by Mav Skye
Chloe started shaking. She knew where those gunshots had come from. She shoved Shirley aside, and ran.
She ran past Mrs. Price with pink curlers in her hair who was standing at the intersection of the Y of Gander and Goose Avenue with her portable phone and binoculars. “Hey! Hey!” she yelled, but Chloe kept running. She ran past May and Jenn, who were climbing in the maple trees at the entrance of Goose Avenue, and when May fell out of the tree and bumped her head, Chloe kept running.
She raced down Goose Avenue. The snake rattled in her mind. Her mother’s words rattled along with it. Dance! Dance! Dance! Become the beast! Chloe could also hear sirens in the distance, but she was going to get there first. Had to get there first.
She saw someone on the stairs as she approached. He was tall and skinny with a yellow shirt and torn, pink rabbit ears. Become the beast! His foot had gone completely through the third step, and he was caught there, swinging his hatchet, growling like a zombie.
The conversation with Shirley just hours—or had it been minutes?—before came to her. “Mama Nola taught him that.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
Shirley pointed to one side of her face, then the other. “Dark and light, Chloe, dark and light. Good versus evil. We all have it inside of us. But sometimes, one side or the other is drawn out by influences.”
Chloe hardly recognized the monster swinging the hatchet at her now. Had he truly been the sweet, shy boy who loved donuts and Bugs Bunny?
Mama Nola taught him that.
Chloe thought to the night when her mother had crawled on the floor, chanting, and had tried to bite off her pinky toe. Had Mama Nola in her state of dementia taught him this?
Her Etsi’s voice whispered in her mind, Dance! Dance! Dance!
Chris liked to dance. Had he danced with Mama Nola?
Become the beast!
He hadn’t just become a beast. He’d become a monster. A monster that wanted to kill people.
Watching Chris howl with bloodthirsty vigor and swing the sharp blade, it struck Chloe that there were different kinds of monsters in this world of dark and light, good guys and bad guys. Each and every person, no matter how kind or innocent had vulnerabilities, and those vulnerabilities led to the capability for monstrous acts and deeds, there was no escape for mankind. Any single one of us could become another’s worst nightmare given the right set of circumstances. We are all monsters inside, each and every one of us.
Become the beast!
Chris swung the hatchet at her, as she leaped onto the first step. She went to grab his arm as he swung down, but he was strong for his age, and the blade nicked her forehead, the same place Mr. Jingles had hit her the last time. Chloe cried out and shoved him aside. He swung at her again, but she was already scrambling up the stairs and into the trailer.
When she saw the red balloon at the ceiling, it startled her so badly that she slipped in the curdling blood on the carpet, and fell flat on her butt. She tried to stand and tumbled into the blood again. The red balloon hovered over her, as if reminding her that the devil owned her soul—and payment was due.
Covered in blood, Chloe screamed in rage, and the clown on the front step screamed with her. In her mind, her mother cried, Become the beast!
The sirens matched their cries as they pulled into the driveway. Chloe crawled on her hands and knees to the hallway. Outside, the police yelled, the clown howled, and there was the sound of gunshots.
Become the beast!
She had to get to Mama Nola’s room first. Chloe leapt to her feet and clambered down the hall, coming to a dead stop when she saw Mr. Jingles laying in the doorway.
The bunny ears had fallen off. The hatchet lay at its feet. The horrible lightning bolt separated the white and black paint. The beepy nose was missing, and the dark red lipstick smeared into a wide unnatural smile. But the eyes that propped wide open, Chloe knew those storm gray eyes. Those eyes that had been so gentle and kind.
We are all monsters inside, each and every one of us.
“No.” And it wasn’t just the eyes. It was also the hair. Long peppered hair fanned out behind Mr. Jingle’s head. It was her mother’s hair. Chloe tried to put the two together. Mr. Jingles lay on the floor, and Mama Nola. Mr. Jingles. Mama Nola.
