The Laughing Stains

In the coastal town of Grayhaven, there stood an old cannery that had been converted into a maximum-security prison. The building had a grim history: before it processed fish, it had been a slaughterhouse, and before that, a leper colony. But the darkest chapter was its time as an execution site during the civil war, where hundreds of prisoners were hanged in the courtyard. The locals swore the ground was soaked with their despair.

My father, Elias, worked the night shift as a corrections officer. He was a stoic man, not prone to flights of fancy, but he had heard the stories from the older guards—about cold spots in Cell Block C, about the faint sound of dripping that had no source, about the occasional glimpse of a hooded figure in the yard. He dismissed them as the product of tired minds and too much coffee.

One night, Elias was assigned to the administrative wing, far from the cells. His duties were mundane: filing reports, monitoring the security feeds, ensuring the ancient boiler didn’t explode. By 2 AM, everything was quiet. The inmates were asleep, the guards were on their rounds, and the only sound was the hum of the fluorescent lights. Elias decided to rest his eyes for a few minutes. He leaned back in his chair, feet propped on the desk, and drifted off.

He awoke with a start. The clock on the wall read 3:00 AM. A strange sound filled the room—not the usual groan of pipes or the distant clang of a door, but unmistakable laughter. It was high-pitched, almost childlike, and it seemed to come from everywhere at once. Elias tried to sit up, but his arms would not move. They were pinned to the armrests of his chair as if held by invisible hands. Panic clawed at his chest. He turned his head, and his blood ran cold.

Two figures stood on either side of him. They were dressed in tattered, brown robes, like monks from a medieval order. Their faces were young, almost serene, but their eyes were voids. And they were covered in a thick, dark liquid that seeped from their pores, running down their necks and staining their robes. It looked like blood, but it was too black, too oily, and it gleamed under the harsh light.

The monks did not move. They just stared at Elias, their lips curved into faint smiles. The laughter grew louder, more gleeful, as if they were delighting in his terror. Elias tried to shout for help, but his voice was a strangled whisper. He struggled against the invisible bonds, but his limbs were as heavy as lead.

Then one of the monks leaned closer, its head tilting at an unnatural angle. A single drop of the black liquid fell from its chin and landed on Elias’s forearm. It burned like acid, searing through his skin. He screamed, a raw, primal sound that tore from his throat.

At that moment, the laughter stopped. The monks faded like mist, their forms dissolving into the shadows. Elias found himself able to move, his arms trembling as he clutched the burn on his skin. He looked down—there was a mark, black and oozing, in the shape of a finger.

The door burst open. Two guards rushed in, their flashlights sweeping the room. They found Elias on the floor, gasping, his face pale. He tried to explain what he had seen, but the words came out jumbled. The guards exchanged glances, their expressions a mix of skepticism and unease. They had heard similar stories before.

After that night, Elias never worked the graveyard shift again. He requested a transfer to the day crew, and eventually quit altogether. But the mark on his arm never healed. It remained, a constant reminder of the laughter and the stains. And sometimes, in the dead of night, Elias would hear that laughter again, echoing from somewhere deep inside him, as if the monks had left a piece of themselves behind.

Years later, I found that mark when I helped him move. It had spread, forming an intricate pattern, like a map of veins. When I asked about it, he only shook his head and said, ‘They’re still laughing.’ To this day, I can’t look at a drop of oil without feeling a chill, and I swear I can hear faint giggles from the old cannery whenever the wind blows. But the strangest thing is what I found in his journal after he died: a final entry, written in shaky handwriting, that simply said, ‘They know my name now.’