Smile No More

by James A. Moore

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” His lips felt numb, but he made them form the words anyway.

  “Well, Todd was swearing on his son Hunter’s life when he told me everything. I’m thinking he was probably telling me the truth.” The tone hadn’t changed at all: the man still sounded as cheerful as could be, happy to be alive and happier still to be talking on the phone.

  Adam had seen the news. He’d watched the clown-faced man get blown to hell at least a dozen times before the carnage lost his interest. That man had been named John Booker according to police sources. Cecil Phelps was nobody. And he’d have remembered if he’d ever met somebody name “Rufo.”

  “I’m going to hang up now, Mr. Phelps. I recommend that you forget this number. If you don’t, there might be legal consequences.”

  “Really?”

  “We have excellent lawyers on retainer. Have a nice night, Mr. Phelps.”

  “Don’t you hang up on me, rube.” The words were hissed, filled with cold hatred.

  Adam disconnected the call and powered down his phone. Let the man call. He could delete the messages later.

  Around him the party progressed. The people were happy and having a good time, even the two girls who kept looking toward each other as if they might have made a horrible mistake.

  Adam did his best to get back into the proper mood. It wouldn’t do to have investors and reporters looking at the board members and wondering what they were hiding.

  The girl who played Fatima, the devil girl and seductress of the story, walked past and delivered the sort of smile that caused men to get stupid. Adam smiled back and after a moment’s hesitation, followed after her. It never hurt to get to know the cast a little better, after all.

  Meaghan Phelps would have disagreed, but Adam had already put the dead girl out of his mind. The body was hidden very well, and no one would be finding her. Besides, the past was in the past and he preferred living for the now.

  ***

  He stared at the cell phone and chuckled. It was not a pleasant sound. The man who had owned the phone in question had been yelling at a four-year-old boy and had called the child several names that Rufo felt children should not learn until they were much, much older.

  The man was dead now, his body folded over itself and rammed deep into a trashcan. Rufo could have seen one foot if he wanted to look, but the dead man was no longer of any concern.

  He had different things on his mind. The parking lot for the theater was only half as full as it had been on any of a dozen recent nights. The show was done and the reception was taking place. He walked slowly until he spotted Salinger’s car. It took very little effort to sabotage the engine. True to Todd’s word, the man was easily spotted and he believed in renting expensive vehicles. Rufo knew damned near nothing about cars, but he could tell a luxury vehicle from an economy model. The damage was nothing major, just the sort of thing that would cause a delay. Loosen a wire here, pull a plug there and the next thing you know, the cars are leaking all sorts of important things that help them run.

  Rufo wanted the delays, but not too soon. He wanted everything to look just right when Salinger came to the meeting the board had scheduled for the next morning. He wanted to make sure Salinger got the message loud and clear.

  Life on the Road: Part Ten

  Being dead was not fun. Being a ghost had certain perks, but when you get right down to it, I wanted to be alive again, truly alive. I made a deal with Albert Miles. I served him and he helped me with my dilemma. I wanted to live again. I wanted the rest of my second family to live again, too.

  To that end, I served the man faithfully. I won’t lie and say we became close friends or anything of the sort, but we talked from time to time and we had certain similarities in what we sought from the world. We understood each other.

  I got my second chance around the same time the curse Miles had put on Serenity Falls came due. He’d spent a very long time making sure that everything was just so, every possible contingency was covered, and then he told me to pick a few close friends and get back to the business of living.

  Escaping death was an interesting challenge but rebirth? Whooo boy. That was a unique experience.

  I needed a body, and he provided one. I’m trying to figure the best way to word this and I suppose I should just be direct. I had to claim the body as my own. It was already occupied by a no-account loser named Marco DeMillio. He made me look like a saint. Kid was already a murderer and a rapist when I took his form. I couldn’t just climb on in, you know. I had to remake him in my image so to speak. I guess by that point I already knew certain things about myself, because the body was different when I was done with it. The least of the changes was the whole clown face thing.

  Everything that happened in Serenity Falls is a story for another day, but I need to go ahead and get something off of my chest here. There’s a thing out there that looks perfectly human, and it calls itself the Hunter. It’s not human, and it has probably done a lot more damage to the world than I ever will.

  The Hunter ruined everything. I was supposed to bring my friends back with me. They would have had new bodies, new lives, but they would have lived again. They’d have had a second chance to live their lives out, and they would have been comfortable. Jonathan Crowley, the Hunter, made sure that didn’t happen.

  I tried to kill him for that and I failed. He was in a big top tent that was under my control and I lit him on fire and the tent, too. And you want to know something? The fucker got away. I burned him, I know I did, and he managed to escape.

  Albert warned me that he was hard to kill and I should have listened better. I made mistakes. I can admit to that. I screwed up.

  But I made him suffer before it was done.

  And then I ran like hell from Serenity Falls and I never once looked back. It might be a pretty town, but it’s still Hell as far as I’m concerned and I don’t much feel like chancing getting stuck in Miles’s little prison again.

