Terror Times Three
Welcome to Hell
Books 1-3
by
O. Penn-Coughin
Published by You Come Too Publishing at Smashwords
Copyright © 2011 O. Penn-Coughin
YOU COME TOO PUBLISHING
WELCOME TO HELL
Table of Contents
(Welcome to Hell Series)
by
O. Penn-Coughin
Copyright © 2011 O. Penn-Coughin
YOU COME TOO PUBLISHING
For the students of South Baker—
No matter how hopeless things look,
always, always fight the clowns.
And God said, “Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind.” And it was so.
Genesis 1:24
Send in the clowns. Don’t bother, they’re here.
Send in the Clowns
Stephen Sondheim
Kissed by a Clown
Based on true events
Chapter 1
The circus had come to Baker City.
Even in a small town like this, out here in eastern Oregon, out here in the middle of nowhere with a capital N, the circus didn’t cause the excitement it once did. It couldn’t compete against the rodeo or high school football or PlayStation or listening to the wind blow or sucking on a nail until you could taste the rust.
Over the last few days I had seen some of the performers in different parts of town—in front of the supermarket, at gas stations, on street corners—handing out coupons. And now on this first Friday in October a van full of clowns had shown up at the school.
At first the students were glad to be out of class, and the 4th graders were all about it, but it didn’t take long for boredom to spread through the crowd like runny peanut butter. A clown on a unicycle, clowns tripping over themselves, a clown juggling, a clown squirting the kids in the front row with water from his plastic lapel flower, and a mime—a mime in the 21st century?—wasn’t getting it done.
“The lamest show on earth,” Jason whispered loudly a few minutes into the assembly. “I mean, the circus is so over. Like more over than Peyton Manning.”
The Gaston twins, apparently big Peyton Manning fans and just plain big, turned around and gave him soiled looks while pounding their fists into their meaty hands.
I didn’t answer. I wasn’t a fan, but I wasn’t sure Peyton Manning was through yet. More importantly, I didn’t like clowns.
I didn’t like clowns ever since that day in the park when a clown took me into the woods.
I was four and had been playing on the slide. And then someone called my name. I looked up and saw a clown standing in the trees. He had no hair and wore a tiny party hat at an angle held on by a thin elastic band. He was smiling.
Forgetting everything my mother had ever told me, I went over to him. He reached out his big gloved hand and we walked down a dirt path through the dark forest. Then he stopped and faced me.
“Ever been kissed by a clown, Danny?” he whispered, his painted face inches from my nose. “It’s to die for.”
His empty eyes suddenly turned evil, bottomless and black. He had the tiniest ears I had ever seen on an adult, smaller than mine at the time, no bigger than a baby’s. His breath smelled of cigarettes and alcohol. Sweat pooled under his rubber nose. The small red hairy triangle above his chin came closer and closer. I looked down at the ground but all I could see were his big floppy, mud-covered shoes. My stomach was about to lose it and my pee was putting on its running shoes.
And then my mother’s yells closed in from behind.
“Danny. Where are you, Danny? Danny!”
“Adults are always spoiling things,” the clown said with a sigh. “No worries, though, we’ll meet again.”
He let go of my hand. When I looked up again, he was gone.
I stood there, crying.
Other kids hadn’t been so lucky.
A dozen children disappeared that year in Northern California. (That’s why my folks ended up moving to Baker City.)
I did my best to help the police sketch artist. But I couldn’t provide too many particulars. To me he was just big and scary. I didn’t tell them what he said. I never told anyone.
One day a man walked in to a police station and confessed. He refused to say what he did with the bodies, which were never found, but he got the death penalty.
The clown’s been dead for two years, but I still have dreams about it now and then, and whenever I see a clown, I can’t help but thinking that I could have been one of those kids.
“You all right, man?” I heard Jason saying next to me. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost. I’ve always wanted to say that by the way. But really, you do look as white as Peyton Manning. You all right, Dan? Dan?”
Jason seemed to be obsessed with Peyton Manning lately but he probably had a point. I didn’t feel my personal best.
“Yeah,” I said after a few seconds. “I’m fine.”
“Check out this freak,” he said.
I looked up on stage. One of the clowns was holding the microphone. He was surrounded by the other clowns. All clowns look the same to me—I usually don’t spend enough time looking at them to see details—but there was something different about this one. The freakishly small party hat sitting that way on his large white bald head. The tiny, infant-sized ears. The little red soul patch below his lower lip. And the eyes. There was something about those eyes.
He looked at me and smiled through his yellow teeth.
“Remember, kids,” he said. “These tickets will get you into the circus for free when you’re accompanied by a paying adult. Hope to see you there. It’s to die for.”
The vomit came up my throat.
Chapter 2
“Sloppy Joes,” Jason said as we walked home, putting absolutely no effort into holding back his amusement. “Man, you nailed Rebecca Wynter in the back of the head with a steaming pile of secondhand Sloppy Joes in front of the whole school. Oh, man.”
He stopped to wipe the tears from his eyes.
“She must have felt like the guy in that urban legend who gets hit by the exploding canister of biscuit dough in the back of the head,” he went on. “She must have thought she was dead.”
“Probably just wished she was,” I said.
“I know you like her,” he said. “But really, bro. Still, I suppose that’s one way to get her attention. A real sick way.”
He kept laughing.
I wasn’t ready to join him, although my stomach did feel a little better.
But I still had that bitter vomit taste in my mouth from, well, the vomit, and from what I had done to Rebecca. I had to find a way to make it right with her. She hadn’t seemed too pleased the last time I saw her walking out of the office, hair still wet, wearing an old shirt the nurse had found for her. I had to admire the dignity she had shown. A lot of other people would have cried or screamed or freaked out. But she kept it together. It made me like her even more and I promised myself that I would make it up to her. But that was going to have to wait.
First I had to wrap my head around what I had just seen and heard. Or what I thought I had just seen and heard.
Had it really happened that way?
