by Alex Jameson
Sam pulled the pinstripe onesie on over his pants and up to his waist. It was made of billowy nylon, reminiscent of a parachute, and was far too baggy on him—which was the point, he assumed. It zipped up the front to an elastic band at his neck. He pulled on black boots and red latex gloves and already felt ridiculous in the costume. He only put his good arm through the sleeve of the costume. A one-armed clown would be more conspicuous, which he wanted to be. He also secretly hoped that in a moment of trouble, adrenaline could help his injured arm draw the pistol if necessary, though he wasn’t sure.
Jake took the balaclava and the binoculars and the black case containing the M-21. He dressed in black from head to toe and tucked the earpiece in his ear. They tested the radio to make sure it worked. Then Jake gave his brother a brief hug.
“I’ll see you out there.”
Sam nodded. “Be safe.”
Jake scoffed. “I’m not sure I’m the one that needs that advice, but yeah. Okay.”
“Remember—”
“One-armed clown with orange hair and a girl dressed as a bumblebee. I think I got it.” Jake grinned.
“Seriously, listen to me. There’s a chance that Harlan might have tried to change his appearance in some way. If you think it’s him, and you have the shot… take it.”
Jake searched his brother’s eyes for confirmation that he was being serious. “But what if…?”
Sam shook his head. “If you think it’s him, take it. But don’t take the shot—”
“If there’s a chance I’ll miss. Right.” He picked up the rifle case. “Alright then. I’ll… see you later.”
“Yeah.”
Jake headed down the stairs and out the door, to Lynn’s car. It was important that he get to his location before the clowns came, and before the National Guard and police were out in full force.
The bathroom door opened behind Sam and he turned. Lynn stared at the floor sheepishly. “Well?” she asked. “How do I look?”
The bumblebee costume was perfect. It had a big round bottom with a foam stinger and a tubular body that hid her curves. She had pulled her hair into a tight ponytail and donned the black headband with two yellow pom-poms that served as antennae, and completed the ensemble with two big red circles on her cheeks.
“I know. I look completely ridiculous,” she said. “I don’t look like a child; I look like an adult in a child’s costume.”
“No, it’s perfect. In the dark it’ll look like you’re a kid that didn’t know trick-or-treat was canceled.” He held up his good arm to show her the oversized, billowing onesie. “If anyone looks ridiculous…”
“Oh yeah, it’s definitely you.” She smiled a little. “Come on, let’s see how the mask looks.”
In the bathroom, he pulled the clown mask over his face. The inside of it smelled sweet and rubbery. He looked in the mirror; his peripheral vision was fairly impeded, but he could see clearly in front of him. The mask was a white-faced clown with a red nose and a wicked, curved smile. The eyes were bright yellow, perched just above the actual eyeholes, and a wild shock of untamed orange hair sat upon the top. It wasn’t terribly frightening, but Sam had come to see clowns as malicious, sinister things, and the sight of himself as one made him look away.
“Sit.” Lynn directed him to the toilet. “Let me add some blood and stuff.” She took up the makeup kit and began dabbing at the mask.
“Jake just left to get into position,” Sam murmured behind the rubber. “We’ve got a little bit of time before we need to be down there.”
“Can I say something?” she asked.
“Sure.”
“It’s just… I know you were both in the military, and did things you don’t like to talk about, but over the last day or so it’s seemed…” She trailed off.
“Seemed what?”
She paused, holding a gooey red Q-tip aloft. “It’s seemed like you’re both very… comfortable with the idea of killing someone. Maybe I’m imagining it. I know he’s a killer and all, but… I don’t know. Never mind. Forget I said anything.”
She moved toward the mask again, but Sam stayed her hand.
“Close the door,” he said.
She glanced at him quizzically, but did as he asked. He grabbed the orange hair and pulled the mask off his face. “There’s something I want to tell you. It’s not good. Depending on how you look at things… it might be the worst thing I’ve ever done.”
