THE CLOWN

THUD THUD THUD

Voice of his footsteps circling around her boomed. She kept her sweating palms clasped in her lap. The ticking of the grandfather clock was her only companion.

“Bibiti babiti boo! A right scoop of Vanilla poop! Bibiti Babiti boo!” and a chuckle rang alarms in her ears.

Isabella didn’t remember how HE ended up here. All she knew for now was that she was in the dark cellar with HIM. Snowflakes embellished her garden in the cold wintery night but the temperature in there had reached its pinnacle. 

HE stopped moving.

Her breath caught. Her heart hurried up and blood roared in her ears.

With fearful eyes, she slowly raised her gaze to meet the expected man on her left knowing that HE had a knife and was comically dressed like a clown; knowing that this was a bad idea.

There was no one on her left.

‘But..’

“Boo.”

She jumped at the slight whisper of HIS voice near her right shoulder. But her surprise turned into horror when HE smiled widely-too widely.

A red pompom stuck to his nose tip, black shaded eyes and the grin that stretched literally from ear to ear with brown teeth peeking out.

She could only stare at him with utter terror that had blasted itself into her with full force. Her panicked breathing made him smile wider.

What that smile could go any wider?

His painted lips conveyed satisfaction when tears dropped from her eyes.

“Please..” she begged, “Let-t me g-go. I will give you whatever you wan-t. J-just let me go.. please.”

It didn’t even seem that HE had actually heard it. HE continued to look at her with that same horrifying grin.

“Please..” she said again as more tears dripped.

HE again didn’t listen.

Time stopped.

HIS breathing did too.

No blinking of eyes.

She blinked in confusion. Isabella waved her hands before HIM but he didn’t respond... as if he was dead. Dead statue.

The news was terrorizing and relieving at once. HIS eyes seemed to bore in hers and HIS smile a trap. Her brain said she should just sit right there on that chair in front of which HE had crouched to look at her. But her heart screamed that this could be her only chance of survival.

From the corner of her eye she noticed that light entered from the upstairs door...the cellar door.

If she could make a run, climb the stairs, reach the door, get inside her corridor and lock it before this clown came out of the comatose, she can make it out from here alive.

Isabella stared at HIM, this time there was determination. She slowly lifted her butt and began to walk back towards the staircase, all the while looking at HIM. HE continued to look at the same spot where Isabella was previously. This boosted her confidence.

After moving away a safe distance from HIM and being just a few metres to reach the staircase, she thought she took the decision. Now a turn, a run, and lock. That’s it. She would reach up, call the cops and end HIS nasty game.

HE was still in that statue mode unaware of Isabella’s thoughts. Isabella thought she won when she began to turn with a smile of hope. When she lost contact with HIM, she thought she could run.

Her feet turned and she was about to look up for running.

HE stood right in front of her.

Isabella froze.

Her body went cold when she saw him standing with that same devil grin, same knife and same dead face, blocking her run.

How did he....?

Isabella frowned. She shook her head in disbelieve and looked back at the chair.

HE was again there. Sitting. Staring at the exact same place where Isabella had sat.

No... no..

Isabella didn’t know what to do. She could stare at HIM crouched there where HE had been before HE just emerged again...

Her heart thudded with a fright she had never known before in her life. Not even when she had been nearly killed in an accident when a lorry had hit her car. We don’t fear death. We fear the fear of death. We fear the day when it would stand before us. We fear the pain it would cause us before our souls left. We fear how and the reason we would die.

Like how her reason now crouched there or...

She gulped audibly.

Clenched and unclenched her fists.

Wiped the perspiration from her temple.

She slowly turned, praying it would all be a dream and when she would wake up.

But god didn’t answer hers maybe because HE was there again.

Standing, grinning madly and killing all her hopes with a pack of solitaires this time, offering her.

HIS mischief and his grin made her weak and her legs shaky. Tears built up in her eyes at how helpless she was.  

“Please.. please.. just please. For god’s sake,” she joined her palms and beseeched, “Just let me go. Let me live, please. I promise I won’t speak a word about you.. please let me go.”

But it put no effect on HIM. HE stood there outstretching the solitaires silently asking her to draw one card.

“Please.”

Nothing.

She sobbed. She wanted to look at the ceiling but feared that HE would be there too climbing up there like a mighty lizard and smiling down at her and happily watching her getting miserable.

Defeated, she chose to play along. With trembling hands, she drew a card. Isabella continued to stare at HIM, not wanting to look at the ugly fate she held in her fingers. Her reality was already too scary to be a tolerable nightmare.

When neither of them moved, she looked down at the card. She just hoped HE didn’t crawl here too.

But...

J

O

K

E

R

The scary letters mocked her. It seemed as if HE was laughing at her fate. HE was laughing at her. As if she could hear HIS cold sneering laughter, she looked back it and was shocked.

The card fell from her hand like a basket of snakes.

HIS smile had intensified.

And she knew.

THUDDDD THUDDD THUDDDD         

The violent knocking on the cellar door caught her attention. The wooden door was being rudely thrummed by some unknown entity. It was rocked and nearly broken by the sheer force of the outsider who.. who wanted to come in.

Isabella stood there with her heart in her mouth. She wanted to run from HIM at first but also didn’t want to face what lied beyond. A known devil was better than an unknown one. But in this case, she didn’t want either.

She didn’t know what to do. Should she go and stop what was trying to enter in and give HIM the signal to openly attack her? Or... should she wait for the door to open and face two .. or more at a time..?

The thudding stopped.

Isabella stood until no noise came but her breathing. Nothing. Just the wind blowing with a haunted sound of spirits howling and her own screaming mind to run.

When silence clutched the cellar again, she was about to look back at HIM but then.

