by Phil Ford
But, to give Mr Chandra his due, he did what he could to check out Clyde’s story, whether he believed it or not. Clyde didn’t tell him anything about the mirror. He just said he’d chased the clown and lost him, and thought he might have ducked into the toilets to hide. But it wasn’t long before the Head’s scepticism won out. It didn’t take much to confirm that Dave Finn hadn’t shown up for class that afternoon, and it hadn’t taken much longer for the school’s security cameras to show him that there had been no multi-coloured clown on the school premises.
To Mr Chandra, as Clyde sat before him in his office, this was starting to have all the hallmarks of a schoolboy prank.
‘It’s not a prank, I swear,’ Clyde told him.
‘So why didn’t anyone else see this clown? Why didn’t the security cameras pick up a clown? I think it’s the sort of thing we would notice, Langer.’
‘I don’t know, sir. Did the cameras pick up Finney leaving the school?’
The Head didn’t answer. They hadn’t.
‘No,’ said Clyde. ‘Didn’t think so. Just like the other kids. Vanished without a trace. Except this time, I saw something.’
‘A clown.’
Clyde really had to bite down hard on the anger he felt rising up. All the same, he felt himself getting up out of the chair and snapping, ‘I tell jokes, not lies, sir! I should have known you wouldn’t listen.’
It was a good thing there was someone that would.
Only Clyde wasn’t going to be able to talk to him until school was over. And that was another three hours. Boy, it was tough work saving the human race on a comprehensive school timetable. And Luke had double physics and chemistry this afternoon so Clyde wasn’t even going to be able to tell him what he’d seen until the home bell. By the time it went Clyde was going out of his head with frustration.
He caught up with Luke at the school gates where Luke was chatting to the new girl, Rani. Clyde felt a momentary spike of jealousy — it looked like maybe Luke was getting over Maria pretty fast. But he pushed it aside. There were more important things to deal with.
‘Hi, Clyde,’ said Rani as he joined them.
‘Hi,’ said Clyde. ‘Look, do you mind, Rani? Me and Luke, we’ve got some business to discuss.’ Luke’s brow furrowed. ‘Business?’
‘Yeah. Boys Only Business.’
Luke wasn’t sure that he really knew what Clyde was talking about, but Rani told them that she’d leave them to it, anyway. Clyde thanked her and reassured her it didn’t mean he was giving her the cold shoulder, or anything, and drew Luke across to the opposite side of the road. As they walked he quickly filled Luke in on the clown. And no way was this clown anything you’d find running around a circus ring with a bucket of water.
‘You think it’s an alien?’ Luke asked.
‘We know aliens have kidnapped kids before. Remember Kudlak?’
Neither of them was hardly likely to forget General Kudlak who had been using a laser game centre in town to kidnap kids to fight a war on the other side of the cosmos. Luke and Clyde had both wound up on an Uvodni spaceship run by a computer programmed for war and sent crazy by the concept of peace.
‘Why would an alien be dressed as a clown?’ Luke asked.
It was a fair question, but Clyde had gone through a pretty rough day.
‘So you don’t believe me, either. Thanks a lot, mate.’
Luke reassured him. ‘Of course I believe you. I just don’t understand it.’
Clyde managed a smile, ‘Well there’s a first.’
But the smile didn’t last — out of the corner of his eye he caught a flash of moving red, blue and yellow…
‘There he is!’
Luke spun around, but saw nothing.
‘Come on!’
Clyde was already running. Luke took off after him.
With Clyde just ahead, the two of them hurtled across the streets, dodged down side roads and cut across verges. Luke never saw anything, but Clyde kept catching glimpses of the clown. One moment he would be walking casually across a road, mindless of approaching traffic, the next he would be leaning nonchalantly against a wall. But whenever Clyde looked again, the clown would be gone. It was like chasing smoke.
Then Clyde caught sight of him in an alleyway behind a block of garages.
‘There he is!’ he cried at Luke.
But by the time he looked back the clown had gone again. All that remained was a red balloon floating on a string tied to a drainpipe.
