Clown in a Cornfield

by Adam Cesare

  And so, it was not acceptable that her people, her friends, her classmates, were running straight into a trap while she could do something about it. This was her party. They were her guests. She couldn’t allow it. And she had the will and the firepower to stop it.

  Janet pushed herself to her feet and left her hiding place, shoulder throbbing.

  Her legs felt like they were about to buckle out from under her, jellied knees breaking inward, but after two steps she was walking, then two more and soon she was running.

  “Back!” Janet screamed, tried to scream, but the word came out as a wheeze.

  She could do this. That clodhopper in the combat boots: she could outrun him. She could kill him.

  She could save everyone.

  “Get back!” she yelled, finally finding her voice. “Run! There’s more than one clown!”

  Eighteen

  In January 2014, Samantha Maybrook slipped on the icy front step of her family’s trinity home, in the Fairmount district of Philadelphia, and chipped her tailbone.

  It was a small chip. About a fingernail’s width.

  It took three days of the bruise worsening—Samantha was willing to miss work, but unable to sit and enjoy her time home—for her to agree to get an X-ray.

  Yes. She’d broken her coccyx. Which wasn’t great, but the injury wasn’t life-threatening. The doctor was happy to report that the chip wouldn’t require surgery. They’d medicate and keep an eye on mobility and bruising. If the fracture didn’t heal in a few months, then, and only then, would a referral to a specialist be on the table.

  The doc was in-network with their insurance, but Samantha Maybrook could have gone to Penn or Jefferson. The coverage she got being on her husband’s insurance was great. No. She’d gone to this doctor even before she and Glenn had been married, she argued, and she liked him.

  The doctor prescribed her two pills: a stool softener, because the pain of straining on the toilet could be the worst part of an injury like this, and an opioid for the discomfort. The opioid, ironically, would cause constipation, so at least in the first days, she’d better double up on the stool softener and drink plenty of water.

  That first night, when she’d been worried about the effects of the painkiller and only taken a third of a pill, a dusty sliver so small she’d needed to take it with a spoon, Glenn had joked about Quinn’s junkie mom and Quinn had laughed.

  Neither of them were laughing on the way to pick Samantha up from rehab in February 2017.

  Or stuck in funerary traffic, snaking down from the service at Laurel Hill Cemetery.

  That death had meant something. Had fundamentally changed who Quinn Maybrook was.

  But this death . . .

  Quinn didn’t know what she expected to feel, having taken a human life—even a life that had ended while doing a horribly evil thing.

  She looked into Mr. Vern’s face. The Frendo mask had slipped off easily. The exit wound from her second shot had popped the back of Mr. Vern’s head like a water balloon. His crossbow was at her feet, and Quinn noticed that Mr. Vern’s weapon had a bright pink camo pattern. Why would anyone make a pink camouflage crossbow? So strange. The whole thing was just so strange.

  “There’s a lot of burns,” Rust said, interrupting her reverie. The neighbor boy put a hand on her shoulder and guided her back from the body and the soon-to-collapse barn.

  The survivors from the barn were arranged behind them in a half circle.

  The group coughed and trembled despite the heat. There were maybe fifteen in all. Most had run off into the cornfield without looking back.

  “What are we going to do? Some of them look like they can’t even walk,” Quinn said, scanning the scene.

  “We should head out to the road,” Rust said, nodding in the general direction of where the street had to be. “We still need to get an ambulance out here.”

  It sounded like a good plan and Quinn couldn’t argue. Frankly, she was too exhausted. She didn’t even know if she could handle the half-a-mile walk back to the main road.

  Rust was gathering up their stuff when Quinn heard the scream.

  “Run!”

  “Janet?” Quinn asked, turning to face the sound.

  “Run!” Janet yelled again, before she could be seen. “Run!!”

  Two or three bodies broke through the edge of the cornfield ahead of Janet’s warning.

  “There’s more clowns! They’re coming! Run. Run! Run!!!”

  Finally, Janet limped to the edge of the clearing, looked to the group of survivors, then spotted Rust and Quinn, and bounded toward them.

