Curse Of The Clown Read online

  ‘Fellow scribe,’ said Barney after a while, tipping his cup in the direction of Keanu. ‘Nice.’

  29

  The Horror

  Late Monday evening, the end of another day. One more day closer to the end of the world.

  Across the land barbers of every hue were watching the news, hoping for a positive outcome in the search for the demonic Koiffing Klown, so that they might sleep safe. They knew, however, that when the news came it would spread like wildfire through the hairdressing community, and they would all have heard long before it was reported.

  And so windows and doors were locked, checked, and double-checked. Bolts were fitted and thrown, security systems were purchased and hurriedly set up, apps were bought for phones, emergency numbers were put on speed dial, and there was a special kind of tension within the barber community, the likes of which hadn’t been felt since the great cull of 1536-41, during Henry VIII’s infamous Dissolution of the Barbershops.

  Danny Field was more on edge than most. He hadn’t been directly threatened, of course, and neither did he personally know any of the barbers who’d been targeted. Nevertheless, the word was out, and the police seemed fairly certain, the Koiffing Klown was Norman. And few people had likely upset Norman quite as much as Danny Field.

  There were two police cars parked outside Danny’s house in Portobello, front and back. One directly opposite the front door, the other at the side and slightly to the rear, with a view of the back of the two-storey property. The police had been round to check over the house, all the locks had been strengthened, and Danny and his wife, Britney, had each been given a panic button.

  Nevertheless, and understandably, Danny and Britney were still nervous. Dinner had been eaten in silence, bar the frankly premature playing of Christmas music on Spotify, the food – a gammon shank, chips and peas, all from Tesco frozen food section – had tasted cheap and false, and the wine – a year-old Pinot from the Blancmange region of Kamchatka – harsh and bitter. They’d tried watching TV, but every show seemed to be a crime drama or a true crime documentary, and when it wasn’t, it was baking or dating or people trying to be funny, and Danny and Britney were in no mood to laugh, and in the end they found enough words for each other at least to agree to turn the television off, and then they sat and flicked through their phones in a silence that seemed to get deeper as the evening progressed.

  Finally, at a little after eleven p.m. Britney decided to retire.

  ‘I’m going to bed,’ she said from her couch.

  Danny nodded without looking at her. Usually there was no strain upon their marriage, usually communication was easy, affection readily given. Tonight they were waiting for something to happen, and they were both edgy, nervous, trying to stop themselves snapping at the other.

  She stopped at the door, staring back at him. He was scrolling through Twitter, barely looking, finding nothing of interest. Nothing in the entire world could interest him this evening, bar the identity of the Klown, and the knowledge that he was either dead or in police custody. Preferably dead.

  ‘Can you come upstairs?’ she asked, tossing the words into the room.

  He turned, looking at her for the first time in a while. He recognised the look on her face from when he’d looked in the mirror an hour earlier.

  ‘Aye, fine,’ he managed to squeeze from his lips.

  They left the lights on, and walked upstairs together. She stood in the small landing, while he put his head into each of the rooms. The spare bedroom, the bathroom, the small office, which wasn’t really an office, which they used as a box room, and then into their own bedroom with its en suite. He checked behind all the doors, he looked in cupboards, he looked beneath the bed. Nothing.

  Bedtime progressed as it normally would have done. He sat in bed looking at his phone, while Britney used the bathroom. They swapped. They lay in bed together, reading, or playing a game. On this occasion, Danny was playing Football Manager and Britney was playing Strange Currencies. Some time later, with a frustrated tut, Britney placed her phone frustratedly onto the bedside table, leaned over, and turned out the light.

  ‘Night,’ she said. There was no lightness in her voice.

  ‘Night,’ said Danny.

  He did the same. They were in darkness, although since they’d left the lights on downstairs, and their bedroom door slightly ajar, soon enough their view of the room lightened, aided by the orange of the streetlights coming around the sides of the curtains.