Clyde looked about him as he approached the balloon. There was no point in running any more. There was no clue as to which way the clown might have gone. And the balloon suggested that the clown had decided the game was over.
‘What happened to him?’ Luke asked.
‘Search me,’ Clyde said. ‘But he left this behind.’
And Clyde reached out for the balloon.
A girl cried out, ‘Don’t touch it!’
Both boys spun around to see Rani at the end of the alleyway; she had clearly been running after them.
‘I don’t know why,’ she yelled, running towards them. ‘Just don’t!’
As she reached Clyde and Luke they turned back towards the balloon. BANG!
It burst.
Chapter Five
The revelations of Rani
‘I’ve been seeing it for days. It just keeps : showing up. Always on the other side of the street. Or, like today, at the window in class. Not close-up. A clown dressed in red, blue and yellow.’
They were close to Bannerman Road now. Rani walked with Luke on one said and Clyde on the other. She had told them everything about the clown that had been haunting her and now seemed to have latched on to Clyde.
‘But you haven’t told anyone about it?’ asked Luke. ‘I mean, if you’ve been seeing it all over the place for a week now…’
Rani couldn’t believe what she was hearing. ‘What am I going to say, listen mum and dad, I don’t want to worry you, but I’m seeing clowns that no one else can see?’
He shrugged, ‘Why not?’
‘You want them to get me locked up?’
‘Why would they do that?’
Rani turned from Luke to Clyde, wide-eyed with disbelief. What planet is he from?’
Clyde grinned, he’d been enjoying Luke digging himself a hole with Rani. ‘Oh, Earth. Mostly.’
But Rani wasn’t that impressed with Clyde, either.
‘You’re so funny, Clyde. No wonder the Head Teacher loves you so much.’
Something struck Luke about the way she had said it. Like her tongue had tripped her when she mentioned the new Head. Like she had been about to say something else.
‘Rani,’ Clyde said, ‘whoever this clown is, we’re going to have to leave it to the cops.’
They were in Bannerman Road now, right outside Maria’s old house, and he was thinking about what Sarah Jane had said that morning, and he knew she had been right. If this clown was an alien they were going to have to deal with it without Rani finding out. He caught Luke’s eye, and he backed Clyde up.
‘Clyde’s right. This is nothing to do with us.’
But Rani was having a difficult time controlling her anger. ‘Look, there’s something happening here that doesn’t make everyday sense! Maybe you can ignore it because it doesn’t go with your MP3 player and your designer trainers, but I can’t! I’ve got to know what’s going on!’
Clyde glanced at Luke and said quietly, ‘Oh, Sarah Jane is going to love this one.’
A car drawing up outside her house had caught Rani’s attention. Quickly she looked back at the boys, looking grave. ‘There’s something I’ve got to tell you. Something you ought to know.’
‘You’re from another planet,’ said Clyde. ‘I already guessed.’ The way things went around here, it certainly wouldn’t have surprised him.
At his shoulder, Luke said, ‘Actually, Clyde, it’s worse than that.’
Luke had seen the car pull up, as well. He had seen who was getting
out of it. And now Clyde did, too.
Clyde’s world went into free fall. ‘Oh, no. Rani, tell me there’s a good reason why our new Head just pulled up outside your house that doesn’t include the word dad.’
As Mr Chandra got out of the car and walked towards them Rani tried to quickly explain. ‘Honestly, he’s all right, really. It’s just his job.’
But Clyde was unimpressed — that was what they had said about Doctor Frankenstein!
As Mr Chandra joined the kids, casting a suspicious look at Clyde, the front door of Maria’s old house opened. Rani’s mum came out and headed towards them, all smiles.
‘Haresh!’ she cried at Mr Chandra. ‘Don’t worry, there are still plenty of boxes for you to open. Rani, my darling, how was your first day at school?’ And she smothered Rani in a big hug. ‘Did your dad go all Captain Bligh again?’
Haresh Chandra caught the smile between Luke and Clyde and simmered, ‘I do not go all Captain Bligh.’
