Strange Days: Fabulous Journeys With Gardner Dozois (23 page)

Then everyone was shouting, screaming, babbling in a dozen confused voices, running forward. The truck driver was climbing down from the cab, his face stricken; his mouth worked in a way that might have been funny in other circumstances, opening and closing, opening and closing—then he began to cry.

All you could see of Mr. Thorne was one arm sticking out from under the truck’s rear wheels at an odd angle, like the arm of a broken doll.

A crowd was gathering now, and between loud exclamations of horror, everyone was already theorizing about what had happened: Maybe the old man had had a heart attack; maybe he’d just slipped and fallen; maybe he’d tripped over something. A man had thrown his arm around the shoulders of the bitterly sobbing truck driver; people were kneeling and peering gingerly under the truck; women were crying; little kids were shrieking and running frenziedly in all directions. Next to David, Sammy was crying and cursing at the same time, in a high and hysterical voice.

Only David was not moving.

He stood as if frozen in ice, staring at the clown.

All unnoticed, standing alone behind the ever-growing crowd, the clown was laughing.

Laughing silently, in unheard spasms that shook his shoulders and made his bulb nose jiggle. Laughing without sound, with his mouth wide-open, bending forward to slap his knees in glee, tears of pleasure running down his painted cheeks.

Laughing.

David felt his face flame. Contradictory emotions whipped through him: fear, dismay, rage, horror, disbelief, guilt. Guilt . . .

The fucking clown was
laughing—

All at once, David began to run, motionless one moment and running flat-out the next, as if suddenly propelled from a sling. He could taste the salty wetness of his own tears. He tried to fight his way through the thickening crowd, to get by them and
at
the clown. He kept bumping into people, spinning away, sobbing and cursing, then slamming into someone
else.
Someone cursed him. Someone else grabbed him and held him, making sympathetic, soothing noises—it was Mr. Gratini, the music teacher, thinking that David was trying to reach Mr. Thorne’s body.

Meanwhile, the clown had stopped laughing. As if suddenly remembering another appointment, he turned brusquely and strode away.

“David, wait, there’s nothing you can do . . .” Mr. Gratini was saying, but David squirmed wildly, tore himself free, ran on.

By the time David had fought his way through the rest of the crowd, the clown was already a good distance down Willow Street, past the bakery and the engraving company with the silver sign in its second-story window.

The clown was walking faster now, was almost out of sight. Panting and sobbing, David ran after him.

He followed the clown through the alleys behind the shoe factories, over the hump of railroad tracks, under the arch of the cement viaduct that was covered with spray-painted graffiti. The viaduct was dark, its pavement strewn with candy wrappers and used condoms and cigarette butts. It was cool inside and smelled of dampness and cinders.

But on the other side of the viaduct, he realized that he’d lost the clown again. Perhaps he had crossed the field . . . though, surely, David would have seen him do that. He could be anywhere; this was an old section of town and streets and avenues branched off in all directions.

David kept searching, but he was getting tired. He was breathing funny, sort of like having the hiccups. He felt sweaty and dirty and exhausted. He wanted to go home.

What would he have done if he’d
caught
the clown?

All at once, he felt cold.

There was nobody around, seemingly for miles—the streets were as deserted as those of a ghost town. Nobody around, no one to help him if he were attacked, no one to hear him if he cried for help.

The silence was thick and dusty and smothering. Scraps of paper blew by with the wind. The sun shimmered from the empty sidewalks.

David’s mouth went dry. The hair rose bristlingly on his arms and legs. The clown suddenly rounded the comer just ahead, coming swiftly toward him with a strange, duckwalking gait.

David screamed and took a quick step backward. He stumbled and lost his balance. For what seemed like an eternity, he teetered precariously, windmilling his arms. Then he crashed to the ground.

The fall hurt and knocked the breath out of him, but David almost didn’t notice the pain. From the instant he’d hit the pavement, the one thought in his head had been,
Had he given himself away?
Did the clown now
realize
that David could
see
him?

