Terrifier 2 E-Book

Tim Waggoner

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 495

Beschreibung

The nightmarish Art the Clown returns from the dead to continue his murderous and mad spree, in this gruesome novelization of the hit horror film. It has been one year since the sleepy town of Miles County survived the murderous spree of demented killer Art the Clown, but little do they know the nightmare is about to begin anew. Resurrected by a sinister entity, Art is back with an appetite for murder and mayhem—setting his sights on the recently bereaved teenager Sienna and her younger brother Jonathan. The streets are about to run with blood, and Sienna must somehow survive this gruesome Halloween night and discover how to defeat a brutal and unforgiving killing machine from beyond her nightmares. There's no stopping Art once his sights are set on you…

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Leave us a Review

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

About the Author

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Terrifier 2: The Official Movie Novelization

Print edition ISBN: 9781835413210

E-book edition ISBN: 9781835413227

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

www.titanbooks.com

First edition: October 2024

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

© Bloody Disgusting 2024. All Rights Reserved.

Tim Waggoner asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

Thanks to Brad Miska for inviting me to play in Art’s blood-soaked world. Thanks to Kenneth W. Cain for doing such a great job editing the manuscript. And, as always, thanks to my agent Cherry Weiner, my steadfast guide through the wild world of publishing.

CHAPTER ONE

Dr. Seth Bolton was having one absolutely shit-tastic night.

Being a coroner was never a laugh fest, but today had been especially grim. A family of four—parents in their thirties and their two young children—had died in their sleep the previous night. The wife’s mother had stopped by her daughter’s house to drop off a batch of ghost-shaped sugar cookies she’d made for the kids to celebrate Halloween. When she found the door locked, she tried calling, but her daughter didn’t answer. Mom had a key for emergencies, so she opened the door, went inside, and called out their names, but there was no response. Frantic, she searched through the house, and she found everyone in their beds. At first, she thought they were asleep, but when she couldn’t rouse any of them, she realized the terrible truth. They were all dead.

She called 911, police rushed to the scene, and after giving the victims a quick once-over, they called the Coroner’s Office. Seth answered the phone.

“Got four cold ones for you,” the officer who called had said. Despite his profession—or perhaps because of it—Seth didn’t appreciate that kind of dark humor, but he said nothing, just took down the address and waited for the EMTs to deliver the bodies. It took two trips, but an hour later, the entire deceased family was in Seth’s lab, lying on gurneys, zipped up in body bags, covered by white sheets. Seth was confident the family had died of carbon monoxide poisoning—the cops on the scene said there were no CO detectors in the house—but he still had to conduct autopsies to prove it, on the kids as well as the parents. That had taken a total of eight hours.

He was looking forward to getting the hell out of here, hitting a drive-thru on the way home to pick up dinner, watching a little TV, and going to sleep early for change. But just as he was about to leave, he got another call.

A middle-aged man had dropped dead at a local bar. He and his friends had been debating the Giants’ chances for the season, when he broke off in the middle of a sentence—eyes wide, features frozen—and slipped off his bar stool. Seth figured the poor bastard was probably dead before he hit the floor, most likely from a heart attack or an aneurysm. But since the cause of death couldn’t be determined at the scene, the man won an all-expenses-paid trip to the Coroner’s Office.

The office was criminally short-staffed at the moment, too. One of the other two docs who worked there was out on maternity leave, and the third had quit to take a job as a pathologist in a hospital, and Seth hadn’t had time to replace him. This meant Seth was doing the work of three people, so rather than putting the new corpse on ice until the morning, he decided to stay late and perform the autopsy, so he wouldn’t be so backed up tomorrow.

Big mistake.

As he was finishing up with the barfly, yet another call came in.

A dead woman had been found in a dumpster behind a nail salon. Her clothes were on backward and inside out, and it appeared that most of the bones in her body had been broken. Another bizarre death, another guest at Chateau de Coroner. By this point, it was almost midnight, and Seth said fuck it, brewed another pot of coffee, and got to work on the woman soon after she arrived.

When he finished, it was around 3:00 a.m. Too late to go home since the day shift would start in a few hours, but maybe he’d be able to catch a few Zs in his office before then, provided no one else in this fucking town died in mysterious circumstances before 9:00 a.m.

He’d settled into his office chair, put his feet on the desk, leaned back, closed his eyes… and the goddamn phone rang again. A number of grisly murders had taken place in an abandoned warehouse on the west side of town. When Seth asked the cop on the line how many a “number” was, she’d said, “A lot—and they’re bad, Doc. Really bad.”

Seth had sighed as he hung up the phone. So much for sleep.

