Chodba bez čísla, časť 2: Kľúč, ktorý bol teplý

The Unnumbered Corridor, part 2: The Key That Was Warm

The Story Begins

When the unnumbered corridor disappeared, only an ordinary patch of wall remained, with peeling green paint. Nora looked at it for a moment longer. Just a few minutes ago, there had been doors there, a dark carpet, and a narrow space that did not exist in the building plans at all.

“So we agree,” Filip said, trying to keep his voice calm. “We did not only imagine it because we were tired.”

Ben pulled the strap of his dark backpack a little tighter. “I’m tired now. And I still see it when I close my eyes.”

The lift beside them gave a quiet groan. It was not the sound of a modern lift. It sounded more like an old fridge whispering through a wall.

“Let’s go down,” Ben suggested. “At least while the lights are still on.”

Nora nodded, even though she did not want to leave. In her small paper notebook, she had already written three things: the lights went out, the corridor appeared, there were no numbers on the doors. On the fourth line, she had left a blank space. She still did not know what to write there.

When she turned toward the lift, something flashed on the floor.

It lay just by the threshold, where the lift doors closed into two metal leaves. A small old key. Brass, dark with age, with a round ring and two tiny teeth at the end.

“That wasn’t there before,” Nora said.

Filip bent down, but did not touch it. “Maybe it fell out of someone’s pocket. Mrs. Richterová has a huge bunch of keys.”

“She wasn’t here,” Ben reminded him.

“That does not mean she could not have walked past yesterday. Or last week.”

The girl pushed up the sleeve of her grey hoodie under the rust-red jacket. Then she picked up the key very carefully with two fingers.

At once, she froze.

“It’s warm.”

“Warm like what?” Ben asked.

Nora moved it into her palm. The brass was not just less cold than the floor. It felt pleasantly warm, almost like a mug of tea someone had held only a moment ago.

Filip lifted his eyebrows. “Maybe it was near the lift motor.”

“The motor is not by the threshold,” Nora said.

“Fine. Then maybe it was in an adult’s pocket.”

Ben looked toward the empty staircase. At the end of the corridor, a yellow bulb shone, and under it a thin spider web trembled. No one was there.

“If an adult was here,” he whispered, “we would probably hear the door. Or footsteps.”

“Maybe they left in the lift,” said Filip, although he glanced at the still lift doors while he spoke.

Nora took out her notebook and placed it on the windowsill. With her pencil, she drew the shape of the key, the number of teeth, and the small letter on the ring. It looked like the letter K, except the bottom line curved strangely.

“I’ve seen this before,” she muttered.

“On the key?” Filip asked.

“No. In the building. Maybe on the old mail box in the basement. Or on the board by the boiler room.”

The boy leaned closer. The flashlight clipped to his belt knocked against his sweatshirt. “That could be the maker’s mark. Old locks had their own signs.”

“Or a wing mark,” Ben said quietly.

Both of them looked at him.

“Mrs. Richterová once said the building used to look different,” he went on. “She mentioned the back part that was torn down during the rebuild. I thought she meant some shed. But then she said, ‘Some doors stayed, even when there was nothing behind them anymore.’”

When Things Start to Change

Nora wrote the sentence down exactly, even the comma before even though. Their teacher always said exact notes were like good clues: they should not be blurred.

Filip scratched his hair. “That still does not mean there is a secret wing behind this wall. Buildings have service shafts, old air spaces, and unused storage rooms.”

“And which of those appears only after the lights go out?” Nora asked.

He had no answer for that.

The lift groaned again. This time it lasted longer. The metal doors did not move, but the sound travelled through the wall into the tiles under their shoes.

Ben went quiet. “Do you hear that?”

“Lift cables,” Filip said automatically.

“No. After that.”

All three of them held their breath.

At first there was only the soft hum of the old lift. Then something else joined it. A short, quiet click. As if someone on the other side of the wall had unlocked a lock.

Nora’s stomach tightened. The key in her palm was still warm.

