Paul Cleave - The Laughterhouse

His house comes into view, only it’s not his house anymore. Last time he saw it, it was, but last time was from the back of a police car. His hands were cuffed behind him and his hair was still damp from the shower and there was blood under his fingernails. He knew he would be going away but he also thought he’d be coming back-he didn’t know then that the policeman he’d hurt was dead.

The policeman. For the first few years he used to think about him all the time. Sometimes he’d scream out at night, other times he’d wake up in a cold sweat, lean over, and throw up on the cell floor. When he had access to the Internet in jail, he used to sit in front of the computer with his fingers over the keys ready to type that cop’s name into it, but he never did. He didn’t want to know if he had a family, if he left behind children. It was too hard. Reason he stopped trying to kill himself was because of that cop-Caleb knew he himself deserved to be punished for what he did, like everybody else. Killing himself fifteen years ago-no, he owed the cop more than that. He owed it to him to suffer, but now he has suffered enough. Like Jessica and Lara and his unborn son, that cop died because Dr. Stanton stood up for the wrong man.

He has no idea whether the people in his house are the ones who bought it fifteen years ago. The fence is new, the roof has been painted, and the garden looks nothing like it did back then, a few of the established trees are still there but the other ninety percent has been ripped out and replaced. However the essence of the house is still the same. There are lights on inside. He wants to knock on the door and ask to take a look through. There are memories locked away within those walls, small moments from his life, insignificant days that will come back to him. For a moment, even if only for a second, the world would feel quite okay.

“Where are we?”

Katy’s voice pulls him out of the thought. He turns around and watches as she wipes her eyes with the back of her knuckles the same way Jessica used to when she fell asleep in the car whenever the drive was longer than thirty minutes. She leans forward and entwines her other hand with her sister’s, who is still asleep.

“Go back to sleep,” he tells her, keeping his voice low.

“I’m not tired. Where’s Melanie?”

“She not here.”

“Where is she?”

“Melanie was a good girl so I let her go. She didn’t keep talking, and she was quiet when I told her to be and she didn’t keep asking questions.”

“Where’s Daddy?”

“You’re off to a bad start, Katy,” he says.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean you’re not very good at being quiet.”

“I’ll be quiet once I know where Daddy is.”

He rolls his eyes. Jessica used to be the same way. It was always quicker just to answer her questions. “He’s in the trunk.”

“Why?”

“Because I didn’t want him back there with you.”

“Why?”

“Because there wasn’t enough room.”

“He could have sat in the front seat and Octavia could have sat back here.”

“I didn’t want him in the front seat. I wanted him in the trunk, and that’s where he went.”

“He could have fit back here too.”

“You’re not listening to me,” he says.

“Is that your house?”

Maybe it’s not quicker this way. “Do you know what quiet means?”

She nods.

He nods too. Then he sighs. “Yes, I used to live here.”

“With your wife?”

“Yes.”

“And your daughter?”

“It was a long time ago.”

“Until a bad man took them away.” She bites her knuckle and sucks on it for a few seconds, then pulls it away but rests it on her lower lip. “Are you a bad man?”

“Yes,” he says, but he’s not a monster.

“Did you hurt Melanie?”

“No.”

“Do you promise?”

“Yes.”

“Are you going to hurt Octavia?”

“No.”

“Are you going to hurt my dad?”

“Yes.”

“Bu. . bu. . but you can’t,” she says.

He tries to feel something for this kid, some empathy. Is he that far gone that he feels nothing? He searches, he really searches, he wants there to be something, and there must be if she reminds him of Jessica.

Only he’s not that man anymore.

Katy is starting to cry so hard that she has to cover her face. Stanton starts banging from the trunk of the car. The bastard is awake. Katy looks up, her eyes are red, and yes, he does feel bad for her. None of this is her fault. Her father brought this on her, but she is a tool, a tool that is a means to an end.

He would be best to remember that.

“Daddy,” she cries out.

“Shut up,” Caleb says, the words low and harsh. “If you say one more word, just one more, I’m going to hurt you. Okay?”

She goes quiet. The banging in the trunk gets louder. Last thing he needs is to be driving around and have somebody hear it. He looks at the knife with the flecks of purple paint on the end of it but leaves it on the seat. He gets out of the car and pops the trunk. Stanton is still bound, and he stops kicking against the wall when Caleb looks down at him.

“You keep doing that,” he says, repeating the speech to Stanton that he just gave a few seconds earlier, “and I’m going to take it out on your remaining daughters. I’ll do to Katy what was done to mine. I’ll do everything to her that was done to mine. Then I’m going cut them into tiny pieces and jam them down your throat. You get my drift?”

The doctor mumbles something for a few seconds, and then nods. Caleb slams the trunk down. One of the neighbors is staring out the window at him. Derek Templeton, fifteen years older and fifteen years fatter than the last time he saw him. Once he helped Derek install a kitchen. They did most of the work but had to have the countertop made by professionals. They used plenty of power tools and hammered everything into place and the process was a mess but the end result was fantastic. Derek bought them pizza and beer and they sat outside on the deck with their wives and made a toast to good times. Right now Derek has a look on his face that suggests he can’t quite believe who he’s looking at. His waves are slow and jerky with no arm movement, all side to side from the wrist, the wave of a man confused by what he’s seeing. Caleb finds himself waving back, the human instinct kicking in, both men reacting to it, each of them moving like marionettes.

Caleb lowers his arm. Derek stops waving. They stare at each other from across the street like gunslingers ready to draw down on each other. Then Derek disappears. Caleb gets back into the car.

He doesn’t even know why he came here. Part of him, at least subconsciously, must have been aware of where he was driving. He supposes he was hoping the house would be as he left it, the furniture would have been returned, every surface covered in dust, the smells of his wife’s perfumes and the scent of her body clinging to the air. The house would be empty but inviting him back to a part of his life long since gone. Whatever piece of him thought he could return home couldn’t have been any more mistaken. The past is the past, you can’t change it, and Caleb Cole knows that better than anybody.

Before we can say anything, Benson Barlow puts his hand up the same way a publicist will to a news crew before running off a statement about why their client was caught naked outside a restaurant in town. He moves toward us and we take a few steps back so Melanie’s mother and her boyfriend can slip into the office behind him. We can hear Erin gushing over Melanie, while the boyfriend doesn’t seem to know what to say. We can almost hear the mother’s tight hugs being thrown around her. We don’t hear anything coming from Melanie.