The Laughing Man in the Fog

My family and I—Papa, Mama, my older brother Ajay, and me—had just moved to a small, rain-slicked town called Fernwood, nestled in the foothills of the Cascade Range. Papa had taken a job at the local lumber mill, and we’d rented a creaky, two-story house at the edge of a forest that seemed to breathe with its own life. The town was quiet, almost too quiet, and the air always smelled of wet pine and something faintly metallic. My brother Ravi, who was sixteen and in the middle of his board exams, often complained of the isolation, but Mama said the change would do us good.

It was the last week of November, and the town was gearing up for the winter festival. The streets were strung with dim, flickering lights, and a thick, gray fog rolled in every evening, swallowing the lamp posts and making the houses look like ghost ships. Ravi, being the eldest, was often sent on errands by Mama, who had a habit of preparing elaborate meals and insisting we share them with the neighbors. One evening, after a particularly heavy fog, Mama packed a container of her spicy lentil curry and said, ‘Ravi, take this to Mrs. Kovac across the street. She’s been feeling under the weather.’ Ravi, though reluctant, grabbed his jacket and stepped out into the gloom.

He walked about halfway to Mrs. Kovac’s when he noticed something odd. Through the fog, he saw a group of figures standing in a loose circle on the road, about fifty feet ahead. They were dressed in pale, flowing garments that seemed to billow even though there was no wind. Their feet—if they had feet—hovered a few inches above the asphalt, and they moved in a strange, swaying motion, like reeds in water. Ravi froze, his heart thumping. He thought he was seeing things, perhaps a trick of the fog and the dim streetlights. But then, one of the figures turned its head, and even through the mist, Ravi could see its face—a gaunt, pale visage with hollow eyes and a mouth stretched into an impossibly wide grin. The figure let out a high-pitched, cackling laugh that cut through the silence like a shard of glass, and then it began to run—no, glide—toward him, its feet never touching the ground.

Ravi’s instinct screamed at him to run, and he did. He dropped the container of curry, the lid clattering on the pavement, and sprinted back toward our house. He didn’t look back until he was through the front door, slamming it behind him and leaning against it, gasping. Mama, hearing the commotion, came running from the kitchen. ‘What’s wrong, beta?’ she asked, her face creased with worry. Ravi tried to speak, but his words were a jumble of ‘fog’ and ‘laughing’ and ‘not human.’ Papa, who had been reading in the living room, rose and peered out the window. The street was empty, the fog now unnaturally still. ‘You’re probably just spooked by the fog, son,’ Papa said, trying to calm him. But Ravi shook his head, his eyes wide. ‘No, Papa, I saw them. They were floating.’

The next morning, Ravi was still shaken, but the fog had lifted, and the sun cast a weak, watery light over the town. He tried to convince himself it was a hallucination, maybe a side effect of exam stress. But when he went outside to retrieve the fallen container, it was gone. Only a small, dark stain remained on the asphalt, as if something had leaked and been absorbed. Strange, but he shrugged it off. However, that night, just as he was about to sleep, he heard a faint, giggling sound outside his window. His room faced the backyard, which butted against the forest. He crept to the window and peered out, and there, at the edge of the trees, stood a figure in white, its head tilted, watching him. It raised a hand and waved, then dissolved into the mist.

Over the next few days, the encounters became more frequent. Ravi would see the figures in the distance, always at the periphery, always laughing. They seemed to be everywhere—on the road to the market, near the school, even in our backyard one evening, where three of them stood in a silent triangle, their heads moving in unison as if they were reading something in the air. Ravi tried to tell Papa again, but Papa, a practical man, dismissed it as an overactive imagination. Mama, though, was more superstitious. She began to murmur prayers and light incense around the house, and she insisted Ravi not leave after dark. But one night, when Papa was away on a late shift, a series of knocks sounded at the front door. Ravi went to answer, thinking it was Papa, but when he opened the door, he saw one of the figures standing there, inches away. Its face was a mask of cracked porcelain, and its grin split from ear to ear. It held out a hand, and in its palm was the container Mama had sent with Ravi—now filled with a dark, viscous liquid that smelled of rot. Ravi stumbled back, and the figure giggled, a sound like broken music, then vanished.

I wasn’t born yet, but I’ve heard this story countless times, told in hushed tones by my brother and my mother. Ravi eventually became a recluse, refusing to leave the house for months. He took to wearing a silver amulet that Mama bought from a traveling priest, and he slept with the lights on. The laughter, he said, never truly stopped—it echoed in his mind, a constant reminder that they were always watching. When we finally moved away, Ravi began to recover, but he never spoke of Fernwood again. To this day, whenever I see fog roll in, I remember the story, and I think of that laughing man in the white, and I pray that I never, ever meet him.