The Locker That Would Not Stay Shut

Every barracks has its bunk nobody wants, and ours had a locker. It stood at the end of the row, empty, assigned to no one, because the last three people assigned to it had all asked to be moved and none of them would say exactly why.

The locker opened by itself. Not a rattle, not a slow creep — you would be lying in the dark at two in the morning and the metal door would swing wide with a single sharp bang that jerked everyone awake. We would slam it and latch it and lie back down, and twenty minutes later, bang, wide open again.

We tried everything. We tied it with cord; the cord was found on the floor. We ran a chain through the handle; the chain was in the next bunk over by morning. Finally two of the guys who worked in the motor pool brought a welder and tacked the door shut, a good solid bead all along the seam. We stood around it, satisfied, and went to sleep.

At reveille the locker was standing wide open. The weld had not been ground off. It had cracked, cleanly, straight down the middle of the bead, the way metal cracks when something bends it with enormous force from the inside.

Nobody slept well after that. We reported it up the chain and, to our surprise, were quietly moved to a different building within the week, no questions, no paperwork, as if someone above us already knew. I still do not know who the locker belonged to, or what he was still trying to get out to do.