Smile No More

by James A. Moore

  He fought against the straightjacket and forced it lower down his body, pushing past the leather and canvas and buckles, barely even aware of the garish bows and ribbons that had been woven into the thing.

  His feet slipped and Carver sucked in a breath, freezing himself instantly as he balanced on the edge of the railing. One wrong move and he was dead. He had no doubt the fall would kill him or worse, leave him shattered on the stage below.

  He must have made a sound, though he couldn’t recall hearing one. The girl who’d been in the unexpected performance looked up at him and screamed, pointing in his direction.

  Her voice worked like a slap on the people around her, waking them from whatever odd slumber they’d been experiencing. King stared at the girl and Cantrell looked up, spotting him. Her hand swatted at King and before he could protest she was pointing.

  The two of them ran for the stairs, and Carver whimpered as he sent a silent prayer toward Heaven. Despite the horrors down below he wanted to live through this.

  If only so he could kill the fucking clown once and for all.

  ***

  Tia collapsed on the stage, her breaths jagged and cold, her skin feeling as wintry as the sets behind the curtains.

  She held herself and rocked back and forth, staring out at the audience and seeing only the dead and dying. She had lived a sheltered life and knew it. She had seldom dealt with death, and never on this scale. She wasn’t alone. Several of the performers joined her. Some cried, others merely stared and a few staggered off to get sick as the stench wafted toward them from the auditorium.

  She was aware of the people around her, but they didn’t seem to matter. Nothing seemed to matter except the deaths and the strange voice that whispered in the back of her head. Just to escape from the horrid sight in front of her, she tried to make sense of the whispers, but no matter how hard she strained she could not hear words, only the sibilance.

  Leslie’s warm, wonderful hand touched her shoulder, and Tia looked over and up at her friend and felt the world slide back onto its axis. Everything was shaky, but with Leslie there, at least she felt there was a chance reality could make sense again.

  Somehow Leslie wound up next to her on the ground and they hugged each other with desperate strength and need.

  For a while that was all that mattered. For a while it was enough.

  ***

  King held his legs while Cantrell pulled him back from the brink. Had he been completely free to do so he would have hugged them both. Instead, he fought the straightjacket away from his body and then caught the railing with his hands as he recovered his equilibrium.

  “Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck me….”

  “It’s all right. You’re safe.” Cantrell’s voice was meant to reassure, but Carver shook his head.

  “We need to go after him.”

  “He’s gone.”

  “Then we find him!” He could see in their eyes that they were still recovering from whatever the hell the clown had done. He would have loved to take the time to examine their state of mind and understand what had occurred, but there wasn’t time.

  Booker was getting away, and he needed to kill the man once and for all.

  “Get your guns and help me find this fucker.”

  “What about them?” King’s voice sounded a little clearer than it had when he came up the stairs calling for Carver to stand still. Whatever had happened was wearing off. That was good. That helped a lot. The man’s hand waved toward the dead and dying in the auditorium, as if there were any doubt what he might be referring to.

  “Call for ambulances, lots of them. Do whatever you have to. I’m going after Booker.”

  The bastard couldn’t be allowed to live. He’d shot the clown before, or he’d shot someone who looked like him in the rain. It didn’t matter. He’d kill him right this time. That was all there was to the matter.

  Cantrell said something else, but he didn’t listen. Instead Carver pulled the pistol from the small of his back and stormed down the stairs. Performers were wandering around, lost inside their own heads and he left them to find their own ways. The clown had gone toward the back of the place, toward the exit where he’d caught Carver flatfooted earlier.

  This time around, the detective took the time to pay attention and kept his weapon drawn, but lowered toward the ground in front of him.

  “Booker! Show yourself! You told me we could finish this, don’t you fucking start lying to me!”

  The door to the alley behind the theatre opened with a squeal and he saw the shape of the man as he slid outside.

  He resisted the urge to shoot. He wasn’t in the mood to fire at shadows when he could save every bullet for when he needed them. Was he losing his calm? Yes, but he hadn’t gone completely crazy, not yet.

  Carver followed the clown through the threshold and looked around, carefully, cautiously, trying to spot his prey.

  The clown stood fifteen feet away, staring at him again, a half-smile showing past the red grin painted on his face. His eyes were hidden in shadow, his face made nearly alien by the same darkness, and yellow sodium lights of the alley sent a thousand flashes from his sequined outfit.

  “Come to kill me again?” Booker’s voice was calm, mocking.

  Carver took careful aim. “Don’t you fucking move.”

  The clown promptly broke into a soft shoe and darted toward the left.

  Carver fired once and blew the hat off his head.

  “I said don’t you move!”

  The man laughed, his eyes wide with the shock of the unexpected gunshot, but his expression one of pure amusement otherwise. “Oh, I heard you.” Booker’s voice didn’t change at all, no sign of nerves or worry carried past the smile on his face.

  Michael moved toward him and sighted on the spot between his eyes, the area where the blue triangles tried to converge. “Don’t think I won’t kill you.”

  “You already did that once. What makes you think it’ll work better this time?”

