by Alex Jameson
“You’re lying!” Sam shouted. “I’ve known you your whole life, I can tell! You get all melodramatic on me, just like you’re doing now!”
“Maybe I’m trying to protect your dumb ass!” Jake shouted back.
“You think I need protection? Me? Against what—some asshole who killed a kid? Hell, I’ve killed kids, Jake. Women too. Even got paid for it. This guy? He’s an animal! He should be put down.”
The neighbors banged on the wall and shouted something, muffled by the divide. Sam hadn’t realized he was standing, pointing accusingly at Jake.
“Whoa.” Jake raised his hand, palm out, eyebrows raised. “Calm down, Sam. You’ve got a crazy look in your eye. Let’s just chill, okay? No one is going all rogue on this. Christ, you look just like you did back with Heckler.”
“We agreed we’d never talk about that,” Sam growled.
“I’m sorry. I won’t mention it again. Just chill, alright?”
Sam sucked in a deep breath and sat again. “Yeah. I’m chill. Sorry.”
Jake moved slowly and sat beside him on the couch. “Listen to me, Sam. I know you too, and I can tell you’re hanging by a thread. You need to calm the fuck down, alright? I’ll tell you what I know, but nobody is going vigilante on this, okay? You’re not going to do anything that the cops and feds can’t.”
“I know,” Sam said quietly. “I just need to know if there was anything else I could have done.”
“Alright. Wait—what do you mean, anything else?”
“Nothing. Just tell me.”
Jake took a deep breath. “You asked for it. Short version: We got nothing. No hair, no skin cells, no blood, no saliva, no DNA at all. The guy got the drop on Aiden in a bad way. He…” Jake inhaled through his nose. “The guy punctured his lung first, so he couldn’t shout for help. Then he dragged him deeper into the woods so his buddies wouldn’t find him.”
“God,” Sam murmured. “Nothing? How is that possible?”
“Forensics thinks the guy was wearing gloves, and something over his clothes… like a smock of some sort.”
“Gloves? A smock? How would they know that?”
“They found very trace elements of a disinfectant, like a cleaning chemical. He took the murder weapon with him, too.”
“What are you saying—this was planned?”
Jake nodded once. “They think this guy planned it. Yeah. Maybe he didn’t plan to kill Aiden, but he planned to kill somebody, and he found Aiden.”
“No,” Sam said forcefully. “You don’t stab someone thirty-seven times and call it premeditated. That’s a crime of passion.”
“Well, it could be that he was trying to make it look like a crime of passion. Or…”
“Or what?”
“Or we’re dealing with a serious psycho who did… that… because he wanted to.”
Sam leaned back against the couch cushions and stared up at the ceiling. “Christ. I’m gonna be sick.”
Jake slapped Sam’s knee halfheartedly. “No, you’re not. You’ve heard and seen worse.”
“But… why Aiden? I mean, how did he know people would be in the woods that night?”
“Add it to the list of stuff we don’t know. I promise you, though, anything new I hear I’ll tell you. Okay?”
“That’s all I can ask, I guess.”
CHAPTER 7
* * *
Asheville, North Carolina
“It d-didn’t work.”
Of course not. What, did you think that one would be enough?
“I d-d-don’t want to d-do this anymore.”
You have to, kid. You’re the only one that’s figured it out.
He assumed that it would stop. He thought that killing the clown would make them go away. Send a message; show them that even they have someone to fear. That’s he’s not a kid anymore.
But no.
It got worse.
Schools were closed. The internet buzzed. People… they seemed like they liked it. They liked that a clown was dead. And the clowns, now they were more active than ever. He did little more than piss them off. The media was right about one thing; this was an epidemic.
They were wrong about everything else. As usual. They said that the clown was a kid. They tried to play it off as a prank by some high schoolers. He knew the truth. A kid? No. A demon. A… thing. He’d sent it back to wherever it came from. With a warning.
“I’m n-not a k-kid anymore…”
But it wasn’t enough.
The day after it happened, he’d returned to work. He was more cheerful than he’d been in months. He said hello to everyone. Even his stutter was getting better. The other guys at the plant, they talked about the “kid” that was murdered. Some seemed saddened by it. Others said stuff like, “That’s what you get,” or “These kinds of things have a way of getting out of hand.”
But he knew. He knew. And he smiled. And he talked with the guys and he even treated himself to a nice lunch.
But the next day… oh, the next day. The school was still closed. “Clown-related threats,” they called it. They were threatening children. All over the country. More of them. More threats. More clowns on street corners and in parks and playgrounds.
You know what needs to be done.
“B-but I c-can’t…”
Then you’ll have to shoot down the moon.
“I don’t know h-how…”
Fine. Then just die.
“No!”
He hid in the closet with a steak knife. The bread knife and gloves and rubber smock were soaking in a disinfectant solution in the basement slop sink. His clothes from that night, burned in a drum in the yard.
Find them.
“How?”
