Clown Moon

by Alex Jameson

  “Did you know about this?” Sam whispered to Lynn.

  “No. I had no idea.” Her eyes glistened in the moonlight. “It’s… beautiful.”

  He turned to face her. “We still have to do what we came here for. You sure you’re okay with this? It’s not too late to turn back.”

  Lynn nodded tersely. “We’ve come this far. We can’t go back now.”

  “Yes, you can, if you want.”

  “No. Let’s go.”

  “Alright.” He took Lynn by the arm, gripping her around the bicep, and led the way into the woods. “Jake, you have eyes on me? Southeast area of the park, about fifteen yards from the basketball court.”

  “Uh… not yet… yes. I see you.”

  “Alright. You’re going to lose sight of me when we get into the trees, so do a quick sweep from me, counterclockwise in a circular pattern until you’re back on me. Got it?”

  “Okay…”

  “Did you see Reidigger? Or anyone that resembles Harlan?”

  “No, I didn’t see much of anything but shapes and flames. Christ, I wish I’d had time to practice this. It’s like doing a Where’s Waldo puzzle.”

  Sam gritted his teeth and blew out a breath; yes, they probably should have practiced spotting, but that was a process that took weeks, even months to master. There wasn’t anything he could have taught Jake in a few hours that would have helped much.

  “Alright, Jake. We’re going in. Keep an eye on the park, and let me know if anything goes haywire.”

  “You got it.”

  They stepped gingerly into the woods, careful not to trip on roots or errant branches. Once they were confident that they were obscured behind the trees, Lynn helped him pull the nylon costume up over his torso and good arm, and secured the mask over his face. His visibility went from bad to worse.

  As he adjusted the rubber mask over his eyes, an eerie, high-pitched laugh rang out from elsewhere in the forest—not far. A shiver ran up Sam’s spine. Nearby, another giggle echoed through the trees. Lynn gripped his arm.

  “It’ll be okay,” he told her. “We’re not here for them; we’re here for Harlan, and that’s all.”

  She nodded. He led the way, stepping carefully. With the mask on, he had to turn his head left and right to see anything coming—not that he saw anything coming.

  But out of the darkness, others saw them. As they crept along, voices hissed from behind trees, from shadows.

  “Hey little girl, you want some candy?”

  “Why don’t you come into the woods with me, bumblebee girl…”

  “Come on, give us a little scream…”

  Lynn gripped Sam’s arm as he held hers. Suddenly a clown stepped directly into their path and hissed, high-pitched, “Hey girlie, where are you going with this clown?”

  Sam stepped forward, right in his face. “Back off,” he growled. He stood his ground. The clown was unarmed and a few inches shorter; he backed down and slunk away.

  “How we doing, Sam?”

  “We’re fine so far. We’re going a bit deeper.”

  “Don’t go too far. I can see some movement now and then in the trees.”

  Sam had his destination in mind; the site of Aiden’s murder.

  “Any sign of Reidigger or Cole yet, Jake?”

  “I’m doing the sweep thing, but nothing yet. It’s too hard to tell one person from another. And hell, if they’re in plainclothes I wouldn’t even notice them.”

  “Well, keep trying,” Sam said. “If they find me before you find them—”

  “Sam!” Lynn screamed.

  Sam spun, but before he could fully turn he felt Lynn’s fingers slip from his arm. Then her arm was wrenched from his grip. Behind him, two clowns pulled her away; one of them had his hands around her waist, and the other tugging her arm.

  “No!” she exclaimed, swinging her free arm around and smacking one of the clowns across the face. He shook it off, enraged, and yanked her harder.

  Sam sprang forward, tensing and flexing the fingers of his hand under his clown costume; he knew this was about to hurt.

  “Sam! What’s going on?” Jake hissed into the radio.

  Sam clenched his teeth and reached for the Glock tucked in the back of his pants. Daggers of searing pain radiated from his shoulder, down his arm, into his torso. He sucked in a quick breath and wrapped his hand around the gun. He pulled it from the waistband. He aimed his hand for the sleeve…

  His fingers numbed and the gun slipped from his grip. It tumbled down into the billowing pant leg of the nylon suit and stopped at the elastic band around his ankle.

