The Night the Cabinets Split

I was eighteen when I first stepped into the jungle camp, part of the first batch of National Service. The place was a muddy clearing hacked out of the rainforest, surrounded by towering trees that seemed to swallow the light. We were assigned to longhouses—wooden structures on stilts, each holding thirty of us. The layout was simple: a single long room with a walkway down the middle, fifteen cots on each side, and small wooden cabinets between each bed. Those cabinets were our only privacy, a thin shield between strangers who snored and whispered and feared the dark together.

Months passed. Stories began to circulate, as they always do in such places. Some claimed to see a woman in white under the banana trees near the river, her hair like wet moss. Others said they heard crying in the latrines at night. I dismissed them as fear and imagination. But then my friend, a wiry boy from the city, woke up screaming, clawing at his own throat, saying something had tried to pull him down. The officers chalked it up to stress, but I saw the scratches on his neck.

One night, after lights out, I couldn’t sleep. The air was thick, humid, the kind that sits on your chest. The only light came from the moon through the windows, casting pale rectangles on the floor. I lay in my cot, staring at the cabinet beside me. It was a simple thing, about knee-high, made of cheap wood. The top was covered with a thin layer of dust, and I noticed a small, dark stain near the hinge—like dried blood, but darker.

Then I heard a sound, soft and rhythmic, like a finger tapping. It came from inside the cabinet. I froze, my heart thudding. The tapping stopped. Then a voice, barely a whisper, echoed from within the cabinet. It said my name. Not my full name, but a nickname only my mother used. The voice was familiar, yet wrong—like my mother’s, but deeper, with a hiss at the end.

I wanted to run, but something held me still. The cabinet door began to open on its own, slowly, with a creak that seemed to fill the room. I saw darkness inside, deeper than black, and two small lights like eyes. The voice spoke again, clearer now: ‘Help me.’ The sound came from all around, as if the room itself was whispering.

I reached out, my hand trembling, and touched the edge of the cabinet. The wood felt cold, like stone. I pulled my hand back, but it was too late—a hand, cold and dry, shot out and grabbed my wrist. It was impossibly strong. I yanked, but the grip tightened, pulling me toward the cabinet. I opened my mouth to scream, but no sound came out.

Suddenly, the lights flickered on. The drill sergeant’s voice bellowed, wanting to know who was making noise. The hand vanished, and I fell back onto my cot, gasping. The cabinet was closed, as if nothing had happened. My wrist had finger-shaped bruises, dark and purple.

I tried to tell the sergeant the next morning, but he laughed and told me I was dreaming. The bruises, he said, were probably from a fall. But I knew what I saw. The other boys avoided their cabinets, sleeping in groups on the floor, and some asked to go home. The officers blamed it on mass hysteria, but they couldn’t explain why the door of my cabinet had a charred handprint on it the next morning.

A few days later, a recruit was found screaming in the latrine, babbling about a woman with no face. He was sent to the infirmary. That night, I gathered my courage and inspected my cabinet. The dark stain had grown, spreading like a map of veins. I pried the cabinet away from the wall, and behind it, I found a small, blackened object—a child’s hairclip, rusted and brittle. I picked it up, and the air grew cold.

From that moment, the presence grew stronger. The tapping came every night, louder, insistent. The voice no longer begged—it commanded. One night, I woke to find myself standing in the middle of the room, pointing to a cabinet on the other side. All the cabinets in that row were open, but the beds were empty. A whisper filled the room: ‘All of them.’

I don’t remember what happened next, but the next morning, I was told I had disappeared for three days. I was found in the banana grove, covered in mud, babbling about cabinets. They sent me home, medically discharged.

Years later, I still hear the tapping. At night, I check every cabinet in my house, but they’re always empty. Yet just last week, I found a small, rusted hairclip on my doorstep. The tapping has started again, and I know—the cabinets are not the walls of a house, but the thresholds of something else. And they are always ready to open.