It had been complete happenstance that he’d found the first ones. He’d been staking out the parks and playgrounds in the area for three nights, occasionally driving by each in a wide circuit that took him through Asheville to neighboring Kingston and then back again. That third night, he spotted one. His heart had leapt into his chest at the sight of it—bulbous red nose, black teeth, crazed yellow eyes. It took everything in him to park and get out of his car. He clutched his knife the entire way.
He’d followed it into the woods where he was horrified to find a whole gang of them, six in all. He couldn’t have taken six of them. He had to wait until one separated.
And it did.
And he sprang.
He took care of it.
But now…
“H-how do I find them?”
Silence.
“T-tell me how.”
Nothing.
“P-please!”
Anywhere. Everywhere.
Of course. The clowns were everywhere; he needed to be everywhere, too. It couldn’t just be here in North Carolina. The clowns in Tennessee and California and Massachusetts had nothing to fear from a clown being killed in North Carolina. It had to be everywhere. He had to be everywhere.
They have to know who to fear. They have to know…
“I-I’m not a k-kid anymore.”
That’s right. Get to it, Harry.
CHAPTER 8
* * *
Kingston, North Carolina
Monday morning, Sam rose, dressed for work and headed to the store. He rapped gently on the frame of the open door to the manager’s office, where Sherri was filling out some sort of paperwork—hopefully not for a new hire. She looked up at him and raised an eyebrow.
“Hi,” he said sheepishly. “Just, uh, curious… do I still have a job?”
On Tuesday he’d requested a few days off. Sherri had gently informed him that bereavement time was exclusively for parents, siblings, and spouses—not nephews. She would call corporate and see what she could do. Sam had told her to fuck off and threw his apron at her feet.
“Close the door, Sam. Sit.”
He did, feeling very much like a child sent to the principal’s office. Sherri was in her mid-forties, a no-nonsense woman who made it very clear that she didn�
�t give a damn whether her employees liked her or not. She folded her hands upon the desk and gazed at him.
“I put in for some emergency PTO time for you,” she said. “I had a feeling you’d be back when… the dust settled, so to speak.”
“Thanks,” he said. “I, uh, didn’t know I had that.”
“It’s usually for medical emergencies, sudden surgeries, stuff like that. So don’t go bursting your appendix or anything, okay?” She smiled, but it faded quickly. “And, I’m sorry about what happened.”
“Thanks.”
“Come back tomorrow and start again.”
He thanked her again and rose.
“Oh, and Sam? If you ever talk to me like that again, you’re fired.”
“Got it.”
***
That evening, he went over to Lynn’s place and she made him chicken marsala, one of his favorites, which he especially appreciated since he knew Lynn didn’t care for mushrooms.
“How was school?” he asked.
“It was alright. I, uh, didn’t really hear anybody talking about it. Kids are pretty resilient, you know. More so than people give them credit for.” She pushed some mushrooms around her plate. “But… I don’t hear you talking about it either.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“It helps.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“It can.”
He dropped his fork on his plate with a clatter that startled her. “Lynn, I’ve talked, okay? I’ve talked and I’ve talked. That’s what everyone wants me to do—to talk. What’s it good for? Most of the time it’s just so they know which pills to prescribe. It doesn’t bring anyone back. It doesn’t undo what’s been done. It doesn’t get anything out of my head. Talk is cheap.”
“Compared to what?” she asked quietly.
“Action,” he said. “Action is what matters. And inaction. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t, right?”
“You’re ranting. Calm down. Please.”
He ran his hand through his hair. “I’m calm. Alright? I’m calm.”
He wasn’t hungry anymore. He drained the rest of the glass of wine in front of him and reached for the bottle in the center of the table. Then he thought the better of it and put it back.
“Look, there are just… there are things about me that you don’t know, and that I never want you to know. Ever. You have to live with that.”
She set down her fork and wiped her mouth on a napkin. “I can handle it, Sam.”
“I don’t think you can.”
“I can. These things you don’t think I can handle, they keep you at arm’s length, all the time. It’s been two years and I don’t feel like I’m close to you. Maybe if you let me in… I could help.”
He shook his head, grabbed the bottle of wine, filled his glass almost to the brim, and then he passed the bottle to her. She filled hers and they sipped in silence for several minutes, neither of them quite looking at the other.
“Fine. Fine. There was… a time. Overseas. Me and Greenburg, my spotter, we were shacked up in this shell of a building across the street from an old factory. Command claimed some bomb-maker was holed up in there, planning something. We didn’t get to know what. We were there for one reason: Kill whatever came out.”
His throat felt dry and tight. He took another sip. Still dry.
“Two days. Nothing. We laid in filth and waited. We spent the time talking about women and stupid shit we’d done and what we were going to do with our deployment money. It was all lies; we were just making stuff up to entertain the other. Then, I’m napping when Greenburg shakes me. Someone came out.” He paused to refill his glass. “It was a woman. Wouldn’t have been the first time they used women to deliver something. Can hide a lot under a burqa. Hell, for all I know, maybe it was a guy in disguise. Doubt it though.”
