by Tim McBain
A scraping, grating sound startled her from her thoughts. It sounded like metal being dragged over concrete or brick and came from somewhere behind her.
She did not stop walking. When you heard strange sounds in the city, it was best to keep moving. Especially if you were a girl.
She tried to speed up her pace without being obvious.
A low brick building ran along the street to her left. Mismatched blobs of brick-colored paint adorned the walls. Evidence of many attempts at covering graffiti. It gave the building a patchwork appearance.
When she came to the narrow alley at the edge of the building, she heard it again. That scraping sound. But this time, it came from down the alleyway. That wasn't right. The noise had definitely come from behind her before. It didn't make sense unless... unless someone was following her.
Her eyes strayed past a line of weeds growing from a crack in the pavement. The orange glow of the streetlights did not penetrate the darkness between the two buildings, and she squinted into the gloom.
It stepped out from the shadows, as if propelled forward by her gaze.
It was a clown.
She stopped, her feet suddenly rooted to the sidewalk as if she were one of the rogue dandelions sprouting up from the concrete.
The red and yellow outfit, painted face, and tufts of brightly colored hair might be cheery and fun to some people, but not Chloe.
Chloe hated clowns.
And then the metallic screech came again, and her eyes fell to the clown's waist, where a white-gloved hand clutched a machete and slid it over the brick exterior.
Chloe gasped and stepped back into the street, and then she was surrounded by bright lights and a car horn blared in her ears.
Tires screeched against the pavement. The car managed to swerve around her at the last second, and the driver yelled out the open window as he passed.
“Move, ya dumb bitch!”
The rumble of the muffler receded as the car continued on its way.
“Screw you, asswipe!” she yelled back, on instinct.
Chloe took a shaky breath, high on adrenaline after her near-collision with the car. It was a moment before she remembered what had startled her into the road in the first place.
Her head whipped back to the alleyway, but it was empty.
She shivered, thinking of the painted face and the blade. What the hell? What kind of psycho walks around dressed like a clown, carrying a machete? Just to scare people or what?
By the time she was walking up the front steps of her house, she had started to doubt the whole thing. Maybe the cigarettes she'd stolen from Rick were laced with something. That was a thing, right? Though she hadn't ever seen him do anything harder than pot or booze. He didn't have the funds, for one thing.
She tried the door. Locked. Dickheads. She dug around until she found her keys, which took a while because no one had left the porch light on, either. Mega-dickheads. She gave up, lifted the faux rock hide-a-key from next to a shriveled pot of neglected begonias, and unlocked the door.
She checked her breath in the palm of her hand as she slipped through the front door. It reeked of smoke. Most kids would carry around a pack of gum or a mini-bottle of Scope to try to cover their tracks. Chloe never bothered to cover her tracks. She didn't need to. Neither of her parents noticed anything she did.
Well, that wasn't totally true. Every few months her mom would decide something had crossed the line enough to warrant a grounding. Last time it was Chloe's nose ring. The funny thing was, she'd had it for almost a month before her mom even noticed.
Chloe supposed maybe they were under the impression that this was “a phase” that she'd grow out of eventually. That if they made too much of a stink, they'd only make it worse. Most times she figured they really didn't give a shit and had given their daughter up as a lost cause.
The TV was blaring from down the hall in her parents' room. The green neon glow of the digital clock on the microwave in the kitchen told her it was almost midnight. On a school night. No one had waited up for her. Typical. She wondered what would happen if she just didn't come home one of these nights. Would they even notice?
She swung the door of the fridge open wide, squinting into the light that seemed impossibly bright after being outside in the dark. Her stomach churned and growled. She hadn't eaten anything since school got out, when she grabbed a medium fry from McDonald's on the way to Rick's. Rick never had any food, so she hadn't even had a snack since three o'clock, let alone dinner.
She shifted the various bottles and jars and containers of leftovers around on the shelves before she settled on a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. She grabbed the jar of strawberry jam and let the fridge door close on its own.
