Clowns At Midnight (29 page)

Then, only then, did I dare risk the terrible vulnerability of sleep.

CHAPTER 20

I slept till after ten, and woke to the phone ringing. I stumbled from bed, hurried to the kitchen and snatched up the receiver.

‘Hello?’

‘David? It’s Raina.’ The voice sounded distraught, almost too emotional to be recognisable as hers.

‘Raina, good morning. I just wanted –’

‘David, she has us.’

‘What’s that? She what?’

It was Raina’s voice as I’d never heard it, terrified, upset. ‘She has us. We are at the house. I can’t—stay talking.’

‘Zoe wouldn’t harm you. She’s unstable, she’s frightening, but I doubt she’d –’

‘David, she’s bleeding us. Carlo is nearly dead. She wants you here.’

‘Listen, just –’

There was a fierce hissing on the line, barely human, then a harsh whisper. ‘Tell no-one and you might save one of them. You can pick.’

‘Zoe, please –’

The voice stayed as a whisper. ‘Just you or they are both gone. Come see them without their arms! They’re
so
alert. Amazing what modern drugs can do!’

‘Zoe, listen –’

‘But you’d know all about that.’

The line went dead.

I didn’t believe it, couldn’t for a moment—yet couldn’t afford to do otherwise.

And how would she know if I called the police? If it were a hoax, I’d gladly be the fool. I’d experienced Zoe with her scalpel tooth in the caravan. Escaped lightly considering.

The direct number for the police in Kyogle was on the message board above the phone. No need to be routed through a triple-zero operator. I keyed it in.

It was picked up on the second ring. ‘Kyogle Police Station.’

‘This may be a hoax, but I’ve just had a call from Raina Risi at 158 Edenville Road. She says she’s being assaulted by an intruder who is threatening to kill her and her husband, Carlo Risi.’

‘And who is this please?’

‘Their neighbour, David Leeton. At 150 Edenville Road. I’m at the Rankins’ –’

‘Your name again, sir?’

‘Leeton. David Leeton. Listen, you don’t understand –’

‘Please stay where you are, Mr Leeton. We’re sending a car.’

‘The intruder is Zoe Ewins. She said she wants me –’

‘Zoe Ewins, right. Just stay there, sir. We’re sending someone to 158 Edenville now.’

He rang off. Was this how it happened? Is this what they said in such an emergency? It sounded wrong, insufficient, almost comical. They wouldn’t ring off, didn’t need to. They’d keep me talking, quiz me, satisfy themselves that I was telling the truth, that it wasn’t a hoax.

Unless they were a small operation, over-extended but pragmatic. They’d have my number from the regional database. That’s what they’d do: check the number, call me back from on the road, determine that I was where I said I was. All precautionary.

But I had to do something. Zoe had been specific. They were being bled!

I couldn’t risk it. I rushed out to the car and was soon crossing the hill, racing along Edenville Road in a cloud of dust.

The Risis’ gate was unlocked. I left it open when I drove through. The house was quiet. There were no strange cars in the turning circle. My Black Clown had probably been hiding in the roof. I knew how she worked.

I stopped the car and hurried to the front door. No point knocking. I seized the door knob to see if it was locked, felt several sudden jabs, needles going in. I jerked my hand away, but it was too late. The force of my grip had been enough to empty the tiny sac taped behind the barbs, my agitation enough to send the drug quickly through my blood.

Within seconds I was reeling in the shade of the veranda, falling against the door jamb, then back against the wall, finally sliding down to sit with my legs straight out across the boards of the veranda like a limp toy doll. She had me. She’d been waiting and she had me again.

I would have screamed with the terror but, like everything else, screams were bundled off into a familiar hazing, a darkening in the midst of all the harsh bright air where my parked car kept moving back and forth, back and forth. I barely heard the door open, barely managed to turn my head, but I knew what I was seeing. It was the right shape, the right amount of darkness. So much right and so much wrong.

It wasn’t like waking in the caravan. I felt groggy, wooden, heavy from the drug, but this time I knew immediately where I was. It was night; most of a day had been taken. Houselight spilled over the well-tended hedge walls from the terrace; moonlight and starlight marked Moreton Bay figs, glittered off hedge-tops. It was the maze. The fragrances on the balmy night air confirmed it: jasmine, honeysuckle and night-scented stocks.

