by Mav Skye
“That’s right,” said Chloe. “And there was a lot of blood.”
Diana snapped her fingers. “Exactly. My first question is: did they find the laceration on Mama Nola’s calf where Chloe struck her?”
Diana paced back and forth, a detective combing through a crime scene.
Tanya said, “Injury to either of the legs wasn’t on the coroner’s initial report or the post-mortem examination. Maybe you didn’t hit as hard as you thought, Chloe. In that kind of situation, it can feel more dramatic than it was.”
“Oh, I got him all right,” Chloe said, but Diana’s question puzzled her.
Diana said, “Which leads me to my second question.”
Chloe and Tanya said, “Yes?” at the same time.
Diana laced her hands together behind her back and paused, turning to both women on the couch. “If she didn’t have those wounds on her leg, then that wasn’t your grandmother that you hit with the hatchet.” Diana met Chloe’s eyes. Her voice softened, “If that wasn’t your grandmother, Chloe, then who was it?”
Chloe’s mouth fell opened. “I’m sure it was. The coroner must have overlooked it.” Tanya and Diana gave each other a look.
“He missed it,” insisted Chloe. She felt panic surge in her stomach and rise. Much of what Tanya had said, as painful as it was, felt right. All the morbid puzzle pieces fell into place to form the dark picture of her past. But this did not fit.
At all.
It just brought up more questions. More mysteries. More pain. She turned to Tanya. “Tell me I’m right. The coroner was lazy. He missed it.”
Tanya frowned, and kept her thoughts to herself as Chloe and Diana both watched her, waiting for her keen mind to answer. Finally, she said, “Diana’s right. There was an inquest, Chloe. It would have been documented. The clown in the forest must have been someone else.”
“No.” Chloe stood. She said emphatically, “No.”
Diana placed a hand on Chloe’s elbow. “But think about it, honey. If Mr. Jingles truly died when you were sixteen, who is the Mr. Jingles that’s been stalking you and talking to your son?”
Chloe began to shake. Diana was right. For a few moments, everything felt as if the puzzle had fallen into place and now, the pieces were scattered again, and nothing made sense.
A door open and close in the hallway. Chloe heard a familiar tune. It caused her heart to pound, her teeth to chatter; she trembled from head to toe.
It was a circus jingle, one that brought back memories of a time and place when she was chased by clowns.
And Chloe was still chased by clowns.
Wes approached the women holding a child’s wooden jewelry box in his hands—her jewelry box. How had Chloe not remembered it? She had adored it as a child until Mama Nola had begun to steal it for reasons the young Chloe hadn’t known. The top was open revealing a little clown in black and white checkers. It stood inside the lid with a mirror behind it, smiling and clapping its hands together.
Chloe stared at it, horrified.
Wes said, “I’ve never seen this before. Chev said that clown gave it to him today back in that alley after school. The clown instructed him to give this to you, Chloe. Does it mean anything to you?” He saw the look on Chloe’s face. “Chloe? Chloe! Grab her!”
She felt hands grab at her waist as she fell.
Chloe fought the darkness full of lost time and clowns.
She drew up an image of Chev’s face and focused on it. It morphed into another face, a face with freckles, teal eyes, and red hair. Always in my dreams, Joey whispered.
And then Chloe was back in the present.
She heard Diana’s voice, “Should we take her to the hospital?”
“No, no,” Tanya said, “She just needs to rest. She’ll be back in an hour or two.”
Chloe said, “I’m back now.”
“Oh!” Tanya said with surprise.
As Chloe swam out of the void, she gripped onto that volcano of passion that had consumed her before.
If she wanted her family safe, she needed to stop being the victim and do something about this. Chloe said it out loud, “I need to do something about this. I will do something about this.”
“You’re right, Chloe, absolutely right,” said Tanya.
But instead of hearing Tanya’s voice, Chloe heard her Etsi’s, and the clap of her hands like a beating drum, Dance! Dance! Dance! Become the beast. Become Uktena.
