Boo! Read online

  Boo!

  by

  David Haynes

  Copyright © David Haynes 2016. All Rights Reserved. No part of this document may be reproduced without written consent from the author

  Edited by

  Storywork Editing Services

  Cover artwork by

  Go on Write

  To find out more about David Haynes and his books visit his Blog

  David Haynes Horror Writer

  or follow him on twitter

  @Davidhaynes71

  For Sarah, George and our own fearless greyhound, Tommy.

  Table of Contents

  1

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  3

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  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

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  1

  Maldon Williams was nine years old when he saw a clown murder his parents. The clown used a kitchen knife to cut their throats from ear to ear, and blood dripped down the walls in thick, oozing rivers. Apart from his birthday party, that was the only thing Maldon remembered about being nine.

  Mum had kicked and thrashed, her slippered feet sliding and slipping on the bloody floor, but Dad had been silent. Other than the sound of his gurgled last breath, he had not made a noise. Perhaps it was the shock.

  The clown had seen Maldon, watching like that in the doorway. How could he miss him?

  “Boo!” the clown said and smiled, his grin impossibly wide. A bubble of blood burst on the tip of his bright red nose and sprayed like a snotty sneeze all over Maldon’s face.

  Then the clown had left, as quickly and quietly as he came in. He walked out of the door with his frizzy orange wig bouncing on his head like a dreamy cloud.

  And all the time, the carnival music played in Maldon’s ears. Just like in the big top when the clowns rode their tiny bicycles and threw pies at each other. It played and it played.

  *

  It had been a very long time until Maldon felt able to look at, or even think about, a clown again. But then he read a book that truly changed his life. That book brought him here tonight. It led him to this very place. It invited him to meet the killer clown and to take back something the clown had stolen from him on that night. His smile.

  “Now then, Bingo, where shall we begin?” Maldon sat on the chair opposite the clown and opened up the book.

  Bingo couldn’t answer, of course, because he had a ball gag in his mouth. He couldn’t move either. The rope made sure of that.

  “Sorry, you’ll just have to be a mime clown tonight.” He lifted the book and looked at the cover. It was as awful as it was wonderful. The needle teeth, the festering dark cavern of the clown’s mouth and the hideous bloody diamonds around his eyes were hypnotic. He turned it around and showed it to his restrained clown. Their faces were slightly different. He didn’t have the needle teeth for one and his hair was more red than orange, but Maldon knew he was in the right place. He had the right clown.

  “This is my copy, one of the early editions. One of the best covers, I think.” He could feel an excited buzz zipping through his body. It wasn’t just the impending atrocity he was about to commit. No, just talking about the book gave him an intoxicated dizziness that came from nothing else. Nothing man-made or otherwise came close to it.

  He smiled and looked over at Bingo’s bookcase. “But you probably already knew that. I must admit to being a little envious, Bingo. Five copies! You have five copies of the book and all of them signed by Ben Night himself! It’s incredible. Ahead of its time, that’s what it was. Everyone’s doing it now but back then putting a ‘z’ at the end of the word ‘clown’ made it stand apart. Gave it an edge. A nasty, sharp and jagged edge too!”

  Bingo wriggled and made more grunting noises in response. Maldon wasn’t surprised that Bingo was trying to join in the conversation, he was clearly a huge fan.

  He turned the book around and looked at the cover again. It was that which had first attracted him to the book, or more accurately, stunned him into picking it up.

  It had been on the book trolley, right at the bottom, but as he trawled through the dog-eared and slightly sticky collection of thrillers, he found himself staring into the eyes of his parents’ killer. Right down to the droplet of blood on the end of its nose. It was a face he had been trying hard not to remember ever since, but it was one even drugs couldn’t entirely obliterate.

  And here he was. The killer clown from the kitchen. As bold as brass on the cover of a book.

  “Pick one, Mouldy,” the guard had said. “Time to go beddy-byes.” And he had taken Clownz back to his cell and read it for as long as the light stayed on. Even when they turned off the lights, he tried to read some more.

  In the book, Sparkles The Clown travelled up and down the country slitting throats and eating the part of the brain that made people laugh. It wasn’t much more than a chewy lump of gristle but inside it was the unimaginable power of smile. Eating it kept the painted smile on Sparkles’s face and it kept his nose the brightest red imaginable. Some people had a better sense of humour than others, some were quicker to laugh and others barely knew how to smile. But children loved to laugh all the time. They were especially delicious and they made his smile run from ear to ear and his nose drip with blood.

  It was no surprise that Bingo loved the same book. He had, after all, stolen Maldon’s smile in just the same way.

  How many times had he read that book? Too many to count. He’d read all of Ben Night’s books more than twice but Clownz at least twenty times. It was never very far away from him.

  When people said that books spoke to them, they were right. From the moment Maldon read the book, he had been utterly and horrifically transfixed by Sparkles. But it wasn’t until a short time ago that the book had changed from being a graphic piece of fiction into something else. It had become his inspiration, his instruction manual and his reason for living. Why he hadn’t considered it earlier was irrelevant. From that moment on, from the moment the thought crystallised itself and attached its wiry tendrils onto his brain, he knew what he must do. He had to kill the clown who had taken his smile. The clown called Bingo.

