Guy Adams - The Clown Service

‘OK,’ said Derek, ‘I’m ready. Most of you are going to need to step back. Charlie, you understand I don’t really know what I’m doing here, yes? Krishnin’s body is the trigger, rather than the room around us. We will see him change rather than the environment. I can create the state of temporal flux, but what we see then is beyond my control. I also don’t know how it might affect you, standing so close to it all.’

‘We’re winging it,’ I said. ‘It’s OK. I get that. We’re beyond planning here, I’ll take my chances.’

I picked up April’s shotgun, checked it was loaded and then turned to Derek. ‘Right. Let’s do it.’

He turned on the machine and the projectors hummed into life. Krishnin’s body, still writhing on the dirty concrete, stiffened. I was reminded of the Ghost Population, the way their physical presence had seemed unstable and easily distorted.

Suddenly, the body vanished and I found myself looking at a young boy. Krishnin as a child. His face was smudged with dirt and a thin trickle of blood crept from one nostril. It looked as if there were tears in his eyes. What incident was this, I wondered? Had he been bullied at school? Beaten by a parent? I tried to feel something for him, for the child that could have been something else, something better. I couldn’t. I raised my shotgun, not ready to fire yet – if I killed him when he was a child then who knew what future events might change? I had to bide my time. But I wanted to be ready. I needed to be able to pull the trigger quickly.

He changed again and I recognised this version of him only too well. The gun in his hand, the dead expression. He had just shot August Shining and I knew he was only too happy about it.

And again. A young man, dancing with a girl, their extended arms vanishing as they stretched beyond the influence of the projector. Was this his first love? Was someone like him even capable of the emotion?

‘Ten seconds!’ Derek shouted. ‘Everything’s working fine.’

There was a loud crack from the main doors as the sleepers pressed against it. They would be through any moment.

‘We haven’t got long!’ said Jamie. ‘That barricade isn’t going to stop them.’

Krishnin altered once more, older, dressed in a long black coat, a drink in his hand. He raised the glass in a toast and took a large mouthful.

And again: a similar age but he was a mess, his hair dishevelled, his shirt undone. Sweat was visible on his forehead and throat. He held up a fork, its tines coated in thick blood. I remembered the story Shining had told me, about how he had had to listen to this man as he tortured someone. Was that what I was seeing? Had that moment been important because he had found it hard to bear or because he had enjoyed it?

And again: the child returned, dressed for a funeral. He looked up and smiled.

‘Oh God…’ I turned to see April still looking out of the window. A point of light flaring in the distance. ‘We’re too late!’ she cried. ‘They’ve done it! The stupid bastards have done it!’

My finger tightened on the trigger, I had to take the shot…

The boy vanished and here was my moment… Krishnin dressed in his military clothes, a spray of blood erupting from his chest as a .44 bullet entered it.

The sound of wind. The shockwave. The flash of light.

I fired the shotgun into the past. Saw Krishnin’s face become nothing but red mist.

And then there was nothing but heat and noise and dust.

‘My God, lad,’ said O’Dale, ‘you might have tried to wound him.’

August Shining stared at the body lying on the floor in front of him.

‘He was… didn’t you see? It was like he was disappearing, vanishing right in front of us.’

‘I thought that,’ agreed Cyril. ‘He was just fading away.’

O’Dale scoffed. ‘Well, he’s certainly faded away from above the neck. You took his head clean off.’

Shining began to shake, the gun falling from his hands. ‘His chest,’ he said. ‘I aimed for his chest.’

Then he turned and threw up all over the floor. Out of the corner of his eye he thought he saw someone run out of the front door, but he was hardly in a position to do anything about it.

‘You bagged him in the chest as well,’ O’Dale was saying, still looking at Krishnin’s body.

‘There was only one shot though,’ said Cyril. ‘At least I think there was… wasn’t there?’

‘Don’t you worry your little civil servant’s head about it,’ said O’Dale, tutting at Shining who was still retching. ‘You going to be all right?’

Shining nodded, though he was by no means sure that was true.

Only time would tell.

‘He’s new!’ said Shining, looking at Jamie. ‘Isn’t it wonderful?’

‘I give him a week before he defects,’ Goss replied.

‘Oh no,’ insisted Shining, ‘not this one; he’s got potential.’

I felt detached. Not quite able to focus. I sat there on Jamie Goss’ sofa and held my hands out in front of me. They were solid now. This was the real world. Yes. Not that strange dreamlike place we had just been in. This was solid… I am the Insubstantial Man , I suddenly thought, with no idea as to why.

‘Glad you think so,’ said Jamie. ‘He seems dead from the neck up to me.’

Eventually, Shining and I left, taking the Tube back to the office. For the whole journey, he talked to me in a calm, matter-of-fact tone about the work that Section 37 undertook. He discussed previous cases; nothing concrete, just a line here and there, little jewels of madness scattered all over the conversation as if I were supposed to be able to make sense of them. In a way I did.

I couldn’t quite understand why the things he told me seemed acceptable. Because they weren’t. They were ridiculous… The Haunting of Black Rod, his time in China fighting a dragon god… Rubbish. Fantastical tales that I would dismiss in a novel let alone in real life. And yet somehow I didn’t dismiss them. I just nodded, overwhelmed but wholly credulous. I believed every single word.

‘You know,’ he said as we climbed out of Wood Green station onto High Road, ‘it’s so refreshing to be able to tell you all these things and not just have you laugh. Or call the emergency services. My career has tended to lack receptive audiences.’

He went into the mobile phone shop beneath the office. Apparently his phone kept ringing at four in the morning; I got the impression he was trying to decide whether it was a malfunction or whether it was actually possessed. I decided to leave him to it. I wanted a moment of silence, to try to take in everything that had happened.

I wasn’t to get it.

‘I suppose you think that was clever,’ said an elderly lady who had just left the shop.

‘I’m sorry?’ I had never met her before in my life. Shining had just ushered her out of the door and right into me. Was it some form of test? Was this another of his strange agents?

‘It wasn’t clever you know,’ she continued. ‘Not one bit of it. It may have solved the immediate problem but you’ll never believe the price.’

‘I really don’t have the first idea what you’re talking about,’ I said, looking over her shoulder and through the shop window. Shining was talking to the owner who was waving his arms around as if besieged by the most unreasonable man in the world.

‘You don’t remember, of course,’ she said. ‘But I can change that. Would you like me to change that?’

‘I think you have the wrong person,’ I replied.

She gripped me by the arm and suddenly my head was spinning. I stumbled slightly, toppling back against the street railings, the old woman’s grip remaining utterly firm.