  “Shit.” He bent and clawed at the ankle.

  “Sam!” Lynn screamed again.

  The two clowns pulled her further into the woods. Sam kept his eyes on her as he desperately tried to work the pistol from his pant leg. The more she wriggled and fought, the harder they held on.

  “Hang on, Lynn!”

  He fumbled with the elastic band, not even realizing that he was panting, or that he was using both hands. Adrenaline coursed through his veins. The pain was distant, unimportant.

  She was quickly fading from view. Suddenly something silvery glinted in the air behind them. The clown that had Lynn around the waist jerked violently to one side at an unnatural angle and he fell sideways, dragging her down with him.

  Eric stood over him, his aluminum bat shining in the moonlight through the leafless canopy overhead. A spot of it glistened, slick with blood. He grinned maniacally and spat on the clown.

  “Whoo! Knocked your ass out, bitch!”

  The second clown lunged toward him, but two thick arms wrapped around him from behind. Biggie lifted the clown clear off the ground and pile-drove him into the dirt with a gut-wrenching thud.

  “Two for two!” Eric shouted. “Who’s next, huh?”

  Biggie helped Lynn to her feet. Sam stopped fumbling for the gun and stood, leaving it in his pant leg.

  “Jesus, not these guys again,” he muttered.

  “Sam, what’s going on? What guys?” Jake asked in his ear.

  “Those goddamn clown hunter kids…”

  “Oh, Christ. You need me down there? I can be there in less than a minute—”

  “No! Hold your position, Jake.”

  “Be careful.”

  Sam rose to his feet and started towards them, his hands up, palms out.

  Eric saw the clown coming and pointed the tip of his bat at him.

  “You feeling brave, Giggles? Because I just split your buddy’s skull open here.”

  Sam reached up and tugged the mask off by its orange hair. “It’s me. It’s Sam. Remember?”

  For a moment, Eric’s mouth formed a perfect little O of surprise. Then his grin returned, even wider than it was before.

  “Holy shit, Biggie, are you seeing this? Our clown hunter friend… is a clown! Man, you just blew my fucking mind!” He jumped up and down once with excitement. “Oh, this is just too good.”

  “That’s not what this is,” Sam said slowly. “My fight’s not with you.”

  “No?” Eric gestured toward his purple, splotchy face and laughed. “The way I see it, now I got two reasons to fuck you up real bad.”

  “Sam, I can get there fast…”

  “No, Jake. He’s not worth blowing this whole thing.”

  In his earpiece, Jake let out a grunt of frustration.

  Eric took two quick steps toward him and swung the bat hard. Sam ducked and dropped his mask. He felt the breeze of it over his head. Close… too close.

  “Oh, you’re a quick one, huh?” Eric turned and swung again. Sam leaned back and dipped a shoulder, avoiding another blow, but sending a shockwave of pain through his wound. “Come on, then. Fight back.” Another swing; another near-miss.

  Lynn shouted at them to stop and lurched for Eric. Biggie held her back by both wrists.

  Sam waited for an opportune moment. If he was uninjured he would have taken the bat from him by now and beaten the kid sensele
ss with it, but he had to be careful.

  Eric pointed the end of the bat at him again. “Is this why you didn’t let me bash that clown’s brains out back in Ohio? ‘Cause you’re one of them?”

  “I’m trying to tell you, I’m in disguise. The killer, the Clown Killer, he’s here tonight. He’s…”

  Eric swung again, straight across at chest level. Sam ducked it, but not fast enough; the bat bounced off the top of his head. It was a glancing blow, but enough to stun him for a moment. He saw stars in his vision as he fell to his hands and knees.

  “Now I’m gonna kill you.” He saw Eric’s feet in front of him. He looked up; the bat was high in the air.

  A single shot cracked the air like lightning. The back of Eric’s head exploded outward, flinging blood and brains across the trees. Several people screamed in the distance, from the park.

  “Goddammit, Jake!” Sam hissed.

  “That… wasn’t me,” Jake said in disbelief. “I didn’t have a shot…”

  Sam looked behind him.