“We do not have to go in,” Ben said quickly. “If it appears again, we can just look. From a safe distance.”

“That’s a good plan,” Nora agreed. “First we watch. Then we decide.”

Filip nodded. “And if we go closer, we stay together. No heroic splitting up in a dark corridor. That only works in films, where people are clearly begging for trouble.”

Even Ben gave a small smile at that.

Just then, the light above them flickered twice.

The first blink was fast. The second lasted longer.

Then everything went out.

The darkness in the old corridor was not complete, because weak light from the street came through the dirty window. Still, Nora could not see Filip’s face. She only heard Ben’s quick breath and the soft zip of his jacket.

Somewhere above them, the lift cables moved. A long metallic hum sounded.

“I’m here,” Nora said.

“Me too,” Filip answered.

Ben’s “yes” was quieter, but it came right after.

The light came back for just a split second.

The wall opposite the lift was gone.

In its place was a narrow corridor with a low ceiling. The wallpaper on the walls had faded to the colour of old paper, and the carpet was dark, almost blue. On the left stood the first door. It had a brass handle with dust still sitting on it.

Then the bulb went out again, but the corridor did not disappear.

A faint grey light came from inside it. Not electric light, more like the light that comes before rain.

“This time it stayed,” Filip whispered.

Nora raised her hand. The key in her palm grew even warmer.

“Maybe it did not stay,” Ben said. “Maybe it is waiting.”

Nobody laughed at him.

The girl took one step forward, then stopped at the threshold. Behind her were the lift, the staircase, and the ordinary building. In front of her was a space that should not have been there. She knew fear was not a command to run away. Sometimes it was only a warning to look more carefully.

“Filip, you’ll light the way. Ben, watch for any changes behind us,” she said. “I’ll try the door. If the corridor starts disappearing, we go back at once.”

“That sounds pretty sensible,” Filip admitted, taking out his flashlight.

“And pretty scary,” Ben added.

They went in together.

The carpet swallowed the sound of their steps. The corridor was shorter than it had looked from the doorway, but Nora still felt as if they were walking for longer than a few metres. The air smelled of dust, cold metal pipes, and something dry, maybe old books.

An Important Moment

She stopped at the first door.

On the frame, just below peeling paint, there was a metal plate. Filip shone his light on it.

The letters were small and partly rusted. Nora read them aloud.

“Wing K. Service access. 3A.”

“Wing K,” Ben repeated. “Like on the key.”

Filip knelt to look closer at the plate. “3A could be a room label. Old plans used both numbers and letters. That’s normal.”

“And a corridor that appears when the lights go out is normal too?”

“I said the plate was normal,” he replied. “Don’t take everything away from me at once.”

Nora put the key into the lock.

It fit exactly.

For a moment, nothing happened. Then there was a firm click, quiet and clear. The handle moved under her fingers.

Ben took half a step back. “If there’s something in there that moves on its own…”

“Then we leave,” Nora said.

She opened the door only a little.

No monster waited behind it, and no long stairs led into darkness. Instead, there was a small service room, barely big enough for three people. Along one wall ran old pipes painted grey. On a shelf lay coiled cables, two empty glass bottles, and a tin box with a rusty lid.

On the other side stood a narrow metal cabinet.

“See?” Filip let out a breath. “A technical room. Exactly what I said.”

“Not exactly what you said,” Nora reminded him. “You said a shaft.”

“Room, shaft… technical things come in many shapes.”

But Ben was not looking at the pipes. He was staring at the cabinet. “It’s locked.”

A small brass padlock hung on its doors. The same metal as the key in Nora’s hand. The girl looked at her friends.

“Should we try it?”

Filip bit his lip. “If the key opened the door, maybe it belongs to the whole old system. Just don’t pull hard on anything.”

Ben stayed silent for a moment. Then he nodded. “Open it. But if we only find old heating bills, I’ll be disappointed.”

The key slid into the cabinet lock as easily as before. When Nora turned her wrist, the lock clicked open.

