Chodba bez čísla, časť 3: Kroky nad stropom

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 standing ready by the wall. In one hand she held her small paper notebook, and in the other a pencil. Filip had a flashlight, although all three of them knew that its beam sometimes went weak in the corridor without a number. Ben pulled the strap of his dark backpack a little tighter.

After the last blink, a narrow corridor appeared between the apartment doors. Its walls were faded green. At the end waited the first room they had opened a few days earlier with old key from Mrs. Richterová.

“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. Inside, it felt much colder than in the corridor. Not like when someone opens a window in winter. More like a basement where the air has not moved for years.

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

Nora knelt down and opened her notebook.

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

“No socket, no switch, no vent either,” Filip added, shining his flashlight over the walls. “This isn’t a normal room. It looks more like a mistake in the building plan.”

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

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

Nora knelt beside him. The plan showed that above the old staircase there was only a low space under the roof. But this room was sitting where, according to the drawing, it should not 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 sharply clear. As if someone were carefully walking on a wooden plank just above the ceiling.

Filip lifted the flashlight. The beam stopped on the crack.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

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

“Pipes don’t move in the same rhythm,” Nora replied.

For a moment, the sound stopped. Then it came again right above the place where she was standing.

Tap.

The girl stepped back.

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

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

“Something like what?” Filip asked too quickly.

The boy shrugged. “Mrs. Richterová once said there were places in this building where sound travelled like inside empty iron. She mentioned it when she dropped her key between the radiator and the wall. She said repair workers used to get almost everywhere.”

“Almost everywhere is not the same as above our heads,” Nora said. With her pencil, she marked a small cross in the notebook. “Listen. The sound always stops above this spot. Then it keeps going toward that wall.”

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

When Things Start to Change

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

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

The flashlight beam slid low over the dust. Only now did they notice that the dirt was not even near the wall. Small marks ran through the grey layer.

Nora stepped toward 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 a pattern of slanted grooves at the heel and two small round marks near the toe. They were not fresh. Dust had already fallen lightly into them again, but they could still be seen.

“Those aren’t ours,” Ben said.

“And not modern ones either,” Filip added. “I’ve seen soles like that on old work boots at a museum. Or on my grandad’s shoes when he was little.”

Nora traced one print with her finger and then placed her own shoe beside it to compare sizes.

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

Filip crouched near the baseboard. With the tip of his pencil, he gently ran along the narrow strip. The dust separated in thin little clouds. Under it, a thin dark line appeared, straight and strangely clean.

“A seam,” he whispered.

Ben pointed the flashlight at the floor. The light bounced off the plaster, and the dust wavered for a moment.

“Do you feel that?” he asked.

Between the wall and the baseboard, a weak cold draft was blowing.

Filip put his hand on the strip. “This is not a wall. Well, it is, but… a moving one.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Hero stuff is cancelled today,” Ben agreed. “Today we only have sensible backing up.”

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

Cold air brushed their faces.

Together they pushed once more. The wall slid aside on old rails that stuck and squealed. Behind it opened a narrow dark space. It was so tight they would have to turn sideways to go through.

Inside, pipes ran along the walls. Some were wrapped in cracked insulation, while others were held by rusty metal brackets. The floor was not wood but metal, with a dull surface full of scratches.

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

“That explains why it sounded like it came from above,” Nora said. “It does not explain who was walking there.”

The flashlight flickered several times. At the end of the narrow passage, only more darkness showed for a moment.

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

An Important Moment

“A few,” Nora decided. “We don’t split up. And if the panel starts closing, we go back right away.”

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

After two steps, she found familiar marks on the floor. They were not only shoe prints. In the dust, strips repeated again and again, as if someone had dragged something heavier or regularly set a box down.

“Look,” she said.

Filip lowered the light. The tracks always turned away near one pipe, then came back to the middle. It happened several times.

“Someone knew this route,” Nora decided. “They knew where to step aside.”

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

Under a pipe there was a small brass hook. Beside it, an oval metal mark could be seen, almost completely covered in dust. Filip carefully cleaned it with his sleeve.

There were no words on the mark, only a carved symbol: an arrow pointing right and, next to it, a small letter K.

Ben’s face changed. “K for Klára?”

Nora looked up. That name had already been mentioned once, when Mrs. Richterová spoke about an old tenant, but then she had suddenly ended the conversation. She had only said that there was a girl who kept writing the residents’ names down before the building was rebuilt.

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

A moment later, the passage ended. In front of them stood a brick wall. The bricks were darker than the plaster in the room, and thick uneven lines of mortar ran between them. Someone had added them later. That was obvious even without a building course.

“This was not the end at first,” Filip said. He pointed the flashlight at the pipe disappearing under the bricks. “The route kept going.”

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

“Don’t touch it right away,” she reminded the others.

It was a metal pendant, about as big as a fingernail. It hung from a torn cord and was shaped like a tiny house. On the front, the letter K was carved. The back was scratched, but under the dust a tiny window picture could still be seen.

Ben knelt beside her. “That looks like a child’s thing.”

“Or a name tag,” Filip said.

“No,” Ben answered quietly. “Mrs. Richterová once talked about Klára. She said she always wore something around her neck that her father made for her. A little house, because she wanted to have every flat 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, like she should not have said it at all.”

Suddenly, the tapping came again from the bricked-up wall.

Tap.

All three jerked. This time Filip immediately pointed the flashlight up. Above the pipe there was a narrow metal strip that trembled when the wall moved.

Tap. Tap.

The panel at the entrance began to slide back very slowly.

“Out,” Nora said.

No one needed to hear it twice. Filip took the pendant using a clean paper tissue that Nora tore from the back of her notebook. Ben backed out first so he could keep the flashlight aimed toward the exit. The metal floor creaked again under their feet, but now they knew what they were hearing.

What Comes Next

Even so, it was not easier to walk.

When they returned to the room, the panel stopped. It stayed open only as a thin crack. Cold air still drifted through it for a while. Then there was one last soft scrape, and the wall slid into place.

Filip laid his hand on the wallpaper. “The mechanism comes back 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. Next to 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 one more time. The footsteps had stopped. The room was silent again, with only the faint hum of invisible light coming from the corridor without a number.

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

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

“And the other part?” Ben asked.

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

They went back to the door. Behind it waited the pale corridor, which always disappeared in normal 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 flower wallpaper. The plain wall that hid a metal passage.

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

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