The House That Breathed

M Mehran

It began with a dare.
On the outskirts of town stood a house no one wanted to claim. The windows were boarded, the paint peeled, and weeds grew like claws across the porch. Kids called it The Breathing House, because on quiet nights, some swore they heard it exhale.

Maya never believed in ghost stories. She laughed when her friends dared her to spend one night inside. “It’s just rotten wood and bad plumbing,” she said. But deep down, she wanted to prove something—to them, and maybe to herself.

So, on a Friday evening, flashlight in hand, she pushed open the creaking front door.


---

Chapter Two: The First Breath

The smell hit her first—mold, dust, and something sour beneath it. Her light cut through layers of cobwebs as she stepped onto warped floorboards.

The silence pressed heavy, until—creeeak. Not from her feet. From the walls themselves, groaning like something shifting inside. She froze, her breath clouding in the cold air.

And then she heard it: a long, low sigh.

Maya’s laughter caught in her throat. “Just the wind,” she whispered, but her voice sounded thin against the dark.


---

Chapter Three: The Portrait

In the living room hung a portrait, tilted slightly on the wall. A family of four stared out—father, mother, two children. Their eyes were wrong. Too dark. Too sharp. She shone her light closer, only to find the glass smeared, as though someone had pressed their face against it from the inside.

She backed away, uneasy. That’s when the frame rattled. Once. Twice. Then slammed to the floor, though no breeze stirred.

Her flashlight flickered. And for a second—just a second—she saw the family smiling wider than before.


---

Chapter Four: The Whispers

Upstairs, the air thickened. Her skin prickled as whispers floated down the hallway, too soft to make sense, too many to count. She thought of leaving, but pride shoved her forward.

The door at the end of the hall was half-open. She nudged it with her foot, revealing a child’s bedroom. Toys lay scattered, but they were wrong—stuffed animals with missing eyes, dolls with cracked porcelain faces, all turned toward her as if waiting.

The whispers rose. She swore one of the dolls mouthed the words: Stay.


---

Chapter Five: The Walls

Midnight crept in. Maya sat in the corner of the bedroom, hugging her knees, flashlight trembling in her hand. That’s when she noticed it.

The walls. They were moving.

Slow, steady, expanding and contracting, as though the house itself inhaled and exhaled around her. The floor shuddered with each breath.

She scrambled to the hallway, heart hammering. The walls here moved too, pulsing like veins under skin. From between the cracks oozed a dark, wet substance, dripping onto the floorboards.

Her stomach churned. The house wasn’t haunted. The house was alive.


---

Chapter Six: The Stomach

The whispers grew louder, forming words now: Hungry… hungry…

Maya ran for the stairs, but the steps stretched, lengthening beneath her feet. She slipped, crashing to her knees. The wood beneath her hands was warm, slick. When she pulled away, her palms shone red.

Blood.

The house groaned, louder this time, like a belly rumbling. The whispers turned to chants. Hungry. Hungry. Hungry.

She realized too late—she wasn’t in a house. She was in something else. And it wanted to feed.


---

Chapter Seven: The Mouth

The front door loomed ahead, but as she sprinted toward it, the floor split open. A gaping crack stretched wide, lined with jagged splinters like teeth. From the depths came a stench of rot, and the whispers howled in triumph.

She tried to leap across, but the floor buckled, hurling her back. Her flashlight skittered into the darkness. The “teeth” began grinding shut.

Maya screamed, clawing at the floorboards. Her nails tore, her breath ripped from her chest. And then she saw it—on the wall beside her, the portrait of the family.

They weren’t trapped behind the glass anymore. They were watching from the room itself, smiling wide, their mouths moving in sync with the house: Hungry…


---

Chapter Eight: The Last Breath

The crack swallowed her whole.

Outside, the house stood silent again. No lights, no screams, only the faintest sigh slipping through the cracks of its walls.

The next morning, Maya’s friends came looking, laughing nervously as they pushed open the door. They found only her flashlight, cracked in two on the floor.

But when they glanced at the portrait on the wall, their laughter died.

The family of four had become five. And the newest face was smiling with familiar eyes.