  Less than a minute, and Danny was on his feet, at the window, curtains back, looking down to his left. There was the police car, and there were the two officers sitting in it. No need to worry. The chances of Norman coming here, the police had said, even without the police presence, are virtually nil. Considering the police presence, those chances evaporated altogether.

  Get some rest, don’t worry about anything.

  Danny returned to bed, worried about everything.

  ‘WHAT WAS THAT?’

  The dead of night. Danny swallowed. He felt the fear of being woken up, the nervous tightening of his skin, Britney’s cold left hand wrapped around his forearm.

  Heart instantly racing, so it seemed the pounding was all he could hear.

  ‘What?’ he finally said in reply, Britney squeezing his arm again, one of her nails digging into his skin.

  ‘There was a noise,’ she said. She was whispering.

  They lay together, not daring to breathe, staring at the ceiling.

  Silence.

  Nothing from outside, the house still. The boiler, in the room off the kitchen and directly beneath them, and often the loudest sound in the house, was dead-of-night quiet. The light from the streetlights cast its dull orange shadows, as they stared at the ceiling.

  The continuing silence did not remove the fear on their skin. The silence didn’t matter. That there was no immediate recurrence of the noise that had awoken her did not matter. They could feel it. There was something.

  ‘Shit,’ he said, voice low, the word carried on his breath.

  She lifted her head slightly off the pillow, now saw what he had just seen. The downstairs lights were off.

  ‘Fuck...’ she said. Barely audible.

  The fear was now inescapable. Crushing. The lights had not turned themselves off. Danny felt his chest squeezed, his heart constricted, as though it didn’t have enough space to beat. Another swallow, ears strained, every nerve, every sinew, every muscle tensed.

  ‘Check the police car,’ said Britney.

  Danny didn’t want to get out of bed. He wanted to stay where he was, in warmth, beneath the meagre protection of the covers. He wanted to lie here until the fear subsided, until he fell asleep, until he woke up in daylight.

  ‘Check the police car,’ she repeated, two nails stabbing into his skin.

  He still did not move. There was little good to come from checking the police car. Just because it was there, did not mean there wasn’t someone in the house. And what if it wasn’t there?

  For now, it was Schrödinger’s police car.

  ‘Go on,’ an urgent whisper.

  Legs like lead, he swung them over the edge of the bed, emerging from the covers into the cold. He looked around the room, fearing the face at the door. The room, and the dark gap at the door, stared back at him.

  He turned to the curtains. Stubbed his toe against something unexpected. Looked down, worried, frightened, at a dark shape. Rectangular. In his confusion couldn’t work out what it was. Hurriedly opened the curtains, even though he dreaded the thought of it, of the face outside the window. No more than a few inches, didn’t look straight ahead, a quick glance down to the side. Hoping to see the car, the two officers. Maybe he could signal them. Maybe it was time to press the emergency button.

  The car was gone.

  Curtain closed, he whirled round. Whatever he’d stubbed his foot against forgotten in the panic. A moment in the dark, tick-tock, eyes adjusted. Just the pale face of his wife staring back at him f
rom the bed.

  ‘It’s not there,’ he said.

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  He didn’t answer. Instead, bedside light switch. Time to flood the house with light, address the fear.

  The light didn’t turn on.

  Tick-tock.

  ‘Oh God,’ said Britney. ‘Oh fucking God. Danny? The light?’

  Danny looked at the door. There were not going to be any lights.

  He pressed the panic button.

  When they’d done it earlier, testing the system, a red light had shown on the button to indicate it had been activated. Now, nothing. The panic button was dead.

  ‘Danny?’

  ‘I’ll call,’ he said quickly.

  He lifted the phone from the bedside table. Still standing in the same position, still looking at the gap in the door. The phone lit up, casting a blue, hellish light upon his face.

  ‘Danny?’

  ‘I’m calling it!’ he snapped.

  He called the number, phone to his ear, heart thundering, skin in a cold, cold sweat.

  Tick-tock. One second to the next. Expecting it not to ring. Expecting silence, or the strange siren of the dead line.

