by Jeff Strand
CLOWNS VS. SPIDERS
A novel by Jeff Strand
Clowns Vs. Spiders copyright 2019 by Jeff Strand
Cover design by Lynne Hansen http://www.LynneHansenArt.com
All rights reserved.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without written permission from the author.
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PROLOGUE
One hundred and one years ago
"That ship is being steered by ghosts."
Captain Blackhorse snatched the telescope out of his first mate's hand. Superstitious fool. Blackhorse looked through the lens himself, and...yes, the ship off in the distance was covered in eerie white tendrils that seemed to glow in the moonlight. An uneducated man could be forgiven for thinking there were phantoms aboard.
"Gather a few men and row over there to investigate," said Blackhorse.
Pauler frantically shook his head. "I won't go near that ship."
"Are you disobeying my order?"
"I'd rather be executed than cursed."
Blackhorse chuckled. "Your cowardice is duly noted. Stay behind, then. Let the men know that they'll receive double shares of whatever is aboard."
Though they weren't actually pirates, Blackhorse wasn't going to pass up the opportunity to scavenge valuables from an abandoned ship. There wouldn't be chests filled to the bursting point with treasure, but there might be things they could sell when they finally reached land. Or perhaps food that hadn't rotted. That would be a nice treat. Even if the ship was barren, they should try to find out what had happened.
The idea that somebody aboard might need help did not figure into Blackhorse's decision-making process.
Pauler left, looking ashamed of his lack of courage. Overall, he was a fine first mate and for now there was no reason to shoot him.
* * *
Four men, two of them volunteers, boarded the small, visibly unsafe boat and rowed toward the ship. Belief in ghosts was something for centuries past, yet it was difficult to look at the ship with its billowing tendrils and not think it was somehow haunted.
"We should leave this alone," said Christian, who had not volunteered. "What if the men aboard died of disease?"
"Then don't inhale and don't touch anything," said Robert. The other men laughed, though their laughter was less about amusement and more about trying to prove they weren't frightened. Because all of them were frightened.
The rowboat began to take in water before they reached the ship, so Robert claimed the official duty of bailing water while the others rowed.
"Those aren't ghosts," said Matthew.
"Of course they're not," said Robert, tossing a bucket of water over the side. "Nobody thought they were."
"Look at them," said Matthew. "I think they're webs."
"That's disconcerting," said Isaac.
They rowed up alongside the ship.
"They're webs, all right," said Robert. "Be careful with the lanterns when we get on board."
A rope ladder dangled over the side of the ship. They rowed up next to it.
"Maybe this should wait until sunrise," said Christian. "It doesn't seem like a good task for the darkness."
"Do you think the captain is going to drop anchor and wait here all night?" asked Robert. "They're just webs."
"And webs mean spiders."
"Are you afraid of spiders?"
"I'm not afraid of a spider," said Christian. "I'm afraid of spiders that enveloped an entire ship in their webbing, yes."
"We don't know how long this ship has been floating out here. They may have had years to work."
"Spider webs don't last for years."
"Enough," said Robert. "You don't have to go aboard. I know how scary a spider can be to a timid little girl like you. We need somebody to stay and bail out the rowboat anyway."
"Too bad we don't have any curds and whey for him," said Matthew. Everybody except Christian laughed.
"Try not to let the boat sink while we're gone," said Robert, standing up and reaching for the lower rung of the ladder. He climbed to the top, with a lantern in one hand, then boarded the ship. Matthew and Isaac followed.
Though the entire deck was not covered with webs, most of it was. There was no sign of a crew. No sign of life, including spiders.
"We're not cowards, but let's also not be stupid," said Robert. "Everybody stay alert. This does seem like an abnormal amount of web activity."
Robert, Matthew, and Isaac walked slowly along the deck. The floorboards creaked, because that's what boards were supposed to do when one was walking on a creepy abandoned web-covered ship.
"Hello!" Matthew called out. "Is anybody on board? Does anybody need help?"
Silence.
"Does anybody here know how to tell poisonous spiders from non-poisonous ones?" Isaac asked. "Just in case we encounter them?"
"Assume they're poisonous, and don't put your body where one can bite you," said Robert.
They continued walking.
"I don't like this," said Isaac. "I'm sorry. I know you'll make fun of me like we made fun of Christian, but I don't like this at all. He was right—we should wait until daylight."
"We're not going to wait all night to keep a spider from crawling on us," said Robert. "We work on a ship where rats scurry over our feet while we sleep; why are you all so petrified of insects?"
"Spiders aren't insects," said Matthew. "They're arachnids."
"You need to look deep within your heart and ask yourself if you truly believe that I wanted that information. Go on, ask yourself. Was there any chance that I cared if spiders are insects or arachnids? Any chance at all?"
"There's nothing wrong with being accurate. Also, the proper term is venomous, not poisonous."
"If you two want to go back to the rowboat and suck your thumbs, it's fine with me."
