The Clowns

by Tim McBain

  A good five minutes or more passed before Chloe spoke up to break the spell.

  “Here’s a question,” she said, and then she paused.

  “What is it?” Phillip said.

  “Did you say you were flunking social studies?”

  “Yeah, probably. I mean, I’m definitely flunking geometry – like, for sure – and social studies isn’t looking great. At all. Let’s just put it that way.”

  “OK.”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Well, don’t be offended, but I just… I thought you were a nerd.”

  “OK?” he said, the word trailing up at the end to make it clear it was a question.

  “Well, nerds are supposed to get good grades and be all about school, you know? They’re supposed to study all the time and get into Ivy League schools and all that stuff.”

  He mulled this over for a moment before he replied.

  “Yeah, I guess that’s true. I don’t know. I guess I’m just a loser.”

  Chloe laughed at that, and it took Phillip a second to realize that she thought he had been making a joke. Maybe that was for the better, he thought.

  They fell quiet again, Chloe’s boots clopping out loud footsteps that seemed a little hypnotic. They didn’t recapture that word-free affection from earlier, but they came close, at least in Phillip’s view.

  Maybe it was the way the shadows had expanded to shroud most everything around them in black, but the path seemed quite different going the other way. Somehow foreign. It looked different, yes, but more than that, it felt different. The atmosphere had shifted. Altered. Mutated. Phillip didn’t notice it right away, too lost in the notion that they’d settled the clown thing – determining, in fact, that it wasn’t a thing at all – but the unease crept up on him, seeping into his thoughts on some subconscious level until it overtook them. By the time he recognized it for what it was, he was quite uncomfortable. Quite scared, he hated to admit to himself. Flippin’ terrified were the words he conjured to describe it.

  He glanced at Chloe out of the corner of his eye. She was a dark shape hovering to his left, her shoulders swaying in an effortless, almost liquid way that seemed fully disengaged from the ground, the pounding of her boots the only evidence that she was walking rather than floating. The frightened part of him knew that he should say something to her, but he was embarrassed.

  He waited, clenched his jaw, willed the spooked feeling to pass.

  A dog barked somewhere in the distance, and Phillip flinched a little, startled by the sound.

  “Do you hear that?” Chloe said, stopping in her tracks.

  “The dog?”

  “Yeah. It’s not right.”

  Phillip listened, really listened, to the dog again. She was right. It wasn’t normal. The thing was going bananas, vacillating rapidly between warning growls and shrill screams, some awful blend of fear and aggression, all sheer animal panic. Even at a distance it made the hair on his arms stand up.

  “Do you think… ”

  Phillip couldn’t bring himself to say it, and Chloe apparently couldn’t bring herself to answer him.

  Crap.

  They looked at each other for a long moment, just able to make out each other’s eyes in the moonlight. She looked more scared than he could’ve imagined before this, even the black makeup caked around her eyes unable to hide the fear. He was sure he looked just as frightened, if not more. Neither of them spoke, both knowing what would happen next.

  Chloe led the way. They left the asphalt trail, cutting a diagonal path through the woods, walking toward the awful sound.

  The perils of navigating the woods in the dark slowed their pace considerably. Fallen trees crisscrossed the landscape, hellbent on snapping an ankle if they could. Random dips and holes in the ground seemed to harbor similar goals. On top of the dangers, the way was cluttered with branches and shrubs and all manner of foliage. They had to take it slow, Phillip knew, even if listening to the panicked dog warbling in the distance made his heart thud at a frantic tempo.

  “How did we not think to bring weapons?” Chloe said. “Who brings fists to a clown fight?”

  Phillip ducked under a pine bough before he answered.

  “I think maybe before this it didn’t quite seem real. Even if we both saw the clowns and kind of believed it, it didn’t seem real until we were out here, you know? I mean, we still don’t know what’s happening, right? Not for sure.”

  Chloe shrugged.

