by Brian Harmon
Most horrifying of all was that the monster inside the doll also looked like a clown. Crimson, tooth-filled mouth, pasty white flesh, big, bulbous nose that looked like a blood-engorged boil.
It might’ve been something straight out of his nightmares, if his mind had the capacity to create something that repulsively horrifying.
He ran for the other door.
As he passed the fortune teller’s box, the gypsy woman inside jumped out of her seat, uttered a blood-curdling scream and began banging on the glass hard enough to shake the entire machine. Eric responded to this by uttering some sort of unintelligible string of squeaky, guttural noises and performing a maneuver that was supposed to be a simple sidestep but turned into something that he thought probably looked like the world’s clumsiest ballerina attempting to invent a new type of freeform gymnastics.
Somewhere, someone or something was laughing at him. The sound of it filled the room between the screams of the wax fortune teller. It was the same raspy sort of giggling that he heard in his ear just before the knock-em-down dolls began hatching crawling, clown-faced horrors.
Latter he’d have time to appreciate just how absurd the entire situation was. Right now it was all he could do to not scream like a little girl.
He reached the door and threw his weight into it. Predictably, it didn’t budge.
The fortune teller screamed again. The box she was in rocked back and forth and then crashed to the floor, the glass shattering. Something was scuttling across the floor toward him. He needed out of here. He didn’t even know how to fight things like this. He didn’t even know if they were real or merely inside his head. All he knew for certain was that they were freaking him the hell out!
He searched the door for a lock. Surely both doors didn’t lock from the outside. Shouldn’t they lock from the inside? Wasn’t the point to keep people out? Why would it keep him in?
Movement to his right caught his attention and he turned to find that the plaster clown had turned to stare at him.
Eric jumped and stepped backward.
Seriously?
How did that even happen? How did any of these things even happen? These clowns were plaster. They couldn’t move. They’d shatter. And how could the fortune teller scream? She was built to blink and turn her head and move her hands over her tarot cards. And he was quite certain there weren’t any unborn clown-faced monsters incubating inside those knock-em-down dolls, either.
This couldn’t be real. None of it could be real. Something had gotten in his head. He was hallucinating. Like when he was attacked by that steampunk monk back in the summer.
That had to be it.
And yet he wasn’t waking up.
The clown had its hand behind its back. As Eric watched, it brought its arm forward, revealing what it was hiding. The plaster cracked and popped as it moved, but didn’t shatter. It held it out for him to take. It was a hammer with a big, foam head.
He stared at it for a moment, confused. Where had he seen that before?
Then he remembered. It was the hammer for the whack-a-mole game.
He took another step away from the clown and shined his light at the booth where the hammer came from.
There, beside the game, was the clown in the green sport coat and stupid tie. He was grinning back at him, clearly amused.
As he watched, the clown gestured at the whack-a-mole board. On cue, little furry things began spewing from the holes and spilling down the sides of the booth. Not moles, he realized, but rats. Dozens of fat, squirming rats, swarming toward him. Scores of them. Hundreds. Thousands.
A group of rats was known as a mischief. And this was definitely more mischief than Eric could handle. He turned and shoved at the door, trying to force it open.
The plaster clown tossed the hammer over its shoulder and threw its head back in an exaggerated laugh. At the same time, an eerie laughter rolled across the room, not from the clown’s guffawing mouth, but as if from the very bones of the building around him.
The fortune teller screamed again as she crawled into the light. She never had a bottom half when she was just a wax dummy inside the machine, he realized. She didn’t need legs. And she had none now that she was alive. She was dragging her own, bloody entrails behind her.
Strange, scuttling things still wearing their tattered knock-em-down doll skins emerged from the darkness behind the fortune teller, their weird, clown heads thrust forward, their toothy jaws snapping.
But it was the rats that reached him first. They surrounded him. They scurried up his legs, up his back, across his chest, snapping their diseased jaws at his face.
Blind panic overwhelmed him. He dropped the phone and swatted at the rats.
But there were too many of them.
He felt their teeth tearing into his flesh, ripping open his face, shredding his scalp.
Throughout it all, the ghastly, giggly laughter of the clown filled his ears.
Chapter Eight
There were many things Eric had experienced that he’d describe as terrifying. Several times now, he’d found himself at the very brink of an untimely and excruciating death, only to be spared at the last possible second. Each time it happened, in the agonizing moment, it was easily the most terrifying experience of his life.
And this time was no different.
He felt the razor-sharp teeth of the rats tearing into his flesh. He felt his warm blood course down his face. He writhed in agony as the monsters gathered around him, each one yearning to tear pieces from his still-squirming body.
And then, like so many times before, it was just over.
There was nothing there.
Except for the muffled sounds of the arcade and the children on the other sides of the walls, the room was deathly silent.
The rats were gone. The pain was gone. The blood. The monsters. All of it. Gone.
