QThe house woke up laughing.
It started as a low hum in the walls — like pipes rattling or a radio tuning between stations. But then it shaped itself into something disturbingly cheerful. A chuckle. A giggle. A full-bodied laugh that rolled through the hallways like thunder trying out stand-up.
Eli shot upright on the couch. "Please tell me that's you practicing material."
Lena rubbed her eyes. "If it is, I'm killing it in the plumbing circuit."
The laughter continued, light and hollow, bouncing from ceiling to floor. The chandelier swayed slightly, glittering in the morning sun as though the house itself found something hilarious.
"Great," she muttered. "Our home's developed a sense of humor."
Eli stood, eyes scanning the room. "It's not possession. It's resonance. You remember what I said about emotional energy rebuilding the structure?"
"Yeah. Why?"
He pointed upward. "It's mimicking us. Every laugh you gave last night, every joke—it's learned them."
She blinked. "The house is doing impressions of me?"
A floorboard squeaked. The sound formed a faintly sarcastic snort.
"Yep," she said flatly. "That's my brand."
They moved through the corridors cautiously, following the sound.
As they walked, the house changed subtly — portraits' smiles widened; wallpaper patterns shifted into comic faces. In one mirror, Lena's reflection looked back and winked, mouthing, Good set last night.
"Eli," she whispered, "this is getting weird."
"It was already weird," he muttered. "This is just… weirder with applause."
They reached the main hallway. A message had been scrawled across the wall in smoky letters:
Welcome to the show.
The handwriting was hers.
"Okay," she said. "That's new."
Eli exhaled slowly. "It's copying your style, your words, your timing. It's using your humor as… language."
The chandelier above them flickered in rhythm with the laughter — faster now, almost expectant.
"Language for what?" she asked.
He met her eyes. "Communication. It's trying to talk."
"Great," she said. "My emotional support haunted house wants to chat."
They tried to record it — the sounds, the vibrations, even the patterns in the wallpaper — but nothing stayed consistent. Every time they turned away, the message changed.
At one point, Lena caught the wall whispering to itself:
Knock, knock.
She hesitated. "...Who's there?"
Closure.
She frowned. "Closure who—"
Wouldn't you like to know?
The wall burst into giggles. She jumped back, heart hammering.
Eli ran over. "What happened?"
"It—It made a joke," she stammered. "It made a good joke!"
He looked at the wall like it had personally betrayed him. "Fantastic. The entity has timing now."
The laughter receded, but the air remained charged — alive.
Lena pressed a hand to the wallpaper. "If it's learning, maybe we can teach it something."
Eli raised an eyebrow. "Like what?"
"Boundaries."
That night, they set ground rules — literally.
Eli drew sigils on the floorboards in chalk while Lena, perched on the coffee table, read aloud:
"Rule one: No laughter after midnight. Rule two: No writing on walls without consent. Rule three: No using my face to advertise your paranormal open mics."
The lights flickered twice, as if acknowledging her.
"See?" she said. "It's cooperative."
A cupboard door opened by itself and slammed shut again.
"Okay, mostly cooperative."
Eli chuckled, shaking his head. "You're handling this disturbingly well."
"Comedy's just trauma in rehearsal," she said. "And I've had plenty of rehearsals."
He looked up at her then, the chalk in his hand forgotten. "You joke, but you've been carrying this alone for a long time, haven't you?"
Her expression softened. "Hey, don't go therapist mode on me. We just started dating in a haunted duplex."
"I'm serious."
"So am I," she said quietly. "If I stop joking, I have to start feeling. And I'm not sure I can do that in a house that applauds."
Eli's voice lowered. "Then maybe you don't have to do it alone."
For a heartbeat, the air around them stilled. The laughter in the walls faded into something like a sigh.
Lena smiled faintly. "You realize even the ghosts are shipping us now?"
"Let them," he said. "They need something to root for."
At 2:37 a.m., the laughter returned.
But this time, it wasn't coming from the house.
It was coming from beneath it.
Lena woke to the sound of deep, echoing chuckles rumbling through the floorboards. The furniture trembled in rhythm. Eli was already up, scanning the room.
"It's the basement again," he said.
She groaned. "Of course it's the basement again. Why do ghosts love basements so much?"
"Proximity to hell?"
"Or bad lighting."
They grabbed flashlights and descended the creaking staircase, each step echoing louder than the last. The air grew cold, heavy with damp earth and memory.
The basement door was slightly ajar. Faint blue light seeped through the gap.
Eli pushed it open.
The mural they'd found weeks ago — the one that moved when someone laughed — had changed.
Now it depicted them.
Lena and Eli, painted in vibrant color, standing hand in hand before a glowing house. Around them, shadowy figures clapped and cheered, their painted mouths wide with laughter.
"Oh no," Lena whispered. "It's fan art."
Eli stepped closer, eyes narrowing. "The house is manifesting its interpretation of us. A psychic echo."
She pointed at the corner. "Is that supposed to be Julian?"
A faint outline lingered at the mural's edge — Julian's grin, faint and ghostly, as if watching from the wings.
Encore, whispered the walls.
The floor shifted under them. Cracks spidered outward, glowing with that same blue light.
"Eli," she said, "I think we just got a bad review."
The mural pulsed — once, twice — and then the laughter turned violent, shrieking, distorted. The figures on the wall began to move, stepping forward, clawing out of the paint.
"Go!" Eli shouted.
They bolted up the stairs as the laughter chased them, filling the air with manic echo. The house shook, frames falling, lights bursting.
They reached the front hall just as the door slammed shut behind them.
Silence.
Lena gasped for air, trembling. "What—what the hell was that?"
Eli's eyes were wild. "The house isn't just mimicking us anymore. It's rehearsing us."
"Meaning?"
"It's turning our lives into its performance. And next time…" He swallowed. "Next time, we might be the punchline."
When she finally crawled into bed that night, she couldn't sleep. Every creak sounded like a giggle. Every whisper of wind through the eaves sounded like an audience waiting.
She turned on her side and stared at the ceiling. "Hey, Eli?"
He stirred. "Yeah?"
"Promise me something."
"Anything."
"If the house ever starts doing crowd work, we move."
He smiled in the dark. "Deal."
They lay there listening to the walls breathe — the faint, patient sound of a ghostly audience waiting for the next act