by David Haynes
The call ended and the screen went dark for a minute, then flashed to say there was a message waiting for him. Sales people didn’t usually leave messages, especially not at eleven o’clock at night.
He should probably go and fix the generator now. It had been a good ten minutes since the kid knocked on his door. He climbed out of the bed, which he rarely converted back to the two-seater sofa arrangement any longer, and picked up his phone. The van was a mess and it smelled. He needed an upgrade urgently and the only way to do that was to get a pay rise from that skinflint, Fred.
He looked at the message icon. He could wait a bit longer for the generator to be fixed, maybe just long enough to see who had phoned. He pushed the screen and held it to his ear.
“Hi, I hope this is still Jim Crawley’s number, if not just ignore this. Jim, it’s Ben Night, you advised me on my book a few years back, well a lot of years back now, it was called Clownz and you pretty much told me everything you knew about the circus. I wondered if you had a few minutes to talk about the possibility of a bit more advice. I’ll pay you for your time. Call me back.”
Jim felt his eyes widen. This was it, this was where the big money came from. Last time, how long ago had that been? He had no idea, but there was a good pay cheque from Night, a very good pay cheque. But there should have been more. He’d been naïve and ignorant of the way things worked back then. He’d just been flattered that someone actually listened to him and not just stared like he belonged in a zoo. Back then, when Night came to the circus, none of the others wanted to talk to him, but Jim did. He didn’t know much but he knew there might be a few quid in it for him.
He brought up the missed call and dialled Night back. He hardly ever read anything, not books anyway, but he bought ten copies of Clownz to give to anyone who showed an interest. He wasn’t bothered about the story, he wanted everyone to see the dedication to him at the front. It said, ‘Technical Advisor – Jim Crawley.’
Technical Advisor. It sounded impressive but nobody else thought it was. They just laughed and called him an idiot for not getting more money out of it. He had to agree on that score, he had missed out, so maybe now was the time for putting things straight.
“Hello?”
“Mr Night, it’s me, Jim Crawley. Sorry I missed your call, I was in the middle of something.”
“Hey, that’s great. Bit of luck you still having the same number. How’s tricks? How’s the circus business treating you?”
Last time they spoke, Jim had lied about being a clown. Without actually being one, he knew almost everything there was to know about them. And when the time came for Night to watch a show, he’d ‘fallen ill’ that very evening and been unable to take part. What bad luck!
“Good, really good. Just finished a show actually. You said something about advising you again?”
No point in beating around the bush or making small talk, he wanted to get down to business.
“Yes, so, I’m writing a new book with clowns in and I wanted to get some advice about a few things, you know, ensure it’s authentic, like the last one. Reckon you can help?”
“No problem, no problem at all. As long as... well, I’m pretty busy at the moment, we’re halfway through a run and then we’ll be on the road again. I have to go where the money is, and there ain’t that much of it about.” There, just throw a few crumbs down for him to peck at.
“I’ll pay you, Jim. I’ll cover any lost earnings and I won’t need that much help. I’m sure the circus business hasn’t changed that much.”
That was worrying. “We’ve had to move with the times, nothing stays the same. If you want your book to be up to date, we’ll need more time than you might think.” Nothing much had changed, except the costumes perhaps, but he needed to string this along for as long as he could.
“Okay, so what’s the best way of doing this? You have access to email? I can write the questions up as I go and send them to you?”
Jim looked at the ancient, rusty fridge under the sink. He barely had electricity let alone Wi-Fi.
“No, my laptop’s on the blink.”
“Phone then?”
“We could but I can’t guarantee I’ll always be available. What about how we did it last time?” Meeting up would give him the chance to spin things out a little longer. It would also give him the opportunity to be a little more forceful with his request for more money. Just a little intimidating, perhaps.
“Meeting up? Where are you at the moment?”
Bingo. “For the next three days we’re in some shit-hole called Matlock, in Derbyshire then we’re...”
“Matlock? I can be there in twenty minutes.”
He was keen. “It’s late and I’ve only just finished. I can do tomorrow, that would be better.” Keep him waiting just a little longer.
“Okay.” He sounded disappointed. “What time?”
“Early as you like but I’ve got jobs to do at nine.” Make it sound like you’re not really bothered, that’s the way to do it.
“I’ll be there at seven?”
Jim could almost see the cash in his hand. “Great. My van is at the far end of the field, on its own.” That was by design. Not his, by everyone else’s.
“Brilliant, see you then.”
Jim hung up. He could feel adrenalin pumping around his body. This was his chance to make some real money. This might be an opportunity to fix up the van, maybe even buy a new car. He didn’t need to look in the mirror to know he was smiling. Possibilities were opening up again and he was buzzing.
Too wired, in fact, to bother about pretending to fix something that wasn’t really broken. No, he needed another outlet for his energy. Something that would really tickle his funny bone. Half an hour with Denise while Fred’s back was turned would not do the trick, not by a long chalk.
He reached into the cupboard above the sink and pulled out the clown mask. It was just a cheap one from a fancy dress shop. So cheap that instead of looking funny and friendly as he suspected it should, it looked deformed, ugly and scary as hell. That made it perfect.
