Guy Adams - The Clown Service

The older man moved away from the river and into the tight network of streets.

He stopped in front of an apartment block and stared up at its stone and glass body. ‘How interesting.’

‘If you like Terence Conran,’ said Toby, noting the shop beneath the building. ‘Personally I find it all a bit Emperor’s New Clothes: spindly nothings, the only heft is the price tag.’

‘Hmm…’ said Shining, glancing at a clear Perspex chair in the window. ‘I stumbled upon a real ghost chair once – cost more than a couple of hundred quid to sit in it. I wasn’t looking at the shop, though.’ He stepped as far back as he could, resting his back against the external wall of the building opposite. ‘Look between the buildings. What do you see?’

Toby stood next to him. ‘A bit of industrialist grey with a door in it, staff entrance to the shop maybe? I don’t know – just looks like a join between the two buildings.’

‘Keep looking.’ Shining walked across the road, marched up to the divide between the shop on the right and the clean walls of Cinnamon Wharf on the left. He reached his hands out towards the plain, grey concrete. Then he continued to walk and Toby was faced with exactly what he had predicted only a few minutes earlier: the utterly impossible.

From the young man’s perspective, the narrow stretch of concrete – no more than six feet wide – shimmered and ballooned outwards, changing its appearance entirely. It was a warehouse. Not the spruced-up, rebuilt apartment blocks that now filled the area but an ageing, crumbling, dirty stretch of wood and brick. Once the illusion had been broken, Toby could see it clearly, unable to believe he hadn’t noticed it in the first place. There was an entire warehouse between the shop and the apartment block. Shining reappeared, framed in the large, tatty doorway, having pushed open the double doors.

‘You see it?’

‘I see it.’

‘Come on then, if you’re going to accept the impossible you may as well explore it thoroughly.’

Toby walked across the road, narrowly avoiding a bicycle courier.

‘Open your eyes, mate!’ the cyclist shouted. Toby thought he could tell him the same.

‘I’m trying to remember walking past it,’ he said to Shining as he entered. ‘Surely you must notice it’s taking you too long to get from one place to the other? Your eyes say it’s only a few feet and yet you spend too long walking next to it.’

‘Did you notice?’

‘No.’

‘Then you have your answer.’

Toby looked around. The ground floor was open, some signs of a few crumbled partition walls, a rotting staircase heading up to a second level that could be glimpsed through the occasional hole in the ceiling.

‘Some form of perception field, I imagine,’ said Shining, continuing to explain the trick that had hidden the building from sight. ‘You can only see it if you know it’s there.’

‘A spy’s dream.’

‘Hardly one hundred percent reliable though. It didn’t take much encouragement for you to see it, did it? If I were them, I’d have put up more protection than that.’

There was a crashing sound from upstairs.

‘What the hell was that?’ asked Toby.

‘More protection?’ wondered Shining.

‘I’m really beginning to hate this job,’ said Toby. ‘What’s it going to be now? A dragon? A yeti?’

‘Nothing so subtle I expect,’ muttered Shining, dropping to the floor and beginning to trace in the dust with his fingers.

Toby shook his head in exasperation and began backing towards the door. ‘And this would be why she was right, telling me that I wasn’t cut out for this section…Years of training and it’s still like sending a plumber to fix your computer. I don’t suppose you thought to sign out a firearm?’

‘I haven’t carried a gun for ten years,’ Shining admitted, busily drawing a large circle in the dirt. ‘I think there may be an old revolver in the office kitchen if you want to bring it with you in future. I’m pretty sure it still fires. They built things to last in the ’40s.’

‘You’re not making me feel any better.’

‘In truth, neither would the gun. It would be no more use to you in a situation like this than a roughly sharpened pencil. In fact, the pencil would be better… Easier to draw with than your finger.’

The clattering noise increased. A cacophony of splintered brick and snapped wood.

‘And drawing helps?’ asked Toby.

‘It might. Stand inside the circle and keep your feet within the line.’

‘You’re asking me to just stand still and wait for whatever that is?’

‘I am, and because you’re clever enough to realise that while you may not be trained to face whatever it is, I am , you’ll do it. Now .’

Toby stepped inside the rough circle Shining had drawn. ‘I still think I’d have preferred the gun.’

Shining was moving around on his hands and knees, adding embellishments to the circle, swirls and symbols.

‘That Egyptian?’ Toby asked.

‘Sumerian.’

‘Great. I work in British Intelligence and my section head is writing in Iraqi.’

‘Very ancient Iraqi.’

There was one more crashing noise and then it was replaced with the sound of hooves. Dust poured in torrents from the ceiling.

‘A horse,’ said Toby. ‘Somebody’s riding a horse up there.’

‘No, that would be ridiculous.’

‘I’m glad to hear you say that.’

‘Not some body , some thing . You’d never get a real horse and rider up those stairs.’

Toby shook his head and stared at his feet. ‘I am imagining this, aren’t I? Like the story you told me yesterday. This is a hallucination, a trick.’

‘Possibly, but I don’t think so.’

‘You said it wasn’t a real horse and rider…’

‘That doesn’t mean they’re a figment of your imagination. Now shush a minute, I need to concentrate.’

‘Shush a minute?’

The sound of horse’s hooves increased in volume as whatever it was galloped across the length of the floor above, heading towards the stairs.

‘It’s coming.’

‘I know, and you need to not look.’

‘What?’

The hooves began to descend the stairs, Toby saw a glimpse of old bone in the pale light that cut through the shadows.

‘It’s important, Toby. You mustn’t look at it. Close your eyes, stare at your feet – whatever you find easier, but do not look directly at it .’

‘Why?’ The hooves descended even further, a thin band of the horse’s chest now visible, a ragged thing of butchered meat.

‘Because it doesn’t need to touch you to kill you.’ Shining stood in front of Toby and grasped the young man’s head in his hands. ‘Look at the floor.’ He forced Toby’s head forward. ‘Describe your shoes.’

‘What do you mean “describe my shoes”? What earthly fucking point is there in my describing my shoes?’

‘Please, Toby, trust me and do it.’

Toby gave a slight nod but Shining continued to hold his head.

‘Light brown, scuffed. Mismatched laces. I always snap the laces and end up having to replace them. Should replace the shoes too. I get through them so quickly, always buy chain store cheap. Something about the way I walk wears the heel down at an angle. Before you know it I’m on a tilt every time I stand still. What’s the point in spending real money on them?’

The hooves had reached the bottom of the stairway. Their progress slow now, and steady.

‘Keep talking,’ said Shining. ‘In what way do you walk funny?’

‘I don’t know. Not something I’m aware of. It’s only looking at the shoes that you notice. Forty-five degree angle worn out on each heel. Right in the corner.’