Chloe saw the horned serpent in her mind’s eye, scales like emeralds, obsidian eyes, horns of fire. It rose its full height to the clouds, beautiful and deadly. With a flip of its tail, it disappeared beneath the icy waters. Water constricted her veins. The serpent breathed life, vengeance and fire into her shell of a body.
And then she heard Wes, felt his hands on hers. “We will take care of this together. You’re not alone anymore, Chloe.”
Chloe opened her eyes. In that moment of ice in her soul and fire in her heart, combined with the genuineness in Wes’ eyes, she knew the truth. The truth that Mama Nola had tried to tell her all along. Chloe had never been alone.
Wes cried out, “Chloe, your hands…they’re dripping water.”
Tanya placed her palm against Chloe’s forehead. “I don’t understand it. You’re not sweating.”
Diana said, “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Chloe held up her hands for inspection. They were indeed dripping streams of water. The water was ice cold.
Uktena, her mother whispered.
24
Death on a Unicyle
DONNY SWUNG THE TROLL CLOWN AROUND and pinned him across the patrol car. He slapped on a pair of cuffs and read the guy his rights while waiting for SPD to show up.
The clown had a lime green wig, green face makeup and a lime green jumpsuit with dark green balloons.
Donny had caught the ugly looking troll with a baseball bat chasing an elderly woman down the street.
He’d been in town cruising the area. Truth be told he was out of his jurisdiction, but their—well, Kara Leigh’s—little house was in an older neighborhood of rental homes, and he couldn’t help but cruise by at least once an hour to check on the place. As a result, he had been close when the elderly woman’s neighbor had called it in.
Kara lived a few blocks away. It could have just as easily been his wife, and his infant daughter the clown was chasing, and that was too close for comfort.
He put the Troll in the backseat and reached for the triple shot Americano that sat in the cup holder up front. The surge of adrenaline when tackling the clown had helped wake him up, but fatigue was already starting to settle into his bones again.
Kara Leigh had invited him over the night before. It had felt like old times, eating Thai food in front of the TV while she told him about Mckayla throwing up in her hair and that she hadn’t had a chance to wash it out yet. She shared how many poopy diapers she had changed, and the goopy green ick she had to keep wiping from Mckayla’s eyes. As she unloaded her day’s burdens, Kara Leigh picked flakes of something called cradle cap out of the infant’s fine hair.
Donny had promptly lost his appetite, but was happy to be there for Kara Leigh.
He’d felt a spark between them that hadn’t been there for a long time, and he thought perhaps she was pulling out of her depression.
He’d gone straight to work after her place and worked a ten-hour shift. Kara Leigh had texted him again in the middle of the night and asked him if he’d pick up milk and eggs at the store, and bring them by after he got off work that morning. Mckayla had picked up yet another cold, and Kara hadn’t been shopping for a few days.
Donny had swung by and dropped off groceries, then held Mckayla while Kara Leigh washed the puke out of her hair. Then, Kara Leigh had made him breakfast while he and baby snoozed on the couch. By the time he made it back to his apartment, Donny had time for a four-hour nap before his next shift.
Working overtime seemed like a great idea when he and Kara Leigh had first separate
d, but the long hours with little sleep were starting to wear him down, and he found himself asking for more and more shots in his evening Americanos.
Donny set down his coffee and listened to a cop on the other side of town respond to a report of a clown kicking a stray dog.
He shook his head. The clowns were like aliens invading the town, and what they had planned was anyone’s guess. How his boss couldn’t see that annoyed Donny.
He glanced in the rearview mirror. The Troll Clown’s head lay back, resting on the seat. He stared at the roof of the patrol car with a giant painted grin on his face—high as a kite.
Movement outside the window caught Donny’s eye.
An ugly beast with white tufts of hair and a painted black face approached on a unicycle. His gloved hands rested one on each knee. His legs pumped robotically on each pedal.
The clown floated through the air like a balloon, the wheel of the unicycle spinning directly down the middle of the sidewalk drawing closer and closer to the patrol car.
