The Laughing Boy and the Toy Engine

My family moved into the old Bramblewood house in the fall of ’91. It was a sprawling, two-story Victorian with a wrap-around porch and a yard that seemed to swallow the light. I was nine, my brother Leo was six. The house had a musty smell, like old books and dust, and the floorboards creaked in a rhythm that felt almost like breathing.

It started with small things. You’d walk into the kitchen and find a cupboard door open that you were sure you’d closed. The radio would turn on by itself in the middle of the night, always tuned to static. But the most persistent presence was in the living room. A man, tall and gaunt, with a long coat that seemed to drink the shadows, would stand by the bay window. He never moved, never spoke, just stood there, looking out at the street. I saw him a few times, always from the corner of my eye. When I turned to look directly, he was gone. My mother saw him more clearly. She said he had deep-set eyes and a sorrowful expression. She mentioned him once to the elderly woman who owned the house, after she came to check on the furnace. The woman went pale and said, ‘That would be my husband’s father, Jacob. He lived here in the ’50s. He died in his armchair right in front of that window.’

But it was Leo’s room that held the real mystery. Leo was a quiet kid, but he had an imaginary friend he called ‘Tommy’. He’d talk to the empty air, have whole conversations, and sometimes he’d laugh. That might have been ordinary, except for the sounds. A few months after we moved in, I was lying in my room, reading a comic book, when I heard the unmistakable whir of a small electric motor. It was a toy car, a remote-controlled one like Leo had. I heard the rubber tires on the hardwood floor, the little clicks of it hitting the baseboard, the occasional rev. This went on for maybe two minutes. I got up and went to Leo’s room. The door was slightly ajar, and inside, Leo’s toy car was sitting on the floor, dead still. The batteries were out, on the shelf. Leo was at school.

My mother had her own experience. She was home alone on a rainy Tuesday, folding laundry in the hall. From Leo’s room, she heard a child’s laughter. Not Leo’s laugh—this was higher, wilder, almost unhinged. It was a shrieking giggle that went on for a full ten seconds, then stopped. She said it made her blood run cold. She checked the room, of course, and found nothing. Just the usual clutter of a six-year-old. But she swore the room felt colder.

I heard the laughter myself once. I was walking past Leo’s room at night, heading to the bathroom. The door was closed, but I heard that same high-pitched giggle from inside, followed by the sound of the toy car starting up, its wheels spinning on the carpet as if it were trying to drive through a wall. I froze, my heart pounding. Then the laughter stopped, and the car went quiet. I didn’t sleep well that night.

The worst incident, the one that made us finally leave, happened in the winter of ’93. Leo had a fever, and my parents were out getting medicine. I was supposed to be watching him. I was in the living room, watching TV. Then I heard Leo’s voice from his room, clear as day: ‘Come play with me.’ It wasn’t Leo’s normal voice—it was a singsong, almost hypnotic tone. I ran to his room. Leo was sitting up in bed, but he was staring at the wall, talking to it. ‘Tommy says he’s sad,’ he said without looking at me. ‘He wants us to stay forever.’ I slammed the door open all the way, and for a split second, I saw something in the corner of my eye—a small, dark shape, like a child, but hunched and wrong. It vanished when the light from the hall hit the room. Leo blinked and looked at me like he’d just woken up. ‘Why are you crying?’ he asked. I hadn’t realized I was.

After that, my parents started sleeping with the lights on. My mother refused to go into Leo’s room after sunset. We moved out the next spring, and I never looked back. But sometimes, in the quiet moments, late at night, I still hear that toy engine, and the faint echo of a child’s laugh, from a room that doesn’t exist anymore.