Had I created the whole thing in my head, the result of a runaway imagination fueled by bad cafeteria food? Had the police gotten the wrong man? Or was it just coincidence? Couldn’t two completely different clowns, hundreds of miles and several years apart, look alike and be able to say “It’s to die for” without me losing my lunch? (Don’t answer that.)
A cold breeze blew down the street and dark clouds covered the Elkhorn Mountains as I turned down my block.
“See you tonight, Sloppy Joe,” Jason said.
“Not if I see you first,” I said feebly.
When I walked in the house, my mom came rushing up to me.
“Are you all right?” she said, feeling my forehead.
“Word travels fast ‘round these parts I reckon,” I said in a western accent. “Yeah, I’m fine. More embarrassed than anything.”
“Oh, that will pass,” she said. “You don’t seem to have a fever. That’s good.”
I was quiet for a moment, thinking about how she would probably raise a stink about me going over to Jason’s later.
“Say, mom, hypothetically speaking, could you ever end up liking someone who threw up on you?”
“Boy, this is serious,” she said, smiling. “If you’re getting all hypothetical on me. Let me see? Could I ever end up liking someone who threw up on me? That’s an easy one. I like you, don’t I?”
She then reminded me of all the times I spit up on her as a baby. (I guess I had a nasty habit of hurling on the women in my life.)
“Thanks, mom,” I said. “Oh, and can I still go over to Jason’s later? It’s the opening of our film festival.”
“Maybe, if you promise to lay off the Cheetos.”
This was the third year of our Stephen King festival. Every Friday in October we would watch a different movie based on one of his stories. When it came to scary movies, Stephen King was the Man. Some of them were beyond awesome and others not so much. But it was always a good time. Even the bad ones—and there seemed to be a lot of them—were fun just because they were so bad. We talked about stuff and drank sodas and ate too many Cheetos. At first it was just Jason and me, but there were now five regulars in our group.
We would take suggestions from the other guys, but being the founding members, Jason and I had final say on what we were going to watch. We still hadn’t decided on tonight’s movie.
“How’s it staying down, Slop?” Jason said as he opened the door. “Oh, wait, it’s not.”
He started laughing again and I fake punched him in the gut.
“All right,” I said. “I suppose I’m gonna have a hard time living down that little incident.”
“Hard? Try impossible.”
“So what’s it going to be tonight?” I asked.
Jason held up the Pet Sematary DVD.
“How’s this sound?”
“I want to play with yeeooou,” I said, quoting the super creepy little kid in the movie.
“No fair,” he said back at me.
“Hey, when are they going to release that bad boy in Blu-ray?”
“Beats me.”
Gabe and Tony hadn’t seen it, so it was fun to see their reaction. It still held my attention after almost 20 viewings. I didn’t think about the clown once. My stomach felt fine, but I still followed Dr. Mom’s orders regarding the Cheetos. I knew she would check me for orange fingers later.
“That was a good one,” Tony said. “Too bad there’s only four Fridays this October.”
“How ‘bout we include the last Saturday of the month this year, too?” Jason said.
After that was settled we took turns trying to speak with a Maine accent.
We had to stop when Gabe busted everyone up with his Cartman version.
“You know, guys,” he said. “Sometimes dead is better. Ayuh.”
“That was epic in school today, Dan,” Eddie said a minute later. “Just epic.”
Everyone started laughing again, including me.
“I guess it was,” I said.
I figured this was good practice for what was waiting for me back at school on Monday.
After we stopped laughing, Tony asked what we were going to watch next week.
“How about It?” Gabe said.
“You’re kidding, right?” Jason said. “That movie blows more chunks than Dan here. No offense, Slop.”
“None taken,” I said. “But see what you can do about not calling me Slop.”
“Sure thing, Slop.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“That clown is scary,” Tony said.
“Yeah,” Jason said. “He’s scary for about five seconds—and then you have to sit through three more hours of pure torture.”
“I hear the book is a lot better,” Eddie said.
“Does the clown turn into a giant spider in the book?” Jason said.
“I don’t know,” Eddie said. “I haven’t read it.”
“Well, if it does, you keep that book far away from me,” Jason said. “The clown turning into a giant spider sucks. Why not an ostrich or a ladybug? What were they thinking? So to answer your question, I guess, no, we won’t be watching It anytime soon.”
“How about Storm of the Century and could we please talk about something other than clowns?” I said on behalf of my stomach, which had suddenly started to feel more than a bit queasy.
“Say, speaking of clowns,” Gabe said. “Is anybody going to the circus?”
“Ah, jeez,” I said. “I’m going home. That’s where I’m going. I’ll see you guys tomorrow.”
“See ya, Joe,” Jason said. “I mean, Dan.”
The cool night air felt good. I walked slowly for the first block, looking up at the star-filled sky and thinking of Rebecca in that old shirt. Then I heard someone walking behind me. Their feet made a loud sound when they hit the ground, like giant clown shoes slapping at the sidewalk.
SLAP.
SLAP.
SLAP.
I ran the rest of the way without looking back.
Chapter 3
It’s late November. A bunch of us are watching a movie at the Eltrym, the town’s lone theater. Rebecca is sitting next to me.
I don’t remember what’s playing. It’s not important.
Rebecca whispers something in my ear.
“Ever been kissed by a clown, Danny?”
I look over at her.
It’s Rebecca. Her hair, her clothes, her voice.
“What’s that?” I say, thinking I must have heard wrong.
“Ever been kissed by a clown?” she repeats, louder this time, leaving no doubt.
My heart begins to pound like the drum in that old song my mom likes by Phil Collins.
Then she turns slowly. I can see her face now. But it’s not her face. It’s not Rebecca. It’s the clown. I try to get up, but I can’t move. He pulls me in, closer and closer and closer until his lips are pressing against mine. I try to scream, try to push him off. But all I can do is taste the—
“Aaah!”
I woke up screaming.
A few seconds later my dad was standing in the door frame.
“You all right, Dan?”
“Yeah,” I sighed. “Bad dream, I guess.”
“You want to talk about it?” he said.
