by Brian Rella
Mason relaxed a little. He stopped trembling.
“I’m Harvey, Harvey the clown!” Harvey blew the horn on his belt a few times and did a little circle dance. He popped his teeth back in his mouth and smiled. “So whadya say, Mace? Want me to use my magic to clean those jammies?”
“OK,” Mason said and went over to his dresser and slowly pulled the top drawer open, trying to make as little noise as possible. He pulled out a clean pair of underwear and pajamas, stripped off the wet ones, and put the dry clothes on. He glanced over to the closet. The nightlight changed from purple to blue, the light reflecting off the clown’s white make up.
“Now bring the dirty ones here, Mace,” Harvey said.
Mason hesitated. He was still unsure and a little scared. Harvey seemed friendly enough and he said he was magic. Mason loved magic. His parents had read him stories about magic stuff before. Trains that talked; animals that talked. But those weren’t real. They were stories. So how did a real clown get into his closet? Maybe he is magic? He walked over with the dirty clothes in his hands and stopped a good distance from the closet and just stood there.
“How did you get in my closet?” Mason asked.
“Ohhhhh. Well that’s part of my magic, Mason,” Harvey said. “My magic lets me visit boys and girls all over the world. Do you like magic?”
“Yeah.”
“Great!” the clown said. “We are going to have so much fun together!” Harvey did another little dance in the closet and Mason smiled. Maybe Harvey isn’t so scary after all! Maybe he’s friendly.
“But how did you get in my closet?” Mason asked again.
“Magic!” the clown said. He reached into his shirt and dug around. He had this strange look on his face, as if he was searching for something. Then he smiled and his eyes brightened. Harvey pulled a balloon animal from his shirt and reached out to hand it to Mason.
Mason laughed out loud. He heard some movement from his parents’ bedroom next door. Someone’s feet creaked on the floor.
“Quick, give me the clothes and get back into bed!” Harvey said.
Mason was afraid his dad was going to get angry with him. He didn’t want his daddy to yell. He didn’t want Daddy and Mommy to fight anymore. He reached up with both hands to give Harvey the clothes.
“Gotcha, Mace!” Harvey yelled, and he grabbed Mason by his hands and pulled him into the closet. The door closed as panic pounded in Mason’s chest. He screamed too late, as he heard the door click shut, and was pulled into the clown’s world. Mason’s bunny was left lying in front of the closet door.
***
Alec crept in front of Mason’s door and listened. He didn’t hear anything. Good, he went back to sleep. Maybe he’s finally learning to soothe himself. He stood at the door and listened a little longer. A sliver of light from Mason’s nightlight crept from under closed door, changing from red to yellow. He went back to his room and crawled back into bed with Christine.
“False alarm,” he whispered.
“Thank God,” she said.
Alec heard Christine start to snore softly and then they were both asleep.
***
“Mason?” Christine called. “Come on, Mace. Time to get up. You’re going to be late for school.”
“I’ll get him,” Alec said.
Alec walked into Mason’s room, looked around, but didn’t see him. “Mason?” He looked under the bed. Maybe he had to pee? Alec checked the hall bathroom, but he wasn’t there either so he went back into Mason’s bedroom. Maybe he’s downstairs? As he was leaving Mason’s room to go check downstairs to see if maybe Mason went to watch some TV—which he knew he wasn’t supposed to do before breakfast—he saw Mason’s bunny in front of the closet. He sighed, a little annoyed, thinking Mason was playing games as he walked over to the bunny and picked it up. “Mace, come on, buddy. Come out of the closet, you’re going to be late for school.” Alec opened the door, but didn’t see Mason. He pushed the clothes around and searched behind all the crap on the floor. No Mason.
His fear grew as Alec searched the rest of the house for Mason, eventually making his way back into Mason’s room again and still couldn’t find him. He stood in the center of the room as a pang of anxiety went through him like the ripple from a rock breaking the surface of a calm lake. Where the hell is he? “Christine!” he yelled. “Christine! I can’t find him. Do you see him anywhere?”
