by Phil Ford
And then one night there was a thunderstorm.
Lightning outside the window blasted young Sarah Jane from her sleep. Startled awake, she lay with her ears pounded by the crash of thunder.
Then her eyes found the clown hanging from its strings in the corner, light from the storm outside playing across it.
And Sarah Jane saw its head turn towards her.
And as the thunder struck again she saw it straining against the strings that held it, reaching for her, trying to get at her.
Five-year-old Sarah Jane screamed and screamed.
‘I screamed the house down,’ Sarah Jane said as she sat on the sofa next to Luke. She smiled when she said it, but she didn’t feel like smiling.
‘Aunt Lavinia told me not to be so silly. It was a puppet. It was a trick of the light in the storm. And perhaps it was.’
Luke took her hand and squeezed it.
Sarah Jane felt tears in her eyes. ‘It was the first time that I ever cried out for my parents.’
Luke could only imagine how that could feel. Sarah Jane may have not given birth to him, but she was all the parent he could ever want. And it was okay for her to get scared once in a while.
Sarah Jane kissed him. She had always believed that an awful lot of Aunt Lavinia had rubbed off on her. Her pragmatism, certainly, and her curiosity and determination as well. And, she had once thought, her attitude towards children. Sarah Jane had once believed she had much more important things to fill her life than children. Luke had shown her just how unlike Aunt Lavinia she truly was. He was the first person other than her aunt that she had told about the clown puppet and she was glad that he was there for her to do so.
The next morning, as she drove out to the Pharos Institute, she felt that telling Luke about the puppet had actually done her good. She had been sure that the encounter with Odd Bob and the animated clown mannequins would bring nightmares of that thunder-struck childhood night to the surface — but she had slept well. And there was nothing like a good night’s sleep for going into battle with aliens.
As she left the car and walked up the steps to the doors of the institute she felt good. The feeling lasted all the way up to the polished metal sign that bore its name. That was where she saw Odd Bob’s face reflected among the lettering.
Sarah Jane spun around, her nerves instantly drawn tripwire-tight. But there was no sign of the clown.
Sarah Jane shivered in the sunlight and went through the institute’s doors. She found Celeste Rivers coming towards her on high heels with a broad smile and an extended hand.
‘Miss Smith. So good to see you again,’ said Professor Rivers.
The scientist’s smile helped Sarah Jane push aside that vision of Odd Bob. Maybe the clown was lurking somewhere, maybe it knew what she was up to. Sarah Jane told herself that it didn’t matter — neither Odd Bob, nor Elijah Spellman, or the Pied Piper himself — was going to stop her.
Professor Rivers led Sarah Jane through the institute explaining that the meteorite that had fallen in the Weserbergland Mountains in the 13th Century had been loaned to Pharos by Munich University
‘Do you know if it’s been out of Germany before?’ asked Sarah Jane.
‘I believe the Americans had it for a time back in the thirties,’ said Professor Rivers.
So Luke had been right: Odd Bob had come with the meteor, and had taken children in the States whilst it had been studied there.
Professor Rivers led Sarah Jane into a small laboratory where the meteorite stood on a perspex plinth.
‘We’ve been using the meteorite in experiments in remote viewing with our psychics. Seeing if they can pick up any images of its origin.’
‘Oh?’ said Sarah Jane. ‘With what sort of results?’
‘None,’ said Professor Rivers flatly. ‘None of our psychics will come anywhere near it.’
Sarah Jane raised an eyebrow. She wasn’t entirely surprised.
Professor Rivers drew her voice down to little more than a whisper, as if the space rock might hear her. ‘It’s not dangerous, is it?’
‘On the contrary, Professor Rivers, I hope it can help end something that is.’
The scientist thought it might be better if perhaps she wasn’t there while Sarah Jane took her sample from the meteorite. It was, after all, highly irregular. Sarah Jane waited for her to leave and took out the sonic lipstick.