  I got a new body out of the deal and it can do a lot of things that my old body couldn’t do.

  Want to hear a neat trick? I can heal from almost any wounds. I learned that after the Hunter and another man put big holes in my body. I should have been dead, but I lived through it. I also figured out—by instinct, I suppose—that I could fix the injuries as long as I had the right raw materials to work with. In plain English, I ate my way back to health. They’d blown away a part of my head and a part of my insides. I grabbed the closest available person and I ate the parts that got ruined. And just that fast, I was all better.

  It was fatal for the man I chewed on, but I was better in no time. Yay me.

  Seems like it works on almost any kind of wound, too.

  That means I’m really, really hard to kill. Not that I like to test that theory too often.

  Anyway, the thing is, everything that was supposed to happen to keep me alive and bring my friends back went wrong. The only one of us to get out of it alive was me. Serenity Falls fell down and it’s still trying to get back up. I killed over seven hundred people with the circus tent fire. I also killed all but three members of the Pageant family, the good people who let us use their farm and then murdered me and mine. The other three? I’m not done with them yet. I’m just biding my time. I have all the time in the world these days, if you know what I mean. I’ll get to them when the mood suits me.

  In the meantime, I went off to see the sights and then to look for Millie. And, well, I’ll be writing about that soon.

  My life on the road? I think that’s going to be a permanent thing. I think maybe I wasn’t meant to settle down in any one place. Doreen Miles might still be out there somewhere, or the serpent man could be wandering. Maybe I’ll find one of them in a traveling show and see if I can’t hitch a ride.

  Time will tell. And me? I have all the time I could ever need.

  Chapter Eleven: Looking for Millie (Part Eleven)

  My search for Millie or any other member of my
family ended in disaster. That story is basically done. What I want to do now is explain a few things. See, at first I thought I was looking for my sister just to see her and as I look back on this entire mess, I realize that there was more to it than that. I’ve been searching for Millie or Meaghan and I’ve also been searching for a way to keep Cecil Phelps.

  Let me explain. Cecil died in a fire in Serenity Falls.

  Cecil stayed dead. Cecil was a dreamer. He wanted to make his family proud and gain fame and fortune.

  I don’t want those things. I don’t need those things and I don’t even aspire to them. They hold no special appeal for me. Not like they did for Cecil.

  I think if I’d found Millie and had a real chance to say goodbye that maybe Cecil could have come back to stay instead of just visiting, but there’s nothing for him in this world. It’s too far removed from what he knew in the past. The circus isn’t the life it used to be and the only people he loved are gone.

  I don’t need a family. I don’t even need friends. I have my values and I have the kids. Oh, I know, you can look at the things I’ve done and wonder how I could say a thing like that. But there are exceptions to every rule.

  I do love children, and that’s the truth. I love to hear them laugh and to watch their eyes light up when they see a good magic trick. I love to see them smile and to watch them when they are happy.

  And now and then I even like their parents. Only sometimes daddy says bad things and does worse, so I have to punish him. Now and then mommy thinks a drink of scotch is the bee’s knees and that her little ones can do just fine without her, so I test that theory. Occasionally, little Johnny decides to be a brat and so I have to punish him, or that nice Mr. Jones down the street does something to little Suzie that he shouldn’t and so I have to fix that, too.

  There’s always a reason for what I do. Just don’t expect me to explain them all.

  I’m a clown, and I like to make people smile.

  And if I can’t make them smile, then I have to do other things to keep myself amused.

  Cecil Phelps is dead.

  My name is Rufo the Clown, and I believe in fixing the world one little step at a time.

  Cecil mourned his sister and his parents and even his grandniece whom he never met.

  Rufo doesn’t mourn anyone.

  But now and then, Rufo gets even instead of getting angry.

  The Carnivale de Fantastique caught my attention.

  Killing my last kin caught my ire.

  Payback, folks. I learned all about payback when I traveled with the Alexander Halston Carnival of the Fantastic. Only I have to say, in hindsight, I think Alex was a little kinder than me.

  ***

  Michael stared at the special agents and shook his head. “You’re kidding me, right? This is a joke.”

  Cantrell shook her head. “Nope. Completely serious.”

  He looked from one undercover agent to the other again and again, waiting for one of them to crack a smile and give it up, but they were not smiling.

  “Somebody killed two people and took Booker’s body?”

  “That’s the way it looks.” King’s voice sounded dubious.

  “What aren’t you telling me?”

  “If this was TV, I’d be calling on Scully and Mulder and this would be an X-File.” Cantrell crossed her arms over her chest and shook her head. “Nothing adds up.”

  King came to the rescue before Carver was forced to ask for clarification. “Both bodies were badly mauled. Very badly. There are pieces missing.”

  “Jesus.”

  “There are also footprints leading away from the examination table. Bare, bloody footprints, complete with a toe tag.”

  “Oh, bull shit!”

  “Completely sincere, my man.” King held up a hand to God. “Got no reason to lie to you.”

  “So this is still considered an open investigation?”