But Rani told her mum that he did, just a bit. And introduced Luke and Clyde.
‘Luke Smith,’ Luke told Gita, offering her his hand. ‘Pleased to meet you.’
The name set off a firework inside Haresh’s head. ‘Luke Smith?’
He turned towards Luke, his eyes alight with interest.
‘He’s my son. I’m Sarah Jane Smith.’
Luke saw that his mum had crossed the road to them. Haresh reached out and shook her hand, a smile spreading across his face. It was the sort of thing Clyde had never expected to see. He thought Mr Chandra had the kind of face that only cracked to bark and order.
‘I’ve been looking at Luke’s results for the last year. Very, very impressive.’
Sarah Jane slipped an arm around Luke’s shoulders; it was part pride and part protection. ‘He’s very gifted,’ she said simply.
The trouble with Luke’s intelligence was that it made him stand out. He couldn’t help it. And the last thing that Sarah Jane needed was for that to attract too much attention. Some questions about Luke would be difficult to answer.
‘Sarah’s a journalist,’ Gita told Rani.
Rani’s face lit up with excitement. ‘For real? That’s fantastic! I’m really interested in being a reporter when I leave school, Sarah Jane. Maybe I can come over some time?’
Sarah Jane smiled tightly. If there was any chance at all that Rani Chandra had the makings of a journalist — and from what Gita had said earlier, she did — then the last place Sarah Jane wanted her was on her side of Bannerman Road.
‘Well,’ she said bluntly, ‘I am rather busy.’
Then Sarah Jane hated herself a little when she saw the disappointment in Rani’s eyes.
Clyde, meanwhile, was feeling robbed of the spotlight.
‘And I’m Clyde Langer,’ he told Gita. ‘The joker in the pack. Apparently.’
Clyde enjoyed Mr Chandra’s discomfort.
‘Oh, and I see clowns that don’t exist.’
Haresh Chandra gave Clyde a look that fried and announced that he was hungry and that, if Sarah Jane would excuse them, his family had a busy evening ahead of them.
Sarah Jane understood, of course, and wished them well in Bannerman Road. Then, as the Chandras headed inside their new home, Sarah Jane crossed back to her big house on the other side of the road with Luke and Clyde. As they went, Rani looked back and saw that all three were instantly wrapped up in some intense conversation.
‘Rani!’ Gita was calling. ‘Come and see your new room!’
Rani smiled, for the moment any worries about strange clowns pushed aside by the thrill of the move into a new home.
The Chandras were from Nottingham originally Both her father’s and mother’s parents had settled there back in the sixties when they moved to England from India. Rani had always thought how brave they had been. England must have seemed so strange and she knew that not everyone had welcomed them. But the Chandras and her mother’s family, the Vermas, had settled well in Nottingham and had flourished. Their families had since spread across the country. Rani had lived in London since she was ten. They had moved down there when Haresh got a job as the head of the history department at a school in Camden. The opportunity to take over the vacancy left by Mr Blakeman’s sudden disappearance at Park Vale had been too good for Haresh to pass on. And so they had moved to Bannerman Road.
Now Rani stood in her new bedroom that was filled with unopened boxes, and tried to imagine what her life was going to be like here.
Downstairs she heard her mum call up, ‘Coffee!’
Rani made her way down to the kitchen and found her mum and dad discussing Dave Finn’s disappearance. Haresh might not have been convinced by Clyde’s story, but he had cared enough to look hard and make some phone calls — all of which had confirmed that Finney was nowhere to be found. Maybe a clown hadn’t taken him, but he had vanished without trace.
Haresh had brought a plastic bag in with him from the car. Inside it he had Finney’s schoolbooks.
‘The police want to look at them,’ he explained. ‘There’s a chance that something was worrying the boy and he’s run away. Kids sometimes write things down. There might be some sort of a clue here.’
Rani glanced across at the books over the top of her coffee cup and wondered, if there was a clue in them would the police even be able to recognise it? The police were the last people likely to understand just how weird things were around here.
