The Laughing Hour

It was the summer of 2019, and I was eighteen, spending my vacation at my cousin’s farmhouse in the remote village of Kalthan. My cousin Meera had invited me to stay with her for a fortnight while her husband was away on a business trip. She lived there with her three-year-old daughter, Anaya, and her elderly grandmother, Aaji, who was visiting from the city. The farmhouse was beautiful, surrounded by fields of sugarcane and a dense grove of mango trees that whispered in the wind. I was excited for a peaceful, rustic holiday.

The first few days were idyllic. We woke to the sound of birds, spent our days reading on the veranda, and in the evenings, we would sit around the fire, listening to Aaji’s stories. But on the fourth night, something changed. We had finished dinner and were watching an old Bollywood movie on the television. The clock on the wall showed 2:30 AM, an hour we were usually asleep. Meera had been quiet all evening, her smile a little too forced, her eyes a little too wide. Suddenly, she began to laugh.

It wasn’t her usual warm, melodic laugh. This was a high-pitched, guttural cackle that seemed to come from deep within her chest, but it didn’t sound like her at all. Her face contorted, her eyes rolling back, and her body shook with convulsions of laughter. Anaya, who had been sleeping in my lap, woke up and started screaming. Aaji, who was knitting in the corner, dropped her needles and froze.

‘Meera! Meera, stop!’ I shouted, but she didn’t respond. She just kept laughing, her head thrown back, her throat straining. The sound was so unnatural that my skin crawled. I tried to shake her, but she was unresponsive, her body rigid. After ten minutes that felt like an eternity, she went limp and collapsed onto the sofa, her laughter replaced by slow, heavy breathing. She had fallen asleep.

I spent the rest of the night huddled with Anaya and Aaji, who was muttering prayers under her breath. When dawn broke, Meera woke up as if nothing had happened. She had no memory of the incident, and she looked at our pale, frightened faces with confusion. ‘Why are you all staring at me?’ she asked, reaching for a glass of water. When I told her what she had done, she laughed it off, dismissing it as a bad dream. But Aaji’s face was ashen.

The second night, it happened again. More precisely at 2:30 AM. This time, Meera wasn’t laughing. She was standing in the middle of the living room, her head tilted at an unnatural angle, her mouth open wide. She began to hum a lullaby that neither I nor Aaji recognized. The melody was off-key, eerie, like a record playing at the wrong speed. Anaya ran to me, burying her face in my shirt. I saw Aaji’s hands tremble as she clutched her rosary.

By the third night, I had my phone ready to record. At 2:30 AM, Meera woke from a dead sleep, her eyes wide, and walked to the window. She pressed her face against the glass, her breath fogging it up. Then she started to laugh again, that same horrible cackle, but this time it was mixed with sobs. I managed to capture it all on video, but when I played it back the next morning, the recording was distorted. Her laugh sounded like a thousand voices layered on top of each other, all screaming in terror. The lullaby was there too, but it was singing in reverse.

Aaji finally revealed that this had happened before, years ago, to Meera’s mother. She said it was the ‘Laughing Hour’, a curse that had followed their family for generations. It was said to be a vengeful spirit that would possess the women of the house, using their laughter to summon something. Aaji had witnessed it as a young girl, but she had hoped it had died with the old ones. Now it was back.

On the fourth night, we didn’t sleep. We sat in the kitchen, drinking strong chai, trying to stay awake. Aaji was burning incense and chanting, but I could see her hands were shaking. Around 2:15 AM, Meera began to twitch. Her eyes rolled back, and her body started to convulse. I grabbed her, trying to hold her still, but she was unnaturally strong. Her mouth opened, and the laugh came out, but it was no longer just a laugh. It was a scream, a wail, a laugh, all mixed together. The lights flickered, and the television turned on by itself, showing static.

Then, I saw it. In the static, there was a shape. A woman, dressed in white, with long black hair that obscured her face. She was reaching out, as if trying to pull Meera into the screen. I heard Aaji scream, ‘No! You will not take another!’ She flung the rosary at the TV, and the screen shattered, plunging the room into darkness.

When the lights came back, Meera was on the floor, unconscious. The TV was destroyed, and the room was freezing cold. Aaji was sobbing, saying she had finally broken the curse, but at a cost. I never asked what that cost was. The next morning, Aaji was dead in her chair, a peaceful smile on her face. Meera had no memory of the past nights, and she was never troubled again. But I still have that recording. Whenever I watch it, I hear the laughter, and I see the white figure in the static, and I wonder if it’s been broken forever, or if it’s just waiting for the right time to laugh again.