The sign was an improvised marriage of laminated paper and flimsy wood. The plastic was worn at the edges and the original yellow coloring of the paper had soaked away through untold seasons, but the message of the sign was clear.
In bold Comic Sans font, it read:
“DO NOT FEED THE MIDNIGHT CLOWNS!”
The drive from Olomouc to Prague took three hours on a good day and five if the D1 was being its usual self — but I always made it without any stops. It was on that particular day, near the tail end of a Sunday afternoon ride, that I felt the need to pull over into that particular gas station.
I got a red bull and a baguette and sat down at the benches by the parking lot. Getting some caffeine in my system and food in the stomach had me feeling better, but I was still feeling just a bit too sleepy to get back behind the wheel. So, to wake myself up, I went for a bit of a walk around the lot.
It was a big place, one of those spots where the long haulers with foreign plates sleep. I walked along the massive trucks carrying mysteries until I reached a slope of gravel. At the bottom of the rocks sat a meadow and, embedded in its unkempt grass, the sign read:
“DO NOT FEED THE MIDNIGHT CLOWNS!”
The first time I had stopped at that gas station was purely by chance, but it quickly became tradition. I was making the drive from Prague to Olomouc just about every Friday afternoon and driving back just about every Sunday.
Stopping by the sign became my little ritual to end the week.
Once, on my third pilgrimage or so, I even ventured to ask the gas station attendant about the sign. They were not helpful. Or nice for that matter. The internet was of no help either.
The message was there week after week yet no new clues to its origin presented themselves. So, as the months dragged on, I just found myself content with the mystery of the sign, which read:
“DO NOT FEED THE MIDNIGHT CLOWNS!”
I was seeing a girl in Olomouc. At first the obstacle of distance seemed completely absurd, but love works better when people are at arm’s reach. I thought she’d eventually move to the bigger city but she liked it back home and wanted to stay. She worked at a theater and loved the old building in a way that I couldn’t comprehend. As we argued more about the theater and our diverting future, we started to see each other less.
After a couple missed visits, we texted each other goodbye.
Maybe I was just busy with work, or maybe I was too heartbroken to care, but when I stopped going to Olomouc, I stopped thinking about the sign. For three weeks I sulked and worked and slept and drank and then, on a Friday, just as I was getting ready to spend the evening alone — she showed up at my door.
A welcome surprise.
We had a splendid weekend and parted on good, yet vague, terms. Through chat boxes across the week all seemed fine. We spoke as if the past month apart had been a collective hallucination.
When I showed up at her place on Friday, however, time came crashing down on us. She seemed happy to see me at first, but five days had passed and they made all the difference.
Things got sad.
Last week’s visit might’ve been a mistake, but this one definitely was. We sat down at her favorite pub, each nursed a solitary beer and tried to make sense of the future. When the pauses in conversation got too long to bare, I decided it would be best for me to go back home.
I had scarcely sipped from my beer, but it was already dark. There could be plenty of dangers lurking in the darkness of the D1 highway. She insisted I stay, even if only on the couch.
I couldn’t.
There were two stops I took on my drive back home. The first, not far out of Olomouc, was at a roadside McDonald’s. My nerves kept me from eating the whole day and, as I sat in the parking lot by the golden arches, they kept me unhungry still. I took a couple tasteless bites of my burger before I got back on the road. In darkness and silence, I drove back home, resolved to stop at a familiar parking lot with a makeshift sign.
No truckers slept that night. The parking lot, much like the gas station, was empty. I didn’t mind the solitude though. Parking back in my usual spot after a month-long break brought up plenty of feelings and on the back of those feelings my hunger returned.
I ate my now cold McDonalds with only flashes of headlights from the highway for company. I got through the burger but by the time I ate my first nugget I was wiping my fingers and checking my phone.
She hadn’t called and she hadn’t written.
It was just a couple minutes after midnight.
That’s when I noticed the bobbing red light on the far side of the parking lot. At first, I thought it just a reflection of the passing cars, yet even when the road was empty the small blimp of red continued to hover in the darkness. For a while I sat still, trying to uncover the mystery of the light from the comfort of my own car. I ate my cold McNuggets and watched and, finally, when only stale fries in a paper bag remained — I got out of the car.