Quickly, he sat up, clutching his hands around his knee and rocking back and forth as if absorbed in pain. He found that he had no difficulty making himself cry, and cry loudly, though he didn’t feel the tears the way he had before. He carefully did not turn his head to look at the clown, though he did sneak a sidelong peek out of the corner of his
eye.

The clown had stopped a few yards away and was watching him—standing motionlessly and
staring
at him, fixedly, unblinkingly, with total concentration, like some great, black, sullen bird of prey.

David hugged his skinned knee and made himself cry louder. There was a possibility that he hadn’t given himself away—that the clown would think he’d yelled like that
because
he’d tripped and fallen down and not because he’d seen him come dancing around the corner. The two things had happened closely enough together that the clown
might
think that. Please, God, let him think that. Let him believe it.

The clown was still watching him.

Stiffly, David got up. Still not looking at the clown, he made himself lean over and brush off his pants. Although his mouth was still as dry as dust, he moistened his lips and forced himself to swear, swear out loud, blistering the air with every curse word he could think of, as though he were upset about the ragged hole torn in his new blue jeans and the blood on his knee.

He kept slapping at his pants a moment longer, still bent over, wondering if he should suddenly break and run now that he was on his feet again, make a flat-out dash for freedom. But the clowns were so
fast.
And even if he
did
escape, then they would
know
that he could see them.

Compressing his lips into a hard, thin line, David straightened up and began to walk directly toward the clown.

Closer and closer. He could sense the clown looming enormously in front of him, the cold blue eyes still staring suspiciously at him. Don’t look at the clown! Keep walking casually and
don’t look at him.
David’s spine was as stiff as if it were made of metal, and his head ached with the effort of not looking. He picked a spot on the sidewalk and stared at it, thrust his hands into his pockets with elaborate casualness and somehow forced his legs to keep walking. Closer. Now he was close enough to be grabbed, if the clown wanted to grab him. He was right next to him, barely an arm’s length away. He could
smell
the clown now—a strong smell of greasepaint, underlaid with a strange, musty, earthen smell, like old wet leaves, like damp old wallpaper. He was suddenly
cold,
as cold as ice; it was all he could do to keep from shaking with the cold. Keep going. Take one more step. Then one more . . .

As he passed the clown, he caught sight of an abrupt motion out of the corner of his eye. With all the will he could summon, he forced himself not to flinch or look back. He kept walking, feeling a cold spot in the middle of his back,
knowing
somehow that the clown was still staring at him, staring after him.
Don’t
speed up. Just keep walking. Papers rustled in the gutter behind him. Was there a clown walking through them? Coming up behind him? About to grab him? He kept walking, all the while waiting for the clown to
get
him, for those strong cold hands to close over his shoulders, the way they had closed over the shoulders of old Mr. Thorne.

He walked all the way home without once looking up or looking around him, and it wasn’t until he had gotten inside, with the door locked firmly behind him, that he began to tremble.

David had gone upstairs without eating dinner. His father had started to yell about that—he was strict about meals—but his mother had intervened, taking his father aside to whisper something about “trauma” to him—both of them inadvertently shooting him that uneasy walleyed look they sometimes gave him now, as if they weren’t sure he mightn’t suddenly start drooling and gibbering if they said the wrong thing to him, as if he had something they might
catch—
and his father had subsided, grumbling.

Upstairs, he sat quietly for a long time, thinking hard.

The clowns. Had they just come to town, or had they always been there and he just hadn’t been able to
see
them before? He remembered when Mikey had broken his collarbone two summers ago, and when Sarah’s brother had been killed in the motorcycle accident, and when that railroad yardman had been hit by the freight train. Were the clowns responsible for those accidents, too?

He didn’t know. There was one thing he
did
know, though:

Something had to be done about the clowns.

He was the only one who could see them.

Therefore,
he
had to do something about them.

He was the only one who could see them, the only one who could
warn
people. If he didn’t do anything and the clowns hurt somebody else, then
he’d
be to blame. Somehow, he
had to
stop them.

How?

David sagged in his chair, overwhelmed by the immensity of the problem.
How?