She dropped the Q-tip in the sink and gave him her full attention. “What is it, Sam?”
He stared at a spot on the tiled floor.
“About four years ago, I was fresh out of the military, home again, getting my life together. This was before we even met, let alone started dating. I was spending a lot of time with Aiden; after being gone for six years, the kid barely remembered me, so I was working on that relationship. Anyway, one day, he comes to me and he says, ‘Sam, I have a problem.’ He was only like eleven or twelve at the time, but you remember how he used to talk like an adult.”
“Yeah,” Lynn agreed quietly.
“So he tells me, ‘Sam, I have a problem, and I can’t tell my mom and dad.’ And he tells me that there’s a guy that’s been following him home from school. Not every day—just randomly. He says it started a few weeks earlier. Aiden would get off the bus, and he’d start walking home, and this guy would just appear, and he’d follow Aiden all the way to his house. And he would say things… he would say, ‘I’m gonna get you, kid,’ or ‘One day you’re coming home with me,’ and he told Aiden that if he ever told his parents, he would snatch him right off the street. Sometimes the guy wouldn’t come around for three or four days, but then he’d be back. One day he even made a grab at him. Luckily Aiden got away and ran off.”
“Jesus,” Lynn murmured.
“So Aiden tells me all this, and he says, ‘You can’t tell my mom.’ You know Sarah—total helicopter mom. If she knew, she’d call the police and never let Aiden out of her sight again, right?” Sam shook his head. “I should have told Sarah. Or the police. But I didn’t. Instead, I staked out Aiden’s bus stop for three days straight, waiting. Finally, one day, Aiden gets off the bus and he starts walking home and this guy follows him. So I follow the guy. And I can see that he’s saying things to Aiden and that the kid is uncomfortable, and I want to run up and beat the hell out of this guy, but I wait. Aiden gets home okay, but I keep following the guy, all the way to his house. I wait until night. Then I knock on his door. When he answers, I grab him by the throat. I throw him down, and I tell him that if he ever comes near Aiden again, I’ll beat him so badly he’ll have to eat through a straw.” Sam lifted his gaze to look Lynn in the eye. “And you know what this guy did?”
She shook her head, no.
“He laughed at me. He laughed. Then he told me his name, and he said, ‘Now you know my name and where I live. You can’t touch me. I dare you to try.’ His name was Jason Heckler.”
“Heckler?” Lynn raised an eyebrow. “That sounds familiar from somewhere.”
Sam’s throat felt dry and tight, but he kept talking. “I looked into him, checked online. Turns out that Jason Heckler’s father is some big-shot judge that works out of Charlotte. Apparently he had a shot at the NC Supreme Court but turned it down. Anyhow, Papa Heckler got his son Jason off the hook three times before. Three times. Guess what the charges were?”
Lynn didn’t answer. She bit her lip and waited for him to continue.
“Heckler was a pedophile, plain and simple. He liked little boys. He’d been caught with child pornography. He had exposed himself on a playground, and on another occasion had tried to nab a kid from the backseat of a car while his mom was in the grocery store. But each time, there either ‘wasn’t enough evidence’ or ‘faulty eyewitness testimony’ or whatever. It was Judge Heckler, keeping his kid out of jail—but also making him think that he was invincible. Untouchable. Heckler thought he could do whatever he wanted.” Sam ran his hand through his hair. “Before I left Heckler’s h
ouse that night, he stood in the doorway and called out to me. He said, ‘I’m going to get that kid. I’ll have him. Just watch.’”
Lynn swallowed hard. She remembered where she had heard the name before. “What did you do, Sam?”
“The next day—the very next day—Heckler made another grab at Aiden. That was the last straw. Jake came home on leave a few days later. I told him about Heckler. And then I told him that I was going to kill him. Jake tried to talk me out of it… at first. But he could see I was serious. So instead, I convinced him to help me.”
Lynn’s hand was over her mouth as she listened.
