The Wall’s Laugh

I still remember the summer I turned fifteen, when the heat of the plains clung to the air like a second skin. I was visiting my uncle’s family in the dusty town of Jhelum, a place where the river’s ancient stones whispered secrets to those who listened too closely. My cousin, Rohan, was six months younger than me, and we were inseparable during those long, sweltering months. He had a rusted old bicycle that he’d inherited from his elder brother, and we’d ride it out to the dry fields beyond the town’s edge, looking for lizards and cicadas to startle.

It was late afternoon, the sun a dull copper disc sinking behind the distant hills, when Rohan suggested we go to the old banyan tree by the canal. We’d heard stories from the local kids about a ghost that haunted the tree, but we were too old to believe in such things. We pedaled along the cracked road, the air thick with the smell of baked earth and drying cow dung, and soon we were sprawling under the tree’s vast canopy, watching the sky bruise into twilight. When the darkness began to seep in, we decided it was time to head back, our laughter echoing off the walls of the narrow lanes.

Rohan’s house stood at the end of a long, unpaved lane, its whitewashed walls chipped and weathered. The compound was enclosed by a wall that was disproportionately high, a relic of his great-grandfather’s paranoia. At the top of the wall, someone had embedded shards of broken glass and twisted metal spikes to deter climbers. We leaned the bicycle against the wall and collapsed onto a low stone bench just outside the small wooden gate, our legs aching from the ride.

We were catching our breath, talking about the cricket match we’d watched at the local pitch, when a sound cut through the stillness. It was a laugh, but not a human laugh. It was a high, brittle cackle that seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at once, like the clattering of dry leaves in a whirlwind. Rohan froze, his eyes widening, and I felt the hairs on my arms stand on end. Slowly, we both looked up.

On the top of the wall, impossibly balanced on the razor-sharp spikes, stood a woman. She was tall and gaunt, her black hair hanging in long, tangled strands that reached down past her waist, obscuring her face. Her feet were bare, and her skin was the color of old bone. She was motionless, as if she had been standing there for years, and the laughter had come from her throat, which moved with a sickening ripple.

‘Who is that?’ I breathed, my voice barely a whisper. Rohan shook his head, unable to speak. We both knew that no one could stand on those spikes without being torn to shreds. The woman raised one hand, pointing a long, crooked finger at us, and let out another peal of laughter. This time it was lower, more guttural, and it seemed to vibrate in our chests.

We scrambled to our feet, our legs clumsy with fear, and bolted through the gate. Rohan slammed it shut, and we leaned against it, panting. I dared to peek through the cracks in the wood. The wall was empty. The woman was gone.

We told my uncle, but he dismissed it as a trick of the fading light, a stray reflection from the glass shards. He laughed and patted Rohan on the head, telling us we’d watched too many horror movies. But we knew what we’d seen. That night, I lay in bed, listening to the sounds of the house settling, and I heard it again: that dry, brittle laughter, coming from just outside my window. I pulled the covers over my head, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that those bare feet were standing on the window sill, and that through the tangles of her hair, she was smiling.

The next day, Rohan found a single strand of black hair on the stone bench where we’d sat. It was coarse and brittle, like it had been left there by a storm. He held it up to the light, and for a moment, I thought I saw it move, coiling around his fingers like a viper. Without a word, he dropped it and ground it into the dust with his heel.

We never went back to the bench, and we always entered the house through the main gate, even if it meant walking an extra minute. But the laughter followed us. Sometimes, in the dead of night, I’d hear it echoing through the halls, bouncing off the walls like a lonesome spirit. And I’d lie still, counting my breaths, waiting for the sound to fade. It always did, but it never fully left. It was the laughter of something that had been waiting on that wall for a long time, and it had found new playmates.

Years later, when I had grown and moved away, I received a letter from Rohan. He wrote that the laughing had stopped, but that he had started to see the woman in his dreams. She stood on the wall, her hair whipping in a wind that didn’t exist, and she laughed and laughed. He wrote that the dreams were so vivid that he could feel the glass shards under his feet, and the cold metal spikes against his palms. The letter ended abruptly, with a single line: ‘I can hear her whispering my name. She says it’s time to come up.’

I didn’t visit Jhelum after that. I couldn’t bring myself to. But every time I hear a child laugh too sharply, or a gust of wind rattles a dry branch against a window, I think of that woman on the wall, and I wonder if she’s still there, waiting for someone to look up.