  “Cole?”

  About fifteen yards away, Agent Cole held a pistol aloft, the barrel still smoking. She was in plainclothes, a sweater and jeans. Her face was tight, emotionless.

  Eric’s body fell to the ground, his eyes staring at Sam. Lynn dashed over to him and helped him to his feet.

  In his ear, Jake muttered, “You’d better get the hell out of there. It’s going to be swarming with cops in no time.”

  Cole turned her gun on Biggie. “Go.”

  He didn’t think twice. He turned and lumbered away as fast as he could out of the woods. Cole lowered her pistol. “Asher,” she said quietly, “you’d better be right.”

  “Thank you,” he managed. His voice was hoarse. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Don’t say anything,” she said. “Just lead the way.”

  From somewhere in the woods, a clown laughed, a long high-pitched gleeful giggle. Then another. More took up the strange cry, until laughter seemed to fill the air. From the direction of the park, they heard sirens and stern voices echoing through bullhorns to disburse.

  Sam led the three of them parallel to the tree line as fast as he could in the darkness. His eyes were adjusting to it; he was able to make his way without tripping or stepping into pits of dead leaves.

  A clown laughed to their left; close. Too close. They kept moving. They could hear police shouting warnings to the candlelit vigil to disburse, return to their homes. Boots crunched on leaves as cops and soldiers entered the woods. Another laugh, a deep, frightening bellow, sounded to their right.

  “Keep moving,” Cole grunted from behind them. “Whatever you do, just keep—” She yelped.

  Sam turned quickly, nearly sliding on wet leaves as he did. Three clowns were upon Cole, grabbing at her arms and neck. She disappeared under a tangle of limbs and bright colors.

  “Stay here!” he told Lynn. He charged at the trio of clowns.

  Cole managed to elbow one of them in the face and free her arm. She punched a second one solidly, and then spun around and kicked the third in the crotch. The first clown recovered and tried to make a grab for her from behind, but Sam hit him across the chin hard enough to lay him out. The second clown tackled Cole to the ground. Sam grabbed him and tore him off of her, and then kicked him in the face for good measure. The two clowns quickly scurried off, stumbling as they ran deeper into the woods.

  Sam winced at the pain in his shoulder. “Come on, Cole, we gotta move… Cole?”

  She looked up at him and let out a long breath.

  The handle of a knife stuck out from between her ribs.

  CHAPTER 41

  * * *

  Harlan watched from the safety of the trees as people began to populate the park. It wasn’t fear rooting him to his spot; he was beyond that. No, it was a realization that kept him in the woods. What occurred to him was that all this time, his message had been wrong. His actions were right; his motivations were correct. It was the statement that he was making that he had gotten wrong.

  The clowns had lost before night ever fell, as a hundred citizens gathered in the park with candles, holding their ground.

  This whole time he had thought that his message to the clowns was that they should be afraid of him.

  No.

  His message was to the people, that they shouldn’t be afraid of the clowns. By god, it was working. And it was glorious.

  He had already felled two of them. He’d heard leaves rustling as two clowns attempted to sneak into the park from the rear, through the trees. He waited in the darkness until they were nearly at his position before he moved on them. The first one he’d stabbed between the ribs with his long, thin fishing knife. Then he swung the hand scythe, catching the second in the throat right above the notch where the collarbones meet. The first one tried to crawl away, but Harlan made quick work of him.

  He returned to the trees, to his vantage point with the X carved in the trunk, and watched as people gathered against the clowns. He’d never seen anything so beautiful. Then the gunshot rang out. From where he stood he couldn’t tell who or what did the shooting or who got shot, but he was certain it came from further back in the woods.

  And the clowns… they started to laugh. The sound of it, the collective laughter of those lurking among the trees, sent fresh shivers down Harlan’s spine. It was time for him to act.

  He left his vantage point with his hand scythe and a butcher knife and made his way deeper into the woods. It didn’t take long to find another pair of clowns making their way into Kingston. He slashed at the nearest clown to him, stabbing downward into its chest. He swung the hand scythe and caught the ribcage of the other. He tugged the scythe; it wouldn’t budge. He had to put a boot on the clown to tear it free.