He peered out between his arms. His cell phone was lying on the floor a few feet in front of him, shining its light up at the ceiling. In the ambient glow, he could see that the plaster clown was back where it belonged. The whack-a-mole mallet was lying on the table, waiting to be used again someday. The fortune teller machine was standing upright again, its glass panes intact once more, its wax gypsy woman undisturbed.
He couldn’t see the Knock-Em-Down Clowns booth from here, but he was sure that if he walked over there, he’d find the dolls all standing neatly in their rows, intact and undisturbed, with no evidence of any small, terrifying creatures incubating inside them.
What the hell just happened?
And why did it stop happening?
He walked over to where his phone lay and bent to pick it up. But as soon as he had it in his hand, he froze.
Someone was standing behind him.
He could hear the heavy, labored breathing.
Slowly, he rose to his feet and turned around. He already knew who was there. He’d heard that heavy breathing before.
The fat clown stared down at him, a blank sort of expression on his chubby face.
For a moment they stood like that, neither of them moving, neither speaking, only staring at each other.
And breathing.
The door behind the fat clown began to rattle. Someone was opening it from the other side. As the key turned in the lock, the clown lifted his hands, as if he meant to reach out and grab him.
Then, like the horrors before him, he was simply gone.
The door swung open.
It was the well-dressed, dark-haired woman from before, still wearing her clown nose.
“What are you doing in here?” she demanded. “This area is for employees only.”
Eric stared at her for a moment, unsure what to say. He was just standing there in the dark, in his socks, no less, probably looking like a freak. And he had a feeling she wouldn’t believe that a ghoulish pair of deranged clowns let him in through the blocked-off mirror maze.
Thinking fast, he gestured back into the room and said, “I was looking for the rest
rooms when I saw some kid run in here.” He wasn’t typically all that good at lying, but sometimes, when he really needed to, he surprised himself. “I didn’t think anyone was supposed to be in here, so I was going to shoo him out. But I got locked in.”
The woman considered him for a moment, clearly not trusting him. Then she stepped into the room and flipped on a light switch, flooding the midway with light.
Eric stared at the switches, feeling stupid. The lights worked? Seriously? All he had to do was try the switch?
She looked around. “I don’t see any kid,” she told him.
There did seem to be an astounding lack of proof, now that she mentioned it. Deciding that the best course of action was to go on the offensive, he said, “I know. I don’t know where he went. I was sure I saw him come in here. It’s weird, isn’t it? And why did the doors lock on me?”
He studied her expression as he said these things. There was something about the look on her face that suggested she might not be entirely surprised to hear that odd things were going on in the building.
“They do that sometimes,” said another young woman as she walked into the room, peering around. She was very petite, only a little over five feet tall, with short, black hair, thick glasses and a pierced lip. Like the first young woman, she was wearing a clown nose, but she was dressed much less formally in torn jeans and an oversized, black tee shirt that drooped over one shoulder. She had a distinctly feminine, punkish look, right down to her black, high-heeled boots. “This place kind of has a mind of its own.”
The first woman rolled her eyes. “It does not.”
“The doors are always locking and unlocking themselves.” To Eric, she said, “This place is totally haunted.”
“It’s not haunted!” snapped the first woman. “You can’t go telling people that!”
“Why not? It’s true.”
“Because we don’t want little kids to be afraid to come here! And because it’s not!”
It was the second woman’s turn to roll her eyes. She turned to Eric. “I’m Kacie Bresnahan, by the way. I’m sort of the assistant manager.”
He shook her hand. “Eric Fortrell.”
“Fortell?” said the first woman, surprised. “You’re…
“Karen’s husband.”
“Right…” Suddenly she seemed flustered. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize when we met earlier.”
“My fault. I’m always forgetting to introduce myself properly. And I seem to have a habit of getting lost and meeting people in awkward places.”
She laughed a little at that. He was pretty sure she was just trying to be polite now. She looked uncomfortable. Something about finding out that he was Karen’s husband had rattled her.
“I’m Melodi Boldt,” she said, offering her hand.
“Melodi…” repeated Eric. “Karen mentioned you. Aren’t you the owner or something?” Although she looked far too young to own any business. And he thought the owners were an elderly couple.
“My grandma is the owner,” she corrected.
“She’s the heir to the Bellylaugh empire,” said Kacie.
Melodi rolled her eyes again. “I’ve taken over running things for her. That’s all.”
Eric noticed that she didn’t say her grandparents were the owners, meaning that her grandfather had likely passed away. It wouldn’t be surprising, then, that Grandma would be looking to pass the torch.
And that also explained Melodi’s awkwardness. Karen had said once or twice that the lady who hired her, her mother’s friend, had dished out a lot of money for this party. And with so many names on the guest list, it wasn’t hard to believe that the staff here would be eager to make sure everyone stayed happy and remembered the experience for their next party. The poor woman was probably worried about making a good impression, which meant she was far more likely to talk to him now that she knew who he was.
Not that he actually had any say whatsoever in Karen’s business. But Melodi didn’t know that. And he intended to take advantage of it.
“I’m sorry, but it’s really hard to take you both seriously with those…” He gestured at his nose, indicating the stupid, red clown noses they were both still wearing. “Do you have to keep those on all the time?”