"I didn't say anything about being scared," said Matthew. "I corrected your terminology. If I'm in a state of mind to do that, it means I'm not scared."
"Shut up."
It was quickly clear that there was nothing of interest on the upper deck. When they reached the trapdoor that led below deck, Robert crouched down beside it and grabbed the handle. He hesitated.
"Open it," said Matthew.
"I will. I don't have to rush right into it."
"Are you scared that a flood of spiders will come pouring out?"
"I'm taking my earlier advice that we shouldn't be stupid. I'm not going to just throw open a trapdoor without thinking. What if the inside of the ship is filled with a plague-ravaged crew, driven mad by their disease?"
"We'd probably have heard them moving around down there."
Robert opened the trapdoor. Neither spiders nor insane crewmembers spewed forth. Robert waited a moment, then held his lantern and peered down into the opening.
"More webs," he said. "You two can wait up here. I'll go down myself, and call for you if there's anything worth bringing back."
Matthew and Isaac nodded. Robert descended into the lower deck.
He wasn't going by himself to demonstrate his bravery. He was, in fact, feeling less brave with each passing moment, and he was worried that if a spider did crawl over his boot that he might let out a yelp, subjecting him to massive amounts of ridicu
le. Better to be down here by himself. Nobody would see if he flinched.
The webs were thicker down here. He knew very little about spiders (though he had known they were arachnids—he simply didn't care) but he was pretty sure that a normal quantity of spiders wouldn't generate this many webs. He briefly considered not investigating and just reporting back that there'd been nothing down here worth taking, but if he got caught in his lie, the repercussions would be severe.
He slowly walked forward, soon reaching a point where he had no choice but to push webs out of his face. They clung to his hand and he wiped them off on his trousers.
He needed something better than his hands to clear the webs out of the way. A wooden chair rested against the wall, so he toppled it onto its side.
"I'm about to make a loud noise," he called out. "Don't be alarmed!"
"Okay, we won't," Matthew called down.
He stomped on one of the chair legs, breaking it off. Then he picked up the leg and resumed walking, using the wood to clear webs out of his path. Very quickly, it looked like he was holding a stick of unappetizing cotton candy.
The webs got thicker and thicker. This was a terrible idea. He was done. He'd tell Matthew and Isaac that there was nothing worth taking and suggest that they go down there to verify his story, and they'd say no, that was fine, they believed him, and then the four of them would report back to Captain Blackhorse that they should sail away and forget about this web-covered ship.
What the hell was that up ahead?
He held the lantern out in front of him.
Now he saw spiders. Lots of spiders. Hundreds of them.
Spiders twice the size of his hand.
They were crawling over what appeared to be web-cocooned human bodies.
Robert did not scream.
He did drop the lantern, which shattered on the highly flammable web-covered floor.
The spiders scurried toward him.
* * *
"Is everything all right?" Matthew called out at the sound of the crash.
The sudden orange glow indicated that, no, everything was not all right.
Robert's shriek confirmed this.
Isaac immediately ran back toward the rowboat. After a second of indecision, Matthew decided that his conscience would torment him for the rest of his life if he didn't at least look to see what was happening below deck and make sure Robert wasn't completely doomed before they abandoned him.
Robert's shrieks hadn't stopped.
Matthew ducked his head down into the trapdoor opening. Robert, clothes and hair on fire, ran toward the ladder, arms flailing. A huge writhing mass followed him.
Robert veered off course, smacked into the wall, and fell to the floor.
Matthew decided that his assistance was unnecessary at this point and stood up. The flood of spiders they'd expected when the trap door was first opened made their appearance.
This was not a good time to stop and gape, but Matthew couldn't help himself. He'd never heard of spiders growing this large. They were as big as his head.
The actual flames from below deck were already visible. More and more spiders poured out, and Matthew found himself instinctively stomping on them instead of fleeing.
"Hurry!" Isaac shouted at him, just before he climbed over the side of the ship to descend the rope ladder.
As Matthew splattered a giant spider beneath his boot, several of them scurried up the back of his legs. He ran forward, lost his footing, and struck the floorboards, crushing several spiders beneath him.
He screamed and screamed as they covered him.
* * *
"What the hell is going on over there?" asked Captain Blackhorse. "Those idiots have set the ship on fire!"
He peered through the telescope. One of the men (Ivan? Isaac? Ian?) was climbing down the ladder so quickly that he dropped his lantern, which plunged into the ocean. He leapt down into the rowboat and gestured frantically to the other man.
Blackhorse frowned and squinted, trying to get a better look at what was spilling over the side of the ship. He handed the telescope to Pauler. "Take a look. See what that is."
Pauler looked through the telescope. "I'm not sure. Bugs?"
* * *
Isaac and Christian rowed as vigorously as they could. Hundreds of spiders, maybe thousands of them, crawled over the side of the ship.
It was okay. They were safe now. The spiders were drowning themselves.
