[Sarah Jane Adventures 08] - The Day of The Clown Read online

  ‘But she is involved already,’ Luke pointed out. ‘And she’s determined to find out what’s going on. She might be in danger.’

  Sarah Jane considered. ‘You’re right. Someone should keep an eye on her.’

  Sounded like a job for Clyde Langer.

  Only Luke had some bad news for him. ‘I don’t think her dad would let you anywhere near her.’

  Clyde knew Luke was right, but did he have to smile quite so much when he told him?

  So while Luke was looking after the new girl over the road, Clyde and Sarah Jane were talking to Steve Wallace on the touchline as the rest of the team went through their paces in training for a better challenge season next year. Not that Steve was all that keen on talking. He knew Dave had gone missing, of course, and he would do anything he could to help find him, only when Clyde introduced the woman that was with him he said she was a journalist.

  ‘My dad says journalists are scum. They’re like crows picking at road-kill.’

  Clyde had met Steve’s dad and he wasn’t impressed. He made his own walk-out dad look like ‘Father of the Year’.

  ‘I suppose he only buys a newspaper to look at the pictures, then?’ Clyde taunted. ‘Come on, Steve, Sarah Jane is trying to help find Finney.’ Steve shrugged and bounced the football he was holding, ‘I don’t know anything.’

  ‘Had he been acting strangely?’ Sarah Jane asked.

  ‘Not that I saw.’

  ‘What about clowns?’ Clyde asked. ‘Did he ever say anything about clowns.’

  Steve frowned, like why would he?

  And then he remembered something.

  There was a clown down by the station. There was me, Finney and Tony Warner. He was handing out tickets.’

  Sarah Jane was electrified. ‘Tony Warner? The other boy that went missing?’

  Steve nodded. ‘Him and Finney used to hang around a lot. Anyway they both took a ticket off the clown. I told the weirdo to take a hike.’

  As Steve spoke something went off at the back of Clyde’s head. He started digging into his pockets. ‘Hang on, I’d forgotten all about this. My mum said she’d picked it up at the shops.’

  And then he had it, a carelessly folded piece of paper. A ticket.

  ‘That’s it,’ said Steve. ‘One just like that!’

  Sarah Jane took the ticket and looked at it. It was designed to look as if the reader were looking through the folded back tent flaps of a big top. A tent decorated with red, yellow and blue stripes. Sarah Jane read the words that floated within the big top…

  SPELLMAN’S MAGICAL MUSEUM OF THE CIRCUS.

  And at almost the same time, back in Bannerman Road, Rani and Luke came across exactly the same ticket pinned between the pages of one of Dave Finns books.

  When Luke had shown up in the kitchen earlier he had said he’d come around to help Rani unpack. She thanked him and told him she could really do with the help and had taken him straight up to her room, along with Dave Finn’s books. Barely stopping for breath she told him about the clown in the kitchen just moments before he got there, and showed him Finney’s pictures.

  ‘This isn’t natural, Luke. None of it is! Whatever’s going on here — whatever this clown is — it’s supernatural.’

  Luke looked up from Finney’s books, ‘I doubt that it’s supernatural.’

  Rani felt like kicking him — how could he deny what was so obvious? She knew he was clever, but even Luke was never going to come up with a rational explanation for what was happening to her.

  ‘You’ve got such a closed mind!’ she said. ‘The supernatural is only science we don’t know yet — like life on other planets.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘That’s different.’

  Aliens existed; ghosts and things that were a part of the supernatural did not. But he wasn’t going to tell her any of that. It wasn’t really going to help.

  ‘Look, I’ve got to do something, Luke. Look at Finney’s pictures. He was seeing the clown same as I am. That means it’s coming after me, like it did him.’

  And that was when Luke turned a page and found the ticket. Rani recognised it immediately. She found another just like it among her stuff.

  SPELLMAN’S MAGICAL MUSEUM OF THE CIRCUS.

  Luke bit his lip, whatever Sarah Jane had said, there was no doubt now that Rani was in real danger.

  ‘You should talk to my mum,’ he said. ‘Mum understands things like this.’

  Rani was already grabbing her coat.

  ‘Where are you going?’ he asked.

  ‘Luke, no one understands things like this. But this ticket has got to be some sort of a clue. Are you coming?’

