The Planked Door

The day I moved into the attic room of the old house on Wenming Lane, the landlady, Mrs. Gu, stood at the foot of the stairs with her hands clasped, her face a mask of warning. ‘Don’t open that closet in your room,’ she said. ‘It’s falling apart. The floorboards are rotten. I nailed it shut for a reason.’ I nodded, figuring it was just an old woman’s fussiness. I was a graduate student, new to Nanjing, and the rent was absurdly cheap. I had bigger worries, like the piles of books and my research on local folklore.

The room was small but cozy, with a single window overlooking a narrow alley. The closet was indeed boarded up with rough planks, nailed crudely, as if done in haste. I didn’t mind; I had the hallway closet for my clothes. But at night, I would lie in bed and hear a faint scratching, like claws on wood, from the closet’s direction. I dismissed it as rats, though the sound had a strange rhythm, almost like a human fingernail tracing letters.

A week later, the other tenant, a quiet woman named Lin who worked in a nearby teahouse, stopped me on the stairwell. ‘You hear it too?’ she asked, her eyes darting to my door. ‘The scratching. It started two weeks before you came. I told Mrs. Gu, but she just said it was the house settling. But I know better. That closet… it wasn’t sealed to keep pests out. It was sealed to keep something in.’ She refused to say more, but her fear was contagious.

The next weekend, I couldn’t resist. I examined the planks, saw that a few had warped, leaving gaps just wide enough to peer through. I pressed my eye to a crack. At first, it was dark, then I made out a shape—a bundle of rags, or maybe a small trunk. But as my eyes adjusted, I saw something glint: a pair of glasses, old-fashioned, round-framed, resting on what appeared to be a folded cloth. And then the cloth moved. It shifted, and I stumbled back, heart pounding.

I confronted Mrs. Gu. She was in the courtyard, watering her orchids. Her face went pale when I mentioned the glasses. She whispered, ‘That was my husband’s brother, Zhou. He lived in that room during the Cultural Revolution. He was a writer, and he wrote things they didn’t like. They came for him one night. He hid his manuscripts in that closet, but they found them. They took him away, and he never came back. But his ghost… he’s still looking for those papers. He thinks I hid them. That’s why he scratches. He wants to get out, to search the house. But I can’t let him. If I open that door, he’ll never rest, and neither will we.’

I didn’t believe her. Ghosts were superstition. I was a rational man. So that night, I took a crowbar and pried the planks off. The closet door was old wood, swollen with humidity. I pulled it open. Inside was a small space, maybe three feet deep, with a gaping hole in the floor where boards had rotted away. And sitting atop the hole, like a mockery, were the glasses. I reached for them, and as my fingers touched the frame, the hole below seemed to breathe, and a cold draft enveloped me.

I heard a whisper, not a voice exactly, but a sensation of words: ‘You opened the door. Now you’ll help me find them.’ I tried to step back, but my feet felt glued. From the hole, a hand emerged—thin, gray, with long nails—and grasped the edge. I screamed, but no sound came. The hand was followed by an arm, then a head with matted hair and a face like a drowned man’s, hollow eyes fixed on me. ‘My papers,’ it rasped. ‘Where are they?’

I managed to break free, stumbling into the hallway. I slammed my door, locked it. Through the wood, I heard the closet door creak open wider, and a shuffling sound, then the unmistakable sound of footsteps moving across the floor. I pressed my back against the door, breathing hard. The footsteps stopped on the other side. Then a soft knock. ‘Let me out,’ a voice said. ‘I only want what’s mine.’

The knocking grew louder, more insistent, turning into pounding that shook the frame. I looked around for something to block the door, but there was nothing. The hallway closet was at the end of the corridor. I remembered Mrs. Gu’s warning and felt a wave of regret. As the pounding intensified, I noticed the gap under the door was widening, and a pale, bony finger slid through, wriggling, searching. I grabbed a nearby chair and smashed it against the finger, but it retreated with a hiss.

I called for Mrs. Gu, but no one came. The house was silent except for the pounding. I realized the sound wasn’t coming from my door anymore, but from the floor below. Then I heard Mrs. Gu scream, and the pounding ceased. I rushed down the stairs, heart in my throat. In the hallway, a trail of wet footprints led from my door to Mrs. Gu’s room. I found her sitting in a corner, rocking back and forth, her eyes wide with terror. ‘He’s in the walls,’ she whispered. ‘He’s searching. He won’t stop until he finds them.’ I asked where the papers were. She pointed a trembling finger toward the kitchen. ‘Buried under the stove. I hid them there after they took him. I thought if he found them, he’d leave. But he never did. Now he’s angry.’

I demanded she give me the papers, so we could put them in the closet and appease him. She was too scared to move, so I went to the kitchen, found a loose tile, and beneath it, a bundle wrapped in oilcloth. Inside were yellowed sheets of paper, covered in dense Chinese characters. As I lifted them, the house shuddered. I ran back upstairs, threw the bundle into the closet, and slammed the door. I wish I hadn’t. As soon as the papers hit the hole, a sound like a contented sigh came from the darkness, and then a violent thud, as if something had thrown itself against the floor.

I nailed the planks back, but I knew it wasn’t over. The scratching returned that night, but it was different—like a pen scribbling, or maybe just the sound of something writing. I lay awake, staring at the ceiling, and saw the boards above me ripple, as if something was crawling in the space between floors. And then, in the dust, a word formed: ‘More.’

I moved out the next day. I couldn’t sleep in that room again. Mrs. Gu let me go without a single complaint, her face haggard, as if she’d aged ten years. As I left, she grabbed my arm, her grip surprisingly strong. ‘He won’t stop,’ she said. ‘Now that he’s found his papers, he’ll want to write again. And he’ll use any hand he can.’ I shook her off and left, but as I walked down the alley, I felt a cold spot, and I swear I saw the silhouette of a man in the window, holding a pen. I hurried away, never looking back.

Months later, I received a letter. But I didn’t open it. I knew what it would be. The envelope had no return address, but the handwriting was old-fashioned, elegant, and it smelled faintly of dust and rot. I burned it. I’ve since moved across the country, to a new city, a new life. But sometimes, when I’m alone, I hear a faint scratching—at first distant, but growing closer. And I know: he’s found my address, and he’s still looking for a hand to write with.