The child’s laughter
echoed in her darkened bedroom for the third time that week. Instead of turning
on the light and searching for the source, she snatched her cellphone off the
bedside table, slid it under her covers to hide any light it gave off, unlocked
it, and slid her thumb across the screen to pull up the camera. She would be
damned before she didn’t have proof for her parents this time. “I didn’t hear
anything Marisol, and I’m a very light sleeper. You must have been dreaming.”
She would prove them wrong now.
The laughing got louder.
Marisol suddenly felt the covers on her feet shift and grow heavier.
Instinctively, she pulled them towards her chest. The laughter stopped and the
room felt still. Marisol looked around the dark room, hoping to see something
to explain what she had been hearing. But the shadows were all familiar.
Shivering, she pulled the blankets closer to herself and stopped the video.
She lay there in the dark
for who knew how long before sleep mercifully took her again. In the morning
light she found her phone tangled in her bedsheets. Unlocking it she pulled up
the video from the night before, hitting the speaker button she listened to the
black recording. The childlike laughter could be heard. Ecstatic to have proof,
she ran from her room and to the kitchen to find her parents. Her mother sat
huddled over her coffee, while her father flipped bacon strips in a pan on the
stovetop.
“Mom, I managed to get a
recording of the laughter! I told you I wasn’t dreaming!”
“Marisol, honey, let me
have at least half of this cup before you come at me with that much energy,
please,” her mother responded.
“Okay, that’s fine,”
Marisol stated as she walked around the table towards her father, “dad, can you
listen at least?”
“Sure, baby bear, just
one sec,” her dad said as he used tongs to fish a few pieces of bacon out of
the splattering fat in the pan. She watched as he gently shook a few fat
droplets off the strips before he laid them on a plate lined with paper towels.
Then he turned towards her, “Okay, go for it.”
She pulled up the video,
made sure the volume was all the way up on her phone, and hit play. There was
the sound of the sheets rubbing the phone, silence, and then that creepy laugh.
“Oh, that is super
creepy, Marisol! You should make more videos like that! You could freak out
your cousins the next time they come over!” His face was lit up like a kid
walking into a candy store and a fistful of twenties.
“No, Dad! I didn’t make
this; I recorded the laughing that’s been waking me up the last few nights!”
His face went a bit
blank. “That’s not you laughing?”
“No, that’s someone else
laughing.”
He looked over to her mom,
and Marisol followed the look. Her mom gave her dad some unspeakable look, they
both glanced towards Marisol and back to each other. Her mom gently said,
“Honey, there’s no one else in this house, and that’s not me or your father
laughing, so that leaves just you.”
“I know it’s not you and
dad! But it’s also not me!”
“Fred, did you remember
to set the alarms last night?” her mom asked her dad.
“Yeah, right after I took
out the trash.”
Her parents both looked
at her again. “Don’t look at me, I just wanted to have proof so you wouldn’t
say I was dreaming it, when I knew I wasn’t,” Marisol argued against their
collective looks.
Her dad turned off the
stove, pulled the last of the bacon from the pan, and wiped his hands on a
towel. “I’ll look around the house, see if I can find anything.”
Her mom stood up and took
the phone from Marisol. She watched the video again, but there was nothing to
see. Marisol told her mom about the pressure she felt by her feet and her
jerking them away and the laughter stopping. Shivering, her mom handed her back
the phone.
Eventually, her dad came
back with an all clear. Closets, garage, basement and shed had all been
checked. There wasn’t anyone lurking in dark corners. Unsure what else to do,
they eventually moved on with their day. That evening Marisol felt her stomach
cramp at the thought of going back to her room. Even though she was a teenager,
she asked her parents if she could sleep with them that night, to which they
understandably agreed. Her dad wrapped an arm around her as her mom put on a
documentary about pyramids, and she drifted off to sleep, safe in their presence.
Laughter made her eyes
snap open. Jerking up, she shook her dad. He didn’t respond. She reached for
her mother, but her spot on the bed was cold and empty. She leaned, fingers
searching for the lamp. Finding it, she clicked the light on. There stood her
mother, impossibly smiling from ear to ear, staring off into the distance, mouth
opened wide as she laughed like a child.
“Mom?” she gasped.
Her mother’s eyes rolled
towards Marisol; her smile suddenly gone. Marisol shivered and inched back
towards her father. Not wanting to take her eyes off her terrifying mother, she
pat the bed behind her. Finding his arm, she shook it dramatically. “Dad. Dad
wake up. Please dad! I need you!”
Her mother’s eyes shifted
to look over Marisol’s shoulder. Her smile returned, impossibly spreading.
Marisol jumped when her
dad’s hand grabbed her arm. Unable to stop herself, she turned and looked back
at him. She immediately tried to pull away. His grip grew tighter. Her father
had the same impossible smile on his face. Then he started laughing in a high
pitched and child-like voice. Terror filled her heart as she desperately tried
to pull away.
She never should have
turned on the light.