Her mother’s voice chanted, We trixied the eyes, but not the heart.
Chloe finally understood. We tricked the eyes, but not the heart.
“No, no, no, no, no, no. No!” The room spun like a pinwheel. She clutched the wall for support.
Become the beast!
Mama Nola was Mr. Jingles, and Mr. Jingles was Mama Nola. They were one and the same.
Dance! Dance! Dance!
Mama Nola held a pistol in her hand. Mama Nola—Mr. Jingles—had taken her own life.
Become the beast!
The rattlesnake shook its tail. Her mother’s voice sang to the beat of drums, Dance! Dance! Dance!
And then Chloe heard another voice as the room spun round and round, and the circus music played from her jewelry box, the clown clapping his hands in beat with her mother’s voice, Dance! Dance! Dance!
The other voice was a single high-pitched wail. “Why? Why? Why?!?”
Become the beast!
Then the wail turned into a single name, and the name brought a face. “Ohanzee!”
Be here.
Had he transformed? “Ohanzee!”
Be in the now.
Had he gone away with Mama and left Chloe? “Ohanzee!”
Trust yourself.
Footsteps in the house.
Swearing as someone slipped in blood.
Then arms lifting Chloe as she was
falling, (Dance!)
falling, (Dance!)
falling (Dance!) into a deep, black abyss of disbelief. She fell in the darkness, the never ending darkness, curling into a fetus. She let the emptiness embrace her as her Etsi used to. She heard Mama Nola’s voice whisper, Dance! Dance! Dance! and then a single word, Uktena.
Chloe kept falling. She fell and fell. Until she slept.
22
Abyss
THE NEXT FEW WEEKS WERE A blur. Chloe remembered waking to familiar faces leaning over hers at the hospital. She couldn’t remember their names, but recognized the woman who looked like Sally Field and the twin girls who could only be told apart by their blue and brown eyes.
When they spoke, it was as if the voices came to her from the other end of a long, long tunnel.
One girl: “The scary clown is gone now, Chloe. Why won’t you wake up?”
The other girl: “It’s because you took the balloon. I know it.”
The woman hushed and scolded the twins, before she said, “I know you’ve been through so much, Chloe. I am so sorry. You are going to stay with us until your Aunt can come. I just talked to her this morning. I hope that is okay.”
A word came from her lips, a word she didn’t recognize but knew. “Etsi.”
The woman who looked like Sally Field took her hand and said, “She’s gone, Chloe.” The woman began to cry, then squeezed Chloe’s hand. “I’m sorry.”
She’s gone… these words sent a flash of memories through her mind. Chloe remembered the responding officers’ faces. She remembered their lips moving, asking questions. Their lips moved, but she didn’t hear a single word they spoke until one in particular pricked her heart, and then that was all she could focus on. The word was “Suicide.”
But there were other words, names rather. One name, in particular, meant the whole world to her; she spoke it out loud, “Joey.”
The woman who looked like Sally Field replied, “Aw, Chloe. He’s run off. Nobody knows where he is. I know you two were close. I’m sorry he can’t be here for you now.” Tears spilled from the woman’s eyes once more. “I’m sorry I didn’t do more in the beginning. If I had known—” She shook her head. “I’m just so very sorry.”
Chloe heard the words. She saw the emotion on the woman’s face, but she herself
felt nothing but falling. She fell and fell inside the black void, until she fell back asleep again.
Chloe awoke on a familiar couch. She knew it before she even opened her eyes, she’d spent countless times on it, reading to a set of particularly gruesome little girls. She opened her eyes, and those same girls were sitting on the floor in front of her watching Disney’s Pocahontas. One girl said, “I like the Chloe movie.”
The other said, “That’s not Chloe, that’s Pocahontas.”
“But she’s so pretty. So pretty, I think it is Chloe.”
“But it isn’t Chloe. Chloe’s right there. And she isn’t a cartoon. This is real life.”
“You don’t have to tell me what’s a cartoon and what’s real life, Sharon. Geez.”
