Trembling With Fear 05/03/20

A House That Breathes by Radar DeBoard

Feng beamed with a sense of pride as he looked around his new living room. It had taken him almost a whole weekend, but he had finally unpacked everything. He plopped down into his grey, worn recliner letting out a tired sigh. He was still stuck on how cheap he had gotten the house for. It was located in a good neighborhood, had large square footage, and was in almost pristine condition. Yet for some reason no one had been trying to buy the house. By the time Feng had come along, it had been on the market for over three months. Thus, Feng was able to haggle the realtor down to a price half of what Feng was willing to pay for it.

 He let out a long yawn, the full weight of his exhaustion hitting him like a freight-train. Slowly rising from the chair, he made way back to the bedroom. He fell asleep almost immediately, his snores filling the room. Halfway through the night Feng shot up in bed. He was breathing rapidly, and a cold sweat rolled down his cheeks. He searched and failed to identify the cause. 

He shrugged it off as his body reacting to the new house, and started to drift off again. He was at the precipice of sleep, drifting in and out of consciousness. He woke up the next morning, feeling a bit on the stiff side. He assumed he was just sore from the move and rolled out of bed. By the time he was finished with his shift, he didn’t feel like doing anything. So he went directly home and decided to stay there for the evening. 

Just before he pulled himself out of his recliner and headed off to bed, he took a second to appreciate how quiet it truly was. He finally had a place all to himself, and he was really enjoying the solitude. A loud thud coming from behind him, shattered the silence. He whipped around to find the source of the noise. Feng found his framed diploma, laying on the ground. It had fallen from the wall. He picked it up, checking to make sure it hadn’t broken. 

He looked at the wall trying to figure out why it had fallen. He scanned the area and found no explanation/ Though he did notice a small bump roughly three or four inches wide in the middle of the wall, just a few feet from where he had hung his diploma. He found it strange he hadn’t noticed it before, but shrugged it off. He hung his diploma and trudged off to bed. 

He laid back, allowing the softness of the blankets to soothe him. As he teetered on the brink of sleep, he heard it again. The sound of someone else breathing. He held his breath, trying to see if the breathing continued without him. He didn’t hear anything. Feng let out a sigh of relief and slowly drifted off. Several hours later, Feng woke from his slumber screaming. After several seconds he stopped. He was confused as to why he had been screaming, or what the feeling of uneasiness that hung over him was. All he could do was to try to forget what had happened and go back to sleep.

Over the next few days Feng would wake in the morning with his body feeling worse than it had the prior day. Night after night of broken sleep had left him utterly exhausted. Each night, he heard breathing that wasn’t coming from him. More and more, Feng felt as though the house itself was breathing. 

Feng stopped going out. At first it was to avoid hanging out with friends. Soon however, he had stopped even going to get groceries from the store. He didn’t feel tired and sore in his home; it was his safe haven. Despite the strange breathing, the house had a comforting aura that he had become dependent on. Feng took a day off to relax and get some sleep. It didn’t work. He found himself waking up even more during the night, still hearing the strange breathing.

The most frustrating thing for Feng was that his diploma kept falling off the wall. Every time he inspected the wall fixing however, he found nothing wrong. The bump in the wall, meanwhile, had grown dramatically. It was now almost three feet wide, and seemed to grow every day. He didn’t know what was causing the warp in the wall, but kept telling himself he was going to fix it. Each time he was about to call someone to repair it, he found himself too tired and unwilling to do so.

As he stared at the deformity, he noticed something different. The bump was now made up of several shapes. One group of imprints had five small bulges, each one connected to a slightly larger bulge in between them. 

It’s like a hand, Feng thought for a moment. 

Then there was a larger shape a little bit further up the bulge that if he looked at it long enough, he saw the impression of a face. He stopped, quickly turning away from it. 

You’re just tired, he told himself, there’s no face in your wall.

He laid down in his bed, trying his hardest to relax. His mind was still fixated on the deformity in his wall. Feng focused on slowing his breathing, hoping it would lull him to sleep. After several minutes he started to drift off, but then he heard the strange noise that had been plaguing his nights. 

 “Where is that coming from!” he screamed. 

He threw the blanket off and stomped out of the bedroom, focussing all his effort on pinpointing where the breathing was coming from. At that moment a strange sound came from the living room, it sent a chill down Feng’s spine.

Slowly, he made his way down the hallway, creeping into the living room. He immediately turned his gaze to the deformity. Feng could tell something was off. His diploma had vanished from the wall. He moved closer towards where his diploma should be, a terrible feeling growing in his gut. The closer he got, the more he could tell the imperfection had grown.  

Feng thought to himself, it’s moving. 

He reached out towards it, his mind racing. The wall moved in small, continuous motions as he placed his hand on it. Then the deformity split down the middle, creating a wide opening. Feng froze, gasping in horror as he stared into the black abyss.

***

Joshua unlocked the door, and walked into his new house. He still couldn’t believe he had gotten it for such a cheap price. He honestly couldn’t figure out why no one else had snatched it up before him. He noticed something on the ground, and picked it up. 

“Who’s Feng?” he asked, looking down at the framed diploma in his hands.