The Oeuvre

by Greg James

  The other Emma was still in the box and Emma felt like she couldn’t breathe but the pain in her hands and arms anchored her. She was sitting on this chair next to Mum. She wasn’t in the box and couldn’t be. The third clown brought out a saw, which it flexed in the air so everyone could see its teeth and how big it was. The red wound of the smile on its face was what Emma hated most of all. This one looked like it was enjoying itself far too much. The first and second clowns bowed to the third and moved away from the box, turned to the crowd, and raised their hands in the air. The fingers began to count down in time with shouts from the crowd.

  Five ... four ... three ... two ... one ...

  The third began to saw through the box. The crowd hushed and the only sound Emma could hear and feel was the serrated teeth passing back and forth through the wood of the box. She waited, aching inside, for the sound to change as the saw bit into flesh and bone. She waited for screams. She waited for the other Emma to die. The sacrifice made to these painted things which laughed at pain and danced after death.

  Come on, come on, come on.

  There was no change in the sound of the saw. There was no blood in the sawdust of the circus ring. The act ended. The box opened. The other Emma was okay. Everyone cheered and applauded, except Emma – because she knew the truth. The clowns were hiding in plain sight; showing everyone what they wanted to do to her.

  One day, she thought, they’ll do it. They’ll come after me.

  They won’t be able to stop themselves.

  The sacrifice will be made.

  Chapter Three

  Emma looked down at the dead man and knew she couldn’t leave him like this. He wasn’t a clown anymore. He wasn’t anything anymore. She dialled 999 on her phone.

  “Which emergency service please?”

  “Ambulance ... police ... both!”

  “Which emergency service please?”

  “Police ... just police.”

  “Thank you, putting you through now.”

  There was a pause and a click on the line.

  “Hello, where are you calling from?”

  I just killed a man.

  “Hello, what is the nature of the emergency?”

  It was an accident.

  “Is anyone hurt or injured?”

  “He’s dead ...” Emma whispered, “he’s just dead ...”

  She turned away from the body. She couldn’t look at it.

  “Hello? Where are you? Are you hurt?”

  Emma hung up. She didn’t know why. The words were numb in her mouth.

  He’s dead. It was an accident. I killed him. I didn’t mean to.

  “Shit, shit, shit.”

  She’d ruined everything, made things much worse rather than better. The path ahead was suddenly dark and certain; questions, cold rooms, no answers, hard faces, arrest, court, prison – and yet more punishment. She wasn’t sure she could handle more.

  No more please.

  Emma turned around and saw the evening rain was falling on a bare patch of soil and leaves. The body was gone. She leaned forward and looked at the stone, which had been thickly stained with blood. It was clean – or had it been clean all along?

  Had he been there?

  “Am I seeing things?”

  After the words were said, she smiled. A genuine, pure smile.

  He’s not dead. Whatever happened, there’s no dead body here. I’m okay. We’re going to be okay.

  “Everything’s okay. Mummy’s going to be okay.” Emma said to Jacob and Liam. She knew that they couldn’t hear her but some things needed to be said out loud. Emma began to walk home, wincing at shooting pains in her leg. There was some wine in the fridge. She’d have a glass, maybe two, when she got back then go to bed, sleep it off, and start again tomorrow.

  *

  Evening was turning to night, making the world a duller place as Emma went on her way. She ignored the language of the leaves as her feet disturbed them and sang her own private, wordless songs over the sound of the wind. She paid no mind to the heavier fall of the rain; and how it sounded like careful footsteps being made amongst the trees. Home wasn’t far away, nearly there now.

  A white shape moved amongst the trees ahead. Emma ignored it. She kept her thoughts on home and the wine waiting for her. The white shape was not something she welcomed as she seemed to see it passing from tree to tree. Someone’s washing, it must be. A bedsheet blown away by the wind, caught up in the branches and flapping about a bit, that’s all. It fell onto the path before her and lay there; crumpled, torn, and obstructing the way. Emma made to walk around it.