“Long story short, I did what I was supposed to do. I didn’t want to. Maybe I didn’t need to. But I shot her.” Sam put a finger to his temple. “Right here and out the other side. Here’s the real kicker: she wasn’t the bomb-maker. So for two more days, we stayed there, waiting. No movement; nobody coming in or out. We’d given away our position, but Command said, stay. For forty-eight hours I stared at a dead woman in the street through my scope. Finally we get the call. You know what they said?”
Lynn’s eyes were wide, her chest heaving as if she’d run up a flight of stairs. She shook her head, no.
“Wrong. Fucking. Factory.” Sam punctuated each word with a finger in the air. “Wrong place.”
“So… what happened?”
“We did what we were told to do. We packed up and got out of there. Never checked the body; never looked back. Got back to the FOB—that’s a forward operating base—and pretended everything was cool. Then, two days later, Greenburg has a goddamn breakdown. Loses his mind—I mean, just a sobbing, slobbering mess. Tells the CO about what happened. We both get demoted. Slap on the wrists, really, compared to what could have happened.” Sam shook his head.
Lynn swallowed hard. “I don’t know what to say. That’s awful, Sam. I’m so sorry.”
He held up his index finger. “That’s just one. One, of a couple dozen I have just like it. That’s why I don’t want to talk about it. It’s my burden to bear. And no, I don’t want to talk about Aiden, because it makes me sick to think that what I did over there has anything to do with what’s happened here.”
“Oh, Sam, you can’t possibly think they have anything to do with each other.”
“Don’t they? I mean, what the hell were we fighting for over there? So kids can play and grow up and not worry about if their house is going to get shelled today, right? But then here comes some psycho carving up teenagers. Didn’t we protect him too?”
“That’s not at all fair to yourself.”
“No, what’s not fair is that this guy is out there somewhere still drawing breath. You know what I want to do? You want to know what I’ve thought about every minute of every day since Monday?”
“No,” she said quietly.
“I thought about what I’d do if I found him. And I’m not going to tell you, but it would be slow. And it would hurt, a lot. And I’d enjoy every minute of it.” He drained his wine glass a second time. “He was just a kid, Lynn. Christ, he was a good kid.”
A moist spot appeared on the red tablecloth. Had he spilled wine? No. Another fell. He touched his cheek; he was crying. Tears spilled from his eyes until his vision was blurry. He squeezed them shut. He heard the chair legs scraping on the floor, and then he felt her warm hands around him, on his neck, rubbing down his back. She held him as he cried.
“You don’t think less of me, do you?” he asked, almost a whisper.
“What? For crying?”
“No. For telling you what I did.”
“Of course not. I love you.”
“I love you too.”
That night, he didn’t try to distract himself with how to separate a top sirloin from a sirloin, or which part of the rump makes the best roast. He didn’t think about flanks or escape velocity or a woman lying in the street. He didn’t think about how many kids were orphaned or London broils or how to adjust for minute of angle. He focused entirely on her; on her angelic face in the moonlight, on her pert breasts, on the curve of the muscle of her thighs when her legs wrapped around his waist. Sweat beaded on his forehead as he lifted her and pinned her against the wall, both of them crying out until the neighbors shouted to shut the hell up because his kids were trying to sleep. Then they both laughed and went back to the bed and fucked until they could barely move, and when he finally collapsed at her side, him panting and sweating and her still having small spasms of aftershocks, he stared at the ceiling and wondered how in the hell he ever thought he could be normal.
CHAPTER 9
* * *
The next day Sam went back to work. He arrived at six a.m. He checked for out-of-code products. He cut tenderloin and flank steaks and New York strip.
He filled the display case and ground chuck and cubed stew meat.
When slitting a throat, reach up under the armpit, not over the shoulder; that way they can’t block the knife with their hand or forearm.
He worked quickly and efficiently, but his mind was elsewhere. He hadn’t been lying when he told Lynn what had consumed his thoughts this past week.
Kneecaps are more resilient than most people think. Always hit sideways to break it, not straight on.
Travis came in at ten, his ridiculous beard-net around his face. “Wow, look at you go,” he said, having a glance around. “You didn’t leave much for me to do, huh?”
“Nope.”
If you hit someone in the back of the head hard enough, you can pop an eye out of its socket. This is not only painful, but extremely disorienting; it is often accompanied by vomiting and/or blacking out.
“You, uh, need a hand with anything?”
“Nope.”
An ear only takes about six pounds of pressure and a twisting motion to tear off.
“Okay. I guess I’ll just help customers then.”
“You do that.”
Breaking an arm is easiest at the elbow, when the arm is straight, and upward force is applied from beneath it.
“Hey, did you hear about those students in Charlotte? At, uh, UNC? They’re organizing a student-run clown hunt. To make sure the kids are safe, you know?”
Sam stopped what he was doing—slicing T-bones on the saw—and stared Travis down. “What makes you think I’d be interested in hearing about that?”
Travis looked away. “Sorry, man. All things considered, I thought you might find it, you know, comforting.”
“I don’t.”
“Alright. Sorry.”
Sam resumed his work. Travis drummed on the countertop a few times before piping up again. “Hey, by the way, Sherri wanted me to tell you not to mark down the stuff that’s almost out of code. Guys at the plant on Asheville are on strike. The price of beef is about to go up.”
