The Unnumbered Corridor, Part 8: Someone Writes in Chalk

The Unnumbered Corridor, Part 8: Someone Writes in Chalk

The Story Begins

The lights in the corridor flickered just as Nora closed the door behind her.

"That wasn't normal," Ben said quietly.

Filip was already reaching for the flashlight clipped to his belt. "In old buildings, all sorts of things flicker. Wires, fuses, bulbs, power-plant ghosts…"

"The last one wasn't a technical explanation," Nora reminded him.

Then the light went out completely.

It lasted only a few seconds. The corridor sank into thick darkness, where the only sound was the distant drip of a radiator. Nora gripped her small paper notebook so tightly that one corner of its cover softened. She knew that during brief blackouts like this, the unnumbered corridor sometimes appeared. The one that did not exist in daylight.

The bulb above them flickered back to life. It gave off a weak yellow glow.

On the faded green wall opposite them, a single word had been written.

SEARCH.

The writing was white, fresh, and lightly dusty. It looked as though someone had written it in chalk moments ago. But the corridor was empty.

Ben took a step back. "There was nothing there before."

"I know," Nora said. She moved closer but did not touch the wall. "I was facing exactly this way."

Filip aimed his flashlight at the word, even though the lights were already on. "Maybe someone wrote it in the dark. Someone who likes hiding behind doors and has a very good timer."

"And why would they wait until we were standing right here?" Nora asked.

The boy frowned. "That's the weaker part of my theory."

Without another word, she opened her notebook. On a clean page, she wrote the date, the time, and the place: corridor near the vanished wing. Beneath it, she carefully copied the new word. SEARCH.

While Nora blew on her fingers to warm them, Filip knelt by the wall. Using a string from his hoodie pocket, he measured the distance from the word to the corner of the corridor. Then he looked at the ceiling, the bulb, and a small metal box near the floor.

"The blackout lasted about four seconds," he said. "And the word is exactly at eye level. Not too high, not too low. If a person did this, they would have to stand here."

"And leave chalk dust behind?" Ben added.

There really was a thin white streak on the wall. But it was not beneath the word, as though chalk had fallen from above. It ran out of a crack in the plaster beside the letters.

Nora wrote that down too.

Her notebook already contained several older notes from the past few days. During earlier blackouts, short words had appeared, each in a different place: NEAR. MAINTENANCE. BETWEEN. WINGS.

Until then, they had seemed like pieces of a sentence someone had scattered through the building.

Filip straightened up and scratched his head. "Maybe it's an old wayfinding system. Technical areas used to have signs. Arrows, numbers, labels. When paint peels, they can show through."

"The word SEARCH isn't showing through," Nora said. "It's on top."

"All right. Then maybe it's some kind of special paint. Visible when the light changes."

Ben looked at the latest notes in the notebook. His finger stopped at the word MAINTENANCE.

"Do you remember Mrs. Richter?" he asked. "Last time, she said there were old spaces beneath the building where nobody went anymore. And that after the renovation, they had bricked up more than one room."

"She said it very quickly," Nora agreed. "Then she changed the subject to leaky pipes."

"Because she didn't want to say any more," Ben added.

When Things Start to Change

For a moment, they stayed silent. The bulb above them hummed softly. In an ordinary corridor, nobody would have noticed that sound. Here, it sounded like a warning.

Nora tore a small, clean slip of paper from her notebook and copied all the words onto it. Then she spread the slip on the windowsill by the stairs.

NEAR.

MAINTENANCE.

BETWEEN.

WINGS.

SEARCH.

"Put SEARCH first," Ben said.

She moved the slip.

SEARCH NEAR MAINTENANCE, BETWEEN THE WINGS.

Filip read the sentence aloud. This time, he did not smile.

"That's not a warning," he said. "It's an instruction."

"For whom?" Ben asked.

Nora pulled a folded copy of the old map from her pocket. They had found it in the previous episode. The paper had become soft along the folds from being unfolded so often. The plan showed the present-day staircase, flats, and shared spaces. Beside them, the vanished wing of the building was marked with a thin dashed line.

Between the new and old sections was a small rectangle labelled in faded letters: MAINTENANCE.

Filip bent over the plan. "That's by the back stairs. Behind the laundry room."

"But there's only a broom cupboard there," Ben said.

"Maybe there is today," Nora replied. "On this map, there were doors there."

Just then, keys jingled on the stairs. All three of them jumped so sharply that Filip's flashlight bounced across the floor.

Mrs. Richter stood on the lower flight of stairs. She wore a dark burgundy sweater and held the mail in one hand. A bunch of old brass keys hung from the other.

Her gaze travelled from the children to the wall.

The word SEARCH still gleamed white.

"What are you doing there?" she asked calmly.

Nora snapped her notebook shut, but Ben noticed that Mrs. Richter did not look surprised by the word. She looked sad instead. Only for a moment, but he had definitely seen it.

"We found an inscription," Nora said. "It appeared after the blackout."

The older woman stepped closer. Her keys jingled. "Chalk can be wiped away."

"Please don't wipe it off," Ben blurted out.

Mrs. Richter stopped. "Why not?"

Nora opened her notebook to the page with the copied words. "We think they belong together. Search near Maintenance, between the wings."