And I was dressed, just as I’d been when the needles had stung me. I managed to stand, steadying myself on the hedge wall, and checked everything as well as I could.

My
clothes. Enough of
my
world. A drugged lassitude, a leaden holdover from the sedative, and sleep in the eyes; a parched throat, and a dry feel to the skin of my face where the light breeze touched.

Now I knew.

Zoe was behind this. Zoe existed.

Though the other certainties crowded in. Or Gemma. It was all Gemma. Or it had been a hoax—the panicked phonecall, the threat of bleeding—and Carlo and Raina were behind it, using fear and delight, making all this.

Still, what if not? What if the phonecall had been genuine and they had been bled to death?

But the police
hadn’t
arrived, couldn’t have—if that phone number had even been the police and not some carefully placed false number left on the Rankins’ message board, with a fellow trickster at the other end. What if –

Tchink!

It came from across the maze, a sharp mechanical sound, nothing like the shuffling
shink
of the mamuthone bells. I stopped to listen, needing to be sure.

Scrrrrrrrrrrr!

A drawn-out scraping, then silence again: the night silence of insects chirruping, birds calling, the feather-dance flutter and turn of the breeze in the hedges and nearby trees.

Again, I knew what the new sounds were. I listened and waited.

Tschink!

From the left this time, a different newel post.

Carlo had restored them, serviced them, prepared them for tonight and set them going. Carlo or Zoe. Carlo
and
Zoe! It just went on.

If
they had ever needed servicing. They’d probably been functional all along, just waiting to fling out their spikes, their deadly skewers, retract them on gears, using clockwork and powerful springs, fling them out again.
Keep David here!

There was light, enough light. I could avoid them. I could manage, though clown-fear was already locking me up. The thought was enough.

Scrrrrrrrrrrr!

Newel posts, I told myself. Chess pieces maybe, but pawns, just pawns. Swiss army knives. Fixtures, not figures, not deadly dolls,
not
scarecrows.

My heart was racing. Breathing was harder. There was a drumbeat to the night.

Newel posts, newel post pawns, that’s all.

Tschink!

But scarecrows, too, guarding the avenues, smooth blind heads catching the light. Minimalist doll-forms keeping watch. On guard.
En garde!
Parry. Thrust.

Scrrrrrrrrrrr!

Four, just four. I could avoid four. I could manage.

One hand on a hedge wall, I moved along the avenue, heading in the direction of the house, towards the wash of yellow light lifting like a false dawn over the hedge-line.

Tschink!

Again, off to the right. Musketeers in the night. Swordsmen in the dark.

I rounded a corner, proceeded to the left, though it took me away from the house. No choice there.

But some choice. I could wait. I could sit here till morning, until someone came. In daylight I could easily avoid.

Scrrrrrrrrrrr!

And almost immediately:
Tschink!

It sounded nearer. The things couldn’t move, but the sound was so close.

Scrrrrrrrrrrr!

I kept going, trailing my hand along the hedge wall, making another turn, back towards the house this time. The warm yellow light beckoned, enamelled the leaves of the big trees.

Then nothing. Just my tread, just insects and night birds and leaf flutter.

The posts had stopped sounding. I waited too. Where were my duellists, my mad fencing clowns? Was I imagining it or were they on timers, set to respond in patterns?

I moved ahead slowly, hating the turns, the close jostling darkness of the hedge lanes. Step, step, stop and listen. Continue, stop again.

There was movement on gravel, a tread, an approach, definitely there. Again I waited. Insects sounded, a plover cried in the night. The breeze shivered in the hedges.

Another scrape, definitely heard, definitely there. Someone stirring. Something.

I hurried on. It needn’t be in my lane. It could be one lane over, the length of my arm away and hopelessly separated by the maze circuit, as trapped as I was, with no chance of reaching me.

But it was this new silence, just knowing the posts were there, spikes retracted.

Wait till you see the whites of his eyes!

Another turn. The glow from the terrace seemed suddenly far off, like the last lights of a ship at sea.
Titanic
in the hedges. The new avenue was a block of darkness, impossible to face.

