When I was maybe seventeen or so, I remember getting a summer job at a carnival that rolled into our town. I did it as a way to hang out with my friends and talk to girls, the usual reason any kid would want a summer gig. I saw online that a local food truck needed part time helpers and that was perfect for me. Flexible hours, moderate pay, and there would be other people my age to work alongside.
When I pulled up to the carnival on my first night, I noticed the barns and gravel walkways filled with people and booths for vendors. I checked out the truck where I would be preparing lemon shake-ups and corndogs. The owners were a nice older couple who knew their employees would be highschoolers, so they didn’t expect top notch performances. Just that we worked the few hours we were scheduled to and didn’t handout free food.
There was a girl I was working with that was absolutely gorgeous. I had seen her around school and could hardly stay on my feet when I was told we shared shifts. She was laughing and chatting with her friends when I stepped up into the truck to begin food prep. She turned and looked at me with a smile, her dark eyes and chocolate hair blew seemed to wave at me, curtesy of the desk fan taped to the truck’s wall. “You must be Mark, right?” she asked me. I nodded my head, scared of what would happen if I spoke. “I’m Haylee.” she said in response to my gesture. I finally managed to squeak a “nice meet you” before I buried my nose in the prep counter.
I didn’t have much experience in food service but all I had to do was dip a hot dog on a stick into a bucket of batter and then set it in the fryer for a few minutes. Haylee would work the cash register and just tell me what to make. It was simple work and after a while I was able to strike up some pretty good conversations with Haylee. Apparently, she had a pretty sad past with an abusive father and her mother remarried rich. That would explain her tricked out car she drives to school. Being someone who was always labeled as an uppity girl in school, she actually was pretty down to earth and kind!
It wasn’t until after my second hour that I noticed something odd. Across from our truck, there was a man grilling chicken for a fundraiser for the local fire department. But what was strange is there was a brightly dressed clown wandering in circles around his area, seemingly stalking him. He stepped away from his grill and moved to take a plate of meat into the tent where it would be served. But as he went out of sight, the clown moved in and made his way towards the grill. I saw begin to unscrew something on the fuel tank beneath the grill, and start slipping things inside of it. I don’t know if this was a routine or joke, but it seemed too real, and nobody was watching him. I told Haylee I would be right back and went to confront the clown.
As I closed in and swiftly went towards him, he looked up and that’s when I saw it. The clown had an odd face. His chin was too low, his eyes were slightly too far apart and were an odd milky white color, with no pupils. This wasn’t cheap clown makeup; this was his real face. There were dark sockets surrounding his eyes as if he was supposed to have something bigger in it’s place. The clown gave a childish look of surprise when I approached him and asked him what he was doing. He handed me a rusty hammer from his bag that was thrown over his shoulder and bolted quickly away and around the corner within seconds. I chased after him but as soon as I turned that very same corner, he was gone. It was a straight away with no entrances. The clown had to have been there, there was nowhere else to go.
My thoughts were interrupted as a man grabbed my arm and spun me around. It was the man from the grill I had seen. “Do you wanna explain what I’m seeing?” the man told me in an angered tone. “What are you talking about?” I replied. The man pointed to his sabotaged grill that had its fuel tank smashed and pouring fuel everywhere. “If I would have turned that fuel tank on, people would have died, kid!” he screamed at me. People all around looked at us with disgusted looks. “It wasn’t me! There was some guy dressed as a clown that I ran off! The one standing by you for like the past ten minutes!” I shot back at him. He looked at me confused and then told me that there was no clown standing by him, and that he was all alone. I stood there shocked but also creeped out. What did he mean there wasn’t a clown?
After a round of apologies for something I didn’t do, the firefighters let me off the hook relatively easily all things considered. I returned to the truck and Haylee was inside furious at me. “Thanks for the help!” she said sarcastically. I apologized and lied, saying that I got caught on an important phone call. She just rolled her eyes and went back to the register. Maybe five minutes in, I saw one again.
