The Clowns

by Tim McBain

  “I’ll use this,” he said. He scooped up handfuls of shells and loaded every pocket.

  “Fine by me,” Chloe said. She pulled a piece of Winterfresh from a foil wrapper and folded it onto her tongue.

  “How long do you think it takes?” Phillip said, his mouth going dry as he spoke. “To turn, I mean. How long do you think it takes before someone turns after they get bit?”

  “Probably depends on the severity of the wound,” Malcolm said between bites of cereal. “Like Tommy Dickface went fast, you know, but he was all chewed up and shit. With a little wound – a single bite, you know – I bet it takes a few hours, at least.”

  “I saw the old lady,” Chloe said. “The one with the dog. She was with the clowns chasing us through the woods. At the time, I thought I must be out of my mind. Anyway, that was pretty quick, right?”

  Phillip’s eyebrows scrunched up.

  “I’ve been thinking,” he said. “The one who… tackled me?”

  He caught himself, almost saying “bit me.”

  “I think it was Greg Moffit. I mean, I know it was him. I saw his braces. He had these red rubber bands – still has them, I guess – and they’re only on the top teeth. He wasn’t in school today, either.”

  Chloe’s eyes went a little wide, and they all seemed lost in thought for a long moment. The kitchen clock seemed louder with every tick.

  “We should go,” she said, finally.

  She had just placed her hand on the 9mm on the counter when a cacophony of shattering glass erupted from the living room. It sounded, in that moment, like a waterfall of glass shards breaking and raining onto the carpet, an endless flow of glass that just kept going. It was impossible.

  And then the glass finally stopped, and everything was quiet.

  “They’re here,” Phillip said.

  They rushed into the living room to find a clown straddling the window sill, most of the way in. Chloe’s mom looked dumbstruck on the couch, little exasperated clucks emitting from deep within her throat.

  Phillip lifted the shotgun, his hand wavering. He hesitated for the briefest of moments, one tiny tick on the second hand of that kitchen clock, and squeezed the trigger.

  The shotgun’s barrel snorted and blazed, the orange flash filling the room which had previously been lit with the TV’s glow. The report was an incredible boom that seemed to shake the foundation of reality itself.

  The clown’s chest ruptured, striped shirt and skin tattering away to reveal the shredded red tissue underneath, the stringy muscle fibers turned to savaged wads of raw meat, like a mess of those disgusting chips of steak in a fast food burrito. And the force seemed to eject the thing from the window, effortlessly thrusting it into the bushes outside before the bloody mist could even clear.

  At the same time, the recoil nearly knocked Phillip over, wrenching his arm as though trying to fling him by it. It hurt, his shoulder aching as if the ligament was torn, but he stayed on his feet and got the weapon under control.

  Everything went dead still for a beat, nobody even daring to breath.

  “Mom,” Chloe said.

  Chloe’s mom sat totally motionless on the couch, her lips parted. Her face looked more listless than shocked, Phillip thought, like mentally she was somewhere far away from here, totally incapable of processing what she’d just witnessed.

  Chloe’s tone turned harsh.

  “Mom. Get in the bathroom and lock the door. Now.”

  The woman got to her feet, doing as she was told, eyes blinking in fast motion.

  Smiling figures stirred outside the window.

  “There are more out there,” Phillip said in that gravelly tone just above a whisper. “A bunch of them.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  October 30th

  9:57 PM

  Electricity thrummed through Edmund’s veins as he sidled up to the car. Energy. Intensity. It filled his chest, tingled in his fingertips, throbbed in his face like a massage chair turned all the way up. It almost felt like taking a drug, he thought. Something that made him feel better than real life for a little while.

  He’d watched the couple get out of the Volvo, cross the parking lot, and enter the apartment building. He’d watched them do this almost nightly for the past ten days. They parked here, usually between midnight and 1:30, usually heading inside for 15 to 25 minutes before returning to the vehicle.

