by Brian Harmon
WHY DON’T YOU GO GET A CUP OF SODA? suggested Isabelle.
“I’m okay,” he muttered.
NO YOU’RE NOT. YOU’RE ALL FLUSTERED
He wanted to argue with her. He wanted to insist that he was fine. It’d take more than a bunch of arcade machines screaming his name to rattle his nerves. But it was pointless. The girl was inside his head. He couldn’t lie to her any more than he could sprout wings and fly.
IT’S OKAY. THAT WAS FREAKY, EVEN FOR US
He frowned at the screen. Us. Sometimes he forgot that they were in this thing together. She wasn’t just a cheerleader, after all. She didn’t just watch him bumble around, offering occasional advice. They might be thousands of miles apart, but they were always merged. And she was particularly sensitive to his feelings of cautiousness, worry and fear. When he became scared, she became scared. When he panicked, she panicked. She didn’t always feel it as intensely as he did, but she always felt it. At least a little bit. She couldn’t help it. She was intimately bonded to his emotional state.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
IT SHOOK ME UP FOR A SECOND THERE, BUT I’M OKAY
She did seem to bounce back quickly enough. And he had to hand it to her. She was never discouraged. He couldn’t think of anyone better to be stuck with when the weird came crashing down around him.
There was a token machine conveniently located in the open area between the arcade and the party room. Eric stopped there and fed a ten-dollar bill into it. The next time he met the boy, he’d be properly prepared to barter information. Hopefully he wouldn’t have to spend every dollar he had.
But how long would it be before Todd decided to show himself again? And what the hell was he supposed to do in the meantime?
The party was officially beginning. Guests were starting to arrive. Things were going to get crowded soon. And he had no idea what kinds of horrors were at work here. It made him sick to think that all these children might be in danger right now, but if Todd was to be believed, then he couldn’t risk canceling the party.
Although he couldn’t for the life of him understand why…
WE DON’T REALLY KNOW ANYTHING RIGHT NOW, SO ALL WE CAN DO IS ASSUME HE WAS TELLING THE TRUTH
He nodded. All they knew for certain was that there was a buildup of spiritual energy in this building and something “dark” lurking somewhere nearby.
That, and there was a freaking clown in the mirror maze.
MAYBE YOU SHOULD HAVE ANOTHER LOOK AROUND. SEE IF THE ACTIVITY IS LIMITED TO THE ARCADE AND THE MAZE
Again, he nodded. If this was anything like the other times the world turned weird on him, maybe he’d stumble onto whatever he was supposed to do next if he just kept moving.
He slipped his phone back into his pocket and made his way to the playland entrance.
He stopped well short of entering it. The noise from this area seemed deafening. How could such small people make so much noise? It always astounded him.
Nothing seemed out of place here, so he turned and began walking around it, toward the back of the building.
THAT DARK ENERGY IS STRONGER THERE, said Isabelle.
Eric stopped and eyed the playland entrance. “In there?”
JUST A LITTLE. YOU SHOULD GO IN AND CHECK IT OUT
He frowned. He didn’t want to go in there.
Signs assured him that parents were welcome to join their children. And he could see two moms inside, following their little ones, trying to keep up as they raced around, exploring the enormous, plastic labyrinth.
The two clowns stood guard, one on either side of the faux tent opening, grinning their stupid grins under their stupid, red noses. One was dressed in a blue jumpsuit, the other in yellow. Eric was dressed in jeans and a gray polo shirt. The team lines were clearly drawn.
There was a sign to the left of the entrance, stating the rules of the playland. The first rule on the list prohibited shoes inside the playland, but required socks to be worn at all times. (Socks could be purchased at the prize counter if you didn’t happen to have any.) And it was careful to stress that the rule applied to everyone, not just the children. There was a large shoe cubby next to the sign that was adorably designed to look like a small circus train. He could see more than just the two pairs of adult shoes in there, meaning other grown-ups were likely crawling around with their kids in there somewhere, high up out of sight. No one was going to think much about him going in there. He’d just look like another parent looking for his kid.
