13 Tales To Give You Night Terrors by Elliot Arthur Cross, Troy H. Gardner, Erin Callahan, Scott Clark, Jonathan Hatfull, Tom Rimer, Vinny Negron, & Rosie Fletcher
THERE was a clown standing at the end of Randy's bed.
Anyone else, Randy knew, would have been terrified of the sight. In the middle of the night, a seven-foot clown, regardless of how much he was smiling, would scare the crap out of anybody. For Randy, though, the grinning merry-maker positioned just beyond his exposed toes was nothing he hadn't seen before.
Randy had been visited nightly by the clown for the last thirteen years. In the early days, just after his fifth birthday, when he moved out of the bedroom he shared with his older brother, he'd screamed for his parents every time the clown appeared. In each instance, his parents rushed in to him, but they never saw the gawking colossus with the red nose, comically small pinwheel beanie, and painted-on tears. The clown never disappeared as they entered the room. It continued to stand and ponder him, cocking its head like a curious puppy, even after his parents repeatedly explained that they didn't see anything and that he must have been having a very vivid dream. Eventually, Randy gave up trying to tell his family what he was seeing. He simply became used to the clown. It never hurt him, touched him, or spoke. It simply was.
Randy got older, started high school, and eventually spent more time sleeping away from home. And, wherever Randy went, so did the clown. Still standing. Still smiling. Make-up never fading.
Randy remembered a camping trip he'd begrudgingly ventured on to The Berkshires when he was in middle school. It was to be the first night he'd spent away from his parents and (he had hoped) the clown. He'd woken to the crack of thunder and the ripple of the wind against his nylon tent. Fumbling for his flashlight, unable to even see his hands, he knew the clown was there. He waited patiently, and with the next flash of lightning, the grinning clown face was illuminated, white and looming over Randy's sleeping bag. It couldn't stand upright in the two-person pup tent, and was awkwardly bent at the waist. That instance always stuck in Randy's memory because it was the first time Randy realized he'd never be rid of it, no matter where he slept.
Another time, Randy fell asleep in a hospital room, keeping watch on his sickly grandfather. His parents only left the room for a few minutes to get some coffee, but being up past his bedtime, Randy had been unable to keep his eyes open. He'd fallen asleep for just a moment when the beep-beep-beeping of his Gramps' heart monitor shook him awake. Randy lifted his head and, behind the bouquet of "get well" balloons, the massive bulk of the clown loomed. The balloons danced on the invisible breath of the overhead vents and the clown's eyes eventually made contact with Randy's. The clown never looked down at the shriveled old man in the bed; he only stared through the balloons at Randy. Just like he always did. The next morning, Randy's Gramps died.
The clown was even with Randy to ring in the New Year once. He'd tried to stay up with his older brother to watch the ball drop on Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve, long after his parents had stumbled to bed. Though they'd both valiantly fought the urge, the two brothers had passed out not long before the chanting in Times Square started. Randy woke up, post countdown, thanks to some one-hit wonder prancing around on stage in a glittery leotard, and immediately saw the warped, fun-house reflection on the TV screen.
The clown's painted face was lit up in marvelous pinks and greens, yet he didn't blink or seem to even register the celebration happening in front of his foam nose. As always, it pondered Randy, the boy who no longer cried at the sight of him and who for so long, had simply accepted him.
And so, on that night, when Randy was suddenly awakened with a painfully full bladder, he had almost no reaction at finding the clown standing in its usual spot. As Randy swung his legs off the bed, rubbing sleep from his eyes, he noticed something was different about the clown. In the thirteen years it had been visiting him, it had never spoken. On that night, though, Randy watched the clown's lips twitch, and its tongue struggle to produce some kind of a sound. There came a quiet crackling, like a snake slowly dragging itself through a pile of sodden leaves, as the clown's lungs expanded for possibly the first time. Randy thought it was trying to say something.
Instead of going to the bathroom, Randy decided to wait. He wasn't just curious what the clown might have to say, but he was, for the first time in a long time, a little bit frightened.
Sure, the clown was nothing new, but Randy had become so used to its presence that he barely registered it any more, seeing him like an old chair or a pile of forgotten mail. That the clown was trying to speak was as startling as it would have been if that chair or the old envelopes had opened their own mouths and had started to talk.
So Randy listened.
The clown's mouth continued to work at producing some kind of a voice, but seemed unable to do so. After a while, the crackling sounds slowly transformed into a low hiss, like an old gas valve had been forced open. Randy tried to read the clown's quivering lips, but could only focus for so long before the sight made his gut go sour. He realized he'd never stared so long and intently at the figure standing at his feet, and doing so forced him to see what he had never before seen.
The clown's painted-on tears were not painted on at all. He was crying. And the expression that Randy had for so long assumed was a smile was actually much closer to a grimace. Its lips, struggling to form words, were split and leaking blood. Its tongue, slithering to life, was nothing more than a rotting stump. Randy remained in bed, a shiver creeping through his body, and pulled his blankets over his feet.
The clown stepped toward the bed.
Randy pulled his feet away from the footboard and sat up.
The clown took another halting step forward.
Randy squeezed himself as far back on the bed as he could, his shoulder blades scrunched against his headboard.
The clown leaned forward and placed a hand on the end of Randy's mattress.
Randy looked at the hand. Where he could see flesh poking through the dirty white glove, he saw peeling skin and oozing sores. It moved closer to him, into the moonlight, and Randy saw the hand was clutching a large butcher knife.
The clown dragged itself over the base-board and Randy felt the bedsprings groan under its weight. Its eyes focused on him and it tried to speak again. As its painted face pulled even with his, Randy smelled the rancid rot of clown breath, and its sounds became more recognizable as sobs. Then, the sobs turned to mournful whispers.
"I-i-i-i-"
The clown was speaking to Randy.
"A-a-a-m-m-m-"
Randy's eyes widened.
"S-s-s-s-o-o-o-r-r-r-y."
The knife pierced Randy's chest. Again and again, it sliced into him. He screamed through a bloody cough as the blade tore at his flesh. He felt the clown's tears splashing on his face and its child-like sobs wracking its immense frame.
Randy squeezed his eyes shut, ready to die, and when he opened them, the clown was gone. For a moment, the fear faded and he tried to breathe. The breaths came raggedly, though, and before long he noticed the bloody knife he held in his hand. The clown tears he'd felt had not been tears at all, but rather, the splattering of Randy's blood; the sobs he'd heard had been his own.
As Randy slowly faded away, the sound of circus music danced past his ears and he realized what he'd always known. He and the clown were one and the same. As the life begin to drain from him, he knew he'd finally rid himself of that mocking stare. Randy closed his eyes, and as the darkness began to eat away at his dying brain, he smiled back at the clown that never was.
5. BACK HOME
Jonathan Hatfull, England