Spoiler! :
Jane can hear the laughter.
It’s four-forty in the morning and she’s watching a horror movie online. She takes off her headphones and looks around listens carefully. The house is quiet, as to be expected at such an early hour. Jane is used to the quiet. She’s a bit of an insomniac and spends most of the night on her laptop while her parents and brother sleep.
Jane shrugs it off and replaces the headphones. The movie keeps going. As a building on screen explodes, she swears she hears the laughter again. This time she takes of her headphones and sits up on her bed. She listens carefully again and then slips off the mattress, tip-toeing to her closed door. She opens it quietly and peeks out into the hall.
It’s dark.
No one’s there.
Jane closes the door and heaves a sigh as she rubs her eyes. She sits down on her bed and shuts off her laptop before placing it under her bed. It must just be one of those nights. She figures she should go to sleep early.
She lies down on her back and releases the tension in her body as she lets her eyelids droop close.
The cackling wakes her up. Jane’s eyes snap open and she looks around the room. It’s empty, as to be expected. There’s sunlight streaming in through the blinds over her window. She glances at the digital clock at her bedside and then springs into action; she’s late for school.
She waits at the bus stop with Danny. She’s listening to her iPod and she hears the faint laughter again. This time she frowns and looks around. She wonders if it’s her brother trying to freak her out.
‘Not funny, Danny,’ she says loudly, shooting him a glare.
He looks up from his cellphone and gives her a strange look before returning to it and muttering, ‘Jane has finally… cracked,’ under his breath as his thumbs fly across his cell’s keyboard.
She rolls her eyes as the bus stops in front of them.
As she climbs on, she hears it again, this time it’s like the giggle of a naughty child. She frowns and pauses, looking over her shoulder and taking out her ear buds.
‘Hurry up there,’ the driver tells her and she goes up the remaining steps on the bus.
She’s sitting in Study Hall and there’s a thunderstorm raging outside. They’re all restless so someone turns off the lights and the teacher tells them an old scary story. It’s pretty boring and Jane stops listening after the babysitter finds one of the children dead.
‘Jane, why don’t you tell a story?’
She blinks and looks around to see everyone staring at her in the dark.
‘Yeah,’ someone else says, ‘You’re an expert in scary stuff.’
So she takes the flashlight from the teacher and thinks of a story to tell. She can’t think of a good one that not a single one of them will know, so she makes one up on the spot. ‘You can hear the laughter,’ she says slowly, ‘It echoes around you, running from one shadow to the next.’
Her listeners scoot in closer so they can hear over the rain pounding overhead. ‘It’s the shadow people, and they’re following you. You can’t see them, so they laugh.’ Her eyes fly open when she hears the laughter. She looks around frantically, and someone says, ‘Jane?’
They’re waiting for her to continue. ‘The shadow people want you. They’re waiting for you to let your guard down. But there’s someone out there who just can’t keep quiet. They laugh whenever you are close to getting snatched, and they accidentally warn you.’
+++
‘You’re counting on the laughter to keep you alive, but then it stops. A long time passes, and you never hear the laughter again…’
Jane waves good-bye to her friends and heads down the street. She’s walking by herself to the bus station since it’s late and she was at an after-school club. It’s late October, and the evening is chilly. The sun is already setting, and it will be gone by the time she gets home.
‘But then you make your mistake.’
If Jane cuts through the alley between some office buildings, though, she’ll make it home on time. The streetlights are already turning on when she steps off the bus and heads across the office parking lot.
A dog barks somewhere on the block. The wind blows, sending shivers through Jane’s body, and she’s glad when she makes it to the entrance of the alley; the buildings block the wind. It’s dark, but Jane can see the end of the alley about ten yards ahead. She hurries forward and almost trips over some trash that litters the ground.
She’s almost out on the street when she stumbles once more. She trips over forward and rips her jeans.
‘You let your guard down.’
And then something cold grabs her and she screams. Suddenly, Jane can hear the laughter.
But this time, it’s too late.
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