The Rattling Corridor

I work at a small logistics firm on the third floor of an old, converted warehouse in the dockside district of Visakhapatnam. Our office is a long, rectangular hall with a row of tall, dusty windows on one side, and the other side is lined with metal racks holding stacks of cardboard boxes. In the far corner, we keep a set of folding metal chairs, about forty of them, neatly stacked against the wall. My colleague, a quiet woman named Anuradha, sits at the desk opposite mine, and we are the only two in the office from nine to five. After five, a few other employees drift in for the evening shift, but the daytime is usually silent except for the hum of the air conditioner and the occasional rumble of trucks outside.

It started eight months ago, on a Tuesday, around 2 PM. The air was still, the heat pressing against the windows. I was staring at a spreadsheet, and Anuradha was typing up invoices. Suddenly, there was a sharp, metallic clatter from the chair stack—like someone had run a metal rod across the slats, one after another. The sound was unmistakable, rhythmic, as if someone were deliberately dragging a tool from the top chair to the bottom. Anuradha looked up, her eyes wide. That noise lasted for about a minute, then stopped as abruptly as it began. I walked over to the stack, but everything was undisturbed. There was no one in the corridor; the only entrance was locked from inside.

We dismissed it as a settling of old metal, perhaps a rat, but we were both unsettled. Over the next weeks, it happened again, always in the same hour, always the same metallic scraping. We tried to ignore it, but Anuradha grew increasingly nervous. She began to leave early, and I found myself staying later, not out of bravery, but because I was afraid to see what might happen if I left.

Then one afternoon, as the sound echoed through the room, the chairs themselves began to vibrate. The top chair in the stack wobbled, then slid off, crashing to the floor. Another followed, then another, as if an invisible hand were toppling them in a deliberate sequence. Anuradha screamed and ran out, leaving me alone. The chairs continued to fall until the entire stack was scattered across the floor. I stood frozen, my heart pounding. And then I saw it—a faint shadow in the corner, not quite solid, that seemed to be watching me.

I learned later that the building had once been a flour mill, and a worker had been crushed by a falling stack of sacks in that very corner. His name, an old watchman told me, was Vishnu, and he had been known for his habit of running a stick along the metal railing of the stairs as he walked down, a kind of signature. The old watchman said that sometimes, on quiet afternoons, you could hear that sound—but he always added, ‘It’s nothing, just the building settling.’

But I knew better. One day, I decided to record the sound on my phone. When I played it back, the recording was clear: the metallic scrape, but underneath it, I heard a faint voice, whispering something I couldn’t understand. I played it for Anuradha, but she refused to listen. ‘I’m leaving this place,’ she said. ‘I can’t take it anymore.’

She quit a week later. I stayed, partly because I needed the job, partly because I was strangely drawn to the mystery. Every day, the chairs would rattle, and every day, they fell. I started to stack them in a different pattern, but they always ended up scattered. I tried to clean the corner, but the dust seemed to cling there, and I noticed a stain on the floor that wouldn’t come out.

One evening, as the sun was setting, I was alone. The chairs had toppled, and the shadow was more defined, almost human. It moved slowly towards me, and I felt a cold draft despite the warm weather. It reached out, and I felt a hand on my shoulder—thin, bony, but warm. Then I heard a voice, clear as day: ‘Why do you keep stacking them? I like them scattered.’

I turned, and for a split second, I saw the face of a man, his features blurred like a photograph left in the rain. Then he vanished, and the chairs were neatly stacked again, as if they had never fallen.

I left that job the next day. I still hear the rattling sometimes, in quiet moments, and I wonder if Vishnu is still there, playing with his chairs, waiting for someone to remember him. Sometimes I think about going back, but then I remember the hand on my shoulder, and I know it’s better to let the dead have their own way.