That night Lina fell asleep unusually fast.
There were no thoughts.
No memories.
Only exhaustion.
The kind that comes after a day when the mind tires faster than the body.
At first she heard the wind.
Not strong.
Barely audible.
As if someone were slowly turning the pages of an old book.
Then the pavement appeared.
Damp.
Uneven.
She was standing in a narrow street.
She wasn’t sure how she’d gotten there.
She looked around.
Old houses.
Stone walls.
Narrow windows.
No light.
No sound.
Only the wind.
She took a first step.
The click of her shoes echoed far too loudly.
As if the whole city were empty.
– Hello?
Her voice rolled down the street.
No one answered.
She walked slowly.
The city felt familiar.
Not because she had been here before.
But because she had already seen it somewhere.
In dreams.
In patients’ stories.
In the notebook.
Every turn felt like a memory she’d never actually had.
The first strange thing was the windows.
There were hundreds of them.
Maybe thousands.
All closed.
Some had lights on.
Warm.
Alive.
But no one stood at a single window.
Lina stopped.
She could feel it.
Something was watching.
Not from one window.
From all of them.
She raised her eyes.
A curtain shifted almost imperceptibly.
That was all.
When she came closer, the window was empty.
Further on, the street widened into a square.
A fountain stood in the middle.
Without water.
Around it – benches.
Empty.
An open book lay on one of them.
The wind turned its pages.
She approached.
The book was completely blank.
Not a single letter.
Only yellowed paper.
Suddenly the wind stopped.
The pages stilled.
On one of them a shadow briefly appeared.
As if someone’s hand had just turned the last page.
Lina lifted her head.
There was no one in the square.
She walked on.
The deeper she went into the city, the more she felt a strange pressure.
Not fear.
More like…
Anticipation.
As if the city was waiting for her to remember something.
Then she saw the first shadow.
Not a person.
A shadow.
It lay on the pavement.
Long.
Dark.
Clearly visible.
Only…
There was no body casting it.
Lina froze.
The shadow didn’t move.
She looked up.
There were clouds above her.
There was no sun.
She looked back down.
The shadow was still there.
She slowly reached out her hand.
Her fingers touched the stone.
Nothing.
Only cold.
When she straightened up…
The shadow was gone.
A few steps later a second one appeared.
This time on the wall of a house.
As if someone were leaning their back against it.
Only there was no person.
Further on – another one.
On a bench.
By a door.
By a well.
Everywhere.
Shadows.
Without people.
It seemed as though the city was full of invisible inhabitants.
Or…
As though all the people had vanished.
Leaving behind only what had always walked alongside them.
Lina felt that something was behind her.
She didn’t turn around.
She only stopped.
The silence grew so deep she could hear her own breathing.
A moment later…
Not her own.
Someone else inhaled.
Right beside her.
She turned slowly.
Empty.
Only on the pavement.
Right at her feet.
Stood another shadow.
This time…
Her own.
Lina looked at herself.
There was no light around.
Nothing that could cast a shadow.
But it was there.
She carefully raised her foot.
The shadow stayed in place.
As if it didn’t belong to her.
Lina stepped back.
The shadow didn’t move.
For the first time she felt fear.
Not because she was alone.
Because for the first time in her life she had seen her own shadow.
And she understood…
It wasn’t looking at her.
It was looking at something behind her.
A bell rang in the distance.
Once.
Twice.
A third time.
The city slowly began to fade.
The houses.
The windows.
The street.
The shadow.
Everything dissolved as if into fog.
Lina opened her eyes.
The bedroom was still dark.
Her heart was pounding fast.
She sat up in bed.
She sat motionless for a few minutes.
Then she picked up the black notebook from the nightstand.
Opened a new page.
She wanted to write down the dream.
But stopped.
She didn’t know where to begin.
After a long silence she wrote only one sentence.
There wasn’t a single person in the dream.
Beneath it, in slightly smaller letters, she added:
Only their shadows.
She closed the notebook.
At that very moment a muffled sound came from the hallway.
As if someone had slowly walked past her apartment door.
Lina glanced at the clock.
It was four hours, four minutes.
She got up.
Opened the door.
The hallway was empty.
Only on the floor, at the threshold, lay a small colored pencil.
The same one she’d brought back from the old town yesterday.
She was certain she had left it on the kitchen table.