Kacie took hers off. “See?” she said to Melodi. “They’re annoying.”
“They are not. The kids love them.” For a moment, she stubbornly left hers on. But then she relented and plucked it from her nose.
Neither of them said anything about his missing shoes. Either they hadn’t noticed or, more likely, they were used to seeing people running around the building in their socks.
But Eric wasn’t used to it. He felt weird. Naked. But there was nothing he could do about it now.
He gestured at the midway. “What’s with all this, anyway? Why’s it all locked up? Seems like it’d be popular with the kids.”
Melodi looked over at the carnival games. “It was popular,” she replied. “But not very profitable. It just takes too many people to run it all.” She stared at the dusty booths for a moment. “Grandpa wanted this place to have everything, but he wasn’t very good at balancing the budget. They made money when the place was busy. Not so much on slow days.”
“I take it that’s why they cut back the hours,” he reasoned.
“They didn’t,” replied Melodi. “That was my dad. He took control when they were on the verge of bankruptcy and forced them to restructure the whole thing. He would’ve rather just sold it, but Grandpa wouldn’t let him, so they trimmed it down to the only two things that reliably made money.”
“Party reservations and the big fish fry,” deduced Eric. It made sense, he supposed. Although it seemed to him like a lot of lost potential to only have the restaurant open one day a week.
“But when Melodi takes over completely, it’ll be different,” said Kacie. “She can open the place up full time again and actually make it make money.”
Melodi looked embarrassed. “I’m not making any promises,” she told her.
“But you do have ideas.”
“A few,” she admitted.
“I don’t know why you’re so bashful about it. You have really good ideas.” She turned to Eric again and said, “Like with this room. She was talking about adding it to the rental package for future parties, with the option of either charging to hire people to run the booths or letting the parents do it themselves.”
“That does sound like a good idea,” admitted Eric. “People like more options.”
“I know, right?” said Kacie.
Melodi still looked embarrassed, but he thought she also looked a little pleased with herself. And why not? It really was a good idea, he thought.
“But how would the prizes work?” he asked.
Kacie squinted at him behind her glasses and pursed her lips.
“I haven’t figured it all out yet,” said Melodi as her cell phone began to ring. She withdrew it from her pocket and frowned at it. “Excuse me a second.”
“At the very least,” said Kacie, “I’m sure she can make the restaurant make money more than just one day a week.”
Eric thought she was probably right. At the very least, they could do like some other restaurants and add a Wednesday night fish fry. And he knew a few places that had a very popular prime rib Saturday, too.
“Yes, I am,” said Melodi to whoever was on the phone. She looked up at Eric, confused. “He didn’t say anything about it… Okay… But I can’t spare anyone to… Are you sure? No, that’s fine… Okay… Sure. Bye.” She disconnected the call and fixed him with a curious gaze. “I didn’t know you knew my grandma.”
He stared back at her, unsure what to say. Neither did he.
“She said you agreed to do an inspection for her. Something about making sure everything’s up to code before winter?”
“Right,” said Eric, pretending this wasn’t the first he’d heard of it. Sometimes it was just best to go with things. “She set that up with Karen. I ne
ver actually talked to her directly.”
Melodi stared at him for a moment, perplexed. “She didn’t say anything to me.”
“Your grandma’s been kind of forgetful lately,” reasoned Kacie.
“I guess so…” She looked down at her phone. “I mean I haven’t even seen her in a couple weeks. I was starting to think she’d dropped off the planet.” She turned to Eric again and said, “I’m supposed to get you some keys and leave you to it. And I don’t really have anyone I can spare to show you around anyway, so…”
“I’ll be fine,” said Eric. He decided that was all he’d say about it, since he didn’t know the first thing about inspecting…well…anything…much less a place as unique as this.
To Kacie she said, “Can you get him some keys? I need to check on the party.”
Kacie assured her it was no problem.
“Right.” She looked at Eric again, still suspicious. “It was nice meeting you.”
“You too.”
She returned the clown nose to her face and set off to check on Karen and the party guests.
“Come on,” said Kacie.
As he followed her out of the midway and into the dark restaurant, still feeling weird about not having his shoes, his cell phone alerted him to a new text message.
THAT WAS WEIRDLY CONVENIENT
I know, thought Eric. Even for him, this was eerily easy. Just go with it.
TOTALLY
Chapter Nine
There was a hallway next to the kitchen, where the offices and employee break room were located. Kacie, the “sort of the assistant manager” of Bellylaugh Playland, as she’d introduced herself, led him through the darkened restaurant and into this hallway, where he was treated to the first, tantalizing whiffs of pizza.
It smelled amazing, but he had a feeling he was going to end up missing lunch today. He’d only barely begun to unravel whatever the hell was going on here and already he felt like he had his work cut out for him. A ghost boy named Todd. Not one but two evil clowns. (As if one weren’t bad enough.) And why would Melodi’s grandmother just suddenly give him unrestricted access to the entire building?