Balancing two sandwiches on top of a glass of Sunny-D, she stomped up the stairs to her room.
She closed the door and locked it behind her. Her parents rarely bothered coming to her room these days, but when they did, it always pissed her mom off if the door was locked. Chloe always made sure it was.
Ignoring the light switch next to the door, she stooped and plugged in the strand of multi-color Christmas lights. They gave the room more ambiance than the overhead lighting, Chloe thought.
She lay back on her bed, paper plate resting on her belly while she took alternating bites of sandwich and swigs of Sunny-D. A glob of jelly dribbled out from between the bread, and she paused to lick it from her finger.
She remembered the guy in the clown suit again and shuddered. She hated clowns. Always had.
When she was little, her grandparents gave her a giant doll as a Christmas gift. Or tried to give it to her, anyway. It had red yarn hair and a painted face, with blue stars on the cheeks and big red lips. She screeched at the sight of it, and they had to put it out in the garage to get her to calm down. The doll was huge, bigger than Chloe at the age of three, and they thought maybe it was the size that frightened her. So they waited until she was five and tried again. Same reaction.
Chloe didn't actually remember this, of course. But she'd heard her parents and grandparents rehash the story enough times that it almost felt like she did. And there were pictures. Photographs of a smaller, red-faced Chloe, wailing at the big, hideous clown monstrosity. Really, she didn't even know who would think that would be a good gift for a child. Why do adults think kids like clowns? Clowns were so goddamn creepy with those fake grins always plastered on their faces. No one smiles that much.
Chloe started to doze off then, still fully dressed, boots and all. She'd been asleep for a while when something caused her to stir. Not fully awake yet, she rolled over, eyes still closed. What was it?
Her throat was dry, mouth sticky from sleep. Right. She was thirsty.
Without opening her eyes, she flung out an arm, searching for the glass of Sunny-D. Her hand connected with something, and she had the sense of the room growing darker, even though her eyes were closed. She must have knocked the plug for the Christmas lights out of the socket. Oh well. Her hand resumed the errant search for the glass of juice.
And then she heard it.
A tapping sound. Coming from her window.
Someone was outside her bedroom window.
Her eyes snapped open, and her roving hand forgot about the Sunny-D.
Her room was dark, silent. She held her breath in the pitch black, waiting. Had she imagined it?
No, there it was again.
Tap tap tap.
Before the thought came to her all the way, she tried to stop it. Knew it was coming. Anticipated it. But it was too late.
She thought of the clown she'd seen earlier in the night, and icy fear crept up her spine.
The whole house was quiet now. Her parents had turned off their TV and gone to bed. She wanted to call out to them the way she had when she was little and had a nightmare. But she knew she couldn't. Or wouldn't.
The tapping continued, and Chloe held absolutely still. Maybe whoever it was would go away if she didn't make a sound. But then she remembered that sh
e'd fallen asleep with the venetian blinds down but open and the Christmas lights on. They'd probably seen her lying there in bed. They weren't going to leave. They knew she was there.
The tapping came again and it suddenly occurred to her that it was probably Rick.
Yes, of course it was Rick. He was the only person stupid enough to come and knock on her bedroom window at night. He'd probably gotten into a fight with one of his squat-mates again and decided to leave until it blew over.
This was so Rick. He was probably just horny, and it was all a ruse to try to get into her room and then into her bed.
Really, did he think she was that dumb? Her parents were downstairs, for Christ's sake.
All her fear had vanished, and she scooted off the bed. Rick would be lucky if she didn't shove him off the roof.
At the window, she shoved the blinds aside and found... nothing.
No Rick. No nobody.
Maybe that should have made her feel better. It didn't. She tried to swallow again, but her mouth was so dry, there was nothing to swallow. She took a step backward and the movement reminded her of the way she'd stumbled into the street when she'd seen the clown, and the hair on her arms stood on end.
Tap tap tap.
She almost screamed when the tapping returned, but just as quickly her fear turned to anger again. Whoever it was, they were about to regret messing with her.
