The Laugh in the Attic

When I was seventeen, we moved into my granddad’s old farmhouse in the dusty hills of western Nebraska. He’d been gone for three years, and the place still smelled of pipe smoke and axle grease. My little sister, Chloe, chose the upstairs room that used to be my father’s, giddy at the thought of sleeping where he’d grown up. My brother, Max, who was ten, took the room next to mine at the end of the hall. I didn’t mind the creaking floorboards or the way the wind rattled the windows; I was just glad to be out of the cramped apartment we’d left behind.

For the first few months, things were normal. Chloe would chatter about her day at school, Max would hide my homework as a prank, and Mom would make us all dinner at the old cast-iron stove. But then, one night, as I was passing the hallway, I saw Chloe dragging her mattress down the stairs. Her face was pale, and her eyes were wide. When I asked what she was doing, she just shook her head and muttered about the ‘laughing.’ The next morning, she refused to go back up. She said she’d heard a man and a woman laughing in her room, right above her head, as if they were standing on the ceiling. We teased her, called her crazy, but she wouldn’t budge. She set up a permanent camp on the couch, and that was that.

A few months later, I was in my own room, which was right at the top of the stairs. I was folding laundry, humming some tune, when a man’s voice cut through the silence. It was low and gravelly, and it asked, ‘What are you doing?’ I spun around, but the room was empty. My heart hammered. I thought maybe it was Max playing a trick, but when I threw open his door, he was sound asleep under his quilt. I didn’t sleep that night, but I told myself it was just the wind or my imagination.

The next week, I was coming back from the bathroom, and I heard it again, but this time it was a woman’s laugh, high and light, drifting from the attic door at the end of the hall. That door had always been locked, and we never had a key. Curious and a little scared, I pressed my ear against it. The laugh faded, and then I heard footsteps, slow and heavy, as if someone was walking away. I yanked on the knob, but it wouldn’t budge. I called for Max, but he was downstairs. I stood there for a long time, my hand shaking on the cold brass.

I didn’t tell anyone, but I started carrying a kitchen knife with me when I went upstairs. The sounds didn’t stop. Sometimes it was a whisper, too low to make out. Other times, it was a child crying, muffled, like from behind a wall. One night, I woke up to find my bed shaking, a violent tremor that made the whole frame rattle against the floor. I grabbed the knife and held it out, but nothing was there. The shaking stopped as suddenly as it started. I didn’t sleep again, just sat in the corner with the light on, watching the door.

Max started having nightmares. He said a tall man stood at the foot of his bed, pointing at the attic. He said the man had no face, just a smooth oval of skin. Mom dismissed it, saying he had too much sugar before bed, but I saw how she started taking the stairs two at a time, and how she never went near the attic door.

Then, one afternoon, I was home alone. I had a sudden urge to see what was in the attic. I remembered Granddad had a hiding spot behind the loose board in his closet, so I went to my room and pried it open. Inside, there was a rusty key. My heart skipped. I took it to the attic door and worked it into the lock. It turned with a click. I pulled the door open, and a gust of cold air hit my face. The stairs led up into darkness, and I could smell old books and mothballs. I hesitated, but I had to know. I took one step, then another. At the top, there was a single bare bulb. I yanked the cord, and the light revealed a cluttered space: trunks, a rocking horse, boxes of Christmas ornaments. And in the center, a child’s wooden crib, covered in dust.

I walked over, my footsteps echoing. Inside the crib, there was a faded photograph face down. I picked it up. It was a picture of a man and a woman, both smiling, and a small child between them. The woman had curly dark hair, and the man had a thin mustache. I turned it over. On the back, in my grandmother’s handwriting: ‘Our little angel, Taken too soon. 1952.’ I felt a chill. I had never heard of a child dying in this house.

Just then, I heard the laughter again, but it was right behind me. I spun around, and there they were: the man and the woman from the photo, standing at the top of the stairs, their eyes black and hollow. The man said, ‘Why did you come up here?’ The woman started to laugh, a high, rattling sound that grew louder and louder until it was all I could hear. I stumbled backward, tripped over a box, and fell, cracking my head against the floor. The world went dark.

I woke up on the living room couch, a cold compress on my forehead. Mom was crying, and Max was holding my hand. They said they found me unconscious at the bottom of the attic stairs. The attic door was locked again, with the key nowhere to be found. I told them everything, and this time, they believed me. We moved out the very next week, leaving all of Granddad’s furniture behind. I never saw the man and woman again, but sometimes, in the dead of night, I still hear that laughter, echoing in my dreams. I know now that the dead don’t always rest, and that some houses hold more than just memories. But we never spoke of it again, and I’ve never set foot in that county since.