  He shook his head. How he had found the book, how Sparkles had inspired him, barely mattered. Bingo was here, in front of him; the clown who had stolen his smile and kept it for his own. If it weren’t for the book, he wouldn’t be here now.

  He stood up and pressed the tip of the knife to the clown’s cheek.

  “My smile is in there somewhere and I want it back. You killed them!”

  Bingo grunted. It was all he could do.

  In the days when heroin had been king, Maldon had been a good burglar. Not so good that he never got caught but good enough to get away with hundreds before the police finally got hold of him. He’d been a bit rusty, but breaking into the clown’s house was easy. An unsecure kitchen window, a little shimmy through and then it was just a matter of waiting for him to come home.

  The look on Bingo’s face when he saw someone waiting behind the door was priceless. He could have laughed at that himself but he hadn’t, he’d just said, “Boo!” and held the kitchen knife up for emphasis. Bingo went on and on about money. Even as he was being tied up, he was talking about how much he had and where it was. It was boring and Maldon tuned it out. All he was thinking about was how it would feel to smile again.

  He leaned in closer and looked at the paint on the clown’s face. Even though he was i
n control, just being so close to a clown made his stomach flutter with nerves. The white paint wasn’t quite as bright as it had been earlier. Tears had made two dirty-looking ravines in his cheeks and his big, red smile wasn’t quite as wide any more, but he was still a clown. A murdering, laughter-eating clown.

  “What are you without this mask, I wonder? What lies beneath the mask of a clown?” He traced the tip of the knife down the bridge of the clown’s nose. “Shall we find out?”

  Bingo started to struggle. His voice was nothing but a muffled series of grunts and his body swayed from side to side as he tried to tip the chair over.

  *

  Maldon was forced to kill Bingo before he finished removing his mask. He had struggled so much that the mask started to get untidy around the edges. He threw it onto the floor and it landed with a slap.

  He stood back and closed his eyes. He was waiting for the smile that had been taken from him all those years ago to magically return. Taking the clown’s mask was the only thing that could bring it back. It had to be. Yet as he stood there, he felt no different. He touched his lips. They were still the same lifeless lumps of flesh they had always been. Where was it? Why hadn’t it returned? A terrible sense of deflation washed over him. It wasn’t supposed to feel like this.

  He put Clownz back in his holdall, along with his bloody gloves, overalls and a selection of Bingo’s clown costumes. He didn’t know why he wanted to take them, he just did. It felt right.

  He took a few steps toward the kitchen and admired his wall art. A pattern of blood not dissimilar to the one in his parents’ kitchen.

  “Boo!” He smiled as he spoke the word. He’d written it with the tip of the knife and used the blood like ink. It was a bit scratchy but it was okay. It was Sparkle’s catchphrase in the book when he was in the act of slicing someone’s face off.

  Was that someone laughing? He cocked his head and waited. No, it was just someone outside on the street. He started walking again and the laughter came through once more, only it was louder. And closer.

  He turned around. There was nobody here except him and Bingo, what was left of him anyway.

  “Hello?”

  The laughter came back as a reply. “You got me, Maldon. You got me good and proper.”

  He took a step forward, toward the discarded mask, and bent down. Bingo’s face lay on the blood-spattered carpet, looking up at him with hollow eyes. Where his nose should have been was just a jagged hole.

  “Are you talking to me?” As he stared into the dark pools where his eyes should have been, the faint tinkle of carnival music filtered through. It was beautiful.

  “You bet I am! Now get me off this filthy carpet and take me home.”

  Maldon fell back. The clown’s lips had moved. Those big, red, banana-shaped lips had moved in time with the words. Yet how could this be?

  “You… you took my childhood away from me, you destroyed everything!”

  “That was him, not me. I’m hurt you don’t recognise me! It’s me, Sparkles. Your best buddy, Sparkles! You can’t just leave me here now you’ve liberated me. Please take me home, Maldon. I’m tired.”

  Maldon opened his mouth to reply and then stopped. The music was louder again and the tune was terribly off-key. It was hideous yet hypnotic.

  “I promise not to eat your brains out. I’m not sure you’ve got much fun inside you anyway. I reckon you might make me cry, not laugh, but I can help you change that. You’ll smile again, Maldon.”

  “I have got fun inside me. I can laugh like everyone else!” He tried to laugh but he didn’t know how.

  “Pathetic! Take me home and we’ll have some real fun.”

  “We will?” Maldon felt like a child.

  “Sure we will. Reeeeeaaaallll fun!”

  Maldon pushed himself back up and touched Sparkles. He expected the mask to be cold but it felt warm, almost hot. The music blared briefly in his ears. It really was him. It was really Sparkles.

  “There, that’s better. In the bag and off we go.”