“What do you mean you can’t find him?” she said, walking into Mason’s room, an irritated look on her face.
“I searched the whole house,” he said. “I can’t find him.” The worry Alec felt was now apparent on Christine’s face.
Christine re-searched the whole house top to bottom while Alec went outside to search the yard and garage. He was nowhere to be found. By the time Alec was walking back in the house, he was shaking as he dialed 9-1-1 on his phone. Christine started crying and Alec was doing everything he could to hold himself together. He’s probably just gone for a walk somewhere. I’m sure he’s going to walk into the house like nothing happened any minute now.
But he didn’t. When the police arrived, they searched the house again. Christine was barely keeping it together as she tried to explain to one of the officers about what had been going on lately while Alec was speaking with another officer.
“Have you noticed any strangers around the house? Anything out of the ordinary? Strange cars parked on the street, strangers coming to the door soliciting magazine subscriptions, repairmen with the wrong address, or something like that? Anything? Anything at all can be helpful,” the officer said. His badge said Johnson when he flashed it. He had coffee breath and his clothes hung on him in wrinkles and creases.
“No. Nothing,” Alec said. He was answering the questions and racking his brain with his own. Where could he be? If he had another nightmare, where would he have gone? Alec had checked and rechecked every place he could think of and was coming up empty.
“What about school?” the officer asked. “Have you noticed anything or anyone strange when picking him up from school? Have the teachers mentioned anything?” Officer Johnson asked.
“I don’t know,” Alec said. “Christine picks him up and drops him off.”
It all became a blur. The questions faded into the background. Alec could hear himself answering them, but he was really doing his own mental investigation. He felt he was missing something. He knew there was something he wasn’t seeing. Then a female officer came out of Mason’s bedroom with a handful of papers. She handed them to Officer Johnson.
“We found these,” she said. “Everything else looks normal. No sign of a break-in or struggle.”
Alec awoke from his dreamlike state and looked at what Johnson was holding. Construction paper. The kind that Mason liked to draw on. The kind he had used to make his father’s day card last year. There were at least twenty drawings. On each page was a similar picture. A clown. Alec snatched the pictures from the officer’s hand.
“These mean something to you?” Officer Johnson asked.
“Mason was…he’s been having bad dreams about a clown lately,” Alec said. “Nightmares. But they stopped about a week ago.”
Alec stared at the pictures in his hand. The clown. The clown was in the closet, he said. The clown was in my dream.
“Mason kept saying there was a clown in the closet,” Christine said. “He was afraid. He kept coming in and waking us up, telling us there was a clown in the closet and the door kept opening… and…and we told him he had to let us sleep…and…” She broke down. She couldn’t finish the sentence. But Alec could. He had told Mason to stay in bed. He had told his son to stay in bed and let them sleep. Alec’s heart sank into his stomach. He felt like he had to puke.
The officers checked the closet again. There was nothing there. After another thirty minutes or so they left, telling Christine and Alec they would call if they found anything. They told them to keep their cell phones close and not to worry, as there was still plenty of tim
e to find him.
Alec and Christine were alone in the house. Christine was sobbing on the couch and Alec was staring off into space thinking about the clown and the pictures and the closet. How could I have ignored him? Why couldn’t I have just let him sleep in the room with us? What if someone dressed as a clown was sneaking into his room at night? What if he’s been kidnapped by some kind of child molester? Christ! It’s my fault. It’s my fault!
He got off the couch and went back into Mason’s room, threw open the closet door and started ripping all the clothes off the horizontal pole and throwing them in a pile behind him, his anger and frustration with himself growing with every article of clothing he pulled from the rack. Then he grabbed the old toys and pulled them out of the closet too. He took all the toys and puzzles and games off the shelves until they were bare, then he started pulling the shelves out.
“Alec!” Christine said. “What are you doing? Alec, please stop, you’re scaring me.”