“No, I’m okay.”
“All right, then. Try to get some sleep. We’ve got the early game tomorrow.”
As I stared up at the ceiling I thought about how some other parents might have blamed my nightmare on the movie I had been watching a few hours earlier. I liked how my dad didn’t jump to conclusions and overreact to things. (Except when it came to soccer.) I wished at that moment he had passed that trait on to me.
But was I overreacting?
Alone, in the dark, anything seemed possible. Especially bad, terrible things. Things like evil clowns coming back to life.
I slept walked through the game the next morning, a real zombie in cleats.
“C’mon, Dan!” my dad shouted as I wasted yet another pass to me in front of the goal. “Focus!”
Things almost turned around for me on the last play of the game. The score was still 0-0. Jason, our keeper, made an awesome save and kicked the ball all the way down the field. I trapped the ball with my left foot, bringing it down as sweet as Mrs. Butterworth. Then I flicked it over the last defender’s head and raced in all alone toward the goal. Time slowed and my senses came to life. I even thought I heard the small crowd drawing in its breath and the goalie’s knees shaking.
I looked up one last time before shooting.
And that’s when I saw him.
The clown was standing in the trees to the right of the goal. Just like that day all those years ago.
All the oxygen left my body. I fired the ball wide, closer to the corner flag than to the goal. The ref blew his whistle.
When I looked up again, the clown was gone.
As I walked slowly toward the sidelines, I saw the disappointed look on my dad’s face. He stared at me and then shook his head.
“I hate to say it, man,” Jason said a few minutes later. “But today you played bad enough to qualify for the U.S. men’s team. Say hello to Tim Howard for me.”
My only consolation was that I hadn’t thrown up this time. So I had that going for me.
“You kept us in it the whole way, Jason,” my dad said as we stood watching the teams warm up for the next game. “Really good game—which is more than I can say for some others around here.”
Jason was the best goalie I had ever seen. Most keepers hung back by the goal line and waited nervously. Not Jason. He attacked the ball, coming out—way out sometimes—every chance he could, closing down angles, striking terror into the hearts of opposing forwards, forcing them to shoot before they were ready. Most times, they never even got off a shot. Jason just took it off their feet.
I knew Dad was going to hold a grudge over this for a while. He expected a lot out of me. Like I said, there was the easygoing way he felt about most things. And then there was the way he felt about soccer. I was cool with it. I expected a lot more out of myself, too.
“Your dad’s all right, man,” Jason said a few minutes later. “He gets on you because he cares. All my old man cares about is golf.”
I thought about asking him if he had seen the clown when another question suddenly pushed that one aside: what if the clown was just in my head? Maybe I was losing it, cracking up. Maybe it was only a matter of time before my dad would have to find another striker because they would be measuring me for a different kind of uniform: a strait jacket. Do you wear white?
I bit my lip and stared off into the woods.
Chapter 4
I might have been losing touch with reality, but that didn’t stop me from becoming a reality star at South Baker Upper Elementary. By Monday mine was the most famous vomit in five counties. Later Deb, my older sister, told me that even kids at the high school were talking about it. People smiled and laughed and called me Joe or Chuck or Stan (the South Park character who’s always throwing up on his girlfriend).
“You’ll come out of this stronger,” my dad had said during breakfast. “Look at it as practice for middle school. And remember that if they see that it’s bothering you, it will make them keep at you all the more.”
“Plus, with attention spans being what they are these days,” my mom said, “the next thing will come along and people will forget all about this.”
“Wow, it’s like you’re the Justin Bieber of puking,” Jason said at recess.
“C’mon, man. You know I hate that guy. I don’t want to be the Justin Bieber of anything.”
“Sorry, bro,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t make the rules.”
I had gotten to school early and raced over to Rebecca’s locker. Making sure no one saw, I slipped the card into one of the vents.
It felt like I worked on it all night, but in the end the only thing I could come up with was: “I’m really sorry. I hope that someday you can forgive us. Dan and his stomach.”
Lame, I know. I was really hoping they were right about it being the thought that counts. Because if it’s the puke that counts—as I suspected it was—I was screwed.
I saw a few kids wearing circus T-shirts, just in case I needed reminding that the circus had come and gone, having made a real mess of my life, a mess of elephant turd proportions. But I was young, I told myself. I had time to pick up the pieces. Maybe by the time I turned 40.
In the meantime, I would focus on keeping my head down. I didn’t look in Rebecca’s direction all day, which wasn’t easy. I was hoping to see a look in her eyes, some kind of sign that she had read my note and that things weren’t completely, well, hopeless. But this had to be hard for her, too. Normally, you might expect people to show some sympathy for the victim of such a heinous crime. But this was 6th grade. I knew there would be no mercy for either one of us.
Three o’clock finally came around. Somehow I survived. I staggered out the door at the end of the day, woozy but still standing.
In this corner, from Baker City, Oregon, a voice announced in my head, wearing green trunks and an even greener face, the undisputed champ of nausea, queasiness, and gastrointestinal distress … KID VOMIT.
I flashed my title belt. The crowd went nuts.
Nuts like me.
I had a great soccer practice that afternoon. Everything I touched found the back of the net. I couldn’t miss.
“Save some of those for the game,” my dad said, smiling.
After practice, some of the guys got into the same argument we had been having since last year. Who was better, Messi or Ronaldo?
Tony made the mistake of picking Ronaldo.
“Yo mo crazy than Mourinho,” Jason said, reaching over and pinching Tony’s cheek.
“Mo crazy than Mo who?” Tony said, rubbing his face.
“You should know who that is, man,” Jason said. “He’s Ronaldo’s coach on Real Madrid. He calls himself The Special One. A real loon, totally whacked, insane in the membrane.”
“Well, I think you’re insane in the membrane,” Tony said. “Whatever that is.”
I was surprised at how good I felt. It felt good to score, even if it was just practice, and to have the day behind me and to smile as the guys talked nonsense.
