The Clowns

these performers were knocking their audience dead--literally

The C. Fred Johnson Municipal Pool was packed with swimmers, more in spite of the blazing sun and wet, muggy heat than because of them.

It was the dead middle of August, stiflingly hot, and it would have made more sense to stay inside--or, at the very least, in the shade--than to splash around in the murky, tepid water. Nevertheless, the pool was crowded almost shoulder to shoulder, especially with kids--there were children everywhere, the younger ones splashing and shouting in the shallow end, the older kids and the teenagers jumping off the high dive or playing water polo in the deep end. Mothers sat in groups and chatted, their skins glistening with suntan oil and sweat. The temperature was well above 90, and the air seemed to shimmer with the heat, like automobile exhaust in a traffic jam.

David Shore twisted his wet bath towel and snapped it at his friend Sammy, hitting him on the sun-reddened backs of his thighs.

"Ow!" Sammy screamed. "You dork! Cut it out!" David grinned and snapped the towel at Sammy again, hitting only air this time but producing a satisfyingly loud crack. Sammy jumped back, shouting, "Cut it out! I'll tell! I'll tell! I mean it."

Sammy's voice was whining and petulant, and David felt a spasm of annoyance. Sammy was his friend, and he didn't have so many friends that he wasn't grateful for that, but Sammy was always whining. What a baby! That's what he got for hanging out with little kids--Sammy was eight, two years younger than David--but since the trouble he'd had last fall, with his parents almost breaking up and he himself having to go for counseling, he'd been ostracized by many of the kids his own age. David's face (continued on page 130)The Clowns(continued from page 83) darkened for a moment, but then he sighed and shook his head. Sammy was all right, really. A good kid. He really shouldn't tease him so much, play so many jokes on him. David smiled wryly. Maybe he did it just to hear him whine----

"Don't be such a baby," David said tiredly, wrapping the towel around his hand. "It's only a towel, dickface. It's not gonna kill you if----" Then David stopped abruptly, staring blankly off beyond Sammy, toward the bathhouse.

"It hurt," Sammy whined. "You're a real dork, you know that, Davie? How come you have to----" And then Sammy paused, too, aware that David wasn't paying any attention to him anymore. "Davie?" he said. "What's the matter?"

"Look at that," David said in an awed whisper.

Sammy turned around. After a moment, confused, he asked, "Look at what?"

"There!" David said, pointing toward a sun-bleached wooden rocking chair.

"Oh, no, you're not going to get me again with that old line," Sammy said disgustedly. His face twisted, and this time he looked as if he were really getting mad. "The wind's making that chair rock. It can rock for hours if the wind's right. You can't scare me that easy! I'm not a baby, you know!"

David was puzzled. Couldn't Sammy see? What was he--blind? It was as plain as anything....

There was a clown sitting in the chair, sitting and rocking, watching the kids in the swimming pool.

The clown's face was caked with thick white paint. He had a bulb nose that was painted blood red, the same color as his broad, painted-on smile. His eyes were like chips of blue ice. He sat very still, except for the slight movement of his legs needed to rock the beat-up old chair, and his eyes never left the darting figures in the water.

David had seen clowns before, of course; he'd seen plenty of them at the Veterans' Arena in Binghamton when the Barnum & Bailey Circus came to town. Sammy's father was a barber and always got good tickets to everything, and Sammy always took David with him. But this clown was different, somehow. For one thing, instead of performing, instead of dancing around or cakewalking or somersaulting or squirting people with a Seltzer bottle, this clown was just sitting quietly by the pool, as if it were the most normal thing in the world for him to be there. And there was something else, too, he realized. This clown was all in black. Even his big polka-dotted bow tie was black, shiny black dots against a lighter gray-black. Only his gloves were white, and they were a pure, eye-dazzling white. The contrast was startling.

"Sammy?" David said quietly. "Listen, this is important. You really think that chair is empty?"

"Jeez, grow up, will ya?" Sammy snarled. "What a dork!" He turned his back disgustedly on David and dived into the pool.

David stared thoughtfully at the clown. Was Sammy trying to kid him? Turn the tables on him, get back at him for some of his old jokes? But David was sure that Sammy wasn't smart enough to pull it off. Sammy always gave himself away, usually by giggling.

Odd as it seemed, Sammy really didn't see the clown.