  The white shape bulged upright. Small hands reached out of it, snatching at her. Emma pulled away. The hands cast off the white shape, which was a dirty sheet, and there was a boy standing there. His face was scratched and his blonde hair was ragged.

  “Jake?”

  Could it be him?

  Pale-faced and dressed in a minute clown suit of red, blue and white stripes. No, he was with Grandma and Grandad and this boy was different somehow. His little face was painted with black cross-hatched eyes and his lips were painted blue as frostbite – except Emma felt certain that if she touched his face, tried to wipe the make-up away, she would find it was one with his skin. This couldn’t be Jacob.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked, refusing to say his name.

  She edged closer to him as she spoke, wanting this boy to be someone else. She had to see him up close without the obscuring shadows of twilight. She had to know.

  “Mummy?”

  It was his voice. No, it couldn’t be. His eyes didn’t blink as he looked at her and he was standing very still. Jacob blinked a lot and fidgeted too.

  “They’re coming for you, Mummy.”

  “Who are? Who’s coming?”

  It looked like him. It sounded like him.

  “They’re coming for you, Mummy. It’s time for it to happen.”

  “Time for what?”

  “The sacrifice, Mummy. It has to be tonight.”

  He was close enough to touch. She had to touch him and know.

  “You can’t run from them, Mummy, because they’re bad things and bad things always come back.” He smiled as he said this. It was the smile of a clown not her little boy. Emma reached out. Her fingers fastened on the clown suit and she pulled hard at it – and he was gone. Sticks tied into little bundles fell to the ground. A paper-plate mask rolled into the bushes. The clown suit hung empty in her hands. Emma threw the thing away then went and stamped on it with her foot.

  Good foot. Bad leg. More pain. Shit.

  Emma ground the small clown suit into the dirt and then looked around. There were no more shape moving in the trees. She took out her phone and dialled. Rain fell on the smartphone screen, making it slip under her fingers as the numbers blurred. There wasn’t much of evening left and she wasn’t out of the woods yet but she had to do this now. She had to know. The line rang, rang and rang.

  Grandma picked up.

  “Hi, Rose. Is Jakey there? Is he okay?”

  “Of course, he is,” came the reply, “He’s fine, dear.”

  “Have they been watching films?” she had to say something, make the call sound normal.

  “Oh yes, quite a few today. The weather here’s taken a turn for the worst so no playing outside.”

  “What’ve they been watching?”

  “Old stuff with Grandad. Something with clowns, I think. You want me to put them on?”

  “No, it’s okay. It’s nothing, just ... nothing, nothing. Don’t worry. I was just being ... silly. I missed them.”

  “Ah, don’t you worry yourself about missing them. It’s fine, dear. Happened to me when I was your age, back when your Mum was a babe. We’re taking good care of them. You just have yourself a nice time on your own and you’ll see them soon.”

  “Yeah, I will. I’ll try to. Thanks, Rose.”

  “You take care now, love.”

  “You too, Rose.”

>   “You take care, dear. G’night.”

  Grandma hung up, leaving Emma standing in the woods and wondering what she was going to do. She hadn’t asked Rose to call the police. She should have done. Something was up here. He could still be out there; the man in the clown-suit, wanting revenge.

  They’re coming, Mummy.

  She dialled 999 once more.

  This time, the line was dead.

  Chapter Four

  Emma tried to sleep after she saw the clowns at the circus but couldn’t. She was too big for a night-light and she wouldn’t have asked for one anyway. She had to be brave and not let the clowns scare her. The house around her was asleep and, like the comfort of an ageing relative, it sighed and moaned as it settled. Like an old tree in autumn, it creaked itself steadily to rest. The clock beside the bed told Emma it was almost three o’clock. Mum had told her stories about this time of night; it was the witching hour when the scary things were at their strongest.

  There were eyes watching her. She could feel them. They were touching her – how could watching eyes touch though? They could because they could; the feeling of being looked at until it’s like fingers touching your skin.

