The Clacking CDs

My name is Elara, and I’ve always been a magnet for the inexplicable. Most kids see shadows in the corners of their rooms; I saw shadows that moved with purpose. But two encounters stand out above the rest, forging me into someone who checks corners twice and listens to silence with suspicion.

The first happened when I was eight, in our cramped apartment on the fourth floor of a building that coughed with every elevator ride. My father was a music fanatic, his CDs stacked in a wobbly tower on the living room shelf, a monument to his eclectic taste. One evening, I was in my room, drawing a crayon monster with too many eyes, when I heard a rapid-fire clacking, like someone shuffling a deck of cards with violent impatience. I crept to the living room, my heart a drum in my ears.

There, the CDs were leaping from the stack, rising a few inches into the air, and slapping back down, one after another, in a manic cascade. The clatter was sharp and rhythmic, as if unseen fingers were rifling through them at impossible speed. I stood frozen in the doorway, my mouth dry. The stack was a cyclonic blur of plastic and paper, the colors of album covers bleeding together. I didn’t call for my father; I was too stunned. I just watched, my brain unable to process the reality before me. After what felt like minutes, the clacking stopped as abruptly as it began, leaving the CDs in a neat pile, as if nothing had happened. I backed away, my hands trembling, and didn’t speak of it for years, convinced I had imagined it.

But the second experience, far more recent, proved that what I saw as a child was no fluke. Last year, at twenty-one, I was living with my fiancé, Liam, and a couple of our friends in a creaky old house on the outskirts of town. The house had a history, we were told: a previous owner had died there, and rumor had it he still lingered, annoyed by the living. I brushed it off; ghosts were bedtime stories, not reality.

One afternoon, I was doing laundry in the basement, a dank space with a single flickering bulb. I had gathered a mountain of clothes from the dryer, my arms overflowing, when I turned to close the dryer door. The door refused to budge. I nudged it with my hip, but it was as if something was holding it open. Irritated, I set the clothes in a basket and tried again, pushing hard. The door resisted, then yielded with a sudden force that slammed shut, the sound echoing in the small room. I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the cold concrete.

I turned to leave, but the laundry basket, which I had placed on the floor, was now overturned, clothes strewn across the grimy tiles. I froze. The hairs on my arms stood up. From the corner of my eye, I saw a shadow detach from the wall and slide toward the stairs. I spun, but there was nothing. Then, a faint whisper, too low to make out words, brushed past my ear. I dropped the basket and ran, not stopping until I was in the sunlit kitchen, gasping.

When I told Liam, he laughed it off, but I saw a flicker of unease in his eyes. That night, I couldn’t sleep. I lay in bed, listening to the house settle, every creak a potential threat. At 2:00 AM, I heard it: a soft, rhythmic clacking from downstairs, like someone flipping through CDs. My blood turned to ice. I crept to the top of the stairs and peered down. In the living room, the stack of old records we had inherited from the previous owner was lifting and slapping down, one after another, faster and faster, just like the CDs in my childhood.

I didn’t wait. I woke Liam and the others, my voice shrill. They were skeptical, but as we gathered at the top of the stairs, the clacking continued. Then, it stopped. Silence. Liam flicked on the light, and we saw the records scattered on the floor, as if a hand had swept them off the shelf. No one spoke. We moved the next week.

Now, I live in a sterile apartment with no CD towers, no record players, just silence and white walls. But sometimes, in the dead of night, I think I hear a faint clack, like plastic against plastic, and I wonder if the unseen hands have followed me here, or if they were never about the media at all, but about me. I gave up trying to make sense of it. Some doors are meant to stay closed, and some whispers are best left unheard.