“Yeah? Well, you thought Chloe was the Crypt Keeper.”
“I did not.”
“Did, too.”
“Mom!”
Pocahontas sang about all the colors of the world, but to Chloe’s ears it sounded like an out of tune violin. The music spiraled sharply in Chloe’s ear as well as the girls’ arguing. The whistle blew on the teapot in the kitchen, and Chloe smelled fresh fry bread. Every one of Chloe’s senses was overwhelmed by sight, sound, smell and touch.
She sat up, and both girls turned and looked at her. They spoke, but their voices were muted when Chloe suddenly heard the shake of a rattlesnake tail, then familiar circus music.
“No,” she whispered.
Mr. Jingles waltzed out of the kitchen, waving the hatchet above his head. When he opened his mouth, her Etsi’s voice came out. “Dance! Dance! Dance!”
Chloe tumbled off of the couch. She covered her ears, and screamed, wishing to fall into that deep, dark place where she felt nothing, heard nothing, saw nothing. The abyss would not come, so she was forced to watch as the clown’s makeup melted together like candle wax, but it was more than just makeup that melted, it was the clown’s skin. Skin melted and dripped from its face on to the carpet. As the skull emerged, so did the horns. They grew from the clown’s skull. The clown’s legs fused together and it fell to the floor, slowly morphing into a serpent, a serpent with horns.
Uktena, urged a gentle voice.
As the clown was fully transformed into the Horned Serpent, the tinkling music turned into a dramatic beating of drums. The snake crawled toward Chloe, hissing.
Chloe rolled across the floor, grabbing the girls’ cereal bowls filled with Cheerios and milk. She flung them at the beast, but it did nothing to slow it down.
Chloe jumped to her feet just before the serpent struck. It chased her around the couch straight into the woman’s arms. “Chloe! Chloe! What’s wrong?”
The voice was too far away; she couldn’t help Chloe. Chloe frantically searched the living room for anything and everything to throw at the snake monster. She tossed the couch pillows, the lamp, side table.
It dodged all the objects, and sprang at her. She felt its teeth
sinking
sinking
sinking
into her neck, and once more, Chloe slept.
A doctor with squinty eyes and glasses leaned over her face, shining lights into her pupils. He spoke to someone else but continued to examine Chloe as he did.
As usual, she only heard a few words. “Post-traumatic stress…Prescription drugs… Clinical trial...” She heard a woman’s voice, then the doctor said, “A breakthrough with histone deacetylase inhibitors. She will forget everything.”
Yes! Chloe willed her lips to speak, but no sound came from them. If sound did come, she would tell them that she wanted to forget. She wanted to forget everything. The doctor leaned over her. “I thought I saw her lips move.”
A woman with long dark hair wrapped into a bun leaned over her as well. “I saw her lips move, too. Do you think she’s waking up?”
Chloe struggled to say the word, yes, but then froze. Standing behind the doctor was the clown, the clown with a hatchet. It had horns like a cartoon devil. She willed her fingers to move, to point at it.
The doctor said, “I believe she’s experiencing something right now.” He pressed a stethoscope to Chloe’s chest. “Her heartbeat has picked up.”
The woman leaned over her. “Ayita?”
The clown glanced from the woman to the doctor, then back to Chloe. The giant red smile on his face kept stretching wider and wider.
“Uh huh. Well, if she does, she’s on a pretty good dose of Xanax, so she shouldn’t be as physical as she was the other day. What she needs is to move away from this place. Somewhere new where she won’t experience triggers that will send her into this state.”
“She’ll be coming back to California with me, Doctor. Can we still participate in the trial?”
“California, eh?” The doctor laughed. “It’s where I live. Yes, and the sunshine will do her good.”
“Then what are you doing here?”
“Oh, let’s just say I’m helping out a good friend.”
“How soon can we start the trial?”
“There’s paper work—a lot of it, but other than that, we can start immediately.”
