The Laugh That Frayed

My Aunt Clarisse could find humor in a funeral. She’d lean over and whisper something absurd about the deceased’s shiny shoes or the way the organist kept butchering a hymn, and soon we’d be choking back snickers, tears streaming down our faces for all the wrong reasons. That was her gift, turning the unbearable into something you could laugh at, if only for a moment. We called her the Teflon woman because nothing seemed to stick, no sorrow, no fear, not even the creeping dread that had settled into the old farmhouse my grandparents left her.

The house itself was a testament to stubbornness. It sat on a hill overlooking a valley that fog rolled into like a sea, and the attic had a circular window that peered out like a cataract eye. The wood creaked with the memory of every footstep that had crossed its floorboards, and the walls breathed a musty scent of decayed hopes. I’d stayed there one summer as a teenager, and I’d never felt truly alone. There was always a sense of being watched, a presence that skittered just out of sight. But Aunt Clarisse would just laugh, open a bottle of wine, and tell stories of her own childhood mischief, her laughter echoing through the corridors as if to chase away the gloom.

Four years before her eldest daughter, Marta, and her family moved in, things began to change. Marta had been living in a cramped apartment five blocks from our place, and she often visited with her kids, two boys with wild imaginations and a girl who seemed to see ghosts everywhere. The visits were frequent, but they never came alone. The children would speak of strange sounds, of silverware clattering in the kitchen at three in the morning, of whispers that curled down the hallway like smoke. Aunt Clarisse would wave them off, saying it was just the house settling, or the wind, or some other mundane explanation. She’d then tell a joke, and soon the kids would be giggling, their fears forgotten. But I saw the way she’d sometimes pause, her eyes darting to the ceiling, as if listening for something.

It was during a particularly harsh winter that the footsteps began. Not in the attic, but in the walls themselves. They’d start at dusk, a slow, deliberate tread that moved from one side of the house to the other. The pattern was always the same: three steps, a pause, then a dragging. Aunt Clarisse, to my knowledge, never mentioned it to anyone, but her laughter began to come a little less easily. One evening, I was staying over, and I heard it myself, a rhythmic thud that seemed to resonate within my chest. I looked at her, and she forced a smile. ‘Cement settles,’ she said, but her voice was tight. The next morning, I found her in the kitchen, staring at a row of knives that were all slightly ajar, as if someone had tested their edges.

The tipping point came on a moonless night in March. I was awakened by a crash from the kitchen. I crept downstairs to find Aunt Clarisse standing in the middle of the room, surrounded by shattered glass and scattered cutlery. Her face was pale, and she was trembling slightly. ‘It’s just the damn prowler,’ she muttered, but there was no prowler, and we both knew it. We cleaned up in silence, and as we worked, I noticed she was humming a tune, a nursery rhyme I didn’t recognize, something about a child lost in a well. When we finished, she turned to me, and for the first time, I saw fear in her eyes. ‘I heard my mother’s voice,’ she whispered. ‘She called my name, but she’s been dead for ten years.’

That night, Clarisse couldn’t sleep. She wandered the house, and I followed at a distance. She stopped at the foot of the attic stairs, her hand on the rail. The air grew cold, and I could smell damp earth, as if the ground had been freshly turned. A sound came from above, the unmistakable sound of a child’s sob. Aunt Clarisse froze, her laughter was gone, replaced by a silence I had never known in her. She began to move up the stairs, and I called out, but she didn’t stop. I ran after her, but by the time I reached the top, she was standing before the circular window, her back to me, her shoulders shaking. ‘There’s something in the glass,’ she said, her voice hollow. ‘It’s been waiting for me to look.’

I turned her around, and her face was streaked with tears. She looked at me, and then she did the most terrifying thing I’ve ever witnessed: she started to laugh. But it wasn’t her laugh. It was high-pitched, almost manic, and it didn’t stop. She laughed until she was gasping for air, until I thought she’d pass out. Then, as suddenly as it started, it ceased, and she said, ‘I remember now. When I was seven, I had a sister. She died. I forgot her. The house remembered.’

We left the attic, and I helped her to her room. She didn’t speak again that night. In the days that followed, she told me the story. She’d had a twin sister named Madeleine who had drowned in the well out back when they were only seven. It had been deemed an accident, but Clarisse had always felt guilty, as if she’d somehow caused it. She had blocked the memory entirely, and it was only now, when the house was making itself known, that it all came rushing back.

From then on, the house seemed to calm, as if it had been trying to tell her something all along. But the laughter, real laughter, never quite returned to her eyes. She’d smile, but it was a mask, and I knew the truth: she was still listening, still waiting, for the sound of Madeleine’s voice to come back. And every so often, when I visit, I catch her standing by the circular window, staring out at the valley, and I swear I see another reflection beside her, a small girl with wet hair, about to laugh.