  “Yep. And that means we still want you going to Philadelphia with us.”

  “Yeah, well, I never unpacked, so that works for me.”

  “Excellent.” Cantrell smiled as she stood up. “The troupe is already on their way, and we can meet up with them before the next show starts.” She fished in her pants pocket until she found her keys. “I’ll drive.”

  “I need to get my stuff.”

  “We’ll stop on the way.”

  King chuckled and Cantrell shot him a murderous glare.

  The man held up his arms in surrender and Carver watched them with no idea of exactly what was going on between the two of them. He’d figure it out as they went. In the meantime he had other places to be.

  ***

  The breakfast spread was elaborate. There were pastries, urns of coffee, chafing dishes with scrambled eggs, sausage and bacon as well as biscuits and gravy. Enough food to feed easily thirty people and all of it set out for the members of the board and a small army of lawyers. Twelve people in all.

  Almost everyone was there. Adam Salinger was having engine troubles, exactly as the clown had planned it.

  Everyone else was eating, sitting down at the tables provided by the hotel in the private office that they had rented for the occasion. Absolutely no one was to disturb them for at least three hours, not even the hotel staff, because the nature of their discussions was sensitive to say the least.

  Rufo the Clown stepped into the room with grease painted smile firmly in place, and an ax slung comfortably over his shoulder.

  Eloise Fischer was the first to notice him. She stared for several seconds, her mind refusing to accept what she was staring at as surely as if a purple bear had tap danced into the place. The man was dressed in casual clothes, but his garish face, his blue hair and the ax certainly slid him away from the mundane category.

  “Howdy, folks!” His voice was good-natured.

  Eloise stood up, her mouthful of bacon forgotten and pointed at him. “You aren’t supposed to be here.”

  “Nonsense,” he said. “I was invited.”

  “By who?” Her tone brooked no argument.

  “Meaghan Phelps.” With that answer he swung the ax off his shoulder and drove it into the meaty neck of Richard Emery, the private investigator they’d hired to learn more about John Booker and anyone else who might be connected to the unexpected deaths.

  Emery never even had a chance to scream before his life ended.

  Eloise tried to scream, but as she drew in a deep breath for that exact purpose she sucked half-chewed bacon into her airway and started choking. The clown smiled in her direction and winked. “You wait right there. I’ll get to you, too.”

  He hauled the ax out of Emery’s dead body and whipped it around with almost casual ease, a thick stream of crimson spraying the wall as he changed directions. Neil Porter had just stood up and was trying to get away from the madman when the ax drove into his upper back and the point of it burst through the front of his neatly pressed white shirt.

  Paul Hammet, one of the sleaziest lawyers Eloise had ever met, tried for the door and the clown caught him, long elegant fingers hooking into the fatty jowls on the lawyer’s face and bringing him to a very abrupt halt.

  Hammet tried to scream, but the sound was muffled. The clown shoved him backward and sent him crashing into the buffet table, spilling coffee, food and Sterno containers in the process. They got lucky: none of the jellied fuel cans caught the room on fire.

  Hammet did not rise from where he had landed.

  Chaos was the only word that came to mind as the rest of the people in the room tried to find a way out of the area as fast as humanly possible.

  Eloise charged at the door with a lowered head, still coughing violently in an effort to clear her airway. The clown whipped a hand at her and a second after that she felt the throwing knife slam through the side of her neck. The blow was brutal, harsh enough to split her vertebrae and sever the spinal column. Eloise fell hard, slamming her face into the ground. The pain was a scintillating blast that flared and then vanished a mome
nt later.

  And after that, she lay still despite her best efforts to move.

  The sounds continued for several more seconds, and more than once she saw a body fall at the edge of her vision. When silence reigned for a full minute she began to think that either she had gone deaf or the lunatic had departed the area. Neither proved to be the case.

  The man in the clown face lifted her easily and moved her over to the table. He set her down and the table creaked threateningly under her weight.

  “Now, see, I thought for sure you would be dead by now.” He smiled as he looked her over. “That’s okay, not much longer.” He moved and her head rolled to the side of its own volition. She wanted to move, but could not. That meant she got to see what he did to her long time friend Andy Finch, despite her prayers to the contrary.

  The clown found his ax where he had left it buried in Porter, and hauled it free with a grunt. It took three swings to sever the head from the rest of the body.

  When he was done and the stump was still bleeding freely, the clown grabbed a knife and started carving away at Andy’s face. Eloise cried, her mouth working, but very little sound coming from her throat. She was having trouble breathing, but couldn’t think of that as a bad thing as the clown-man turned Andy’s face toward her and showed her his workmanship.

  “You know, when I was a kid we did this thing with potatoes, called potato stamping. I’ve kind of wondered if this would work.” He stared at her as he spoke, his mouth no longer smiling behind the blood red slash of makeup that made him grin just the same.

  The clown looked at the wall that was currently covered with the charts Eloise had put up before the breakfast started and then dipped the freshly carved face into the pool of blood that flowed from the stump where the head had previously been attached.