  Janet was holding the handgun out in front of her, waving it around. Quinn flinched. They’d come so far, only to be shot by their friend, hallucinating from her trauma and armed because Rust felt guilty leaving her with an unloaded gun.

  “It’s revenge! You’ve got to listen,” Janet raved, her voice pleading. Even from this distance, Quinn could see Rust’s borrowed flannel shirt had been blotted solid with blood and dirt. Janet must’ve noticed how she was holding the gun then and pointed it up at the sky.

  “This isn’t one person,” Janet continued. “This is revenge. They’re killing us because—”

  Brrrmm. Brrrrmm.

  The loud rev of a motor drowned out Janet’s words.

  The sound caused Quinn’s muscles to lock up, stop mid-stride.

  Quinn’s vision got sharper by degrees and the smell of smoke returned, possibly because the wind changed, possibly because the adrenaline drip was back.

  Quinn was no longer tired, because she’d gone back to being terrified.

  At a full gallop, Frendo the Clown followed Janet out of the cornfield. He was no longer carrying a crossbow.

  Instead, the clown carried a large, whirring circular saw. It was a two-handed piece of equipment—a weapon—its blade measuring at least a foot and a half in diameter. The end under the clown’s elbow spewed thick gray smoke out into the night.

  The clown was faster than Janet, and it wasn’t long before he’d closed the distance. She seemed to sense he was there, though, and turned to face him before she was overtaken.

  She couldn’t get the gun up, though. He swung once as Janet attempted to dive away. From this vantage, it looked like he barely connected. He grazed Janet’s chest, a fine mist of blood fanning out into the air. Rust’s leather belt snapped loose from around Janet’s shoulder and her compress unraveled as she ran backward.

  “No!” Quinn yelled, raising the rifle. If she couldn’t run to Janet, she could at least shoot the bastard.

  Janet wobbled forward as Frendo stepped back. There was an unsatisfying click as Quinn attempted to fire at the clown. She hadn’t advanced the bolt. It didn’t matter—she didn’t have a clear shot, anyway.

  “Get down,” Rust screamed to Janet. She was five feet away now, the clown maybe six.

  The follow-through of the clown’s first swing had thrown the attacker off-balance, but instead of falling, he let the momentum of the heavy, whirling blade drag him around.

  The clown, broader in the chest and shoulders than Mr. Vern, made a complete 360 in a ballerina’s pirouette.

  Coming back around into a second swing, the circular saw cut Janet’s head from her body. She fell backward in a halting, dislocated heap, the pop of the handgun sounding only once, as Janet’s head hit the dirt.

  Quinn wished she’d looked away, hadn’t seen Janet’s body trip over her own face.

  With Janet out of the way, Rust took two more steps toward the clown and pulled the trigger.

  Sparks flew from the end of the shotgun, blasting this Frendo backward into the dirt.

  There was no need for a second shot. The left side of Frendo’s torso had been blown apart, the man nearly torn in half.

  The motor of the circular saw idled, then died, the clown’s hands letting off the throttle.

  And like that, the clearing was back to quiet.

  Behind them, more of the barn collapsed in a soft
rustle of ash and cinders.

  “Why are they doing this!” someone yelled, but nobody offered an answer.

  Rust tapped Quinn on the elbow, pointing.

  Janet had been right. There was more than one clown. A lot more than one.

  To the south, the direction of the road, two clowns stepped out of the cover of the cornfield. One carried a long, hooked blade, the other a chainsaw, gently idling, waiting to be revved.

  From the far side of the barn, another clown sucked his teeth, the sound getting them to turn, his body language gloating that he had flanked them. He had a crossbow—no pink accents—at the ready. Had this been the one who’d shot Ginger, the murderer who’d started this whole thing? It seemed right. He was huge, where Mr. Vern had been quite reedy in class.

  To the east, dragging behind him a mewling, babbling freshman, came a Frendo with two hands on a wooden staff. No, not a staff: a pitchfork, his victim impaled at his feet, stuck in the tines. To the side of him stood another clown, smaller, slimmer, hefting an ax.

  They were surrounded on at least three sides, the clowns seemingly unconcerned that their victims had guns, that the kids had already blown away two of their members.

