by David Haynes
“You should ring them, just for the giggles!” Sparkles spoke loudly now, confident that the police had left. He might have to think about that one, he wasn’t sure if it was such a good idea.
He rolled out of bed and went to find something to eat. There wasn’t much to get excited about, but there was a box of Frosties which he took to his computer and ate dry straight out of the box. They were stale and tasted woody but at least it was something to put in his aching belly.
He put the box down, wiped his sticky fingers over his legs. The sensation was unpleasant and spiky. His fingers had rubbed against something crusty. He was still wearing the overalls he’d worn to kill the copper and the caravan clown. They were smeared in dried blood and bits of... well, bits of human.
He shrugged, licked his fingers and looked up. His eyes caught the creased, stained photograph he kept stuck on the edge of the monitor. It was the only possession he had to remind him how Mum and Dad looked, and he only had that because it was in his hand when they took him away from the house. The colours had faded so almost everyone looked like they had a bad case of jaundice. He had no idea when or where it was taken. Nobody was smiling in the photograph. In fact Dad was looking away and he looked angry. Maldon liked to imagine that just off camera were a group of coppers coming to arrest him and he was shouting, “You’ll never take me alive!” or something like that.
Even though she was his mum, Maldon thought she was ugly. She was fat and looked like she had a bad taste in her mouth. Over the years he had imagined having hundreds of rows with both of them about all manner of things, both trivial and not. After all, that was what happened in families wasn’t it?
It was twenty years since the clown had killed Mum and Dad. It had taken as long as that for him to come back to the county. His support worker didn’t think it was a good idea at first. But Maldon had been persuasive, and in the end the worker thought it was such a terrific idea that he found him a house to rent. Getting Maldon off the drugs was his ‘top priority’ and getting him away from his circle of ‘criminal friends’ had been his ‘ultimate goal.’ If that meant coming here then that’s what it took. Maldon knew about the cross-dressing prostitute his support worker visited and that helped persuade him too.
He hunched over the keyboard and started writing the back story of the circus worker. How he came to work in the circus, what he liked to do when he wasn’t working. It would end in his gruesome murder, they always did, but it was good to start a new story. There was a twinge of sadness as he started typing, the circus music slowing in tempo. The story was nearing its conclusion, and soon it would end. His smile hadn’t returned, although he had felt several tickling sensations at the corners of his mouth when he slaughtered the circus worker. It was trying to come through, that was for sure, so he shouldn’t get too disheartened. There were still a few chapters left to go and the ending was still to be worked out, so there was plenty of time.
His fingers moved quickly over the keys. He was getting faster at typing and it helped that Sparkles was dictating the story to him. He was allowed to add his own flourishes occasionally but mostly Sparkles was the creative one. Except when it came to killing, then he was the artist.
He needed to work quickly today too. Tonight he had a couple of visits to make.
*
He didn’t have to walk far before finding a suitable car. The police had long since left the area and a lorry took the burned-out wreckage away. He walked through the dark streets with his hoodie pulled tight around his face. Even that hadn’t been enough for Sparkles.
“Hurry!” he squealed. “Hurry, hurry, hurry!”
It made him nervous and the coat hanger got jammed as he tried to lift the door lock. He didn’t like doing it but was forced to growl at Sparkles to shut him up. After that, opening and starting the Vauxhall had been easier.
This car was particularly bad. Its engine sounded like it belonged in a tractor and it didn’t go much above thirty-five miles an hour. As long as it didn’t draw too much attention to him, he would be fine. He had a visit to make before he went to see Mr Night. A visit to his past. One he had been putting off ever since he came back.
He drove past the entrance to the cul-de-sac three times before he dared turn in. Each time he didn’t have the stomach to look down into it, he just drove straight past as if he were on the way somewhere else, somewhere he needed to be. And each time he sat shaking at the junction a hundred metres away, shaking and feeling sick. All the time Sparkles had been silent and so had the music.
On the last occasion, he actually started crying as he neared the turning for Wilson Croft. The tears ran from his eyes and were gobbled up under the mask by Sparkles immediately. He had no time for tears. It was smiles all the way. But as the tears leaked he could feel the smile on Sparkles’s face dropping, inch by miserable inch. All his good work was being undone.
He stopped the car opposite number 12 and turned off the engine. Everything was completely silent for the first time in a very long time. He wished Sparkles would shout at him, would tell him off for crying like a baby, but he didn’t utter a sound.
Maldon couldn’t turn his head to look at the house for a very long time. He knew the longer he sat there, the more chance there was of someone spotting him. He was in a cul-de-sac at one in the morning, after all.
The last time he was here was when they took him out of the house. There were people everywhere; police officers in uniform and some in suits and people he now knew were from Social Services. Men and women with comforting smiles who smelled of Polo mints and perfume.
They made him take off his pyjamas and push them straight into a long brown bag. One of the officers had scribbled something on the outside of the bag and stacked it with the others. He still remembered the design on the pyjamas too. They were special ones with oriental symbols stitched into the fabric. He had no idea what the markings said but Dad had told him they were magic words and could teach him how to do kung fu in his sleep.