It was a clown, similar to the one before but slightly different. This one had orange hair and a bowler hat. But the face seemed vastly similar to the one from the grill. It was pushing a young boy in a wheelchair with seemingly nobody else around. Was this one really just a helper trying to be nice? Or was it actually just as sinister as the other? With a young child on the line, I wasn’t taking any chances, so I followed it. At that time, I’m glad I did.
Luckily the truck was on break, and we could go where we wanted to without abandoning the truck. I followed the clown and the boy into what looked like a funhouse. I started getting concerned about the clown’s intentions as we got to the second floor. Thats where I saw it. The boy was blindfolded and laughing, likely thinking he was just having fun. But the clown was dangling him over the ledge of a Maintenace doorway that dropped 30 feet onto the hard ground. The clown slowly turned his face to meet my gaze with a twisted smile and a sinister cackle. He started to let go of the wheelchair as I bolted over to him to try and grab the chair before it was too late. I bodychecked the clown out of the way and grabbed the handle just before the boy rolled off. The clown made an odd noise and jumped away dramatically into the darkness of the funhouse. I was relieved to see the boy still sitting there blindfolded and laughing, still unaware of his situation.
Once again, my thoughts were interrupted by a curdling scream. It was a woman standing below and staring right at us. Her screams brought a crowd before I could even comprehend what was unfolding. But that’s when it hit me… I was framed again. The next few hours went by like a flash. First I was handcuffed and brought to a security station for questioning. Then I was walked right in front of my boss and Haylee, where they were told what I had done, or rather what I had been accused of. To no surprise, I was fired on the spot. But what hurt more was seeing Haylee’s look of disgust as I walked away. The police told me I was ban from the carnival event and if I returned, I’d be trespassed.
I held my head down in disbelief at what had just happened. Nobody believed me of what I saw, and nobody else seemed to have witnessed the clowns but me. If I was lucky, I’d be able to return to school this fall and NOT have this follow behind me. On my way out I passed a magic show and decided to blend into the crowd to at least get some enjoyment out of tonight.
The magician called on his “lovely assistant” to help with his next trick. The assistant that walked out though was a frumpy being in baggy flashy clothes that wore a crumby wig and a skirt. It was another clown. I watched the clown closely as I recognized its gaze lock directly onto my own. It smiled another sinister smile, and it walked swaying its hips dramatically. The magician pulled out a large crate and asked for a volunteer to step into the box as the clown held the door open. He picked a young woman from the crowd, and I recognized her immediately. It was Haylee! She grabbed the magicians hand and stepped up to the stage. The clown held the door open motioning her to step inside, but as he did it, he turned again to look directly at me.
At first, I panicked, but then I came to my senses. Everything I had tried to stop tonight only ended with me in trouble. So I decided to call the clown’s bluff. I just smiled at him and waved, provoking him to actually do something, or admit defeat. I felt a wave of satisfaction run over me as the clown frowned and scowled at me for not getting involved. But that emotion started to waver as his twisted expression turned into one of evil and sick joy. He shut the door with Haylee inside, and then made a swift exit out of the back of the stage. The magician said his magic words and swung open the door.
some people puked, others screamed, while some thought it was still part of the show. But what was inside the box was something that burned into my brain that I can still see to this day. It was the mangled and torn apart corpse of Haylee. I stared in terror as the box leaked with blood and the magician stood startled on the stage, wondering what had happened.
As first responders arrived, I knew I needed to make my exit or risk being seen by police. I ran home and shut myself in my room. Does this mean I really WAS saving people’s lives tonight? Would that grill really have exploded? Would that boy really have fallen to his death? I asked myself what these clowns were up to and what they had against me. But my only conclusion was no conclusion at all.
To this day I’ve never seen those clowns again. But I know what I will face if they ever do return. Do I take the blame for their actions?
Or do I let them carryout their torment on someone else?