by James Walley
Clearly the old duffer was in the mood for nostalgia, and the crew of the Fathom had neither the time, nor the patience for such clownish reminiscence.
“I came through with the others, but I’m afraid they were all too eager to spread chaos and merriment, and they went on ahead.”
Whipstaff rubbed a hand across his face, “That’s very sad, sir, but we’d like to get back to our fellow clowns. They’re having all the fun, setting fire to things and chasing innocents and so forth.” He turned to Timbers. “That actually doesn’t sound half bad. Maybe we had these clown guys all wrong.”
Timbers shot his first mate a withering glance, before chipping in with a further enquiry. “So if you could see us on our way, we’d be most grateful.”
Wrinkles slinked up alongside Oaf, staring down at the tiny giant with eyes that seemed to telescope out on their stalks. Oaf shifted uncomfortably, wanting to say something, but all too aware that something important was happening, and still trying to maintain control of his own googly eyes.
“You don’t look like the chaps I used to raise hell with,” Wrinkles croaked, peering at the costumed pirates curiously. “Where’d you get those outfits?”
Timbers jostled his way between Wrinkles and the clearly panicking Oaf. “Lost and found. You take what you can get, there’s a war on, don’t you know?” He shrugged, blankly at his companions. This doddering clown was older than the Bible’s publisher, there was sure to have been a war on when he had still had some of his marbles.
Wrinkles clapped his hands approvingly. “Good for you, pitching in and helping the war effort.” He beamed, a smile that would have given any dentist within a ten mile radius nightmares for weeks. “I’ll show you where the troops are converging, but you’ll have to leave your…friends here.” He eyed Kate and Marty cautiously, apparently offended by their lack of outlandish colors and greasepaint.
“We can’t. They’re our prisoners,” Oaf piped up from behind Timbers.
Perhaps once in a lifetime, when the planets are in alignment, and the words in his head formed a magically relevant sentence, did Oaf pull a blinder, and this was that moment. he basked in the glow of this crystalizing miracle, as several eyes turned to add to the glow with a mixture of surprise and awe.
“Oh splendid! Well follow me then,” Wrinkles replied curtly, clearly unaware of the gravity of the moment, before shambling off back the way he had come.
The crew stared after the departing clown blankly. “Should we…should we go after him?” Whipstaff ventured.
Timbers was already trotting away in pursuit. “What else are we going to do? Stand around looking like the lost and found box at Chuck-E-Cheese?”
Whipstaff glanced down at himself. He had forgotten for a moment that they were decked out in clothes that would make a seventies glam rock star embarrassed. He motioned to Oaf to follow, and scampered off after his captain.
Kate shot a cautious look at Marty. “This has all the hallmarks of an impending and comprehensive disaster.” What should have worried Marty was that she was right. They were being led into the lion’s den, with the ultimate aim of towel flicking a bunch of clowns’ backsides, before legging it back the way they had come. Even backup plans held more water than that.
Marty felt a grin creep across his lips. “That’s exactly why it’s going to work. Because it shouldn’t.”
Kate shook her head, raising an eyebrow. “That makes precisely no sense at all.”
Already a few paces up the street, in the direction of his departing shipmates, Marty hesitated, fixing Kate with what he hoped was a look of reassurance. “I know, but look around. Does any of this make any sense at all?”
Fighting reason with bare-faced anti-logic had been a skill Marty excelled at, even before the world had gone big topped shaped, and he knew Kate had no answer. She smiled back, throwing her hands in the air. “Dammit, Marty, why’d you have to be so damned right all the time?”
Marty grasped her hand, and took a wild stab at milking the moment. “I’m not, except when it comes to having no business being right in the first place. I’ve got that down to a fine art.”
She giggled approvingly, pushing Marty towards the almost totally foolhardy plan as they ran. “That’s what I like most about you. You’re a complete idiot,” she whispered, squeezing his hand. There was no way to take this as anything other than a compliment in their current predicament, and Marty would’ve smiled even wider, had they not caught up with Wrinkles and the crew of the Fathom at that moment.