They were ruined though. The material was soaked in blood – in Mum and Dad’s blood – so there was no way he could ever wear them again. He cried when they took him out of the house. Not just cried but wailed and screamed. He remembered how it had all seemed like a dream, like a nightmare, a really bad nightmare.
He turned slowly and looked at the house that had been his home for the first nine years of his life. Part of it was illuminated by the street light, throwing an orange glow across the front room window. It made the house look sick and it matched the feeling in his stomach. The front room had been painted a pale yellow colour which always seemed to look dirty, and there was a television in one corner.
He had watched Dad punch Mum in the face, knocking her into the television in that room. Dad had bought a new TV because Mum knocked the old one over as she fell. It made the screen smash. On sunny days, if the cartoons were boring he would look at the wall behind the television and see the faint bloodstain from Mum’s nose when it exploded. The stain was always there, no matter how many times they painted over it. Or maybe it was his imagination?
After twenty-one years, the act of picturing the inside of the house was tricky. He had spent only one third of his life in that house, and things that had happened since were easier to recall. Things that lay on top of old memories and pushed them down deeper in his mind. He remembered his room, although he couldn’t be sure what colour it was, or what his favourite toy had been. He didn’t really remember the garden either, although he was sure there was one. The bathroom and the dining room were also complete blanks.
But he couldn’t forget the kitchen. Nor could he forget the way Dad’s head lolled to the side with the insides of his throat on show. Or the look in his mother’s eyes as the blade disappeared into her neck. There had been so much blood too. Much more than at the clown’s house or the copper’s or in the caravan, even though they had been mutilated much worse.
But he supposed there had been two people in the kitchen with t
heir throats cut. Two people’s blood up the walls, on the ceiling, on the cooker and coating the door of the glossy white fridge-freezer in fat, red rivers. The whiteness of the fridge looked how a bone looked through a deep cut through the flesh.
What happened after they took him from the house had lasted for twenty-one years. It was still happening to him, and because of that it was far worse than the bloodbath. The examination of his body, the interviews, being asked to go over and over and over the same thing time and time again had all been nauseating. Describing the clown and how he did what he did to Mum and Dad, reliving the horror over a hundred times, had been more than his immature mind was able to cope with. The police officers, the care workers, the counsellors, the drugs, the breakdowns, all of it as a result of the clown and what he did. All of it.
He reached over and grabbed the filthy knife from his bag. He was going to cut Sparkles out of his life for good. The tip of the knife pressed against his cheek, puncturing through the layer of Sparkles’s mask.
“No, no, no!” the clown squealed. “Kill me and you’ll never get it back. I’m the only one who can help you, silly boy!”
Maldon held the knife in place for a moment and then threw it back into the bag.
“It wasn’t me, it was Bingo, the one you carved up. Remember?”
Maldon was confused and his head, face and body ached with each beat of his heart. He stripped off his gloves and worked his teeth around what was left of his fingernails. In the past he always reached for drugs to smooth away the anxiety, to help him cope with the anger, frustration and confusion. But he wouldn’t do that again. It would render him incapable of doing what he needed to do. He looked at the tips of his fingers. None of them had nails he could bite any longer and they all stung horribly. Nevertheless they would just have to do until the story was finished and the last word typed. He slipped the gloves back on, wincing as he pulled them tight over his fingertips.
He took one last look at the house then started the car again. The next chapter was on the seat beside him and he needed to deliver it to Ben.
14
After the detective left, Ben locked both the front and back doors. Then he went from room to room, checking all of the windows. Stan stayed by his side throughout, not at Ben’s request but of the dog’s own volition. Stan had an almost permanent look of anxiety on his face. It was as if he expected the worst to happen at any time. That look seemed to have grown deeper and darker in the last few days.
He shouldn’t give the dog human expressions and feelings, he knew that, but the way Stan felt the need to touch him almost constantly was a sign of fear and protection. It was a simple reaction, not singularly human or canine. It was pack mentality; protection in numbers. Whatever it meant, it was comforting for both of them.
When he was satisfied the house was totally secure, he checked the internet for an alarm company and called them. There was room on his credit card to have one fitted but even after pleading with several companies to come that same day, none could manage it and he had to settle for nearly a week later.
He double-checked the doors and windows again, with Stan for company, and took a mug of hot lemon to bed. Stan led the way up the stairs but Ben had to keep nudging him with his knee to keep the dog moving. Every two steps, the dog paused and sniffed at the air. Whatever he was sniffing at was well out of Ben’s range but it was unnerving all the same.
He put the mug down and groaned as he fell onto the bed. The adrenalin rush he had felt surging through his body last night and this morning had gone completely. The buzzing ideas about his book were lying wingless and dead at the base of his brain now, and in their place were pictures of a grotesque clown butchering Jim Crawley’s face. He felt only the slightest twinge of grief for Crawley. He barely knew the man and what he did know wasn’t particularly good, but nobody deserved to be treated like that.