She had promised Professor Rivers that she would hardly notice the difference when she took her sample and Sarah Jane took care in carving off only as much of the space rock as she needed for Mr Smith’s analysis. The sonic lipstick sculpted a slice off the meteorite as easily as a knife cutting through butter.
It was then that she heard Spellmans voice. ‘What are you doing, Miss Smith?’
Sarah Jane found the ringmaster leaning over her like an inquisitive student. She leaped back in surprise and Spellman’s smile grew.
‘I didn’t mean to frighten you.’
And as if to emphasise just how much of a lie that was, Spellman transformed into the clown before her eyes.
Frightening her was exactly what Spellman wanted to do. But she was determined that he wasn’t going to succeed.
‘I’m going to find out what you are, Odd Bob,’
she growled. ‘We’re only scared of what we don’t understand. When I know where you come from — what you really are — I will stop you!’
Odd Bob’s painted face split into something that looked like a smile but felt like a snarl. ‘Is that what you think?’
He took a step towards her, and Sarah Jane couldn’t help but shrink back.
‘Just suppose there isn’t anything to be understood? Suppose I am beyond understanding?’ Sarah Jane felt the palms of her hands turning wet, her throat going dry. Odd Bob took another step towards her, but Sarah Jane refused to move back another foot. She stood there and faced him, and he grinned at her, just inches from her face, his strange silvery eyes boring into hers.
‘Suppose, as the thunder crashed and the lightning flashed, your aunt’s clown really did come to life?’
Sarah Jane’s eyes widened with horror, ‘How could you know that?’
But Odd Bob only smiled, delighting in her horror.
‘It was a trick of the light,’ she gasped.
And then Odd Bob was Spellman again. Then why are you still so scared?’
Sarah Janes jaw tightened with determination. ‘I know what you’re trying to do. You need people to be frightened of you. That’s why you take the children. It’s the thing that scares us most, the thing it’s almost impossible to understand.’
Spellman’s eyes turned hard as flint. ‘And today just for you, Miss Smith, I will chill the blood of a nation. A thousand families will ache with loss and millions will shudder, sleepless with a bone-gnawing fear.’
Sarah Jane yelled at Spellman, ‘What are you going to do?’
Behind her the door opened — it was Professor Rivers.
‘Are you finished, Miss Smith?’
And Spellman had vanished as if he had never been there.
But he had been there, and he was preparing to do something terrible. The question was, what? And could she stop him?
Chapter Ten
Red balloons
‘The meteorite originated in the Jeggorabax Cluster,’ said Mr Smith.
After her confrontation with Spellman and Odd Bob, Sarah Jane had rushed home and straight into the attic. Minutes later Mr Smith had analysed the fragment of meteorite.
‘The Jeggorabax Cluster? I’ve never heard of it.’
Sarah Jane was alone in the attic; Luke, Clyde and Rani were at school.
Mr Smiths said, ‘It is a dark nebula on the cusp of the Zeta-Vordak System. Largely unexplored. If I might speak in the modern idiom?’
‘If you must.’
The Jeggorabax Cluster is in the back end of nowhere. In terms of cosmological reference. There are legends about the Jeggorabax Cluster. Unsubstantiated stories from the few
craft that have passed through it and survived. Stories of energy entities created by emotion. Particularly fear.’
Sarah Jane absorbed this with interest, sensing that the pieces of the puzzle were falling into place.
‘And this energy came here in a meteor that fell near Hamelin where people were terrified by a plague of rats. And their fear manifested as the Pied Piper. Is that possible?’
‘Apparently’ said Mr Smith. ‘And once manifested the entity required more fear for its survival.’
Sarah Jane grasped what Mr Smith was saying with a chilling horror. ‘It took the children. To create fear. And has been doing the same thing ever since.’
That was when Sarah Jane’s phone went. She grabbed it.
Luke.
‘Mum! I think you’d better get down here!’
It had been break time at Park Vale when the first balloon drifted by.