But he didn’t want to remove his shoes. The thought kind of made his skin crawl. He couldn’t help but imagine himself stepping in gum or spilled soda or pee or vomit the second he stepped inside.
Children were gross.
But he also didn’t want one of those clown-nosed employees yelling at him for breaking the rules. And it wasn’t as if he didn’t understand the reason behind the rule. They had to protect the play mats and keep everything clean and sanitary. (As clean and sanitary as possible, anyway, considering the horrifying amount of germs children spread with their hands alone.)
He peered inside and saw that the moms in there were, indeed, in their stocking feet.
Reluctantly, he removed his sneakers and stuffed them into one of the cubby holes. Then, resisting the urge to flip off the stupid, plastic clowns, he stepped past them and into the playland.
Surprisingly, he didn’t step in anything foul the moment he set foot inside. But he supposed he still had plenty of time.
There was a narrow path leading around the enclosed ball pit from which one could enter a number of little passageways that led up into the higher levels by various means. You could take a set of stairs that had been thoroughly padded with brightly colored mats, presumably so that you couldn’t hurt yourself even if you threw yourself head-first all the way down them. Or you could climb up a winding set of plastic, stair-like platforms. Or you could climb up a rope net. Or, if you were the little boy in the Transformers tee shirt, you could try to climb up one of the slides. That apparently worked, too.
So far, he didn’t see anything evil.
He chose a direction and began making his way along the plexiglass wall, examining the layout of the enormous, colorful playground.
As he passed one of the mothers, she offered him a friendly smile. He did his best to return it. Hopefully that meant he was doing a good job of not looking creepy. It was a private party, after all. Everyone probably assumed he was a family member or friend of the family. Or at the very least a part of the staff. (Which he kind of was…seeing as how he was the husband of the party planner.)
But he still couldn’t help feeling like a weirdo.
Children always complicated things. It wasn’t their fault. It was just the way the world was. You couldn’t trust anyone anymore, which meant you couldn’t be trusted. And he could hardly blame anyone. He’d seen the headlines. He’d heard the horror stories.
It was clear why the place was so popular with the kids. The playland was a wonderfully complex labyrinth. All around him, children were scurrying around, crawling through tunnels, running across wobbly rope bridges and zipping down slides. He could hear little feet pounding the plastic overhead and the shouting of more children playing much higher up.
Somewhere up there, that little girl was shouting for Hunter again. Or maybe she was shouting for him still. It was hard to say for sure.
A little girl popped out of one of the slides as he walked by, followed closely by her mother, who seemed to be having almost as much fun as the girl.
Everything seemed perfectly normal here. He doubted there were any monsters lurking anywhere in the playland. There wouldn’t be anywhere for them to hide, for one thing. These children would cover every square inch of this place, regardless of how big it was. If something frightening appeared, he was sure everyone in the building would know within minutes.
And yet his horrid imagination was more than eager to remind him that he’d encountered a great many very dangerous
creatures in his travels that had the ability to literally appear out of nowhere. If one were to suddenly materialize deep inside the playland, it would be almost impossible for all of the children to escape.
A hard shudder shook his bones as an awful image blossomed in his mind: torrents of blood dripping through the mesh, raining crimson down through the playland onto terrified children and screaming mothers.
No. He wouldn’t let something like that happen. It was why he was here.
Right?
He watched the children playing inside the ball pit. They were burrowing in them like rodents, throwing them up in the air, pretending to swim in them. They all looked so happy. He couldn’t help but smile a little. Then, as he walked around behind it, he was greeted by the sight of a three-year-old boy half buried in the balls with his face pressed to the plexiglass, licking it.
Eric looked away, not wanting to think about how many germs were crawling around in there, and found a young boy with spiky, blond hair leaning against the mesh wall, his hands stuffed into his jacket pockets.
