The Cedar Room Incident

My older brother, Marcus, was a tutor in his late teens. He’d meet his students after school in the old municipal library, a brick building that had been converted into a study hall. The library had a musty smell, like old paper and floor wax, and its high ceilings made every footstep echo. Last year, the library shut down, citing budget cuts. That’s when things got strange.

One Tuesday evening, Marcus had a session with a kid named Tommy. He arrived early, as usual, settling into a back corner of the main reading room. The room was vast, with rows of heavy oak tables, each with a brass lamp. He placed his folder on a table and waited. Minutes passed. The clock on the wall ticked loudly, the only sound in the silent space. No Tommy. Marcus checked his watch – ten minutes late. He texted Tommy’s mom, but no reply. He decided to wait a little longer, assuming Tommy might be caught in traffic.

Fifteen minutes turned to twenty. The silence grew oppressive. Marcus felt a prickling at the back of his neck, a sense of being watched. He glanced around – the room was empty, but the shadows in the corners seemed deeper than usual. Just as he was about to leave, a loud BANG shattered the quiet. Marcus jumped. The sound came from the far end of the room, near the reference section. He turned, and there, a table was trembling, as if something were pounding on it from underneath. The banging continued, rhythmic, like a frantic heartbeat. Marcus could see the tabletop flexing, the legs straining. He was frozen for a moment, his heart hammering in his chest. Then the banging became faster, more violent, and the table began to scrape across the floor, leaving deep scratches in the polished wood.

Marcus didn’t think. He grabbed his bag and bolted. He ran through the dark corridors, past shelves of dusty books, his footsteps echoing like gunshots. He burst through the front door and didn’t stop until he was home, gasping for breath. He flung open the door, and our parents saw his pale face, his wild eyes. He told them everything, but they laughed it off, saying it was probably a rat or a draft. But Marcus was adamant. He had felt the table move. He had heard the pounding. He refused to go back.

We tried to find a rational explanation. We even went back the next day, in daylight. The table was back in place, but there were fresh scratches on the floor, and one of the table legs was slightly cracked. We checked for loose floorboards, for air vents, for anything that could cause the movement. Nothing. The library was locked, and the only key was with the caretaker, old Mr. Henders, who swore he hadn’t been there.

Weeks later, I was doing research for a school project and went to the local historical society. I found an old newspaper from 50 years ago. It told of a fire that broke out in the library when it was still a school. A student named Cyrus, who had been held after hours for a minor offense, had been trapped in the main reading room. The fire had consumed him, but his body was never found. The article mentioned a ‘persistent knocking’ from the ruins for months after, until the room was rebuilt. The library, it said, was built over the old school’s foundation, and the main reading room was exactly where Cyrus had died.

I never told Marcus. I didn’t want to scare him further. But I knew that what he heard wasn’t a rat or a draft. It was the echo of a desperate boy, still trying to get out from under the floorboards. And sometimes, when I walk past that library at night, I can hear the faint, rhythmic banging, as if the table is still dancing to a ghost’s tune.