David looked around to see who else he could ask. Certainly not Mr. Kreiger, who had a big potbelly and wore his round wire-rimmed glasses even in the water and who would stand for hours in the shallow end of the pool and splash himself with one arm, like an old bull elephant splashing water over itself with its trunk. No. Who else? Bobby Little, Jimmy Seikes and Andy Freeman were taking turns diving and cannon-balling from the low board, but David didn't want to ask them anything. That left only Jas Ritter, the pool lifeguard, or the stuck-up Weaver sisters.

But David was beginning to realize that he didn't really have to ask anybody. Freddy Schumaker and Jane Gelbert had just walked right by the old rocking chair, without looking at the clown, without even glancing at him. Bill Dwyer was muscling himself over the edge of the pool within inches of the clown's floppy oblong shoes, and he wasn't paying any attention to him, either. That just wasn't possible. No matter how supercool they liked to pretend they were, there was no way that kids were going to walk past a clown without even glancing at him.

With a sudden thrill, David took the next logical step. Nobody could see the clown except him. Maybe he was the only one in the world who could see him!

It was an exhilarating thought. David stared at the clown in awe. Nobody else could see him! Maybe he was a ghost, the ghost of an old circus clown, doomed to roam the earth forever, seeking out kids like the ones he'd performed for when he was alive, sitting in the sun and watching them play, thinking about the happy days when the circus had played this town.

That was a wonderful idea, a lush and romantic idea, and David shivered and hugged himself, feeling goose flesh sweep across his skin. He could see a ghost! It was wonderful! It was magic! Private, secret magic, his alone. It meant that he was special. It gave him a strange, secret kind of power. Maybe nobody else in the universe could see him----

It was at this point that Sammy slammed into him, laughing and shouting, "I'll learn you, sucker!" and knocked him into the pool.

By the time David broke the surface, sputtering and shaking water out of his eyes, the clown was gone and the old rocker was rocking by itself, in the wind and the thin, empty sunshine.

After leaving the pool, David and Sammy walked over the viaduct--there was no sign of any freight trains on the weed-overgrown tracks below--and took back-alley short cuts to Curtmeister's barbershop.

"Hang on a minute," Sammy said and ducked into the shop. Ordinarily, David would have followed, as Sammy's father kept gum and salt-water taffy in a basket on top of the magazine rack, but today he leaned back against the plate-glass window, thinking about the ghost he'd seen that morning, his ghost, watching as the red and blue stripes ran eternally up and around the barber pole. How fascinated he'd been by that pole a few years ago, and how simple it seemed to him now.

A clown turned the corner from Avenue B, jaywalking casually across Main Street.

David started and pushed himself upright. The ghost again! Or was it? Surely, this clown was shorter and squatter than the one he'd seen at the pool, though it was wearing the same kind of black costume, the same kind of white gloves. Could this be another ghost? Maybe there was a whole circusful of clown ghosts wandering around the city.

"David!" a voice called, and he jumped. It was old Mrs. Zabriski, carrying two bulging brown-paper grocery bags, working her way ponderously down the sidewalk toward him, puffing and wheezing, like some old, slow tugboat doggedly chugging toward its berth. "Want to earn a buck, David?" she called.

The clown had stopped right in the middle of Main Street, standing nonchalantly astride the double white divider line. David watched him in fascination.

"David?" Mrs. Zabriski said impatiently.

Reluctantly, David turned his attention back to Mrs. Zabriski. "Gosh, I'm sorry, Mrs. Z.," he said. A buck would be nice, but it was more important to keep an eye on the clown. "I--ah, I promised Sammy that I'd wait out here for him."

Mrs. Zabriski sighed. "OK, David," she (continued on page 154)The Clowns(continued from page 130) said. "Another time, then." She looked across the street to see what he was staring at, looked back puzzledly. "Are you all right, David?"

"Yeah. Honest, Mrs. Z.," he said, without looking around. "Really. I'm fine."

She sighed again with doughy fatalism. And then she started across the street, headed directly for the clown.

It was obvious to David that she didn't see him. He was standing right in front of her, grimacing and waving his arms and making faces at her, but she didn't even slow down--she would have walked right into him if he hadn't ducked out of the way at the last moment. After she passed, the clown minced along behind her for a few steps, doing a cruel but funny imitation of her ponderous, waddling walk, pretending to spank her on her big, fat rump.