“We planned it perfectly. We knew that on Thursdays Heckler always ate at this Thai place that used to be over on Fourth. I took Aiden to an arcade that I knew had security cameras. Jake hid in an alley with a tarp. I told Aiden I was going to the bathroom. I went up to the roof. My rifle was already up there. I—”
“Stop. I don’t want to hear anymore.”
Sam drew a deep breath. He was silent for a minute or so before he continued.
“When it was done, the cops came to my place. I was the only one in Kingston with any experience around that kind of rifle. But there was nothing to find; we’d hidden the gun and… taken other measures. Heckler’s body was found on the other side of town with two shots in it; Jake had been the one to—”
“Sam, please.”
“I need to tell you this.”
“You don’t.” Tears brimmed in her eyes.
“I do. Just… a little more. They had no evidence against me. We got away with it. But two days later, someone else came to see me—this time it was Judge Heckler. He was alone. I opened the door and he just kind of, stared at me for a while. I stared back at him. And in that moment, an understanding passed between us. I don’t know how long we stood there, but after a while the judge said, ‘It was probably for the best.’ And then he left.”
They were quiet for a long time.
Finally, Lynn softly asked, “Why did you tell me this?”
“Because… I guess because I want you to know the worst part of me. I want you to know the realest version of Sam Asher that you can know. I don’t know what’s going to happen tonight, but there’s a chance that I’ll never be able to go back to my regular life. And if that happens, I don’t want your memory of me to be anything less than genuine.”
Her throat flexed as she fought back the urge to cry. “I’ll wait for you downstairs,” she said.
She closed the bathroom door again when she left.
Sam sat there for a while by himself. That was it; with those few minutes behind a closed bathroom door, his life would never be the same again, one way or another.
He turned the mask in his hands. Before their talk, Lynn had added a couple dark red trails of blood beneath each eye. He worked his good arm back through the sleeve of his clown costume so that he could reach the flip-phone and powered it back on. He should keep it on, he decided, just in case the radios failed or—god forbid—he actually needed Reidigger’s help tonight.
The screen lit up and it chimed once. He had received a text message at some point, from a number he didn’t recognize. It said simply, He knows.
Sam surmised it was Agent Cole—between the first text, Don’t trust him, and this one, she seemed to be warning him. But wasn’t she working with Reidigger? How could he know they weren’t playing a game with his head, trying to get him to spill more information?
He texted back: What does he know?
He waited. About two minutes later, a call came through from yet another unknown number. He answered.
“Asher, don’t talk; just listen to me.”
“Cole?”
“I’m calling you from the hotel lobby. Reidigger knows that you’re lying about the location. He’s having us go to the park. And he knows your brother will be involved somehow; he called in an anonymous tip to the cops with a description fitting Jake’s.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because sometimes what you believe is right isn’t what everyone else says is right.” She hung up.
He sat there for another minute, thinking. Reidigger would be in the park, and Sam would be the obvious one-armed clown with the bumblebee lady. He had surpassed his goal of being fairly conspicuous into the territory of “really fucking obvious.” It was too late to go back now. They would have to play it by ear. He carried his clown mask downstairs to the foyer and slipped quietly out the front door. He didn’t want Sarah or Pat to see him dressed this way.
CHAPTER 40
* * *
The police, working with the National Guard, set up patrol routes for each unit to take that covered most of the town. They were instructed to drive slowly, shine their floodlights down alleys and in yards, and use their PA systems to warn residents to remain indoors. There was a mandatory nine p.m. curfew in effect. Anyone out on the streets after nine would be subject to arrest.
The Guardsmen set up checkpoints at each of the three major roadways in and out of Kingston. They shone flashlights into cabs and asked drivers to pop their trunks. Anyone caught with clown paraphernalia was turned away, and their license plate number was taken down.
