“The growling woke me up. I’d never heard them like that before. It scared me – I didn’t even know it was them at first; I didn’t know what it was. I got up to go check on them, and just saw this blur of white in the cage.”
Cheryl paused to take a deep breath, trying to calm herself. She was obviously upset, nearly hysterical. I would be too I imagine, if I’d gone through what she had. But I just sat next to her in the hospital bad, holding her hand, and said nothing, letting her tell her story.
“Maybe I should’ve thought first, but I didn’t, you know. I didn’t know what was going on. Was something in there hurting them? Were they playing – I’d never heard them play like that before. I ran to the cage and opened the door and…and they just flew out at me!”
She was talking about Jak and Daxter, our two dogs, and yes, named after videogame characters. We caged them at night to keep them from getting into things. The crate wasn’t huge, just big enough for them both, but they’d huddle together anyway to keep warm even without it; we live in a walkout basement apartment, half a house shared with out upstairs neighbours. It was a good arrangement but the lower half got cold sometimes – great in the summer; bad in the winter. Why they’d attacked her I had no idea; they’ve always been good dogs – we had them since they were puppies. But they weren’t big dogs and it was hard to picture them doing so much damage. Cheryl looked horrible; like she’d been mauled by a bear. Cuts and bruises covered her head to toe, although most were covered by bandages. She looked like a mummy.
“First they attacked me,” she continued, tears streaming down her face. “I don’t know why. Just biting and scratching for no reason. And they fought each other too. They’d just gone crazy or rabid or something. They were bleeding all over and missing fur. Whenever I tried to stop them they’d turn on me. I don’t know how long it went on for. At some point I noticed one of them was dead. I couldn’t tell who it was; they both looked the same now, just awful and bloody, and…and…oh God, Jason…”
I pulled her into a hug as she broke down. “I should’ve been there. I’m sorry.”
“No,” she said after a minute. “They would’ve gotten you too. Just look at me. No sense us both being here, like this. One of us has to be able to work and pay the bills.”
That was true. Doctors figured she’d be at the hospital for a couple weeks, depending on how well she healed. It was still too early to tell though. It wasn’t the severity of the damage; it was how much of it there was. Scratches, cuts, bite marks all over her skin. Knowing her, she hadn’t been wearing much if she’d just gotten out of bed, and the dogs got everywhere.
What the hell had gotten into them?
They were both dead now anyway, probably as a result of their fighting. Cheryl had passed out at some point during the ordeal, and when she woke up they were both still, finally at peace. She called the cops after, and they’d taken her to the hospital. She’d forgotten her phone at the house but called me when she was able to.
As soon as she was asleep I left to go home. I needed a shower and something to eat, and I imagine I had a mess to deal with too. I left a note by her bed, telling her I’d be back later that day.
It was hard to anticipate what I was going to find when I got home, but I’m glad I got her call just in time. I was at work and my shift was almost over. Had I come home and found this without warning I might’ve had a heart attack.
Cheryl had been right: there was blood everywhere. It was dried and beginning to stink now, and was smeared over almost everything. It was going to take forever to clean up. Hair – from the dogs and my girlfriend both – was stuck to the blood in clumps, as were small chunks of…something else. It looked like pieces of meat, and I shuddered to think it was bits of flesh. The kitchen table and chairs and couch and pretty much everything else was shoved out of place. The dogs were nowhere to be seen. Cheryl hadn’t mentioned what happened to them after but I figured the cops had probably removed them, and for that I was thankful; I wouldn’t have known what to do with them.
I stood in the doorway, horrified. How did Cheryl even survive this? I’d barely taken a step inside when I heard something that sent chills down my spine.
Screaming.
It wasn’t a piercing, shrieking wail, but more of a moaning, grinding shout. But it was hideous to hear, like nails on a chalkboard. The voice belonged to a woman, and was broken up, like she was crying, or maybe even being tortured. Worst of all, however, was the laughter. Amidst the choking, sobbing moans of agony was hysterical laughter. The woman sounded insane.