  “I’m pretty sure,” she said. “As soon as I heard the dog, I was pretty sure.”

  As if on cue, the dog screamed, holding a shrill note for too long. The level of ferocity made it sound more like some jungle cat or maybe even a feral woman about to go berserk. Phillip never would have placed it as a dog without the context of the earlier barks.

  The dog fell quiet after that, and Phillip feared it was too late for the poor beast, but the barking started up again after a beat. That was good. Mostly.

  They were close now, the dog’s screeching louder than ever, and the light swelled around them as they drew near to the lamps hanging over the street and parking lots just beyond the edge of the woods. Phillip listened for cars, but there were no sounds apart from those of the shrieking dog. Even the crickets that had accompanied them earlier on their walk had gone quiet.

  The thicket here seemed to slow Chloe, her boots tangling in Virginia creeper, so Phillip crashed out in front of her, not out of heroism, he thought, so much as sheer dread. He needed to know. For better or worse, he needed to know what lay beyond these woods.

  Nausea fluxed in his gut, and sweat clung to the flesh above his top lip, and his fingers flexed and unflexed repeatedly. All because he needed to know. He was sick with the need, smothered by it. It was funny how that worked. No matter how awful the truth might be, it was somehow worse to not know.

  He high stepped the last few paces, letting his arms swing wildly at the branches that hung in his way. The heavy feet tromped down brush, grass swishing, branches snapping with pops as loud as broken bones. He didn’t care how inconspicuous he was being. He cared only about knowing.

  He passed the threshold and stepped into the clearing, stopping in the shock of the open air. Some strange agoraphobic panic came with this new sensation. His chest heaved. Dewy grass smeared at his feet.

  The first thing he saw was the dog, crouching, baring its teeth and working its jaw up and down as it fired off bursts of yelps. It was a beagle mix, he thought, its voice sounding bigger and deeper than the animal looked.

  It stood by an old lady, the dog’s master Phillip assumed. She had wispy gray hair, stooped shoulders and a terrified expression on her face. Figures surrounded the two of them. Figures that Phillip’s eyes couldn’t quite make sense of at first since they held so motionless.

  Clowns.

  Clowns with dead eyes and weapons dangling at their sides – knives, bats, an axe, a machete.

  Nine of them.

  Phillip’s heart stopped. The whole world just stopped, held perfectly still for a long moment, and then the clowns lurched into motion, ready to attack.

  Phillip went to yell, but Chloe appeared at his side, clamping a hand over his mouth.

  “Are you crazy?” she said, words hissing through the tiniest crack between her teeth.

  Before he could protest, the clowns struck. The bat whacked her skull, knocking her over, and the others descended upon the fallen body. She screamed. Twice. And then she was quiet. The beings writhed atop her, heads all bobbing and twisting. It looked like a pack of jackals stripping the meat from an antelope’s bones.

  “Oh, Jesus,” Phillip breathed.

  The dog managed to bite a forearm, tearing open one of the clowns, but then it was forced to retreat. It was too quick for the evil beings, looping away from them, trying to elude them while staying close to the old woman. The animal’s screams grew more desperate as it evaded them, more confused and terrified.

  “At least the dog is get
ting away,” Chloe whispered.

  But the dog couldn’t resist. It circled in toward its fallen master, perhaps thinking it could still save the old woman. A smaller clown reached for it, and the dog struck, latching onto the wrist, clown flesh gripped in its teeth.

  Another clown grabbed the dog by the throat, ripping it free from the wrist and slamming it spine-first to the ground with a sickening thud. The other clowns moved to the animal, enveloping it.

  Chloe tried to say something but only a little choked sound came out.

  Phillip had never witnessed such brutality, such cruelty.

  “I think I’m going to be sick,” he said, leaning over to vomit into the grass. It came pouring out for some time, a strange amber liquid that didn’t seem to match what he’d had to eat.

