Paul Cleave - The Laughterhouse

“Thirty minutes,” he tells me. “I swear to God, when I call you in thirty minutes if Mrs. Whitby is still alive this little girl is going to run out of fingers, and it’s going to get a whole lot worse after that.”

Caleb puts the girl into the front seat of the car and climbs into the driver’s seat. His stomach feels like it’s grown a finger and is flicking at the back of his throat. His shirt is covered in blood and he got some on his face, and it’s all over the front of the girl’s dress. His hands are shaking so hard that when he tries to start the car he keeps missing the ignition with the keys. He looks over at the girl, at her hand, at the stump of the finger. He can see Tate standing in the doorway. He can feel the vomit coming.

“Hold on,” he tells himself, and he gets the car started. He gets it into gear and turns around, and before he reaches the end of the street his stomach forces the bile upward. He doesn’t have time to pull over and open the door-instead it gushes from his mouth and around the hand that he’s put up to try and hold it, it sprays sideways, it’s forced between his fingers, it covers his lap and the steering wheel, it hits the door and the girl, small chunks of it splatter the windshield. It burns his mouth and his throat and for a few seconds he can’t breathe. He keeps driving, forcing himself to get around the corner before pulling over, not wanting Tate to get any indication of weakness.

“Christ,” he says, and all the humanity that left him over the years is coming back. Everybody was right-he’s hurting these children. The inside of the car stinks and he winds down the window. He looks over at Katy and he wipes the vomit off his chin and he shakes his head and starts to cry. “I’m sorry,” he tells her, and he leans over and picks up her hand. The cut is neat, he can see bone, but it splintered on the edges. He looks around the car for something he can tie around it and can’t see anything. He tries the glove compartment. Nothing. In the end he uses the knife to cut some of his shirt away, and he ties it as tight as he can around the rest of her finger and hand.

He doesn’t want to keep hurting her. He doesn’t have the stomach for it, but with no choice, well, what does he have with no other choice? She’s lost her finger and she may lose a few more so an evil woman can be taken out of this world, and it’s not a huge price to pay.

He drives another minute before he has to be sick again, and this time he’s able to pull over. He opens the door and leans out. When he’s done, he climbs out of the car and takes off his shirt. He wads it up and tosses it onto the street. He looks at his watch. It’s been five minutes.

It takes him another ten to drive back to the house with its showroom furniture and tied up doctor. He parks in the driveway and carries Katy inside.

“Just so you know, this isn’t a nightmare you’re going to wake from,” he tells Stanton, holding up the girl so Stanton can see his daughter’s hand. Stanton almost retches into the duct tape. Sounds that are supposed to be words get caught in there somewhere.

“This is all your fault,” Caleb says, “every bit of it, all your Goddamn fault,” he says, and it’s true. So very true. He steps back out of the room and carries Katy into another of the bedrooms. He lays her down carefully and rests her head on a pillow and drapes a blanket over her. Her hand has stopped bleeding. He’s glad. When she wakes up she’ll probably hum her fucked-up version of her ABCs for a few weeks while people smile at her and say what a shame, but she’ll move on.

In ten minutes Theodore Tate will either kill Mrs. Whitby or he won’t, and if he doesn’t, he’s going to cut more of Katy’s fingers off, and he’s going to keep cutting them until that evil old bitch is dead. He has to. He doesn’t want to, but he has to-it’s the only way. Mrs. Whitby has to be punished. And then it will end. It has to, because the only thing left is to finish this.

First thing I do is go into the bedroom and grab my cell phone. I get Schroder’s number up on the display but I don’t make the call. Can I kill Mrs. Whitby to save the life of a five-year-old girl? It’s a simple question. Yes or no.

If yes, how am I going to do it?

If no, can I live with myself if Cole kills the girl?

I sit down in the same seat I occupied earlier in the dining room and I stare across the table at the finger no longer attached to Katy Stanton. Cole is gone and my headache is gone and I think about the lesser of two evils because that’s what Cole is forcing me to do. I think about taking the life of Mrs. Whitby to save the life of Katy Stanton. In a logical world, the equation is simple. You sacrifice the older evil woman to save the innocent little girl. Mrs. Whitby beat her son within an inch of his life. She scarred his chest and legs with an iron. She used to put out cigarettes on his arms and lock him in closets for days at a time. She created a killer. So it should be a simple equation, and on paper it is.

But this isn’t on paper. This is real life, you can’t exchange one life for another, and even if you could, the person making that exchange is going to go to jail.

I load Schroder back up on my phone.

I set the phone on the table and don’t make the call. Then I walk into the kitchen where there are still crumbs on the bench and I turn on the tap and cup my hands with water and splash my face. My eyes get a little wider but my mind stays just as foggy. Tired or awake or high on adrenaline, the solution wouldn’t be any clearer.

In thirty minutes’ time if Mrs. Whitby is still alive, will Cole kill Katy? All I know is that five minutes ago I didn’t think he would cut her finger off. Any understanding I had for him disappeared when he pushed down that blade. So did any profile of the man that we’d built up. Cole is desperate. A desperate man can do anything. I splash more water on my face, grip the bench hard, tightening my grip until my fingers and thumbs throb, then push myself away, my reflection in the kitchen window doing the same thing.

I put on my shoes and put the two cell phones into my pockets, grab a jacket and my keys. I’m making my way to the front door when I hear the cat flap swing open in the dining room.

I back down the hall in time to see the neighbor’s cat jumping up onto the table.

“Hey,” I yell at it.

It jumps down and races back toward the cat flap, a look of utter panic on its face, the finger hanging from its mouth. I move to intercept it and it changes direction and goes back toward the dining room, then into the lounge. I go after it and it hides behind the couch. Jesus, I just don’t have the time for this. The clock is ticking. I flip the couch over and the cat rushes past me back toward the door. I reach for it and miss, it looks back at me and runs into the wall, the finger falls from its mouth. It reaches for it again but I’ve halved the distance, so instead it hisses at me, then starts to growl. I clap loudly, it turns away and gets outside.

I pick up the finger. It’s lighter than I’d have imagined, but I guess I’d never really imagined how much one would weigh before. I wrap it in a plastic bag and put it into the fridge. I figure it needs to stay cold if there’s any chance of it being reattached and maybe the freezer will cause too much damage. I think the cells can crystallize or something-or maybe I’m just making that up. I don’t know, but I figure the fridge is at least better than it getting munched on by the damn cat.

I get out to the car and put on the sirens, lights only. I don’t know what in the hell to do. Call Schroder? Risk a girl’s life? I don’t know. I just don’t know. All I know is that the car eats up the distance between my house and the Whitby house. I can still see that knife pressing down and cutting through Katy’s finger, and the look on Cole’s face, and it wasn’t the face of a man who liked what he was doing. He was proving a point. Would he kill her to keep on proving it?