Clowns At Midnight (27 page)

CHAPTER 19

I woke one, two, three hours later, I couldn’t tell, still on the bed in the caravan but no longer restrained, if that had ever happened. I threw off the blanket, clambered off the bed to stand in the cool air.

No dizziness, no dreaminess now, none of the drugged, hallucinatory wildness or uncertainty. It was a new world, everything vivid and clear. I stood naked in the confined space, exploring the edges of the bed. Proving everything.

The restraints were gone. The lantern had been taken; but the growing light through the long window at the end showed it was nearly dawn.

All so easy. So easy to trick someone, create unreality.

I went to the door, felt clothing on the floor with my foot, reached down and grabbed what was there.

Not my clothes, nothing of mine. Female things, a light chenille house-robe, a pair of fluffy bedroom scuffs.

I actually laughed. All this drama, this terror; now milady’s boudoir things casually left behind. My spider had a sense of the absurd. Of course. My dream clowns. Either of two. Both. Zoe
and
Gemma.

The caravan was real, the special bed, standing naked in the new day.

Zoe had been real. All of it. Put it in your report, officer. The offence? Why, the usual. Raped by a black clown, of course.
After
the white clown had fallen. Make sure you’ve got that straight. The black ones are the worst.

I pushed the door open, looked out on the cool grey of a forest dawn before the day’s heat began, stepped out on grass and bracken damp with dew. The dark trunks of gums stretched away. The air felt wonderful. Smelled wonderful. I was vividly alive.

I moved out, treading carefully, making it mine.

The caravan was in the middle of a forest glade, set on a rise, with the land sweeping away towards the sunrise.

If it had been Gemma, then the drama was done.

But if it had been Zoe? If the white clown
had
fallen. Then Gemma was at her flat, wherever that was from here. She’d had the wine too. I had to know.

I stayed at the caravan long enough to check the bed, the floor and the wall cupboards. There was nothing. No tooth. No spider trace. I put on the scuffs and the chenille robe, all an intense cliché pink, and headed down the slope, soon came to a barbed wire fence and a dirt road beyond.

This would be a sight.

I headed along the road, robe flaring, penis swinging in the cool air. I was like the victim of some buck’s night prank, or a lover brusquely evicted after a careless remark, or—Carlo would approve!—a clown satyr heading home after a wild night’s hunting.

Finally a truck appeared in its rooster tail of dust. I held the robe closed and waved. I told the driver—Mac Salter, he said his name was—my sorry tale (the eviction) and let him drive me twenty-four kilometres into Kyogle. He was going through there anyway, he said. The caravan had been off Allers Road in Backmede. I noted every turn, every street name. I meant to go back.

With a parting remark: ‘Pink’s definitely not your colour, Dave!’, Mac Salter dropped me in front of the house at 14B Rastin Street and was gracious enough not to wait. I hurried to Gemma’s door and knocked.

Nothing. No sound. But the night had been real, that other part of it. My clothes and car keys were possibly in there too.

I tried the handle, found it locked. A quick glance around and I threw myself at the door, once, then a second time. No luck. The Powder-Puff Avenger. The Hot Pink Nemesis. I’d never done this before, forced a door. I tried again, and this time it slammed back. I entered, quickly closed it behind me. Let the neighbours wonder; let them look out and doubt. All was still again.

Nothing in the living room or the kitchen, but soft sounds from the bedroom.

Gemma was there, spreadeagled on her bed, still in white, still hideously made up, arms and legs pulled wide and cuffed to the sides of the bed as mine had been, a big piece of white surgical tape over her mouth, but painted with a huge red clown grin.

At least the crotch of her tights hadn’t been cut. The spider had spared her that.

But she’d pissed herself. After all these hours, little wonder.

She arched up, seeing me, just as I must have done in the caravan. She roared behind the tape and pulled at the cuffs, furious, raging at me.

She thought
I
had done this to her!

Despite the spiking clown fear, I hurried over, began freeing her hands.

‘The robe’s courtesy of your sister. I spent the night chained to a bed in a caravan over at Backmede. She did this.’