Nonsense. The word bounced around in my head. Everyone has their own nonsense. Why did my nonsense have to be so dark and serious? I needed to lighten up.
I had imagined the whole clown thing Friday afternoon. There was no other explanation. The circus clowns were real enough, but that was it. The rest was on me. And so what? I got a little worked up and carried away. And who could really blame me after what happened to me as a little kid? Everyone’s entitled to lose it a little now and then. And I don’t mean little amount wise, like in the amount of vomit I lost that day. That was not little. I mean little in another way.
I just needed one more piece of proof before I could get on with my life. I had to check the news to see if there were any reports of missing children.
And then it hit me that Gabe wasn’t at practice. Gabe never missed practice.
I texted him on the drive home. Then I began checking the internet.
Nothing. There was a story on the circus, but nothing about missing kids.
By the time I got out of the shower, Gabe had written back.
“Didn’t feel like it. (Happy face.)”
Didn’t feel like it? And what was that happy face about? That didn’t sound like Gabe.
Oh, well, maybe Gabe was going through his own nonsense. No big thing.
I wasn’t going to lose the contents of my stomach or sleep over it.
And I didn’t.
Chapter 5
Things were pretty uneventful the next few days. The jokes and vomit references slowly started dying down.
There was a full moon Tuesday night. My teacher, Ms. Myles, said that the Native Americans called it the hunter’s moon or the dying moon. To me it looked like a Salem’s Lot moon. I didn’t have to use too much imagination to see the skull showing through, like in the movie when the credits started to roll. As I stared up at it, I wondered if things like that ever really happened. Could a whole town get taken over by vampires? Yeah, right.
I saw Gabe at lunch Wednesday and asked him if he was going to be at practice that afternoon.
“I don’t think so,” he said with a big smile. “I don’t see the point.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I have to go help my teacher now,” he said, grinning again.
“Hey, did you see the Barcelona game Sunday? That was a crazy goal Messi scored.”
“No, didn’t see it,” he said, walking away.
This just didn’t sound like Gabe. He was always rushing through his lunch so he could get out to the yard and play soccer. It was in his blood, like it was in mine and my dad’s. Now he was going to miss back-to-back practices and help his teacher instead of playing? Weird.
Maybe he’s just going through a phase, I told myself.
We had social studies in the afternoon. Ms. Myles was really into social studies.
“Most people still think the Civil War was fought to free the slaves,” she said, her eyes lighting up. “But that’s just not true. It was about power. It’s pretty much always about power. Power and money. Which is really the same thing. Now, I’m not saying Lincoln didn’t want to free the slaves. He did. And once that terrible war started he made sure that something good came out of it—the end of slavery. I’m just saying that it wasn’t the cause of the war.”
“Oregon State!” Logan shouted.
“C’mon, fool,” Riley said. “Oregon State can’t touch the Ducks.”
“Please, boys,” Ms. Myles said. “Not that Civil War.”
The whole thing got me started thinking about Titus Andronicus, one of my favorite bands. Their second album was made up of songs about the real Civil War, the one Ms. Myles was talking about. It was a weird idea for punk rockers, but the music was killer.
“Why are there two Ls in Lincoln?” Mark said.
“Did you see that Lincoln Lawyer movie?” Jesse said.
“That Matthew McConaughey is pretty hot for an old guy,” Emily said. “I think I would let him, uh, defend me.”
“I guess I would, too,” Ms. Myles said. “But I object to the “old guy” reference. Why, he’s younger than—. Okay, okay, let’s try to focus here. Order in the court.”
“I’ll take an order of fries,” Jesse said. “From DQ.”
“DQ?” Mark said. “Child, please. What this town needs is a Burgerville. Now, they know fries.”
Outside a few snowflakes started falling. That Titus Andronicus video for A More Perfect Union started playing in my head. Guitar. Guitar.
Thursday was a good day. A really good day. When I opened my locker in the morning, I found a note.
“Thanks for the card. My grandfather got me that Gold and Ghosts shirt. It was one of my favorites, but I’ll try not to hold it against you or your stomach. Rebecca.”
Yes.
Yes, yes, yes!
“Have you become one of those smiley types, too?” Jason said before class started. “I mean, you look happier than Josh Ritter.”
“Huh?”
“You’ve got a giant clown smile plastered on your face,” he said. “Just like a lot of people around here lately.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, man. I’m just happy.”
“That’s what they all say,” he said. “Why the glee?”
“I’ll tell you about it later.”
He was right. I had a real village idiot thing going on. I could feel it. I didn’t care. I kept smiling.
But as the day went on, my brain slowly started to put together what Jason had said with what I was seeing. There seemed to be a lot people walking around with big smiles. Like Gabe and his teacher, Mr. Stanton, and the lunch lady and the Gaston twins and a few kids in my class and more than a few fourth graders.
Good for them, I thought. Good for them.
Nothing wrong with being happy. Nothing at all.
On the walk home, I told Jason about Rebecca’s note.
“Hey, man. Maybe it was destiny,” he said. “Did you ever think of that? Maybe you were destined to lose your cookies all over her that day. Maybe the puke was the catalyst that has set something beautiful in motion.”
“Where do you get this stuff, man?” I said. “Here all I’m trying to do is figure out her shirt size and you’re over there with your white coat in your lab coming up with scientific theories that weave together vomit and destiny.”
“I’m just saying.”
“Hey, Mom,” I said when I got home. “I need to buy Rebecca a T-shirt, but I don’t know her size.”
“It’s a tricky thing buying clothes for women,” she said. “If it’s too large or too small, feelings are hurt, and you can end up doing more harm than good. I would guess she’s a medium, though. That’s your best bet. If it goes wrong, you can blame it on me.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
I looked for it at the downtown shops near my house first. Then I rode my bike down Campbell Street. I was at the end of the line, and fresh out of stores, when I walked into the visitors’ center at the edge of town. I had never been inside. The little gift shop section could have fit inside a medium size bathroom and kind of smelled like one. But there it was. A big stack of GOLD AND GHOSTS ALONG THE BYWAY shirts.
