Boo!

by David Haynes

  The writer stepped away from him, holding his own hand, blood dripping to the floor and grimacing in pain.

  “I’m sor...” he started.

  “Hahahahahahahahaha! Can you hear that, Mouldy? It’s laughter, it’s real laughter, makes your tummy feel funny. You did it before...”

  But it didn’t sound like laughter. It sounded like a child screaming. A child screaming deep, deep down where nobody could hear it, strangled and tortured. His own screams.

  He held his face with one hand and started slicing through Sparkles. This time he’d slice right to the bone.

  “Police! Drop the knife, Maldon!”

  He turned toward the door. The police officer was there. The lady with the red hair, just like his mum’s. She knew him too. She knew his name. His mum, his beautiful mum. She was gone. They all were now.

  “Maldon, please. We know what he did to you. We know.”

  Her voice was soft and gentle. He recalled how warm her skin had been when he’d touched her. How the photographs on her phone had shown the sun flickering through her hair. How it had made flames and fireworks. Just like Mum’s.

  He pushed the knife under his other eye and flicked away the final piece of the clown’s mask. The final black diamond was gone, and as it spiralled to the floor a thin, reedy voice bounced off the walls in his mind.

  “Hahahahahahaha. Hehehehehehe.”

  Then it was gone. And so was the music.

  He dropped the knife. It fell to the floor, the tip of the knife piercing the last piece of Harvey Newman’s face.

  He could hear a voice calling for help, calling for an ambulance, but all he felt were the arms of a woman who looked and smelled like his mum. A strange feeling fluttered around his stomach, rose up through his chest and into his throat. It flowed out of his mouth and tickled his cheeks.

  One corner of his blistered lips twitched. A smile. The beginning of a smile.

  27

  Ben looked out of his office window and counted the chimney pots he could see – around ten. At least ten people who lived within striking distance. The new house had plenty of neighbours. That was better than not being able to see anyone and nobody seeing you.

  A year had passed since Maldon Williams, and everything had changed. Everything.

  “Nearly finished?” Jane asked and kissed the top of his head.

  “Not far off, another ten minutes and I’ll be done.”

  Former Detective Sergeant Jane Brady had moved in three months ago. It was then that he lost Stan. As it turned out, Stan was a ladies’ man, rather than a man’s man.

  He was writing too. Writing more in the last six months than he had done in the last five years. The scar on his wrist itched like crazy some days. It would never allow him to forget Maldon, not that he would ever try.

  Maldon had been taken away to a secure clinic where he would never be a danger to himself or anyone else. His tragic life would end in that place, but Maldon would know nothing of it. His mind had locked itself into some alternate reality. Where or when it was, nobody knew for sure. But when Ben was eventually allowed to visit him, the perpetual, locked-in smile on his face told all.

  He tilted his head back and puckered up for a kiss. “Ten minutes, I promise.”

  She kissed him. “Why does it always smell like feet in here? Feet that haven’t been washed for a week.”

  He laughed. “That’s my brain burning up.”

  She patted her leg. “Come on boy, let’s leave him to his smelly socks.” Stan followed her out and she closed the door behind her.

  After Maldon had been taken way, or most of him had been removed, Ben had sat quietly in his office staring at the screen. He could think of nothing else to do except write. The only problem was, he had no idea what he was going to type.

  And then it came to him. Or rather, he saw it. Under his desk, just at the joint between the side and the back, was a strange-looking lump. It looked like spat-out bubblegum and he was about to get annoyed that one of the officers had left it behind.

  He had bent down to pick it up. It didn’t feel like bubblegum. It felt like something else entirely. It was human flesh. It wasn’t as bright red as Sparkles’s nose on the cover of the book but that’s what it was. A clown’s nose. A part of the mask nobody except him knew about.

  Remembering that day, nearly a year ago, Ben fished into his pocket and touched it. It was part of Maldon, it had to be. Oh yes, he knew exactly who to thank for his burst of creative energy.

  He smiled and started typing. There would be no clowns in this story. Not a chance. He always wanted his books to have an impact but Clownz had been destructive too. He knew of two men whose lives it had helped destroy; two men it had transformed into monsters. He couldn’t and he wouldn’t write about clowns ever again.

  There was a witch in the story, though. A vile, bed-hopping, spell-casting, wart-infested bitch of a witch who enjoyed making men’s lives a misery.

  He had her name before he’d even started the story. A pleasant-sounding name, if a touch unusual. The witch was named Fleur. He had her end worked out too. He was going to enjoy writing that. Oh yes, he was going to enjoy describing that in gory detail.

  This one was going to be the best book yet.

  The End