  There were always eyes watching her in the house. Mum collected porcelain dolls and they could be found in every room. Wherever there was a space, Mum put a doll. They watched the days and nights pass by with their unseeing eyes, half-smiling as if they knew something blackly amusing.

  Nights when she needed to get up to pee were the worst ones for Emma. The toilet was downstairs under the stairs which meant leaving her room and having to face the dolls. At this time of night, when the house was buried in shadows, few of the dolls could be seen clearly but she knew they were there; on the bookshelves, in corners, behind the closed doors, peeping out through curtains. As she padded barefoot through the house, a polished profile might come into view, a round, white face could find its way out of the dimness, or a spotless hand would reach out for her with its moulded fingers. Emma hurried past them all; her breath, heart and footsteps all beating in time. The house was not her house after dark, it was their house and, perhaps, that was why they smiled the way they did – and tonight was a night when she had to pee.

  The dolls were waiting but she knew if she were quick then she’d not be too scared. Taking a deep breath, Emma threw back the bedcovers and fumbled at the floor with her toes for a moment as the uneasiness of half-sleep retreated. The door of her room looked like it was made from the same porcelain as the dolls with the light of moon on it. The handle felt as cold as porcelain as well when Emma touched it and turned it around until she heard the click.

  There was a creak like footsteps and a sigh like someone’s breath as she opened the bedroom door. Emma decided she had made the sounds. Dolls didn’t move or breathe, they only watched – and that was enough. She closed the door behind her and saw the hallway before her as a tunnel cut from night-loam. Dismembered light was scattered across the floor; having passed through curtains, seeped through window-cracks, and crept around doors. Emma could see only pieces of the house as she knew it by day and, as she heard the house settle itself earlier, she was sure that now she could hear sounds of something else waking up. The dolls, of course. She knew they were there, but could there also be something even the dolls were afraid of?

  Emma padded through the stuttering dark-light, light-dark of the hallway until she reached the top of the stairs and began to make her way down. She took one step at a time, holding onto the bannister with both hands. She was big enough to use one but the house made her feel small at this time of night so she descended like a child half her age. Shadows fell across the stairs in ways that argued and conflicted, and she could never tell if one of them wasn’t going to reach out and give her a push; a little push by a cold, little hand shaped from porcelain.

  She reached the bottom of the stairs and turned, as always, to look back up the stairs. Vertigo washed over her as the top of the stairs looked like a mouth of swallowing darkness. She looked away from it.

  Emma padded around to the toilet under the stairs, opened the door, and reached for the cord to turn on the light. She pulled the cord and the light came on. The bulb cracked and the light went out. In the moment where there was light, Emma saw something was there. It had been one of Mum’s dolls with a smooth face, glassy eyes and wry smile but dressed up as one of the clowns from the circus. Mum had said they were called Pierrot – but there were no dolls in the house that looked like those clowns.

  And its eyes had been made of something which was not glass.

  Emma reached out to slam the toilet door shut but a shape came at her in the dark; a puppet lunging forward on its loose yet unforgiving strings. She heard the thump-thump of small, hard feet. She felt cold porcelain touching her cold skin. Emma screamed. Her bravery was gone – a collapsed shrunken and powerless thing. Utterly spent. Her voice filled the void of the house until she felt empty herself.

  Lights came on and washed away the shadows as Mum, awake, came pounding down the stairs and wrapped the girl Emma had been up in her arms. She buried herself deep in Mum’s embrace; drinking in the scent of rose perfume and stale cigarettes.

  Eventually, she calmed down and Mum let her go but, before going back up the overlit stairs to bed, Emma turned to look for the clown doll. It wasn’t there – though there were small, faint impressions in the carpet which could’ve been footprints. They would be gone by morning but, wherever he’d gone, he’d be coming back for her, one day.