"We should have known better!" Isaac said. "You never investigate a web-covered ship after sunset!"
At least it was over now. The ship would sink. He'd have an exciting and unbelievable story to tell his grandchildren, along with a permanent phobia of arachnids.
"What are they doing?" Christian asked.
"What do you mean?"
"It looks like they're swimming."
The webs on the upper deck of the ship were burning now, and in the light of the fire Isaac could see that, yes, a mass of spiders was moving along the surface of the water, toward them.
The men rowed even faster.
The other ship wasn't far, and the rowboat slammed into the side. "Careful!" a man, Edward, shouted down at them.
"Let us up!" Christian screamed.
"Do you want me to fly down there and magically whisk you up? The ladder's on the other side!"
Isaac and Christian resumed rowing. The spiders—lots and lots and lots of them—were still coming after them. The burning ship was beginning to sink.
They smashed the rowboat into the other side of the ship as well. Both men stood up at the same time, and Isaac barely resisted the urge to shove Christian out of the way. Christian climbed up the ladder and Isaac followed.
"You didn't secure the rowboat!" said Edward, peering over the deck.
"Forget the rowboat! Don't you see what's out there?"
Edward took a closer look. "Are those spiders in the boat?"
"They reached the rowboat already?" asked Christian. "Where's the captain? We need to get out of here as quickly as possible!"
Pauler hurried over to them. "What happened? What was on the ship? Was it spiders?"
Isaac looked over the side. "They're on our ship!"
Dozens of spiders were crawling up the side of the ship, with a line of them stretching across the water all the way back to the burning vessel.
Shortly after that, there was a great deal of screaming.
Some of the men jumped overboard to take their chances in the cold ocean. They perished more quickly than the others, though drowning is a truly awful way to go, even when the alternative is to be swarmed by oversized venomous spiders.
The rest of the crew did what they could to survive, but there was nowhere to run, and by sunrise all of them were dead.
The ship drifted on its own, making landfall two days later, just as the spiders' food supply began to run low.
The spiders moved from the ship to the land. Many of them died as they traveled through the forest, decomposing and being cleaned up by nature before humans could marvel at their size.
Finally they found a cave. Plenty of tunnels. A perfect place to settle down and live, undisturbed and undetected.
Plenty of room for their numbers to grow.
CHAPTER ONE
Eighty-Three Years Later
Jaunty the Clown loved the rodeo. Yes, it was smelly and dusty, and it was uncomfortable to wear greasepaint and a baggy, heavily padded hobo costume in the blazing summer heat. But he loved the crowds. Loved the hooting and hollering. Loved making people laugh out loud with his wacky antics.
Admittedly, he didn't love putting his life in danger to distract an angry bull, which was the primary reason he was out there. Entertaining the audience came a distant second to making sure a cowboy didn't die a grisly death under the hooves of the bull who'd just thrown him off its back.
"Protect the rider first," his boss had told him during his extremely brief training session. "If he gets trampled because you were focused on ge
tting laughs, that's on your conscience."
So after each cowboy struck the ground, Jaunty would run around and attract the bull's attention. The audience would laugh and laugh as the furious animal ran at him, intending to impale him with its horns. Sometimes Jaunty would hide behind a barrel and pretend to be biting his fingernails in terror. Sometimes, if it was safe, he'd do a pratfall. Every once in a while the bull would bash into him, which delighted the crowds more than it delighted Jaunty.
Yet he loved the experience. He was making people happy.
And he was saving lives. Perhaps not in a firefighter or paramedic way, but there would be a lot more mangled cowboys if he weren't on the job. Once a rider had fractured his spine in the fall. Jaunty had kept the bull away from him and kept the audience delighted and amused while the cowboy was carried off in a stretcher, never to ride again.
He had higher aspirations than this, but for now, at twenty-three years old, there were far worse jobs he could have straight out of Clown College. It was a good life. Though he didn't like the way that bull was looking at him...
It was Tyrannosaurus, the biggest and meanest of the bulls. (Technically his name was "Tyranosaurrus," but that was a misspelling and he was indeed named after the dinosaur.) Jaunty had worked with this bull countless times over the summer. He was one seriously angry beast, and there'd been a couple of close calls. Right now, in his bucking chute, Tyrannosaurus was staring at Jaunty in an unnerving manner, less like an enraged bull and more like a sociopath. Jaunty didn't want to read too much into the bull's expression, but it seemed to say, "Tonight you die, clown. Tonight you die."
He was imagining it, of course. The afternoon was the hottest of the summer so far and it was baking his brain a little.
The cowboy jumped onto the bull's back. The crowd cheered as the gate opened.
A couple of seconds later, the cowboy was on the ground. Jaunty didn't need to do anything to attract the bull's attention; it ran straight for him, a homicidal glint in its eye. Jaunty jumped into one of the large wooden barrels that was there to protect him from injury or death, much to the merriment of the crowd.
