Normally, you did not go out after the sunset. That was the unspoken rule which loomed over the city every day and affected everyone, even tourists. If you wanted to spend another day without a possibility of starting to catch yourself on Stage 0 or Stage 1, you would stay at home, lock the doors, windows, and pull the blinders down, because the night was the time when it was about survival, not fun. Well, generally dark time was about that.

  It was a real bummer in the winter, but eventually they all got somewhat used to it, - or, at least, pretended to.

  He had been always perfectly aware about that rule — it wasn’t his first day — but after lunch and sometime wandering the hallways of the hotel, he suddenly found himself outside of the building when the sun just disappeared behind the horizon. The sky still held that barely touched by light dark sapphire color, which he always liked when he was a kid. It seemed like the night, and day were still arguing a little about whether to get into their respectful positions.

  Stopping outside the backdoor of the hotel, he looked around, just to confirm one more time to himself that he was out after sunset. He should have turned around and gone back in while it still was just an accident, but before his brain sent the needed signals to the body, his feet already moved. One step, another, then another, falling into an easy stride out of the alley and down the street.

  ‘Okay,’ he told himself, ‘Just a little walk since there is no shift tonight anyway. Ten minutes. To clear the noise’.

  Pulling his hood on, he decided it was maybe better to keep his head down and keep an eye out to have time to run back in case of… anything, really. Hallwalkers were a problem, but homeless folk and junkies looking for money were still a threat even nowadays.

  He couldn’t help but think about those as he walked — no one would notice if one of such people would go haywire suddenly, right? Some of them were crazy enough for others to not react. Prague accepted them in the most European style possible, and once he even saw some homelessly looking old guy buying vodka in “Relay”. The stench was awful, and the poor girl at the cash register spent maybe the whole spray bottle of air-freshener before the guy finally paid and then shuffled out with his stuff. He saw the man when he quickly paid for his own things, and that was maybe the worst thing he saw so far even with the Pits and Hallwalkers, and all that, because that old guy was somehow walking while his feet were rotting, literally. And the stench they all felt in the shop was exactly from those feet, where flies were already happy to munch on the flesh.

  He still shivered upon remembering that even if it happened last summer and that old guy had only two options by now left, if any.

  The streets should have been empty during this time. He checked again on his watch that it was 19:50. The tourists were usually politely and gently ushered into the hotels by the sunset — minus that crazy folk who came to Prague for an ‘urban horror experience’ and would go on nightly tours to Pet?in or Vy?ehrad. Locals already knew the drill on their own, without additional announcement like it was in the beginning, when every day half an hour before the sunset there would be a mechanical voice sounding around the city through the same speakers which were used for tests of airstrike sirens. “Dear citizens and guests of Prague, the sunset is in thirty minutes. Make sure to get home by that time.”

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  Technically, now the streets were empty and dimmed, like they should. Streetlights dropped to half. Offices went black one floor at a time. Windows didn’t glow so much as breath, a few at a time, never clustering. But he could feel them out and about. Shadows with shoes, people with steps that didn’t sound right at all.

  As he walked past a small patch of grass with some bushes on the side of the pavement, he saw someone walking a dog — except the leash was slack, and the dog wouldn’t go near the owner.

  Down the street, at the tram stop, a guy stood. Seemingly normal, until you’d notice he was watching the tracks. Not the road.

  As he walked further, he felt the city humming softly, like it was remembering how to be quiet after a whole day of bustling. After the sunset it felt like some alternative world — the streets stretched longer than usual; a tram glided past with no one driving and no passengers inside.

  He continued on, noticing small things, like a corner he passed which he didn’t remember. It shouldn’t have been there — never was. Except now it was perfectly there, like it had to exist in that exact spot.

  A store on his right was boarded up for the night, glowing faintly but selling nothing. The reflection in the window behind him was just… a little too late.

  The city had grown too quiet by the moment he reached Malostranská, but it wasn’t the usual curfew hush — this was listening quiet. A soundlessness that pushed inward, waiting, but he didn’t really want to know what it was waiting for.

  He stepped up to a crosswalk, noticing he wasn’t alone. A couple steps from him, a woman stood. Dressed plainly, posture casual, almost rehearsed — she had her hands in her coat pockets, foot tapping like someone impatient with the silence. Knowing better than to stare, he kept his gaze averted, not really willing to confirm if she had those dark, Pit-like eyes.

  “Cold night, huh?” She still noticed him and started a small talk.

  Her voice sounded casual; the type that could have been mistaken just for a stranger chatting to a stranger while they both waited for the traffic lights to change. Not very common but not unseen. Yet she was too casual, like repeating a line she heard in a movie. Because, in all honesty? No one talked like this anymore.

  He cursed internally, hoping she’d lose interest if he was silent. But she took a step forward anyway.

  “You live nearby?”

  Her words were sticky, stretching too far between syllables, like she was trying to cast them out like hooks.

  He opened his mouth to reply — maybe to lie, maybe to leave — but the woman suddenly stopped. Her gaze shifted over his shoulder, and for a moment her expression stiffened. She opened her mouth again, but no words came out this time — just silence. And a beat of pure, cold recognition, the same a white shark probably would get when it saw an orca too close for the shark’s good.

  It took mere seconds, and then the woman snapped back into a new rhythm as suddenly as she got distracted, like a switch was pulled.

  “Never mind.” She backed away a step, sounding hastily and almost too-human now, “D-don’t— don’t talk to me.”

  She turned fast, walking away with hard steps; not hurried like she was in a panic, just…removed. As if whatever she was trying to do had been canceled in her mind.

  He turned around to see what exactly made her do that. Nowadays, the possibilities were endless, but the street behind him was empty. No one was there.

  No one he could see.

  Yet the hairs on his arms rouse like someone’s breath was still on them. It was that low ripple of dread when your eyes couldn’t see it, but some primal reflexes inside were screaming — someone was there.

  He stood on the crosswalk until the light turned green, then turned to walk back up the street without thinking.

  On his way back, he looked around some more, but it seemed like even that thing which was walking the dog preferred to disappear from his path. Strange. But, on the other hand, it wasn’t unwelcomed.