  Chapter Five

  Emma followed the path into the dark of the woods, using her phone’s screen-light as a make-shift torch. She hadn’t tried calling anyone else. Whoever picked up, she had a feeling that she wouldn’t like what she heard. It was cold in the woods. The rain had eased but the tangle of trees seemed like it was in on whatever was happening as it was not letting her go. Her trainers were soaked through and her socks squelched unpleasantly with each step. Home was nowhere in sight, only the black of the trees cast against the black of night lay before her. Her bad leg ached from the cold and, for the hundredth time, she thought about how she’d like the surgeon who’d done this to her to die slowly. I just want to go home, Emma thought miserably as she slogged onwards, why can’t I find my way?

  There!

  A light in the trees, burning softly. She began to jog towards it, praying for a pub or something similar by the motorway. She could orient herself then and find her way home. Her leg complained of the jogging after a short while and she dropped back to a brisk walking pace. The light passed back and forth between the trees as she came closer to it. Thankfully, it didn’t dim, go out, or become lost in the bracken. It led her out into another open part of the woods and she saw the last remains of a church standing before her.

  The light burned from inside a singular window of a half-fallen wall like a watchful eye. Its glow made the shadows lengthen and draw themselves in around her like long fingers sifting through the undergrowth. She could hear voices inside the ruin; low and sonorous. She moved carefully so as not to be heard, not trusting whoever might be out in the woods at this hour. Today had not been a good day for meeting strangers.

  Emma drew closer to the light and saw a cluster of figures gathered in the church’s broken heart. She caught glimpses as the light played over them and felt her mouth dry up altogether. There were beggar clowns, derelict harlequins, and haggard mimes standing in a shuffling, uneven circle. They swayed as the clown she’d met in the clearing had swayed though this time the words they were chanting explained the rhythm.

  “Ekkeri, akai-ri, u kair-an! Fillissin, follasy, nakelas ja'n!”

  She had no idea what the words meant, but the solemn tone of the clowns’ voices suggested ritual.

  The sacrifice will be made.

  As Emma watched through the church’s remaining window, she saw a clown emerge from the gloom, leading a much smaller figure by the hand. The clown was unlike the others; neat and clean with a sp
otless, alabaster face. Each eye was marked by a single black teardrop painted beneath and his rouge lips were a livid wound, like the third clown she had seen at the circus on that day so many years ago.

  Was this creature her Pierrot?

  The smaller figure was a young boy. He was nude and must’ve been about Liam’s age. His hair was the same tousled mess. The boy’s face was turned away from her. Some part of her wanted to cry out Liam’s name but she she stayed where she was. She felt her fingers clenching as she watched the scene unfold. The fingernails digging into her palms until she could feel them pressing on tendon and bone.

  The Pierrot led the child towards the gathering of clowns. They parted and Emma saw the altar which had been concealed by their bodies before. It was crude and henge-like with four uncarved rocks supporting an altar stone partially-cracked lengthways. The Pierrot directed the boy to the altar. Emma could see the boy’s skinny, bare legs trembling as he climbed gingerly onto the cold stone.

  The chanting of the clowns intensified.

  “Ekkeri, akai-ri, u kair-an! Ekkeri, akai-ri, u kair-an!”

  The Pierrot snapped his gloved fingers at the gathering of clowns and four of his kin came forward. Each of the four took a wrist or ankle so that the boy was spread-eagle on the altar. The boy was quiet and Emma wondered why; what'd been done to make him so acquiescent to the Pierrot’s will? She decided that she didn’t want to know.

  The Pierrot clapped his hands together and the chanting of the clowns ceased. He stood behind the altar and made a sweeping gesture towards the pinioned boy, “Chiv o manzin apre lati!”

  The clowns surged towards the altar as a murmuring mass with their hands outstretched. From where she was, Emma could see over the heads of the gathering so the altar was not obscured as they clustered around it but what she saw made her wish she had not. The fingers of the clowns went roaming over the boy’s torso like pale, dirty spiders. The way they touched his small body, the way they stroked, fondled, and pinched at his skin made her feel sick. She could see the boy’s face and it was not Liam. A part of her which she might have hated was grateful.