The first time he’d used it had been with a prostitute years ago. Whether or not the police believed that she was raped was immaterial, the absolute bliss of the moment had stayed with him for weeks afterwards. The sex part of it was way down on the list. All he could think of, while he lay on top of her on that grubby mattress at the back of the shops, was what she was seeing. She had tried to close her eyes of course, but he’d told her if she did that, he would cut her throat open. So she saw a clown. An ugly, deformed and vile clown raping her.
The thought of it made him hard. There had been countless times since but none as powerful as that first time. Why would anyone believe them anyway? Most of them were so smacked up on dope that they could hardly think for themselves, let alone report it. He suspected not many of them reported being raped by a clown to the police. The cops would just tell them to go home and come down from whatever drug-fuelled fantasy they were in.
He pulled the mask on and took his favourite knife from the drawer. He knew just where to go. He’d been in this town before. He knew his way to the city, he knew where the streets were paved with girls just waiting for him to come. He whistled the old-time circus music and slipped his jacket on. Tonight was going to be a good night and tomorrow was already shaping into a fine day. Only good times lay ahead for Creepy Crawley.
He opened the caravan door and took the first step without looking ahead.
“Boo!”
Someone was outside his van – the voice made him jump. He felt his stomach lurch and he tried to step away, but his foot caught on the step and he fell back into the van. He closed his eyes as his head smashed into the toilet door, seeing only a bright burst of fireworks go off in his head.
“Boo!” the voice came again, before a boot heel came down on his clown mask and split his nose down the middle.
*
Jim rushed up through the misty oblivion and found that wherever he had just
been was infinitely better than where he now was. It was dark, pitch black and he could taste blood. A lot of blood. He ran his tongue around his mouth and felt the jagged shards of smashed teeth shave the edges. He’d had some good beatings, his dad had been good at that before they took him away, but he’d always seen them coming. This was new, he’d been taken by surprise and someone had actually stamped on his head. His nose was smashed to pieces, he knew that; the pressure all across his swollen face was immense. It felt like his head would explode if it wasn’t lanced.
He wasn’t used to it. He was always the one in control. With the prostitutes, with Denise… ever since he was fifteen he had called the shots. People danced to his tune, whether they liked it or not. Usually not.
There was movement in the room with him, at the side somewhere. He tried to move his head but couldn’t, there was something across his head, neck and arms. He was tied down. He was lying flat on his back.
He opened his mouth to speak but something was gagging him. He whimpered. Was this revenge? Was it someone getting their own back on him for something he’d done? Maybe one of the smack-head girls had a pimp who wanted to teach him a lesson. He wanted to shout out, to tell them he would never do it again, that he had learned his lesson now and they could stop.
But he couldn’t say anything. And he could hear someone moving about, walking slowly backwards and forwards. Their footsteps sounded hollow. He was still in the caravan which was good. They hadn’t taken him anywhere to sort him out, they were going to do it right here.
Someone would hear and come to help. They would ignore the sign on the door that said, ‘If it’s rockin’, don’t come a knockin’ and rescue him from this sick bastard.
But his caravan was down at the bottom of the field, well away from the rest of the crew, just as he normally liked it. Nobody would hear him and if they did, they all hated him anyway. Was it one of them? Fred, perhaps? Panic flowered in his guts like a salmonella bug and sent a spasm all the way to his arse.
Don’t shit yourself, Jimmy, they want you to do that so they can all laugh at you tomorrow. Creepy Crawley shit himself! Haha! Not a chance. He clenched his bum cheeks in defiance.
“Come on! Do your worst. Get on with it!” Those were the words he formed in his head but all that came out was a long pathetic groan.
Then there was a silence, a stillness that told him someone was standing over him. They probably had a lump of wood, a bat or a pool ball inside a sock to beat him with. He tensed up and waiting for the real pummelling to start. Cowards. They couldn’t take him in a fair fight so they were going to do it like this. He’d get them back, one day when they weren’t watching.
But nothing happened for a while. Had they gone? Was it just a warning? He listened carefully. No, someone was still here, right above.
There was a sliver of light, then more and then...
Jim tried to scream but nothing came out. He tried to struggle but the bonds were too tight. It was a nightmare, a really bad nightmare and any minute he would wake up and it would all be over.
There was a clown staring down at him with the most hideous snarl smeared across its face. It was the most frightening thing he had ever seen. Was this what the girls saw before Jim raped them? His bowels emptied and he groaned in disgust. The room hadn’t been dark. It had been the mask he was wearing, the clown mask had been pushed to the side to blind him. He wanted it pushed back into place. He didn’t want to see. He didn’t want to see the clown that looked like the killer on the front of the book he had advised on. The book he had never read.
“Boo!” the clown whispered.
Creepy Crawley screamed his muffled cries for the next hour as Sparkles’s smile grew ever so slightly wider and his nose bloodier. The sign on Crawley’s door, ‘If it’s rockin’ don’t come a knockin’ trembled as it had done hundreds of times over the years, and not one person took any notice of it.