The doddering jester had come to rest beside a lamp post, which he clung to as he fought for breath. Timbers and Whipstaff stood beside him, eyes wide and taking in the sight before them, as Oaf lumbered up to join his crew.
“That’s your standard base of operations,” Wrinkles wheezed, casting a tattered glove towards what seemed to be all the clowns in the known universe. They spread out like a wriggling patch of weeds in the shopping mall car park which sprawled out along the underpass beneath. “I sure wish I could be with them, preparing for the festivities, but like I said, I got a bit lost, and these old bones won’t get me down there.” The old clown sagged against his lamp lit crutch, letting out a sigh that seemed to deflate his entire body as he surveyed his unreachable kin.
“Wow,” Kate murmured, tightening her grip on Marty’s hand. “That is a hell of a lot of red noses.”
“More on the way too,” Wrinkles chipped in, having apparently found emergency reserves of breath. “There’s still more of us coming through that big portaly thing at the edge of town.”
Timbers and Whipstaff exchanged excited whispers, letting words like shiny and sparkly escape into the air above them. The two quickly became aware that eyes were upon them, and straightened sharply, Whipstaff’s eagerness to chime in with a final “Shiny!” cut off by a rasping, “Shh!” from his captain.
“Oh, we know about all that, of course,” Timbers stammered. “We’ve just come from there.” He glanced around for support from his costumed crew. “Haven’t we?”
Whipstaff nodded way too emphatically, almost losing his wig. “Oh yes, and did all sorts of incredibly naughty things on the way over here. Why, just before we bumped into you, we smashed up a…we set fire to some…”
Oaf stepped up, his face set and determined, as though he was trying to maintain the roll he was clearly on. “We played some mini golf.” Whipstaff peered at his comrade. “As devilish escapades go, that ranks up there with breaking wind at a Sunday school picnic, or mooning a busload of passing nuns.” The little first rasped, grinning despite himself, and possibly making a mental note to do the latter at some point that evening.
Wrinkles rubbed his leathery chin dubiously. “Golf, you say. Well, times have changed since my day. I suppose if you laid mines at each hole as you went, that would count.” He paused, his gaze drifting, before he returned to the point he had started to make. “In which case, bravo!” He exposed more orthodontic terror in their direction, much to the relief of the would-be clowns, and their pretend captives.
Timbers rubbed his forehead nervously, as if to coax more words with which to dupe the old geezer into getting them down to his cronies somehow. As he withdrew his little cloth hand, the ancient harlequin gasped in surprise and revulsion. Timbers glanced down at his paw, which was now dripping with freshly removed greasepaint, and hastily attempted to reapply it to his face.
“Mother juggler!” Wrinkles cried. “You’re not clowns at all.” He turned on creaky ankles and crowed an alarm to the assembled fiends below. “Interlopers! Tiny spies in our midst! Get up here, and bring sharp things!”
Wrinkles’ pleas for assistance were cut short as he fell beneath a pirate pile-on, but seemed to have reached their target, as dozens of glinting, wicked eyes turned to view the frantic scuffle above them.
Marty took a step towards his scrapping shipmates, as shrieks of realization came swirling up from the car park. Kate’s hand pulled him back, and her eyes stopped him
from wading further forward. “We have to get out of here. All of us.” She was right. At any moment, those gleaming eyes would start to get bigger as their owners made for the overpass. Even as she spoke, clusters of balloons were bobbling out of countless clownish waistcoats, and carrying their wearers skyward, a floating squadron of murderous airborne freaks.
Marty turned to where his pirate allies were enthusiastically putting the boot in on old Wrinkles. Oaf stared back from where he sat, pinning the old pie chucker to the ground, and waved happily.
“Timbers, stop abusing the elderly and get out of there.” Marty cried. “We’ve got incoming.”
The sound of several battered nose honks drew triumphant battle cries from the scrapping brigands, and Timbers’ head rose from the chaos to reply. “You go ahead, Marty. We’ve got this crusty old balloon-atic.” He chuckled to himself, although it was unclear whether it was due to the fighting, or the zinging one liner that he’d just delivered. “Once his mates land, we’ll be right behind you. Get back to the Fathom and get ready for a quick exit.” There was no arguing with the captain, mostly because he had underlined his point with a hefty elbow slam and returned to the melee.