  Was it an affair? A prostitute and a john? Someone getting off work and changing clothes? Were they making a nightly delivery of some type? Something else?

  He didn’t know. He didn’t care about the details. He cared only about the opportunity.

  People making those quick stops – only running inside for a few minutes – those were the people who left their wallets and purses and tablets and laptops in the car. What were the chances, they probably told themselves, that someone would break into the car during that brief window of time? Those were the people he drove around looking for.

  Trails where people went for jogs and walked dogs were good, though it was risky to hit the same spots too often. Better to find people like tonight’s couple. People he could blindside and never cross paths with again.

  He slid the hooked piece of wire coat hanger out of his pants and crammed it in that tiny gap between the window and the door’s innards, wiggling it all the way down. They made tools for this, he knew, flat pieces of aluminum with holes punched in them called slim jims for the police and locksmiths, but he liked the coat hanger, liked the feel of the little hooked piece gripping around the lever arm and pulling it to disengage the lock.

  The backs of his hands brushed the window, the glass cold to the touch. The pressure of the wire bit a little into the seams along the insides of his knuckles, but he could feel the hook working its way into place. It was almost over now. Just like that.

  The lock lever jiggled on the other side of the glass, working its way upward as he lifted the coat hanger. Watching that little plastic nub rise seemed to double the voltage of the electricity pulsating through him, turning it cold, ice water vibrating up and down his limbs. His hands shook from the adrenaline, and his heartbeat grew wild the way it did during those first few thrusts of a sexual encounter.

  The lever jerked the last little bit into its fully upright position, and something deep within the door clicked. The car was unlocked.

  He pulled the hanger free of the door, cupped his fingers under the door handle, and pulled it open. The dome light snicked as it came on, the light spilling out into the street in a little wedge shape that matched the opening, the brightness forcing his eyelids into squinted slits.

  He got in and closed the door behind him, the leather seat cool against the clamminess of his back. He was sweaty. He hadn’t realized it until now, though he wasn’t surprised.

  The wallet sat in the cup holder in the console between the bucket seats. He grabbed it, shoved it in the left front pocket of his jeans. He scanned the area for a purse to make it a matching his and hers set, but he didn’t see one. He thought back, trying to remember if she was carrying a purse upon leaving the vehicle. He thought not.

  He ran a hand under the driver’s seat, finding only a wadded up Kleenex and various crumbs. Doing the same under the passenger seat unearthed a wad of fabric though. He pulled it free, revealing just what he’d been looking for – a lady’s handbag, bulging with whatever goodies it contained.

  The dome light clicked off, making him jump a little, his shoulder blades pressing back into that frigid leather. Jesus, he was jumpy tonight. That wasn’t normal.

  It didn’t matter now, though. He was done.

  He pressed the unlock button on his way out, each door clacking in unison to obey his command, every lever standing up straight and tall. He took a certain satisfaction in leaving the car fully unlocked, though he wasn’t sure why. Did he want them to think that maybe they’d left it unlocked, that maybe they were to blame for what happened here? Or was it closer to the opposite: making his violation of
their space somehow total and putting that on display? He couldn’t decide.

  Edmund didn’t spend a lot of time examining himself, didn’t spend a lot of time analyzing anything. He lived for the moment and took the things he wanted. When he was nine and he wanted chocolate chip cookies and Gatorade from the snack bar in school, he took them. When he was twelve and he wanted bottles of Boone’s Farm from the convenience store, he took them, pinning them into the waist band of his pants. When he was fourteen and he wanted the things he wanted from Britney Chambers in the woods behind her house, he took them, commanding her in a cruel voice that they both somehow knew she couldn’t disobey.

  Self-examination was a passing thought, a passing feeling, forgotten as soon as it happened, just like everything else in his life. The only thing he had patience for was thieving. Taking. He could wait like a spider at the edge of the web for as long as it took.