  Luke knew there was no way he was going to stop Rani; her eyes were alight with excitement. He had seen the same look in someone else’s eyes. And once that happened he knew there was no way you could stop them.

  He had seen that same look in Sarah Jane’s eyes.

  Only right now there was a quite different look in the eyes of Sarah Jane Smith.

  She stood with Clyde just outside Spellman’s Magical Museum of the Circus. Its front had been painted to resemble a circus tent and on either side of the door stood life-size clown paintings. To Sarah Jane their wide painted smiles looked more like snarls.

  She really, really hated clowns.

  ‘Welcome to the Circus of Horrors,’ Clyde said beside her.

  Sarah Jane glanced at him. ‘You know, Clyde, occasionally your sense of humour really leaves something to be desired.’

  ‘Who said I was joking?’ he asked.

  Sarah Jane shuddered and forced herself to lead Clyde over the threshold and into the museum.

  Inside they found themselves in a strange, dimly lit world where circus music played softly in the background, accompanied occasionally by the roar and gasp of a recorded crowd. There were posters on the walls advertising the great world- famous circuses of the past, and pictures of circus acts that seemed to go back decades. Clyde took it all in with mystified wonder. He stopped to pat the trunk of a stuffed elephant head and rolled his eyes.

  ‘Like museums don’t normally creep me out — all those stuffed animals, old bones and mummies — but this place doesn’t just take the biscuit, man, this place gets the whole Christmas tin.’

  And behind them a mechanical clown in a glass case started to laugh hysterically.

  Sarah Jane nearly jumped out of her skin.

  That was when a spotlight suddenly illuminated the tall man standing in the corner. He was dressed like a ringmaster, complete with top hat, whip and waxed moustache. For a moment she thought he was a waxwork, then he bowed…

  ‘Welcome! Welcome, to Spellman’s Magical Museum of the Circus, and the story of the most wondrous family entertainment in the world.’

  He spoke with a German accent, ‘From the tumblers and jugglers of ancient Rome, to the father of the modern circus, a sergeant major in the 15th Light Dragoons!’

  ‘Mr Spellman, I presume?’

  Spellman bowed, tipping his top hat, ‘Elijah Spellman, at your service, Madame.’

  Creepy, thought Clyde. But what else had he expected?

  ‘My name is Sarah Jane Smith. I’m a journalist. This is my friend, Clyde. We’re here to talk to you about clowns.’

  Spellmans eyes lit up, ‘Ah! The Princes of the Sawdust Ring. This way, please.’

  He led them along a corridor and into another room and Sarah Jane felt the blood turn to ice in her veins. The room was filled with life-size clown mannequins. Pale-faced clowns, tramp clowns, bald clowns, crazy-haired clowns. Every clown you could think of. And every one of them seemed to be watching Sarah Jane, every one of them silently taunting her and laughing at her fear of them.

  She felt her pulse racing and told herself to get a grip — what had happened to her had been a long, long time ago. And it had been nothing, really. Nothing, she told herself, just a trick of the light.

  ‘Mankind has always needed someone to make them laugh, slave or king,’ Elij
ah Spellman was saying, as he walked around the room, in between the mannequins.

  ‘Maybe you can drop a note to my new Head,’ Clyde suggested, wryly.

  Spellman continued, ignoring Clyde, ‘The Pharaohs had fools, so did Native Americans. We had the harlequin and, in the Middle Ages, the jester.’

  But Sarah Jane had had enough of his shtick, ‘Mr Spellman, it’s not so much the clown’s showbiz history I’m interested in as their reputation for scaring people.’

  Spellman looked at her, and Sarah Jane realised uncomfortably that the ringmaster saw her own uneasiness among the clowns. He smiled, ‘Ah, the fear of the painted smile.’

  ‘They used to paint clowns on the walls of children’s wards, but when they were asked every child said the pictures scared them. Children sense things,’ said Sarah Jane. ‘I know.’

  From behind her, Clyde called out. He had found something. Sarah Jane turned around and saw a reproduction of an old picture, a man with some sort of pipe, dressed in red, yellow and blue.

  ‘Those are the colours of the clown I saw,’ Clyde said.

  But Sarah Jane had seen this picture before, and this wasn’t a clown.

