The hallway at my grandmother's had a sound

The hallway in my grandmother's house was narrow, papered, and laid with a wool runner that had been there long enough to have a path worn down its middle. At the far end there was a clock.

The hallway had a sound. Not the clock, though the clock was in it. The hallway itself, the way it held the tick and gave it back a fraction later, softer, so every second arrived twice.

How I know

I did not notice it as a child. I noticed it the day the runner was rolled up for the move, because the second tick vanished. The hallway went from a room to a corridor in the time it took two people to carry a carpet out the door.

What I do now

I listen to rooms before I talk in them. Most are nothing. Some are almost instruments: a stairwell in a library that turns footsteps into rain, a kitchen with a tin ceiling that answers every spoon.

I have never found another hallway that ticks twice. I keep a list of the ones that come close. It is short, and I am in no hurry to finish it.

— w.