The walk to the edge of the parking lot wasn’t far, yet the closer I got the more my steps slowed. At first, the bobbing red light was just that — a featureless glow in the darkness. The closer I got, however, the more my steps started to slow.
The red light was starting to resemble the nose of a clown.
I never took the concept of the Midnight Clowns seriously. I always considered the sign in the meadow to be the result of some inside joke or quirky artistry. Looking at that bobbing red light, however, had me questioning my skepticism.
A flash of light from a passing car dispelled all doubt.
I saw him for only a second, but the afterburn of the bizarre image lingered in the darkness. The red light was a glowing clown nose attached to a pale face with frizzled hair. In the darkness there was a clown, and he was balancing on stilts.
The sight made me doubt my sanity and I was uncomfortable enough to consider retreating to my car, but just as I was about to turn around and run, I heard the queerest of sounds. I lack the words to fully describe it, but it was like a mixture of whistling and children’s laughter — a strange song which lacked all melody or tempo. It was coming, ever so faintly, from the far side of the parking lot.
The clown on the stilts had made me beyond uncomfortable, but there was something about that queer song that filled my heart with calm. Perhaps it was out of curiosity, or perhaps it was because the thought of going back home to my empty apartment made me sick — I decided to investigate the strange music.
The sign had not changed, yet it no longer seemed absurd.
At the bottom of the slope of gravel, all around the lowly meadow — frolicked the midnight clowns. There were about a dozen of them, all of different shapes and sizes, all dancing and twirling and enjoying the night. Their eyes shone with a calm pale blue and their noses, much like the one of the stilt-walker, lit up in bright blood red.
I stood not far from the clowns in plain sight, yet none of them acknowledged me. Their song, although unconventional in its composition, seemed friendly and the way they danced and rolled around the meadow didn’t make the clowns seem dangerous, but I knew better than to spend my evening with strangers in unlit wilderness. Making as little noise as I could, I retreated back to my car.
The absurdity of what I had seen, although seemingly harmless, had become far too much to handle on my own. The moment I got back in my car, almost by instinct, I called her. I called her and I told her about the sign and the clowns but even in that moment the wild strangers in the meadow seemed less pressing than our relationship.
We talked.
We talked for a long time and, as we talked, I fished out my stale French fries from the McDonalds bag and picked away at them when the words I wanted to say got stuck in my throat. We talked, and as we talked, my attention drifted from the bobbing red light in the distance.
It wasn’t until we said our final goodbyes and hung up that I noticed that the sole clown nose was no longer alone. Like bloody fireflies, the crowd of clowns approached my car from the far side of the parking lot. They hopped and danced and did cartwheels in my direction all while producing the eerie notes of that strange song.
They moved quick. By the time I got the motor running the clowns had surrounded my car. With long thin fingers they pressed against my windows and with shining starving eyes they looked at my half empty pack of French fries. The midnight clowns were discomforting from the very start, but it wasn’t until they had their faces pressed against the windshield of my car that I felt true terror.
They had the faces of children. Even though some of them had scraggly beards and most seemed to possess the bodies of full-grown adults, all the clowns had the innocent faces of children. Their teeth, however, exuded a wholly different mood.
Like thin writhing tentacles, they moved around their small mouths. The longer the strange creatures looked at my pack of French fries the more bits of glowing red spittle slid down their childish chins. The midnight clowns watched my food and with their strange writhing dentures they licked at their thin lips.
Before the creatures could fully surround my car, I got in reverse and high-tailed as far away from that parking lot as I could. As hungry as the clowns were and as quickly as they had moved before, they did not make chase. For a couple panicked moments I could see the stilt walking clown in my rear-view mirror but even he soon disappeared.
I got away safely, yet when I was still in that parking lot a strange thought swirled through my mind. I considered, very briefly, feeding the midnight clowns. They did, after all, look very hungry and there was something about the strange music that escaped their lips that had me feeling charitable about my cold McDonalds.
I do not know if the idea to feed the clowns came of my own will or whether they had somehow forced the thought into my skull through their queer dances and music. Regardless of how the idea of sharing my food grasped my consciousness, however, I rejected it. I rejected it because I remembered the sign. I remembered the makeshift sign in an inconspicuous meadow that provided a single line of advice.
I remembered the sing that read, ever so clearly:
“DO NOT FEED THE MIDNIGHT CLOWNS!”