The Guild of Fallen Clowns (25 page)

“Rule number three: You must never attempt
to destroy our statue. We will stop you and you will pay a heavy
price.”

“A heavy price?” Cheryl questioned.

From behind, Agor temporarily stopped his
circular pace around her. He leaned in, and she cringed from the
heat of his breath on her neck.

“Do you love your children, Cheryl?” he
said.

“I’m sorry, Agor. Please don’t hurt my
children. I won’t do anything to it. I promise.”

Agor backed away and continued his path. “We
thought so,” he said. “Rule number four: You must never distance
yourself more than a half mile from our statue.”

Cheryl nodded.

“Now, this final rule will be the most
difficult of all for you. Each day you must spend a minimum of one
hour in the thickest center of crowds.”

Panic overtook her. “No! I can’t do that.
Please don’t ask me to do that. I’ll do everything you ask, but I
can’t do that. Please, anything but that.”

Agor smiled as she continued pleading.

“We thought you would reject that one.
You’ve just earned that demonstration we promised you.”

Cheryl’s face turned to fear. “No, please
don’t,” she said as she started backing to the corner of the room.
Agor giggled and four figures appeared behind her, preventing her
retreat. Those four giggled and another group of at least ten Agors
of various sizes popped into the room. All of them faced her and
took turns giggling until the small room was packed with Agor
figures.

Cheryl was forced to the center of the room
as the Agors pushed and shoved, her, and each other, in all
directions. Her legs gave out, but the pressure of the tight crowd
prevented her from falling to the floor. They talked and whispered
to each other and to Cheryl as they squeezed past her. Too drained
to scream, she felt her eyes drift inside her head. She appeared to
be passing out, but it didn’t happen. Her eyes returned and she
wept. Her head drooped and her entire body went limp in total
surrender.

One by one, the figures vanished from the
outside in until just one Agor was holding her up from behind.
Still weak from the experience, she made no attempt to stand free
of him. Agor let out a single syllable of a giggle. Seconds later a
tall, thin Agor entered the room carrying a dining room chair. He
placed it beside the Agor holding Cheryl and faded from sight. Agor
moved her into the seat and then knelt down on one knee in front of
her. Her eyes, drained of life, raised to meet his.

“We can do that all day,” he said. “Or you
can get out among real people for an hour a day. We think we made
our point.”

She nodded as her eyelids closed. With the
room silent for over a minute, her eyes opened. Agor was gone. She
shifted from her slouched posture and scanned the room. It was
clear. She hunched over in the chair and cried into her hands.

Upon entering his kitchen, Alan noticed the
blinking red light on his answering machine.

“Hi, Alan, this is Paula. Hey, I know this
is short notice, but we were hoping Boogy the Clown would be
available Sunday afternoon for a kid’s party at our house. I know
you’re probably busy. If so, I understand. Like I said, this is
short notice. Anyway, we hope you can make it. Call me as soon as
you can so I can make plans.” She gave him her phone number. As
Alan wrote the number on a scrap of paper, a hard knocking came
from his front door.

He was halfway to the door when the
impatient visitor pounded even harder.

“I know you’re in there, Booger!” Lyle
shouted.

The sound of Lyle’s voice slowed Alan’s
pace. He crept the rest of the way. Although he recognized the
voice, he instinctively peeked through the peephole.

Lyle’s eye was on the other side, staring
back. “There you are, Booger. I know you can see me because the
peephole just got dark. Come out here. We have some unfinished
business to take care of.”

Alan ducked away from the peephole, but it
was too late. Lyle wasn’t going away.

“Open the door, clown!” Lyle commanded with
another pound on the door.

He was sure that opening the door would
result in his own beating. If only Lyle’s friends hadn’t shown up
earlier, Spanky might have prevented this situation. Instead of
Alan being a prisoner inside his own apartment, Lyle might have
invited him over for a beer so he could apologize for all of his
past bullying.

Lyle pounded the door again, interrupting
Alan’s thoughts of what might have been. “I knew it. You’ve always
been a coward. I knew you wouldn’t come out here and face me man to
man. You just better be prepared to watch your back, Booger,
because I’ll be watching. You can’t stay in there
forever—coward.”