And she was in my house.
Should I call the cops again? I pulled out my phone and began recording my house, just in case evidence would be needed later. I couldn’t see the woman, but she sounded like she was just around the corner down the hallway, out of sight. The sound of her pained laughter couldn’t have been more than a dozen feet away.
“Hello?” I called out, but got no response. The woman must’ve been too distraught to hear me. I took a tentative step into my house. Then another, careful to be quiet so I could sneak up and get a look at her and figure out what was going on. The hardwood floor beneath my feet was sticky from the dried blood, making sucking sounds with every step.
As I got closer to the hallway on my left, I peered around the corner, but saw nothing. The crazed, crying laughter was just as loud, seeming to come from everywhere – but who was making the noise? The hallway marked the beginning of the carpeted section of our home. I grit my teeth at the blood stains all over the carpet. Unlike the hardwood that wasn’t going to come out. Our landlord wasn’t going to be happy. Bloody footprints – probably Cheryl’s – went around the corner at the end of the hallway to the bathroom. A couple doors, both open, led off the hallway to the bedrooms. Perhaps the woman was hiding in one of them.
I called out, “Hello?” again, but still got no answer. I crept down the hall, the carpeting masking my footsteps. I peaked into the first room, but saw nothing unusual. There wasn’t anywhere to hide it the room – we basically used it as an office – so I pressed on. Strangely, the laughter wasn’t getting any louder, making me feel like I wasn’t getting any closer to the source. As I moved further into the house I moved away from the light. The main room, which served as our living-room and kitchen, had most of the windows. Not wanting to be in the dark, I flicked on every light switch I came across.
The end of the hallway forked. To the left was the master bedroom; to the right was the bathroom and storage room. I was apprehensive about going either direction, leaving myself exposed from behind from the other. I quickly reached into the bedroom and closed the door, then turned around quickly. But nothing happened. No one was there. In fact, as I checked out the rest of the house I found no one.
I ended up spending half an hour checking every nook and cranny only to find nothing. But the laughter never stopped. It was almost as if it was coming out of thin air.
It occurred to me that the noise might be coming from upstairs, but it didn’t seem right. First, the woman sounded like she was right beside me no matter where I stood. Secondly, I’ve heard the neighbours before, shouting or watching a loud movie, but this was louder than anything I’ve ever heard from them. Still, with nothing else to go on I marched up to the landing, and just as I was about to knock on the door, the laughter stopped.
It was eerily quiet after that, like the house was dead. I could hear my heartbeat. I knocked on the door anyway, hoping to get some answers. Even if they weren’t responsible for the wailing, surely they must have heard it. When I got no answer, and the house remained silent, I walked out to check the driveway; they weren’t even home.
Deeply unsettled, I set about scrubbing the floors. I turned on the TV so the house wouldn’t be desperately void of sound. I needed to hear someone else’s voice, if only to get the evil, tortured laughter out of my head.
After a few hours, sore and sweating, I stopped for the day. Most of the blood was cleaned up, but the carpet was beyond repair. I winced every time I looked at it. I packed up a few items for my girlfriend – some clothes, hairbrush, her phone; things she’d need if she was going to be away for a while – and went back to the hospital.
Cheryl was awake when I walked in with her stuff and a couple subs for dinner. We ate together and watched a little TV for a while. She’d called her job and gotten some time off, and called her parents. They lived a few hours away but would be coming in tomorrow. I told her I cleaned up most of the mess, but left out the sickening laughter. I didn’t have an answer for it and there was no use upsetting her even more. She was still depressed about what had happened.
I don’t remember falling asleep, but Cheryl woke me up some time later, told me to go home and get some proper rest, said I’d had a long day. I almost laughed when she said that – her day had been much longer I’m sure. I wanted to stay with her at the hospital, not really wanting to be alone in the house after what had happened earlier. But she said she’d feel better knowing I was home in bed. So I left.
