“Look!” said the clown.
The others drew closer, and William could see a streak of something pink upon the orange clown’s tongue before it was released to slide back into its owner’s mouth with a slapping sound. The blue clown raised his finger so William could see what was upon it.
It looked like pink makeup.
Instantly, William was dragged to his feet and brought to one of the dressing tables. He was forced into a chair, and an old cloth handkerchief was stuffed into his mouth. William struggled and tried to cry out, but the cloth smothered the sounds and the clowns held him in place. There were hands on his shoulders, on his legs, on the top of his skull and beneath his jaw, keeping his mouth closed on the gag.
And then the clowns descended upon him, their long tongues unfolding from their mouths, their breaths stale with the lingering taste of tobacco and alcohol. He felt their tongues upon him, licking his face, scouring his eyelids and his cheeks with their tiny barbs, exploring his ears and his lips and his nostrils as they covered him with their saliva. William closed his eyes tightly as his skin began to burn, the pain like the stinging of nettles. Just as he felt sure that he could take no more, the clowns stopped. They stared down upon him, and now there were real smiles beneath the painted ones as their tongues withdrew into the cages of their mouths. They backed away, revealing William’s reflection to him.
Another William stared back at him from the mirror, this one pale-faced and yellow-eyed, with a fixed smile and rosy-red cheeks. The blue clown rubbed William’s head gently, and a handful of William’s dark hair came away in his hand. The other clowns joined in, running their sharp nails through William’s hair until there was nothing of it left but a few stray strands. William’s face crumpled, the tears flowing freely now, but the clown smile never left his face, so that he seemed to be laughing even as he cried, crying harder than he had ever cried before, crying for all that he had now lost and that would never be his again.
“I want my mum,” whimpered William. “I want my dad.”
“No need,” said the blue clown. His accent was thick and foreign, like the ringmaster’s. He looked very old. “No need for family. New family now.”
“Why are you doing this to me?” said William. “Why have you done this to my face?”
“Done?” asked the blue clown, and there was real surprise in his voice. “What done? Done nothing. Clown not learned: Clown chosen in the mudderwomb. Clown does not become: Clown is. Clown is not made: Clown is born.”
And the show went on that night, while William’s parents searched and searched for him; and the police came, and laughter rose from the circus tent as the clowns drove on in their happy jalopy and gave balloons to the children, the hated children, and when they left there were smiles on the faces of nearly all of those in the audience, except for the very clever children who sensed that there was more to clowns than bright suits and funny cars and oversized feet, and that if you were wise you didn’t laugh at them, and you stayed out of their way, and you never pried into their business, for clowns are lonely and angry and want company in their misery. They are always seeking, always searching, always looking for new clowns to join them.
The Circus Caliban was gone the next day, and there was no sign that it had ever visited the town. The police looked, but William was never seen again, and a new clown was added to the act of the Circus Caliban when next it appeared at the edge of a forest in a country far, far from this one. He was smaller than the rest, and seemed always to be looking into the laughing audience, searching for the parents that he still hoped would find him, but they never came.
And his teeth fell out and were replaced by sharp white hooks that were kept hidden behind shields of plastic; and his nails decayed to hard yellow stumps at the end of soft, pale fingers. He grew tall and strong, until at last he forgot his name and became only “Clown,” and a great clown he was. His tongue grew like a snake’s, and he tasted children with it as they laughed, for clowns are hungry and sad and envious of humanity. They travel from town to town looking for those that they can steal away, always marking the child that kicks in the womb, and always finding him upon their return.
For clowns are not made.
Clowns are born.
Deep, Dark Green
We should never have gone near Baal’s Pond. We should have stayed far away from it as we were told, as we had always been told, but young men will follow young girls and do their bidding. That is the way of things, and it will always be the way. Hindsight is worse than blindness, and pleasure and regret walk hand in hand.
And so we had gone to that place, Catherine and I. I had been lured by the promise in her eyes, deafened by the demands of my own appetites. I was young. I did not understand what those appetites could create, how they could be transformed, mutated, degraded.
How they could find form in the being that dwelt in Baal’s Pond.
I think of Catherine often, now that the hour of my own passing approaches. I find myself staring at my reflection on the surface of the lake near my home. I throw a stone and watch my face come apart in ripples, one visage briefly becoming many as I am drawn back to the last day that I spent with her. It becomes harder and harder to depart from such places now, for since her death part of me has always been lost in dark water.
The pain of the disease that is eating away at my insides is relentless, but I think that I shall not wait for my body to betray me. Instead, I will join her in the depths and hope that she will come to me, her mouth against mine as I breathe my last, and yet I have lived with her loss for so long that the thought of being reunited with her is almost too much to bear.
There have been other women since Catherine, although none remained by my side for very long. I was not entirely sorry to see them go. In truth, I found that I came to fear them, and so was unable to open myself fully to them. I was afraid of their desires, their rapaciousness, their ability to draw a man inside them and make him lose himself in the promise of their flesh. Is that not a terrible confession for a man to make? Sometimes I feel that it is. At other times, though, I believe that perhaps I am merely more honest than most of my fellows. My eyes have been opened, and I have seen the worm that coils in the apple of temptation.
So I am alive and Catherine is dead, and her body will never be found. It lies at the bottom of Baal’s Pond, far in the tainted reaches, down where it is green.
Deep, dark green.
There had always been something strange about that place. A long time before, so long ago that none of those responsible, or their children, or their children’s children, remained alive to tell of it, the river was redirected through a small glen. Somehow-it was said that stolen kegs of gunpowder were used-the banks were blown apart and the waters rushed downhill into the little valley, flooding it completely before resuming their original course half a mile farther on. People from distant villages gathered to watch the event, and the only sound to be heard before the gunpowder exploded was the soft uttering of prayers, the rattle of the beads, and the dull clanking of a chain from the cottage far below, as a presence within tried desperately to free itself.