The doorbell rang.

David could hear an indistinct voice downstairs, mumbling something, and then hear his mother’s voice, clearer, saying, “I don’t know if David really
feels
very much like having company right now, Sammy.”

Sammy—

David scooted halfway down the stairs and yelled, “Ma! No, Ma, it’s OK! Send him up!” He went on down to the second-floor landing, saw Sammy’s face peeking tentatively up the stairs and motioned for Sammy to follow him up to his room.

David’s room was at the top of the tall, narrow old house, right next to the small room that his father sometimes used as an office. There were old magic posters on the walls—Thurston, Houdini, Blackstone: King of Magicians—a Duran Duran poster behind the bed and a skeleton mobile of a Tyrannosaurus hanging from the overhead lamp. He ushered Sammy in wordlessly, then flopped down on top of the
Star Wars
spread that he’d finally persuaded his mother to buy for him. Sammy pulled out the chair to David’s desk and began to fiddle abstractedly with the pieces of David’s half-assembled Bell X-15 model kit. There were new dark hollows under Sammy’s eyes and his face looked strained. Neither boy spoke.

“Mommy didn’t want to let me out,” Sammy said after a while, sweeping the model pieces aside with his hand. “I told her I’d feel better if I could come over and talk to you. It’s really weird about Mr. Thorne, isn’t it? I can’t believe it, the way that truck
smushed
him, like a tube of toothpaste or something.” Sammy grimaced and put his arms around his legs, clasping his hands together tightly, rocking back and forth nervously. “I just can’t believe he’s gone.”

David felt the tears start and blinked them back. Crying wouldn’t help. He looked speculatively at Sammy. He certainly couldn’t tell his
parents
about the clowns. Since his “nervous collapse” last fall, they were already afraid that he was a nut.

“Sammy,” he said. “I have to tell you something. Something important. But first you have to
promise
not to tell anybody. No matter what, no matter how crazy it sounds, you’ve got to promise!”

“Yeah?” Sammy said tentatively.

“No—first you’ve got to promise.”

“OK, I
promise,”
Sammy said, a trace of anger creeping into his voice.

“Remember this afternoon at the swimming pool, when I pointed at that rocking chair, and you thought I was pulling a joke on you? Well, I
wasn’t.
I did see somebody sitting there. I saw a clown.”

Sammy looked disgusted. “I see a clown right now,” he grated.

“Honest, Sammy I
did
see a clown. A clown, all made up and in costume, just like at the circus. And it was a clown—the same one, I think—who pushed Mr. Thorne in front of that truck.”

Sammy just looked down at his knees. His face reddened.

“I’m not lying about this, I swear. I’m telling the truth this time; honest, Sammy, I really am—”

Sammy made a strange noise, and David suddenly realized that he was
crying.

David started to ask him what the matter was, but before he could speak, Sammy had rounded fiercely on him, blazing. “You’re nuts!
You are
a loony, just like everybody says! No wonder nobody will play with you. Loony! Fucking
loony!”

Sammy was screaming now, the muscles in his neck cording. David shrank away from him, his face going ashen.

They stared at each other. Sammy was panting like a dog, and tears were running down his cheeks.

“Everything’s . . . some kind of . . .
joke
to you, isn’t it?” Sammy panted. “Mr. Thorne was my
friend.
But you . . . you don’t care about
anybody!”
He was screaming again on the last word. Then he whirled and ran out of the room.

David followed him, but by the time he was halfway down the stairs, Sammy was already out the front door, slamming it shut behind him. “What was
that
all about?” David’s mother asked.

“Nothing,” David said dully. He was staring through the screened-in door, watching Sammy run down the sidewalk. Should he chase him? But all at once it seemed as if he were too tired to move; he leaned listlessly against the doorjamb and watched Sammy disappear from sight. Sammy had left the gate of their white picket fence unlatched, and it swung back and forth in the wind, making a hollow slamming sound.

How could he make anyone else believe him if he couldn’t even convince
Sammy?
There was nobody left to tell.