The fury went out of her, vanished just like that. She knew.

I tended to her feet while she peeled off the tape.

‘That fucking bitch!’ she said, as she swung off the bed then hurried to the bathroom. Just the three words.

‘Zoe?’ I said it because I had to be sure, needed Gemma to say it, confirm it. Name that spider.

Gemma didn’t answer. I heard the toilet go, heard water in the sink, heard the shower run. She needed to be away.

I went out to the kitchen, set the jug going for coffee, all the while fighting arousal, unexpected and real, all part of the terrible intimacy, finding her like that, smelling her piss, seeing the incredible fury. She’d been doubly exposed, needed to blame. White clown but victim too. Hunter hunted. Pre-empted. It had to be intense: the shame, the embarrassment, fitting back in.

There was no sign of my clothes or car keys. I’d been undressed elsewhere. I returned to the bedroom, to Gemma’s wardrobe, found a big enough shirt, some baggy shorts that fitted with the top buttons left undone.

Time was needed. Distance. Routines and chores, re-choosing. But how to know? The shower was running. No more words. Give her that.

I left a cup of coffee on the table beside my empty one—
This is for you
—symbol talk, and a few busy chore words written on a scrap of paper.

I need to check the caravan at Backmede. Talk later.

Then I went out into the day, spent precious minutes unwiring the spare ignition key from under the left passenger door, then drove back to Starbreak Fell.

There’d be time, chances, both of us rebuilding. Gemma backing off from the fury and certainty, me from accusing.
You
were the white clown! That part of it. Wait and see how she deals. We all need stories, words to step behind. Let her find the best ones. Let me.

Turning onto Edenville Road, I knew where my clothes would be. I stopped at the house long enough to get the spare house key, newly hidden behind a bonsai, to dress properly and fetch my camera, then drive back to the high point of the road. I hurried up the slope to the forest, pushed through to the tower and the scarecrow cross.

They were there: jeans hanging by the belt from the vertical join, shirt spread across the skeletal pole arms, tails stirring in the light breeze, shoes and socks stuck on the ends as impromptu hands, underpants on the upright where a head would be; some joke in that. I photographed the display, realising once again that photos would prove nothing. But they would be for me.
I
would have the proof.

Stripping the stulos was easier than I expected. They were my things. This was completion. It never even reached quarter-clown. Go figure.

Then I drove out to Backmede, reached Allers Road. The day was warming up by the time I found the hilltop and the forested slope. The barbed wire fence was much easier to negotiate in jeans and work boots than scuffs, chenille house robe and so much bare skin. I made quick time of it.

The caravan sat like a faded blue egg amid the gums. Getting it in place would have taken some doing. It was easier to imagine that it had been parked there years ago and that the trees had grown up around it. I took more pictures, keeping it real the only way I could.

The narrow door was unlocked, the interior deserted and quiet, a close, dusty space completely at odds with the nightmare chamber of six or seven hours before. The bed was still there, low and sturdy but able to be dismantled. It would be gone later, I was certain. This was an in-between time.

For once I wished I did have a mobile and that I could call someone, anyone, who could come and verify what was here. Alternatively I could wait. Someone would come by eventually, though for the first time I realised that I might be under surveillance, and that no-one would approach till I had gone. Only the camera kept it real, and I took photo after photo to anchor myself.

I searched everywhere: the wall cupboards, the floors, the ground outside, but found nothing. The homestead for the property was nearby, I could always ask there; though I already knew what I’d find. The caravan had been there for ages; some old squatter had lived there years back. It was why Zoe had chosen it.

So how strong was she? How had she carried me up the hillside? Who had helped?

Maybe there’d been a four-wheel drive and she’d crossed the property right to the forest’s edge. Maybe there had been others helping to carry me, helping to restrain Gemma.

The usual cast of characters came to mind: Carlo, Raina and the rest.

I closed the narrow door and returned to the car.

As I drove back to Starbreak Fell, the paranoia only intensified. Were they tracking me now, watching what I did, fitting me into their schemes and staying in touch by mobile? I felt alone but trapped.