Luke had been with Clyde and Rani in the playground. It seemed like Rani was coming to terms with the concept of aliens in Ealing, just not with how. And that despite that, life carried on pretty much as always.
‘I can’t believe we’re at school with Odd Bob and Spellman still out there,’ she complained.
‘Welcome to our world,’ Clyde grinned. ‘We’re the Fearless Alien Hunters, Defenders of Earth — but everything stops for the school bell. Tell me about it!’
But Rani had other things on her mind right now — the red balloon on a string that she had just seen floating by.
‘He’s here! The balloon — it’s Odd Bob! He’s here’
Clyde and Luke spun around as Rani pointed — and suddenly there wasn’t just one balloon, there were hundreds, drifting in the breeze across the school playground. Other kids had seen them now, and were reaching for the balloons, laughing, jumping and grabbing. But the laughter died as each child took hold of a balloon’s string. Their faces froze like masks, and together they started to move.
‘It’s as if the balloons are taking control of them,’ said Luke.
And as a single body, every kid in the school started to move towards and through the school gates.
‘He’s leading them away,’ Rani cried. ‘Like the Pied Piper.’
A thousand children being led away.
‘Come on,’ Clyde called. ‘We have to try and stop them.’
They went after the kids into the streets beyond Park Vale, and found themselves swept along in the mass exodus of pupils. Clyde and the others yelled at the blank-faced kids holding the balloons, but none listened. They tried to get in their way, but they walked around them. They tried to hold them back, but they shrugged off their hands. Nothing was going to stop them as they surged along the streets of Ealing — and Luke, Clyde and Rani knew exactly where they were heading.
That’s when Luke made his call to Sarah Jane.
They’re heading for the circus museum,’ she said as she took his call in the attic and listened to what had happened.
This had to be what Spellman had been talking about in the Pharos laboratory — he was going to make the whole school vanish.
‘Luke, whatever you do, don’t follow them into the museum,’ she said. ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can.’
She ended the call and turned to leave, but looked at the mobile phone in her hand — she turned back to Mr Smith: she had a job for him.
It didn’t take her long to tell the computer what she needed him to do, and ten minutes later she was parking her car outside Spellman’s Magical Museum of the Circus as, ahead of her, a sea of schoolchildren headed towards the museum, each clutching a red balloon that swayed in the air above them. She saw Luke, Clyde and Rani running towards her.
‘We tried to turn them back, but they just won’t listen,’ Rani told her.
‘Spellman is controlling them like he did the clown mannequins,’ Sarah Jane explained. ‘He’s going to draw them into the museum and they’ll disappear like the others.’
‘Why?’ Clyde demanded. Why is he doing it?’
‘It isn’t the children he’s interested in — it’s the fear that their disappearance causes. Spellman is an energy entity that feeds on fear.’
As she spoke Spellman stepped through the museum doors, holding his top hat aloft, calling out to the advancing kids.
‘Roll up! Roll up! Welcome to Spellman’s Magical Museum of the Circus! There’s nowhere like it on Earth — or anywhere else! Just step this way!’
But Sarah Jane stepped between him and the sea of enchanted schoolchildren.
‘I don’t think so, Mr Spellman.’
He regarded her with cold eyes. I don’t think you have any say in the matter, Miss Smith.’
Sarah Jane held his gaze, and took out her mobile. ‘Perhaps I should call a friend.’
Around them the air was suddenly alive with ring tones. Pop tunes, theme tunes, crazy noises. The street crackled with them. And the kids started letting go of the balloons, and answering their phones, Spellman’s control over them broken the same way Rani’s phone had broken his control the day before.
‘It’s Mr Smith,’ Tuke grinned. ‘He’s scanned the school records and rung every pupil!’
And as the phones rang, the kids looked around them confused, and began to move off.
Spellman watched with a face turning dark with rage. ‘You meddle with me at your cost, Sarah Jane Smith.’