The boy sighed profoundly and said, “Some people are so immature, aren’t they?”
Eric smiled, amused. The kid couldn’t have been more than eight. “Well, what can you do, right?”
The boy shook his head. “That’s life for ya.”
He had to repress the urge to laugh. “I guess so, yeah.”
“So which kid is yours?”
Eric blinked. “Huh?” He looked at the children in the ball pit. “Oh… None of them. I’m…uh…” He gestured awkwardly toward the party room. “I’m with the catering.”
“Oh. That’s cool. I’m Preston, by the way.”
“I’m Eric.”
“Nice to meet ya, Eric.”
He was quick to admit that he wasn’t all that fond of children in general, but this kid was freaking adorable.
“Yeah… I used to like to play in the ball pit too,” said Preston in a wistful sort of sigh. “Back when I was a youngster.”
Eric assumed it would be rude to laugh aloud at that, so he did his best to bite it back.
“But you’ve gotta grow up sometime, am I right?”
Eric nodded. “Some people more quickly than others, I’ve noticed.”
He looked dead serious when he said, “Right?”
Karen would get a huge kick out of this kid. And he could probably stand here all day and never get bored, but he couldn’t afford to keep wasting time. “Well, I should probably get back to work.”
Preston nodded and stood up. “Yeah. I got some stuff to do, too.”
He had to physically bite his lip to keep from laughing.
“See ya around, Eric.”
“See ya.”
He watched as Preston sauntered off, his hands still stuffed in his jacket pockets.
OH MY GOD CAN WE KEEP HIM?
Eric chuckled. “Afraid not.”
He glanced around, wondering where he should go next. He didn’t have to wonder long. His eyes fell on the mirror maze entrance. There, staring back at him, was the ghastly face of the clown.
He was just standing there, grinning that creepy, crimson smear of a grin at him.
Then he withdrew back into the shadows and was gone.
Eric followed. He had no proof that the boy who called himself Todd was telling him the truth, but somehow, he felt that he could trust him. In the same way, he found himself convinced that this clown was bad news. It wasn’t just that Isabelle felt something dark when he first showed himself. It was one of those gut feelings that he sometimes had, a kind of intuition that had served him well so far.
The clown was trouble. He was sure of it.
As soon as he entered the maze, he realized that something was different. It didn’t feel the same as it did last time he was in here. It was colder. And the sounds of the children were more muffled than before.
Alarms were going off in his head. Something was wrong here. He wasn’t in control of the situation. He wanted to turn and leave, but he couldn’t. He had to push forward, regardless of the risk. Every moment he delayed was another moment the danger grew for all those children out there.
He stopped at the first intersection and turned around, searching every corridor, every mirror, looking for any sign of the clown, but he’d lost him.
The guy was frustratingly evasive for a clown. Weren’t they supposed to attract attention?
He chose the passage on his left. Was it gut instinct, or a dumb guess? Sometimes it was impossible to tell. But when he rounded the corner, the clown was waiting for him.
He was just standing there, reflected back at him in a mirror, a wide, unsettling grin spread across his face, exaggerated by the smear of red lipstick that spread across his gaunt cheeks.
He even waved.
Eric had to pause for a moment. The entire scene was so unnervingly surreal that it was almost more than he could stand.
The mirror was at the end of the short corridor where he was standing, set at an angle so that it reflected back to him whatever was in the next passage. The clown was to his left, on the other side of the mirrors next to him.
But when he rushed forward and turned the corner, there was no one there. All he saw was a flash of green sport coat darting across the glass in several directions at once.
This was tricky. If the clown went left in a mirror, Eric went right after rounding the corner. But which way did he go when the reflection of the clown was reflected off a reflection? And how did he know which was the reflection and which was the reflection of a reflection?
That headache was getting worse.
