The Night of the Hollow Breath

The first thing I noticed was the smell. Not the usual scent of my small studio in Reykjavik—clean sheets, old wood, a hint of sea air—but something else, something like damp earth and cold metal, as if the room itself had been dug up from a grave. I’d moved here for the quiet, far from the university hostel where the other exchange students laughed and argued into the small hours. I wanted solitude, and I got it. Too much of it, perhaps.

I fell asleep that night to the drone of a documentary about volcanic vents, my laptop glowing on the nightstand. I don’t remember dreaming, only the sudden, violent wrench into wakefulness. My eyes snapped open, and the room was dark except for the pale blue light of the screen, which had gone to a screen saver of drifting aurora. I was pinned to the mattress, not by weight, but by a tingling that ran from my scalp to my toes, as if every nerve were humming at a frequency just below pain. My skin bristled, each hair standing on end, and a cold sweat broke across my back.

That’s when I heard it: a breath. Not my own—my own was caught in my throat. This was a deep, wet inhalation, a slow drag of air that seemed to come from the corner of the room near the wardrobe, then a long, shuddering exhalation, like someone trying to swallow a sob. The sound was intimate, right there, as if whoever—or whatever—was kneeling beside my bed.

I tried to move, but my limbs were leaden, and my mind raced through the usual rationalizations. A draft? A pipe? But the breathing continued, even, patient, as if it had been waiting for me to notice. I forced myself to turn my head, a motion that took an eternity, and peered into the darkness. There was nothing there. Just the silhouette of the wardrobe, the stack of books, the faint outline of the window. But the breath came again, closer, and I could feel it puff against my cheek, warm and rotten, like the exhalation of some deep-sea creature.

I squeezed my eyes shut and counted to ten, then twenty, trying to convince myself it was a half-dream, the residue of a late-night meal. When I opened my eyes, the room was still, silent. The breathing had stopped. I laughed at myself, a shaky, pathetic sound, and sat up, reaching for the glass of water on the nightstand. My hand brushed against something cold and smooth, not the glass—a hand, human-shaped, but with fingers too long, joints that bent at the wrong angles. I yanked my hand back, and the thing withdrew into the dark, and I heard a skittering, like a crab on tile, moving across the floor.

I didn’t sleep that night. I turned on every light, sat in the middle of the room with my back to the wall, and watched the corners. The breathing didn’t return, but the sense of being watched, of something breathing just out of sight, clung to me like a cold mist. When morning broke, gray and watery, I convinced myself it was fatigue, stress, the novelty of living alone in a foreign city.

The next week, I noticed the air in the apartment felt heavier. I’d wake with dry lips, a metallic taste in my mouth, and small scratches on my forearms, as if from fingernails, though I kept my nails short. I told no one; they’d think I was crazy. The other students, like the cheerful Finn who lived next door and played accordion at all hours, were friendly but distant. I kept to myself, as I always had.

One night, I woke to the breathing again, but this time it was faster, like a hunted animal. I lay rigid, staring at the ceiling, and the breathing moved, from the corner to the foot of the bed, to the left side, to right above my head. I felt a cold spot on my forehead, as if someone were leaning in to examine me. And then, a voice, soft and childlike, said: “You can’t see me, but I can see you.”

I screamed. I didn’t care if anyone heard. I fumbled for the light, slapped the switch, and the room blazed to life. Empty. Just my messy desk, my unmade bed, the wind rattling the window. But the voice left a residue in my ear, like an echo in a cave.

I tried everything to rid myself of it. I burned sage (the smell didn’t help), I played loud music (the breathing simply moved under the sound), I left the lamp on all night (the shadows in the corners seemed deeper). My eyes grew heavy, my body twitchy. I started seeing movement in my periphery—a shape that darted behind the shower curtain, a dark mass in the hallway mirror.

Then, one evening, I came home from a late lecture and found the layout of my apartment changed. The chair I always left at the desk was turned to face the door. The books on the shelf had been pulled out and rearranged alphabetically, which I never did. And on the floor, in the center of the rug, was a small, perfect circle of salt, no more than two feet across. I hadn’t put it there. I knelt down and touched the ring; the salt was still slightly wet, as if freshly laid.

I felt a cold laugh bubble up inside me, not mine, but as if someone had placed a sound in my throat. I backed away, grabbed my coat, and fled to a 24-hour café, where I sat trembling until dawn. When I returned, the salt was gone, and the air in the room was still, but there was a new smell—like old pennies.

That night, I resolved not to sleep. I sat in the chair, facing the door, and watched. Hours passed. The city hummed outside. At three in the morning, the breathing returned, but it was different: it was rhythmic, like a lullaby, like something trying to soothe me. And then, from the corner, a whisper, not in my ear but in my mind: “You’ll never leave me now.”

I couldn’t take it anymore. I packed my bags at dawn and bought a ticket to the northernmost town in Iceland, hoping distance would break it. But as the plane lifted off, I felt a pressure in my ears, not from altitude but like a hand pressing. I looked at the empty seat beside me—no one was there, but the air pouch, the seatbelt, were distorted, as if sitting on an invisible body. And I know, with a certainty that tightens my chest even now, that it came with me.

I live in that town now, in a house with no neighbors for miles. The breathing still comes at night, but I’ve grown used to it. Sometimes, when the wind howls, I whisper back, asking it who it is. And sometimes, it answers: “You know.”

I don’t sleep anymore. I just breathe.