“Come on. They can handle this.” Kate repeated, tugging at Marty’s arm. “If we don’t get the Fathom ready, we’ll be sitting ducks when the charge of the fright brigade gets here.”
Marty cursed under his breath. He was not a fighter, but wasn’t one to leave his friends in a fight, no matter how much they appeared to be enjoying it. Grimacing, he turned back the way they had come, and high tailed it towards the Fathom, with Kate sprinting alongside him, and the fire of several dozen ghoulish, clown eyes burning into their backs as they ran.
Chapter Twenty-Two
There is a deep, dark place that your mind goes to when faced with the absurd, impossible, and downright terrifying. In Officer O’Riley’s case, that place was a small, groundskeeper shed just outside the town hall. He had stumbled into it, frantically casting glances over his shoulder, convinced that a white gloved hand would be resting upon it at his every step.
The tiny wooden hut offered little in terms of protection, but it had a door, and a lock, which was enough for now. O’Riley sank back into the sparse shelter, listening for signs of red nosed intrusion. Whether the abject silence which greeted him was reassuring or worrying—he could not decide—but it at least gave him the chance to catch his breath.
There wasn’t much by way of furnishings within O’Riley’s hiding new place. Several tools hung from hooks on the wall, and bags of something funky smelling were heaped up against the far wall. Beside him sat a sorry looking camp bed, no doubt a place to rest the weary head of someone down on his luck, or an employee lacking in horticultural motivation.
O’Riley’s eyes shifted back towards the rough hewn doorway of the shed. No glaring eyes peeked their way into the gloom, and no darting hands sought access. He plonked himself down onto the camp bed and placed a quivering hand to his face. When would this nightmare end? Probably when the sun came up, he thought. That’s when nightmares usually ended, wasn’t it? When the break of dawn shot forth radiant beams of reality which put paid to the night terrors, and signaled another dreary but thankfully murderless day. The darkness closed around him, pushing the panic inwards, condensing it like a tightly packed lump of coal that would inevitably give way to a needle sharp, gleaming diamond of fear. O’Riley couldn’t see anything now. Maybe the moon had passed behind a cloud, or maybe he had shut his eyes, he had neither the will nor the curiosity to decide which.
Slumped down again the bags of fertilizer, he barely heard the wispy voice drift down from the tiny window above him. “Hey. You in there. I know you can hear me.”
It was an ambitious claim, as O’Riley craned up to the little aperture from which he thought he’d heard something. He had no wish to advertise his presence, but gave in to the last embers of regimented procedure that still flickered within him. “Who…who’s there? Identify yourself.” It came out as more of a plea than a command, but was markedly better than the stifled whimper that his mind had offered up as an alternative response.
“I know why you’re here as well,” the voice continued, ignoring the weak question. “And you should know that you picked the wrong evening to walk your beat, Mr. Policeman.”
There was a diminutive quality to the voice, like a puppet who had somehow learned to speak, and possibly wield a knife. O’Riley had been uneasy when it had first issued into the shed, and what sounded like a thinly veiled threat did little to allay his rapidly blooming fears.
“Listen, I don’t know who you are, but I’m not walking anything,” O’Riley gibbered. “I’d place tonight’s moonlight stroll in the ‘running away’ category, if anything.”
The voice sniggered. “Indeed. You don’t know who I am.”
O’Riley winced. For all the terror, uncertainty and downright confusion that tonight had bestowed upon him, a sliver of annoyance had crept in as the mysterious whisperer continued to completely ignore him.
“Look. What’s all this about?” O’Riley flared, gusto momentarily wrestling control of his senses away from self-preservation. “I don’t care who you are, I’m just trying to get home, preferably with at least all of my limbs still attached.”
The voice suddenly exploded into fits of shrill laughter. Whether O’Riley had discovered the secret of comedy, or this hidden menace had several hundred screws loose, he couldn’t be sure. He was willing to hazard a guess, though. His question hadn’t been that funny.