I’d climb over. I’d try. The hedge to my right seemed thick enough, sturdy enough. I found footholds and handholds, began the ascent. The lower mass supported well; it was near the top that it started leaning away, too thin to bear my weight, tumbling me, taking me with it.

I slammed hard on gravel, cried out with hurt and surprise. Nothing broken, nothing torn that I could tell. There was a new pathway, a new avenue as dark as the other.

I’d be ready next time. I could climb my way out.

The next wall had thorns. I reached in to grip and yelled in pain as two barbs went in. Just like the needles.

Clever Carlo. Clever Zoe. Fencing posts. Hah! Duellists at the crossroads, now swordsmen in the hedgerows as well. You had to have a sense of humour.

I sucked blood from my palm, relishing the sharp brassy taste. It was real. Blood and jasmine. Fear and wisteria. Hysteria, yes!

No. No more. Wait till dawn. Lay back on the path and consider the night. I truly believed I could.

It was there like a gunshot.

Tschink!

Right there. So near that I yelled, heard my cry echoing as the spike retracted.

Scrrrrrrrrrrr!

Then the scraping. They’d been rooted in packed earth and clay; now there was this.

And a new sound.

Eeeeet!

The thing was turning, rotating its shaft, bringing round a lower or higher spike. No ducking under, no leaping over. No knowing.

Surrender was out of the question. As impossible as being David the Hero was, leaping hedges, triumphing by sheer effort of will, so was the quitter coulrophobe knotted in a foetal position on the trail. No more of that. Being survivor was enough.

Tschink!

So loud, so near.

I crouched, tensed like a runner, and began edging back, away from the sound.

Scrrrrrrrrrrr!

Eeeeet!

And, as if in answer:
Tschink!
Tschink!
Tschink!
Musketeers converging on Richelieu!
We’re coming!

I scrambled back, hearing the scraping above heartbeat and exertion.

Scrrrrrrrrrrr!
Scrrrrrrrrrrr!
Scrrrrrrrrrrr!
Swordsmen ready.

My hand ran over something on the gravel. A thread. A thick nylon thread trailing along the path.

Someone had left Ariadne’s thread! Theseus was being helped to escape the Minotaur!

I would have laughed at the wondrous absurdity, but a duellist pawn got there first.

Tschink
!

Again so loud, so close. I could sense it there, thought I saw its narrow sightless head and spindle trunk looming up. Instinctively I raised my two wounded hands to fend it off, one still gripping the thread.

Scrrrrrrrrrrr!

Fingernails on a blackboard.

I scrambled away, following the thread round a corner—into what, I wondered. An ambush? Into the clutches of cleverly waiting musketeers ready to make their crossed-sword ‘All for one!’ salute through chest, heart and groin?

But Ariadne played true. The thread led me turn by turn back towards the house, left the demon swordsmen behind. I doubted her all the way, of course, expecting newel posts waiting at the exit, usurper pawns; but the precious twine took me under the arch, up the terrace steps and through the back door.

The house was lighted, but seemed deserted. I expected the thread to lead into the family room, up to the smiling Phoenician, Etruscan, whatever face with its all-encompassing grin and leering, potent eyes. Some fitting and portentous Carlo Risi resolution.
Make of this what you will!
Dionysian madness.

But from the back hall it took me left into a brightly lit rear bathroom and instant and utter terror.

The thread was tethered to a solid bath-rail, and in the mirror above it was a hideous face—
my
face!—chalk white, star-eyed, deformed with an irrepressible red grin. The dryness on my skin had been make-up!

Carlo’s last laugh. Zoe’s.

Ta-da! You’re the clown!
Go haunt yourself!

I yelled, reeling back in shock. But like the ophidiophobe kissing the cobra’s head, the claustrophobe enduring a mock funeral, I was inside my terror. My hands fumbled on the taps.

No water came. It had been turned off, the pipes drained.

How could he? How could they?

Stay the clown! Be what you are!

I barely remembered getting to the kitchen. No water there either, the taps spun uselessly, but I opened the fridge door and grabbed the first thing I saw: a bottle of wine, more than half full.