  The men in the masks walked in sync, cinching closed the noose. The clowns stalked forward on heavy boots, looking ready to cut and chop and shoot them down.

  “RUN!” Rust yelled, lowering his gun to his waist and firing at the nearest clown, the big one who’d crept from around the front of the barn with the crossbow. The shot went wide, only peppering the clown’s side and shoulder. The man spun and howled, but not before getting a shot of his own off, the arrow sailing into the small crowd of survivors.

  Quinn didn’t need to be told again. She followed Rust, advancing a new round into the rifle as she went.

  They needed to run north, toward the only place there weren’t visible attackers. Or was that what the clowns wanted? Were they being herded?

  Paranoia nagged at Quinn as she ran. This was insane. This wasn’t a lone-wolf shooter; it was a nightmare army made of Kettle Springs’ goofy mascot, multiplied. She remembered one of Janet’s last words, her warning: this was revenge.

  Juking past him, Quinn and Rust gave the injured clown with the crossbow as wide a berth as possible, Rust shuffling with his pant pockets, presumably grabbing for more bullets—no, shells, they were called shells, he’d been serious about that distinction when they were talking in the field.

  They were passing between the ruined barn, smoking bodies littering the parted front doors, and the silo, when Quinn heard a voice cry out.

  “Rust, Quinn! Over here!”

  Cole Hill was standing in the doorway to the silo, was waving to them, then suddenly disappeared, looking like he’d been yanked back inside.

  Quinn turned, and two of the clowns—the pitchfork and the ax—were in pursuit, while the other three had begun to descend upon the group of barn survivors. The stunned and defenseless kids were trying to scatter unsuccessfully.

  Without stopping, or really aiming, Quinn turned the rifle on the two clowns and fired. No hits and neither pursuer seemed fazed. It was a waste of ammunition.

  Quinn and Rust fell onto the silo door, now suddenly closed. Rust yanked at the handle and . . .

  Nothing.

  The door held firm.

  “Let us in!” Quinn screamed, taking hold of the door handle and trying for herself. Rust let go and fumbled to feed two shells into the shotgun. Dropping one into the gravel and dust as his hands shook, he bent for it.

  The clowns were bearing down on them. One with his pitchfork held aloft like a javelin, the other choking up on his ax.

  Quinn could hear a scuffle on the other side of the door.

  “They’ll kill us, too!” a voice screeched.

  “Fuck yourself. Open that door.”

  Rust pumped the shotgun, his back against hers, leaning for support. Quinn sobbed, banging an ineffectual fist on the door.

  “Open this door or I’m blowing it down,” Rust screamed, then punctuated the threat with a blast from the shotgun, aimed behind and above them.

  There were footfalls and laughter behind them. The cackling was strained and evil, the sound of someone enjoying killing.

  “Please,” Quinn gasped, one last time.

  Quinn closed her eyes in anticipation of the end. Hoping death would be quick.

  And then she fell forward, Rust’s weight on top of her, crushing her.

  Nineteen

  Cole had opened the door to let Quinn and Rust in. He’d had to punch Matt Trent in the face to do it—so the situation was a win-win. Cole had fantasized about laying Matt out for, well, years now—probably ever since he started talking about how much better things used to be way back when and dropping the word “cuck” into his insults. Even if Cole’s knuckles throbbed and had already started to swell a bit, it was worth it. It shut Matt up and Ronnie, too. She stopped screaming to help him close the door again.

  But as they slid the silo door shut, a steel-toed boot and a white-gloved hand wedged into the doorway. The clown on the other side grunted in opposition as they tried to roll the door the last few inches closed.

  Cole couldn’t move, couldn’t let go, or the clown would get in. Fortunately, Rust noticed.

  “Get back,” Rust said, nodding to Cole. Rust was still on his back, shotgun barrel angled up. Quinn clawed at dirt and corn, crawling out from under him.

  Cole smiled. It felt good to smile, just like it felt good to still be on the same wavelength as Rust. Even after all this time. Even in this situation.

  Cole backed away from the clown’s grasping hand and the doorway. Knowing what was coming, he turned and covered Ronnie’s face and neck with his arms, protecting her from any shrapnel or stray pellets.