  He cradled Sparkles and lowered him gently into the bag. There was a muffled grunt and then the circus music was gone.

  “Steady on there, my man. You’ll have me all battered and bruised!”

  Maldon felt a strange sensation in his throat. It was as if something was trying to force its way out of him. Was it laughter?

  He hummed along with the music. It had been a long time since it played in his ears like this. A very long time. He missed it terribly.

  2

  Ben Night hated selfies and not just because they made him look old. He hated them because getting that close to someone he didn’t know made him itch. Bumping heads with someone who had obvious hair-hygiene issues made him want to vomit. It probably meant there were other hygiene issues too. But he couldn’t afford to think about those other issues when he was having his photo taken. No, that would give him the look of someone about to cry. As well as someone with a double chin.

  “Done?” he asked the boy. He was sure there had been two clicks of the camera already.

  “One more,” the boy replied and gave the camera a thumbs-up sign. Ben did the same and pulled away. The boy’s hair smelled of fried food, onions and stale sweat. He walked away without saying anything else. He was staring at his phone.

  “My pleasure,” he whispered.

  “Pleased to meet you, Mr Night.” The next fan offered her hand and he took it. Now this was more like it. What was she? Twenty-five, a little older maybe but at least twenty years younger than him.

  “Pleased to meet you. Shall I sign your book?” he asked.

  She blushed slightly and slid it across the table. “Could you make it out to Fleur, please?

  He opened her copy of ‘Howl’ and started writing.

  “You gave me nightmares for weeks after reading this. It’s why I started writing.”

  Ben looked up. “Really? That’s great to hear. I did a good job then.” He carried on writing.

  ‘To Fleur, maybe one day you’ll give me nightmares. Ben.’

  He slid it across the table to her. She read the inscription and immediately smiled. She really was very pretty.

  “Selfie?” he asked.

  “I hate them,” she replied. “They always make me look bad.”

  Wasn’t that typical? “Me too.”

  There was silence for a moment and then Ben spoke again. “Well it was nice meeting you, Fleur, and thank you for reading my books.” He offered his hand again and noticed the absence of a ring on her left hand.

  She took it. “And thank you for the message. I’ll treasure it.” She smiled and walked away.

  Ben watched her go. Her long blonde hair swung with each step. It was so long it hung right down to her...

  “Hello, Ben!”

  He looked back, slightly startled by the interruption to his thoughts. A round-faced teenager with bad acne was smiling down at him and had his hand in a bag of pork scratchings.

  “I love selfies!” he announced and reached into his pocket.

  *

  He stood in the shower and waited for the steam to open his pores to scrub away the afternoon. Book signings were good for half an hour, but after that the joy of the occasion wore off very quickly. He loved his readers, he loved each and every one of them – at a distance. On the end of an email or a letter was great, but not so much in person. There had been one exception today. The blonde girl, Fleur, had been pretty, very pretty and also very out of his league.

  He climbed out and dried himself. One good thing about hotel rooms was that the towels were always clean. You didn’t have to worry about washing them. Maybe he should move into a hotel, permanently.

  All he wanted now was to have something to eat, drink a couple of beers and sleep. He needed to get home early tomorrow, collect Stan and get back to work. He had a couple of ideas that wouldn’t keep quiet, and he wanted to get them down before they felt he was ignoring them and ran away. He hated that thought. Imagining
that those little magic lights could just slip away, out of his head, and find another writer’s head to fizz into.

  There had been a time when all he had to do was sit at his desk and listen to those little sparks zipping around like tiny fireflies in his head. Each one carrying a little light bulb with idea etched on the side. Two or three of them would get together and pretty soon there would be hundreds of them bumping into each other, burning like the sun. That’s where the books came from.

  You couldn’t write a book if those little fireflies died before they found their mate, though. If their wings fell off, they just fell to the floor like dirty bluebottles, buzzing and black. The carpet in his office was covered in thousands of little black corpses that only he could see.

  Ben dressed quickly, picked up his book and went downstairs to the restaurant. Hotels like this served the same sort of food wherever you went. Steak, chicken or, if you were lucky, a mixed grill. He wanted steak, a great big juicy lump of meat, and some good chips on the side. All washed down with a couple of bottles of cold lager. Just what the doctor ordered. Especially when his agent was paying for it.

  The restaurant/bar was quiet which was good. He didn’t particularly like eating late but it allowed the fans time to clear out and give him some peace. He strolled across to the bar and ordered a bottle of lager, then took it to a table by the window and looked at the menu. Curry, lamb shank, mixed grill, Hunter’s chicken and ah, there we go, 12oz rib-eye steak.

  He put the menu down and looked out of the window.

  It was dark outside and there were people milling about, waiting for taxis or dates or just for something to happen. It wasn’t very interesting so his focus shifted onto his own reflection. That was a little more interesting but not in a particularly pleasing way. He looked old, older than he was. Fairly soon the publisher was going to have to change the photograph in his books. That picture showed how Ben looked ten years ago. On a good day.