So now here he was, alone with what the nightshift EMTs—Roman and Elston—assured him were only the first bodies recovered from the warehouse massacre. At least two more would be coming. Seth wished he’d listened to his father and gone to law school. Elston had promised to bring him a breakfast sandwich—with bacon. That was something.

Time to open the presents they’d brought him.

He unbuckled the restraints that kept the victim’s corpse secured to the gurney, donned a pair of rubber examination gloves, then unzipped the brown body bag just enough so he could get a look at the man’s face.

“Jesus.”

With the exception of the left eye—which remained intact—his entire face had been reduced to ragged, raw meat. There were cavernous holes where the right eye and nose had been, the lower jaw was shattered and hung at an angle, and only a few teeth remained visible in the violated flesh.

Seth remembered what Elston had told him.

You’re probably going to have to identify this poor bastard by his teeth—if you can dig them out of the back of his skull.

He’d thought the EMT had been exaggerating. If anything, the kid had understated the severity of the man’s injuries.

Seth looked up and stared at the second body bag, lying on a gurney several feet away. The killer was in there. Elston had said the fucker had killed himself rather than be taken into police custody, but Seth thought the man had gotten off too lightly. Anyone who could do something like this to another human being—he gazed back down at the victim’s red, wet ruin of a face—deserved to be punished, to suffer, for a long time. Seth didn’t believe in Heaven or Hell, but at times like this, he wished he did. It would be a comfort to know this man’s killer was roasting in the fires of damnation for all eternity.

He sighed. At least the maniac could never hurt anyone else.

“Let’s have a look at the man of the hour.”

He zipped up the victim’s body bag, concealing the ravaged face once more. Seth wasn’t squeamish—not after twenty-two years on the job—but that didn’t mean he enjoyed gazing at mangled meat and crushed bone any longer than he had to.

He walked over to the second gurney, undid the straps, and unzipped the bag. Before opening it all the way, he looked down at the spot where the killer’s head was hidden.

“I hope your fifteen minutes of fame was worth it, you sick son of a bitch.”

He pulled the bag open—

—and immediately drew back in surprise.

The motherfucker was dressed like some kind of goddamn demon clown. Why hadn’t Roman and Elston given him a heads-up? Maybe they’d just forgotten; or maybe they’d decided to treat ol’ Doc to a little trick tonight. Jerks. God, he hated working on Halloween.

He leaned forward to examine the killer’s face more closely.

The killer wore a bloodstained white skull cap that covered his head and ears, and his face was covered with white makeup. Black makeup encircled his lips and mouth, and formed cartoonishly thin crescent eyebrows that reached up to his forehead. He didn’t appear to have any actual eyebrows. Had he shaved them? He had a long, hooked, witch-like nose—complete with a small black wart-like dot on the tip—sharp, protruding cheekbones, an exaggerated brow ridge, and a thick, prominent chin. At first, he assumed these features were merely more makeup, rubber appliances affixed to the man’s face with some kind of adhesive. And yet, they looked like real flesh, bone, and cartilage. Seth couldn’t escape the feeling that if he were to reach out and gently pinch the end of the killer’s nose, he’d find it wasn’t a prosthetic at all.

The fucker stank, too. He smelled of blood—both fresh and congealed. And his body odor was so strong, it was like he regularly bathed in sewer water.

The worst part was the killer’s teeth. The mouth was stretched in a wide orifice, revealing swollen black gums and rotting teeth, slick with blood. The mouth looked as if it belonged to some loathsome deep-sea creature rather than a man, and it gave him a disturbingly inhuman appearance.

He could only see a bit of the clown’s costume—a ruffled white collar (stained with blood, of course) and a tiny black top hat he wore at a jaunty angle on the left side of his head, held in place by an elastic strap that reached beneath his chin. He supposed the hat was meant to add a touch of whimsy to the outfit, but all it did was make the bastard seem even more creepy.

There was something else about the man, too, something Seth couldn’t quite put his finger on. Even dead, he exuded an aura of menace, of violence waiting to erupt at any moment, like a powerful thunderstorm on the verge of letting loose. It was an unsettling feeling, and he didn’t like it.

Seth had been so fascinated by the man’s bizarre appearance that he’d momentarily forgotten to examine his injuries, and he did so now. The right eye was gone, and since he saw no obvious signs of it being cut or pulled out, he assumed it had been pushed out by great force.

He blew his brains out before they could take him in, Elston had said.