Alan looked through the peephole to see Lyle
turning to leave. The immediate threat of bodily injury was
replaced by Lyle’s stinging words. The truth was eminently more
painful than any beating he might sustain if he simply opened the
door and faced Lyle’s wrath. Spanky might be able to prevent future
beatings, but hiding now would negate all of Peepers’ work. He was
proud of his progress in facing his fears and he wasn’t about to
give Lyle the power to take that away.

Lyle stopped at his own door when he heard
the unlatching deadbolt from behind. He turned to see Alan’s door
open. Alan stepped out and stared back without expression.

Lyle grinned and sauntered closer to his
target. Alan’s blank stare never lost contact with Lyle’s squinted
eyes. Lyle leaned in to closely examine his prey. He looked up at
Alan and snarled like a vicious animal.

“So, pizza boy does have a spine,” he said
as he moved from side to side, looking for weakness in Alan’s stoic
face. Alan’s eyes casually followed.

Lyle grew impatient at his inability to
break Alan’s resolve. He turned and took a step out of Alan’s
personal space. Then, without warning, he turned with his arms
spread and lunged to within inches of Alan’s face. “Boo!” he
shouted.

Unfazed, Alan kept his body and expression
as relaxed as if he were having a casual conversation with friends.
His head leaned slightly forward and down and in a soft voice he
said, “I’m not a coward, Lyle. You don’t scare me and I would
suggest we just forget about what you did this morning.”

Alan didn’t realize how volatile his offer
of reconciliation would be interpreted by Lyle. As blood flushed
Lyle’s twitching face, Alan slowly withdrew, returning his head
upright.

Bubbling over with uncontrollable rage,
Lyle’s chest puffed out as his arms drew back with clenched fists
cocked and ready for an all-out assault. In the most severe
violation of personal space, his wiry frame rose to the balls of
his feet as he tiptoed to close the inches between them, shoving
his chest into Alan’s. As he fiercely challenged his opponent,
spittle projected from his frothing mouth. “Forget about it?” he
said. “Who the hell do you think you are telling me to forget about
it? I’ll be the one who decides when this is over. And believe me,
Booger, this ain’t over—till I say it’s over.” Lyle’s precarious
balancing act faltered as the toes of his right foot temporarily
gave out. His chest slid sideways down Alan’s before he could
reposition his toes and reestablish his position.

Alan calmly raised his arm, turned his head,
and wiped the splatter of saliva from his face.

Lyle snorted his disapproval and pinned Alan
tight to the wall with two hard chest thrusts. As Alan waited for
Lyle to shift into fighting mode, he wasn’t thinking about the
resulting pain or visit to the emergency room. Instead he was
noticing Lyle’s eyes. It occurred to him that in all the years he’d
lived across the hall from him, he never looked into Lyle’s eyes.
They were green. In addition to the color of his eyes, the rhythmic
throbbing of a vein in Lyle’s forehead also fascinated him. It
pulsed three times to every twitch of his right nostril.

His trance was broken when Lyle lost his
footing again and attempted to make it look like a purposeful move
as he backed off and punched the wall beside Alan’s shoulder. Alan
flinched, but Lyle didn’t notice because he was looking at the
floor as he paced in front of Alan.

“So, this is how it’s gonna be?” Lyle fumed.
“You aren’t going to fight back, huh? You’re just gonna stand there
and let me hit you without defending yourself?” He waited for
Alan’s reply.

“Lyle, I don’t want to fight you. I never
wanted to fight you, but I’m tired of looking over my shoulder. I’m
tired of hiding from you. So, if you feel you must fight me, I’m
not going to run away, but I’m also not going to let you hurt me
without fighting back. I will defend myself.”

“Shut up!” Lyle yelled. “You don’t speak
unless I tell you to.”

“But you asked me—”

“I said shut up!” His pacing intensified.
Then as if Alan hadn’t answered his question, he said, “Well, I’m
not going to hit someone who won’t fight back. I fight fair.”