He followed the corridor around the corner and into the next passageway.
The maze had grown quieter now, as if he’d ventured deep inside a vast labyrinth.
Those alarms in his head were still ringing. Something wasn’t right here. He was being toyed with. The clown had him running in circles.
He found a dead end and had to backtrack. When he returned to the previous intersection, he caught a glimpse of the clown as he darted past to the right. He hurried after him, determined, but even as he ran, he realized that something was off. It was the mirrors. The reflections as the clown passed. They weren’t behaving correctly. The clowns in the mirrors were darting left when they should’ve been darting right, as if they had a mind of their own.
But he didn’t have time to contemplate what that meant. When he rounded the corner, he found that the clown had finally slipped up.
He was standing at a dead end, his back to Eric, his bony hands pressed against the glass. He wasn’t laughing now. His ghastly face stared back at him from the mirror, his bloodshot eyes wide and panicked.
Eric didn’t hesitate. He lunged at the clown.
It had seemed so simple in the moment. Tackle the freaky, painted weirdo to the floor. Ask him some pointed questions. Get some makeup on his fists, if necessary.
He wasn’t entirely sure at first what went wrong.
One instant he had the clown right where he wanted him. The next, he was colliding at full speed with the glass. Pain shot through his fingers and face. He staggered backward, cursing and clutching at his nose, blinking back tears of pain.
He should’ve known that was too easy.
The clown reeled around, a goofy expression of mock surprise on his creepy, painted face. He made no sound at all, but enthusiastically acted out a fit of laughter at him. He pointed. He made ridiculous “Ha-ha-ha” and “Ho-ho-ho” faces. He clutched his belly. He slapped his knee. And when he was done, he sighed deeply and wiped away imaginary tears.
The glass between them was no mirror, but the mirror maze didn’t have clear panes in it. At least, he hadn’t noticed any before now. And how did the clown get in there? There were mirrors on the other three sides of him. He was completely boxed in. Trapped, with no visible way in or out.
And for that matter, every surface was amazingly clean. There were no smudges, no handprints, no evidence whatsoever of child
ren.
Why hadn’t he seen it before? This wasn’t the same maze.
But then…where the hell was he?
The clown lowered his hands to his sides. He slumped a little. His goofy grin faded. He actually frowned, as if he felt bad for playing such a cruel joke.
Eric stood where he was, glaring at him as he checked his fingers for blood. He was sure his nose would be gushing after such a violent impact, but somehow he was okay.
The clown suddenly stood up straight again. A long, bony finger shot up. An idea. He reached into the pocket of his sport coat. With the other hand he made a “come here” gesture.
Eric didn’t move.
The clown tilted his head to one side and gave him one of those “don’t be like that” expressions.
He didn’t think anything could be more irritating than a clown, but this one apparently also fancied himself a mime. It was amazing how much that made him want to not just punch the guy, but punch him repeatedly. Until he bled. While also strangling him with his stupid tie.
The clown pulled out a tiny slip of paper and pressed it to the inside of the glass for Eric to read. It looked like one of those slips of paper you found in fortune cookies. Something was written on it in extremely tiny letters. It was impossible to read without moving closer.
He hesitated. He didn’t trust this…whatever this guy was…any farther than he could, well, hear him.
But he was behind that glass. What could he possibly do?
Except maybe reach through the glass and rip out his still-beating heart, of course. Or steal his immortal soul. Or simply make him spontaneously combust. This wasn’t a man. He was certain of that. And nothing was impossible, no matter how horrible. He, of all people, should know that by now. An evil clown with hellish powers was no less believable than a cosmic, world-devouring conqueror worm.
What the hell was he thinking? He actually tried to tackle this creep? That was stupid! He was lucky something really horrifying didn’t happen to him.
Cautiously, and without lowering his guard, he leaned forward and peered at the message.
It was so tiny. He still couldn’t make it out. He had to lean closer…
Closer…