  ‘Danny?’ her voice more insistent.

  Danny didn’t reply. Mouth clamped shut, lips thin and drawn. Swallowed. Short, ugly breaths through his nose.

  The phone started to ring at the other end. A moment, the briefest flash of relief, and then it was wiped away.

  Heart in mouth, mouth falling open, a strange, strangled croak from the back of his throat.

  There was a phone ringing in the built-in wardrobe.

  He gawped at the wardrobe door. Took a step back. Swallowed, loudly. They stared at the door together. Britney scrambled to sit up in bed, the covers pulled up beneath her chin.

  ‘The fuck, Danny?’

  Voice full of panic now.

  Danny put the phone back to his ear. Ringing in his ear, ringing from the wardrobe.

  ‘Jesus,’ he said softly, the fear giving way to an absolute dread, and a certainty they were going to die.

  The ringing stopped. The call had been answered. Silence from the other end.

  Tick-tock.

  ‘Hello?’ said Danny. Two syllables, a hundred weight of dread.

  Tick-tock.

  ‘You don’t sound happy, Danny.’

  Danny swallowed. In the silence of the room Britney had heard the words spoken from the other end of the phone. Did they also come from the wardrobe, or had they imagined it?

  ‘Cat got your tongue, Danny?’

  Danny still had nothing. He was staring at the wardrobe door, consumed by fear. Struck dumb by it, overwhelmed by it. Legs stuck in concrete, yet shaking.

  ‘Danny?’ said Britney.

  ‘Coming for you, Danny,’ said the voice. ‘How could you ever expect otherw –’

  Danny clicked the off button and tossed the phone on the bed. Heart exploding out of his chest, he looked at the wardrobe door.

  ‘Danny?’

  This time the second syllable of his name choked from Britney’s lips with a tear.

  ‘Don’t look in the cupboard,’ she said.

  She sat up, moved forward, never taking her eyes from the wardrobe. She eased herself slowly out of bed until she was standing across from her husband.

  ‘What do we do, Danny? Danny?’

  ‘We need to go,’ he said.

  To get to the door, walking round the bed, he would pass within a couple of feet of the wardrobe. Another swallow, this one startlingly loud in the deathly quiet of the room, and then he got onto the bed, moved across it on his knees, and he was beside Britney on the other side.

  Still looking at the wardrobe door, their hands found each other in the night. Cold, clammy, desperate. This was what death felt like.

  ‘Don’t let go,’ he said.

  The frantic laugh spluttered from her lips.

  Danny looked ahead. The gap in the open door, the darkness of the hallway, stared back at him, as intimidating as the wardrobe.

  Could it just have been a phone in the wardrobe? Did the emergency number go to more than one phone, so that the killer, the Koiffing Klown, could be standing just outside the bedroom?

  ‘Aw, fuck,’ he muttered, voice low, filled with dread.

  She squeezed his hand, he squeezed back.

  ‘Right,’ he said, though he didn’t move.

  Tick-tock.

  A movement to his left, and he turned.

  Silently it rose from the other side of the bed.

  A balloon, dark and colourless in the low light, floated slowly upwards, and they watched it in silent horror, held captive in the night.

  Up it rose, endless, unhurried, and then with a barely perceptible bump it reached the top and bobbled against the ceiling.

  They watched it, they swallowed, a taste like the last breath of air. They were going to die.

  He felt a tap on his ankle.

  Fear, shock, raced up his leg. He looked down, thought to move, but not fast enough. Two hands, appearing from beneath the bed as though disembodied, grabbed him by the ankles and pulled. Danny fell back, suddenly, out of control. Head banged off the wall, arms thrashed. Britney grabbed at him, Danny flailed like a punctured inflatable. Then he was on the floor, and quickly dragged under the bed.

  Britney screamed, grabbed at him, his body slipping through her fingers like wet soap.

  ‘Baby! Baby!’ she screamed.