Alec barely heard her as he tore the closet apart. When all the shelves were in a pile behind him and there was nothing left in the closet, Alec stepped inside and inspected the closet. He didn’t know what he was looking for. He just kept looking, running his hands around creases in the wall looking for anything that might give him a clue. What was in the damn closet? Why was Mason so scared of the closet? The only strange things that had been happening recently were the nightmares and the closet and the bed wetting.
He started tapping the back wall of the closet, listening for anything. Maybe there was a secret door or something? He didn’t know. He heard a hollow answer to his knock and a pang of hope rushed through him. Maybe there was a secret panel in the house or something and Mason was trapped inside.
Hope he would find his son mixed with anger and frustration as he began punching and kicking the back wall of the closet. His fists and feet went through the drywall until there was a gaping hole in the back of the closet. Exhausted, his hands hurt and bleeding, he finally slumped back down to the ground outside of the closet door. Christine fell to the floor with him and they cried in each other’s arms.
Through the tears, Alec glanced at the damage he’d done. There was a huge hole in the wall a couple of feet in diameter. He noticed something out of place in the hole he’d made. He nudged Christine from his lap and went back into the closet. There. Beside the hole he had just made, was a corner of something just barely visible. A box. A black box. He could just make out the corner of it.
He grabbed hold of the wall and began to pull apart the drywall and wood, widening the hole. When he was done, a black shoebox lay covered in dust and crumbled drywall in a hidden compartment built into the back of the closet. He pulled the box out of wall and onto his lap.
“What is it?” Christine asked.
He opened the box and inside was a statue. Alec pulled the statue out and held it in his hands. It was a statue of a clown and a boy. Alec remembered his mother had these Hummel statues when he was growing up and this looked like one of those. There was a clown with three tufts of hair on its head and a little boy next to him. The boy looked frightened. Alec looked at the clown and could see letters on his shirt. Harvey.
***
Harvey pulled Mason close to his face and Mason could feel the heat radiating off of him. He wet himself again and started crying, calling for his Daddy. “Shut up, runt! Your Daddy’s gone! You’re mine, pal!”
Harvey’s face started melting away. Underneath the makeup and fake skin, Mason could see what Harvey really looked like—and he was a monster. His skin was red and wrinkled like he had been burned. His mouth was crooked, like his face had been cut. Harvey smiled and revealed rows of sharp and pointy teeth, like a shark Mason had seen in his animal book. Mason screamed and kicked and punched at Harvey to try and get away, but he couldn’t. Harvey was too strong.
“Ain’t I a happy clown! Hahaha! Now come on, kid,” Harvey roared. “I need somethin’ to eat!”
Mason was in some kind of amusement park. Harvey was dragging him through a gate. There were big letters above the gate all lit up. F-U-N-L-A-N-D. Mason couldn’t make the word. There was a merry-go-round and a Ferris wheel right inside the gate. Harvey pulled him past all these to another building with the letters F-O-O-D-S-H-A-C-K.
***
Alec stared at the little statue of the clown and the boy, turning it over in his hands. How did this get in the wall? Why was it hidden in the wall of the closet? Could this be the clown that Mason had been talking and drawing about? Is this the clown from my dream? It didn’t make sense, yet it was the only explanation. “What the hell is going on?”
As he was turning the statue around, he looked at the boy. He could see tears coming from the boy’s eyes. They weren’t there before… He stopped turning the figurine and felt it shift in his hand. He looked at the clown. The clown’s face had changed. It looked melted and evil. Its teeth had changed, too. They were sharp and pointy. The clown was hideous and angry.
***
Mason fought back as Harvey dragged him on forward. “Stop trying to run!” Harvey snarled. “You fucking kids always try to run! All of you! No one wants to stay with Harvey! But you will. You all end up staying with Harvey, don’t you? Yes. Yes you do! If you try to run again, I’ll break your goddamn arm!” Harvey tugged on Mason’s arm so hard that Mason felt something pull in his shoulder and he yelped in pain.
