"It's a creepy-looking village," said Beth from the backseat.

"What's so creepy about it?" questioned Elaine, her hands tightening around the steering wheel. She flashed an uneasy glance in my direction.

"Well," I said. "For starters, it's a random village in the woods...in the middle of nowhere. Beyond that, it looks like it belongs in a different century-"

"And a different country," Beth interjected as she leaned over the center console. "That's why it looks so creepy, it doesn't look like it belongs in Shadowbrook Canyon."

"So, it looks a little out of place, not entirely sure how that makes it creepy," replied Elaine with an almost mousy tone.

I could see Beth's mouth fall open and decided to cut her off before she made Elaine even more uncomfortable.

"You don't recall a village on the way to your parent's cabin?" I asked.

Elaine shook her head, "No? I mean, I remember passing little towns. Like ones with log cabins and stuff but nothing like that...maybe it's new? Something they built within the last five years?"

Beth scoffed and threw herself back into her seat. "That is not new Elaine, that village looks like it's a couple hundred years old."

Beth was right. The village before us looked to be at least a hundred years old. A quaint little village of the bygone era. The roads were made of cobblestone, and on those streets were tiny houses built with aged stone. All of the houses had steep roofs made with burgundy brick, and they each had a chimney that came out from the top, a few were jutting out plumes of smoke. Each of the houses had a front yard with bushes and wildflowers, some tended to, but most appeared to be neglected.

I could see a windmill at the far end of the village, it spun around slowly due to the lazy summer wind. At the center of the village stood a church, it was the largest building in the village. A large steeple in the shape of a cross pointed high into the sky, blocking out a portion of the sun...at least from where we were parked. A large bell hung just below the steeple, framed by a series of arched windows. Under the bell was a large clock and the time read:

12:45

The clock was wrong. According to my watch, the time was 2:35, the same time read on Elaine's dashboard. The clock being off bothered me the most, it made it seem as though the entire village had been abandoned for several years. It didn't help that there wasn't a single car on the streets, we also hadn't seen a single soul.

"Should we turn around?" Elaine questioned.

Beth let out another scoff, this one coated with frustration, "My God Elaine! I wasn't going to say anything earlier...I figured you knew where you were going, but who the hell gets their directions off MapBuddy.com? Why didn't you use Mapquest like a normal person?"

"Beth," I started, knowing full well that the damage had been done.

"I know how to get to my parent's cabin Beth!" Elaine snapped, her head jerking toward the backseat, eyes narrowed into a glare. "My dad just gave me those as a backup."

I could feel the tension escalating in Elaine's tiny Volkswagen bug. I could feel my joints stiffen as my palms got sweaty. There had always been a weird hostility between Elaine and Beth, and I was the awkward piece of glue that held us together.

"Okay...Elaine. Do you think we're going in the right direction?" I asked.

Elaine nodded, "We're on the right path, Robyn. I’ve just never seen that village before."

"Alright, then let's just drive through the village and see where it takes us," I said with confidence.

"Or we can ask her," Beth said.

I turned to see where Beth was pointing and saw a woman walking down the side of the road. She was at the halfway point between us and the village. She wore a white sundress that ran down to her ankles. She had dirty blonde hair that brushed the blades of her shoulders, and a headdress made of flowers sat on top of her head. Her hair swayed from left to right which distorted her facial features. She was barefoot, and she walked as though she were dancing to her own rhythm. She threw both arms out before spinning on the balls of her feet and prancing in our direction.

"I am not asking that crazy hippie for directions," Elaine said.

“Oh my god Elaine, just drive over and I’ll ask her,” Beth snapped.

Elaine flashed me an annoyed sneer before putting the car in drive. The gears of her Volkswagen cut through the awkward tension within the vehicle. She pulled off the side of the road, her tires crunching over the fallen leaves. I did my best to not stare at the woman, something about her didn't sit right with me. She danced across the dirt road with a disturbing elegance, it was beautiful and unsettling at the same time. Her feet were beyond filthy, caked with so much of the earth that they were pitch black. She threw her head back and laughed at the sun, an almost deafening chuckle that challenged the sound of Elaine’s engine. Elaine pulled the car up next to the woman, lining her up with Beth's window.

Her laughter made my skin crawl, it made my ears ring in agony. She had her back to us when we pulled up. I could see that her hair was indeed blonde, but it looked old and frail, unhealthy. And then I realized that the flowers around her head were dead, they were welted and barely clinging to the wire of the headband. The tips were a rotten black, and the bodies of the flowers were a fading purple.