  ‘This is the Pied Piper,’ she said. ‘He wasn’t a clown. He rid Hamelin of a plague of rats by playing a magical tune on his flute, then when the town refused to pay him he went back and took all their children.’

  Spellman spoke close to Sarah Jane’s ear, ‘The oldest and most accurate picture of the Pied Piper. The colours of his costume signify he was a travelling entertainer and, I’m afraid, even clowns have their dark days.’

  ‘And that’s exactly the sort of clown I’m interested in. One that makes children disappear,’ said Sarah Jane.

  But Clyde was confused. ‘The Pied Piper was a fairytale. Wasn’t it?’

  ‘Myths, legends, fairy tales — every story has its inspiration, Clyde.’ Then Sarah Jane turned back to Spellman — but he was no longer there.

  ‘Mr Spellman?’

  ‘Where did he go?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Sarah Jane said. She was starting to feel nervous, and she didn’t think it had anything to do with any clown phobia — this was a feeling in her gut that she had felt countless times before, and it had saved her life just as often. ‘I think we should get out of here. Now.’

  They turned to go — and found Luke and Rani standing there.

  ‘Luke!’

  But Luke was just as shocked. ‘Mum!’

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Clyde demanded.

  But Rani wanted answers, too. ‘What are we doing here? What are you doing here?’

  Luke was telling Sarah Jane that she had told him to stay with Rani — so he’d had to come with her when she set out for this place.

  And Rani heard that and her confusion went critical. ‘Am I missing something?’

  Clyde told Luke he had been supposed to keep Rani out of the action.

  And she wanted to know, ‘What action?’

  She got her answer when one of the clown mannequins grabbed her hand.

  Rani screamed with shock and Clyde tore the mannequin’s hand from her. Around them the mannequins were starting to move, coming to life.

  Rani took it all in, unable to believe her eyes. ‘What’s happening? They’re alive!’

  ‘Run!’ Sarah Jane shouted.

  Together they burst out of the clown room and into the passageway — and the clown mannequins followed. They didn’t move quickly, and their movements were staccato, like clockwork toys. Sarah Jane had no doubt they were no less dangerous, for all that.

  ‘What happened to Spellman,’ Clyde demanded.

  ‘He’s controlling them,’ Sarah Jane told him, keeping her eyes peeled for more clowns. ‘I think they’re like puppets — probably under some sort of telekinetic control.’

  ‘Walking puppets? Telekinetic control?’ Rani was having a hard time keeping up.

  ‘He’s controlling them with his mind,’ Luke told her helpfully.

  ‘I know what it means, Luke. Who is Spellman?’

  ‘Probably an alien,’ he told her.

  ‘You know, that sounded just like you said ‘alien’.’

  More mannequin clowns appeared ahead of them, blocking off their escape, reaching out for them.

  Rani saw Sarah Jane pull something from her bag and cry out to them, ‘Stand back!’

  There was some sort of electronic buzz and suddenly the clowns were frozen.

  Rani’s mind was falling over itself, ‘What was that?’

  ‘Sonic lipstick,’ Sarah Jane said, twisting the top back on something that looked — well, like a lipstick. ‘Never leave home without it!’

  She told them it would hold the clowns for a while, but they had to get out of there quickly, and she set off, leading the way

  ‘Aliens,’ Rani called after Sarah Jane. ‘Luke said aliens!’

  ‘Actually,’ Clyde corrected, ‘he just said alien.’

  ‘And it will be still around here somewhere,’ warned Sarah Jane. ‘Come on. There’s no time for explanations.’

  Clyde took Rani’s hand, ‘She’s right. And from what I’ve seen, one alien can be as much trouble as a whole invasion.’

  Rani gave up. None of this made sense. None of it. But she didn’t have to understand it to see that they were right, they had to get out of there. Whatever was going on here, it wasn’t good.

  They hit the front doors at a run. But they didn’t give. Rani saw Sarah Jane pull out her lipstick thing again, but this time it just buzzed and the doors stayed shut.

  ‘He’s sealed the doors,’ she said.

  ‘Telekinesis,’ Luke offered quickly. ‘The same way he animated the mannequins.’

  Sarah Jane was grim. ‘Whatever we’re dealing with here, it’s extremely powerful.’

  ‘And it’s got us trapped,’ gasped Rani.

