John Connolly - The Creeps - A Samuel Johnson Tale

They saw that the next-to-last floor had been given a circus theme. There was a Ferris wheel in one corner, large enough for very small children to ride, and the wooden façade of a big top. There were signs that read HOOP TOSS and, slightly worryingly, GHOST TRAIN. Over them all hovered the head of a ringmaster in a top hat, his black mustache curling almost to his eyebrows, and his smile wide enough to swallow a person.

The ringmaster was Hilary Mould.

Beneath the ringmaster stood three dummies dressed as clowns. One was bald and entirely covered in whiteface makeup. He wore a suit of broad yellow checks, and a little red hat was positioned on the side of his head. Samuel wondered how it stayed in place: glue, perhaps, or a very thin rubber band. It was only as he drew closer to the clown that he saw the hat had been nailed to his skull.

The second clown wore a huge pink wig that looked like the aftermath of an explosion in a cotton candy machine. Only the areas around his eyes and mouth were painted white: the rest of his face was a sickly yellow. He wore a long green coat with tails, and purple trousers decorated with pink polka dots. A huge plastic flower was pinned to the buttonhole of his jacket.

The third clown was female. She was wearing white one-piece overalls decorated with big red fluffy buttons, and her wig was black. So, too, was the makeup around her mouth and her eyes, while the rest of her face was very pale. Strangely, her mouth had been painted into a frown instead of a smile. Her fingernails were long and pointed, and varnished a deep, dark red, as though she had recently been tearing apart raw meat.

Samuel had never seen a female clown before, 53but then he had only been to the circus once in his life. Samuel didn’t care much for the circus, or clowns. He wasn’t scared of clowns; he just didn’t think they were amusing. 54

The dwarfs wandered over to join him.

“They’re not going to get many laughs looking like that,” said Dozy.

“Never liked clowns,” said Angry. “They always seem to be trying too hard.”

“What do you call the gooey red stuff between a circus elephant’s toes?” asked Jolly.

“I don’t know,” said Samuel.

“A slow clown,” said Jolly. “Get it? A slow clown .”

The female clown turned her head slowly in Jolly’s direction. Her fingers tested the air. The bald clown opened his mouth and licked his lips, and the clown with the fuzzy wig put his hand inside his jacket and squeezed the bulb on his plastic flower. A jet of liquid shot from it, which just missed Angry. It sizzled when it hit the floor, and began burning a hole in the carpet. The others immediately stepped out of range, but instead of joining them Angry began shouting at the clowns.

“Losers!” he said. “I’ve seen funnier dead people.”

The flower-wearing dwarf tried again, firing a stream of acid in Angry’s direction. Again it landed on the carpet and began eating its way through.

“How do you get a clown off your porch?” called Angry. “You pay him for the pizza.”

By now the bewigged clown was growling and spraying a constant stream of acid at Angry as he circled the trio. The others tried to snatch at him with their fingers, but he was too fast.

“What are you doing?” cried Samuel. “You’re going to get hurt!”

The smell of burning carpet and wood was very strong now, and a near-perfect acid-drenched circle was sizzling at the feet of the clowns. The liquid stopped pumping. The clown’s supply of acid was exhausted. He looked at the flower in disgust before deciding to take care of Angry and the others personally. He took one step forward. The other clowns did the same.

The ceiling collapsed, taking the three clowns with it and leaving only a hole where they had previously stood. Carefully, Samuel and the dwarfs peered over the edge at the floor below. The clowns had shattered on impact, like china dolls. The ceiling had also landed on Miss Muffet’s giant spider: they could see the tips of eight legs sticking out from under the mass of wood and plaster, and its insides were leaking out. Lucy’s boot might not have been strong enough to crush one of the smaller spiders, but three clowns and a heavy ceiling seemed to have done the trick for the big one.

“Like I told you,” said Angry, “I never liked clowns. Never had much time for spiders either.”

Miss Muffet appeared beside the remains of her spider. She glared up at them.

“Bad!” she said, pointing a web-covered finger at them. “Very bad!”

“Uh-oh,” said Jolly. “We’ve done it now.”

As they watched, Miss Muffet started to make her way to the stairs. She had obviously decided that someone had to pay for the destruction of her spider, but they were distracted from her approach by the ringmaster. His wooden face had contorted into a mask of rage. Thin streams of black smoke poured from his nostrils. Beside him, the Ferris wheel rattled on its foundations. Bolts popped, and its supports collapsed. The Ferris wheel dropped to the floor and headed toward them.

“Incoming!” shouted Jolly.

Samuel and the dwarfs dived out of the way of the rolling wheel. Samuel was relieved to see Lucy and the policemen do the same. They reacted fast, certainly faster than Miss Muffet, who reached the top of the stairs just in time to be hit by the wheel. It rolled halfway down the stairs before striking a wall at full speed, tearing through the brickwork and taking Miss Muffet with it. All that was left to show she had ever been there at all was a trail of crushed black spiders.

And that was when the Polite Monster appeared.

To start with, Samuel and the others didn’t know that he was polite. When monsters appear, the general approach is to assume that they don’t mean anyone any good and to set about getting rid of them. If that doesn’t work, it’s a good idea to make your apologies and leave while you still can. The Polite Monster had a lot of horns, and a great many teeth in its jaws, and four eyes, two on each side of its head. It was about twelve feet tall, and almost as wide, and was covered entirely in coarse red fur. It popped into existence in a puff of purple and yellow smoke, accompanied by the most horrendous smell combining the worst aspects of rotting fish, dog poo, and very old eggs that had been scrambled and fed to someone with bad digestion and worse wind.

The Polite Monster sniffed the air, made a face, and said, “That wasn’t me.”

It had a very cultured voice. It sounded like a monster that liked light opera, and perhaps acted in plays for the local dramatic society, the kind in which chaps called Gussy popped up dressed in tennis whites, and people laughed like this: “I say, aha-ha-ha!”

By that point, everyone who wasn’t a monster had found somewhere to hide. This floor of the shop was devoted entirely to books and some more board games, which had been a relief to everyone until the Polite Monster appeared. There was a limit to how much damage a game of Scrabble could inflict: at worst, it could probably arrange some of its tiles into a rude name.

“Hello?” said the Polite Monster. “Anybody home?”

Samuel poked his head up from behind a pile of boxes of Risk. The boxes were rattling alarmingly, suggesting to Samuel that some games might be more dangerous than others. This was confirmed when he heard a muffled shot from the topmost box, and a tiny cannonball pierced the lid and flew past his ear. A very small voice, muffled by cardboard, shouted, “Reload!”

“Oh, hello,” said Samuel.

“Ah,” said the Polite Monster. “I’m terribly sorry for intruding—nine letters, ‘to force oneself in without invitation’—but I was hoping that you could tell me where I am?”

Samuel was still wary.