Mason wanted his Mommy and Daddy and kept calling for them through the tears that streamed down his face. He stopped trying to pull away, hoping Harvey would loosen his grip, so he could run, but Harvey didn’t let go. Harvey kept dragging him along toward the building with the letters F-O-O-D-S-H-A-C-K.
Inside the building, Harvey pushed Mason into a booth. “Now, Mace, my friend,” he said, showing all his sharp teeth, “what can I get you to eat?” He pulled a large knife from behind him. It was a butcher’s knife about the size of Mason’s arm. “Do you like chicken, Mason? Huh? Do you? I love chicken, Mason! I bet you do too. Now what do you want? A wing?” Harvey pointed the knife at Mason’s arm. “Or a leg?” Harvey pointed the knife at Mason’s leg. Mason was frozen with terror.
***
Alec kept turning the statue of the clown over in his hands and realized the statue had changed again. What did this all mean? How could this statue just change like this? He wasn’t sure how, but he knew the clown must somehow have his son. Alec kept turning the statue over in his hands, studying it, looking for a clue, but found none.
“What the hell is happening?” Christine said. Alec looked up from the statue. She must be seeing it change too.
“I don’t know,” he said. “But I think this statue is connected to Mason’s disappearance.”
“What are you talking about, Alec?” She looked at him like he was crazy. He couldn’t explain it either, but he had to try.
“Christine,” he said. “I’m telling you. There’s something about this statue that’s not…Ouch!” Alec dropped the statue and it fell to the hardwood floor and one of the clown’s arms broke off. The broken arm was holding a knife now. Alec looked at his finger and saw a prick of blood forming.
***
Harvey screamed as his arm fell off his body and onto the floor. Blood squirted from his arm all over Mason and the booth he was sitting in as Harvey fell backward shrieking. Mason didn’t think. He just ran. He ran as fast as he could, looking for a way out.
“Get back here!” Harvey howled. “I’m not through with you yet!”
Mason pushed through double doors and outside. He stared around, not knowing which way to go. To his left was the Ferris wheel. To his right was another building with another sign. Which way? How do I get home? He went right and pushed through another set of double doors across the street.
Mason was in a maze of mirrors. All the mirrors distorted his image. Some made him tall. Some made him pear-shaped. He was surrounded by them and stumbled through the maze, bouncing into mirrors, trying to find a way through.
; “Mason!” he heard Harvey yell. “Come on, Mace, I was just kidding, buddy. Hehehehe!” Harvey’s laugh was menacing and Mason ran faster. “Come on, Mace! I’m a happy clown!”
Through his tears, Mason saw an image of Harvey in front of him. He froze and realized he was looking in a mirror and turned around to face Harvey.
Harvey held the large butcher’s knife in his one hand. Where his other arm should have been, there was only a bloody stump. His face was a snarled mess of blood and melted flesh. His sharp teeth were pointed in that horrific grin. “I love the house of mirrors Mace!” he wheezed, “They make me look pretty! Now get over here!”
Harvey moved toward him slowly, stalking him. “First I’m gonna cut you into bite sized pieces, pal. Then I’m gonna eat you bit by bit…”
Mason ran.
“This is my house, boy!” Harvey roared. “You can run, but you can’t hide. Hahahahaha!”
Mason kept moving, stumbling along, bouncing against mirrors, searching for a way out or a place to hide. He came upon a mirror and saw something strange. He saw what looked like a window into a familiar room—his bedroom. He could see his Thomas the Tank Engine blanket on his bed and his pictures on the wall. Someone was kneeling on the floor in his room. He could see part of the leg of a man. He recognized the shoe the man was wearing. Daddy’s shoes.
Mason started banging on the glass. He started screaming. “Daddy! Daddy!” He had to get through the mirror. He had to get to his Daddy.
***
“What is that?” Christine asked.
Alec heard it too. It sounded like someone tapping on a window. Then he heard a voice. He must be hearing things. It couldn’t be. Could that be Mason’s voice?