  “I don’t know or care how you lived the last time, you fuck.” He stepped closer still and the clown stayed where he was, letting him move in. “I’ll burn your body to ashes if I have to.”

  “Would you like your shield back, Detective?” Conversational, casual, like a gun wasn’t aimed to cause maximum damage.

  “I’ll get it when I’m done with you.”

  “You’re just not very swift, are you?”

  His vision went red. Every word the bastard spoke was just another reason to kill him.

  “Fuck yourself.”

  Rufo’s hand blurred as it snatched the pistol from his hand. Carver’s grip was as solid as could be, but the clown almost broke his fingers with the force he used. He wrenched the detective’s wrist to the point where it felt like ligaments got torn. Carver screamed in surprise and shook his wrist.

  The clown flipped the pistol in the air and caught it an instant later, the grip now held properly in his hand. “Also, you’re rude. Your mother should be ashamed.”

  “Leave my mother out of this.” His voice was shaking plenty.

  The clown stepped forward and shoved the gun against the side of his neck with enough force to leave an angry red scrape. “Like that feeling do you? Want to know what a bullet feels like when it goes through your head?”

  Being mostly of sound mind, Carver kept his mouth shut and did his best not to panic. The barrel of his pistol traced roughly down his neck to his chest and he held his breath unconsciously, expecting to die.

  “Too easy.” The clown stepped back ten paces and let the pistol hit the ground.

  “The police will be here soon.”

  “They’re still looking for my body in the river a few miles from here.”

  “You just murdered three hundred people! Trust me, they’ll be here.”

  Booker shook his head and turned his back on Carver, reaching down for his ruined top hat. “It doesn’t matter. I’m done in this town, except for you, of course.”

  �
��What is this all about? What the hell are you?”

  “I showed you what it’s about. It’s all about my grandniece.” The smile dropped from his face, replaced by a murderous rage. “They killed my family. I’m not a very forgiving person.”

  “You’ve murdered hundreds to get revenge for one?” His stomach fell away at the thought.

  “See, you’re a detective. You know how to get answers. I had to work it out on my own.” He looked over the top hat and threw it to the side. Even from fifteen paces away Carver could see the bullet hole that blew through the thing.

  “What?” He shook his head. “Are you fucking serious? You ever think to call the cops?”

  The clown ignored the questions and shrugged his shoulders. “No one wanted to answer my questions, so I beat it out of them.” Carver stepped forward two paces and kept his eye on the pistol. Back at home there would have been a back up piece. Before he threw it in the river.

  “That still doesn’t justify murdering all of the people in that auditorium!”

  “Oh please.” The clown waved a hand in dismissal. “They’re rubes. They don’t count.”

  That was it. Carver lunged for the pistol, scraping his fingertips and knuckles as he lifted the weapon. The pain flared like a struck match, but he ignored it, taking aim at the man who’d driven him to murder, not once but twice.

  “Put your hands up!” he roared the command as he sighted, and then stopped. The man was gone, vanished from where he’d been. Carver looked around, making sure of himself. “What the hell?”

  “You’re getting a little obsessed, aren’t you?” The voice came from behind him and he spun hard, aiming at the sound. The clown was there again.

  He should have waited. In his defense, he wasn’t thinking clearly. Carver pulled the trigger and watched the bullet smash a hole in the wall to the right of the clown. He aimed again and fired as the man moved toward him. Booker was too fast. No one could move at that speed. But he wasn’t fast enough to stop the bullet. It pounded his arm and sent him staggering.

  “Yes! Come on! Do it!” The man’s voice broke as he came closer. His hands reached out and grabbed Michael. Carver pushed the pistol in closer, until he could feel the pressure of the muzzle against the fabric of the tuxedo, and then he fired again and again until the trigger did nothing more but make clicking noises.

  The clown jumped with each shot. Meat and blood flew in streamers and the smell of cooked flesh and burnt gunpowder overwhelmed the alley.

  Booker crumbled, his hands slipped down Carver’s chest as he fell, and left lines running from his shoulders to his stomach. Michael stood still and watched. He made himself watch. If you’re going to murder someone, you need to make sure. He’d learned that lesson at last.

  His hands twitched. His mouth was dry; his eyes ached from the adrenaline and blood pressure surges. He kept staring down at his victim, wishing he could feel something inside. There was nothing. A man wasn’t supposed to feel nothing.

  The clown took care of that for him. Just as soon as Rufo stood back up, Carver felt again. He felt absolute terror. It was one thing to think that someone had come back from the dead and quite another to see it.

  The man didn’t rise slowly. He fairly jumped to his feet, his eyes looked around insanely for a moment, trying to find Carver perhaps, or merely to understand where he was and what was happening.

  Then he looked at Michael and his smile came back, a sadistic madman’s grin. Michael pulled the trigger again, the reaction purely instinct or panic, and got an empty click for his trouble.

  Rufo slapped the pistol aside with a wild swing. Carver felt the bones and tendons in his wrist break and separate, the pain larger than anything he’d ever experienced before, enough to make his eyes swim. He opened his mouth to scream and the clown covered his lips, pressed them into his teeth hard enough to mash them flat and leave them bleeding.

