BOOK SUMMARY
***A Short Story***
Stacey had been sitting and watching the movie for five minutes before she noticed the clown in the corner. The people she is babysitting for sure have strange taste. Who would want to keep a clown in their living room?
And why does its nose keep changing colour?
“Iain Rob Wright scares the Hell out of me.” – J A Konrath, author of the Jack Kilborn horror novels.
“You know... clowns can get away with murder!"
— John Wayne Gacy
“Want a Balloon?”
– Pennywise, IT (1986), Stephen King
1
Mrs Murray handed over the keys to her house. “Thanks so much for doing this, Stacey.”
Stacey smiled. “It’s no problem. At least someone has plans on a Saturday night. I’m happy to babysit for you.”
Mr Murray, twice Stacey’s age, yet extremely handsome, patted her on the arm and made her blush. “Any problems at all,” he said in his booming voice, “you have my number?”
Stacey nodded. “I’ll text if I need anything, Mr Murray. I won’t call and disturb you. Now, go on, have fun.”
“Okay, okay, we’re going. And call me Nev.”
“Harry should go to bed in an hour,” Mrs Murray said. “He’s rarely a problem. Although he did have a nightmare last night.” She suddenly looked very worried. “A bad one.”
Mr Murray held out his wife’s coat and chuckled. “All children have the odd nightmare. There’s no need to worry the lass.”
“Poor Harry was very worked up, though,” Mrs Murray added, putting on her coat and giving Stacey the most earnest of stares. “You might need to sit with him to go to sleep if he can’t settle. He said there was a voice whispering to him in the night.”
Stacey swallowed.
Mr Murray bellowed with more laughter and gave Stacey a quick hug, making her blush all over again. Then he looked at his wife. “You’ll give the poor girl the willies. Come on, let’s go now and get some dinner while we can.” He grabbed her by the hand and led her out the front door. Before leaving he turned back and gave Stacey a wink. “Thanks again, Stace.”
Stacey stood there, grinning like a silly schoolgirl instead of the nineteen-year old women she was. She waved off the Murrays and closed the front door, locking it with the keys she’d been given. Then she went into Harry’s bedroom to check on him.
The boy seemed a little sullen tonight, not his usual smiley self, yet he managed a small grin when he saw her. Stacey often suspected the ten-year-old had a crush on her, as she did on his father, but he didn’t seem as interested tonight as usual. Did he ever think about her the way she thought about Mr Murray? She often lay in bed at night, touching herself while concentrating on Mr Murray’s grizzled face. Call me Nev.
“You okay, Harry?” she asked.
Harry looked up from where he sat cross-legged in front of his Xbox. “I’m okay. Do I need to go to bed?”
“In a bit. I heard you had a nightmare last night.”
“It wasn’t a nightmare. There was a voice. It was talking to me. Laughing at me.”
Stacey swallowed again. Harry was usually such a normal kid, but he looked ill tonight, and a little off-kilter. “Okay,” she said, “well, um, I’ll be up late, so I’ll be here to check on you. No need for nightmares.”
Harry seemed to loosen up a little at that. He paused his game and smiled. “I’ll go to bed now, then. I’m really tired after not sleeping much last night. I feel a bit ill, too.”
“Okay, do you need anything?”
“Can I have a glass of water?”
Stacey did a little curtsy. “Coming right up, sir.”
She headed down to the kitchen and ran the cold-water tap for a second before filling up a pint glass and taking it to Harry. She found him already tucked up in bed, the duvet under his chin. She put the glass of water on his bedside table.
“Thanks, Stacey. Will you come if I call you? If I get…scared?”
“Of course. I get scared sometimes, too. I’ll be right downstairs, okay?”
“Okay.”
She headed back into the kitchen and grabbed herself a bag of crisps, before going through into the living room. The TV was already on, but she switched between the channels until she found a movie just starting. It was an action flick starring Bruce Willis when he still had hair.
She settled back into the Murray’s deep sofa and moaned in satisfaction. She wondered if this was where Mr Murray sat at night. How she would love to lie beside him each night, her head on his lap while they watched TV together. Mrs Murray was such a lucky…woman.
Stacey sat and watched the movie for five minutes before she noticed the clown in the corner. It was a large statue, two feet tall and standing in the corner of the room. The expression on its face was glum, with a single black tear running down its chalky white cheeks towards blood-red lips. The statue was an ugly-ass thing and not at all in-keeping with the ultra-modern décor of the Murray’s home. The living room, in particular, was very minimalistic and stylish; the television wall-mounted and the sofas made from sleek PVC. The sad clown, with its gaudy green dress and floppy yellow shoes, was completely out of place. Unusually, its big round nose was not the expected bright-red but instead an icy blue.
Stacey found herself shivering, so she got up and turned the heating up from the thermostat in the hallway. As an added defence against the cold, she went into the kitchen and made herself a hot mug of coffee. While she was waiting for it to cool down on the counter, she checked her phone for messages. She had fantasies of seeing a secret text from Mr Murray, but there was only a text from her mum. She no longer lived at home, but she always called twice a week at least. It was a quarter-to-nine and now would be a good time to call. Her mother was a widower and Saturday nights could get lonely for her.
