same kind of order she maintained in the archive. The inheritance of trauma through symmetry.
"I'll make tea," he said in the direction of the kitchen, not waiting for an answer. An escape. He always began with an escape into manual tasks.
She followed him. The kitchen was narrow, with a window looking out onto a well courtyard where rain drummed against the metal windowsills in a rhythm Marta found herself tapping out with her fingers on the tabletop. Marek set the water to boil. His movements were slow, careful, as though he were operating complex machinery rather than an electric kettle. She watched his back. Hunched, tense. He was bracing for a blow.
"How was the journey?" he asked, not turning round. He took two cups from the cupboard. They were identical, white, undecorated.
"The train was late. As usual," she said. Her voice sounded foreign in that acoustic space. Too loud. Too solid. "Dad, I didn't come to talk about PKP."
The whine of the kettle rose, filling the silence thickening between them like setting jelly. Marek reached for the tin of tea. His hand trembled, scattering a few black fragments across the immaculate white counter. He froze. He stared at those black specks as though they were an error in the code of reality.
"I know," he said quietly. He swept the tea into the sink with his palm. "But I'd rather you'd come simply. As a daughter."
"I stopped being 'simply a daughter' the day you stopped talking about her. Twenty-two years ago."
He turned round. His face was a mask of exhaustion. There was no anger in it, only a deep, abyssal weariness — the weariness of a man who had spent decades holding a door shut against pressing water.
"Marta..." He sighed. "Why are you doing this? You have a good job. You have peace. Why do you have to go digging through the rubbish?"
"It isn't rubbish. It's my life. And her death."
He set the cups on the table. The sound of ceramic against laminate was dry, brief. He sat down opposite her and folded his hands. His knuckles were white.
"She is dead," he said flatly. "A car accident. The car skidded. End of story. How many times do I have to tell you?"
"Not once. Because you never told me. Grandmother told me. You said nothing." Marta reached into her bag. The fabric rustled. Marek flinched, his gaze travelling to her hands, tracking every movement with the wariness of an animal caught in a trap.
She took out the dictaphone. An old, analogue model she had borrowed from the archive. A heavy, solid block from the eighties. She placed it on the table between the two steaming cups. The black cassette inside looked like an eye staring straight at Marek.
"Górowo," she said. A single word. A place name that should have meant nothing.
Marek stopped breathing. Not metaphorically. His chest simply froze mid-inhale. His pupils dilated, swallowing his irises, turning his eyes into black holes. For a moment the kitchen held nothing but the rain and the quiet hiss of cooling water.
"Where did you hear that name?" His voice was hoarse, as though his throat had abruptly turned to dust.
"I found documents. And tapes." Marta placed her finger on the play button. The plastic was cold and slick. Her heart hammered in her throat, its rhythm entirely unlike the calm dripping of the rain. "Dad, she was there. You knew."
Marek stood up sharply. The chair scraped across the tiles with a shriek that made Marta clench her teeth. He crossed to the window and pressed his forehead against the glass. His back heaved. He was breathing fast and shallow.
"You have no idea what you're talking about. It's nonsense. Old papers, bureaucratic errors."
"Errors?" Marta pressed the button.
The mechanism engaged with a loud click. The reels began to turn. Hiss. That distinctive, analogue hiss of magnetic tape, sounding like wind whistling through empty rooms. And then a voice. A voice Marta knew from her own nightmares, but which sounded as though it belonged to someone she had loved before she learned what loving meant.
"It is dark. But it isn't night. This is a darkness that has weight. I feel it on my skin like a wet blanket..."
The voice on the tape was a woman's. Trembling, on the edge of panic, but controlled. Her mother's voice. Or her own. The boundary was fluid.
Marek turned from the window. His face was white as the wall. His mouth hung open, his hands shook so violently that he had to lean against the windowsill to keep from falling. He looked like a man who had seen a ghost. No — worse than that. He looked like a man who had seen his own sin return after years away to present the bill.
"Turn it off," he whispered.
The tape kept turning.
"They make me look in the mirror. But in the mirror there is no me. There is only an opening. And I can hear... I can hear something scratching on the other side of the glass..."
"TURN IT OFF!" he screamed. It was not his father's voice. It was a howl. He lunged toward the table.
Marta had no time to react. Marek reached the dictaphone, his large, gnarled hands striking the device and knocking it from the table. The plastic hit the floor, the cover sprang open, the cassette fell out and rolled under the fridge. The sound cut off abruptly, replaced by the hum of the refrigerator and Marek's heavy, wheezing breath.
He stood over her, panting. His face was purple, the vein at his temple pulsing at a rate that suggested a stroke was close. Marta sat motionless, pressed back against her chair. For the first time in her life she was afraid of her father. Not of his indifference. Of his presence.
"Where did you get that?" he asked. His voice was breaking. "Who gave it to you? Rawski? Is that bastard still alive?"
Marta felt a coldness spread through her stomach. Rawski. A name that had existed until now only as a shadow in documents — spoken aloud by her father, it took on flesh.