She continued to laugh and dance, swaying her hips from left to right, waving her arms up and down to nothing, oblivious to our existence. I didn't want Beth to ask for directions, I didn't want Elaine to drive through the village. I wanted to tell her to turn the car around and head back for the main road. The words sat frozen on the tip of my tongue, and then Beth spoke from behind me.

"Mam. Sorry to bother you. But we appear to be lost. We're looking to get to Crystal Point, are we going in the right direction?"

The woman continued to laugh as she turned around toward Beth, she turned toward my passenger mirror...and what I saw made my body freeze in horror. The skin of her face seemed to cling to her emaciated skull. Her eye sockets were sunken in and gaunt, her eyes had a fading shade of gray over her beady pupils. Her smile was so wide that it took up the whole bottom part of her face. Her teeth were rotten, with a thick black substance seeping out between each tooth. She continued to dance as she reached into her left sleeve, pulling out a large knife that glimmered in the sun...

Everything happened so fast. The woman continued to laugh, her mouth opening so wide that her lower jaw seemed to detach from the rest of her head. Her right arm shot out and grabbed Beth, and then she drove the knife into her shoulder. I saw the blade exit through Beth's back; I heard the tip make contact with the side of Elaine's car. I watched from the side mirror as Beth’s blood rained down the side of Elaine’s car. Beth’s face contorted with horror before she screamed, the veins of her neck pulsating.

And then I heard Elaine's scream, just before she stepped on the gas, her car shooting forward across the dirt path. I spun around to Beth and all I could see was her blood as it splashed along Elaine's back seat. Beth was clutching her shoulder, howling at the top of her lungs, her face growing paler with each passing second. I turned to tell Elaine to head back for the main road and screamed.

Standing in front of us was on the dirt road, just before the village were six more individuals from the town, male and female. Each with a sundress that ran down to their ankles, each wearing a headdress of dead flowers. They all laughed with mouths full of decaying teeth. Elaine let out a sharp yelp, her body stiffened as she stepped on the brakes and jerked the car to the right. Her car let out an ear-piercing screech as it viciously veered off the main path.

And then we crashed into a tree and my world cut to black.

----------

The sun was setting when I came too, I could tell by its radiant brightness. I woke up at the center of the village, lying on the cobblestone pavement. The first thing I heard was the laughter of the townsfolk. I used the back of my hand to clear my vision. There were about thirty of them standing around me, each of them looking as demented as the ones we saw on the dirt road. There were men, women, and children, each of them had wide and decaying smiles. A majority of them were dancing, once again to no music, they all seemed to be having the time of their lives.

I got to my feet and spun around on shaky legs, my eyes landing on both Beth and Elaine. Their backs were facing the entrance of the village, their features distorted by the lowering sun, but it didn’t take long to see the horrifying state they were in. Elaine was tied to a large post that shot up into the sky, a bushel of dried branches and leaves piled up at her feet. Beth had her arms and legs tied up behind her, as she lay on a white, granite pedestal.

“Robyn! Run!!” Elaine screamed.

My brain struggled to make sense of what was going on. Elaine continued to scream for me to run, and Beth only echoed her words. I could barely hear them over the townsfolk’s laughter.

“Robyn! Get out of here!!” Beth wailed.

Two of the laughing townsfolk brushed past me, one with a knife, the other with a torch. The one with a knife made his way toward Beth, and the one with the torch headed toward Elaine, I could feel the momentary heat as he passed by.

“Robyn! Get out of here!! They don’t need you!!” Elaine repeated.

The two men looked at one another, laughing into the sky as if they’d exchanged the greatest joke. And then the man plunged the knife into Beth’s torso. He did this repeatedly, his stabs spanning throughout her chest and stomach. I watched as Beth screamed, as her blood ran over the pedestal and onto the pavement. The man near Elaine dropped the torch onto the dry branches at her feet, and she was instantaneously engulfed by flames. I watched as the flames singed away at Elaine’s clothing, as it melted the flesh on her bones.

The flames burned away at my best friend. The man continued to drive the knife into Beth’s body. And then their horrifying screams turned to laughter. These loud and shrill cackles that sounded like demented joy, a form of laughter that I’d never heard from either of them.

“RUN ROBYN!!!” Screamed Beth as her face turned to a deathly white, as the knife revealed her insides.

“RUN!!! RUN!!! RUN!!!” Screeched Elaine as the flames licked away at her face, as the fires caused her hair to ember.

And that’s what I did. I pushed through the crowd and ran, hurling myself down the cobblestone path toward the dirt road. Leaving behind my dying friends.

Running from the horrifying cackles of The Laughing Village.