  Impossible strength from an impossible dead clown, and the alley shifted as Carver was lifted from the ground and smashed into the wall violently. Before he could recover he was rammed into the wall a second time.

  The clown held him there; the hands on his arms trembled, but did not lose their strength.

  “Do you have any idea how much that hurts? Have you ever been shot, you bastard?”

  “Fuck you.” His voice trembled. The pain in his arm had calmed down enough to leave him merely nauseous, but his head rang from the impacts with the brick wall.

  The clown held him to the wall with one hand, pinned like a butterfly, his arms waving just as uselessly as the wings on one of the insects. The knife came from nowhere and slashed quickly, stroking fire on either side of his face. Carver let out a small scream as the blood began to flow.

  Rufo stared for several heartbeats and then nodded his satisfaction and stepped back, letting Michael stand on his own. “We’re done now, Detective. I let you ask your questions, and even gave you a chance to punish me.” The voice was weak, made frail by the holes in the clown’s chest and lungs.

  “Why don’t you just fucking die already?” He shook his head to clear it and was rewarded with a case of the bed spins. His legs buckled and he fell in a nearly perfect imitation of the path Booker had taken moments before.

  “I’m already dead, rube. Been dead for fifty years now.” The man laughed, but it was soft and the sounds gurgled.

  He wanted to ask so many questions, but he couldn’t make them form in his mind. “Why?” It was the best he could manage.

  Another chuckle and the clown looked down at him. “Why? Why am I still standing? I don’t want to fall down.” He shrugged.

  Carver shook his head. “Why am I alive?”

  The man shook his head. “Because I need you.”

  Carver shook his head and fought against the gray that wanted to swallow him. Nausea haunted him, threatened to steal his control and force him to his knees again even as he managed to crawl up the wall and regain his feet.

  Rufo watched, his cold blue eyes amused by the struggle.

  “Why do you need me?”

  “Every performance needs an audience, Detective Carver. You chased me. You volunteered to be my audience for this show.”

  “You can’t get away with this.”

  “Really? I already did. It’s done. I’m leaving.” To make his point clear, the clown started walking, heading down the alleyway toward the road that was only a few yards off and a thousand miles distant. Carver tried to follow and promptly fell on his face in the dirty back area.

  “No. Come back here.” He whimpered the words, frustrated by the pain that kept trying to steal him away.

  “Have a wonderful life, Detective.” He paused for a moment. “Man, I haven’t seen that movie in years….” And then he was gone, around the corner and out of the detective’s sight.

  Carver tried to stand again and gave up when the gray came and swallowed him whole.

  Looking for Millie: The Last Curtain Call

  I stared at Millie’s headstone. It was simple and elegant and a solitary angel carved from the same granite looked up toward Heaven and held onto the cross at the side of her name. The expression on that stone face was perfect for expressing grief and that made me happy. These days the smile on my face gets in the way of expressing much of anything aside from happiness and that wasn’t quite fitting for visiting my sister.

  I’d like to say I cried, but I think I’m past that stage now. Instead, I just listened to the wind and set down the flowers I’d picked up.

  I waited for a while and then I made myself presentable. Growing flesh feels strange and it always makes my face tingle. I’d rather go without, but the men who were coming to bury Meaghan wouldn’t have understood.

  I made sure they found her body and I paid for the burial and the headstone with cash. Best not to ask where I got the money. Let’s just say the good detective left me needing to heal myself again and there was a wallet left behind by my organ donor.

  I watched them when
they put her into the ground. I never said a word. The priest that gave the sermon spoke a lot, but the only audience to listen to him was me and I barely even noticed. I was lost in thought again, remembering my little sister and the life she had.

  In the end, I think I hate myself most for never getting her that damned pony. I know she would have loved to have one and I would have given my soul to see her smile again.

  ***

  Tia sat in the darkness with her eyes wide open and stared at Leslie where she lay sleeping. The other girl never had trouble drifting easily into slumber and she envied her that.

  The Carnivale had closed shop, but only for a short time. The plans were already in place for next season and both of them had been invited back. She should have been thrilled. She was, really, except that she couldn’t get the clown out of her head.

  It wasn’t all the time, just now and then, but when she closed her eyes, she saw him smiling at her and felt her heart thump in her chest like a bass drum. He didn’t invade her dreams, but rather stopped her from meeting up with them. She didn’t know which was worse.

  When she did manage to sleep her rest was always fine. She had dreams of her family or dreams that she was dancing on the stage and the audience was cheering.

  Tonight was one of those nights, however, when actual sleep refused to come.

  The clown stared at her; his eyes glittered.

  Leslie rolled over and let out a tiny sigh. She smiled at the sound. That at least was going well. She hadn’t been prepared for any of this, for falling in love with another girl, but at least the feeling was returned. She hadn’t told her parents. They wouldn’t understand.

  Leslie hadn’t told her parents, either. That was something neither of them wanted to discuss much, but they knew they’d have to before the holidays came around. In due time. For now they were just happy to be happy.