The Jester’s Bargain

Eli was the kind of guy who could make a funeral feel like a party. He had a gift for finding the absurd in the tragic, and his laughter was contagious. He didn’t believe in ghosts, not for a second. If someone told him about a creaking floorboard at midnight, he’d spin a yarn about a ghost cat that only appeared when you were constipated, leaving everyone in stitches. He was the life of every gathering, and he loved it.

School was a joke to him. He scraped by with the bare minimum, more interested in pranks and punchlines than algebra. He was a jack of all trades, master of none, and he was perfectly fine with that.

Then Aisling walked into his life. She was a new girl from Ireland, her father a geologist on a three-year assignment. She had a wild mane of red hair and a laugh that sounded like wind chimes. Eli was smitten, and for once, his jokes failed him. He stammered, he fumbled, and he made a complete fool of himself. But Aisling seemed to find it endearing. She would laugh at his puns, even the bad ones, and her eyes sparkled when she looked at him.

They became inseparable. Eli would walk her home, his heart doing somersaults as she told him stories about the old ruins back in Ireland, and the legends of the faeries and the pooka. Eli just nodded, a smile plastered on his face, thinking she was the most beautiful storyteller he’d ever met.

One day, Aisling told him about a picture she had found in her attic, a daguerreotype of a man in Victorian clothing, with a cruel smile. She said she felt like the man was watching her. Eli, of course, made a joke about it, comparing the man to a constipated owl. But Aisling didn’t laugh. She looked at him with a seriousness he’d never seen before. She gave him the picture, asking him to keep it safe, to prove that he believed her. Eli took it, rolling his eyes, and shoved it into his pocket.

That night, Nana, his grandmother, saw the picture. Her face went pale. She told Eli that the man in the photograph was known as the ‘Jester of the Bog’, a trickster spirit that fed on the joy of the living. It was said that if you held his image, he would come for you, and he would steal your laughter, leaving you a hollow shell. Eli scoffed, dismissing it as an old wives’ tale. But that night, he couldn’t sleep. He felt a cold draft, and his room seemed darker, as if the shadows were leaning in to listen.

The next day, Eli started telling his jokes, but they fell flat. His friends looked at him with a strange detachment. He tried to laugh it off, but his laughter felt hollow. At night, he dreamed of the bog, a vast, misty expanse, and he heard a voice, low and sweet, whispering, ‘I’ve come to take back what was mine.’

Over the next week, Eli’s world began to lose its color. His jokes were no longer met with laughter but with polite, uncomfortable smiles. He felt a creeping dread whenever he was alone, and he would catch glimpses of a shadowy figure in his peripheral vision, always just out of sight. Aisling grew worried. She came to his house and found him sitting in the dark, his face blank, staring at the photograph. She tried to take it away, but Eli held on with a strength that scared her. Then, in a flash, the photograph slipped from his grasp and fluttered to the floor. Aisling picked it up and saw that the figure in the picture had changed – its smile had grown, and its eyes were now black.

Aisling knew what she had to do. She had heard the old stories. She took the photograph and burned it in the kitchen sink, the flames casting weird dancing shadows on the walls. But, in that moment, Eli let out a sound that was not a scream, but the absence of one – a deep silence that seemed to swallow all noise in the room. When the photo was ash, Aisling turned to Eli. His eyes were glassy, and a faint, terrible grin was etched on his face.

From that day on, Eli was never the same. He no longer told jokes. He would laugh, but it was a cold, mocking laugh that sent shivers down the spines of anyone who heard it. He would wander the town, greeting people with an unnerving cheerfulness that felt like a threat. Aisling stayed away, but she could feel his eyes on her, always watching.

One night, she woke to a scraping sound outside her window. She looked out and saw a figure in the fog, standing just beyond the fence. It was Eli, but his face was shadowed, and when he turned to walk away, she saw that he was limping. The next morning, she heard the news: Eli had been found dead in the bog, his body tangled in the roots, a smile frozen on his lips.

At his funeral, people wept, but Aisling noticed something strange. When the service was over, as the coffin was lowered into the ground, she heard a faint, tinkling laugh from the direction of the grave. She turned to see the picture she had burned, lying on the grass. She picked it up, and the jester’s eyes seemed to look directly into her soul. She dropped it, and when she looked again, it had vanished.

Aisling left town soon after. She never told anyone what she knew, but she carried with her a new fear – that the jester’s bargain had been struck, and that she had paid the price. In a dusty attic, years later, she found an old birthday card from Eli, and she vowed never to laugh again. But as she was about to discard it, she saw his handwriting change on the card, forming words she couldn’t unsee: ‘Your turn, my dear.’ And she felt a cold breath on the back of her neck.