I was nervous walking in the front door again, waiting for the horrific laughter to begin at any moment. But it didn’t. The longer I was home, the more at ease I became. I tidied up a little, checked my e-mail, things like that. Not long after I went to bed, alone.
I’m not sure why I awoke. The two small lights staring at me couldn’t have been enough to wake me. I blinked at them, but they weren’t blinding. They looked like two small flashlights, nearly drained of power, hovering at the side of the bed, a foot from my head. I reached over to turn on the table lamp – and flung across to the other side of the bed.
A girl stood there, silently, watching me sleep. Or was it a woman? No…as I looked on in horror I realized it was something else entirely. It had the body of a child but the face of a woman, albeit terribly disfigured. Her mouth looked much too wide – either stretched or cut – and was hanging open; she had no teeth or tongue. Streaks of bloody tears stained her face, dried now. And her eyes…they looked dead, even though they glowed faintly.
I slowly inched around the edge of the bed, closer to this…creature, but also closer to the door, and escape. As I grew closer I could see was far older than she appeared. She was wearing very little clothing, exposing much of her body, which looked sickened and diseased. Her skin, pale with a strange blue tinge to it, was weathered and wrinkled, like she was considerably aged. It was also covered with welts and cuts and these…boils or something that were oozing green puss. Blood ran down from between her legs; I could only imagine where it was coming from.
Her dead eyes followed me as I carefully crept towards the bedroom door, staring at me but not moving. As I grew bolder I decided to risk speaking to her. So many things I wanted to ask: who was she, how did she get into my home, what had happened to her, was she the one I’d heard earlier, laughing maniacally?
But I simply asked, “What do you want?”
It was as I’d feared. Her mouth opened even wider, nearly the width of her head now, and she began to emit the tortured, wailing laughter. Despite the fluctuations in tone and the warbling inflection between the screaming and the laughing, the moaning and the gagging, her mouth never moved. It was as if the girl herself wasn’t making the sounds, but they were coming from within her. As she wailed, blood began dripping from her gapping maw down her neck, eventually finding its way to the floor, collecting in a puddle at her feet.
I no longer cared about the carpet by now. My hands were covering my ears, yet did nothing to muffle the bloodcurdling song of cackling agony. I stood there for as long as I dared, too terrified to move, yet desperate to leave. It was when she lifted off the floor and began to float that I was finally able to command my legs to bend, and I ran from the room and out of my house.
It was peaceful outside, if not a bit chilly in the cool fall air. Of course, I had only a pair of boxers on. I couldn’t hear her siren’s wail; just my own heartbeat and laboured breathing. So now what? I didn’t want to go back inside, but what else could I do? My clothes and phone were inside, and my car keys. Everything. I checked around the front of the house; no car. And lights were all off upstairs. I didn’t know where my neighhours went, but maybe it was good that they weren’t here.
After a while the cold started to get to me, and I began to psych myself up to go back inside. If anything, just to grab some essentials and take off. Maybe stay at a motel. Maybe head back to the hospital. But what would I tell Cheryl?
I opened the front door and listened; there was no noise. Carefully sneaking inside, I went over the list of things I needed in my head. Except for the lamp in the bedroom all of the lights were off, shrouding the house in darkness. I went by, flicking on the lights as I went, just like earlier that day. I didn’t want to assume the girl was waiting for me in my bedroom where I’d left her, and expected her to just pop up from out of nowhere.
I got to my bedroom without incident. Not trusting she was gone for good, I gathered everything I needed and got dressed as quickly as I could. I didn’t want to spend another second in that house.
But as soon I left the bedroom I heard her again, shrieking and laughing bloody murder. Then she was there, floating down the hallway toward me, blood soaking her raggedy nightgown and leaving a trail behind her on the already ruined carpet. I stood frozen in horror at she hovered closer and closer, her glowing eyes almost hypnotic.
When she was less than a foot away I broke free from the trance and shoved her back as hard as I could. She bounced off the wall but didn’t fall to the floor. I ran by her and left the house, pausing in the doorway to look back and see her floating towards me. I bolted to my car, leaving all the house lights on and the doors unlocked. I didn’t care about that anymore; I just wanted to get away. I got into my car and drove a few blocks before I pulled over to calm down.