The door knob started to turn.

Isabella felt she would faint.

The key of the cellar was in her pocket then how was the door opening?

Isabella could just wait now until the locks were unlocked to reveal her worst nightmare. As the sound of the ages old lock turning continued, she felt all her parts dissembling. And as the last locked clicked and the door began opening, her imaginations went wild.

She began to picture the scariest faces she could see. A slimy, one-eyed being hungry of human flesh, a cannibalistic spirit, a beheaded man or... another HIM?

The last one was too frightening.

She waited for the monster to spring up from there and run and jump and eat her up. A tentacle to grab and squeeze life out of her and-.

The door opened.

Her breath caught.

There was no one.

There was nothing. No object. No human. No monster. Just a shimmering white light coming from the tube light of the corridor.

The news was welcoming but Isabella was gullible. She had had enough false hopes already.

Her mind and heart were yelling her to run. To grab the chance. But she knew they were irrelevant... especially when HE doesn’t even breath...

HE?

Suddenly, she looked at the spot where HE was only to find no one.

She frowned. She rubbed her eyes and looked again and yes. HE wasn’t there. But..

She turned around and looked everywhere in the cellar. In the dim yellow light of the bulb, every corner of the small cellar was nearly visible.

HE was nowhere to be found.

She wanted to feel relieved and at ease. She wanted to believe that her worst lurid dream was gone.

And maybe it was.

With a sigh, she turned to climb the stairs.

She froze.

The light in the corridor began flickering. It flickered and flickered like a meek candle flame kept in thunderstorm. And just like the flame, the light extinguished.

Darkness erupted from the corridor.

She heard whispers. She swear, yes swear, she heard whispers. She heard people walking. Laughing babies. A crowd gossiping as if there were real people upstairs.

But she lived alone.

Her throat went dry. Blood went cold. Body wanted to fall into pieces. Heart wanted to stop beating but couldn’t.

Because what happened next was... unimaginable.

The yellow bulb in the cellar also began flickering.

And she heard the shadows laugh.

She looked up at the bulb and saw it slowly on the verge of fusing and heard the footsteps of THEM approach the door.

THEM were standing right there, waiting for murk to fall.

With lighting speed, she grabbed the chair and placed it below the bulb. No. She can’t let THEM take her. She just couldn’t.

With shaky legs she stood on the chair, stretched her hand to reach the fusing bulb.

Alas! Her short frame couldn’t. The three inches gap between the bulb and her wouldn’t end no matter how much she tried. She stretched and stretched but couldn’t.

Darkness began entering and the shadows crossed the threshold. Some even smiled. Some waited eagerly.

Tears rolled down her cheeks. She couldn’t reach. She was doomed.

The horrendous faces wanted to burst free. She couldn’t think of anything more terrifying than being eaten up by shadows.

But certainly she was proven wrong until she saw it.

HE was there.

Across the room.

Staring at her.

....crawling on the ground.

Yes, he was crawling. HIS legs looked as if they couldn’t take his weight. They hung lose. HE dragged his body by this hands and began moving towards her. Slowly... slowly.... HIS big smile remained... HIS bloody forked tongue stuck out... HIS shoulders cracking and wrecking with sounds of bone twisting.

The light flickered even more such that there was mere darkness for one second in the entire cellar and then light again.

HE was already across the room right below the chair looking back at her.

Isabella lost her balance.

She fell off the chair.

The last thing she remembered before her head hit the dirty hard ground was that the shadows lurked around her as HE raised HIS knife.

“NO!!”

With a scream she woke up only to find herself on the hospital bed.

“Are you okay, dear?” an elderly lady in a white uniform came running to her. She was the hospital nurse.

Confused, Isabella looked around properly. She couldn’t believe. She was in a hospital? But she was there....

“How.. how am I here?” she asked the nurse, her eyes still open wide with terror and fright. Means all that was really a bad dream?

“You were brought here two days ago after the accident.” The nurse smiled. She touched Isabella’s forehead lightly. “Does it still hurt?” and only then did Isabella realise that there was a burning ache in her head. Her head hurt badly, especially the hind part when someone hits the hard ground.....

No. She didn’t want to dwell on that.

But how did she end up here? And why?

“What had happened?” she asked the nurse.

The nurse sighed. “Nothing. You just had been hit by a truck. The people around had rescued you and brought to here two days ago.”

“Two days ago?”

“Yes.” The nurse chortled. “Don’t worry, dear. You were given sedatives to ease your pain. They just took a toll on you.” She smiled at Isabella.

Isabella wanted to smile back but she couldn’t. She still tried to process everything that she had just visited. An accident, a meeting in the cellar with a clown and shadows and now at the hospital.

She looked at nurse who was taking readings and ticking for medicines as she wrote notes.

Was she...?

No. No. Isabella shook her head. She saw a normal human before her. She saw everything around was normal. She had an accident and she was sedated. The clown was nothing but the result of her imagination. There was nothing to worry...

“Oh, I forgot something.” The nurse said, drawing attention. “On the day of your accident when you were brought here, a guy dressed like a clown said that I should give this to you once you wake up.” And handed over an envelope to Isabella.

Isabella stared blankly.

All the pieces she had just set fell apart. She didn’t want to trust those words but knew she had to.

HE was behind her now.

Tremblingly she quickly fished out what snakes HE must have left for her.

And indeed it was. A poisonous snake that spit its venom at her, paining and slowly killing her. A python that grabbed her throat and she felt as if she would choke and die.

It was the card.

The same card with the cellar dirt smeared a bit.

J

O

K

E

R

But what made death terrible to sound was the next lines written below.

Bibiti Babiti Boo!

I wait for you behind the cellar’s door

Bibiti Babiti Boo!