David stifled a laugh. This was better than the circus! But now the clown seemed to have grown bored with mocking Mrs. Zabriski and began drifting slowly away toward the far side of Main Street.

David wanted to follow, but he suddenly realized, with a funny little chill, that he didn't want to do it alone. Even if it was the ghost of a clown, a funny and entertaining ghost, it was still a ghost, after all. Somehow, he'd have to get Sammy to come with him. But how could he explain to Sammy what they were doing? Not that it would matter if Sammy didn't come out of the shop soon--the clown was already a block away.

Anxiously, he peered in through the window until he managed to catch Sammy's attention, then waved to him urgently. Sammy held up his index finger and continued his conversation with his father. "Hurry up, dummy," David muttered under his breath. The clown was getting farther and farther away, almost out of sight now. Hurry up. David danced impatiently from one foot to the other. Hurry up.

But when Sammy finally came running out of the barbershop with the news that he'd talked his father into treating them both to a movie, the clown was gone.

•

By the time they got to the movie theater, David had pretty much gotten over the disappointment of losing the clown. At least it was a pretty good show--cartoons and a space-monster movie. There was a long line in front of the ticket window, a big crowd of kids--and even a few adults--waiting to get into the movie.

They were waiting in the tail of the line when the clown--or a clown--appeared again across the street.

"Hey, Davie!" Sammy said abruptly. "Do you see what I see?" And Sammy waved to the clown.

David was startled--and somewhat dismayed--by the strength of the surge of disappointment and jealousy that shot through him. If Sammy could see them, too, then David wasn't special anymore. The whole thing was ruined.

Then David realized that it wasn't the clown that Sammy was waving to.

He was waving to the old man who was waiting to cross the street, standing just in front of the clown. Old Mr. Thorne. He was at least a million years old, David knew. He'd played for the Boston Braves back before they'd even had television, for cripes' sake. But he loved children and treated them with uncondescending courtesy and in turn was one of the few adults who were really respected by the kids. He was in charge of the yo-yo contests held in the park every summer, and he could make a yo-yo sleep or do around the world or over the falls or walking the dog better than anyone David had ever seen, including the guy who sold the golden yo-yos for the Duncan company.

Relieved, David joined Sammy in waving to his old friend, almost--but not quite--forgetting the clown for a moment. Mr. Thorne waved back but motioned for them to wait where they were. It was exciting to see the old man again. It would be worth missing the movie if Mr. Thorne was in the mood to buy them chocolate malteds and reminisce about the days when he'd hit a home run off the immortal Grover Cleveland Alexander.

Just as the traffic light turned yellow, an old flat-bed truck with a dented fender came careening through the intersection.

David felt his heart lurch with sudden fear---- But it was all right. Mr. Thorne saw the truck coming, he was still on the curb, he was safe. But then the clown stepped up close behind him. He grabbed Mr. Thorne by the shoulders. David could see Mr. Thorne jerk in surprise as he felt the white-gloved hands close over him. Mr. Thorne's mouth opened in surprise, his hands came fluttering weakly up, like startled birds. David could see the clown's painted face grinning over the top of Mr. Thorne's head. That wide, unchanging, painted-on smile.

Then the clown threw Mr. Thorne in front of the truck.

There was a sickening wet thud, a sound like that of a sledge hammer hitting a side of beef. The shriek of brakes, the squeal of flaying tires. A brief, unnatural silence. Then a man said, "Jesus Christ!" in a soft, reverent whisper. A heartbeat later, a woman started to scream.

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 corner just ahead, coming swiftly toward him with a strange, duck-walking 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 Davie 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 tooth paste 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.

David had a sudden, bitter vision of just how lonely the rest of the summer was going to be without even Sammy to play with. Just him, all by himself, all summer long.

Just him ... and the clowns.

David heard his parents talking as he made his way down to breakfast the next morning and paused just outside the kitchen archway to listen.

"Was the strangest thing," his mother was saying.

"What was?" David's father grumbled. He was hunched over his morning coffee, glowering at it, as if daring it to cool off before he got around to drinking it. Mr. Shore was often grouchy in the morning, though things weren't as bad anymore as they'd been last fall, when his parents had often screamed obscenities at each other across the breakfast table--not as bad as that one terrible morning, the morning David didn't even want to think about, when his father had punched his mother in the face and knocked two of her teeth out, because the eggs were runny. David's mother kept telling him that his father was under a lot of "stress" because of his new job--he used to sell computers, but now he was a stockbroker trainee. "What was?" David's father repeated irritably, having gotten no reply.

