The autumn evening flowed down the façade of Copernicus High School like a thin layer of ink. The building was old, with tiled cookers that hadn't warmed up for years, and corridors so long that the sound of footsteps came from them with a delay, like an echo of one's own thoughts. In room 204, the fluorescent light blinked restlessly. Lena Nowicka stood on a chair and taped a reading plan to the corkboard. It smelled of chalk, dampness and eraser. "Just more of these worksheets..." - she muttered to herself, glancing at her watch. It was nine-five. In the courtyard under the chestnut tree lay the first spiky shells. A tram could be heard in the distance, as if through a thin wall of water. A cleaning trolley rolled down the corridor. Cuba, a caretaker in a thick jumper and carrying a torch, stopped in the doorway. He had the face of a man who knows every creak of the stairs and every patch on the linoleum. "Mrs Lena, so late? Tomorrow the council at eight o'clock. Please don't mess up on the first day." She smiled - new to school, new to town, with a notebook full of plans. "I know, I'm already finishing. I want to have everything ready. After the bell, the kids... I mean students, you know. No time for the little things." Cuba scratched the back of his neck, seemingly out of breath. "If anything, please don't go to the archives alone. The lock is jammed and the light... well, the light likes to play tricks." "The archive?" "Under room 204 - you go down a narrow staircase, such a concrete block. Old diaries, aids, everything that nobody wants, but you can't live without." He laughed briefly, as if at his own joke, tapped the torch against his hand and disappeared around the corner, leaving a trail of wet rubber wheels behind him. Lena looked at the door: 204, a polished brass plaque, slightly crooked. Inside stood four rows of benches and an old green blackboard on which someone had left a crookedly drawn heart in chalk letters last year. Lena removed this heart with a sponge and saw the shadow of the old words emerge underneath - they hadn't quite disappeared. It was as if she had only wiped off the top, and deeper down something remained that had first been a word and was now just a trace. On the desk was a journal - red, hardback, new. She had come to just type in the classes, writing down some plans. "2C - Polish language. 3A - writing workshop." She slid her hand over the spine and opened the first page. The paper was rough, still cool from the print shop. The pen had left a wet signature: "Lena Nowicka." A blink. For a moment the fluorescent light dimmed, and in that dimming something vibrated on the radio above the door. A dry crackle came from the loudspeaker, as if someone had touched an unswitched microphone. "Hello?" - she said, herself not knowing why. The echo answered her from two directions: from the corridor and from the loudspeaker. The crackle sounded again. Then a silence so thick you could hear a lead nothing falling. And then a voice came through the loudspeaker, quiet, with no apparent age: "Ms Leno?" A shiver ran down her spine, like a draught. "Cuba?" "Mrs Leno, please don't open the window." The voice was very calm. Too calm. And disappeared. Lena turned back to the window. Someone - or something - from outside had touched the glass with a fingernail. No, it was just a chestnut leaf, snagged on the gutter, which scratched the glass with every gust. Yet the words from the loudspeaker settled in like dust. "They're probably testing the sound system," she muttered. "Or someone's playing." She took out her phone. On the screen, an e-journal notification: "New message: sender - lab_chem." She opened it. "Ms Leno, please stay in room 204 until the tutor arrives." A message with no signature, no date, as if sent from outside normal time. The watch icon flashed but showed neither hour nor minute. She pressed her lips together. "I'm not going to get screwed." She texted Cuba: "Hey, someone is messing up. Sound system is going haywire, I'm getting weird messages. Is that you?" The reply came after a while: "I'm in the basement by the boiler room. I haven't moved anything. Did someone break into the network? I'll let the director know." Journal. Lena leaned over it again to occupy her hands. She opened in the middle. On the hitherto blank pages appeared writing. Thin, even, like machine writing. Lesson 1: Introduction - Safety rules. Lesson 2: Interpretation - 'Stone on stone'. Lesson 3: Diagnostic - Do not open the window. Lesson 4:. Something in her temple trembled. It was her handwriting. Her 'z's', her 's's', her uneven tails. But she hadn't typed anything yet. She ran her finger over the ink. It was dry. As if the letters had been lying there for a long time, just waiting to be looked at. "Enough, Lena. Night, light, fatigue." She set the journal aside and went into the message panel to write to the director. The screen drew in a thin fog. Instead of a list of contacts, it displayed a photograph. An old photograph, black and white. The corridor of a high school. Along the walls, display cases with diplomas, and at the end, by the doorframe, a group of young people. Students? Teachers from years ago? In the foreground, someone turned sideways, with a profile all too unbearably