  Sarah Jane turned on her and spoke firmly. ‘No. It just thinks it has.’

  Spellman appeared from nowhere. ‘Oh, no, Miss Smith. I am convinced of it.’

  Rani took in Spellman in his ringmaster gear. ‘Are you really an alien?’

  Sarah Jane put herself between Spellman and Rani. ‘Stay back, Rani. Leave this to me.’

  ‘I just never thought an alien would dress like such a geek,’ she said.

  Sarah Jane stood defiantly before Spellman, ‘Who are you? And what do you want?’

  Spellman looked at her, a smile creeping across his face. ‘Who am I?’

  And Spellman began to blur, the red and white of his ringmaster’s outfit shifting colours, his face changing, his clothes altering. Spellman had gone, and Sarah Jane was facing the man in the ancient picture, the man that had charmed away Hamelin’s rats, and then its children.

  ‘I am the Pied Piper,’ he said. ‘Who conjured away a whole town’s infants, and has chilled the hearts of parents for more than seven centuries.’ His outline blurred again, his shape changing before their eyes. And Rani gasped with horror as she recognised what now stood before them, a red balloon in his hand.

  ‘And now I am Odd Bob the Clown,’ he said in that Southern States drawl, ‘who snatches children in the heartbeat that their mother’s back is turned. I am the thing that lives in the darkest corner.’ Sarah Jane pressed back against the others, protectively, her mind scrambling hopelessly for something she could do to defend them from this thing, as Odd Bob took a step towards them, and another…

  ‘I am all these things and more. I am all that you fear the most.’

  He came closer, and began to slowly reach out towards them, grinning, teasing, terrifying…

  ‘And you are mine to feed on! Fear me! You are mine!’

  Chapter Seven

  Rani's Choice

  ‘I won’t let him touch you!’ Sarah Jane screamed, as she lunged past Odd Bob, grabbed a fire extinguisher from the wall and fired the freezing gas at the clown-thing.

  The carbon dioxide clouded around Odd Bob, but that horrible rotted-toothed sm
ile never faltered, in fact it grew.

  ‘Oh, sweet, sweet fear,’ he purred.

  Clyde could see this wasn’t going their way at all. He hit the sealed museum door with his shoulder as hard as he could. It didn’t shift a bit. It didn’t even give in the door hinges the way it might had someone turned the lock. Odd Bob or Spellman, the Pied Piper, or whoever had them captive here, had jammed it solid with his telekinesis. All the same Clyde wasn’t about to give in, so he rammed it with his shoulder again. Just as hard.

  Nothing.

  He flashed a look at Luke. ‘Give me a hand!’ And together the boys shoved at the door, as Odd Bob reached out for Rani.

  Quickly, she shrank back. ‘Why are you coming after me? I don’t even know what you are!’

  ‘But you have a ticket,’ he said, almost gently. ‘You’re mine.’

  ‘Get away from her!’ Sarah Jane shouted, and used the butt end of the dead extinguisher to keep him away — but Odd Bob tore the empty can from her hands and threw it across the lobby.

  Odd Bob snarled at Sarah Jane. His painted lips curled back, and he snarled like a rabid wolf.

  Sarah Jane stood her ground, ‘I’m not scared of you!’

  Odd Bob smiled again, and Sarah Jane wasn’t sure which was worse. ‘But you are scared of me, Sarah Jane Smith. I can taste it!’

  Sarah Jane shook her head — tried to tell him that he was wrong — but it was no good, the words wouldn’t come. Her mouth was too dry to speak.

  And Odd Bob took another step towards her…

  ‘Of all the things you’ve seen, Sarah Jane, of all the things out of the dark that you have fought, it’s me that lives in your nightmares. The painted face of a clown.’

  Luke lunged his shoulder at the immoveable door and threw a desperate glance towards Sarah Jane. He saw her, paralysed with fear as the clown reached out for her.

  ‘Mum!’ he yelled.

  Ranis phone went off. It was the sound of a baby singing some pop song that he thought might have been Kylie. It was dreadful — and it stopped Odd Bob in his tracks.

  At the same instant the museum door flew open against Clyde’s shoulder.

  ‘Quick!’ he shouted. ‘We’re out!’

  Sarah Jane took one glance back at Odd Bob and saw that the clown seemed to be frozen.