Chloe batted the blinds out of her way, unlatched the lock, and slid the window up. She thrust her head out the window, intending to look to either side where she figured Rick or whatever joker was out there was hiding. Instead, she came face to face with a pair of golden eyes.
The black cat trilled softly and leapt through the open window and into the room.
“Binky!” Chloe closed and locked the window, then stooped to lift the cat in her arms.
“You scared the crap out of me.”
The cat purred as Chloe scratched under its chin and give it an affectionate squeeze.
She stumbled back to her bed and felt around in the dark until she found the end of the string of Christmas lights. Under the festive glow, she changed into her pajamas. She found the glass of Sunny-D and polished it off.
The guy in the clown suit had probably gotten a good laugh when she stumbled into the road like that. What wasn't so funny was her almost getting hit by a damn car. The angered returned. Well, whoever it was, if he kept it up, it was only a matter of time before he crossed the wrong person and got the shit kicked out of his polka dot ass.
On most nights, before she crawled into bed for good, she unplugged the Christmas lights. Not tonight. Tonight she left them on. It wasn't because she was still scared, though.
She left the lights on for the ambiance.
Chapter Three
October 29th
8:11 AM
Phillip Burkholder was late for art class. Again. It was his second tardy of the semester, and he was livid with himself, even if his excuse was a legitimate one.
“You saw what?” Mrs. Berman said.
“Clowns,” Burkholder said. “Five of them.”
“Clowns. In the woods outside of your apartment building. And this led to you being late for what reason?”
“The clowns were armed, ma’am. Well, one of them had a knife, at least.”
“I see. And it was the blade that prevented you from making your way to school.”
“Well, I had to call the police, of course. It was my civic duty.”
“Right. I’m sure that’s the case. Well, it looks like I’m out of questions. Maybe take a seat and get to work on your mosaic.”
Phillip made his way to his seat, all eyes in the room on him. He still felt the chill of the long walk he’d just finished due to missing the bus, but the cold he felt from the others in this room bothered him more. He tucked his chin, eyes aimed at the ground. As soon as he sat, the familiar voice rasped behind him.
“Hey, Turdholder.”
Greg Moffit and his lackeys laughed like hyenas. Moffit was tiny for his age. Short and narrow-shouldered. Between his size and the bright red rubber bands on his braces, he could have passed for a seventh grader instead of a junior. He was also the meanest kid that Phillip knew.
“Are you fucking serious, bro? Clowns? Really? Only real clown is you, Turdholder, and an ass clown at that.”
More laughter. Phillip wanted to tell them to watch the Channel 7 news tonight and see how hard they were laughing when all of the facts came out. These clowns were real. They’d see.
He couldn’t say anything, of course. He pretended he hadn't heard. Ignoring them was the only thing that sometimes worked.
Phillip was like a possum playing dead and Greg Moffit was a bear, snuffling at him. No, not a bear, he thought, remembering Greg's laugh. A hyena.
Something warm and wet hit the back of Phillip's neck. Spitballs. Again. Great.
Play dead, Phillip told himself. Play dead.
He wondered if there was a handbook or something out there made for high school bullies, filled with tips and tricks of the trade. How else did they all know the same old shenanigans?
Chapter one: Saliva based weaponry: Mastering spitballs, loogies, and wet willies.
Chapter two: The art of the taunt: Bastardize someone's name into something humiliating in minutes.
Chapter three: Going nuclear: Everything you wanted to know about wedgies but were scared to ask.
“Turdholder. I'm fuckin' talking to you. Is it true what I heard?” Moffit said, pausing to snicker. “That your mom is some kind of big gross fatty?”
Phillip gripped his pencil harder, knuckles standing out white. Just play dead.
The voice spoke up from behind him:
“Hey, maybe you could just send your mom out there to eat the clowns, right? Has a certain logic to it, I think. Perhaps that would be her… what did you call it… civic duty.”
