The Night of the Hollow Engine

The town of Ashwick was a place where the past weighed heavily on the present, its streets lined with skeletal trees and houses that seemed to lean away from each other in distrust. It was the mid-1970s, and I, Arun, had come to this small, forgotten corner of the country to attend the local engineering college. My father had arranged for me to stay with a distant relative, but that fell through at the last minute, leaving me to find my own lodging. A landlord named Mr. Gowda, a wiry man with a perpetually apologetic smile, rented me a room in a two-story building on the outskirts of town. It was a modest place, with a peeling paint exterior and a creaking wooden staircase that led to my door on the second floor. My only roommate was a man named Suresh, a quiet, middle-aged clerk at the railway station who worked odd hours and kept to himself. He had been living there alone for years before I arrived, and he seemed almost relieved to have company, though his eyes often held a distant, weary look.

On my first night, Suresh prepared a simple meal of rice and dal, and we ate in the cramped kitchen that doubled as a living space. He asked me about my studies, my family, and my hometown, but when I tried to ask him about the area, he grew evasive. ‘It’s quiet here,’ he said, staring at his plate. ‘Too quiet sometimes. But you get used to it.’ I shrugged it off, attributing his reticence to the natural reserve of a lonely bachelor. Later that week, he showed me the rest of the building. The ground floor was mostly empty, except for a dusty room that had once been a shop. The landlord lived a few streets away, so we had the place to ourselves. The one thing I noticed was a strange, rhythmic thumping sound that seemed to come from somewhere below us, especially at night. When I asked Suresh about it, he dismissed it as a water pump in the basement. ‘It’s broken, but harmless,’ he said, but his voice had a tightness to it that made me uneasy.

One evening, about a month into my stay, Suresh received an urgent telegram from the railway department, asking him to travel to a nearby junction for a few days of special duty. He packed a small bag and told me he’d be back by the end of the week. As he walked to the door, he paused and turned back, his face unusually serious. ‘Arun, will you be okay staying alone for the night? Are you scared of staying by yourself?’ I laughed and said, ‘Of course not, I’m an adult. I’ll manage fine.’ He nodded, but his eyes lingered on me for a moment too long. ‘Good. But if you hear anything unusual, just ignore it. Sometimes the old pipes make noises, and the wind can play tricks. Don’t go exploring the building at night, alright? There’s nothing down there but dust.’ I assured him I wouldn’t, and he left, leaving me alone in the growing dusk.

The night was warm and still, and I spent the first few hours doing homework, the only light coming from a single bulb that buzzed overhead. Around eleven, I felt tired and decided to turn in. I lay on my cot, the window open to let in the cool breeze, and soon drifted off to sleep. But I woke with a start around 2 a.m., my heart pounding for no reason. The room was silent, save for the ticking of the alarm clock. Then I heard it—a low, rhythmic thumping from below, not the usual pump noise, but slower, heavier, like a giant heartbeat. It seemed to come from the basement beneath the shop. I told myself it was just the pump, as Suresh had said, and tried to go back to sleep. But the sound grew louder, more insistent, and then it was joined by a faint, metallic whirring, as if some machine was slowly coming to life.

I lay there, my skin prickling, and then I heard a voice. It was not a human voice, but a hollow, echoing sound, like someone speaking through a long metal pipe. It seemed to be chanting, or maybe singing, but the words were indistinct. The hair on my arms stood up. I told myself it was the wind outside, but the wind was still. The voice grew clearer, and I could make out a phrase, repeated over and over: ‘The engine wakes, the engine thirsts.’ I sat up in bed, a cold sweat breaking out on my forehead. I wanted to get up and check, but Suresh’s warning echoed in my mind: ‘Don’t go exploring the building at night.’ I pulled the blanket over my head, but the sounds persisted, growing more and more agitated. The thumping became frantic, and the voice became a panicked shriek, until finally, a deafening crash echoed through the building, and then there was silence.

I lay trembling until dawn, too afraid to move. When the first light of morning crept through the window, I forced myself to get up. I felt foolish, imagining I had scared myself with my own mind. I decided to inspect the basement, determined to find a rational explanation. The door to the basement was in the wall of the dusty shop, a heavy wooden door with a rusty handle. It was usually locked, but when I tried it, the handle turned, and the door swung open with a screech. A narrow flight of stairs descended into darkness. I flicked a light switch, but nothing happened. I took a deep breath and stepped down, my footsteps echoing in the silence. The air was cold and smelled of oil and rust. At the bottom, I found a small room with a high ceiling, interrupted by a large, circular machine that I recognized as an old diesel generator. It was huge, its metal casing mottled with age, and it was completely immobile. But as my eyes adjusted, I noticed something odd: the floor around the generator was scarred, as if something had been dragged across it recently. And in the center of the room, there was a strange symbol painted on the floor, a circle with intricate lines that seemed to radiate from it. It looked like a summoning circle from a book I had once read.

A chill ran down my spine, and I backed away, almost stumbling up the stairs. I slammed the door shut and leaned against it, my breath coming in short gasps. That afternoon, I went to the local library to research the building’s history, hoping to find some explanation. The librarian, an elderly woman named Mrs. Iyer, looked at me with curious eyes when I asked about the old building on Railway Road. ‘Ah, that building,’ she said, lowering her voice. ‘It used to be a railway depot, back in the early days, before the town grew. They used to have a generator there to power the telegraph and small machinery. There was an accident, oh, many years ago. A worker got caught in the engine, and he died. They say his spirit lingers, still trying to keep the engine running.’ She paused, and then added, ‘Some folks believe that on certain nights, if you’re alone in that building, the engine starts up on its own, and the dead man chants. But that’s just old wives’ tales, surely.’ I thanked her and left, but her story only fed my fear.

That night, I decided to go back to the basement, armed with a flashlight and a borrowed crowbar from the landlord’s shed. I told myself I was going to confront whatever was there and prove it was all nonsense. The moon was full, casting a ghostly light through the dusty windows. I descended the stairs again, my flashlight beam cutting through the darkness. The generator stood silent, but the symbol on the floor seemed to glow faintly in the flashlight’s beam. I stepped closer, and then I heard the voice again, faint at first, but growing louder: ‘You should not have come. The engine needs a soul to start. You will do.’ Before I could react, something cold and strong seized my arm, and I was pulled toward the generator. I screamed and struggled, but the force was overwhelming. I felt a jolt of energy course through my body, and then I blacked out.

When I came to, I was lying on the cold concrete floor, the generator silent above me. The symbol was no longer glowing. I scrambled to my feet and fled the basement, not stopping until I was back in my room, locking the door behind me. I sat on my bed, shaking, until Suresh returned the next day. When he saw my pale face, he asked what had happened. I told him everything, expecting him to dismiss it as a dream, but instead he grew pale. ‘I didn’t want to tell you,’ he said, ‘but that generator was the reason my previous roommate left. He said a voice asked him for a part of his soul. I thought he was crazy, but I think it killed him. He was found dead near that machine, his eyes wide open.’ I stared at him, horrified. ‘Why didn’t you tell me? Why did you stay?’ I asked. He shook his head. ‘I have nowhere else to go, and it never bothered me. It only seems to act when someone is new here, as if it’s waiting for a fresh soul to power it. I guess it thought you were a suitable offering.’

That night, I packed my bags and left town, never to return. But even now, decades later, I sometimes hear that rhythmic thumping in my quiet hour, and the voice whispering, ‘The engine wakes, the engine thirsts.’ And I know that somewhere in the basement of that forgotten building, a machine still waits for its next soul, and that I barely escaped with mine.