Robert is brought into the Funhouse, a large shed centered on a whipping table, where Warden Haddock is cleaning a leather strap still pink with blood. Haddock says Red McCormack had earlier told him to hold off, but he still means to punish Robert for asking how boys run away. Robert, terrified and warned not to argue, says he only wanted to hear about escape the way he might want to hear a story about detectives or outer space. Boone does not fully defend him, and Haddock decides that stories about escape are dangerous because they lead boys toward rebellion and death.

As Crutcher and Boone move Robert toward the table and tell him to remove his shirt, Haddock turns the interrogation toward the accusation against Robert’s father. In front of the other men, Haddock pressures Robert to say whether his father raped a white woman and to accept Haddock’s version that the accusation was a lie. Robert insists his father would not do such a thing, then quickly shifts to agreement with Haddock to protect himself. Haddock calls himself fair for not punishing a son for a father’s sins, but immediately says Robert will pay for his own and orders him onto the table.

A white man shoves Robert onto the tabletop, and Robert realizes the surface and nearby wall are marked not with mud but with blood from earlier beatings. Crutcher quietly gives Robert a wood chip to bite and advises him to lie still so it will end faster. Robert is crying by then, but he obeys as several men pin down his arms and legs. Remembering his mother’s comforting message, Robert tries to keep from moving.

Haddock begins the whipping, and the first strokes tear through Robert with shocking force. The pain quickly becomes so intense that Robert loses count, struggles to breathe, and feels the table edge crushing his throat while the men hold him in place. Robert thinks how absurdly cruel it is that boys can be beaten like this for ordinary mistakes, and he understands that the reformatory’s punishments are part of something much darker. As the lashes continue, Robert dissociates into darkness and earth, imagining himself sinking past the grounds of the school to the buried remains beneath it.

In that near-fainting state, Robert senses the dead boys connected to the reformatory and glimpses pieces of their lost stories, recognizing them as murdered children whose suffering was hidden under other names. Crutcher says Robert has fainted, and Haddock stops at fifteen lashes, complaining of a headache. Robert believes his mother’s spirit is interfering with Haddock again, just as before. When awareness returns, Robert realizes he is still alive, and the beating hardens him instead of breaking him: he resolves to learn, endure, and someday get free like his father did.