11
Ben stood under the shower for a long time. His head was working at a million miles an hour but his body was still in the slow lane, the crawler lane behind an abnormal load. He hadn’t slept again. Not because of the fever, which still gave him violent shivers, but because of the questions he was preparing for his meeting with Jim Crawley.
Now, as he stood in the shower, he could barely remember any of them. At least none of the questions he had thought were brilliant in the middle of the night. Maybe he should start keeping an ideas book beside the bed again. That really used to get Rachel in a knot. Flicking the light on at three in the morning to jot down some random thoughts that had just popped into his mind was not something she enjoyed. He tried to explain to her that if you wrote them down then you owned them, they couldn’t fly away and or get stolen by another writer. But he could see she didn’t really understand. At least not in the middle of the night.
As he got dressed for the first time in days, he realised how easy it would be not to get dressed ever again. He didn’t have to get dressed to live a comfortable life. He could order shopping online, he could interact with other people online. He could even find sex online if he felt inclined to do so. It would be easy, it would be very easy, but it wouldn’t do any sane person much good in the long run. He’d meet up with Jim, get some research done and then maybe take Stan for a walk in the Peak District. Maybe the fresh air would do both him and Stan some good.
He turned to the dog who was lying full stretch across the bed. “Go get your lead.” Any mention of the word ‘lead’, whether it be in the right context or not, usually resulted in the same response. A whirling, whining, excited dog who rushed to the office door, where the lead was kept, and waited for Ben to come.
Stan lifted his head and pricked his ears. “Go on, go and get your lead.” Stan whimpered and looked at the bedroom door. He didn’t like to go anywhere in the house on his own now, not after their uninvited visitor had made an appearance. If it was at all possible, he stayed by Ben’s side at all times. Toilet doors were no barrier either.
He scratched Stan behind the ear. Was it fear or was it his protective instinct that made him like that? Stan wasn’t an aggressive dog. He didn’t care for other dogs but he had never gone for one. As for people, well he loved just about everyone. Particularly if they scratched him behind the ear or gave him a biscuit.
How would he react if Ben was actually threatened? Maybe Stan hadn’t stood beside him the other night out of fear for himself, but to protect Ben.
“You don’t need to worry about me, Stan The Man. He didn’t want to hurt me, he was...” What was he doing? Being a muse? He shivered. “Trying to help me, that’s all. Now come on, lets go meet a real clown.” He stood up and felt the room tilt, his legs go to jelly. “Maybe I should eat something before we go.”
He took the stairs very slowly with Stan on his heels.
*
Stan wasn’t one for sitting in the boot. He never had been. He preferred the luxury of having the back seat to himself. The seatbelt buckles got in the way a bit but otherwise it was the perfect size for a greyhound to lie down and dream about dog things.
Stan sat up for the first part of the journey but it wasn’t an easy fifteen minutes. The trickiest bit was reversing out of the garage. With Ben’s shaky legs, controlling the clutch and accelerator pedals had been difficult and resulted in a jerking spasm across the drive. The wheel-spinning lurch up the track toward the village road did little to settle the dog either, but he carried on talking to Stan until the dog finally settled down onto the back seat with a grumpy grunt.
He accelerated through the village, gradually feeling more in control, and out onto the main road. It would only take about twenty minutes to get to the circus. As ill as he felt, he also felt excited. There were a lot of things about Jim Crawley that weren’t straightforward but his motivation was clear as a bell. Money. That was it, pure and simple, he wanted money and lots of it. Ben didn’t need to be a mind reader to work that out, nor to see that Crawley never had much money in his l
ife.
It had been a while since they last talked. Crawley would have upgraded by now, but back then his caravan had been disgusting. There were photographs of half-naked models taped all over the walls and cigarette burns in all of the upholstery. Empty cans and dirty dishes in the sink completed the picture. Maybe he had a girlfriend or even a wife by now.
There was something off about the man though. Ben couldn’t put his finger on it exactly but Jim Crawley didn’t appear to have much of a sense of humour. He always found that surprising, given that his job was to make people laugh.
The only time Crawley laughed was at his own jokes, which weren’t really jokes at all, they were vile two-liners about female anatomy. He doubted whether Crawley had ever read the book – if he had, he would have demanded more money, Ben was sure – but part of Sparkles had been based on Crawley. His laugh. Jim Crawley laughed like Muttley the dog and that was creepy, much like the nickname he probably didn’t know he had.
However, he knew pretty much everything about how a circus worked and he knew absolutely everything there was to know about clowns. He had been one for most of his life. Ben needed that insight. You could research details on the internet and get a sense of things, but it was never the whole picture. No, that could only come from talking to people, being with them when they worked and listening to everything they said, not just when you were asking them questions. It was more important to listen to them conversing with their comrades and peers.
The signs for the circus started about two miles out of town. Above a picture of a clown with a wider smile than Sparkles ever had were the words ‘Fred Ring-A-Ling’s Circus is Back in Town!’ It looked like someone had got excited at the printers because the letters were all in different colours. It was a good job he had dosed himself up to the gills before he left the house because the poster was trying to give him a migraine.
