The Mechanical Lung

The first time I heard it, I thought it was the old refrigerator in the basement of my aunt’s boarding house. It was a wheezing, rhythmic sound that seemed to sync with the flickering of the single bulb in my room. But the fridge was on the ground floor, and my room was on the second. I tried to brush it off as pipes or rats, but the sound was too deliberate, too human.

My name is Evan, and I’ve been renting a room in this sprawling Victorian mansion in the middle of the city for three years. The owner, Mrs. Holloway, is a sweet but frail old lady who collects antique clocks. Her son, Marcus, is a paramedic who works nights, and he occupies the room next to mine. The walls are thin, and I can hear his radio when he’s home, but lately, he’s been gone more often.

It started about three months ago. I woke up in that half-state between sleep and consciousness, and I heard it: a slow, labored breathing, like someone with a collapsed lung trying to get air. It was coming from the wall adjacent to Marcus’s room. I figured it was him, maybe he had asthma or something, and I rolled over and went back to sleep.

But it kept happening, every night, and it was always the same. I’d be drifting off, and suddenly that breathing would fill my ears, so loud it was as if the person was in my bed, breathing over my shoulder. I started to get paranoid. I’d press my ear to the wall, and the sound would stop, only to resume when I moved away. It was maddening.

One night, I decided to confront Marcus. I knocked on his door, but there was no answer. I tried the knob, and it was unlocked. I pushed it open, and the room was empty. The bed was made, and there was a faint smell of disinfectant, like in a hospital. The breathing was there, louder than ever, coming from the closet. I opened the closet door, and there was nothing but a few empty hangers and a black duffel bag. The sound seemed to echo from the walls themselves.

I told Mrs. Holloway about it the next day over tea. She smiled, a thin, knowing smile, and said, ‘That’s just the house settling, dear. Old houses have their sounds.’ But I saw her hand tremble as she poured the tea, and she quickly changed the subject.

A few weeks later, Marcus came home early, looking haggard. I asked him about the breathing, and he gave me a strange look, as if I’d said something forbidden. ‘You need to stop listening to things, Evan,’ he said, his voice flat. ‘Some things are better left unheard.’ He went into his room and closed the door, and I could hear him moving things around, as if he were packing.

The breathing grew more insistent. I started wearing earplugs, but the sound seemed to vibrate through my skull, a slow, mechanical rhythm, like a ventilator pushing air into lungs. I began to lose sleep, and my work as a graphic designer suffered. I couldn’t focus, and I’d find myself staring at the wall, waiting for the sound.

One night, I had a dream. In the dream, I was in a hospital, and there was a patient in a coma, hooked to a machine. The machine was breathing for them, a slow, steady hiss. The patient’s face was obscured, but I felt a pull, as if I was supposed to see it. I walked closer, and the face was mine. I woke up gasping, and the breathing in my room was faster, more frantic.

I couldn’t take it anymore. I called a friend who was a sound engineer, and asked him to analyze a recording I’d made on my phone. He called me back, his voice shaky. ‘Evan, this isn’t normal breathing. It’s too regular, too mechanical. It’s like a recording on a loop. And there’s a second sound, a heartbeat underneath, but it’s slow, almost like it’s artificial.’

That’s when I found the vent grate in the wall behind my bed. It was loose, and I managed to pry it off. Inside, there was a small speaker, wired into the wall. The breathing was coming from it. I traced the wires, and they led downstairs to the basement, a place Mrs. Holloway had warned me never to go. But I went anyway.

The basement was dusty and filled with boxes of old clocks. At the back, there was a door that was locked. I picked the lock with a paperclip. What I found inside made me freeze. There was a hospital bed, and on it lay a figure of a man, old and withered, with tubes going into his mouth and nose, connected to an old ventilator that wheezed and hissed. The machine was turned off, but a speaker beside it was playing the sound of breathing, a perfect loop.

I stepped closer, and I saw a name tag on the bed: ‘Harold Holloway.’ Mrs. Holloway’s husband, who was supposed to have died years ago. The man was alive, but barely, kept in a coma by some kind of medicine. I heard footsteps behind me. Mrs. Holloway was standing there, holding a syringe. ‘He’s been in a coma for 30 years,’ she said, her voice calm. ‘The doctors said he’d never wake up. But I found this machine that could keep his lungs going, and I kept the sounds of his breathing to remind me he was still here.’

She looked at me, her eyes glinting. ‘I see you’ve found my secret. But it’s time for a new source.’ She advanced, and that’s the last thing I remember. I woke up in the hospital bed, my body heavy, and a tube down my throat. I can hear the ventilator hissing, and I realize the breathing I’ve been hearing all along was not from Marcus’s room, but from this basement, and now, it’s coming from me.

And in the corner, Mrs. Holloway is adjusting the speakers, and I can hear the sound of a new breathing loop, and I recognize it as my own.