"Oh, I don't know," David's mother said. "It's just that I was thinking about that poor old woman all night. I just can't get her out of my mind. You know, she kept swearing somebody pushed her."

"For Christ's sake!" David's father snapped. "Nobody pushed her. She's just getting senile. She had heavy bags to carry and all those stairs to climb, that's all." He broke off, having spotted David in the archway. "David, don't skulk like that. You know I hate a sneak. In or out!"

David came slowly forward. His mouth had gone dry again and he had to moisten his lips to be able to speak. "What--what were you talking about? Did something happen? Who got hurt?"

"Marty!" David's mother said sharply, glancing quickly and significantly at David, frowning, shaking her head.

"Damn it, Anna," David's father grumbled. "Do you really think that the kid's gonna curl up and die if he finds out that Mrs. Zabriski fell down a flight of stairs? What the hell does he care?"

"Marty!"

"He doesn't even know her, except to say hello to, for Christ's sake! Accidents happen all the time; he might just as well get used to that----"

David was staring at them. His face had gone white. "Mrs. Zabriski?" he whispered. "Is--is she dead?"

His mother gave her husband a now-look-what-you've-done glare and moved quickly to put an arm around David's shoulder. "No, honey," she said soothingly, in that nervous, almost too sympathetic voice she used on him now whenever she thought he was under stress. "She's going to be OK. Just a broken leg and a few bruises. She fell down the stairs yesterday on her way back from the grocery store. Those stairs are awfully steep for a woman her age. She tripped, that's all."

David bit his lip. Somehow, he managed to blink back sudden bitter tears. His fault! If he'd carried her bags for her, like she'd wanted him to, like she'd asked him to, then she'd have been all right; the clown wouldn't have gotten her.

For Mrs. Zabriski hadn't tripped. He knew that.

She'd been pushed.

By the time David got to Sammy's house, there was no one home. Too late! His father had reluctantly let David off the hook about eating breakfast--the very thought of eating made him ill--but had insisted in his I'm-going-to-brook-no-more-nonsense voice, the one he used just before he started hitting, that David wash the breakfast dishes, and that had slowed him up just enough. He'd hoped to catch Sammy before he left for the pool, try to talk to him again, try to get him to at least agree to keep quiet about the clowns.

He made one stop, in the Religious Book Store and Reading Room on Main Street, and bought something with some of the money from his allowance. Then, slowly and reluctantly, trying to ignore the fear that was building inside him, he walked to the swimming pool.

Sammy was already in the water when David arrived.

The pool was crowded, as usual. David waved halfheartedly to Jas, who was sitting in the high-legged lifeguard's chair. Jas waved back uninterestedly; he was surveying his domain through aluminum sunglasses, his nose smeared with zinc oxide to keep it from burning.

And--yes--the clown was there! Way in the back, near the refreshment stand. Lounging quietly against a wall and watching the people in the pool.

David felt his heart start hammering. Moving slowly and--he hoped--inconspicuously, he began to edge through the crowd toward Sammy. The clown was still looking the other way. If only----

But then Sammy saw David. "Well, well, well," Sammy yelled, "if it isn't David Shore!" His voice was harsh and ugly, his face flushed and twisted. David had never seen him so bitter and upset. "Seen any more clowns lately, Davie?" There was real hatred in his voice. "Seen any more killer invisible clowns, Davie? You loony! You fucking loony!"

David flinched, then tried to shush him. People were looking around, attracted by the shrillness of Sammy's voice.

The clown was looking, too. David saw him look at Sammy, who was still waving his arms and shouting, and then slowly raise his head, trying to spot who Sammy was yelling at.

David ducked aside into the crowd, half squatting down, dodging behind a couple of bigger kids. He could feel the clown's gaze pass overhead, like a scythe made of ice and darkness. Shut up, Sammy, he thought desperately. Shut up. He squirmed behind another group of kids, bumping into somebody, heard someone swear at him.

"Da--vie!" Sammy was shouting in bitter mockery. "Where are all the clowns, Davie? You seen any clowning around here today, Davie? Huh, Davie?"

The clown was walking toward Sammy now, still scanning the crowd, his gaze relentless and bright.