Sarah Jane enjoyed what she was seeing. ‘I’m not scared of you, or Odd Bob. I know what you are. You’re an energy entity from the Jeggorabax Cluster. You’re the manifestation of a billion moments of fear across seven hundred years. And the scarefest is over — right now!’
Spellman regarded her; his rage had passed and was now replaced with a reptilian cold. ‘You think you have conquered your fear, Miss Smith? I will show you fear.’
And Spellman slid backwards through the museum doors, which slammed behind him.
Clyde looked at Rani and Luke and grinned. ‘Sounds like a bad loser to me!’
Rani smiled and looked at the kids, they were all moving off now, heading back to school. Spellman had lost.
But instinct told Sarah Jane that Spellman was far from done yet, and when she looked around she felt the blood squeezed out of her heart…
Luke! Where was Luke?
Clyde spun around as Sarah Jane cried out Luke’s name.
‘He was right next to me!’
But Luke wasn’t there any more.
Luke had vanished.
Sarah Jane felt a wave of nausea surge through her. She had to reach for the wall of the museum to stop herself from falling.
Spellman had Luke. She didn’t know how, it didn’t matter. She had no doubt. Spellman had taken her son.
Clyde knew it, too, and he was heading for the museum doors, his head down and his face angry. ‘No, I’m not having this!’
Sarah Jane caught his arm, ‘No Clyde, stay here. You too Rani. I’m going after him on my own.’
‘No way,’ Clyde protested. ‘We’re going to help you.’
But Sarah Jane’s voice flared, ‘I’m not going to risk losing both of you, as well. Now, stay here!’ And she walked through the museum doors. As she did so, she turned, the sonic lipstick in her hands, and locked the doors after her. Clyde and Rani tugged on the doors from the outside, but it was hopeless — Sarah Jane had locked them out.
Chapter Eleven
The day of the clown
Sarah Jane moved slowly through the circus museum, the sonic lipstick held before her. She willed her hands not to shake.
Beside her the mechanical clown in the glass case started to laugh, hyena-like. Sarah Jane spun around and saw it was just the fairground toy. She zapped it with the sonic anyway, and the museum fell into silence.
‘Spellman?’ she yelled into the silence. ‘I’ve come for my son!’
There was no answer from the museum. Sarah Jane moved on deeper into the museum, passing cautiously between a couple of clown mannequins.
They didn’t move, but
she couldn’t shake the idea that they were watching her.
Through a darkened doorway she suddenly caught movement — it was Luke. It looked as if he was at the far end of another passageway, hammering at a glass wall. He was calling her, but there was no sound.
Sarah Jane ran through the doorway, towards him.
He vanished.
And she found herself surrounded by distorted reflections of herself.
A hall of mirrors.
She spun around, searching for the way she had come in, but all around her seemed to be mirror-lined corridors, all reflecting back weirdly distorted images of herself. Going on instinct, she chose one of the passageways and followed it.
And, ahead of her, there was Odd Bob — his head the size of a tractor tyre, his body thin as a lamp post with no legs, just huge feet.
Another reflection.
The chamber was filled with wild laughter, and then Odd Bob’s reflection slipped away.
Sarah Jane spun around, disoriented by the laughter and the mirrors. She screamed into the air, defiant, ‘I’m not scared of you!’
Spellman’s voice echoed through the hall of mirrors, ‘Oh, but I think you are, Miss Smith.’
‘If you’ve hurt my son, Spellman, I will destroy you!’
Spellman chuckled, ‘The fear of a mother for her young. The strongest fear of all.’
And Sarah Jane had had enough. ‘You had better believe it!’
She aimed the sonic at the nearest mirror, and gave it full power. The mirror shattered into dust. Behind it was a doorway — and Sarah Jane strode through it, ready for battle.
As she did so, Clyde and Rani were in an alleyway at the back of the museum. They had found a half-open window, but Rani was going to need a boost off Clyde if they were going to get through it and help Sarah Jane.
Only Clyde wasn’t so sure about Rani going in there. ‘Maybe you should stay here. It’s going to be dangerous.’
