Paul Cleave - The Laughterhouse

He figured they would discover Stanton was missing today. He figured there was a chance they would find his car-he just didn’t think it was likely. Not so soon anyway.

It changes everything.

The woman follows him to the door, trying to sell him the idea of another appointment, saying she can give him a discount if he comes back. He keeps his back to her and walks quickly to the doctor’s car, and she stops following him at the end of the footpath. He’s suddenly aware that soon, if not already, a description of the doctor’s car will be all over the news, along with the license plate. Can the psychic see it? He turns back toward her, but she’s already making her way back inside.

His own car, he wiped it down last night. If there’s any trace of him the police will find it. Same goes for the house-he wiped down any of the surfaces he touched. DNA can take weeks, he isn’t worried about that, but fingerprints are quick. If they find his prints they will have his name within hours.

They won’t find them. He was careful.

Damn it, why couldn’t he have focused more last night? If he had, he could have gotten it all done. The cops could have found all the fingerprints they wanted because it all would have been over by now.

If they do get a print, and he doubts they’ll find one, and get his name, the first thing they’ll do is talk to his probation officer and get his address. They’ll see he has gone, they’ll call in at his work, then they’ll come to the slaughterhouse. With the doctor and kids missing, they’ll probably try the slaughterhouse first. All because of a stupid car battery. Why the fuck couldn’t the psychics have seen that one coming?

The car battery. Ah, damn it! Last night, he’d have put his hands all over the front of the car when he was jump-starting it. Would the police fingerprint that area? No, he doesn’t see why they would. Surely they’d check only the steering wheel and doors, parts of the interior. Maybe the gas cap too.

He has to think worst-case scenario. He has to imagine the police will know soon who he is.

New plan.

It takes him twenty minutes to get back to the slaughterhouse. The first half of the journey he has to stick to the speed limit, but once he hits the open roads he puts his foot down. The doctor and two of the kids look scared. As well they should. Octavia has fallen asleep. First thing he does is put a piece of duct tape over Stanton’s mouth to shut him up. There is no time to mess around. No time to be polite.

“Drink this while I tell you all a story,” Caleb says, handing Melanie a glass of cola.

“I’m not thirsty.”

“You might not get another chance for a while,” he tells her.

“I don’t want it.”

“Do you want me to hurt one of your sisters instead?” he asks, and points at Katy. Katy, upon being pointed at, starts to sing her version of the alphabet again.

Melanie sips at the drink. “It tastes funny.”

“Melanie, I’m not fucking around here,” he says, desperate to get this done. “If you don’t carry on drinking it, I swear I’m going to start hurting people.”

Melanie holds in her tears and starts drinking.

“That’s good,” he tells her. “You’re doing good. Now, this story,” he carries on, “it’s about a little girl named Tabitha. One day this bad man saw her and he thought she was so cute that he wanted to hurt her.”

Katy stops singing. She’s focusing on what he’s saying, and slowly she shakes her head. “That doesn’t make sense.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Caleb agrees, looking over at Dr. Stanton, “but sometimes in life that’s just the way it is. The bad man’s name was James and he began to follow her. Every day after school Tabitha would walk home, and this bad man, this James, he would be there. He knew where she lived. He knew which direction she took.”

The girls are staring at him with big eyes, holding back tears and faces full of concentration. And fear-there’s a good amount of fear in their faces too. And confusion.

“He knew everything about her. He had even broken in to her mom and dad’s house and spent time in her bedroom, going through all of her things, looking at the pictures on the wall she had drawn, looking at her clothes. He was so obsessed by her that he would steal her underwear and store it under his mattress.”

“That’s gross,” Melanie says.

“Why would he do that?” Katy asks, and both girls are scared but engaged.

“Because James wasn’t like other people,” he says. “He stopped Tabitha on the way home from school one day. He was on the sidewalk by a park calling for his puppy, only there was no puppy, but Tabitha didn’t know that. He called and called and then he saw her, and he asked her, “Have you seen my puppy?” She hadn’t, but she wanted to help. So she went into the park with him, and he took her across the other side, through the trees, and out the other side where his van was waiting. He took her home, and for two days he hurt her over and over while the police and her family looked for her.”

“What did he do to her?” Melanie asks.

“He hurt her,” Caleb says.

“But how?” Katy asks.

“That part of the story you don’t need to know,” he says, “but when he was done, he didn’t know what to do, and he didn’t want her telling people about all the things he had done to her, so he took a knife,” he says, then holds up his, “that looked just like this.”

The doctor starts murmuring against the tape, and Caleb can see him squirming against his bindings. All eyes in the room are on the knife, except Octavia, who is snoring softly.

“He was getting ready to kill her,” he says, carrying on, “when the police knocked on his door. Somebody had seen a van in the area. The police were doing a routine check on people with that model van. They came to talk to him expecting nothing, but had known straight away there was something wrong. They forced their way inside and found Tabitha. If they had come to his house a minute later she would have died.”

Melanie has almost finished her drink. Both girls are crying.

“Here,” he says, and he takes the glass from her. He fills it up and hands it to Katy. She slowly sips at it, finding it difficult because she can’t stop crying. The doctor is still squirming on the floor, perhaps this story giving him an idea of where things are heading. He isn’t covering any ground and his face is almost purple. Melanie is slowly becoming tired.

“Your daddy knew what the bad man had done,” Caleb says, still staring at Stanton, “and yet not long after that they became friends. Your daddy said all these good things about James, how it wasn’t James’s fault, how he was sick, how he wasn’t able to control himself. Your daddy spent one hour with him, he got to know him so well that he told the world that what James needed was help, not punishment, because what James had was a sickness, a sickness brought about by his own upbringing. Your daddy took all that blame from James and he put it all elsewhere. He told the lawyers and the judge and the jury that it was James’s mother’s fault, that it was the school system’s fault, how it was everybody else’s fault except James’s. They all listened and agreed because your daddy was very convincing. What James had could be cured, your dad said, if he was given enough care and understanding. So, instead of putting him in jail, he went into a hospital called Grover Hills, where people who didn’t think properly were looked after. He was in Grover Hills for two years, and then your daddy said that James was all better, that James could be a productive member of society.”

Melanie’s eyes are heavy. She’s yawning and struggling to stay awake. Katy isn’t far behind. How long does he have?