The storm from the bay side came without warning. First the wind wailed as if someone had dragged a bow across the strings of the entire street, then the sky tore so close that the panes in the narrow windows of the townhouse rattled like glasses. Lena pressed her back against the cool wall of the corridor and waited for her hand to stop trembling on the brass doorknob. - 'Get in now, child, before the water decides to come in first,' threw Granny Irena from inside the kitchen. The flat smelled of bread, post-storm drips and old paper. It was morning, but the stormy darkness pretended to be evening. Lena took off her trainers and immediately fixed her gaze on the door on the right - the one her grandmother always locked. Grandpa Tadeusz's study. She had heard as much about it as one hears about a chimney: that it was there, that it was warming, and that sometimes it smeared smoke on the memories that no one could blow away anymore. - Today you're going to help me tidy up in there," Grandma Irena announced, as if reading her thoughts. - Tadeusz collected everything that sounded. Tickets, watches, radios, he even brought a cash register when the trams replaced the old ones with new ones. He said that things have their own voices, you just have to listen to them. Lena wanted to parry a laugh, but something in the seriousness of her grandmother's voice stopped her mouth. Instead, she nodded. This summer felt like a suitcase - moved, opened, not always closed fully. Her parents were buried in work, and she was stuck with her grandmother for a 'while' that turned out to be longer than anyone had planned. She tried not to break. She told herself: you will endure. After all, it's just stuff. The study greeted them with blanket-heavy silence. A grey-green desk lamp stood in the middle of a large table like a deserted island, around which piles of papers, boxes and books sprouted. On the wall hung a barometer with a cracked glass, next to it a metronome with a missing flap and an old radio with varnished wood that smelt of cherry smoke. In the corner a gold-framed mirror peeked out, slightly squinting its surface as if trying to keep up with the whimsical light. - First the tidying up of the desk - Grandma slipped the key into a drawer and left it there, as she always did. - Then the display cabinets. Leave what you don't know. I know every nail in here. She disappeared into the kitchen to get some tea. Lena sat down and coughed as the dust rose like a flock of sparrows. She ran her finger over the green glass of the lamp; the coolness was nice, smooth, almost silky. Somewhere deep thunder rolled across the roof. Click. - O! - The lamp lit itself, pale light drifting down the ink stains on the tabletop. Lena looked around nervously. - Grandma? All she heard in reply was the hum of the kettle. She sat for another second or two, trying to throw what she had heard to the wind, before she realised that it wasn't just the click of a switch at all. - Finally. - The voice was soft, slightly nasal, like from a deep lampshade. - I already thought I was going to shine into the void for the rest of eternity. Lena cast her gaze into the lamp. - Can you hear me, Lena? - added the lamp and the light danced as if to greet her with a nod. - I... is this a joke? A hidden camera? - she muttered, looking around desperately. The mirror in the corner seemed to ripple gently for a moment, but maybe it was just a storm. - No joke. - A quiet, benevolent sigh rumbled through the wood of the radio. - 'Your voice is like your mother's when she was fifteen and used to shout at me to stop playing at two in the morning.' - The radio blinked its orange magic eye. - Call me Jowita. - The Barometer also kindly greets you - metal crunched against the wall, the voice rang out harshly, old. - Call me Baron. The pressure is dropping. Again. The metronome began to tick quietly, although its pendulum was not moved by anyone's hand. - 'Tyk,' he introduced himself dryly, without unnecessary syllables. - I count when I need to. Lena slumped her chair against the carpet. - This is not possible. - Possible - replied the lamp calmly. - And necessary. Call me Lila. Lila sounds better than 'desk lamp with green glass'. You should sit down. Irena will be back soon and we don't want her to spill her tea from the sensation. - Grandma knows that? - Lena whispered, and inside her spine she felt something that resembled a plumb line - as if her whole body had suddenly positioned itself to listen. - She knew. A long time ago. - Jowita murmured quietly, as if the hand on the radio was searching for a station. - Then she stopped. Adults do that: they put silencers on themselves. - Tadeusz was a listener, Baron added. - Before he stopped being one. Lena did not ask "why". She guessed. Grandfather had passed away in March, suddenly, unannounced. He left a cabinet, showcases and a million things that supposedly could still be fixed, but no one did anymore. - Why... why are you talking to me? - Lena was surprisingly calm. Maybe it was because she had been fond of things since she was a child. Feathers, paperclips, screws. She believed they had their own character. Only they had never responded before. - 'Because the house is losing something,' Lila said and quietly blinked. - Or rather: someone is deliberately losing something here. At night, a corridor that wasn't there appears. At the end stands a door without a number. If they open on their own, without us, we'll go quiet. Not immediately. Slowly, but effectively. We then become what Jowita calls 'dead varnish'. - I hate "dead varnish" - snorted the radio. - It's like someone taped your mouth shut with a soap advert. - Yesterday the corridor breathed so close that the mirror fogged up from the inside," whispered