Slowly, David pushed his way through the crowd, moving away from Sammy. Bobby and Andy were standing in line at the other end of the pool, waiting to jump off the board. David stepped up behind Andy, pretending to be waiting in line, even though he hated diving. Should he leave the pool? Run? That would only make it easier for the clown to spot him. But if he left, maybe Sammy would shut up.

"You're crazy, David Shore!" Sammy was yelling. He seemed on the verge of tears--he had been very close to Mr. Thorne. "You know that? You're fucking crazy. Bats in the belfry, Davie----"

The clown was standing on the edge of the pool, right above Sammy, staring down at him thoughtfully.

Then Sammy spotted David. His face went blank, as though with amazement, and he pointed his finger at him. "David! There's a clown behind you!"

Instinctively, knowing that it was a mistake even as his muscles moved but unable to stop himself, David whipped his head around and looked behind him. Nothing was there.

When he turned back, the clown was staring at him.

Their eyes met, and David felt a chill go through him, as if he had been pierced with ice.

Sammy was breaking up, hugging himself in glee and laughing, shrill, cawing laughter with a trace of hysteria in it. "Jeez-us, Davie!" he yelled. "You're just not playing with a full deck, are you, Davie? You're----"

The clown knelt by the side of the pool. Moving with studied deliberation, never taking his eyes off David, the clown reached out, seized Sammy by the shoulders--Sammy jerked in surprise, his mouth opening wide--and slowly and relentlessly forced him under the water.

"Sammy!" David screamed.

The clown was leaning out over the pool, eyes still on David, one arm thrust almost shoulder-deep into the water, holding Sammy under. The water thrashed and boiled around the clown's outthrust arm, but Sammy wasn't coming back up----

"Jason!" David shrieked, waving his arms to attract the lifeguard's attention and then pointing toward the churning patch of water. "Ja-son! Help! Help! Somebody's drowning!" Jason looked in the direction David was pointing, sat up with a start, began to scramble to his feet----

David didn't wait to see any more. He hit the water in a clumsy dive, almost a belly whopper, and began thrashing across the pool toward Sammy, swimming as strongly as he could. Half blinded by spray and by the wet hair in his eyes, half dazed by the sudden shock of cold water on his sun-baked body, he almost rammed his head into the far side of the pool, banging it with a wildly flailing hand instead. He recoiled, gasping. The clown was right above him now, only a few feet away. The clown turned his head to look at him, still holding Sammy under, and once again David found himself shaking with that deathly arctic cold. He kicked at the side wall of the pool, thrusting himself backward. Then he took a deep breath and went under.

The water was murky, but he was close enough to see Sammy. The clown's white-gloved hand was planted firmly on top of Sammy's head, holding him under. Sammy's eyes were open, strained wide, bulging almost out of his head. Dreadfully, they seemed to see David, recognize him, appeal mutely to him. Sammy's hands were pawing futilely at the clown's arm, more and more weakly, slowing, running down like an unwound clock. Even as David reached him, Sammy's mouth opened and there was a silvery explosion of bubbles.

David grabbed the clown's arm. A shock went through him at the contact, and his hands went cold, the bitter cold spreading rapidly up his arms, as if he were grasping something that avidly sucked the heat from anything that touched it. David yanked at the clown's arm with his numbing, clumsy hands, trying to break his grip, but it was like yanking on a steel girder.

A big white shape barreled by him like a porpoise, knocking him aside. Jas.

David floundered, kicked, broke the surface of the water. He shot up into the air like a Polaris missile, fell back, took a great racking breath, another. Sunlight on water dazzled his eyes, and everything was noise and confusion in the open air, baffling after the muffled underwater silence. He kicked his feet weakly, just enough to keep him afloat, and looked around.

Jas was hauling Sammy out of the pool. Sammy's eyes were still open, but now they looked like glass, like the blank, staring eyes of a stuffed animal; a stream of dirty water ran out of his slack mouth, down over his chin. Jas laid Sammy out by the pool edge, bent hurriedly over him, began to blow into his mouth and press on his chest. A crowd was gathering, calling out questions and advice, making little wordless noises of dismay.

The clown had retreated from the edge of the pool. He was standing some yards away now, watching Jas labor over Sammy.

Slowly, he turned his head and looked at David.

Their eyes met again, once again with that shock of terrible cold, and this time the full emotional impact of what that look implied struck home as well.

The clowns knew that he could see them.

The clowns knew who he was.

