The Laughter That Watched Me Burn

I

The fire didn’t come from the outside.

It started in the echoes—echoes of laughter that never sounded quite right. At first, it was a whisper in the woods. A child’s giggle. The kind that should’ve brought warmth, but instead dripped cold down her spine like ice melting too slowly.

Marla didn’t believe in ghosts. Not until the day she met the children who didn’t blink.

They came to the edge of her property near the tree line. She lived alone in her grandmother’s old house, surrounded by forest and too much silence. When she first saw them, she thought they were lost. Three kids, one girl and two boys, wearing tattered clothing as if they belonged to a different century.

They didn’t speak. They only watched.

And then they laughed.

Not at her. Not really. It was like they were laughing at something just behind her, something she couldn’t see but could feel breathing on her neck.

She turned. There was nothing.

II

The town spoke in half-murmurs when Marla asked about the woods.

“Oh, those old trees remember things,” said an old man at the local store. “Some say they never forget who died among them.”

She asked who died.

He didn’t answer.

Marla stopped asking.

The children came back. Every night at dusk. They stood by the edge of the forest, silent, until the sun slipped behind the hills—and then the laughter would start. Sometimes just one of them. Sometimes all three. Always just long enough for her to question if it was real.

And always just far enough away that she could never quite reach them before they vanished.

It became a routine. They laughed. She ran. Nothing. She returned. They laughed again.

She started dreaming of fire.

III

In her dreams, she stood at the center of the woods. The trees bent inward like they were listening. And someone—no, something—was humming a lullaby, out of tune and broken.

In the flames, faces formed. Grinning. Familiar.

The children.

Except now, they had no eyes.

One night, she followed them.

The laughter pulled her like a rope through darkness. No flashlight. Just the sound, distant and constant, winding like a thread through the trees.

She reached a clearing where the grass didn’t grow. Ash crunched beneath her boots. In the center, a charred tree stump stood like a monument.

They were waiting.

The girl, older than she looked. Pale eyes. Lips stitched into a smirk too wide for her face.

The two boys sat on either side of the stump, as if they were waiting for storytime.

Marla stepped forward, heart hammering.

“Who are you?” she whispered.

The girl tilted her head. “You don’t remember?”

Marla felt a jolt in her chest. “Should I?”

They laughed. All of them. It wasn’t a child’s laugh anymore. It was ancient. Bitter. A sound sharpened by centuries.

Then they vanished.

IV

Marla found an old photo album in the attic the next day. One of the pictures was in black and white: a group of children in front of the same stump, decades ago.

One of them looked like the girl.

Another wore the same ragged clothes as the boy with the crooked grin.

On the back, someone had written in faded ink: "The Summer They Burned."

She dropped the album.

The whispering began.

V

She barely slept. The laughter didn’t stop anymore. It followed her into daylight, into mirrors, into the reflection of her tea.

The air began to smell of smoke.

She called a priest. He said nothing. Just left a note in her mailbox:

“The children demand memory. You forgot them. They won’t forget you.”

She threw the note away. But it came back the next day, tucked into the folds of her pillow.

VI

Her dreams turned violent. She was no longer watching the fire. She was starting it. Her hands soaked in kerosene. Her voice humming that lullaby.

The laughter was inside her now.

It pulsed behind her ribs.

One morning, she woke with ash beneath her fingernails.

VII

She returned to the clearing. The grass had begun to grow back.

But not where the stump was.

She brought matches.

“I didn’t do anything,” she said out loud.

The wind didn’t answer.

She dropped the first match. It didn’t catch.

She dropped the second.

The flame danced, paused—then twisted upward like it was alive.

The trees began to whisper.

“You watched us burn,” said a voice from nowhere.

“No—” she whispered.

“You laughed with them.”

Marla’s breath caught.

And then she remembered.

VIII

It was a dare. Summer camp, long ago. The counselors were drunk, and the kids wanted a show.

Marla, twelve. Holding a match. Standing beside a tree where three children were tied “for fun.”

They begged.

She hesitated.

Someone laughed.

So she laughed too.

She didn’t light the fire. But she didn’t stop it.

She ran.

She forgot.

Until they returned.

IX

The flames came without warning.

One moment the clearing was still.

The next, it was a furnace.

But the fire didn’t touch the trees. Only her.

Marla didn’t scream.

The children watched from the shadows.

Silent.

Smiling.

When it was done, there was no body.

Only laughter—soft, echoing—like smoke curling through leaves.

X

Now, when others walk near those woods, they sometimes hear it too.

A giggle in the dusk.

A whisper behind the wind.

And if they get too close, they say the air tastes like ash.

No one remembers Marla.

But the laughter does.

It always does.