Chasing Clowns: A Novel (Girl Clown Hatchet Suspense Series Book 2) Read online

  Chasing Clowns

  Girl Clown Hatchet Series, Book Two

  Mav Skye

  Contents

  Part 1

  Her Fear Diary

  His Journal

  1. Moving Day

  2. Dead Sunset Red

  3. First Things First

  Part 2

  Her Fear Diary

  His Journal

  4. Lost and Found

  5. Carnival Circus

  6. Rain Remembers

  7. Hissing Shadows

  8. The First to Dance

  9. The Beast Within

  10. The Horned One

  Part 3

  Her Fear Diary

  His Journal

  11. The Setting Sun

  12. True Blue

  13. Clowns are Funny, Not Scary

  14. Angels and Devils

  15. Juggling Species

  16. Cleave

  Part 4

  Her Fear Diary

  His Journal

  17. The Voices in Your Head

  18. Heisenberg Rules

  19. The Boy and the Sparrow

  20. Burt

  21. Here They Come

  22. A Case of John Wayne Gacy

  23. Uktena

  24. Death on a Unicyle

  25. Clown with a Chainsaw

  About the Author

  Also by Mav Skye

  Chasing Clowns, Girl Clown Hatchet Series, Book Two is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living, dead, or undead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2017 by Mav Skye

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, please contact the author at the following email address: [email protected]

  For Sharon, Erin, Diana and Thomas

  Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.

  Chief Seattle

  History abhors a paradox.

  Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver

  I must fear. Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

  Frank Herbert, Dune

  Part I

  Her Fear Diary

  What I fear most is the clown with a hatchet haunting my dreams.

  It isn’t the hatchet he swings at my face or the hiss that whistles between those sharp, needle teeth. It isn’t the lightning bolt splitting his face down the middle. Nor is it the torn, faded bunny ears or beepy nose or suspenders with laughing skulls.

  No.

  It’s his eyes, those stormy gray eyes. They haunt me. His whole face screams SERIAL KILLER, and yet his eyes are so kind and…sad. They change colors sometimes. They change from gray to teal. I’m not sure if that eye color even exists, at least I’ve never seen eyes that color before. But honestly, it isn’t the color, but the way they make me feel.

  It makes me feel like I’m missing something. Someone. I become aware of an empty spot in my heart that longs to be filled. It haunts me in the dark. It lingers during the day. It’s as if the person(s) behind those eyes are here, but just barely out of reach like a ghost or a memory.

  A haunted memory.

  And I think that’s even worse than being chased by a clown.

  His Journal

  Boss wants me to get creative—wax poetic, he tells me.

  I says, I’ve heard of waxed clowns, and I’ve heard of creative poets, but who ever heard of waxing poet clowns? That’s just disgusting.

  Boss gives me this tight smile which looks so tiny on his fat face, and he says, Well, I guess you’ll be the first.

  So, I tell him. I says, There’s one rule clowns abide by—and only one.

  Boss says, Wasst’at?

  I says, Make them mofos laugh.

  Your point? Boss asks.

  I say, Clowns don’t do poetry.

  Boss says, Eh, stop being a smartass and write a poem. I wanna hear it at tomorrow morning’s show.

  Or, I ask?

  Boss says, Or you’re fired.

  Dum, dum, dum, dum…

  I need the boos—as in booze—get it?

  So here goes:

  I keep a cavern underground

  Like a phantom, I creep around

  Creating colors on long halls

  Streaking clown tears down the walls

  I drink in the morning, noon, and night

  Til’ this gig is up, and I give up the fight

  P. S. My poetry sucks almost worse than I do.

  1

  Moving Day

  CHLOE GRIPPED THE HATCHET RESTING IN the maple stump. As her fingers closed around the red handle, she could hear the old voices start up in her head:

  Joey and Chloe sitting in the tree

  K-I-S-S-I-N-G

  First comes love

  Then comes the hatchet

  Joey hacks up Chloe

  And sews her skin into a jacket

  Gruesome. When in her childhood had she heard that? The rhyme had been haunting her this past year. The only conclusion Chloe had come to was that kids back in the day were more grisly than in today’s PC world.

  Who was Joey? The name brought a slight ache to Chloe’s insides. She didn’t want the memories, but they came anyway. Doctor Morgan said it was only a matter of time before it would happen. Chloe pushed the childhood mocking away and yanked the hatchet out of the stump, almost slipping backward on the wet lawn.

  She rested the gleaming edge against her palm. The sunlight reflected off the steel, momentarily blinding her. In her peripheral vision, she saw him.

  About the clown’s head wisped torn, pink bunny ears splattered with blood. A jagged line separated his painted face: half white, half black. A comical nose sat above the exaggerated crimson grin. When he opened his mouth, all Chloe could see were white needle-like teeth. A hiss whistled through them like the slow release of air from a balloon.