Gita shuddered as she thought about the disappearances. She pushed her worries aside with the more immediate concern for where they were going to sleep that night. The removal men hadn’t listened to a word she had said about where she wanted the bed. They had put it up against the bathroom wall, and there was no way she was sleeping like that tonight — it was such bad Feng Shui! She harried her husband out of the kitchen and up the stairs to fix things.
And as the door closed behind them, Rani fell on Dave Finn’s books.
If there was a clue in them she knew that she would spot it. Because Rani knew what she was looking for.
She found the first drawing of the clown at the back of his English Lit book. Finney’s drawing was good. In a nightmarish way. Rani recognised the clown straight away.
There were other pictures. She found them as she hurriedly flicked through Finney’s other books. Each one sketched with intensity, each one more frightening than the last. The clown with the balloon. The clown smiling with rotting teeth. The clown reaching towards her. There was no question; the same thing that had haunted Dave Finn was stalking her. And that could only mean one thing.
She pushed herself back from the kitchen table where she had the books spread out before her. And she saw the clown staring in at her from the window.
Its grease-paint face was pressed up against the glass, its red nose squashed. Its strange silver eyes danced with a malevolent delight.
‘No,’ Rani gasped. ‘You’re not there!’
She closed her eyes tight, willing the thing away, knowing that when she opened them again it would be gone — just as it always was, like the memory of a nightmare.
But the clown hadn’t gone. It was in the kitchen now. It was right by the table leaning towards her, grinning, holding out a red balloon.
Rani tried to cry out, but all that escaped was a breath that felt for the world like her last.
Then the kitchen door flew open behind her.
It was Gita. ‘Rani, you’ve got a visitor!’
Rani swung around to see her mum with Luke.
The clown had vanished.
She looked back at Luke; she thought that she had never been so happy to see anyone in her whole life.
Chapter Six
Spellman’s magical museum
‘Of course Mr Chandra was never going to believe you, Clyde. Nor would the police,’ said Sarah Jane.
Clyde had started filling her in on the day’s events the moment they started to cross Bannerman Road, and as soon as Rani was out of earshot. Sarah Jane had led them straig
ht to the attic.
The attic in Clyde’s house was little more than a dusty cupboard packed with junk; Sarah Jane’s attic was something all together different. This was where she worked and there was a desk with a computer at which she wrote her newspaper stories; this was also the place in which she sometimes saved the world, and built into the wall was another kind of computer entirely.
‘Children don’t vanish out of closed rooms. It’s impossible,’ she said. ‘As far as people like the police and Mr Chandra are concerned.’
Unlike the police or Mr Chandra, Sarah Jane believed Clyde’s story immediately. She had, after all, seen many things that few others would have believed.
Yet there were still things that Clyde didn’t understand about what he had seen. ‘If it’s an alien that’s taking these kids, a clown disguise isn’t exactly low profile, is it?’
‘But it might know that kids are supposed to like clowns,’ suggested Luke.
Sarah Jane shivered. She felt old memories surfacing. Memories that she didn’t need.
‘Personally, clowns always gave me nightmares,’ she said.
‘Coulrophobia,’ Luke chipped in. ‘It’s the fear of clowns. Johnny Depp has it.’
Clyde was used to being gob-smacked by Luke’s knowledge, but sometimes…
‘What encyclopaedia did you find that in?’ he asked, looking at Luke in amazement.
Luke beamed. ‘Heat.’
Clyde rolled his eyes. Sarah Jane was already planning what they had to do next. Obviously Dave Finn’s parents were going to be too busy with the police right now to talk to them. Maybe one of Finney’s friends would be a good place to start piecing things together.
It was a Monday. That meant training for the school football team, Clyde told her. Finney’s best mate was a kid called Steve Wallace who had scored Park Vale’s only goal during last week’s exit match from the school championships.
Sarah Jane grabbed her coat, eager to collar Steve Wallace before the end of football practice.
What about Rani?’ asked Luke.
‘I don’t want her involved,’ said Sarah Jane.