Seth saw no obvious wounds to the head, so he assumed the clown had jammed the gun muzzle into his mouth and pulled the trigger. The force of the blast could’ve forced the right eye out of its socket, and the exit wound would most likely be in the back of the head. Shooting himself that way would account for the blood on his teeth, too.

Police found him eating the face off some girl after he ran her over with a truck.

Then again, the blood could be from another of his victims. Or maybe it was his and hers, mixed.

Seth reached for the clown’s shoulders, intending to raise him a few inches so he could get a look at the back of his head. But before he could touch the man, all hell broke loose. The fluorescent lights flickered on and off rapidly, creating a disorienting strobe effect, and every electronic device emitted loud, harsh static. The office phone warbled, sounding much louder than it ever had before, and there was a rising-and-falling ssssshhhhh that resembled a chorus of whispering voices, but if they spoke any words, Seth couldn’t make them out. A woman’s voice came from the radio, and the words it said rose above the din.

“You’re going to like it here…”

Screaming followed, whether from the woman or some other source. It increased in pitch and volume until it felt like hot spikes were being driven through Seth’s ears.

And then it stopped.

The lights remained on, and every electronic device fell silent, including the phone. If his ears hadn’t been ringing, he would’ve thought he’d experienced a hallucination, one most likely brought on by severe sleep deprivation. He looked around, half-expecting—or maybe hoping—someone would jump out of hiding and shout “Happy Halloween!” But no one did.

What in the ever-loving fuck was that?

If only the radio had been affected, Seth thought he might’ve been listening to some kind of messed-up Halloween program designed to freak out listeners. But the lights, the phone…

He slowly turned his head to look down at the dead clown once more. Could he—

No, that was ridiculous. Seth was a man of science. He didn’t believe in ghosts.

The clown’s right arm shot upward, and his fingerless-gloved hand fastened around Seth’s throat and squeezed tight. The clown sat up, and his one remaining eye—his living eye—fixed on Seth with white-hot hatred. Holy shit! The motherfucker wasn’t dead! Seth didn’t know how Roman and Elston could’ve made such a mistake, and right then it didn’t matter. He needed to get away from this bastard before he ended up like No-Face over there.

He grabbed hold of the clown’s forearm with both hands and tried to break his grip, but no matter how hard he pulled, it was no use. The killer was unbelievably strong, especially for someone who had been injured so severely that a pair of highly trained and experienced EMTs thought he was dead. Then again, maybe the clown had been dead, and the weird energy surge that passed through the office had somehow brought him back. But he didn’t really give a crap if the clown was dead, alive, or something in between. Seth had expected to die as a result of his bad habits—eating shitty food, drinking too much booze, never exercising—and he’d long ago made peace with that. But he’d be damned if he let himself die at the hands of a blood-covered, one-eyed killer clown—and on fucking Halloween, no less! His obituary would be embarrassing as hell.

Seth wished he had a knife or a gun, but he didn’t. What he did have, however, was an expert knowledge of human anatomy. He removed his left hand from the clown’s forearm, extended his index finger, and jammed it into the clown’s empty eye socket as hard as he could. He swirled his finger around in the bloody slop, hoping to cause enough brain damage to turn off this fucker’s lights for good. But instead of crying out in pain or jerking his head back, the clown merely grinned, exposing more of his horrible-looking teeth.

He tightened his grip on Seth’s throat, and Seth felt his laryngeal prominence of the thyroid cartilage—otherwise known as the Adam’s apple—begin to give way beneath the pressure of the clown’s cruel hand. Then there was a sickening crunch, and Seth screamed. His ears filled with a roaring sound, and gray slid in from the edges of his vision. He knew this meant he was on the verge of passing out, and if that happened, he would be completely helpless. Once unconscious, the clown could kill him easily, and take his sweet time doing it.

Panicking, Seth pulled his finger out of the clown’s eye socket with a wet schlurp and jabbed it back in. He repeated this maneuver, jabbing his finger in and pulling it out as fast as he could. In-out, in-out, in-out… But all he succeeded in doing was to piss off the clown. He felt the man’s fingers cut into the skin of his neck and then plunge into his flesh. Blood gushed from newly created wounds, and Seth tried to give voice to his pain, but all that came out of his mouth was a harsh coughing gurgle.

Acting on instinct, nothing more now than a dumb animal trying to save its life, Seth started shaking his head back and forth rapidly. More blood flowed, coating the clown’s hand and making it difficult for him to maintain his grip. Seth then pulled his body backward with all the strength left to him and slipped free from the killer’s grasp.

For an instant, he felt a surge of victory, but then he shoved the emotion aside. He didn’t have time to do anything except try to survive. He slapped a hand to his throat to staunch the blood flow, turned, and started toward his instrument tray on the other side of the room, hoping to arm himself with something—a scalpel, rib shears—anything with which he could defend himself.