I didn’t know if the woman behind the counter was smiling at me or just in general. It didn’t matter. I smiled back.
Good for her. Good for me.
Nothing wrong with being happy. Nothing at all.
Chapter 6
I’ve thought of a new drill for you, Dan,” my dad said Friday morning.
“What’s that?”
“Your left foot is pretty solid, but your right is still a little weak. So here’s the plan: when you’re playing at school, you shoot with your right foot only,” he said, sounding excited. “Right foot only. It will be hard at first, but I bet you that in a few weeks you’ll start to see a big difference. It’ll give you a tremendous advantage over most players.”
“Sounds good,” I said.
“You know, even some of the world’s best player’s struggle with their off foot,” he went on. “Like you, Messi tends to go to his left most of the time. We’ll study it when we watch Barcelona play on Saturday.”
I dream of clowns. My dad dreams of soccer. My mom dreams of traveling. My sister dreams of—I don’t know. Makeup, I guess.
I put the brown paper bag containing the T-shirt on Rebecca’s desk. I didn’t want it to attract too much attention. I just put her name on the sack. No note. She would know who it was from.
I sat down and waited for her to come in.
“What’s this?” she said softly a few minutes later as she looked in the bag.
Then I saw her smile. She looked over at me. I tried to keep my inner village idiot in check and nodded a slight Mona Lisa smile in her general direction. I hoped it didn’t come across as a bobble head move.
Nothing wrong with being happy. Nothing at all. Bobble. Bobble.
It was cool outside. From my seat I could see the house across the street with its usual epic graveyard decorations on the front lawn. Inside, the heater cranked out a warm smoky sleeping gas, sucking out all the oxygen in the room. It smelled like someone was burning chicken feathers.
Ms. Myles had a quote from Martin Luther King, Jr. on the whiteboard: “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”
I was having trouble focusing on the words.
“What do you think Dr. King meant?” Ms. Myles asked.
“I think he was saying you should stand and give your seat on the bus to an old person,” Logan said.
“You can’t stand on the school bus, fool,” Riley said. “And there ain’t no old people on it anyway.”
“There are different kinds of buses,” Logan said. “Like the ones that take old people to the store.”
“You’re mental, man,” Riley said.
“Maybe he was saying that it’s more important what you do when the game is tied or when you’re losing than what you do when your team is winning by a big score and the game’s out of reach,” Jason said.
“I think I know what you’re trying to say,” Ms. Myles said. “That’s good, Jason.”
“That’s good, Jason,” I mouthed at him mockingly.
“Or think about peace and war,” she said. “Everyone loves peace during peace time. But maybe it’s during war time, when it’s not so popular, that people really need to embrace peace. I think it would be very interesting to see what would happen if we changed the rules of war. What if someone couldn’t be a soldier until they turned 65? For one thing, I bet we would have a lot fewer wars.”
Old people fighting. That was kind of funny. I was interested in what Ms. Myles was saying, but the heat was making me sleepy.
Soon the only thing keeping me awake was my minty green Barcelona road jersey, the one that looked like medical scrubs. Every time my eyelids got heavy, the jolt of looking down and seeing that mind-blowing, monkey dung color brought me back like a woozy boxer getting a sniff of smelling salts.
And yet, at some point, I found myself drifting. And dribbling…
I was going around the other players like they were those little orange cones. A deathly hush fell over the home crowd. The whole stadium sensed what was coming. Looking for blood, Marcelo’s cleats came flying at me from the side. I jumped over them. One more defender to beat. The measure of a man… The measure of a ball. I knew that the diameter of a soccer ball was approximately 22.6 centimeters. I instantly estimated the distance between Sergio Ramos’s feet at a tick under a quarter of a meter. Just enough room. I nutmegged it beautifully through the opening between his legs and blew past him, meeting back up with the ball near the goal. I faked left, winked at someone up in the crowd, left Iker Casillas grasping at my shadow, and pushed the ball with my right foot ever so gently into the back of the net.
“Goooooooooooooooal!”
Dani Alves was the first one to run up and hug me. Messi was there a second later. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Mourinho screaming at one of his assistants.
“You guys know a good restaurant in this town?” I said, waving at Rebecca.
“Shakira and I like El Amparo,” Pique said. “Quite romantic.”
“El cochinillo asado at Sobrino de Botín is crazy good,” Carles Puyol said, a crazy look in his eye, his crazy hair dancing crazily in the wind. “That roasted pig is a supreme work of art.”
The public address announcer brought me back.
“Paging Dr. Snoozen. Paging Dr. U.B. Snoozen…”
It was Jason.
“Was it the one against Real Madrid again, where you school Sergio Ramos?”
I nodded, holding out the FCB badge on my jersey.
“That’s always a good one,” he whispered.
“The best.”
Chapter 7
We had to start early with our movie that night because Storm of the Century is four hours long and my folks wanted me home by 10. It was one of my favorites. I had even named our cat Andre Linoge, after the main character.
Gabe and Tony didn’t show up.
“Tony said he wouldn’t be here,” Eddie said. “When I asked him why, he just smiled.”
“Maybe they’re watching It together,” Jason, said laughing. “Get It?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Gabe seems to be out lately. I think he’s given up soccer, too.”
“There’s definitely some weirding stones afoot,” Jason said. “Get it, a foot?”
“Yeah, we get it,” I said. “Now let’s get watching.”
“No, seriously,” he said, getting serious. “What’s with all those people smiling all the time? It’s beyond weird. It’s crossed over into Lady Gaga territory. I mean, it’s Scary City out there.”
“Pass the Cheetos,” I said.
“What would you have done?” Eddie said four hours later. “If you say no, he kills everyone on the island and if you say yes, you’re giving him—”
“Yeah, it’s a real tough one,” Jason said, his yawn drowning out the end of what Eddie was saying. “Sometimes there’s no easy answer. It’s like trying to stop Peyton Manning. If you blitz, he’ll dump it off and bleed you to death with short little passes and if you sit back and wait, he’ll pick you apart. Choose your poison. It’s the same thing with Linoge. I’m talking about the old Peyton Manning, of course, because these days Peyton Manning is—”
“We know, we know,” I said. “‘Peyton Manning is so over.’”