Mrs. Richter's face changed so slightly that Filip might not have noticed. Her lips pressed into a thin line, and her fingers tightened around the keys.

"Between the wings," she repeated.

"There's a place with that name on the old map," Nora went on. "What was there?"

For a long moment, only the bulb answered with its soft hum.

"Old technical rooms," Mrs. Richter said at last. "Pipes, wiring, shut-off valves. Nothing for children."

"And before that?" Ben asked carefully.

Her gaze moved to the map. "Before that, people kept things there that they didn't want to carry through the whole building. Boxes. Tools. Old records from residents' meetings."

"Records?" Filip repeated.

"Some things shouldn't disappear just because someone rebuilds a wall," she said more quietly. Then she straightened up. "If you go there, don't climb anywhere there are loose boards. And if the doors are locked, leave them alone. Do you understand?"

All three of them nodded.

Mrs. Richter took a small flat key from the bunch. She did not give it to them. She only held it between her fingers for a moment, as if she were not sure what to do with it. Then she tucked it away again.

"Behind the laundry room, there's a service corridor," she added. "The door at the end is grey. Not green. Remember that."

An Important Moment

And without another explanation, she went up the stairs.

"That was almost an answer," Filip said.

"Almost a secret answer," Ben corrected him.

Later, when all the lights in the building had come back on and the unnumbered corridor had vanished, they went behind the laundry room. They did not go deep underground or through dangerous places. The service corridor was just around the corner, behind a door nobody normally used. The air smelled of dust, soap, and cold metal pipes.

At the end stood a grey door.

Beside it was a wall with peeling paint. Beneath the greenish plaster, an older, almost grey-white layer showed through. It looked like a wall someone had painted over long ago and then forgotten.

Filip held the map against the wall. "We're exactly here. Between the old wing and the present-day part of the building. Behind this door should be the maintenance area."

"It's locked," Nora said when she tried the handle.

"Then we'll leave it alone," Filip replied quickly. "That's our agreement with Mrs. Richter. And also an agreement with my own head, which doesn't feel like falling through old floors."

Ben bent down beside the peeling patch of plaster. "Look here."

Under the top layer of paint were faint white lines. Not letters, at least not yet. More like curves and smears, as if someone had only half-erased an old inscription long ago.

"Maybe chalk is coming through from this layer," Nora whispered.

Filip opened his mouth to say something about a chemical reaction. At that very moment, the lights went out.

This time, the darkness was not complete. A thin strip of light shone beneath the door from the laundry room. Even so, Nora felt her heart beat faster.

"Nobody move," Filip said.

"I'm not moving," Ben called from somewhere to her left.

A moment later, the lights came back on.

A new word had appeared on the peeling wall.

PRESERVE.

It was written in smaller letters than the earlier one. Chalk dust clung exactly in the cracks of the old plaster layer. Beside it, almost invisibly, another, older word appeared. It was not fresh. It was grey, a remnant of writing from long ago.

RECORDS.

Ben covered his mouth with his hand. "Preserve the records."

Nora felt goosebumps, but she did not step back. She quickly wrote down both words, the place, and the time. Her pencil trembled a little as she did.

Filip came only close enough to see the wall better. "The lower layer is older than the plaster we see today. Maybe there were technical signs here once. And during a blackout, they… I don't know… show up differently."

"Technical signs don't write whole sentences," Ben objected.

"I know," Filip admitted. "I'm just trying to find the part we can explain."

Nora's notebook now held a clear sequence: SEARCH NEAR MAINTENANCE, BETWEEN THE WINGS. And then: PRESERVE RECORDS.

She spread all the slips and the map beside one another. The grey door remained locked, but the plan showed one more mark nearby. A thin arrow pointed towards a small square behind the wall by the old wing.

"We didn't notice this last time," she said.

Filip leaned closer. "It's not a room. More like an alcove. Or a cupboard in the wall."

Ben pointed to a tiny label beside the square. Some of the letters had been rubbed away, but one part was still readable: HOUSE ARCHIVE.

None of them spoke for a while.

What Comes Next

At last, Filip breathed out. "All right. So the mystery isn't saying: Run, because monsters are coming."

"That's a relief," Ben said.

"It's saying: Find the house archive," Filip continued. "It's still creepy, but at least it's usefully creepy."

Nora smiled, although her hands had not quite stopped trembling. "And someone wanted the records not to disappear. Maybe Klara."

At Klara's name, the white dust on the wall did not stir. Nothing flickered. The corridor remained ordinary, narrow, and quiet.

That was strangely comforting too.

Nora closed her notebook and slipped it into her jacket pocket. "We're not going in there today. The door is locked, and we promised Mrs. Richter. First, we need to ask about the archive."

Ben nodded. "And maybe find out why there's an arrow on the map if there's supposedly nothing behind the wall anymore."

As they headed back towards the laundry room, Filip looked over his shoulder once more. On the grey wall, only a thin white outline of the words remained, as if someone had lightly wiped them with a sleeve.

SEARCH.

Behind the door, an old fan hummed. Somewhere between the present-day building and the wing that no longer stood waited a small square on the map. And perhaps inside it was something Klara had tried to save from being forgotten.