Phillip’s eyes clenched closed, eyelids and nose puckering into wrinkled wads of skin. Something inside of him snapped, and he whirled on Greg Moffit and his gaggle of laughing idiots.
“She has a medical condition, you imbecile!”
Greg Moffit's face froze, eyes wide, and for a minute, Phillip thought he had done it, that he’d finally shut him up.
And then Moffit turned to one of his friends, and they both howled with laughter.
“Imbecile? Is this motherfucker serious?” Moffit could barely get the words out, he was laughing so hard. “Who the hell talks like that?”
“Hey!” Mrs. Berman called from across the room. “More mosaic. Less chatter. What do I always say? W-W-W-dot-shutup-dot-com, right guys?”
The laughs didn’t stop, not really, but they quieted some.
Phillip stood and walked across the room to the supply area, passing squeeze bottles of paint to locate the piles of construction paper and the jars full of scissors. He kept his head down as he selected a few colors of paper and reached into the jar to fish out the only pair of lefty scissors from the bottom. Their laughs seemed a little smaller now that he was some distance away, but they never fully went away.
He was silent, his face placid, but he screamed on the inside:
Fudge those guys. Fudge them in their fudging butts.
The rage made him grit his teeth, made his eyelids flutter of their own accord. Not things that anyone would notice from a distance, but they were there. He didn’t think he was anywhere near tears. Not really. But he couldn’t stop blinking. He took a deep breath before he turned and headed back for his table.
His eyes stayed on the floor as he walked into the hyenas’ den. He never saw the figure off to the right who pushed him, though he knew upon impact that it must be one of Moffit’s lackeys.
He flew, neck flinging back into a whiplash position, sheets of construction paper fluttering away from him in all directions. The scissors only stayed in his hand because his fingers were laced through the loops on the handle.
His arms spread out to the sides like wing
s, as though they could help him balance. It felt like he went fully horizontal in that moment, his face and belly and knees all facing the floor at a 90 degree angle even if that seemed impossible later.
He crashed into Moffit, knocking him out of his chair so they both tumbled to the floor. Phillip tried to bring his hands around to catch himself, and the opened scissors raked just in front of Moffit’s face, coming just inches shy of his eyeballs.
Mrs. Berman looked up just in time to see what looked like an attempted scissor stabbing. She lurched to her feet, bellowing in a deep voice.
“Knock it off! Phillip! Out in the hall! Now!”
The room went silent as soon as she started yelling, that reverent quiet reserved for funerals and doctor’s offices and awkward moments such as this. There seemed to be no movement apart from Mrs. Berman's heaving shoulders.
After a motionless beat, the boys disentangled and stood, both of them bowing their heads like shamed dogs, the scissors dropping to the floor between them. They stumbled away from each other, hands patting around them as though they were feeling their way along in the dark.
Phillip’s lips parted, poised to explain the misunderstanding. He was pushed. Surely this could be cleared up.
“Not a word out of you, Phillip,” Mrs. Berman said, the level of disgust in her voice hard to believe. “Forget the hallway. Go to the office. Now.”
The murmurs picked up as he gathered his belongings from his desk, all of those whispering voices, hushed and tight. He could pick the hyena voices out of the pack.
“Did you see that, man?” Moffit said. “He fuckin' came right at me, tryin' to gouge my eyes out. Kid is fuckin' loco.”
“He musta snapped, bro,” another said.
And in a way Phillip wished that were the truth. If he were going to face the consequences, he may as well have really gone for it, right? Instead, he got bullied into trouble, the extent of his standing up for his mother’s honor amounting to calling someone an imbecile, not even mustering a proper swear word, the kind of coarse language he would never use.
Light streamed through the windows in the principal’s office, reflecting off of the gleaming surface of the desk between Phillip and the school’s ultimate authority figure. Mr. Hagen was a sallow-faced man with a puff of curly gray hair, but with the way he was backlit at the moment, Phillip mostly saw him in silhouette, a shadow with what looked like a Chia Pet on its head.