  The blast echoed around the empty wood cylinder above them.

  Cole turned back to get a glimpse of a ruined stump retreating, oversize glove gone, destroyed by the buckshot, a single naked digit remaining, dangling by a thread against a wrist.

  They closed the door, locked it with the bolt.

  Outside, the clown cried for help. It was a woman’s voice, high-pitched, babbling, crying about her hand being gone.

  Cole looked over to Rust and nodded, satisfied—good job. Somehow, he knew from the start of it that the gunshots he’d heard weren’t the cops. He knew it was Ruston who’d come to the rescue.

  Quinn gasped then, turning his attention. She’d crawled eye-to-eye with Erin’s body. “What the—” she said, but Cole knew there was no explaining. Not now. Instead, he just offered a hand to help her up.

  “What the hell?” Rust yelled, standing. “Why didn’t you open the door for us? We could have died!”

  “I tried,” Cole said. He looked over at Matt. He was sitting on a milk crate, rubbing his jaw, face red in the lamplight. “Someone didn’t want me to.”

  “You think that was a good choice of costume, Trent?” Rust began crossing to Matt. “Why the hell do you still have it on?” He had his shotgun turned around, holding the beveled stock out, making it look more like a baseball bat. Cole had enjoyed punching Matt, but Rust would cave his skull in, if he followed through.

  Ronnie must have seen where this was headed. She hopped onto Rust’s back, but Rust was strong and pissed and he just carried her with him like he was hefting a load of grain.

  “He didn’t mean it,” Ronnie said. “Don’t hurt him.”

  Rust raised his arms, shrugging her off: “He’s an asshole.”

  “Fuck you,” Matt said, as ever not making the situation better.

  Rust was about to lunge at Matt again when Cole cut him off with a bear hug. “I’m just happy you’re alive,” Cole said into his ear. “We’ve got bigger worries now.” He turned to Quinn, reaching an arm out for her shoulder but not close enough to make contact. “You okay, Maybrook?”

  “I’m not dead,” she said, smiling nervously.

  They all went quiet, still; Cole could
hear everyone’s breathing. Outside, the handless clown’s screaming had quieted and turned to a sad, helpless blubbering.

  “Look, I’m sorry,” Matt said, his hands pleading. “I am an asshole. We were just scared.”

  Rust stared him down hard. “Fine. Whatever,” he said. Cole knew that the moment was over but not forgotten.

  And then outside there was an angry roar. The door shuddered against its lock. There was a loud crack. Splinters flew at them, an ax-head buried in the door, a five-inch chunk of wood knocked inward.

  “They’re going to get in!” Quinn yelled. She still had her gun and was pointing it toward the door, out the new hole the ax had just chopped, menacing whoever was out there. “Back away or I’ll shoot!”

  Cole knew that Rust had spent a lifetime hunting. For the early part of that life, Cole had been there, but this girl: she was brand-new to it. And seemed to be doing fine.

  She poked the barrel of the rifle out the ax hole, fired.

  Like that, no more whacks with the ax came.

  “Hey.” Rust put a finger to his lips, waved them over. “We have to get out of here,” he said, his voice hushed and conspiratorial. “We’re vulnerable. They don’t need to get in. They can just burn us out like they did with the barn.”

  “Well, what do you suggest, Sarge?” Matt asked. Ronnie patted his shoulder, trying to quiet her boyfriend. But Cole knew she had very little control over Matt. Nobody decided what Matt Trent said or did, most times not even Matt Trent.

  “How many more shots do you have?” Ronnie asked.

  “I left my bag back in the corn,” Rust said, then worked the action. “So not as many as we’d like.” The gun was a Winchester 1300 that Cole remembered from their childhood. Its wood accents looked like something from the Old West, at least compared to the sleek black tactical shotguns Cole had seen on YouTube. Rust slid the action a second time, revealing that the chamber and magazine of the shotgun were empty.

  “That’s not good,” Cole said.

  “No. Not great. But good news is, Quinn’s got . . .” Rust paused, counted on his fingers. “Four or five rounds left. I can’t remember.”