  The clown’s eyes weren’t stormy gray as they were in her dreams, neither were they a brooding teal—no, they were black holes. Not holes as in graves, but the black holes in outer space, absorbing all matter into an infernal chaos of cold and nothingness. Through the clown’s hissing teeth, she heard a word, a single word that wasn’t a word at all, but a name: Mr. Jingles.

  “Mom!”

  Chloe dropped the hatchet. She felt her eight year old son’s hands on her forearms, shaking her. The clown slipped away from the sunlight.

  “Mom! You’re doing it again. Mom, breathe!” Chev’s hands slipped inside hers. They felt warm, comforting. Chloe’s lungs loosened, and she inhaled through her nose. Exhaled.

  “That’s good, Mom.” Chev gave her a wide smile, squeezed her hand, then dipped to the ground.

  Chloe nodded and breathed as Doctor Morgan had taught her. Old memories had been breaking through her dreams at night, but she’d been dealing with them one at a time. Starting therapy again had been helpful, and she’d wished she started sooner than ten weeks ago, about the t
ime when Wes applied for the loan. On the day that it went through, she had put in her notice at the city police department, and they began looking for a place to rent in Spindler.

  Spindler, they told her she grew up there, but she had no memory of it. Even the name didn’t ring a bell.

  Doctor Morgan and Aunt Tanya were dead set against it. She appreciated their care, but at thirty-six she didn’t need nor want their protection anymore. She was ready to face anything her past could throw at her.

  Anything.

  Anything except…gah, she’d admit it. Chloe was ready to face anything except that freaky clown with a hatchet.

  He wasn’t real. Chloe knew that. Doctor Morgan called them day terrors—a nicer way of saying flashbacks—and possible hallucinations resulting from trauma combined with heavy medication taken in her younger years. Remnants of the medication stored in her spinal fluid occasionally released a zap of memory.

  Chev stood up, holding the hatchet, a birthday gift from his Uncle, Wes’ brother. Chloe reached out and messed up his dark hair playfully. His hair was soft, and she could smell the WATERMELON BANAZA! shampoo he’d used that morning. Taking note of all five of her senses always brought her back to the now. Here.

  Hold it together, girlfriend. Chloe had gotten a maximum of three hours of sleep the night before. There was always last minute stuff when moving. She and Wes had been up until 2:00 a.m. packing.

  He was on edge, talking about the restaurant, the renovations, how he wasn’t able to apply for a permit until they moved. On and on he had rambled, more to himself than her.

  As soon as they’d finished up for the night and gone to bed, Shayla had started puking, and she had dropped her cell in the toilet while doing it.

  Chloe had woken to the noise, and had risen to comfort her, but she’d only wanted her father.

  Wes had slept out in the living room with Shayla, caring for her the way Chloe wished she could—if Shayla would only let her.

  Shayla had shut herself up in the guest bathroom with a blanket and a book for the entire morning, refusing to talk to anyone except her father. She had only been this way since her birth mother had started planting evil thoughts in her head, like how making Shayla participate in house chores was something that the wicked stepmother had made Cinderella do. And how Chloe was always the one preventing Shayla from attending the “Ball.” Which were really nightclubs that her underage friends went to. It was her father who told her no, not Chloe, but Shayla blamed her anyway—for that and for everything else she felt was terrible in her life.

  Chloe felt like the evil stepmother from a fairytale, though the opposite couldn’t be truer. In the decade that she and Wes had been together, Chloe had grown quite fond of Shayla. She was much like her father, a creative spirit with a love of cooking and an extra wallop of sassy. And she was close with Chev when she wasn’t in a mood.

  Chev reached up and grabbed her hand. “Thanks for finding this, Mom. I’d have been really bummed out if we left it.”

  Chloe nodded, smiling at him. They held hands and walked back to the house. “Are you sure there’s nothing left in your room?”

  “Nope! All packed up. I even looked in the closet.”

  “Did you search your sister’s room?” Chloe opened the sliding glass door leading into the kitchen. She saw Wes and a neighbor slip out the front door with the dining table. “Careful of the legs!” she called after them.

  “We got it!” the neighbor yelled back.

  Chev dropped her hand. “Nah. I didn’t go in her room. I didn’t even touch the door knob.”

  “Why not? Your Dad asked you to. Come on, Chev; you know how busy we are.” Chloe turned from her son and noted the three cardboard boxes stacked up by the kitchen counter. The top box was still open. It held the necessities like a frying pan, coffee pot, phone chargers, spatula. She looked inside and made a note of what was there—hoping she’d remembered everything.

  “I didn’t want to get the pukes.”

  She turned from the box and looked at him sternly. “You’re not going to get the pukes by looking inside your sister’s room.”

  He sighed. “Fine. I didn’t want to go in there…because, her closet.”

  “I thought you were over that.” Chloe lifted the open box and put it on the counter.

  He shook his head. “It still scares me.”

  “It was a bad dream.”

