The Forest Eats Laughter

No one knew when the trail vanished from the maps. Maybe it was never there. Just an unmarked crease of trees between Mount Briar and the old rail tracks. The locals had a name for it: Hollowmile.

Every town has that one place-the whispered dare, the unlit street, the broken house. For Deerfield, it was Hollowmile. Parents said nothing about it, which made it worse. They didn’t warn. They just… avoided.

And when teens turn sixteen in Deerfield, they play a game called “Laugh Track.”

The rules were simple:

Go into the Hollow Mile.

Don’t laugh.

If you do, record it.

Then get the hell out.

That summer, five of them went in.

Jace, the class clown, who never took anything seriously.

Bryn, whose laugh sounded like cracked glass but who rarely used it.

Tessa, who filmed everything for her horror vlog.

Leo, the skeptic, who thought it was all town-folklore.

And Mira, the quiet one, who never laughed at all.

They entered at dusk. Flashlights clicked on. Snack bags rustled. It felt like a joke at first. Birds chirped, cicadas buzzed. The forest was thick but not malicious. Yet.

Jace cracked jokes. They were stupid, but they worked. Tessa filmed, narrating like a Discovery channel ghost-hunter. Leo snorted. Bryn giggled.

Mira didn’t.

They found the first tree an hour in. Not just a tree-a trunk, freshly carved and still weeping sap, dark and red like something deeper than wood.

A poem bled down the bark:

Giggle deep and lose your breath,

The forest feeds on joy and death.

Speak in silence, step in fear-

For what you mock is always near.

They stared at it. The sap dripped. Jace laughed nervously.

A gust of wind blew through the trees-and laughed back.

It wasn’t an echo.

Not exactly.

It was the shape of an echo, bent wrong. Like someone impersonating a laugh with their throat torn open.

Leo turned pale. “Okay, that was a coyote.”

Bryn’s flashlight flickered. “Coyotes don’t laugh back.”

They tried to head out, retracing steps. But every path looked the same now. Trees are too close. Branches too low. Even the air felt closer.

Then Jace froze. “Guys,” he whispered. “That’s my laugh.”

A faint giggle floated from the left, rising between the trees. Definitely Jace’s voice. But wrong-too long. Too loud. Like something enjoying the sound more than it should.

More laughter followed. Tessa’s this time. Then Leo’s. One by one, their own laughter spun back at them from different directions-some fast, some slow, some reversed.

It wasn’t just playback. It was an invitation.

And they started to follow.

Not willingly, not quite. It was like the laughter had a string attached, pulling their bodies like puppets.

Tessa’s camera died.

The shadows bent wrong. When Leo raised his hand, his shadow waved back a second later.

Then another tree.

Another poem, carved in raw gashes:

Laughter’s price is never free,

You laughed,

Now laugh eternally.

Bryn cried out and clutched her head. “I-I can’t stop hearing myself-” Her knees buckled.

Her giggle echoed again. Only now it had teeth.

From behind a twisted trunk, something leaned out. Something vaguely shaped like her-but stretched tall, skin tight with bark, mouth torn wide in a bloody grin.

It giggled. The sound made Mira cover her ears. It wasn’t a laugh-it was an autopsy of one.

Leo ran. A root caught his ankle and he fell face-first, screaming-and from the right, his own scream echoed back, softer, almost curious.

When he looked up, his flashlight revealed a figure. His face. Smiling. Smiling too wide. Eyes hollow.

“Don't mock it,” Mira whispered, suddenly, fiercely. “That’s what it wants.”

“How do you know?” Tessa asked, shaking.

“I’ve been here,” Mira said. “I lost my brother in this place.”

She finally spoke, and the forest listened.

“He laughed,” she continued. “Just once. The trees bent toward him. And then…”

She pointed upward.

In the branches above, bones tangled in leaves. A rusted voice recorder dangled like a windchime. A faint chuckle sputtered from it, playing on repeat.

Mira's hands trembled. “We have to walk silent. Don’t speak. Don’t laugh. No sound at all. It can’t hear what you don’t give.”

They nodded, swallowing panic.

For a while, they walked like ghosts. Silent. Careful. The woods shifted but didn’t touch.

Then Jace slipped on a wet root—and snorted.

It was small. Barely audible.

But the woods exhaled.

A giggle rose-not his, but a mimic. It burst from the bark. From behind leaves. From the ground.

The forest laughed with him.

And then it laughed him away.

Jace’s body convulsed. A sound escaped his throat like a joke turned inside out. He screamed-and laughter poured from his mouth until it cracked open wider than it should.

Then he was gone.

Just gone.

Swallowed.

The others didn’t scream.

They couldn’t.

Tessa’s tears ran silent. Leo clenched his jaw. Bryn stared ahead, dead-eyed. Mira led them forward, one step at a time, whispering only with her hands.

A final clearing.

A circle of trees with faces in their bark-some open-mouthed in joy, some frozen in screams. And in the center, carved in a spiral, a last poem burned into the dirt:

You brought your joy and mocked our hush,

So now you'll stay in an endless hush.

A thousand laughs beneath the moss,

Each one a child the woods have lost.

Leo stepped into the spiral.

The forest stopped.

The echo paused.

Then his own laughter returned-and walked into him.

He dropped, twitching. His mouth opened wide, but no sound came. Silent laughter shook his ribs until they snapped.

Tessa screamed.

Too loud.

She vanished before her breath ended.

Only Bryn and Mira were left.

But Bryn-too close to the edge-turned toward a sound.

Her own giggle, small and nervous, from age six.

“That's me,” she whispered.

She smiled.

And the forest pounced.

Only Mira made it out.

Years later, people still play Laugh Track.

But Mira waits at the trail’s edge, holding up a sign she carved herself:

IF YOU HEAR LAUGHTER IN THE WOODS, RUN. EVEN IF IT’S YOU.

She never laughs.

Not anymore.

Because the forest is still listening.