  Hands grabbed his shoulders as a third clown dropped from a low branch above him. Harlan twisted his whole body, bringing all of his weight around and throwing the clown off of him, but also dropping his bag to the ground at the same time.

  He pulled the other knife from his belt and waited for the clown to come closer.

  Then they both stopped, glancing in confusion at a sight stranger than either of them, as a little girl in a bumblebee costume dashed past, no more than ten feet away, running toward the park.

  ***

  “Oh, Christ… come on, Cole. Come on! Get up!”

  “Sam, what’s going on?” Jake asked urgently.

  “Cole, she was stabbed…” Sam stood up and cupped his hands to his mouth. “Hey!” he shouted. “Hey, we need help! Hey, over here!”

  “Asher.”

  He looked down at her. Her face was chalk-white.

  “You have to… go.” Her head lolled to one side.

  “Sam, you have to move. Cops are in the woods.”

  He grunted in frustration and looked back at Lynn… or rather, where Lynn was supposed to be. “Jake! Where’s Lynn? I lost her… can you see her?”

  “I… I can’t… I don’t know where she went…”

  “Shit,” he hissed. Boots crunched leaves close by, and between trees behind him he saw sweeping flashlight beams.

  Sam felt tears well in his eyes. He didn’t even know this woman, not really, but it was such a brutal, senseless way to die. He reached down to check her pulse, but before he could, he heard a voice behind him.

  “Cole?”

  He looked up. Reidigger, in a black denim jacket, stood mere feet away, his jaw slack and both hands wrapped around a pistol. He looked from Cole’s body to Sam, kneeling over her, his hands covered in her blood.

  “Asher,” he said quietly. “What have you done?”

  “No, it wasn’t me, it was the clowns… she saved me…”

  Reidigger leveled his pistol and fired. Sam barely had time to react; he tucked into a roll and hit the ground hard. Fresh pain shot through his shoulder, but he did what he could to ignore it. He came to his feet as another shot whizzed by his ear. He faltered, almost stumbled, and dashed b
ehind a tree. He kept running.

  “Asher!” He heard Reidigger bellow behind him. “Asher!” Another shot split the air, sending splinters of bark on the back of his neck. Sam weaved around trees and ducked under low-hanging branches. Suddenly he found himself at the tree line between the woods and the park, near the playground, beyond the spot where Aiden was murdered. The park was already empty; the vigil was over. The police had gone into the woods to pursue the gunshots.

  “Jake!” he shouted. “Find Lynn! Where’s Lynn?”

  “I didn’t see where she went! I would guess she’s hiding somewhere. I hope so.”

  Sam stopped, panting, and looked around wildly. She wouldn’t have gone deeper into the woods. She could have left the park, headed for home. She could have…

  “The playground,” Sam said breathlessly. He sprinted over, checking under and around equipment. Somewhere close by, there was another gunshot.

  The playground had two tube slides; the first was empty, but in the larger one, the one that curved around, was a silhouette, huddled at the bend.

  “Lynn?” he called into it, his voice echoing. “Is that you?”

  “Sam?” She slid down to him. “I’ve never been so scared in my life.”

  “Me neither,” he said honestly. “Are you okay?”

  “You lost your mask.”

  He touched his face. He hadn’t paused long enough to realize that he’d dropped it. “It’s fine,” he said. “Listen, the plan is over. We’re getting out of here, right now.” He held her by the shoulder.

  Jake muttered something into the radio.

  “What, Jake?”

  “I… I don’t believe it…”

  “Jake, speak up!”

  “It’s him, Sam.” Then louder, feverish, “Sam, I see him! I see him!”

  His heart skipped a few beats. He spun, searching. “Where, Jake? I don’t see him. Are you sure? Are you sure?”

  “Sam—” Jake’s warning came too late. Something knocked into him from the side with such force that he tumbled to the ground, groaning. His first thought was that it was Biggie, back for revenge against his friend.

  The assailant kneeled over him and raised an arm up. He had a knife, aimed for Sam’s heart. He squirmed to the side as much as he could; the knife came down, missing his chest and instead piercing his already-wounded arm.