She got the answer machine. “Hey, mum. It’s Stacey. Just thought I’d call and see how you are. I’m just babysitting for the Murrays again. Can’t afford to turn down the money since they stopped overtime at the supermarket. Harry’s already down and I’m just watching a film. There’s this freaky clown statue in the living room, though. I’ll have to take a picture. Anyway, call me back.”
She took her coffee through into the living room and sat back down. She looked around for the bag of crisps she had left and cursed when she saw the bag had fallen beneath the coffee table and spilled its contents everywhere.
“Bugger it!” Stacey bent forward and started gathering the crisp shards back into the packet, hoping she had not ruined any section of the Murray’s deep carpet.
“Yippe Kay ay, moth-”
The sudden explosion from the room’s surround sound set-up made Stacey leap back. She bashed her wrist on the coffee table and completed Bruce Willis’s infamous line. “Motherfucker!”
“You shouldn’t swear, Stacey.”
Stacey spun around to see that Harry was standing in the doorway. She frowned at him. “What are you doing down?”
“I heard the voices again.”
“You had a nightmare? Did you manage to fall asleep already?”
“I wasn’t asleep.”
Stacey stood up, exhaling as she did so. “Come on, let’s get you back to bed. There’s nothing to be worried about, I promise.”
Harry went back up stairs sullenly, where Stacey tucked him back up in bed. She turned off his light but left the one on the landing still on. She used to be scared of the dark at Harry’s age, too – still was sometimes if she watched a scary movie or thought she heard a noise late at night. She could empathise.
“Night, Harry.”
“Don’t go
far,” he said ominously.
Stacey didn’t know what he meant exactly, so she just smiled and went back downstairs. When she reached the living room, the Bruce Willis movie had ended, the credits rolling. It was weird, but it seemed to have finished really quickly. When she’d first put it on, she was sure it had only just started. She checked her watch and shrugged when she saw that she had been babysitting for less than an hour.
She took a sip of her coffee and lay back on the sofa, kicking off her shoes and bringing up her feet. She grabbed the remote and was about to change the channel when her eyes fell, once again, upon the clown statue. She noticed the change immediately. The statue’s icy blue nose was now a much warmer orange. Weird.
Stacey threw he legs back down onto the carpet and leant forward on the sofa, staring intensely at the clown that somehow seemed to stare right back at her. There was no doubt in her mind that its nose had changed colour, but then something occurred to her that made her laugh. It was much warmer in the living room since she had turned up the thermostat. The clown’s nose must be a temperature indicator. It was actually pretty neat and made its presence a little less strange. It wasn’t just an ugly statue in an otherwise beautiful room; it was a thermometer. Perhaps it was a gift that the Murray’s felt obliged to keep, like the type of thing given by a clueless grandparent. Whatever the reason, Stacey no longer felt quite as weirded out by the clown as she had.
Then Stephen King’s IT came on the television and she was weirded out all over again. Pennywise stood on top of a swamp, holding a poesy of balloons. He seemed to be smiling just for her.
Stacey grabbed the remote and changed the channel. “Jeez! What is it tonight with freaking clowns?”
A talk show came on next, so Stacey put the remote on the armrest and settled back down onto the sofa. She buried her naked feet under the cushions and sighed as she finally got to relax. There was a throw blanket over the back of the sofa, so she tugged it down on top of herself.
“Stacey?”
Stacey spun around to once again see Harry standing in the doorway. Dark bags underlined his eyes, and a sheen of sweat coated his upper lip. His skin was as pale as a corpse.
Stacey stood up again. “What is it, sweetheart? Are you unwell?”
“I have a headache.”
She went and placed a hand against his forehead. “You don’t have a temperature. Perhaps you’re just dehydrated. Did you drink the water I brought you?”
Harry nodded.
“Okay, lets go get you another and I’ll see if your mum has any medicine.”
They went into the kitchen, which was much colder and made Stacey shiver. She sat Harry down at the breakfast bar and poured him another glass of water. “Drink it,” she said, before turning and searching through the various kitchen drawers. None of them seemed to hold any pills or medicine.
“I think my mum keeps all the medicine in the bathroom,” Harry told her.
Stacey nodded. “Will you be okay here while I go get them?”
Harry nodded.
Stacey headed through the living room, planning to go upstairs, but she stopped when she saw the clown. It had tumbled over onto its face. It was strange, considering it was attached to a base and she hadn’t gone near it for it to tumble over. Not wanting to touch it, she compromised by using her barefoot to lift it back up and onto its feet. She hissed when something sharp sliced her instep. She hopped back and stood on one leg. A long scratch lined her instep, already bleeding.
Stacey glared at the ugly clown and tried to figure out how it had cut her. Its fingers were spread out like claws. She hadn’t noticed before, but the statue had very lifelike hands, with slender fingers ending in square, black-painted nails. It must have been one of those black nails that had hurt her.
“I’m sick of looking at you,” Stacey growled. She hobbled over to the sofa and picked up the throw-blanket. Then she turned back to the clown with a snarl on her lips. Its nose had now gone bright-red, the usual colour one would expect to see; and less disconcerting than the icy blue had been. The chalky white face still frowned unhappily and the black tear seemed to creep ever closer to the clown’s mouth.
