The House on Wren Street Breathes at Night

The listing said "charming 1920s colonial, needs TLC," which is real estate for the furnace is older than your grandparents. It was on Wren Street, a dead end with five houses and a lot of maple trees, and it was ninety thousand dollars under anything else in town. I didn't ask why. That's on me.

The first week was fine. Boxes everywhere, the dog, Biscuit, losing his mind over squirrels, me eating cereal for dinner on the stairs because I couldn't find the kitchen table under all the stuff. The realtor had mentioned that the previous owner, Mr. Hollis, lived there fifty-one years and "passed peacefully at home." I remember thinking that was a nice way to go. Your own bed, your own house.

The second week I noticed the noise.

It started around midnight. A long, low creak somewhere in the walls, then a pause, then a sort of sigh, like air going out of a tire very slowly. Then the creak again. Over and over. I lay there and figured it was the pipes, or the wind, or one of those noises old houses make that you stop hearing after a month.

Except I started counting. I always count when I can't sleep.

Twelve a minute. Every minute. In, out. In, out.

That's about how fast a person breathes when they're asleep. I looked that up at two in the morning, which is never a good time to look anything up.

I called a contractor. His name was Ray and he had a mustache like a push broom and he stomped all through the house, knocked on walls, went down in the crawlspace and came back up with cobwebs in his hair. He said it was settling. He said old wood swells when it's warm and shrinks when it cools down at night, and the joists rub on each other, and that's your creak. Thermal expansion, he said, and drew me a little diagram on the back of his invoice, which I still have.

"So it's normal," I said.

"It's a hundred-year-old house," Ray said. "Normal's not really the word. But it's not haunted, if that's what you're asking." Then he laughed, and I laughed, and he charged me a hundred and fifty dollars to tell me that.

Here's the thing Ray didn't explain. Thermal expansion doesn't stop when you turn the heat off. And it doesn't speed up when you're scared.

Because it did. I tested it. One night I lay in bed and made myself breathe fast, short little breaths, like after running up stairs. And the house went with me. Creak, sigh, creak, sigh, faster and faster, the walls ticking like a clock somebody had wound too tight. When I slowed down, it slowed down.

I lay there with the covers up to my chin for an hour, breathing as slowly and calmly as I possibly could, and the house breathed slowly and calmly right along with me, and I have never been so frightened in my life.

Biscuit stopped coming upstairs after that. He's a golden retriever, he'd sleep in a dumpster if you put a pillow in it, and he would not come past the landing. He'd sit at the bottom of the stairs and whine at me.

I went next door and asked Mrs. Kowalski about Mr. Hollis. She's lived on Wren Street since the seventies and she knows everything about everybody, mostly the parts they'd rather she didn't.

"Oh, Walt," she said. "Sweet man. Very quiet. Didn't go out much the last few years." She poured me coffee I didn't want. "You know, it's funny you ask. The night he passed, I remember it because I couldn't sleep either. Bad hip. And that house was so quiet. It's always making little noises, that house. Creaking. My husband used to say it snored." She laughed. "But that night, nothing. Not a peep. Dead quiet. And then in the morning the ambulance."

I asked her how long it had been quiet before I moved in. Four months, between him and me.

"Oh, it was quiet the whole time," she said. "Started up again right around when you got here, actually. Isn't that something."

I went home and sat in my car in the driveway for a long time.

I'd love to tell you I sold the house. I did call the realtor. She said the market was slow this time of year and I'd lose a lot and asked was there a problem with the property, in the voice people use when they already know.

So I stayed. For a while I slept on the couch downstairs with Biscuit, where you can barely hear it. Then my back gave out, and I went back up. Told myself I'd just ignore it. People live next to train tracks. People live with snoring husbands.

That's what I was doing, ignoring it, the night I noticed the other thing.

I was lying in bed, half asleep, and I realized the house had breathed in before I did.

Just a little. Half a second. The creak came, and then my chest went up. The sigh came, and then I breathed out.

I opened my eyes and lay very still and listened. It happened again. And again. It wasn't following me anymore. Somewhere in the last few weeks, without my noticing, it had gotten out in front. I was the one keeping time with it.

I tried to break it. I tried breathing fast. It was hard, really hard, like trying to walk out of step with a marching band. My body kept sliding back into the rhythm without me deciding to. In, creak. Out, sigh.

So I held my breath. I don't know why, it was the only thing I could think of. I held it and counted, and the house kept breathing without me. In, out. In, out. Steady and slow and patient, like it had all the time in the world. Like it was waiting.

At fifty-three I gasped and my lungs went straight back into its rhythm, like they'd been pulled.

I think about Mr. Hollis a lot now. Fifty-one years. "Passed peacefully at home." Very quiet at the end, Mrs. Kowalski said. Didn't go out much.

I don't go out much either, lately. It's hard to leave. Every time I'm at the grocery store or at work I feel short of breath, like I'm at the top of a mountain, and it only goes away when I get back through the front door on Wren Street and hear the walls.

Biscuit lives with my sister now. She says he's doing great.

It's almost midnight. I'm writing this in bed. The house is breathing, slow and even, and I'm breathing with it, and honestly, most nights now it's easier not to fight.

In.

Out.

For the record, the contractor wasn't wrong. Old houses really do creak and groan because of thermal expansion, wood swelling and shrinking as the temperature changes. That's what I keep telling myself, anyway. If you like being kept up at night, there's more in the Horror section, and plenty of other short stories and poems on Vocals Media.