  After a second, Chloe pawed at his shoulder, something frantic in her touch. Phillip went to look at her, but another round of vomitous spray exited his mouth just then, distracting him. Foamier this time.

  “Phillip,” she said, her voice tight and small. She didn’t sound like herself at all.

  He glanced at her, finally, found her mouth wide open and her eyes open wider. He followed her gaze out to the grass field.

  The smaller clown, the one the dog had bit, shambled in their direction, seeming to move faster now that Phillip had spotted him.

  They ran, Phillip still dry-heaving a little. They trudged through the ivy at the edge of the woods, little vining pieces of plant roping around their ankles and slowing them. Phillip pulled out ahead, picking his feet up and falling forward in a wild lunge. The trees rushed past on each side of him, thick dark things whirring by like those orange construction barrels on the highway, and Chloe drifted farther and farther behind, her presence shrinking in his consciousness to something he was just vaguely aware of somewhere back there.

  He cleared the ivy and moved into the cleared-out space under the thicker cluster of trees, a bed of dried out pine needles underfoot, soft like a plush carpet. Now he could really run, a full-out sprint, the light just enough for him to make out the deadfall he needed to hurdle.

  The asphalt trail got within viewing distance, that slash of blacktop cutting through the woods. He stopped dead, breath heaving in and out of him. His chest felt wet inside, his lungs two bags of snail flesh in his chest, inflating and deflating over and over.

  What the fudge was he doing? He’d left her. He’d just left Chloe back to there to fend for herself.

  Left her to the clowns.

  He turned back, running faster this time. He didn’t think about the dead trees in his path, didn’t think about the dips and holes in the ground laying in wait to snap an ankle, didn’t think about anything at all. He ran. His feet just knew where to go.

  He saw her there, still fighting through the ivy, that small clown creeping closer behind her, somehow not struggling with the plant life despite the ridiculous shoes.

  “Chloe!” he said without thought.

  She was backlit, her features smudged in shadow, but he thought he saw relief flash on her face for a second. A flash of ice entered his bloodstream, some combination of excitement that she was still here and terror at how much danger they were both in.

  He stopped, sucking great lungfuls of air, waiting for her to cover those last twenty yards between them, not sure what he’d do if the lead clown got close enough to be a real threat before she’d cleared the Virginia creeper. Hit it? He guessed that was all he could do, balling and unballing his fists subconsciously at his side.

  He noticed that a handful of other clowns had entered the woods as well, though they were much further back. For now, they need only worry about escaping the leader.

  She reached him, and he whirled to run alongside her, peeking over his shoulders to keep an eye on the one pursuing them. He thought he saw a glint of light from its open mouth, an almost metallic twinkle. What the hell could that be?

  He didn’t get time to ponder it. He tripped on the dead tree, his body flung forward, skidding into the pine needles and scraping up a big pile of them in a face-first slide, his arms pinned underneath him so his face took the brunt of it. He flopped like a fish to get his arms free and rolled over, his front smeared with the wet earth from beneath the needles.

  “Get up,” Chloe said, again her voice tight and small, totally out of character.

  He scrambled to his feet, wiping pine needles from his face.

  The clown hit him just as he stood, timing its diving tackle just right so that their heads knocked like two rams fighting over a mate. The contact laid him out and knocked him a little silly. He squirmed, confused, pinned down by the dead weight on top of him.

  Sharp pain registered in that ball of muscle between the neck and shoulder, and he cried out for a second, but the hurt cut out as his hands got to the thing's throat and pushed it up, holding it away from him. All of these actions felt like things that were happening to him rather than things he was doing. He knew his hands were acting, but he didn’t get any sense that he was making the decisions that guided them.

  He stared at the painted face hovering above him, not really seeing it in his daze. He saw only the gnashing mouth, the teeth. Braces. It had braces. That’s what had glinted in the light.