“Couldn’t have said it better myself, Dan,” he said, smiling. “Couldn’t have said it better myself.”
“You know he’s hurt, right?” I said. “Don’t you think it’s a little unfair to kick him when he’s down and all? I mean, why not U2 is so over or Fernando Torres is so over?”
“No doubt the U2 wind chime machine has been over for like forever, and I hope it’s not true about Fernando Torres. Personally I think he’s still got a lot of goals left in him,” Jason said. “But Peyton is so much fun, man. Watching that little pout he gets when he loses. It’s priceless. I kid because I love. I wish him a full and speedy recovery. I love to watch him lose. Football just wouldn’t be same without him. I’m gonna really miss that guy.”
“Whatever,” I said.
“Dan, come on in here a minute,” my mom said from our office the next morning. “Listen to the way Bowie’s voice cracks when he says “nothing” here on Heroes. Can you feel the passion?”
She was listening to her old records again.
“Yeah, cool,” I said.
“But that’s not what I wanted to tell you. I went ahead and did it. I got your father his—our—Christmas present. Two tickets to Barcelona for February. I would have gone back to Florence personally, but you know how he loves Barcelona. So this way, he can go to some games and I’ll still have plenty of museums to visit.”
“Wow, now that’s cool.”
“Yeah, it kinda is, huh?” she said, smiling. “Okay, not a word.”
“Got it,” I said. “My lips are sealed.”
“Our lips are sealed,” she began singing while doing a weird little dance around the room.
I guessed it was another one of those old songs she liked.
Our game that week was against the first place team.
On the drive over my dad gave me one of his pep talks.
“This is a good team you’re playing today,” he said. “But right now anything’s possible. It’s like that magical time right before the World Cup begins. You can dream crazy, impossible things and no one can tell you that they won’t come true. You can dream that your team can win it all. But you can only whisper about it for fear that it will disappear like the fog burning off in the sun.”
And then he finished by whispering, “Make the magic, Dan. Be the dream.”
“You missed a good one last night,” I said to Tony during warm-ups.
“That’s okay,” he said, a large, odd smile covering his face. “That’s okay.”
There was no feeling behind the words. It didn’t fit the smile.
“Whatever.”
“Like in practice,” my dad said in our pregame huddle. “Just like in practice.”
We played a good first half but it ended scoreless.
The second half was a different story. The roof caved in. For the other team.
We ran away with it, 5-0. I had a hat trick and an assist, including a header and a goal with my right foot.
“Just like in practice,” my dad said after the game. “You guys can do magic when you focus.”
Jason and I hung around afterwards, not wanting the feeling to end.
I thought about how fast things can change. It had only been a week since I had seen the clown. Or thought I had seen the clown. But it now felt like nothing more than an old, forgotten dream. Or like when someone asks if you remember something and you say, “No, not really.” And you mean it.
Just another dead leaf carried away on a windy autumn day.
Chapter 8
My dad was right about Messi. He kept going to his left. The defenders knew where he was going to go, but they still couldn’t stop him. Playing almost on one leg, he still scored two goals.
“Imagine if he worked on his right foot a little more,” my dad said. “He would be better than Maradona and Pele put together. As it is, he’s the best player in the world. And Jason’s right. Anyone who thinks he’s not is crazier than Mourinho.”
To celebrate a great soccer weekend, my mom made paella, a rice and seafood dish from Spain. I thought it was cool how the clams opened up in the heat.
“Gross,” Deb said. “You would.”
“Maybe some anchovies next time,” my dad said.
“You two are beyond sick,” she said.
By Monday the vomit jokes had just about dried up. Only a few of the slowest kids still thought it was funny. I saw Rebecca walking down the hall wearing the Gold and Ghosts T-shirt. I smiled.
But I wasn’t alone.
More and more people seemed to have come down with a serious case of the happies. It was impossible not to notice them. I guessed that about a quarter of the school was “infected.” I knew that was a strange word to use, but it fit. It was like a flu going around that made people tired and lifeless, with eyes to match, and left them with a large, creepy smile that didn’t seem to connect to anything they were feeling. In fact, they didn’t seem to be feeling much of anything.
“I’m sick of this sh—” Jason said, slamming his locker.
“Easy there, Hoss,” I said.
“No, man, something’s going on,” he said, his voice shaky. “This morning my dad put his golf clubs up for sale. And when I asked him if he was getting new ones, he smiled at me like all these freaks around here and said he was giving it up. My dad, giving up golf, Dan. That’s nuts. He lives for golf.”
“Are you guys having financial problems? There’s a lot of that going around these days, too. Maybe he’s just trying to find a way to save money.”
“No, that’s not it,” Jason said. “Just last week he was saying how well his business was going.”
“It kind of reminds me of Gabe,” I said. “The way he doesn’t play soccer anymore. Maybe it’s got something to do with the changing of the seasons.”
“The changing of the seasons?” he said, raising his voice. “The changing of the seasons! People are turning into smiling zombie freaks, giving up the things they love, and you’re saying it’s because of the changing of the seasons? That’s weak, man. Get serious.”
“You’re right,” I said. “I don’t know what I was thinking. What do you think it could be?”
“I don’t know, man, but whatever it is, I think it started with the circus.”
“The circus? I don’t understand.”
“I don’t understand it either,” Jason said. “But this smiling epidemic started last week, just after the circus was here. I guess it could be a coincidence. But every time I look at these twisted ear-to-ear smiles, it reminds me of a clown.”
I don’t know why I hadn’t seen it, given my history. But now that Jason pointed it out, I couldn’t help feeling like I was surrounded by clowns. Dozens and dozens of them. As the goose bumps shot up my arms, I suddenly found it hard to breathe.
“Ms. Myles, haven’t you noticed all these people smiling?” Emily said in class that afternoon.