The clowns would be after him now.

Slowly, the clown began to walk toward David, his icy-blue eyes fixed on him.

Terror squeezed David like a giant's fist. For a second, everything went dark. He couldn't remember swimming back across to the other side of the pool, but the next thing he knew, there he was, hauling himself up the ladder, panting and dripping. A couple of kids were looking at him funny; no doubt he'd shot across the pool like a torpedo.

The clown was coming around the far end of the pool, not running but walking fast, still staring at David.

There were still crowds of people on this side of the pool, too, some of them paying no attention to the grisly tableau on the far side, most of them pressed together near the pool's edge, standing on tiptoe and craning their necks to get a better look.

David pushed his way through the crowd, worming and dodging and shoving, and the clown followed him, moving faster now. The clown seemed to flow like smoke around people without touching them, never stumbling or bumping into anyone even in the most densely packed part of the crowd, and he was catching up. David kept looking back, and each time he did, the widely smiling painted face was closer behind him, momentarily bobbing up over the sunburned shoulders of the crowd, weaving in and out. Coming relentlessly on, pressing closer, all the while never taking his eyes off him.

The crowd was thinning out. He'd never make it back around the end of the pool before the clown caught up with him. Could he possibly outrun the clown in the open? Panting, he tried to work his hand into the pocket of his sopping-wet jeans as he stumbled along. The wet cloth resisted, resisted, and then his hand was inside the pocket, his fingers touching metal, closing over the thing he'd bought at the store on his way over.

Much too afraid to feel silly or self-conscious, he whirled around and held up the crucifix, extended it at arm's length toward the clown.

The clown stopped.

They stared at each other for a long, long moment, long enough for the muscles in David's arm to start to tremble.

Then, silently, mouth open, the clown started to laugh.

It wasn't going to work----

The clown sprang at David, spreading his arms wide as he came.

It was like a wave of fire-shot darkness hurtling toward him, getting bigger and bigger, blotting out the world----

David screamed and threw himself aside.

The clown's hand swiped at him, hooked fingers grazing his chest like stone talons, tearing free. For a moment, David was enveloped in arctic cold and that strong musty smell of dead leaves, and then he was rolling free, scrambling to his feet, running----

He tripped across a bicycle lying on the grass, scooped it up and jumped aboard it all in one motion, began to pedal furiously. Those icy hands clutched at him again from just a step behind. He felt his shirt rip; the bicycle skidded and fishtailed in the dirt for a second; and then the wheels bit the ground and he was away and picking up speed.

When he dared to risk a look back, the clown was staring after him, a look thoughtful, slow and icily intent.

David left the bicycle in a doorway a block from home and ran the rest of the way, trying to look in all directions at once. He trudged wearily up the front steps of his house and let himself in.

His parents were in the front room. They had been quarreling but broke off as David came into the house and stared at him. David's mother rose rapidly to her feet, saying, "David! Where were you? We were so worried! Jason told us what happened at the pool."

David stared back at them. "Sammy?" he heard himself saying, knowing it was stupid to ask even as he spoke the words but unable to keep himself from feeling a faint stab of hope. "Is Sammy gonna be all right?"

His parents exchanged looks.

David's mother opened her mouth and closed it again, hesitantly, but his father waved a hand at her, sat up straighter in his chair and said flatly, "Sammy's dead, David. They think he had some sort of seizure and drowned before they could pull him out. I'm sorry. But that's the way it is."

"Marty!" David's mother protested.

"It's part of life, Anna," his father said. "He's got to learn to face it. You can't keep him wrapped up in cotton wool, for Christ's sake!"

"It's all right," David said quietly. "I knew he had to be. I just thought may-be ... somehow...."

There was a silence, and they looked at each other through it. "At any rate," his father finally said, "we're proud of you, David. The lifeguard told us you tried to save Sammy. You did the best you could, did it like a man, and you should be proud of that." His voice was heavy and solemn. "You're going to be upset for a while, sure--that's only normal--but someday that fact's going to make you feel a lot better about all this, believe me."

David could feel his lips trembling, but he was determined not to cry. Summoning all his will to keep his voice steady, he said, "Mom ... Dad ... if I ... told you something--something that was really weird--would you believe me and not think I was going nuts again?"

His parents gave him that uneasy, walleyed look again. His mother wet her lips, hesitantly began to speak, but his father cut her off. "Tell your tall tales later," he said harshly. "It's time for supper."