Stan whimpered at the side of him, as if he too was disturbed by the same thoughts. Ben put his hand down and smoothed the silky soft fur on the dog’s head.
“Reckon I should’ve told her about the manuscript?” He didn’t look at Stan but he could feel his eyes on him.
“Yep, you’re right as usual.”
There was no doubt about it, he should have told Brady about the night-time deliveries. Apart from today, he never had much to do with the police. The books he wrote seldom involved the law and when they did, it was mostly at a level not requiring a great deal of research. Nevertheless, Brady didn’t really seem to fit his preconception of a female detective. Where was the bullish loudmouth he had written about in the past? He had given the detective in Howl a continual need to prove herself all of the time, to everyone. She had been one of his least favourite characters to write about and had been more than happy to describe her death in lurid detail.
Brady wasn’t like that at all. She was softly spoken, with a deliberate and intelligent manner about her which took you off guard. She was tiny in comparison with her colleagues too. All of this probably made her an easy character to underestimate. That, he knew, would be a mistake.
She had scrutinised him though. That was probably why she offered to bring him home, to have a look at him for herself, make her mind up about him. When she took his DNA and fingerprints, she was as close to him as Fleur had been. In any other circumstances, he would have found the smell of her perfume alluring. Apart from the smiles she frequently gave him, she was all business. Although she never went farther than the front room, her eyes were everywhere.
He supposed that was her training. To be nosy and to investigate. She’d scanned the room, which didn’t take long given that it was largely bare. Even in the hallway, she glanced upstairs and did her best to look into the kitchen without it looking like she was looking into the kitchen.
So why hadn’t he told her about the book? He had nothing to hide after all. Because he was afraid? Yes, but of what? Of failure, of losing the only thing he had ever been any good at – making up stories to scare people. He was frightened to death of that. That was what gave him nightmares, not some freaky clown breaking into the house in the middle of the night to help him rediscover his gift.
Until now.
Was it the same clown that tore Jim Crawley’s body apart and covered his caravan in blood? It seemed ridiculous to think that it could be the same clown, yet it had to be. It had to be. So why hadn’t Ben been butchered like Crawley? What made him different? He was using the outline the clown had given him but that was all. Other than that, there was no connection.
That same manuscript described the murder of a sick paedophile clown called Bingo. But that was inspired by the news, that was all. And the mutilation of the policeman, well that was just fantasy. He was sure he would have remembered seeing something like that on the television.
When was the last time he actually watched it?
He sat up and drank some of the lemon drink. The heat burned his throat but it wasn’t anywhere near as harsh as it had been in the last few days. He didn’t recall seeing the news since that obnoxious idiot DC Kelly visited. He picked up the remote and thought about putting the television on as a distraction, then thought better of it. He’d seen enough of human brutality to last him for today.
No, he convinced himself, it couldn’t be the same person. The word ‘Boo!’ was his creation, and if somebody chose to use it as their own then so be it. That didn’t necessarily make them a bad person; it didn’t make them a killer.
He slumped back and opened his paperback. Nobody else was coming in the house today, with or without his permission, he made sure of that with Stan’s help. But he needed a distraction to stop himself worrying about it. The barbarity of the act, the violence and the blood had knocked him off his feet. Literally. He had seen it and would probably keep on seeing it for years to come, but his brain kept trying to tell him it wasn’t real, it was just a scene from one of his books. And yet no book he had ever written or read could even come close to what was in that caravan.
>
Maybe this evening he might go down to the office and write something. He smoothed Stan again, the dog's teeth chattering with pleasure. If he couldn’t get some inspiration from what had happened today, he had no business being a writer.
At just after seven, Ben finished the book and dropped it beside the bed. Stan stretched his long limbs and opened an eye to see what Ben was doing.
“Need a wee?” he asked the dog who pointed his ears upward and licked his lips.
“Yep, me too.”
Ben rolled off the bed and padded to the bathroom. Stan followed behind and stood in the doorway to the en-suite.
He glanced in the mirror as he passed and rubbed his chin. “I need a shave,” he said.
Even if the circumstances had been different, there was no way a woman like Brady would look twice at him. He looked like a tramp who had been on the streets for the last ten years, not a successful writer.
He finished in the bathroom and patted Stan on the head. “Was a successful writer, Stan. Was.”
He reached the top of the stairs and peered into the gloom on the ground floor. He felt like a child who was afraid of the dark, but he couldn’t bring himself to take the first step. He flicked the switch and the hallway was immediately illuminated.
“All the doors were locked, all the windows locked and neither you nor Stan heard a sound, so man up and get down there.” He felt Stan’s warmth on his thigh as the dog leaned on him.
He stopped breathing for a few seconds and listened. There were no alien sounds, just the chatter of Stan’s teeth and the wind whistling across the fields outside. He started walking down the stairs. Maybe he needed to start thinking about protecting himself? He reached the hallway and flicked the switch to light up the lounge and the kitchen. Was it possible to obtain a shotgun? He had no idea what the process was or what the costs were, but it was something worth looking into.