  “It was real, Mom. And I know you’ve seen it, too, because it had the bunny ears with blood on them.”

  Chloe bit her lip and glanced at him. She felt a slight stir inside, and her stomach filled with butterflies. She heard the voices, Joey and Chloe sitting in the tree… but she ignored the taunt and began to draw a picture on the box, beside her husband’s clear handwriting that said KITCHEN. The voices faded and she glanced up, giving Chev “the look.” He knew that talking about her past brought up her PTSD. She sternly said, “Cheveyo Wesley Jackson.”

  He whispered. “Sorry.”

  She motioned him over as she finished up her drawing. Upon seeing it, he giggled. “Mafia Mama versus Spiders. I love it when you draw Mafia Momma cartoons.”

  “Just don’t tell my boss.” She offered him the marker.

  “But Officer Henry isn’t your boss anymore cuz were moovvvinnnggggg.” He drew out the word, sounding more or less like a cow. Wes had told him Spindler was a farming town, but it wasn’t. Chloe had googled pictures on the internet. Wes was so caught up in the clouds about the restaurant that he’d hardly stopped to consider anything else. Chloe hadn’t told Chev much about her past, mostly because she didn’t know much about her past, but her son knew talking about the clown with the bunny ears would trigger a strong reaction in her.

  Chloe said, “Want to draw pictures on the boxes while I go check Shayla’s room?”

  Chev shook his head and held up the hatchet. “I’ve got to get this in the moving truck. Dad said to give it to him if I find it.”

  “Okie dokes.” Chloe smiled as the boy turned and ran off. She searched the kitchen for an empty box, found the last one, and walked down the hall to Shayla’s room. She could hear her husband’s voice in the living room, talking to the neighbor about the kitchen in the new restaurant, how it was all steel with gas burners.

  At the door, she stopped and gently loosened a Ramones poster off the outside of it. Chloe knocked and walked into the room, rolling the poster up. The room was empty except a small lamp in the corner. It was sitting on top of a book. She unplugged it, wrapped up the chord, and set it in the box, then picked up the book.

  It was Chloe’s first edition hardback of Stephen King’s IT. Her Aunt had given it to her years ago.

  She opened the book to the title page and touched her Aunt’s handwriting.

  To Chloe,

  May you face your fears.

  Aunt Tanya

  A big glob of dried ketchup rested below the handwriting. Chloe closed the book and frowned. She’d wish Shayla would ask before getting into her bookshelf. It was then she heard a noise from the closet. Startled, she dropped the book into the box. It made a loud noise as the massive spine hit the lamp, sending a sharp crack through the glass.

  “Shoot.” Shayla was going to throw a fit.

  She heard the noise again, and she froze; eyes focused on the white double doors of the closet. It wasn’t the house settling, nor was it the heater turning on or off. It had been a relatively warm autumn.

  She slowly moved toward the closet door, and she heard a quiet hiss... Stop it, she thought to herself, stop it and open the dumb door. It’s just a radio, a walkie-talkie—not that we own a walkie-talkie.

  She swung the door open wide.

  And it was there, the clown was standing there with its long bunny ears drooped to its shoulders, holding a shiny new hatchet. The painted on smile rose, showing fangs.

  A voice in the back of her mind sang, Dance, dance, dance!

  The clown swung the sharp blade at her… and the room began to spi
n.

  Wes’ voice panicked in the background. “Chloe? Chloe!”

  Her legs gave out beneath her as the world spun and spun like a top on a polished black mirror. She tried to hold onto her consciousness, willing herself to brave the chaos, but the top whirled her into the kaleidoscope of the eternal night that had consumed so much of her past. Would it devour her future as well? The night did not answer, nor would it.

  2

  Dead Sunset Red

  CHLOE AWOKE TO HER AUNT TANYA’S voice. She was talking to someone on her cell. “I’m very concerned. They leave tomorrow and I just don’t think she’s… Yes, I know it’s her choice, but I’m worried the stress will… No, I don’t think she’s a danger to anyone, but I’m worried. Seems like you should be more worried, too. I think we should increase her—”

  “Increase my what?” asked Chloe.

  Tanya whirled around to find Chloe sitting up and looking at her. Her aunt grappled for words. “Therapy sessions.”

  Chloe rolled her eyes like she had when she was a teenager, and fell back on the couch, moaning when her head touched the pillow.

  Tanya whispered into her phone, hung up, then forced a smile. “Sweetheart, how are you?” She picked up an icepack from a bowl sitting on the Cherrywood side table beside the couch, and offered it to Chloe.

  Chloe stared at her aunt for a minute, not feeling like talking after listening to her aunt talking to Doctor Morgan, no doubt, about Chloe as if she were a child. She took the icepack and put it on the knot on the back of her head.

  “Why am I here? Where’s Wes…”

  “I had him drive you here after you fainted. He had plenty of help to finish up by himself.”