The Map on the Wall

I was twelve that summer, staying with my grandmother in her new apartment on the fourth floor of a building that smelled of boiled cabbage and old wood. She had just moved from the coast, and the place was a maze of cardboard boxes, their flaps yawning open like hungry mouths. I remember the scratch of the packing tape, the dust motes swimming in the afternoon light that slanted through the blinds, and the way my grandmother hummed old songs she half-remembered while she sorted through china she no longer had room for.

One evening, after we’d eaten a dinner of cold meat and pickles, I found a roll of paper tucked behind a box of Christmas ornaments. It was large, rolled tight, and tied with a frayed piece of twine. My grandmother said she didn’t know what it was, that it must have come from the previous tenant, who had left a few things behind. She told me to throw it out, but I unfurled it anyway, and there it was: a map. It was drawn in faded ink on yellowed paper, and it showed the apartment building, but not as it was. There were extra hallways, staircases that led to places that didn’t exist, and rooms marked with tiny symbols I didn’t recognize. In the corner, someone had written in a spidery hand, “The doors open only for those who listen.”

I should have thrown it out. I didn’t. I took it to my room, the small one at the end of the hall that held a narrow bed and a chest of drawers. That night, I lay awake, staring at the ceiling, and I heard it: a faint sound, like a key turning in a lock, but softer, as if it came from inside the walls. I sat up, my heart hammering. The map was on the floor beside the bed, and I swear I saw the ink shimmer. I put it in the drawer and tried to sleep, but the sound continued, a low rhythmic click-click-click, like someone walking on the other side.

For three nights, it went on. I told my grandmother, but she said it was just the pipes, or maybe a mouse. She had a way of dismissing things that made you feel silly for mentioning them. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that the map was connected. On the fourth night, I unrolled it again, and I saw that some of the symbols had changed. They were brighter now, as if traced in a fresh ink. One symbol, near the back of the building, glowed like a tiny ember. I thought of the basement, the one with the locked door that the superintendent said was just a storage closet.

On the fifth night, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I took the map and a flashlight, and I crept out of the apartment. The hallway was dim, lit by one flickering bulb, and the air was cold, colder than it should have been in July. I followed the map’s path, but the hallway seemed longer than usual. There were doors I’d never noticed before, all painted the same shade of brown, all closed. The map told me to turn left, then right, then left again, and I did, even though I knew the hallway should have ended at a window. Instead, there was a door, short and black, that looked like it had been there forever, but I’d never seen it before.

I put my hand on the knob, and it was warm. The map in my other hand grew heavy, and I heard that clicking again, right on the other side. I turned the knob, and the door opened onto a staircase leading down, the steps worn smooth as if countless feet had climbed them. The air smelled of dust and something else, something like old medicine. I descended, my flashlight beam cutting through the dark, and at the bottom there was a corridor lined with doors, exactly like the map showed. Each door had a small window, but they were covered in grime, so I couldn’t see inside. I stopped at one door, the one the map marked with a star. I wiped at the glass, and inside I saw a room, empty except for a chair. And in the chair sat an old woman, her face gray as ash, her eyes open and staring straight at me. She opened her mouth, but no sound came out. Instead, I heard the click-click-click, and I realized it was her jaw, moving up and down, like she was trying to speak but had forgotten how.

I stumbled back, dropping the map. It fluttered to the floor, and the old woman’s eyes followed it. I turned and ran, up the stairs, through the door, back into the hallway that now was normal again. I slammed the apartment door behind me and leaned against it, my breath ragged. The map was gone, left in that corridor. I didn’t tell my grandmother. I didn’t sleep that night. In the morning, I thought I’d imagined it, but when I went out, the hallway was as it had always been, with no sign of that short black door. I went to the superintendent and asked about the basement, and he said the door to the storage room was always locked, and he’d never been in there. He said the previous tenant, an old woman, had died in the building, but she had no family, and they never cleared out her stuff. He said they just sealed her room and left it.

I moved back to my dad’s place a week later, but I’ve never forgotten that map, or that old woman in the chair. Sometimes, at night, I still hear a clicking sound, like a key turning in a lock, and I wonder if the map is still there, waiting for someone else to find it, and if they’ll be brave enough to see what’s behind the other doors.