Being at the house only made it worse. Though it was bright daylight I no longer felt safe. Zoe knew this land. She came and went as she pleased, seemed to be able to arrange anything she wanted. Everyone was hiding her presence, pretending she never existed.

Around midday all the emotion turned on me. The shock, the fear brought the inevitable exhaustion. I napped for an hour after lunch, surprising myself that I could, and woke with a start around 1:15, fearing what new thing might have happened at Starbreak Fell while I was away from it in sleep.

At 1:42 I phoned Gemma, but there was no answer. Of course there wouldn’t be. She was out in the world, wiping away memories, dulling raw edges. I considered trying to find her, driving out to check the swing at Sellen Road, checking the pubs in town. She’d need comforting too. But where to look? Where to find her among all the parts and connections I had no knowledge of?

Dejected, desperate, I phoned Carlo and Raina, but there was no answer there either, just Raina’s warm, ever-polite voice on the answering machine, a ghost of the comfort I needed. The world had deserted me. I was tempted to try the Catleys, but resisted being so needy.

I’d go back to Sydney. That was the answer. I’d withdraw, remove myself from the game for a time.

It took only ten minutes to pack a small bag and check that the house was secure. I’d phone Len Catley from Coffs Harbour a few hours south and ask him to look after the irrigation for a few days, say I had a family emergency to attend to. That would do it.

It felt good to be on the road, but when I was nearly at the outskirts of Casino, a sadness came over me, the strangest sense of loss. Instead of relief and a lightening of spirit after all I’d been through, there was a growing desolation, the feeling of losing something.

Part of it was the sense that all this would go on without me, without me in my part, that I would be missing a vital resolution. I’d be removed from the equation, with something else—
someone
else!—factored in. And what Gemma had said, pre-White Clown, pre-Zoe Gemma, about choice three, about trying to bring something larger into the everyday, now made a crazy irrational sense. No, not irrational. Superrational sense. At some level I knew it was important. I accepted it in spite of what had happened, despite what was happening still.

The operative words. In spite of.

What we know in spite of. What we do. What we let ourselves become.

I couldn’t bear to leave.

Instead, I stopped at Rackham’s Hardware, bought new deadlocks for the house doors, three security chains with padlocks just in case.

Then I returned to Starbreak Fell, feeling an incredible relief at making such a homecoming. I would make the house safe then go see Gemma. At least try.

By 4:15 I was done. The locks to the main doors were changed. The sliding doors onto the veranda had even stouter lengths of dowel in their tracks; no-one could get in without cutting or breaking the glass. The windows were already routinely shut and latched whenever I was out; it was standard summer practice anyway for keeping the interiors cool. But now no-one would get in to deliver some new incarnation of Madame for a visit or create further mischief.

As an additional precaution, I checked the crawlspace under the house, found only lengths of timber and spare irrigation tubing, certainly no trapdoors leading into the house above.

The attic, however, was a real surprise. When I set up a ladder in the hall, pushed back the manhole cover and shone a torch around, I found the slant-roofed space completely empty, dramatically so, with no exposed insulation batts and none of the usual clutter. It made it seem larger than it actually was. Panels had been expertly fitted over the roof beams, creating an even more striking sense of a long low triangular room. There were no windows, just a single square meshed and louvered ventilation screen at each end letting in dim light.

There were polished floorboards too, hardly the kind of flooring you’d expect. My absentee hosts had created this close quiet space, then left it deliberately unused. Perhaps they meditated up here, did yoga classes, held a neighbourhood coven—there was a thought! Maybe they were partway through making an attic bedroom for someone, though without easier access it seemed hardly likely. But one thing was clear: it was meant for more than storage.

When I saw the fluorescent light fitting along the squared-off roof join, I searched around for a nearby switch, discovered it almost under my hand and brought stark white light to the strange interior. Then I hauled myself up, found I could stand without stooping for half a metre either side of the roofline. I hadn’t expected it; the house was wider, the roof pitched higher than I thought.