David sagged back against the door panels. They did think he was going nuts again, had probably been afraid of that ever since they heard he had run wildly away from the pool after Sammy drowned. He could smell the fear on them, a sudden bitter burnt reek, like scorched onions. His mother was still staring at him uneasily, her face pale, but his father was grating, "Come on, now, wash up for supper. Make it snappy!" He wasn't going to let David be nuts, David realized; he was going to force everything to be "normal," by the sheer power of his anger.

"I'm not hungry," David said hollowly. "I'd rather just lie down." He walked quickly by his parents, hearing his father start to yell, hearing his mother intervene, hearing them start to quarrel again behind him. He didn't seem to care anymore. He kept going, pulling himself upstairs, leaning his weight on the wrought-iron banister. He was bone-tired and his head throbbed.

In his room, he listlessly peeled off his sweat-stiff clothes. His head was swimming with the need to sleep, but he paused before turning down the bedspread, grimaced and shot an uneasy glance at the window. Slowly, he crossed the room. Moving in jerks and starts, as though against his will, he lifted the edge of the curtain and looked out.

There was a clown in the street below, standing with that terrible motionless patience in front of the house, staring up at David's window.

David was not even surprised. Of course the clowns would be there. They'd heard Sammy call his name. They'd found him. They knew where he lived now.

What was he going to do? He couldn't stay inside all summer. Sooner or later, his parents would make him go out.

And then the clowns would get him.

•

David woke up with a start, his heart thudding.

He pushed himself up on one elbow, blinking in the darkness, still foggy and confused with sleep. What had happened? What had wakened him?

He glanced at the fold-up travel clock that used to be his dad's; it sat on the desk, its numbers glowing. Almost midnight.

Had there been a noise? There had been a noise, hadn't there? He could almost remember it.

He sat alone in the darkened room, still only half-awake, listening to the silence.

Everything was silent. Unnaturally silent. He listened for familiar sounds: the air conditioner swooshing on, the hot-water tank rumbling, the refrigerator humming, the cuckoo clock chiming in the living room. Sometimes he could hear those sounds when he awakened in the middle of the night. But he couldn't hear them now. The crickets weren't even chirruping outside, nor was there any sound of passing traffic. There was only the sound of David's own breathing, harsh and loud in his ears, as though he were underwater and breathing through scuba gear. Without knowing why, he felt the hair begin to rise on the back of his neck.

The clowns were in the house.

That hit him suddenly, with a rush of adrenaline, waking him all the way up in an eyeblink.

He didn't know how he knew, but he knew. Somehow, he had thought that houses were safe, that the clowns could only be outside. But they were here. They were in the house. Perhaps they were here in the room, right now. Two of them, eight, a dozen. Forming a circle around the bed, staring at him in the darkness with their opaque and malevolent eyes.

He burst from the bed and ran for the light switch, careening blindly through blackness, waiting for clutching hands to grab him in the dark. His foot struck something--a toy, a shoe--and sent it clattering away, the noise making him gasp and flinch. A misty ghost shape seemed to move before him, making vague, windy gestures, more sensed than seen. He ducked away, dodging blindly. Then his hand was on the light switch.

The light came on like a bomb exploding, sudden and harsh and overwhelmingly bright. Black spots flashed before his eyes. As his vision readjusted, he jumped to see a face only inches from his own--stifling a scream when he realized that it was only his reflection in the dresser mirror. That had also been the moving, half-seen shape.

There was no one in the room.

Panting with fear, he slumped against the dresser. He'd instinctively thought that the light would help, but somehow it only made things worse. It picked out the eyes and the teeth of the demons in the magic posters on the walls, making them gleam sinisterly, and threw slowly moving monster shadows across the room from the dangling Tyrannosaurus mobile. The light was harsh and spiky, seeming to bounce and ricochet from every flat surface, hurting his eyes. The light wouldn't save him from the clowns, wouldn't keep them away, wouldn't banish them to unreality, like bad-dream bogeymen--it would only help them find him.

He was making a dry little gasping noise, like a cornered animal. He found himself across the room, crouching with his back to the wall. Almost without thinking, he had snatched up the silver letter-opener knife from his desk. Knife in hand, lips skinned back over his teeth in an animal snarl, he crouched against the wall and listened to the terrible silence that seemed to press in against his eardrums.