“Oh, my speeding ticket dispensing friend, you will find out soon enough what all this is about,” the voice rasped excitedly. “As for your limbs. Well, that all depends on how adept you are at dodging nightmares.”
O’Riley hadn’t considered nightmare dodging to be an inherent skill. He’d survived this far through a merciful concoction of luck, abject cowardice, and the desire to wake up tomorrow, limbless or otherwise. He steeled his whirling mind against the barrage of thoughts, questions and prayers to deities, and pressed on. “What do you want?” That was the real kicker, the golden egg, the sixty-four thousand dollar question in the game of extreme hide and seek he’d been playing this evening.
More sniggering greeted his question. This willful outpouring of disregard would surely have awoken the action hero in him, had said hero not turned tail the moment the last of his bullets had been spent. Not having infinite ammo was another bugbear that he would be adding to his list of Hollywood gripes, providing he lasted the night. The giggling snapped off sharply, as the voice pitched forward with a ragged venom which caught O’Riley by surprise. “I told you, you will find out,” the voice eased, as though its owner was struggling to maintain some kind of calm sanity atop what was almost certainly bubbling depravity.
“I just wanted to give you the option to scurry back whence you came before the fireworks really get going tonight. You’ve seen my servants at work. You really don’t want to be around when the world stops taking its meds, do you?”
O’Riley was a good enough cop, albeit several vertebrae short of a full spine, to realize that this was not an empty threat. He was also good enough at being alive and staying that way, to recognize a ‘get out while the getting is good’ suggestion when he heard one.
Rounding up all of his analytical skills, O’Riley channeled his contemporaries: Holmes, Marple, Poirot, Crockett, Tubbs, Columbo, even the Greek, lollipop sucking bald one. “Mr. Peepers?” he ventured into the darkness.
Again, the hoarse whisperer chuckled. This was becoming an annoying trait, and his crime fighting peers collectively shook their heads in his mind. “Mr. Peepers? Close, but no cigar I’m afraid.”
O’Riley cursed under his breath. This was starting to feel like a game of Cluedo, only he felt like he was staring down at his own body, in the shed, with the juggling balls.
“Peepers does my bidding, and tonight, over here, I’m running the show,” the voice cooed. “I find it amu
sing that you think me a foot soldier in tonight’s festivities. No matter, I just wanted to be nice, and give you a chance to head for the hills.” There was a pause, as though the evil mastermind behind whatever plot was unfolding expected a response. “What? I can be nice if I want to be,” came the almost offended afterthought. “It won’t matter anyway, because after tonight, heading for the hills will be pointless…because we’ll be there. In the hills. In the streets. Everywhere in fact.” There was a faint huffing sound, as though the harbinger of all things apocalyptic had run into a dead end of sinister foreshadowing, and was somewhat stumped by the degeneration into small talk.
“If it doesn’t matter, I think I’ll just stay here a while,” O’Riley mumbled sheepishly. “At least until you’ve gone anyway. No offence.”
The voice continued, not a hint of affront in its tones. “That’s up to you. I came over to warn you off, thinking that you might be a hardened cop on a one-man crusade to vanquish evil, like in that movie.”
“What, you mean ‘The Hardened Cop on A One-man Crusade To Vanquish Evil’?”
“No, the sequel.”
O’Riley simultaneously wished he was, and was relieved that he wasn’t.
“Anyway, now I see that you’re only here to give my clowns something to chase after, so I will leave you to cower in your bolt hole.”
“Good,” O’Riley ventured, unsure of how to end a conversation with a criminal mastermind. “Umm, bye then.”
The unseen doomsayer appeared similarly stumped, as several thrashing noises outside signaled its semi-successful attempt to vacate. Amidst various sounds of wrenching foliage and muffled curses, O’Riley spoke up, since he had no wish to peek nervously out of the slatted window for clarification. “I thought you were going?”
“I am! There’s just a lot of shrubs and junk back here. It’s quite difficult to…ow! Nettles!” More puppet-shrill protesting rang out, but further away, as the outsider found what O’Riley guessed was a way back to the town hall gardens.