“Yeah,” Mark said. “Why is everyone smiling like a retard?”
He said the last word with a French accent.
“Now, Mark,” Ms. Myles said. “You know I don’t like that word.”
“No, but just look around,” Emily went on. “Tony, Heather, Megan, Will, Tyrone. They just sit there and smile all day long.”
“Yeah,” Britney said. “I thought Dan was one of them, too. But I think he’s just in love. Look, he’s not smiling now.”
Everyone except for the kids Emily had mentioned turned to look at me.
“Oooh,” Logan said. “Burn.”
And it did.
Stay cool, I told myself. Stay cool. But my will wilted in the suffocating, scorching heat of her words faster than a vampire on the sunny side of Mercury. I felt my face grow hotter than a pizza when you bite into it too soon and it burns the roof off your mouth. I could almost feel the cheese melting up, up, up into my brain. The room started to spin. Kid Vomit was about to go down for the count.
My last thought was for Rebecca. I hoped her name wouldn’t be dragged into the conversation. I knew Britney didn’t like her. But I was hoping that shredding me to pieces with her claws would satisfy her appetite for now.
“Back, hater… back, rumormonger… back, ugly witch,” I heard Jason say through the ringing in my ears. “Your epic vat of vileness can’t touch Dan the Man.”
Jason was the real man. Wounded as he was, he still had my back. I vowed that should I live through this, I would help him find out what was going on.
“Maybe they’re just happy,” Ms. Myles said, trying to regain control of the situation. “You know they say people in small towns are happier than those in big cities. I know it’s like that for me. A day doesn’t go by when I’m not grateful that I live here. And, besides, who are we to question happiness?”
But as I felt the blood slowly leaving my ears, I thought that that was exactly what we needed to start doing.
Chapter 9
Things got stranger when I got home. Someone I almost didn’t recognize was sitting on the couch.
It was Deb. She was staring off into space. Her face looked younger. At first I couldn’t figure out what was different about her and then it hit me: she wasn’t wearing any makeup. I couldn’t remember what her face really looked like. It must have been years since I had seen it last. But now the makeup was gone. The raccoon black around the eyes, the fake-looking, uneven orange tan paint, the shiny lip stuff. All gone.
And in its place was a giant grin.
Deb’s boyfriend came over that night.
“Hey, Dano,” he said. “How’s the Regurgitator?”
“The what?” I said. “Oh, yeah. Good one, guy. Deb, Frank’s here!”
Deb came down the stairs slowly, wearing her big smile.
“Hey, you look different,” Frank said. “Did you do something to your hair?”
It’s her face, you idiot. Get yourself some glasses.
“Can you put the trash out, Dan?” Mom said a few minutes later.
“Frank already left,” I said.
“Daniel Sebastian Rodgers,” she said, a tone of serious disapproval in her voice. “You behave yourself, young man.”
Then she started to laugh.
The clam shells from the paella and the used cat litter fought for my attention. I held my breath as I pushed the trash can out toward the curb.
I stopped when I saw them.
I had been wrong. Frank was still there in the driveway. He was leaning back against his car. Deb had her arms around his neck. She said something I couldn’t hear. Then she leaned in to kiss him.
I was about to turn around and deal with the trash later, when I suddenly heard something I would never forget. The sound was coming from Deb. As she covered Frank’s mouth with hers, she let out a terrible high-pitched shriek that sounded like a thousand bats screaming.
Frank tried to push her off, but she seemed to be too strong. Then he started shaking and convulsing like he was going to die.
After Deb was finished, Frank coughed two or three times and appeared to be fine, back to normal, like nothing had happened.
But then I saw his face under the streetlight.
He was smiling, smiling from ear to ear. He had the same sick smile as Deb and the rest of the zombies.
Shivering in the dark, I stumbled back to the house.
I heard that horrible shriek in my sleep. Smiles filled my dreams. Deb, Frank, Gabe, Tony, the kids from class. They were all there. And the clown was there, whispering in my ear.
“Ever been kissed by a clown, Danny? Ever been kissed by a clown, kissed by a clown, kissed by a clown, kissed by a clown…”
Chapter 10
“That’s a crazy story, man,” Jason said as we walked to school. “You’re telling me that one minute your smiling sister’s kissing her boyfriend and the next he’s turned into one of these, these things?”
“Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. It spreads through kissing.”
As I heard myself say the words, though, it all sounded completely insane, like I had been reading too much R.L. Stine or watching really bad Stephen King—The Langoliers and the hedge animals coming to life in the TV version of The Shining came to mind—and it had all rotted my brain from the inside out.
“I’ve been looking for you guys,” Eddie said, running up to us at recess. “I saw something weird last night.”
“Take a number, man,” Jason said.
“Remember those clowns that were here a few weeks ago? Remember the one in charge, the head clown?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Jason said. “What about him?”
“That clown’s living across the street from me.”
“What?” I said. “What do you mean that clown’s living across the street from you?”
“He moved into that old house that was for rent.”
“When?” Jason asked.
“I don’t know. I saw him there last night. And he was still dressed like a clown.”
I jumped when the recess bell sounded.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Jason said to me.
“There’s got to be a connection,” I said.
“A connection to what?” Eddie said.
“Got to be,” Jason said.
We couldn’t go to the cops yet. We had no proof.
Officer, I saw my sister kiss her boyfriend and it made him smile. Officer, a scary clown just moved in across the street. And it’s no coincidence. Don’t you see?
That wasn’t going to get it done. Right now all we had was my word about what I had seen. It was enough for Jason, but other people were going to need proof. Real proof.
During lunch I told Eddie about Deb.
“You’re saying the smiling is passed along by kissing?” he said. “I don’t know, Dan. That’s hard to believe.”
“Believe what you want,” I said. “Just don’t let any of those smiling things kiss you. Don’t find yourself alone with them, don’t go to the bathroom here at school by yourself, and make sure to lock your room at night.”
“We need to find out what the clown’s part in this is,” Jason said. “Most def he’s behind this.”