"So it's true," she said quietly. "You knew him. You let him do this."
Marek dropped into his chair as though the strings holding him upright had been cut. He buried his face in his hands. His fingers dug into his hair, pulling at it, as if he wanted to tear the memories out by the roots.
"I didn't let him..." he mumbled into his palms. "We thought it would help. She... she was ill, Marta. After — after you were born. Something broke inside her. Depression, the doctors said. But it was more than that. She was afraid of you. Afraid she would hurt you. That she wasn't herself anymore, only someone who had taken her place."
Marta felt the blood drain from her face. Her father's words struck her like stones. She was afraid of you.
"Rawski promised he would fix it," Marek continued, rocking slightly. "He talked about a new method. About reconstructing the self. About cutting trauma out like a tumour. Górowo was supposed to be a chance. Ward C. A miraculous therapy."
He raised his head. His eyes were red, wet. He looked at Marta, but he was seeing someone else.
"We took her there. I left her. I said: 'Everything will be all right, Ewa. You'll come back to us.'" He gave a short, hysterical laugh. "She came back. After three months. But it wasn't her. She looked like her, she spoke like her, but inside... inside there was nothing. As though someone had switched off the light in the house but left the door open."
"What happened there?" Marta asked. Her voice was dry, professional. The archivist had taken control, because the daughter would not have survived this.
"I don't know!" Marek slammed his fist on the table. The cups jumped; tea splashed across the white cloth. "No one knew. Rawski disappeared. The ward was closed. And she... she started hearing things. Voices from the radio. Whispers in the walls. She said the frequency was wrong. That the tuning hadn't worked."
He leaned across the table and seized Marta's wrist. His hand was hot and damp. The grip was painful.
"Marta, listen to me. You have to let this go. Burn that tape. Forget you ever found that box. They didn't disappear. What they did in Górowo... it wasn't malpractice. It was the opening of a door that cannot be closed."
"Who? Who didn't disappear?"
"Shadows," he whispered. "People who funded that research. Do you think anyone built a ward like that in the eighties for the benefit of patients? They were looking for a weapon, Marta. A weapon inside the human mind. Ewa was just a test subject. And you... you are her daughter."
He released her wrist as though it had burned him. He pulled back, breathing hard.
"She didn't die in a skid," said Marta. It was not a question. She understood now, all at once.
Marek was silent for a long moment. He stared at the spreading tea stain on the cloth, brown as old blood.
"She drove into a tree," he said at last, his voice drained of all feeling. "On a straight road. On a sunny day. She didn't brake. I found a note in the glovebox. One sentence. 'Tuning complete.'"
Marta felt the world tilt around her. The kitchen, the rain outside the window, the smell of tea — all of it became suddenly unreal, like stage scenery in a cheap theatre. The only thing that was real was the tape lying under the fridge.
She stood up. Her legs felt like cotton wool. She crossed to the fridge, crouched, and retrieved the cassette. It was dusty. She wiped it on her sleeve and put it in her pocket. She could feel its weight against her hip.
"I'm leaving," she said.
Marek did not protest. He sat hunched, staring at the stain on the table. He looked like a man who had just lost a game of chess in which he'd never had a king to begin with.
"Don't come back here with this," he said, not looking at her. "If you want to live, leave it alone. You'll destroy yourself the way she did. It's in your blood, Marta. That same... susceptibility. I see it in your eyes when you listen to those recordings of yours. You're a receiver, just like her."
"I'm an archivist," she corrected him coldly, though inside she was shaking like a leaf. "And I have just catalogued your lie."
She went to the hallway. She put on her coat, wrapped her scarf around her neck. Her hands were trembling; she couldn't find the button. In the mirror she saw her reflection — a pale face, dark eyes, headphones around her neck. She looked like someone listening for a signal from another planet.
As she opened the front door, she heard her father's voice one last time, from the kitchen. He was not shouting. He was speaking quietly, to himself, or to someone who wasn't there.
"Eight. Bolt number eight. If it gives, everything falls apart."
Marta pulled the door shut. She ran down the stairs without counting the steps. She wanted to be as far as possible from that flat, from that smell of cabbage and fear. But when she burst out onto the street, into the cold Gdańsk rain, she understood there was no escaping it. Her father's words had lodged inside her. You're a receiver.
She took out her phone. She dialled Tomasz's number. The connecting tone sounded in her ear like a steady heartbeat.
"Hello?" His voice was sleepy, rough. "Marta? What's happened?"
"You were right," she said, staring at the wet cobblestones in which the lights of the Old Town were reflected. "This isn't a story. It's a trap. And my father just confirmed we've walked into it."
"Where are you?"
"On my way back. And I'm bringing proof. Not of an experiment. Of a murder."
She hung up before he could ask for details. The rain ran down her face, mixing with something salty she refused to call tears. She put her hand in her pocket, closing her fingers around the cassette. The plastic was warm. As though it were alive.