Tyk, without stopping to count. - Tyk-tyk. Twelve steps outside the townhouse plan. The clatter of cups came from the kitchen. Grandma Irena hummed a song from the seventies under her breath. Time had moved on. - Why me? - Lena asked quickly. - After all, the place is full of people. Neighbours, tourists in high season... - Because you can hear us effortlessly," explained Lila. - And besides, he left you something that belongs to us. Something the world likes to call by any other name, and we call it by its name: the key. - What key? - Lena leaned back in her chair. - Tucked away in Kropek - muttered the radio with something of a smile. - Hidden in who? - repeated Lena. - In the cash box. - Lila nodded with a light towards a display case next to the shelves. Inside, among the paper nets, fare cards and handfuls of metal discs, lay a heavy, cast-iron tramway ticket punch with a handle slick from thousands of hands. - Dots, because he made dotted tickets. Tadeusz called it that. Lena walked over, opened the display case. Her fingers were slightly sweaty, but the flap mechanism was surprisingly smooth. She took the ticket counter in her hands. It was heavier than it looked. She squeezed the lever. - Khe, khe. - Dot coughed up confetti. A few narrow papers with microscopic holes spilled out of the interior and scattered on the tabletop, arranged haphazardly in the shape of a constellation. - Don't squeeze right away, young one. It's not a balloon. Hello Dot. I serve a memory of lines and prints. - Do you really... - Lena didn't finish. Kropek clicked again, this time machinically, and a thinly rolled strip of paper slid out of the slot. On it, in ink - already faded, but still stubborn - someone had drawn the outline of a key. Not an ordinary one: with three letter-shaped teeth. - 'It's just a recipe,' muttered Baron. - The key is inside. - How inside? - Lena turned the cash box over. Underneath, where the metal underside used to have a number, a small, round lid was screwed on. Something glinted in its smooth surface: pressed into the edge was a small star-shaped screw. - 'Leno, in that drawer where Irene leaves the key to the drawer,' Lila hinted with slight irony, 'lies a screwdriver. The one with the black handle. On the left you also have a magnifying glass. Don't ask why. Tadeusz patched things up until they forgot they were broken. Lena found the screwdriver and magnifying glass faster than she had time to think it was absurd. She unscrewed the lid. The metal squeaked finely, like pulling on a violin. Tucked inside was a small key made of brass, cold, rough, with teeth shaped like the letters G, £ and O. When Lena lifted it to Lila's light, the letters shone as if they were a little damp. - GŁO - she read half-heartedly. - It doesn't mean anything. - It means everything - snorted Jowita's radio. - Before anything can happen, someone has to say out loud: "now". - It's the head key,' said Tyk. - Tyk-tyk. The head of the handrail. The lion at the end of the stairs. The cloak has always been closed. Waiting. From the corridor came the clatter of rain against the window sills and the distant rumble of neighbours' footsteps. Grandma must have called the lady from the third, because the distinctive sound now rang out: "It's Mrs Irena, yes, I saw the flash!". Lena slipped the key into her sweatshirt pocket and felt as if she had put a stone's worth of warm water into it. - 'If you come down, go quickly,' advised the Baron. - The pressure is dropping. When it reaches the lowest dash, the corridor will appear. A door without a number will not wait politely. - What if I don't come down? - The noise in Lena's head was growing, but it wasn't unpleasant. It resembled the hum of a story she had already entered and didn't want to fall out of. - It's still going to open up,' Lila said quietly. - 'Only not with you. She didn't give it any more thought. She went out into the stairwell. The lantern outside the window, extinguished by a storm cloud, cast a milky light on the carved railing. At the bottom, on the landing, a lion emerged from the semi-darkness - its head holding a wooden ball, with a muzzle that was neither a smile nor a threat, but a promise. Lena knelt down. In the mouth, under the tongue of the wood, she saw a small hole in the shape of the letters she held in her hand. - 'Lena, watch out for the second step,' her grandmother called out from the study, without moving from there. - It always creaks like a remorse. She slid the key in. It fit. Much more securely than she would like to admit. Metal touched metal and a barely perceptible shudder ran down the railing. Lena held her breath and turned. Click. Something unusual but almost invisible happened. The lion clenched his eyelids as if someone had shaken the dust off them, and then - nothing. Silence. Only the storm sounded stronger, as if it had squatted on the roof of a tenement. - And now what? - whispered Lena to her own fingers. - 'Now look down,' said Tyk, although he was not next to her. Nevertheless, she could hear him clearly, as if a metronome was ticking somewhere behind her back. - I'm counting. Five. Four. Three. Something began to emerge from the darkness on the ground floor that had not yet been there when she and her grandmother entered. To the left of the letterbox, the darkened wall had become thinner. The pattern of the plaster had lost its rhythm, the lines of the bricks had spread out like cards. A doorframe crawled out of the dark rectangle. A door. Smooth, without a plaque, without a number, with a handle that looked as if someone had just polished it from the inside. - Two," said Tyk. - Leno - called out quietly to Lila from inside the study. - 'Don't talk to the doorknob. They are persuasive. - One - said Tyk. The handle twitched.