  Danny, dazed and lost, felt one hand detach from his legs, the other pull him on, then the detached hand was slashing at him, the razor cutting his leg as he was dragged under. Above the knee, higher up the thigh, the groin, the stomach, now cutting repeatedly, deep into the chest, then the neck. Blood gushing and spurting, rushing air and last breaths, and life spewing from Danny’s mouth. Britney screaming.

  She had her back against the wall, hand at her mouth. All she could see in the dark was the top of Danny’s jerking head.

  A scream caught in her throat, and she stared at the carpet by the bed, hand at her mouth. Breath stalled. Sudden silence.

  She wanted to run, didn’t want to leave Danny. What good was she to Danny? She couldn’t even bend down to see if he was OK.

  Danny wasn’t OK.

  There was a movement, and something small appeared from beneath the bed, tossed onto the carpet by Britney’s feet. She stared down at it in the dim light of the bedroom. A moment. Another.

  She screamed. Then she ran, leaving Danny’s detached penis on the carpet. Out into the hallway, no thought or fear that there might be someone else waiting for her out there, just a desperate scramble to get away from the bedroom.

  Down the stairs in the dark, stumbling blindly, falling, banging on the wall, clinging to the bannister, she stumbled to the bottom and ran to the front door.

  It was locked.

  She turned the Yale, pulled the dead bolt, but the door wouldn’t open. The mortice lock by the handle, which they didn’t usually use!

  ‘The key,’ she spluttered, fear and tears and desperation choking their way from her lips. Blindly fumbling in the dark. She scrabbled through the bowl by the window. A key in her fingers. Which key? Didn’t matter, she tried it, fumbled, it fell to the floor. She bent down, lifted the key, this time into the lock. It mocked her with ill-fitting nothingness, no movement either way.

  She pulled the door. She screamed. She banged the door. She screamed.

  There was a back door, but that meant turning round. That meant making her way through another two rooms. That meant going out into the back garden, walking in the dark, getting to the gate, fumbling with the deadbolt.

  The scream ended with a sob, and her head bent forward, resting against the wood. Breath heaving, waiting for the noise on the stairs, the tap on her shoulder, the knife in the back.

  ‘Tick tock.’

  The sob caught in her throat.

  Silence. Breath held. Fear like the fear of the bedroom, but tenfold.r />
  ‘Never quite made it, I’m afraid, did you?’

  Closer.

  Turn, Britney, turn dammit!

  Clenched her teeth. Tried to convert the flight to fight. What did she have to lose? Not the same as Danny and all the others.

  She turned quickly. The Koiffing Klown was two feet behind her. Open razor raised in his right hand, his left hand shining a torch up his chest and onto his face. Face painted white, wide red lips curved in a grotesque smile, eyes deep black, blood spattered across his face and chest.

  She’d turned with determination, but at the last she had nothing. She screamed. The Koiffing Klown took one step towards her then claimed another victim.

  30

  The Sitcom Situation

  ‘Maybe we’re in a sitcom rather than a crime novel,’ said Keanu.

  Tuesday morning in the shop. A day like any other. Bright and breezy, like a cheesily chipper pizza delivery guy over-compensating for the vacuum at the centre of his soul.

  Barney was cutting Old Man Kintyre’s hair, Igor was sweeping up, Keanu was flicking through that morning’s Scottish Daily Mail, headline Koiffing Klown Joins SNP, Slated For Justice Ministry.

  Barney, giving Old Man Kintyre – who loved and loathed his lifelong nickname Mullov in equal measure – his regulation Nigel Farage ‘Cunt’ cut, gave this some thought, long enough for Old Man Kintyre to take it upon himself to answer.

  ‘The fuck are you talking about now, son?’ he said.

  Igor, hunched over his broom, smiled grimly to himself. If he could talk, he regularly thought, he would talk with the constant irascibility of Old Man Kintyre.

  ‘We were talking yesterday about how it seems sometimes like we’re in a crime novel. I mean, how else d’you explain the constant murders? It doesn’t make sense. Sure, murders happen, weird coincidences happen... Sometimes someone’s some place, and then they’re some place else, you know?’