“Can we come over after school?” I asked Eddie. “We can spy on him from your house.”
“Most def,” he said. “Sounds like fun.”
Most def Eddie didn’t know what he was talking about.
We watched the house from Eddie’s room for several hours, but nothing happened. The clown didn’t make an appearance and the house was dark. It still looked like no one lived in it.
“Are you sure you saw him?” I finally said.
“Positive, man.”
“How do you know he moved in and wasn’t just looking at the house or visiting someone else?”
“Because Old Man Matson told my dad we have a new neighbor,” Eddie said. “Called him one of ‘them circus fellas.’ If he says it’s true, it’s true.”
Eddie had a point. Old Man Matson knew everybody’s business. Most times even before they did. He reminded me of Weasel from Salem’s Lot.
“Hey, maybe tomorrow we can go to the newspaper and see if they know anything,” Jason said.
“That’s a good idea,” I said.
“What are we going to watch Friday night?” Eddie said.
“How about Salem’s Lot?” Jason said.
“I was thinking the same thing,” I said. “The original?”
“You know it, homie.”
We struck our fists together.
The remake was pretty good and we watched it some years, but it couldn’t touch the first one.
When I got home I checked the internet to see if there were reports of smiling breakouts in other parts of the country. I couldn’t find any. I didn’t see any posts on Twitter about it either, except for a few from people I knew here in town.
Whatever was going on seemed to be confined to Baker City.
The clowned, as Jason started calling them, kept multiplying. By Wednesday it seemed like one out of every three people at school had been turned.
I was torn about Rebecca. Part of me wanted to warn her. But when I thought about what I would tell her, when I rehearsed the words in my head, it all sounded way too crazy. In her eyes, I was still a fountain of vomit. I didn’t want to come across as a geyser of insanity, too.
We needed more proof. And we needed it soon. The way things were going, the whole town would be infected before the end of the month. Before Halloween.
Chapter 11
Jason and I stopped at the Baker City Herald office after school.
“How can I help you boys?” the man behind the counter said.
“We’d like some information,” I said.
“Fire away.”
“Have you noticed people acting weird lately?” Jason said. “Smiling a lot, walking around like zombies?”
“Weird? Zombies?” the man repeated. “Sounds like someone’s been watching too many Halloween movies. But now that you mention it, the folks at the chamber of commerce are working on a plan to change the town’s welcome sign. They want it to read, ‘Baker City: The Smiliest Place on Earth.’”
“Smiliest?” Jason said. “Is that even a word?”
“Don’t you think that’s kind of strange?” I said.
“I stopped thinking anything them government folks do is strange a long time ago,” the man said. “Now I’ve got to get back to checking tomorrow’s classifieds. You two stay out of trouble, ya hear? And watch out for those—what did you call them?—zombies.”
We stepped back outside. A chilly wind rattled the Halloween decorations that lined Main Street. Dark clouds hung over the mountains. It looked like a storm was blowing in.
“That was helpful,” I said as we turned onto Eddie’s street.
“Yeah, about as productive as Peyton Manning pretending to change the play at the line,” Jason said. “12-42-12-42-clown-shoes-clown-shoes-big-red-floppy-floppy-set-hut-hut—”
He dropped back like he was going to pass an imaginary football, but then he stopped suddenly and brought his hands down by his side. He was staring at something down the street. I looked up and saw it, too.
The clown was coming toward us.
I could have sworn that a second before there hadn’t been anyone on the sidewalk, but the clown was now almost on top of us. There was no time to hide. We just stood there as he walked right up to us.
“Howdy, gents,” he said, handing us each a flyer. “Fine day for a walk.”
I lost the feeling in my legs. I was four all over again. My mind ran down the street screaming: It’s him! It’s him! It’s him!
“You look so familiar,” he said, looking right at me with those dead black eyes and scratching his red soul patch with long yellow fingernails. “Oh, yes, it was that unfortunate incident with the Sloppy Joe’s, wasn’t it? What a shame. All that fine mystery meat gone to waste.”
He winked and smiled, showing off his crooked mustard-colored teeth with large dark gaps in between. Then he starting laughing, his whole body rocking back and forth.
“Well, ciao for now. But only for now.”
A moment later he was halfway down the block. I tried to read the flyer but my hands were shaking too badly.
“Smiles the Clown, available for parties and all your special occasions,” Jason said. “Sure to leave them smiling.”
He had just been messing with me when he said I looked familiar. Sure he was referring to our recent school encounter, but there was something more. We knew each other long before then. I knew he remembered me from that day in the park all those years ago. I sure as hell remembered him. I had no more doubts now. No questioning my sanity or blaming my imagination.
I couldn’t stop shaking.
It was him. He was real. And he was here in Baker City.
Somehow—as impossible as it seemed—Smiles the Clown had come back from the dead.
Chapter 12
Jason and I ran back to my house.
I texted Eddie.
“Something’s come up. Continue operation from there. Hit you back soon.”
“Man, that was one scary dude,” Jason said, his eyes bulging. “Look, I still have goose bumps.”
I connected the polka dots for him.
“He’s the same clown, man,” I said, breathlessly. “The same clown from when I was four. The same clown who confessed to taking those kids. The same clown who went to the gas chamber for it two years ago. That’s why I threw up that day at school.”
Jason just looked at me.
“I know how it sounds. I tried to talk myself into thinking I had imagined it. But no more. It’s him, Jason. I’m more sure of it than anything else in the world.”
Jason was quiet for a minute.
“All right, man,” he finally said. “I’m in. Maybe he is the same clown and maybe he’s not. Maybe you’re crazy and maybe I’m crazy. I just don’t know. But maybe we can combine our dementia and use it to fight this thing.”
“Where do we start?” I said.
“Well, maybe first we find out if this guy’s human,” he said. “And we still need proof, proof that he’s causing this sickness, proof that other people will believe.”
We agreed to give it some thought and discuss it in the morning.
I checked in with Eddie and let him know about the meeting.