The Cabinet of Dora

I never believed in ghosts, not really. I mean, I’d watch those shows on TV, but they always felt fake, like actors jumping at shadows. My name is Sam, and I’m 28. I was born and raised in Portland, Oregon, and I still live here in the same creaky old house I grew up in, the one with the peeling paint and the overgrown rhododendrons that scratch against the windows at night. This is the first time I’ve told anyone the full story, the one that’s been sitting in my gut for twenty years like a stone.

It started when I was seven. My younger sister, Lily, and I were doing our homework at the little pine table my mom had bought at a garage sale. It was in the living room, which was cluttered with my dad’s books and my mom’s knitting. The clock on the mantel said 8:07. I remember that because I was trying to finish a math problem and I kept glancing at it, wishing for bedtime. Suddenly, from the kitchen, there was a crash, like a drawer full of silverware being thrown against the floor. Lily screamed, and I dropped my pencil. My mom, who was reading in her armchair, jumped up, her book sliding to the carpet. She tiptoed to the kitchen doorway, flicked on the light, and peered inside. Everything was fine. The forks and spoons were still in their drawer, the knives in their block, the counters neat and clean. She laughed nervously, said the house was settling, and told us to go back to work. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that something had been in there, something that wanted us to know it was listening.

A few weeks later, Lily and I were in our room, the one we shared at the end of the hall. We had a big oak cabinet, the kind with carved leaves and a glass front, that my grandmother had given us to store our toys and books. It was tall and heavy, and the doors didn’t always shut right. That night, we were playing with our action figures, making them fight, when the cabinet door swung open by itself. It didn’t just creak; it moved so fast that it banged against the wood. Lily looked at me, her eyes wide. I got up, walked over, and slammed it shut. As soon as I turned back, it opened again, slow this time, like something was pushing it from inside. I pushed it shut again and held it for a second. Something pushed back. I let go and ran to get my mom. She came in, frowned, and said the latch was loose, and maybe a draft from the window was doing it. But the window was closed, and there was no draft. That night, I couldn’t sleep. I lay in my bed, listening to the house creak, and I could swear I heard a sound from inside the cabinet, a soft, rhythmic tapping, like fingers on glass.

Things got stranger. My mother, who was normally a calm person, started having episodes where she would wake up in the middle of the night, screaming that something was standing over her. But when my father turned on the light, there was nothing. She began to spend more time in the kitchen, talking to herself, saying she felt like she was being watched. My father, who was a skeptic like me, tried to laugh it off, but I could see the worry lines deepening on his forehead. Then one evening, my father went down to the basement to get some cans of soup for dinner. He came back up white as a sheet, holding a can of peaches, because that’s what he had found. He told us there was a strange smell down there, like rotting flowers, and that he felt a cold spot near the water heater. He said it was probably a dead mouse. But he didn’t go down there again.

I started to think it was the cabinet. Every time I was near it, I felt a chill, and I would get this urge to open it and look inside, even though I knew there was only toys and books. One day, after school, I was alone, and I decided to open it. Inside, everything was as it should be, except for one thing: my grandmother’s old music box, which I hadn’t seen in years, was sitting on the top shelf, with its lid slightly open. I went to touch it, but as I reached out, the music box started to play its tinkly little tune, and the lid opened all the way. The music box played ‘Für Elise’, and it kept playing, over and over, even after it should have wound down. I stood there, frozen, as the melody filled the room, and then I saw it: a small, dark shape, about the size of a hand, flit across the wall behind the cabinet. I ran out of the room, slamming the door shut behind me.

I didn’t tell anyone for days. I avoided the room, sleeping on the couch in the living room, making excuses. But I couldn’t avoid it forever. One night, I woke up to find my father standing in the doorway of my room, his eyes wide, shaking. He said he had seen something too, a dark shape in the hallway, which had dissolved into nothing. He said it was the house, that the house was old, and maybe it had things in it that we didn’t understand. He made a call to a priest the next morning, but the priest said he was too busy to come out, and gave us the number for a paranormal investigator. My mother cried when she heard that. She had always been the religious one, but I think the investigator made it seem too real.

The investigator, a woman named Dr. Elena Marsh, came to the house a week later. She had a bunch of equipment, cameras, EMF meters, audio recorders. She asked us a lot of questions, and she spent most of the day walking around, writing in a notebook. When she got to my room, she examined the cabinet. She looked at the joint where the door met the frame for a long time, and then she said, ‘Sam, have you ever heard the term mallet?’ I shook my head. She went on to explain that mallet was a French word for a certain type of spirit, one that attaches itself to an object, like a furniture or a toy, and that it feeds on the energy of the people around it. She said that the cabinet might be that object, and that the spirit might have been dormant for years, until an emotional catalyst woke it up.

She set up her equipment and asked us to leave the house for a few hours. When we came back, she was sitting on the porch, looking pale, and her equipment was packed up in her car. She said, ‘I recorded some things. I’ll analyze them, but I think it’s best if you get rid of that cabinet. Take it to a landfill, or burn it if you can.’ My mother wouldn’t hear of it, because it was a family heirloom. But my father, who had turned to me and said, ‘Son, I think we need to listen to her,’ eventually convinced her. We loaded the cabinet into the back of his truck, and drove out to a remote dump site outside of town. We left it there, surrounded by trash and heaps of rusting metal. On the drive home, no one spoke.

That night, I had a dream. I was in the room, and the cabinet was gone, but there was a bare spot on the wall where it had been. And on the floor, where the cabinet had stood, was a small, dark shape, like a shadow, and it started to grow, spreading across the floor, reaching for my bed. I woke up screaming. Lily was sitting up in her bed, crying. She said she saw something in the corner. I turned on the light, but there was nothing. But then I heard it: a scratching sound coming from inside the wall, right where the cabinet used to be. It was rhythmic, like fingers tapping on glass. And I knew that the cabinet might be gone, but the thing that lived in it hadn’t left.

We didn’t sleep for days. We lived in the living room, huddled together under blankets, listening to the sounds in the walls. My mother started losing weight, and my father took time off work. Eventually, the scratching stopped, and the shadows faded. But we knew it was just waiting. A few months later, my father sold the house, and we moved to a new place across town. We never spoke about what happened. But I never forgot.

Now, sitting here, twenty years later, I still get a chill when I hear a certain melody, or when I see an old cabinet. Last week, I was at a thrift store, and I found a small music box, just like my grandmother’s. I opened it, and it played ‘Für Elise’. I felt a cold breath on my neck, and I set it down and walked out. I didn’t look back. But sometimes, in the quiet hours of the night, I hear that tapping, and I know it’s still out there, looking for a new home. And I wonder if it’s found one, and if some other child is waking up in the dark, listening to the sound of fingers on glass.