He wanted to run, but the best he could manage was a shambling walk. Blood loss wasn’t the only problem he faced—he was having trouble breathing too. Not only had the clown nearly crushed his throat, narrowing his airway, but the killer’s fingers had penetrated so deeply into his neck that blood was actually pouring into his throat, causing him to swallow and aspirate it. Every time he tried to take in a breath, he sucked more blood into his lungs than air, and when he tried to exhale, he coughed a gout of crimson that soaked his white lab coat or splattered onto the tiled floor. His vision blurred, and he weaved, stumbled, almost fell, but he managed to stay on his feet and keep going.

Something hard slammed into the base of his spine as the clown kicked him, and white light exploded behind his eyes. He crashed to the floor, the impact causing his hand to fly away from his throat. Blood gushed freely from his wounds, and he pressed his hand to his neck once more. The flesh was so wet now it was impossible to maintain a decent seal with his examination gloves, so he stripped off the slippery things, tossed them aside, and pressed his bare hand to his neck. The seal wasn’t much better than the glove’s, but it was something. His lower back felt as if it was on fire, and he thought how easy it would be to just give up and lie here and let the clown finish him off.

He rolled onto his side, injured back screaming in protest, and turned his head enough so he could see the clown standing behind him, mouth stretched into an impossibly wide grin, blood trickling from his empty socket like red tears, his good eye wild with madness.

He could see the clown’s entire costume now, and it followed the same black-and-white color scheme of his makeup. The right arm was black, the left white, while the left side of the body was white down to the pants cuff, the left black. Two black pom-poms were attached to the middle of the outfit like giant buttons. A white ruffled collar, ruffled sleeves, fingerless white gloves, and that tiny black hat completed the ensemble.

He had two thoughts upon getting his first real look at the killer clown. One, he couldn’t believe how much blood was on the bastard’s costume, most of it probably not his. And two, he couldn’t believe a skinny fucker like him could be so goddamn strong. Seth’s gaze then traveled down the clown’s body until he came to the man’s feet. Of course the son of a bitch was wearing a pair of giant clown shoes. No wonder his back felt like it was broken.

Then it happened again, only worse this time. The fluorescent lights started strobing once more, their blue-white illumination far more intense, the shadows they created sharper, darker, deeper. Static blasted from every electronic device in the lab, regardless of whether it had been activated before or not, the noise absolutely deafening. Added to that was a discordant chorus of disembodied screams, the voices of a thousand spirits suffering agonies beyond comprehension. Despite there being no windows in the lab, a violent wind erupted from some unknown source, snatched papers off his desk, and swirled them around the room in an invisible vortex.

The clown spread his arms wide, turned his face toward the ceiling, and closed his one eye, as if luxuriating in the chaos that surrounded him. His mouth moved as if laughing with delight, but no sound emerged, and Seth thought the killer’s silence was, in its own way, equally as disturbing as the powerful forces that had been unleashed in the lab.

This couldn’t be happening, not any of it, but it was, and if he didn’t get off his ass and start moving again, he would die. The clown was still glorying in the storm of insanity that raged around him, and Seth knew this was his chance. He was now too weak to physically fight the clown, but if he could reach the office phone and call for help… He tried to push himself onto his feet using his free hand, but his back screamed at him, so he abandoned that idea. Instead, he crawled across the tiled floor, keeping his right hand pressed to his throat to minimize his blood loss.

He’d only gone a couple of feet when he felt a prickling on the back of his neck, an atavistic warning of danger. Fearing the clown was about to resume his attack, he looked over his shoulder, but the man remained in the same position, head back, arms spread. But Seth saw… something appear next to the clown. It was dark, edges blurry, a shadow that wasn’t quite there. Its size varied rapidly, taller than the clown one instant, small as a pebble the next. Then the shadow stabilized at around four feet. It assumed a roughly human form, pure dark and featureless. No, not a shadow, Seth realized. A shadow was something. This was Nothing with a capital N—a great, endless emptiness in the shape of a child. As frightening as the clown was, as dangerous as he was, he was nothing compared to this… this blasphemy, and Seth was filled with an emotion so far beyond terror he didn’t think there was a word for it.

A voice on the radio, the one he heard before, spoke again. “You’re going to like it here… I promise.”

The dark thing turned its head and looked up at the clown, who still stood with his arms spread, head back, eye closed. Then it lowered its head to face Seth, waved enthusiastically, and then faded until it was gone.

