The Unnumbered Corridor, Part 3: Footsteps Above the Ceiling

The Unnumbered Corridor, Part 3: Footsteps Above the Ceiling

The Story Begins

When the light in the building corridor went out for three short seconds, Nora was already waiting by the wall. In one hand she held a small paper notebook, in the other a pencil. Filip had a flashlight, although all three knew its beam sometimes faded in the unnumbered corridor. Ben tightened the strap of his dark backpack.

After the final flicker, a narrow corridor with faded green walls appeared between the apartment doors. At its end stood the first room they had opened a few days earlier with Mrs. Richterová’s old key.

“It’s still there,” Ben whispered.

“I hope rooms don’t have legs,” Filip said. “Because this one would definitely run away if it could.”

Nora gave him a quick smile, then opened the door. It was noticeably colder inside than in the corridor. Not the kind of cold that comes when someone opens a window in winter. More like a basement where the air had not stirred for years.

The room was empty. A thin layer of grey dust covered the floor. A low wooden baseboard ran along one wall, while a remnant of wallpaper with pale red flowers hung on the other. The ceiling arched only a little above their heads, and an old crack ran through the plaster in one corner.

Nora crouched on her heels and opened her notebook.

“About three metres wide,” she murmured. “Four and a half long. The door faces the corridor. No window.”

“No socket, switch, or vent either,” Filip added as he swept the flashlight over the walls. “This isn’t a normal room. More like some mistake made during construction.”

Ben took a folded sheet of paper from his pocket. It was a simple plan of the building, copied from the notice board by the mailboxes. It did not show every apartment exactly, but it was enough for comparison.

“According to this, the roof is above us,” he said. “Not another room.”

Nora knelt beside him. The plan showed only a low space beneath the roof above the old staircase. Yet this room stood where, according to the drawing, no room should have been at all.

Just then, there was a knock.

Tap.

All three froze.

Tap. Tap.

The sound came from above. It was not loud, but in the silent room it sounded unpleasantly clear. As if someone were carefully walking on a wooden board just above the ceiling.

Filip raised the flashlight. Its beam stopped on the crack.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

“Maybe pipes,” he said, but his voice sounded less certain than usual.

“Pipes don’t walk in the same rhythm,” Nora objected.

The sound fell silent for a moment. Then it came again directly above where she stood.

Tap.

The girl stepped back.

“All right,” Filip admitted. “Then maybe an old valve. Or a metal bar that shifts when the wind blows somewhere.”

“In a sealed room?” Ben looked around at the walls. “What if there’s something up there?”

“Something like what?” Filip asked too quickly.

Ben shrugged. “Mrs. Richterová once said there were places in this building where sound travelled as if through empty metal. She mentioned it when she dropped her key between the radiator and the wall. Apparently, repair workers used to be able to get almost everywhere.”

“Almost everywhere isn’t the same as above our heads,” Nora said. She drew a small cross in her notebook. “Listen. The sound always stops above this spot. Then it continues toward that wall.”

Another quiet tapping followed. Once, twice, three times. They all counted. The footsteps, if they were footsteps, ended at the wall with the flowered wallpaper.

When Things Start to Change

This time, no one moved at once. Nora took a breath, then nodded toward the floor.

“Let’s see whether anything was left down there.”

The flashlight shone low over the dust. Only then did they notice that the layer near the wall was uneven. Small impressions ran between the grey streaks.

Nora approached them as carefully as if she were walking on fresh snow. She knelt and brushed aside a fallen piece of wallpaper.

“Shoes,” she said.

The prints were narrow and longer than her trainers. The sole had diagonal grooves on the heel and two small round marks at the toe. They were not fresh. Dust had already begun to settle back into them, but they were still visible.

“They aren’t ours,” Ben said.

“And they aren’t modern either,” Filip added. “I’ve seen soles like that on old work boots in a museum. Or on the shoes my grandad wore when he was little.”

Nora traced one print in her notebook. Then she placed her own shoe beside it to compare the size.

“Someone walked here long before us,” she said. “And came straight here.”

Filip crouched by the baseboard. He gently ran the tip of his pencil along the narrow strip. The dust broke apart in thin clumps. Beneath it, a dark line appeared, straight and unusually clean.

“A seam,” he whispered.

Ben aimed the flashlight at the floor. The light reflected off the plaster, and the dust stirred for a moment.

“Can you feel that?” he asked.

A faint, cold draft blew between the wall and the baseboard.

Filip laid his palm on the strip. “This isn’t a wall. Well, it is, but… it moves.”

“Don’t pull it,” Nora warned. “First find out where it opens.”

“Miss Detective is right,” he said, and this time he did not smile at all. He ran his fingers along the edge of the baseboard. At last, he found a small metal indentation hidden behind peeling wallpaper.

It was not a handle. More like the remains of a hook or latch.

“If we press here and slide it there…” Filip paused. “Very slowly.”

Ben moved to the other side of the panel. Nora stayed aside so she could watch both the seam and the corridor behind them.

“If anything moves, we go back,” she said. “No heroics.”

“Heroics are cancelled today,” Ben agreed. “Today we only do sensible retreating.”

Filip pressed the metal indentation. At first, nothing happened. Then a dry creak came from behind the wall. The panel moved the width of a finger.

Cold air brushed their faces.