Alan started to correct him when Lyle
quickly cut him off. “I know what I can do. I know how to get even
with you, you stupid clown.” He turned and ran down the stairs.
Alan was confused but curious to know where he went. He walked down
the stairs and as he turned the corner in the direction Lyle ran,
he heard glass smashing.

Alan’s car was parked in front of the
building next door, and Lyle broke his passenger side window.
Gripping a brick, he looked back at Alan and laughed and hopped
around like the Riddler from
Batman
.

“What are you going to do about it, Booger?”
Before Alan could respond, he dropped the brick and ran in the
opposite direction, laughing and occasionally glancing back until
he disappeared from sight.

Alan decided to wait till the next morning
to clean up the mess. The bully was still out there somewhere, and
with Lyle’s crazed state of mind, Alan didn’t want to take any
chances of running into him. He felt lucky to have escaped physical
injury, but he didn’t want to press his luck. He returned to his
apartment, locked the door, and peeked through the peephole.

Turning away from the door, he closed his
eyes, lowered his head, and took in a deep breath. He held it in
for a few seconds. He exhaled and slowly opened his eyes, raised
his head, and focused on the sculpting and casting supplies neatly
stacked in the corner of the room.

Huddled tightly together beneath the
building that housed the Labyrinth, Todd and his two fraternity
brothers quietly waited as carnival employees escorted the last
guests from the grounds and began securing the structures for the
night. The three boys had wedged themselves in a space so cramped
that with their bellies on the dirt, there was only an inch or two
of clearance above. Corrugated metal panels blocked the
crawlspace’s access to all but the small area below the building’s
rear steps.

The Ringmaster and other workers left twenty
minutes earlier. The boys grew impatient as their muscles cramped
from the long wait for Geno to leave for the night. From their
position below the structure, they could hear Geno’s footsteps
mixed with thundering sounds of panels being dragged inches above
them in what must have been a major transformation inside.

“Let’s go, Todd. He’s never going to
leave.”

“Patience,” Todd whispered. “We’ve waited
this long. We can’t leave now.”

“How much longer do you want to wait? I say
we leave if he doesn’t come out in the next five minutes,” the
third boy said.

“Okay,” Todd said. “Ten more minutes. If he
doesn’t come out in the next ten minutes, we’ll blow out of
here.”

One boy rested his head on his hand while
Todd kept watch through the steel grid landing above. The boys
raised their heads as the sound of footsteps came from directly
above. The three braced as Todd shushed his friends. Geno opened
the door and stepped onto the grid above them.

“Finally,” whispered the boy to the right of
Todd. Todd turned toward his friend and angrily placed his index
finger over his closed lips.

Unaware of the spectators below, Geno turned
and closed the door. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a
key.

“Oh shit, he’s locking it,” Todd whispered.
The boy next to him gave him a nudge. Todd turned to see his finger
over his lips. The next three unmistakable sounds they heard were
the key slipping into the lock, the clicking sound of the deadbolt,
and finally, the key sliding out of the locked door.

The heads of the defeated thrill-seeking
trio simultaneously lowered to the dirt. It never occurred to them
that the building would be locked. In an instant, their plan and
uncomfortably long wait were foiled with the simple sounds of a
door locking.

With their heads still in the dirt, two more
sounds alerted the boys. First was the tinty metallic clang above
them. That was quickly followed by an almost indistinguishable tap
on the hard dirt below Geno’s feet. Heads raised as all six eyes
locked on the source of the sound. Light reflected off the tiny
object less than a foot from their noses. It was the key to the
Haunted Labyrinth of Mirrors. After locking the door, Geno had
fumbled it as he attempted to return the key to his pocket. It
clanged on the metal grate before slipping through one of the
narrow slits to the ground below the stairs. Appearing to be a
silver arrow alerting Geno to the intruders hiding place, the
pointed end was aimed directly at Todd—the ringleader.

“Oh, great,” Geno said.

One of the boys became anxious and
whispered, “It’s over now. He’s going to see us when he looks for
the key.”

Todd shot the boy a glance to shut him up.
As Geno walked down the steps, Todd moved his head as close as
possible to the key and blew a short burst of breath in front of
it, kicking up a tiny cloud of dust. He succeeded in dimming the
reflective surface, making it harder to spot in the dark of
night.