Stacey shuddered, then threw the blanket over the clown, letting out a sigh of relief when the thing disappeared from her sight. Good riddance.
She hurried upstairs, aware that Harry was still feeling unwell, and went into the family bathroom. There was a cabinet above the sink and inside was a couple of packets of various pills. She saw Paracetamol and grabbed them, but then paused. She shouldn’t give Harry anything without checking with his parents first. She put the packet back inside the cabinet and reached into her pocket. She pulled out her phone and placed a call to Mr Murray. She had been determined not to call for any reason, but she didn’t want to wait around for a text reply while poor Harry was suffering. Perhaps the boy suffered with migraines.
Mr Murray picked up immediately. “Stacey? Everything okay?”
“Yeah, fine, how are you? Um, no, it doesn’t…that’s not why I’m calling.”
“What is it, Stacey?”
“Harry has a headache. I’m in the bathroom looking for medicine. Is he okay to take Paracetamol?”
“Let me ask Pam.” He disappeared off the line for a second, then came back. “Yes, that’s fine Stacey. Sorry he’s being a bother.”
“Oh, he’s no bother.”
“You sure? You sound a little flustered.”
Stacey giggled, cursing herself for how childish it sounded. “I’m fine. It’s just that clown you have in your living room. The thing has been freaking me out all night. Ha!”
There was silence on the line. Then: “What clown?”
Stacey repositioned the phone against her ear, which had started to get hot and clammy against the touchscreen panel. “The clown statue you have in the living room. Clowns kind of freak me out.”
“Stacey? I don’t know what you’re talking about. We don’t have a clown statue in the living room.”
Stacey swallowed. “You…don’t?”
“No. Are you sure it’s a statue? Maybe it’s one of Harry’s toys. Harry has a thing about clowns. We had to buy him a costume for his birthday. It’s the latest phase he’s going through.” Mr Murray laughed, but cleared his throat as he seemed to sense Stacey’s desperation. “Do you need us to come home, Stacey?”
“What? No, no, of course not. I’m just being silly, ha! You enjoy yourself. I’ll give Harry his pills and see you when you get back.”
“Okay. Call me if you need anything.”
“Y-yeah, thanks, bye…bye, yeah…”
Stacey ended the call and returned the phone to her pocket. For a while she just stared into the mirror above the cabinet. She had gone pale – her face as white as the clown’s. The clown that Mr Murray knew nothing about. What the hell was going on?
Her hands shaking, she grabbed the packet of Paracetamol and headed back downstairs. She went into the living room and was panting by the time she set eyes upon the crumpled blanket she had thrown over the statue. It was still there where she had left it in the corner of the room. She walked over to it slowly, feeling at once terrified and stupid. Were the Murray’s having a joke at her expense? Or was it just one of Harry’s toys? The kid loves clowns? What kind of a ten-year old loves clowns? Nobody loves clowns.
Standing in front of the blanket, Stacey reached out her hand. She paused for a moment, her fingers hovering in the air. Then she grabbed the blanket and pulled it away.
She did the opposite of a scream and took in a breath that seemed to go on forever. The clown was gone.
“Stacey?”
Stacey swallowed. She turned around slowly to see Harry standing in the doorway. He was wearing a clown costume. His pale face and dark, swollen eyes were a mask, hiding the normal features of a ten-year old boy. When he grinned at her, his lips spread wide and his bright red tongue darted in and out of his mouth. “I still keep hearing the voices,” he said. “They’re sayin
g things about you, Stacey.”
Stacey noticed the kitchen knife in Harry’s white-gloved hand and tried to ease away, but as soon as she took as step Harry took one, too.
She stopped, trembling. “W-what are the voices saying about me, Harry?”
“They’re saying that I should kill you?”
Stacey realised she was crying, but didn’t care. She needed to get out of there. “W-why would you want to kill me, Harry?”
He grinned wider, his expression unnatural in every way. “Because somebody’s got to. Hardy har!”
Harry leapt over the coffee table and descended upon Stacey with the knife. He giggled and giggled and giggled inside her. The blood on his face made him smile even wider.
Stacey never understood the joke and, just as she died, her mother returned her call. All she heard through the line was laughter.
END.
If you are interested in buying the next entry in A-Z of Horror, D is for Degenerate, it has unfortunately been banned from sale. You can, however, buy it directly from the author (as a Kindle download) at the following address:
www.iainrobwright.blogspot.co.uk
About The Author
Iain Rob Wright is one of the UK's most successful horror and suspense writers, with novels including the critically acclaimed, THE FINAL WINTER; the disturbing bestseller, ASBO; and the wicked screamfest, THE HOUSEMATES.
His work is currently being adapted for graphic novels, audio books, and foreign audiences. He is an active member of the Horror Writer Association and a massive animal lover.
Check out Iain's official website or add him on Facebook where he would love to meet you.
www.iainrobwright.com
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More Books by Iain Rob Wright
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C is for Clown (A-Z of Horror Book 3) Page 1