Inside were not bills. There were thin files, an envelope tied with a faded blue ribbon, and a folded house plan. The paper had turned yellow, but the lines were still clear.

Filip unfolded it carefully on the shelf. He shone the flashlight on the floor plan.

“Look,” he said.

The present building was drawn in dark lines. Behind it, another part stretched out, marked in lighter ink. It had an inside staircase, a long corridor, and several small rooms.

Above it was written: WING K – removed during the rebuild in 1987.

Nora felt goose bumps run down her back. She quickly copied the note into her notebook.

“So it really existed,” Ben said. “It wasn’t a shed.”

“And this room was in it,” Filip added. He traced the dotted line on the plan with his finger. “But according to this, it is now under part of our staircase. That makes no sense.”

“Lots of things don’t make sense today,” Nora said.

Under the plan lay a small cardboard name tag. It was as thin as a library slip and had a blue ink mark on one corner. Nora picked it up.

On the front, neat childlike writing said: KLÁRA V., 5TH FLOOR.

On the back were four short lines.

If the building changes, memories do not have to disappear.

I put them where the one who notices will find them.

What Comes Next

Below the text was a drawn sign: a curved K, just like on the brass key.

The room suddenly became very quiet.

“Klára,” Ben whispered. “It’s her.”

Nora looked at him. “Do you know who that is?”

“Not really. But Mrs. Richterová said her name once when she thought nobody could hear. She was searching in a cupboard and said, ‘Klára would know where she put it.’”

Filip studied the tag without any jokes. “This is a real clue. Paper, ink, plan, rebuild year. We can check it.”

“And a message,” Nora added.

“That is harder to check,” he admitted. Then he pointed at the K sign. “But this is not. The same sign is on the key, on the door, and on the tag. That is not a coincidence anymore.”

A muffled sound came from the corridor, as if a door had shut far away.

Ben tensed his shoulders, but this time he did not look toward the exit. He only listened.

“It feels different,” he said. “Before, I felt like someone was watching us. Now… I don’t know. It’s like we should leave, but not because something is chasing us.”

The grey light by the doorway faded.

Nora put the name tag back on the shelf, then hesitated. She was not sure if they should take away the original clue without permission. She could not just photograph it either; phones often did not work in the corridor, and hers stayed in her jacket like a useless piece of glass.

Instead, she opened her notebook and copied every word. She drew the name tag, the sign, the number 3A, and part of the plan showing Wing K. Filip told her exactly where the room was. Meanwhile, Ben stood by the open door and watched the way back.

“The light is fading,” he said after a while.

Nora shut her notebook. “Done.”

She took the key out of the cabinet. It was still warm.

When they stepped back into the corridor, the carpet no longer looked so dark. The walls were starting to melt into a soft grey dimness. It was not sudden or threatening. It was more like steam slowly disappearing above a hot cup of tea.

“Together back,” Filip reminded them.

They walked to where the lift should have been. Behind them, the first door closed softly by itself, but without a bang. Nora did not turn around. She held the notebook against her chest and watched only the pale rectangle at the end of the corridor.

Soon they were standing by the lift again.

The bulb above them lit up fully. The wall opposite was ordinary, green, and cracked. The unnumbered corridor was gone.

Ben let out such a big breath that Filip smiled. “I think your carefulness saved my plan to pretend I wasn’t scared.”

“Your plan did not work,” Ben said.

“That is a technical note, not a personal attack.”

Nora looked at the key. Its brass gleamed softly in the light, but when she pressed it into her palm, she could still feel warmth.

She added the last note to her notebook: Key by the lift. Warm. K sign. Opened door 3A and the cabinet.

Below that, she wrote two questions.

What does Wing K mean today, if it was torn down long ago?

And who left the key exactly where they would find it?

The lift finally chimed, and the doors opened. The cabin was empty. The children stepped inside together.

Just before the metal doors closed, Nora looked once more at the wall opposite. There was nothing strange on the dull green paint.

The End of the Story

Only near the floor, for a second, a tiny brass reflection flashed, as if someone had just put down another key there.