I found I was shaking. I couldn’t wrap my head around it: she was real. I didn’t know how it was possible, but this girl, this creature was real. That was a fact. I touched her, shoved her actually. She wasn’t a ghost, or a hallucination; she existed. She was there in my house. I looked in the rear view mirror, wondering if it would follow me, if I’d be safe anywhere. What would she do to me? What did she want? Was she responsible for what happened to the dogs that morning? Is the house haunted? What do I do now?
I knew I wasn’t going to be getting any more sleep that night, so it there was no sense looking for somewhere to stay. On the other hand it wouldn’t do me any good to be driving around all night wasting gas. Perhaps I should just go to the hospital. I could tell Cheryl I couldn’t sleep without her. That could work.
As if on cue, my phone began ringing. I pulled it out of my pocket; it was Cheryl. I answered.
“Hey, Cheryl. Everything okay?”
“Jason? You’ve got to come – hurry! There’s something in my room. A little girl, only it’s not a girl – God, Jason, I don’t know what the hell it is!
Amid my girlfriend’s sobbing I heard laughter in the background. That soul-crushing, anguished cackling. I couldn’t speak. How did it get to the hospital so fast, and why? What did it want with Cheryl – with either of us?
“Call the nurses,” I said. “I’m on my way.”
“I keep calling but no one’s coming! Please hurry Jason!”
She screamed and the line went dead. Ten minutes later I was flying down the halls of the hospital. The occasional nurse tried to stop me, or help me, I don’t know. I burst through to door to Cheryl’s room and stopped. Everything was quiet. No creepy floating demon girl or her horrific laughter.
“Cheryl?” I asked, and got no reply.
Scared more than I’d care to admit, I slowly walked to the bed, hoping she was sleeping.
She was dead.
The breath flew out of me and I nearly collapsed to the floor. Cheryl stared blankly at the ceiling, her face a pale blue, like she’d suffocated – like the little girl. I put my hand to her head; she wasn’t cold, but her warmth was fading. She was gone. I sunk to the floor, unable to process this.
“Excuse me,” came from the doorway. A nurse stood there. “Visiting hours are…” she stopped when she saw I was crying. She came over to check on me and found Cheryl, well, the way I found her. She blamed me and called the police.
There was an investigation following that. Cheryl had been fine when the nurse had last made her rounds, about an hour before I arrived. Her injuries weren’t life-threatening and it was unlikely that she would have asphyxiated on her own. Plus there were witnesses to me running like crazy around the hospital moments before she died. Strangely, no one had heard the evil laughter, or Cheryl crying and ringing for help. So it was all on me.
But records showed that a phone call was placed from her room to my cell phone, and my story – that she’d claimed there was a stranger in her room – lined up. They also calculated that I hadn’t been in her room long enough to kill her. So eventually the charges were dropped. That someone strangled her was obvious, but the killer was never found. I knew it was the girl, but I couldn’t prove it, and would only make things worse by bringing it up.
I wish I could give you a better ending than that, or really any ending, but I can’t. That’s just what happened. Life doesn’t always make for a good story.
I never learned what really happened that day. I also never saw the girl again. I moved to a new apartment on the other side of town and got a cat. The vet who examined our dogs couldn’t find any reason for them to snap like they did, but nothing further came from it. I think they’re connected somehow to the laughing girl.
I still believe she’s out there, even following me around. The laughter I recorded on my phone is the only evidence I had that she exists. I deleted it not long after. It began to play randomly, as if my phone was now haunted. Waking up in the middle of the night to the sound of her laughing is something I never want to experience again.
But I do. I still hear it. Every now and then I get a phone call from an unknown number, and it’s her on the other end, laughing and crying at me. I’ve changed phones, I’ve changed numbers, I’ve changed service providers, but she keeps finding me. I expect her to show up one day to finish what she started.
The Chris Effect 