  He tucked the purse up in his armpit and pinched it between his arm and ribcage the best he could, hoping it wouldn’t be noticeable in the dingy path he’d walk under the streetlights out there. He stepped out of the shadows and onto the sidewalk. He’d parked just around the corner in a parking lot outside of an apartment complex, not wanting his car to be at all visible from what he knew would be the scene of the crime. It wasn’t far, but he was shivering already. The night air was brutally cold against his sweat-soaked t-shirt, and he wished he’d worn a jacket.

  Steam coiled out of his nostrils, and he could feel his armpit grip on the purse slipping a little. He had to resist the urge to fuss with it, hoping he could just get out of sight of the car as fast as possible. The corner looked so far away, let alone the parking lot and car he couldn’t even see from here.

  A slight adjustment to his arm seemed to secure the purse, though, and something about that steeled his resolve. He was going to make it. No problems. He couldn’t wait to go through the purse and wallet. He always waited like this. Grabbing them, taking them, and not going through them until he had driven away.

  Tonight he’d be going through them at the Mobil station on Lovell Street. Before anyone had a chance to report any stolen credit or debit cards, he’d order just less than $25 worth of food from the McDonald’s there – they sometimes asked for ID if you went over that. Then he’d drive across the street to the gas station – the one he knew for a fact had no security cameras – and fill up the tank. He’d sit in the lot and go through the purse and wallet. The electricity thrummed once more, liquid ice pumping through his circulatory system when he thought about it all. He was like a kid on Christmas morning. He could already taste the Double Quarter Pounder grease on his lips, feel the acidic zing of the Coca-cola washing it down his throat.

  He crossed the street as soon as he got around the corner and out of sight of the unlocked Volvo, taking a diagonal path toward his destination and picking up to a light jog. When he stepped out of the streetlight’s circle and moved into the wispy shadows of the parking lot, he knew it was over. He’d done it. Of course. For the first time during this ordeal, he smiled. The endorphins hit, quelling the pent up feeling, the restlessness, that the adrenaline had built up in him.

  His car was in the back corner of the lot, just next to the little grass hill that sloped down into the woods. Out of the way. Inconspicuous. Between his euphoria and the lack of light, he almost didn’t see the figures standing around the Grand Am until he was right on top of them.

  The words spurted from his mouth before he could stop them:

  “Holy shit.”

  He stutter-stepped backwards. They were clowns. Jesus. A bunch of clowns were leaned up against his car, and they stood up straight now that he was looking at them. He knew, on some level, that it was silly to be scared of clowns, but that didn’t stop the hair on the back of his neck from pricking up.

  The clowns moved toward him, all of them seeming to do so at once, though they didn’t seem in a hurry for the moment.

  Once more his heart pounded wildly like it did during sex, like it wanted nothing more than to tear its way out of his chest, but it was different than before. This time he was the one who would be violated.

  When he saw that one of them had a knife with a long, curved blade, he screamed, his voice lifting into a falsetto after a moment.

  He backpedaled again, the purse sliding out from under his armpit and spilling its contents onto the blacktop. Out of sheer panicked instinct, he stooped to gather it, and the clowns were on him.

  A nightstick got him in the ribcage with a crack like a splintering popsicle stick, and he fell onto his knees, bent over to the injured side. A web of pain pulsed from the spot, and he clutched at it stupidly, making it hurt worst.

  Some part of him made sense of it. They’d broken his rib. He screamed again.

  The nightstick’s second stroke got him under the chin, catching enough of his throat to cut off his cry and knocking him flat on his back. The clown flopped down on top of him, pinning him down. He tried to fight, but it was so strong. It pinned one arm down and then the other.

  His scream was a babble now. Nonsensical syllables strung together. His panic got so big that he experienced this in flashes, a sequence of events that he struggled to piece together, but he was aware on some level that the other clowns were here now. They were all around him.

  Something big and sharp entered him near the groin, a stab thrusting up into his bladder, all of the nerves around his genitals screaming, and for a second all he could think was that the clown straddling him was mounting him like a woman somehow. But no. No. It was a blade. He’d been stabbed.