  Chloe’s boot entered his field of vision, connecting with the thing’s chin with an incredible wallop. It toppled off of him into a limp heap, and she pulled him to his feet. He was vaguely aware of the other clowns crashing toward them, a thankfully distant sound, though he could see them in silhouette out there. He watched them a moment, looking to his left as he and Chloe swooped onto the paved trail. He knew he’d been knocked pretty loopy as he thought he saw the old lady among those chasing them.

  “Are you OK?” she said, as they fled.

  “I’m fine,” he said. His voice sounded a little scratchy so he cleared his throat. “Just got my bell rung is all.”

  It sounded like what a gym teacher would say, he thought, trying to stave off worries of concussions and such. He could feel her eyes on him, sure they’d locked onto that aching spot just left of his neck, but she said nothing.

  They ran as fast as they could, Chloe leading the way, and it was a while before he realized they were going the opposite direction of home.

  Chapter Fifteen

  October 30th

  7:44 PM

  Chloe saw the glow of street lights ahead. Thank God. She didn't know how much farther she could go. She grabbed the sleeve of Phillip's jacket and hauled him off the trail. He still seemed shaken but kept insisting he was fine.

  Their feet crashed through the overgrown weeds of an empty lot and then Chloe led them through an alley. If they could make it out to the street at the other end, they'd be right across from the squat. Once they got inside, Chloe thought they had just enough of a lead on their pursuers that they might be able to hide and call for help.

  At the edge of the alley, she hesitated, worried that maybe the clowns had somehow surrounded them or gone a different route to cut them off. Maybe the whole city was already crawling with them. The street was empty, though, and she pulled Phillip up the rotting steps and through the front door of the squat.

  The deadbolt groaned as she turned it. It had probably been years since anyone had bothered locking the door of this dump. She stood on her toes to peer through the glass, watching the street for any movement.

  It was clear for the time being. Her hands patted wildly at her person, seeming almost disconnected from the rest of her. When her fingers found the bulge in her pocket, they extracted the phone.

  “What are you doing?” Phillip asked.

  “Calling the police.”

  “Finally!”

  Chloe held up a hand to silence him. The ringing on the line cut off.

  “What’s your emergency?” the 911 operator said.

  Chloe’s mouth opened, but no words came out. Instead she choked, coughing a little. Her eyes went wide. How the hell was she going to explain this?

&n
bsp; “How can I help you?” the 911 operator said, the inflection of her voice growing a little more concerned.

  “I need to report a murder,” Chloe stammered, and Phillip nodded as if to encourage her. “I saw a murder.”

  “Where was this?”

  “In the parking lot behind Park Terrace Apartments on Kendall Avenue. Well, next to the parking lot, I guess. In the grass. It was an old woman.” Chloe felt like she was rambling now. Was she giving too many details? Not enough?

  “And you’re sure the victim is dead. Is she still bleeding?”

  “I ran. But I’m pretty sure she was dead.”

  “How did this happen?”

  Again Chloe’s mouth didn’t seem to want to cooperate.

  “Clowns,” she said finally. “People dressed as clowns killed her. With a... variety of weapons.”

  After a long pause, the 911 operator sighed, all of the tension leaving her voice.

  “Please keep this line free for real emergencies.”

  “No! It really happened.”

  Another long pause.

  “I’ll send a patrol car by just to be sure, OK? Happy Halloween.”

  There was a click, and Chloe’s phone blinked to indicate that the call had ended. Chloe stared at it for a few seconds without speaking.

  “She hung up on me.”

  “Yeah. I get that a lot,” Phillip said.

  Chloe went back to the window, expecting to see the clowns closing in on the house from every angle, but the street and surrounding area still appeared to be empty.

  “What is this place?” Phillip asked.

  Chloe answered, distracted. “It's a house... what do you mean?”

  “But people live here? So many code violations,” he said, pointing to a notice stapled to the wall next to the door. “Building's condemned. Are you sure it's structurally sound?”

  Finally Chloe turned from the window.