Together, they pushed again. The wall slid aside on old tracks that caught and squealed. Behind it, a narrow dark space opened up. It was so tight that they would have to pass through sideways.

Pipes ran along the walls inside. Some were wrapped in cracked insulation; others were held by rusty metal brackets. The floor was not wood but metal, its dull surface covered in scratches.

Filip let out a slow breath. “So that’s the hollow sound. A metal floor, pipes, and a space above the ceiling. When someone walks there, you can hear it all through the room.”

“That explains why it sounded as if it came from above,” Nora said. “It doesn’t explain who was walking there.”

The flashlight flickered several times. At the far end of the narrow passage, there was only another patch of darkness.

Ben looked at the others. “Can we go in just a few steps?”

An Important Moment

“A few,” Nora decided. “We don’t split up. And if the panel starts to close, we come straight back.”

She went first, turned sideways. Filip followed with the flashlight, and Ben came last. The metal beneath their feet creaked softly. Nora felt her jacket catch now and then on the rough wall, so she moved slowly.

After two steps, she found familiar smudges on the floor. They were not just shoeprints. Strips repeated in the dust, as if someone had dragged something heavy or regularly set a box on the ground.

“Look,” she said.

Filip lowered the beam. The tracks always veered away near one pipe, then returned to the middle. It happened several times.

“Someone knew this route,” Nora concluded. “They knew where to move aside.”

“Maybe they carried tools,” Filip said. Then he aimed the light at the wall. “Or maybe something else.”

A small brass hook was fixed beneath a pipe. Beside it was an oval metal marker, almost completely covered in dust. Filip carefully wiped it clean with his sleeve.

There were no words on the marker, only an engraved symbol: an arrow pointing right, and beside it a small letter K.

Ben’s expression changed. “K for Klára?”

Nora looked up. That name had come up before, when Mrs. Richterová spoke about an old tenant, but then she had abruptly ended the conversation. She had mentioned only a girl who used to write down people’s names somewhere before the building was remodelled.

“We don’t know,” Nora said, though she carefully copied the letter. “But we’ll write it down.”

A moment later, the passage ended. A brick wall stood before them. The bricks were darker than the plaster in the room, and thick, uneven lines of mortar ran between them. Someone had put them there later. That was clear even without a construction course.

“This wasn’t originally the end,” Filip said. He pointed his flashlight at the pipe disappearing beneath the bricks. “The route continued farther on.”

Something small lay by the wall. Nora noticed it as the light swept across the floor. She reached out, then stopped just above the object.

“Don’t touch it straight away,” she reminded them.

It was a metal pendant, about the size of a fingernail. It hung from a broken cord and was shaped like a tiny house. The letter K was engraved on its front. The back was scratched, but beneath the dust they could make out a tiny picture of a window.

Ben knelt beside her. “That looks like something for a child.”

“Or a name tag,” Filip said.

“No,” Ben answered quietly. “Mrs. Richterová once talked about Klára. She said Klára always wore something around her neck that her father had made for her. A little house, because she wanted every apartment in the building drawn.”

Nora looked at him. “Why didn’t you tell us sooner?”

“Because I wasn’t sure. And she said it so quietly, as if she shouldn’t have said it at all.”

Then the tapping suddenly came again from the bricked-up wall.

Tap.

All three flinched. This time, however, Filip immediately aimed the flashlight above them. Over the pipe was a narrow metal strip that trembled when the wall moved.

Tap. Tap.

The panel at the entrance began to slide slowly back.

“Out,” Nora said.

She did not need to say it twice. Filip picked up the pendant with a clean paper tissue Nora tore from the back of her notebook. Ben backed out first so he could keep the flashlight aimed at the exit. The metal floor creaked beneath them again, but now they knew what they were hearing.

What Comes Next

Even so, walking was no easier.

When they emerged into the room, the panel stopped. It remained open only a narrow crack. Cold air flowed from it for a little while longer. Then came one last soft scrape, and the wall slid back into place.

Filip placed his palm on the wallpaper. “The mechanism returns by itself. Probably a spring or a counterweight. Maybe it moves when the light or temperature changes.”

“Maybe,” Nora said. The pendant now lay safely wrapped between the pages of her notebook. Beside the sketch of the tracks, she added an arrow, the letter K, and a note: Bricked-up end. Route continues.

Ben looked up at the ceiling once more. The footsteps had stopped. The room was quiet again, with only the faint hum of invisible light drifting in from the unnumbered corridor.

“So it wasn’t a ghost,” he said carefully.

Filip tucked the flashlight into his belt. “Part of the sound definitely wasn’t. Metal, pipes, a hollow space. It all fits.”

“And the other part?” Ben asked.

Nora closed the notebook. “The other part is a person who knew where they were going. Maybe Klára. Maybe someone else. But someone walked here on purpose.”

They returned to the door. Beyond it waited the pale corridor, which always vanished in ordinary light as if it had never existed. This time, Nora did not look back only because she was afraid. She looked back to remember every detail.

The crack near the ceiling. The flowered wallpaper. The unremarkable wall hiding a metal passage.

When the lights in the main corridor came on again, the unnumbered space vanished. Only an ordinary wall in the old building remained.

But between the pages of Nora’s notebook lay a small metal house marked with the letter K. And somewhere beyond the bricked-up end, a route continued, one that someone had once walked again and again.