Tim Curran - Resurrection

“Look!” Tara cried out. “Over there!”

“A clown!” Cal said. “A real clown!”

And they all got very excited, calling out to him, even though Chuck warned them not to. Because maybe he was the only one who really saw what was standing under that department store canopy, something hunched and wormy and foul.

Then the clown was gone.

But Chuck had seen it. What it was and what it was not.

“C’mon,” he said, barely able to control the terror inside him. “We better go back the other way.”

But Cal laughed in his face. “Why?”

“He’s losing it,” Kyle said.

“No, listen to me?”

But they did not want to listen.

“Maybe the clown can help us,” Tara said.

“Yeah, he’ll know the way out,” Mark agreed.

“Sure,” Cal said.

But Jacob just stood there. “I don’t know…I don’t really like clowns.”

Which got the Woltrip brothers laughing and Chuck wanted to laugh, too. He felt the laughter bubbling up from his belly, because it really was funny, wasn’t it? The absurdity of this situation? The seven of them standing in that reeking water in a flooded, deserted part of town seeing clowns and hearing calliopes and smelling cotton fucking candy? Hee, hee, hee, it was hilarious!

“He’s right,” Chuck said, trying to get a hold of himself. “That’s no clown…it’s…it’s a monster! Like those things that tried to get in the bus!”

“Tell him to stop,” Tara said, the fear encroaching on her now, too.

“Yeah, shut up, faggot,” Cal told him.

“I’m going to talk to that clown,” Kyle said.

He started moving off and Chuck grabbed him and then both Kyle and Cal shoved him away and he went down, sinking into that cold, stinking water, and rising up quickly, gagging. “You…you can’t go!” he told them.

Then just in front of them, a wave of water moved past like something big had skimmed by just under the surface. Like maybe a crocodile. And that served to sober them up, at least for a minute or two.

And then a voice, piping and musical and silly, said, “Hey, you kids! You gonna stand there and freeze or what? C’mon, it’s dry over here! It’s fun over here! C’mon, c’mon, c’mon!”

The clown was only about twenty feet away this time.

His suit was orange-and yellow checked with great green pom poms running down the front, a bright red ruffled collar and cuffs, and oversized white clown gloves. His face was completely white, the lips painted black, his eyes set inside black harlequin diamonds. On his head was a bright blue jester cap with tinkling bells at the tips. He was grinning happily, a mound of cotton candy on a stick in one hand.

“Cmon!” he said. “I won’t bite you!”

Chuck watched the kids begin to slowly move in his direction. They couldn’t see him as he was and they couldn’t smell that awful odor wafting off of him. They were moving towards him and his grin widened and you could see that behind that smile were teeth, really big teeth. Whatever spells he was casting and whatever dark magic he sprinkled into the wind, oh, it worked just fine.

“Don’t,” Chuck heard himself say, that calliope music so loud now it drowned out his words. “Please, don’t…”

Chuck was looking into the clown’s eyes and seeing what was really behind them, that malignant gnawing emptiness, that slimed pit of bones and carrion that it had for a mind.

Don’t be such a spoiled little party pooper! that sing-song voice said in his mind and he knew it belonged to the clown. Play along with me, Chucky! You’ll have fun! You’ll have lots of good, gobby fun! I promise you that! Grimshanks promises you and Grimshanks always keeps his promises and especially to fine, plump little boys like you, Chucky-fucky-sucky! Lookit the fun your friends are having! Oh, it’ll be a merry, silly lark we’ll have! You can have fun, too! Just like them! You can laugh and gorge yourself with sweets right to the end! Oh, boo-hoo, Chucky-fucky, you’re no fun at all! And I thought you could play with me, be with me! You hate them as much as I do! Why not play my games with me? I’ll show you what you do with these sweet-meats, I’ll show you how to fuck and suck and slit and tear them! I’ll show you how to play with their great big globs of greasy grimy kiddie guts and fondle their underparts and make balloon-animals from their entrails! Hee, hee, hee, ho, ho, ho!

“Shut up!” Chuck said, hands pressed to his ears. “You just shut up!”

But the clown voice, oh so unfunny now, would not shut up. How about that Tara? it said. I bet she’s got a sweet, saucy little cunt for us to chew and bite! Would you like that? I’ll teach you how to make them scream! What hurts and what feels good! Just you and me, Chucky-fucky! We’ll fuck ‘em and slit them and rip them wide open and then bury what’s left down in dirty, damp cellars! Take my hand, you randy little prick! Because I love you! I alone love you! They won’t be there for you when you fall, but I will! You’ve tasted the darkness and smelled the fear and know what it’s like to be shivering and alone! Just like me! Remember one thing, you humpty-dumpty little cockfuck: when you fall, they won’t be there to put you back together again, but I will! I’ll pick up your pieces and lick the sweet juice from every one, lick, lick, lick, and lick!

“NO!” Chuck screamed into the wind and rain. “NO! I WON’T LISTEN!

And then everyone stopped, because the clown was gone.

The music had stopped.

And the breeze just smelled like dankness and rot again, dead things and moldering things, sewers and nitrous cellars.

“Where did he go?” Kyle asked.

They had all scattered now. They were no longer closely bunched together where even in this terrible situation there might have been a modicum of safety. Now they were scattered out. Kyle in front, Cal at his side. Tara and Jacob four feet away from them, Mark off to the left and Brian to the right. And Chuck standing far behind, gasping and shaking and ready to lose his mind.

Another wave pushed through the rotting leaves in front of them. Then another splashed behind. Something brushed against Chuck’s ankle and he let out a cry.

You know where I am, Chucky! the clown said in his head. Tell ‘em all where I am…here, there, and nowhere! Tell ‘em how I hunted down boys in the night, Chucky! Tell ‘em what I did when I got them in my car! Go ahead, Chucky, tell ‘em! Tell ‘em all about Grimshanks! Tell ‘em how I died with that fucking rope around my neck, the water rising and things chewing on me and tunneling up my ass and down the head of my dick! Tell ‘em about it! Tell ‘em how I slink through sewers and giggle outside little boy’s windows at night, the moonlight winking off my teeth!

“Get out of here!” Chuck called out to them. “Everyone! We have to go now!”

But they were stunned and dazed and torpid, like dusty toys on a shelf that needed a good winding. They looked around, the fear sinking into them and cutting them open, making them bleed like Chuck was bleeding only it was too late now, too goddamned late and they just didn’t know it.

The water splashed and the leaves sluiced and the moonlight winked out above. And then there was darkness like that which could be found in deep graves and inside zippered body bags. The blackness of death and something even beyond death. A ravening, claustrophobic blackness that wrapped hands around your throat and sucked the wind from your lungs, pressed you down into sunless crevices and buried you beneath rotting cellar floors where a sweet and profane voice promised you that death would not be the end, but a blasphemous beginning.