Donny got out of the car slowly, slowly as if he were in a dream. His eyes locked on the deep, dark eyes of approaching doom. It had a red nose, but the paint beneath, where a grin would be, was black—as if it had no mouth.
Death on a unicycle, a deep sense of déjà vu hit Donny in the gut.
As the clown rode by, his head turned like a doll’s, never breaking eye contact. As it passed, the clown’s head kept turning—all the way backward, watching him.
“What the—?”
From the back seat, Troll Clown said, “I’d leave that one alone if I were you. Dangerous.”
Donny sat back down in the car, watching the clown on the unicycle in the unit’s side mirror. The clown’s head was still backward. He said, “You guys are supposed to be funny. How is terrorizing innocent people funny? What the heck are you guys up to, huh?”
Troll Clown said, “My people have been waiting years for their time, and now it’s just that—it’s our time. It’s our time. Right here, right now. The Clown Apocalypse has begun.”
Donny studied Troll Clown for a full minute before it burst out laughing. Its face was painted cheerfully, but the eyes held no joy. They held only greed and need for power.
Troll Clown said, “Come on, man. We’re clowns. We entertain. That’s what we do.”
Donny said, “How is chasing an old woman with a bat entertaining?”
The clown pursed its lips, making a spitting noise. “I thought it was funny! I wasn’t going to hit her, just having some fun is all.”
“Uh huh,” said Donny, sipping his coffee. Where the was dispatched SPD unit?
His ears perked when he heard the panic in the dispatcher’s voice. “We’ve got a 244 on Sixth and Main. All available officers are asked to respond.”
“Holy mother!” Donny checked his rearview mirror before flipping on the sirens and stepping on the gas, racing toward Main.
Fire engulfed the old hair salon. Clowns had formed an old-fashioned bucket brigade two blocks long. At one end of the clown chain, a vandalized fire hydrant sprayed water onto the street. The clowns had one five-gallon bucket they passed hand to hand. The clown closest to the fire hydrant leaped about the spraying water, catching droplets like a child chasing bubbles with a butterfly net. He’d hand the bucket to the next clown, who’d pass it on down the line, sloshing so much water that there was nothing left by the time it reached the fire. The last clown would run up to the building, tip the bucket over, making a show of tossing the remaining droplets onto the fire.
SPD cops surrounded the old building, allowing the clowns to toss the water since the fire department hadn’t arrived.
“Oh, you should let me go help,” said Troll Clown from the back seat.
Donny parked his patrol car. “You’ve done enough for one day.” He slammed the car door before Troll Clown had the chance to respond, and jogged up the sidewalk.
A rookie hung back watching, while the other cops kept dozens of concerned citizens out of the chain of clowns, while others tried to reverse the valve on the fire hydrant.
“What’s going on?” Donny asked.
The slim young man pointed at the hair salon. “The building went up in flames. It was like an explosion. No one knows why.”
Donny put his hands on his belt. “I can guess why.”
The young cop went on to say, “Then all these clowns came out of nowhere and started all this bucket brigade malarkey.”
Donny raised his eyebrows. The kid looked too young to be using the word malarkey.
“Anyone hurt?”
“Nah. They close up early these days. Ol’ Miss Barbra is in tears, though. Said she’s had the shop for thirty years, open six days a week. It’s a crying shame.”
Donny looked at the cop again. Crying shame was another odd expression for a twenty-something. “Yep. Where’s the fire department?”
The rookie shook his head. “The fire department is late ‘cause they were fitting floats on the ambulance and firetruck for the Harvest Parade on Saturday. Chief insisted on it. They weren’t expecting a fire, I reckon.”
“I reckon,” Donny repeated, glancing sidelong at the kid. “There’s more than one fire engine, isn’t there?”
He shrugged. “The other one is in the shop.”
Donny shook his head. Unbelievable. “Only in Spindler.”
There was a burst of sirens, and a flash of red down the street.
“Speak of the devil,” said the rookie.
They both moved to help clear the street as the firetruck moved through what was now quite a large crowd.