Chloe gasped, pointing at the sadistic being, that horrific monster that had haunted her for as long as she could remember. She tried to whisper, Mr. Jingles…
The doctor looked over his shoulder, then back at Chloe. “It’s not there, Chloe. Whatever it is you think you see, it isn’t there.”
He turned back to her aunt and his voice droned on. “This prescription will cause her to forget her experience, but we don’t know for sure how much it will erase because everyone’s neural pathways work differently. She could forget the past few weeks or the slate could be wiped completely clean. Even if that happens, she could experience break through memories, which would be very confusing for her.”
“I understand, doctor.”
“Is this something you still want to go forward with?”
“Of course, yes. Will it work immediately?”
“On a majority of our test subjects, yes. At some point after the medication is given, she will snap out of this vegetative state because there will be no reason to be in it anymore. You must understand that this is a daily prescription for the first year, then weekly. I don’t want her to talk to a single person associated with this town. No one, not even her friends. One day she may have to deal with her traumatic experience, but not now, not for a very, very long time.”
As the doctor talked, the clown taunted Chloe. He got in the doctor’s face and smiled, waved its fingers in front of the doctor’s face, stuck his finger up the doctor’s nose. He then placed the hatchet blade at the doctor’s neck, not quite touching his skin. Mr. Jingles smiled at Chloe and raised his eyebrows in a question. Should I slit his throat or yours?
Chloe’s heartbeat picked up. She moved her arm. “Clown.”
The woman said, “Doctor, she just said something.”
The doctor leaned in close, and Chloe whispered the word again. “Clown.”
He looked at her sternly. “Chloe? Listen to me. There is no clown.”
Chloe heard the snake shake its tail. The clown raised its hatchet above the doctor’s skull, and mouthed the words,
one,
two,
three! and then swung down. Chloe lunged at the doctor to knock him out of the way and then screamed as the clown raised the hatchet again, this time swinging at her. It hit her directly in the heart.
Fluid gurgled out of her mouth. She struggled with the weight of the clown on her chest. He raised the hatchet again, aiming for her face.
A needle slid into her neck, and she began to fade into the eternal dark.
The clown dropped the hatchet, and his face turned into another.
He had a carefree grin and dark teal eyes. He stroked her cheek, “I love you, Ayita Sevenstars.” Chloe reached for him. She opened her mouth to say the words back, but her fingers slipped right through him, the words wouldn’t form, and then she was out.
Epilogue
Her Aunt Tanya was kind—if somewhat reserved. Her home was large, tidy, peaceful in its elegant simplicity. Doctor Morgan, a short, plump man with squinty eyes and glasses, met with Chloe twice a week, helping her learn to cope with her missing memory. The conditions were ideal for Chloe's recovery, and she embraced her future with open arms.
Chloe was placed in a private school and graduated with honors. She went to Berkley and studied criminal law. She found the practice and enforcement of law grounded her and, to the disappointment of her Aunt Tanya—who had hoped she’d come to work at the firm—Chloe decided to become a Police Officer.
Her Aunt Tanya wept at her graduation from the police academy, and it was the first day on the job that Chloe met Wes Jackson. He was the relaxed, creative type who had just finished cooking school. He had a five-year-old daughter named Shayla from a previous relationship. Chloe adored her.
Wes never asked questions about her past, which didn’t matter because Chloe couldn’t have told him anything. They had a whirlwind romance and married a few months after they had met. Wes got a job cooking at the infamous Julliano’s, and it wasn’t long before Chloe became pregnant. After much discussion with Wes and Tanya, they named their son Cheveyo, which meant Warrior Spirit.
The years went by. Chloe and Wes were happy and endured the usual ups and downs of married life, jobs and children. When Wes started talking about running a restaurant of his own, Chloe was all for it.
Wes’ dream landed him a perfect opportunity in Washington state. And not just any place in Washington, it was a small town with a booming economy. The restaurant was in good shape, affordable and in a busy area.