familiar. A girl with softly curled fringe. Lena. As if it were her, but in a different light, at a different time. She was smiling in the picture at someone who was not in the frame. Before she had time to think "that's not possible", the screen went blank and the usual panel returned. News, schedule, presences. A chill blew in from the corridor. The door to Room 204 vibrated, as if someone had pulled lightly on the handle. Lena looked through the pane of milky glass. The lamp above the bulletin board outside the hall pulsed with uneven light. The corridor - empty. Instinctively, she took the torch from her desk - a new, school-issued one, still in the foil that someone from the administration had left behind. She cut the plastic with the knife, a click, a narrow beam of light made the black edges of the thing sharper. She swiped at the door, at the frame, at the number plate. Where the plaster had been scratched off, the previous layer of paint showed underneath: darker, almost purple. The old letters, barely visible, like a shadow: 117. 117. That was the number of the archive, she remembered Cuba's words. Beneath room 204 - 117. It was as if the two rooms were superimposed on each other in a crooked mirror. She stepped out into the corridor. Her footsteps sounded too loud and the corridor seemed to lengthen, although she knew the measure of it. She passed a display case with cups, a board with an evacuation plan where a green arrow showed the path to the stairs down. The light vibrated, the bulbs resonated with a quiet, metallic hum, as if they were talking amongst themselves. The stairs to the cellars were narrow, made of stone where the years had left shallows from hundreds of feet. Each step had a dent in the middle, like a bowl. When she set foot on the first one, she felt a chill coming from below, the smell of dampness and old paper. A cough echoed, although she did not cough. Downstairs, the corridor split into two arms. To the left - the boiler room, from where came a steady murmur. To the right - the archive door, painted grey, with a large padlock, not necessarily needed. The padlock hung unfastened. The lock was new, shiny, the handle cool as water. Above the door a sign read: "Archive - access for school staff only". Below it, someone had stuck a note with a handwritten note: "Do not enter alone." Lena took the torch more firmly in her hand, felt the skin on her palm sweat slightly. She pressed the handle. The door did not give way. She tried again. The metal groaned and a faint smell of dust, chalk and... jasmine flowed from inside. Did someone use perfume in here? What for? "Cuba?" she called down towards the boiler room. She was answered only by the hum of the boiler and a single, distant clatter, as if someone had dropped a paperclip on the concrete. The phone vibrated. A new message. Sender: atelier_chem. "If you go inside, please do not touch the third shelf from the top, middle section, boxes with green labels." No "why". No "please". Just this. Like an instruction that fell right on the weight of decision. For a moment she stood motionless, feeling her spine tighten like a chord. She felt like laughing at the whole thing - at her own fear bordering on humour. But the laughter stopped in her throat when a rustling sound came from inside the archive. Very light, very human. As if someone was turning the pages. "Hello?" The voice sounded strangely alien in this narrow corridor, as if it belonged to someone else. "It's... Lena. The new polonist." In reply - the rustling again, and then something else that was not a sound. A word? A whisper? Maybe her name, but spoken as if someone hadn't used the letter "e" in a long time. The air thickened. The torch dimmed for a split second. When it flared up again, Lena saw a thin line of light on the floor, like a white vein - it was the crack under the door. From inside, someone had placed something heavy just inside the threshold. Or maybe he was pushing it away. She reached into her pocket for the bundle of keys she'd been given in the secretary's office that morning. They had numbers and coloured hang tags. One of the tags was without description. Gold, plain. The key on this pendant was a different shape to the others - an old design, like from her grandmother's old flat. She hesitated for a moment, knowing it was absurd, but absurdity was sometimes the best spice of life at school. She slipped the key into the lock. It fit. The lock made a sound as soft as a sigh. "Ms Leno?" This time the voice didn't come from the radio station. It came from under the door, soft as the touch of fabric. Very close. "Please... please turn on the light first." "Where?" "On the left, just by the door frame. Just don't look at the third shelf." Lena raised her hand to the switch, feeling her heart pounding all the way to her wrists. At the same moment, something from within brushed the handle, as gently as if it were checking the temperature of her hand. The switch was cold. Click. A narrow stream of light, sharper than that from a torch, came through the gap under the door. And then the handle from the inside moved once more, this time decisively, as if a second hand, belonging to someone invisible, was beginning to turn it at the same time as her.