The Laughterhouse

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Caleb’s next stop is two suburbs over, a house on a dead-end street where the neighbors seem to be making the best of what they have: old homes with tidy yards, cracked windows but all of them clean, patchy paint but none of it hanging in flakes, the bare wood sanded back. He parks outside the woman’s house and even though nobody would want to steal his car, he locks it anyway. Hell, they’d have to get it to start first. He leaves the knife under the passenger seat.

The pathway up to the doorstep is lined with broken sunflowers, their thick stems bent from the last strong wind, some of them missing except for the stumps, others still attached and lying limp on the lawn. A dog next door is running the length of the fence, its paws scrabbling against it, but it doesn’t bark. He reaches the front door. He rings the doorbell and is unsure if it’s broken or if he just can’t hear it. Just when he’s getting ready to knock, a woman swings it open, offering him a large smile painted on in bright red lipstick.

“Right on time,” she says, smiling at him. “Come on through.”

Right on time is one o’clock in the morning, and he guesses she thinks that makes her readings more authentic. He follows her into a room darkened by thick purple curtains. The house smells of whatever was cooked for dinner, some kind of chicken dish. The woman is wearing a scarf over her hair, a velvet dress that reaches the floor, and has tattoos on her hands that he can’t make out. In her early fifties, he knows thirty years ago she could have been quite beautiful. Except for her hand-her right hand is disfigured, the fingers all pointing back at her body, looking like a claw. He’s not sure if she was born that way, had an accident, or if she’s faking a disability to add to her persona.

“Sit,” she tells him, and points to a chair.

The room is illuminated by two lamps from opposing corners. There is a bookcase jammed with titles, words like afterlife and spirits adorning many of them. The table they sit at is a card table with black cloth draped across it and nothing else. There’s a couch against the wall and a cat sitting flat along the arm of it. It stares at him, as if reading his mind, something he hopes he doesn’t have to pay for at the end of the session. There’s a vase full of incense burning by the window.

This is his first time here, but his fourth time in a similar environment. The other three psychics he’s seen all did readings from their homes, outfits the same but different shades of dark, books by the same authors, and lighting just as dim. They had similar ways of contacting the dead. He is hoping this woman will be more genuine.

“Give me your hands,” she says.

So far it’s the same. He reaches over the table, his left hand somewhat hesitant as her clawed one embraces it.

“There is a lot of pain inside you,” she tells him, but she isn’t summoning a spirit to tell her that, it’s written and scarred in his features. “I sense,” she says, then cocks her head slightly, her eyes closed, and he can tell she’s trying hard to listen to something. He stares at her, wanting to believe it’s real. “I sense you have lost somebody close to you,” she says. “Is that right?”

He nods, then realizes she can’t see him. “Yes,” he says.

“Your wife?”

“Yes,” he says again, hoping she isn’t just guessing.

She scrunches her eyes tighter. The other psychics had stopped with the wife. They didn’t figure out his children were dead too. This one is focusing. . focusing. .

“I sense there is more pain,” she adds. “You loved your wife very much. Was there. . somebody else too?”

It’s an open question, but he takes it because he wants to believe. “Yes.”

“I’m sensing somebody younger,” she says, and when he says nothing she tightens the grips on his hands, the good hand stronger than the claw, and thinks for a few more seconds. “Somebody quite younger.”

“My daughter,” he says, then feels stupid for supplying her with that information. He’s overeager.

“Yes, yes,” she says, “I sensed a young girl. Very beautiful. Your daughter.”

He nods, knowing she can’t see him but keeps nodding anyway. “Yes,” he says, and doesn’t mention his son.

“It was some time ago,” she says. “Is that right?”

“Yes,” he answers, still eager but more suspicious now. The way she says things, it’s like she’s fishing for information more from the living than from the dead.

“And you’ve come to me to try and talk to them,” she says.

She opens her eyes and looks at him. “A lot of pain,” she says, “for everybody involved. No?”

He nods.

“And you have come here for what reason?” she asks. “To talk to them? To tell them you miss them?”

“I want them to know how sorry I am,” he says. “I let them down. Can you tell them?”

She smiles at him. “You can tell them yourself,” she says. “There is somebody here,” she says, and she looks over his shoulder. It’s so believable that he glances back, but all that’s there is the couch and the cat and the door to the hallway.

The woman closes her eyes again. “Yes, I definitely sense somebody here,” she says. She tilts her head to the other side now, and he’s not sure which part of the room the spirit-if there is one-is in.

“A woman is here,” she says. “I. . I can’t quite see her clearly. A beautiful woman. Your wife. She. . she is sad she left you. It was sudden, sudden for both your wife and daughter.”

“Yes.”

“Some kind of accident,” she says. “I can’t. . can’t quite make it out.”

“Something like that.”

“There was a lot of pain there.”

“I miss them,” he says.

“She can hear you,” she says. “She says she misses you.”

“Can you. .”

“Wait,” she says, tightening the grips on his hands. “Wait, she is telling me something. She has to go, but there’s something she wants me to tell you. Yes, yes,” she says, nodding and listening enthusiastically, and then, “yes, I understand. I’ll tell him.”

She opens her eyes. “She’s gone,” she tells him.

“Gone?”

“Gone. But she gave me a message. She wants you to know that her pain is gone, that she and your daughter are together, that they love you, that she wants you to be happy.”

He pulls his hands away. The woman flinches, her eyes widening as she realizes she has said something wrong. “Sometimes the messages can be vague,” she tells him. “Sometimes it can take a few attempts.”

He hands over the eighty dollars she told him over the phone that it would cost and it disappears into her claw. She walks him to the front door. He didn’t see them on the way in, but on the way out there’s a set of suitcases packed next to the door, on top of them a pair of passports and a set of tickets. Later tonight or tomorrow she’s leaving the country with her husband or partner and he remembers the holiday with his wife twenty-five years ago, lots of sun and great food and nice wine and nine months after that they had a daughter.

“My wife,” he tells her, “would never want me to be happy. She blames me for what happened-she always will.”

She nods slowly, and he guesses that’s what being a psychic is all about-learning from your mistakes. He expects her to defend herself, to tell him he’s wrong and his wife does want him to be forgiven, wants him to be happy, but she says nothing and slowly closes the door.

He should have known.

The car starts up on the first try. He pulls away from the house without glancing back. Playtime is over. It’s time to move on to the next victim. She’s going to be the easiest-after all, she’s the only one on the list who’s in a coma.