They were coming for him.

He imagined them moving with slow deliberation through the darkened living room downstairs, their eyes and their dead-white faces gleaming in the shadows, pausing at the foot of the stairs to look up toward his room and then, slowly, slowly--reach movement as intense and stylized as the movements of a dance--beginning to climb ... the stairs creaking under their weight ... coming closer ....

David was crying now, almost without realizing that he was. His heart was thudding as if it would tear itself out of his chest, beating faster and faster as the pressure of fear built up inside him, shaking him, chuffing out, "Run, run, run! Don't let them trap you in here! Run!"

Before he had realized what he was doing, he had pulled open the door to his room and was in the long corridor outside.

Away from the patch of light from his doorway, the corridor was deadly black and seemed to stretch endlessly away into distance. Slowly, step by step, he forced himself into the darkness, one hand on the corridor wall, one hand clutching the silver knife. Although he was certain that every shadow that loomed up before him would turn out to be a silently waiting clown, he didn't even consider switching on the hallway light. Instinctively, he knew that the darkness would hide him. Make no noise, stay close to the wall. They might miss you in the dark. Knife in hand, he walked on down the hall, feeling his finger tips rasp along over wood and tile and wallpaper, his eyes strained wide. Into the darkness.

His body knew where he was going before he did. His parents' room. He wasn't sure if he wanted his parents to protect him or if he wanted to protect them from a menace they didn't even know existed and couldn't see, but through his haze of terror, all he could think of was getting to his parents' room. If he could beat the clowns to the second floor, hide in his parents' room, maybe they'd miss him; maybe they wouldn't look for him there. Maybe he'd be safe there ... safe ... the way he used to feel when a thunderstorm would wake him and he'd run sobbing down the hall in the darkness to his parents' room and his mother would take him in her arms.

The staircase, opening up in a well of space and darkness, was more felt than seen. Shoulder against the wall, he felt his way down the stairs, lowering one foot at a time, like a man backing down a ladder. The well of darkness rose up around him and slowly swallowed him. Between floors, away from the weak, pearly light let in by the upstairs-landing window, the darkness was deep and smothering, the air full of suspended dust and the musty smell of old carpeting. Every time the stairs creaked under his feet, he froze, heart thumping, certain that a clown was about to loom up out of the inky blackness, as pale and terrible as a shark rising up through black midnight water.

He imagined the clowns moving all around him in the darkness, swirling silently around him in some ghostly and enigmatic dance, unseen, their fingers not quite touching him as they brushed by like moth wings in the dark ... the bushy fright wigs puffed out around their heads like sinister nimbi ... the ghostly white faces, the dead-black costumes, the gleaming-white gloves reaching out through the darkness.

He forced himself to keep going, fumbling his way down one more step, then another. He was clutching the silver knife so hard that his hand hurt, holding it up high near his chest, ready to strike out with it.

The darkness seemed to open up before him. The second-floor landing. He felt his way out onto it, sliding his feet flat along the floor, like an ice skater. His parents' room was only a few steps away now. Was that a noise from the floor below, the faintest of sounds, as if someone or something were slowly climbing up the stairs?

His fingers touched wood. The door to his parents' room. Trying not to make even the slightest sound, he opened the door, eased inside, closed the door behind him and slowly threw the bolt.

He turned around. The room was dark, except for the hazy moonlight coming in the window through the half-opened curtains; but after the deeper darkness of the hall outside, that was light enough for him to be able to see. He could make out bulky shapes under the night-gray sheets, and, as he watched, one of the shapes moved slightly, changing positions.

They were there! He felt hope open hot and molten inside him, and he choked back a sob. He would crawl into bed between them as he had when he was a very little boy, awakened by nightmares ... he would nestle warmly between them ... he would be safe.

"Mom?" he said softly. "Dad?" He crossed the room to stand beside the bed. "Mom?" he whispered. Silence. He reached out hesitantly, feeling a flicker of dread even as he moved, and slowly pulled the sheet down on one side••

And there was the clown, staring up at him with those terrible, opaque, expressionless blue eyes, smiling his unchanging painted smile.

David plunged the knife down, feeling it bite into the spongy resistance of muscle and flesh.

"There was a clown sitting in the chair, sitting and rocking, watching the kids in the swimming pool."

"David could see Mr. Thorne jerk in surprise as he felt the white-gloved hands close over him."