The sirens burst through the air as the truck grew close. Firefighters leaped from the truck as if it were on fire and not the building. The first man to jump off rolled on the ground, and bounced to his feet. Waving his arm toward the fire, screaming, “Go! Go! Go!”
The top of the building fell in, and several women screamed. Children cried.
The clowns continued to move in a hypnotizing comical fashion. Passing the bucket, one hand to another.
Firefighters asked them to stand back, but in the chaos, a clown tossed the bucket of water at the firefighter instead of the building—which would have been hilarious as an act, but was not so funny in real life.
An older cop stepped forward and slapped handcuffs on the clown who had dumped water on the firefighter. The clown slipped out of the cuffs as if his gloves had been greased, tossed his hands into the air—I’m free!—and ran when the officer reached to grab him again.
Frustrated, the officer drew his baton, which made him look like part of a circus show. He chased the clown in and out of the line of clowns who had started moving another bucket of water back down the chain.
Donny spread his arms and shouted for the public to stand back, snatching up a little toddler as it tried to run toward the line of clowns.
The little blonde haired, blue eyed boy gazed up at Donny for a full thirty seconds before his lower lip began to tremble and he shrieked as if Donny had taken away his lollipop.
“Hunter!” screamed a frantic young woman in the crowd.
Donny searched through faces, until landing on the one who was jumping up and down trying to get by a line of cops who were setting up caution tape. “That’s my baby over there! You’ve got to let me through, or I swear—”
“Mommy!” screamed the toddler, pointing at the woman.
Donny moved toward the woman now arguing with the officers, one of them threatening to cuff her. He deposited the screaming child in her arms, and they sank back into the crowd.
Freaking clowns.
Donny scanned the scene, his eyes focusing on a clown moving in and out of the bucket brigade. Pink bunny ears bobbed up and down on its head. A lightning bolt zagged down its face.
Donny took off after it without thinking twice.
Adrenaline rushed through his veins as he dodged the chaos of clowns, lookey-loos, Police Officers, Firefighters, and goodness knows who—or what—else was
hanging out on the road.
It was the clown he’d seen earlier with Chloe’s son, Chev. He had no doubt about it.
Chev had claimed that the clown was his friend and that they played in the alley after school.
There was more driving him to catch this clown. Donny had to know if it was the one from that day at the pool so many years before? The one that had haunted his dreams for two decades?
He knew that it should have been impossible, but his gut said it was the same one.
The clown with the bunny ears had grabbed a top hat off another clown. He danced around with the shiny accessory as the clown he’d stole it from chased him.
Suddenly, the bunny-eared clown stopped and looked at Donny. His eyes grew wide with recognition.
It was him—the clown with the hatchet.
Like magic, the clown ducked behind the chain and disappeared.
Donny bolted down the street, breaking through the chain of clowns. They fell dramatically like dominoes. On the other side, Donny paused and surveyed the street. He saw the bob of bunny ears a hundred feet away turn into a mouth of an alley.
“Stop! Police!” Donny darted toward the alley just as a teen boy on roller skates cruised in front of him. Donny knocked him aside, and the teen fell into an open trashcan. “Hey!”
But Donny didn’t hear him. He had a full view of the alley now. He kept his sight dead center on the clown with pink bunny ears bounding down the alley like a, well, like a rabbit.
Who knows? Maybe the clown was a rabbit. He could certainly disappear like one. Donny was dashing past a new Mustang parked on the street corner when a brick of man stepped out in front of him holding a paper bag. Donny tripped over his own feet trying to avoid a collision and reached for the hood of the mustang. His palm spun on the waxed surface, whipping him around to the front. There was a loud comical thwack as his ribs collided with the car’s grill.
Donny dripped down to the sidewalk, clutching his ribs while a fat hand clutched his other arm.
The voice attached to the fat hand cried, “Trooper Hanks? Oh, gosh!” Donny tried to register the Officer with greasy hair. He still clutched Donny’s arm with one hand, and a bag of donuts in the other.
