The Hum of Empty Corridors

Night. The room is dark, with only a thin strip of light from the hallway lying across the floor. The door creaks. Kirill feels someone sit down on the edge of his bed.

Father: Wake up. Quietly, though.

Kirill: What? Dad, it’s three in the morning. Where are you going?

Father: Come on, I’m telling you, you rascal. Just keep quiet so your mom doesn’t wake up.

His father’s voice is calm, but there is something in it that keeps Kirill from arguing.

They go down into the cellar beneath the house. Among the crates and old tools stands his father’s equipment: monitors, cables, and sensors that run through a small hole in the concrete floor.

His father hands Kirill a pair of headphones and puts on his own. At first there is only silence, thick and heavy. Then, once every thirty-five seconds, a low hum. A faint vibration passes through the floor along with it.

Kirill looks at his father. He nods, as if to say: “You hear it too.”

Father: I’ve been hearing it for a week now. I bought the equipment for an expedition and decided to test it at home, at night. I heard it while I was setting up.

The hum rolls across the floor. His father waits until it fades.

Father: By my calculations, it isn’t coming from right beneath us, but from the edge of town. There’s nothing out there except the abandoned school. Though I doubt it’s coming from there.

Father: Maybe the military is testing something. A friend of mine told me a legend: during the war, soldiers built tunnels under the city. Or maybe a neighbor just turned on a generator in his basement. Anyway, go to bed. You have school early tomorrow.

Father: Wait, are you all right?

Suddenly the noise in Kirill’s headphones swells, louder and louder and louder. Kirill tears them off, there is a bright flash, a ringing in his ears, and…

Kirill wakes up.

His own room. A gray, foggy dawn. Silence. His heart is pounding and there is cold sweat on his forehead. The cellar, the headphones, his father: it was all a dream.

His father has been gone for several months. He went with a group of geologists to a neighboring region to survey an old mine for work, and there was a cave-in. They searched for the men for a week, then called off the search: it was too dangerous and too expensive. The bodies were never found.

Kirill sits on the bed for a long time, staring at the wall with glassy eyes. There is a sock in his hand. Then he gets dressed and goes to school.

All day long his teachers sound as if they are speaking through glass. His father kept going on about birds that no longer flew the way they used to; he talked about it the whole last year. He only started talking about the hum underground a week before he left. Kirill brushed it off back then.

Before the last class, Kirill stands by the window. Vlad walks up to him.

Vlad: Hey. How are you doing?

Kirill: Fine. All good.

Vlad looks at him and shifts awkwardly.

Vlad: Listen… about your dad. I’ve wanted to say something for a long time, but I couldn’t find the words.

Kirill: Don’t.

Vlad: I just… If anything happens, I’m here for you, okay?

Kirill doesn’t answer and looks out the window. The schoolyard is empty. It is autumn, and the wind drives the leaves across the ground.

Kirill: Nothing to lose. I’ve had nothing to lose for a long time…

Vlad: What do you mean? What are you talking about?

Kirill: Oh, forget it. I was just talking to myself.

The bell rings. Kirill goes to class, and Vlad stays by the window for a few more seconds, watching him go.

After school Kirill goes home. The house is quiet and cold, as it has been ever since his father failed to return. His mother hardly ever leaves her room, his father’s name is no longer spoken here, and his mug still sits on the drying rack, because no one can bring themselves to put it away.

Kirill eats in silence, then takes an old flashlight from the shelf and pulls his father’s notebook out of his backpack. He has leafed through it many times already.

On the last page is a map of the city, and on it, circled in pencil, is the abandoned school on the outskirts. Beneath the circle, in his father’s handwriting: “The source. Check when I’m back.”

Kirill looks at the words “when I’m back.” Then he closes the notebook and puts it back in his backpack.

Kirill: Since you didn’t come back, I’ll check it myself.

He leaves the house toward nightfall, when it is already dark.

Dead of night. He walks up to the building. Kirill stands in front of the entrance to the abandoned school on the edge of town. A cold wind whistles through the empty windows, and the shadows of the streetlight spread across the walls. The sky is covered with clouds.

He stands at the entrance and counts to himself: twenty… thirty… thirty-five.

He should be scared, it seems, but he isn’t. There is only silence inside him, the same silence as at home.

Then something clanks below, followed by a dull thud. The floor shudders. Everything inside him tightens. It becomes hard to breathe. The flashlight trembles slightly in his hand.

Kirill: So you weren’t making it up.

He steps inside. Dusty corridors stretch into the distance, with broken glass, graffiti, and torn wallpaper on the walls. The flashlight lights up a few meters ahead, and the rest hides in the dark. Kirill walks steadily and quietly and doesn’t look back, as if on a familiar road.

He thinks of Vlad by the window. For months everyone has been going around the subject of his father like a pothole in the road: first they stopped searching, then they stopped asking, and now even his mother avoids mentioning him. And then Vlad finally spoke up, when words no longer weighed anything.

He can’t get the thought out of his head. At least here nobody is pretending that everything is fine.

The corridor leads to the basement door. It has long been broken and barely hangs on one hinge. Now the door is ajar, and a cold, damp draft blows through the gap.

That same night Vlad can’t sleep. He keeps replaying the conversation by the window. For a whole month he said nothing about Kirill’s father: he was afraid of saying the wrong thing, and then he no longer knew how to begin. And when he finally did, Kirill just turned away. Now those words, “nothing to lose,” give him no peace.

The next day, Kirill doesn’t show up at school.

During the break, Vlad stands by a window on the second floor and keeps glancing at his phone. Andrey, his friend and classmate, is leaning lazily against the wall by the classroom, as usual.

Vlad: Have you seen Kirill today?

Andrey: Nope. Maybe he’s skipping. What the hell are you freaking out about?

Vlad: Last night I was out walking with a friend, and I saw him heading toward the abandoned school on the edge of town. Alone, I think. And in the afternoon he told me he had nothing to lose.

Andrey: Everybody goes there. Maybe he went to take photos or paint graffiti. Kirill’s always been like that, a quiet loner with his own weird hobbies.

Vlad: This is different. I had my tongue shoved up my ass about his father for a whole month, thinking I shouldn’t butt in. And now he’s alone with all that shit.

Vlad: What if he’s decided that nobody cares? That’s exactly when people fall apart.

Andrey looks at Vlad with a slight squint.

Andrey: You really think it’s that serious?

Vlad: I’m sure of it. This isn’t about abandoned buildings and adventures anymore. He’s planning something, and going to places like that alone is a bad idea. Something could have happened to him.

Andrey: Or he’s just messing around. You overthink everything, man.

Vlad: And what if I’m not overthinking? He’s been changing every day, and I pretended not to notice. Not anymore.

Andrey says nothing, then sighs.

Andrey: Fine. If he turns up, we’ll talk. And if he doesn’t, then what?

Vlad: Then we dig until we find out. I’m not going to sit around and watch him walk into the dark.

Kirill doesn’t show up on the second or the third day either. So Vlad and Andrey decided to go to the abandoned school and check whether he had left any traces there.

The school building greeted them with the cold, empty sound of drafts, as if it had known they were coming. Inside it was dark, damp, and quiet…