The precautionary measures deterred many, but not all. Some clowns were already in town, having come in the night before or earlier that day. Others found places to leave their cars outside of town and simply walked in, sneaking through stretches of trees or backyards. It wasn’t long before word of the checkpoints reached the internet, at which point savvy clowns hid their costumes in spare-tire cubbies or under their seats.
Patrolling police found themselves making frequent trips back to the station to drop off their arrested charges; they could only carry three clowns at a time in a cruiser, and the interruptions in patrols only made it easier for more clowns to find their way in. National Guardsmen patrolled on foot in packs of three. Any clowns discovered were detained immediately. The soldiers were instructed to give armed clowns only one warning—drop their weapons and get down on the ground—before the use of force, which in most cases meant the butt of a rifle to the face. The holding cells of Kingston filled to capacity and then some in no time.
From his vantage point, Jake couldn’t see far enough to note what was happening downtown, but he could see almost the entirety of the park across the street. He was perched atop a three-story building, a bar topped with two floors of apartments, with a flat roof and a short pony wall that he could hide behind if need be. He had pulled the black mask over his head and used the binoculars to scope out the park and surrounding area; he didn’t want anyone to catch a glimpse of the rifle prematurely. He couldn’t believe his eyes.
At ten minutes to ten, the park was as quiet as a grave, save for the occasional police or Guard patrol. Sam hadn’t been lying to Reidigger; their original story, the one that went viral, was for clowns to converge on the center of town, which is where the highest concentration of police and assistance had massed.
But just before ten, bodies began to swarm the park, dozens came, then more, maybe a hundred… but they weren’t clowns. They were ordinary people; citizens of Kingston. They convened in the park in a haphazard crowd, their voices barely above murmurs—a collective buzz, from Jake’s perspective.
They weren’t armed. They didn’t come to fight back against the clowns. Instead they faced the woods as small orange flickers lit throughout the field, a hundred candles. Still more were coming.
“Good Lord,” Jake murmured. He crossed himself—something he hadn’t done in years. The people down below, his neighbors and friends and coworkers, were holding a vigil.
***
Sam and Lynn made their way as quickly and quietly as they could toward the park, sticking to the shadows and avoiding the sweeping floodlights of police patrols. Sam kept his billowy nylon costume around his waist, tied off with the sleeves, and the mask shoved down one pant leg just in case they were discovered. They had to take a long route to the park to a
void streetlights and beacons, but this was their town; they knew it well. They stole through yards and hid behind fences as patrols passed.
He was surprised that they hadn’t come across a single clown. It was just after ten o’clock; he expected the streets to be flooded. He’d expected to hear screams and shouts and broken glass in the distance, but aside from the occasional shouts of warning from Guardsmen and police, the night was eerily silent.
“Jake,” Sam whispered into the radio earpiece. He thought he would be in range by now. “Can you hear me, Jake?”
“You didn’t say ‘over.’”
“Now is not the time, Jake. How do things look up there?”
“Things look… strange.”
“Define strange.”
“You kind of have to see it for yourself.”
Sam grimaced. “I need you to keep your eyes open for Reidigger. He knows we’ll be in the park, and he’ll notice it’s me if he spots me.”
“How am I supposed to keep my eyes on you and him?”
“Scans, Jake. Eyes on me, and then quick sweeps, just a few seconds, circular patterns, coming back around to me, and… oh. Wow.”
He and Lynn crested a small hill and looked out over the park, seeing what Jake had already witnessed. By now there were more than two hundred people in the park, each holding a candle in their hands. The crowd was entirely silent. On its outskirts, police and National Guard stood idly by, confused by the mass and unsure of what to do—was this a peaceful protest? Some sort of ruse?
Sam swallowed a lump in his throat. This was for Aiden. Maybe for all of them.
An officer on the edge of the park, far from Sam and across the street from the building on which Jake was perched, held a bullhorn to his lips. No sound came forth. He faltered, lowered it and wiped his eyes. He waved at his men to back down, return to their patrols.
