The Hour Between

Chapter Two: Thirteen Doors

Maya went to Bellweather House the following morning.

She told herself she was checking the demolition records. She told herself that a photograph with the wrong date was an archival problem, and that archival problems were solved by visiting the source.

The caretaker let her in after she showed him her work identification. He was a narrow man with a nicotine cough and a key ring heavy enough to bruise someone.

“Fourth floor?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“There's nothing up there.”

“It's a residential building. I assume there are apartments.”

He gave her a look that suggested she was not the first person to make the joke.

The fourth-floor corridor smelled of wet plaster. Thirteen doors stood in a neat line, numbered one to thirteen. At the far end was a blank wall. Maya checked the floor plan on her phone. The drawing showed another section of corridor, a small square room and a narrow service passage.

She walked to the wall and pressed her palm against it.

Cold.

Not the ordinary chill of concrete. This cold seemed to reach back.

A door opened behind her.

An elderly woman stood in the doorway of Apartment 11. Her hair was white, her shoulders narrow beneath a knitted cardigan.

“Can I help you?”

Maya showed her the photograph on her phone.

The woman's expression changed so completely that Maya lowered the device.

“Where did you get that?”

“Municipal archive. Do you know the building?”

“I live here.”

“Do you know the woman?”

The old woman looked at Maya's face, then at the photograph.

“Room Fourteen was sealed before I was born,” she said.

"There's no Room Fourteen.”

"There is.”

“There's a wall.”

“That's what they put there.”

“Who?”

The woman glanced towards the caretaker's stairwell.

“People who were frightened of what they remembered.”

Maya felt the familiar irritation that arrived whenever someone chose mystery over an answer.

“What happened in the room?”

The old woman began to close her door.

“People went in with one memory and came out with another.”

“That's not possible.”

“Then why are you here?”

The door shut.

Maya stood in the corridor for a long moment. When she turned back to the wall, she noticed a thin line in the paint. A rectangle. A door that had been plastered over.

She ran her fingertips along its edge.

A small metallic click sounded from somewhere inside.

That evening, she searched the archive database. Room 14 appeared in one document: a demolition inspection from 1979. The entry was brief.

ROOM 14: ACCESS SEALED. RETAIN ORIGINAL PLAN.

There was no floor number and no explanation. The inspector's signature was unreadable.

Beneath it, in pencil, someone had written:

ASK LEELA ABOUT THE SUMMER.

Maya stared at the words.

The handwriting was hers.