  When they started biting, he wished for death with all of his being, his arms free now but thrashing without purpose, hands rubbing at makeup clad faces and colorful wigs, doing nothing to actually force them off or even deter them. He didn’t fight them. He squirmed at them.

  The shotgun blast was so close and so loud, the flash from the end of the barrel lighting up everything. He felt its incredible fury as much as he heard or saw it, a force that seemed capable of ripping a hole in this dimension.

  The clown head hovering over him buckled and disappeared into a bloody mist. Chunks of blood and bone vomited down on him after a beat, their heat and consistency reminding him of chunky soup.

  Clam chowder. Manhattan style.

  The limp body flopped onto his, blood still surging out of the neck and jaw remnant in spurts to wash over his throat and chin. Some got into his mouth and made him gag. It tasted like rotten meat.

  The shotgun pumped somewhere behind him, the clowns all looking that way, and he scrabbled back in a half-crab walk, his legs dragging along with him.

  Phillip squeezed the trigger, and another clown face came apart before him. The Mossberg’s recoil ripped into his shoulder, the gun trying its best to kick out of his hands. It hurt like hell, but it was fudging worth it.

  The other clowns moved with urgency now, running for the woods. Phillip fired one shot after them, but the shotgun wasn’t as much use at a distance, he knew. He heard Chloe squeeze off a few rounds to his left.

  “Should we chase?” she said.

  Phillip shook his head.

  “Let’s regroup and reload. They’re quick in the woods, but we can catch them unprepared again. Better to keep them guessing anyhow.”

  Edmund sat up on the ground, breathing heavily. Wounds and bite marks covered the exposed skin of his arms and face, and blood seeped from his torso. His voice wavered when he spoke:

  “I don’t know who you are, but thank you so much for-”

  Phillip pumped the shotgun and fired at point blank range, taking Edmund’s head off above the jaw. The juicy spray flung everywhere, blood and brain and bits of skull, much of it spattering onto Phillip. A beat after the first wave of spray had settled, an intact flap of his scalp landed on the blacktop with a wet slap like a soggy wad of dough tossed and dropped at a pizza parlor.

  Everything was quiet for a long moment.

  “Jesus Christ, Bu
rkholder,” Chloe said. “That was cold.”

  “Guy got bit,” Phillip said, his face expressionless. “He was already dead.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  October 30th

  10:44 PM

  The Le Baron crept along the edge of the woods, all four windows down for better listening. They’d driven into the lots of three apartment complexes and a dentist’s office which sat adjacent to the little strip of woods that cut through town. So far, they hadn’t seen anything.

  Phillip tried to keep the negative thoughts at bay. Part of him assumed the clowns were out there killing right now, growing their ranks while they drove around aimlessly. Another part of him focused on that little wound just above his collar bone, wondering how long he had left. His eyes maintained vigilance, though. They scanned the area, endlessly looking for any movement or other signs of clown activity no matter what thoughts tumbled through his head.

  Something tinkled in the backseat, an unfamiliar noise with a bit of a sing-song quality.

  Phillip wheeled to find Malcolm eating a bowl of cereal, the spoon clanging out little melodies against the ceramic bowl.

  “How do you still have cereal?” he said.

  Malcolm shrugged.

  “I took a little nap while you guys were out doing your thing.” He gestured with the bowl. “This is what’s left.”

  He slurped at another spoonful.

  “Isn’t that, like, warm? And soggy as hell?” Chloe said, her eyes flicking to the mirror.

  Another shrug.

  “It’s mush. But it’s good. I mean, the marshmallows are still good, at least. Little blue moons and stuff.”

  Phillip turned to Chloe.

  “Why did you let him come along, again?” he said, keeping his voice down.

  “I thought you were the one who OK’d that?”

  He shook his head, and Chloe rolled her eyes.

  “Look, I’ll stay out of your hair, guys,” Malcolm said from the backseat. “By all means, focus on the clown thing.”