The chaos continued—lights flashing, electronics crackling, voices screaming in torment—but the shadow thing was gone, and he was no longer paralyzed by fear. He continued crawling across the floor toward the office phone, struggling to breathe, but, for the moment at least, still alive.

CHAPTER TWO

Art lowered his hands to his sides and opened his eye.

The strange storm that raged around him was beginning to abate. The lights flickered more slowly now, the wind was less violent, the noises issuing from the electronic devices were quieter, and the disembodied screams had ceased altogether.

Too bad. He liked the screams.

A memory, as if from a half-forgotten dream, drifted through his mind. Words, spoken in a man’s voice.

I hope your fifteen minutes of fame was worth it, you sick son of a bitch.

He fixed his eye on the coroner crawling across the floor, hand pressed to his wounded neck, blood trail smeared on the tile behind him. Time to finish the job. He bared his teeth in a half smile, half snarl, and started toward the bleeding man. But he only made it a few steps before a glint of light caught his attention. He stopped, turned, saw a mirror hanging on the wall above a sink. The coroner could wait. He wasn’t going anywhere.

Art walked over to the mirror and examined his reflection. His clothes were a blood-caked mess—always a hazard in his line of work—and his right eye socket was a crimson ruin. He was vaguely aware the coroner had reached his desk and was attempting to grab hold of the phone’s handset. But the man’s fingers were so slick with blood that he was having trouble getting a grip on it. Art wasn’t ready to deal with him just yet, though. He leaned forward and pulled down his lower lid to get a closer look at his empty eye socket. He leaned back, tilted his head, considered. Not a bad look for him, really.

The coroner, still sitting on the floor, managed to finally take hold of the handset. In order to use the dial pad, he would have to remove his other hand from his throat. He did so, and blood streamed from his wounds as he lifted himself into a crouching position so he could see what he was doing. His hand shook as he extended an index finger and stabbed it at the keys on the dial pad. It took him a couple of tries, but eventually he managed to press 9-1-1. He slumped back to the floor, pressed his free hand to his throat once more, and waited.

Art—still standing at the mirror—could hear the dispatcher’s voice as she answered.

“911, what is your emergency?”

The coroner tried to speak, but all that came out of his mouth was a choking sputter.

“Hello? 911. Do you have an emergency?”

The coroner tried again, but only managed unintelligible grunts.

Art reached around to the back of his head, lightly touched his fingertips to the open wound there, felt splintered edges of bone and a slurry of blood and spongy meat. He got his fingers good and wet, pulled his hand away, pressed it to the mirror and began to slowly draw letters on the glass.

A

“Sir, can you speak?”

R

“If you can’t speak, press any button on your phone. Once for yes, twice for no.”

T

“Are you still there? Sir, I want you to stay on the line for me, okay? I’m gonna track your location.”

The letters might’ve spelled Art, but the message they were meant to communicate was, I’m back, motherfuckers!

Time for the coroner.

Art turned away from the mirror and took a deep breath to help him refocus. The storm was over now, and aside from the coroner’s labored, wet breathing, all was silent. Art swept his one-eyed gaze around the lab until he found what he was looking for—a rolling stainless-steel tray with various surgical instruments laid out upon its surface. He walked over to the tray and considered the array of lovely toys before him.

Decisions, decisions…

“Are you still with me? Hello? Are you still there?”

A gleaming steel postmortem hammer caught Art’s eye. He picked it up, felt its weight in his hand, considered its heft, imagined the damage such an instrument could inflict. Yes, this would do nicely. Gripping the handle tightly, he turned back to the coroner, and his lips drew back from his teeth in a savage grin.

“Okay, 129 Peterson Drive, Miles County Morgue. Sir, are you still with me?”

Art walked toward the coroner. The man’s eyes widened in panic, and he tried to speak again, the sputters coming more rapidly this time, but he remained unable to form coherent words.

“Just sit tight and remain calm. Police and paramedics are on their way—”

Art gently removed the handset from the coroner’s grip and replaced it on the base unit, cutting off the dispatcher. The coroner looked up at the clown, fear in his eyes, along with a silent plea for mercy.

As if.

Art raised the hammer and brought it down onto the coroner’s forehead. There was a satisfying crack of bone, and a jet of blood flew upward and splattered onto the wall calendar. The coroner slumped to the floor, and Art crouched over him and swung the hammer into the side of the man’s jaw. Another crack, and teeth flew through the air, hit the tile with sharp clacks, and skittered to a stop. Art dropped the hammer, grabbed the coroner’s damaged jaw with his left hand to hold the man’s head still. Then with his other hand, he reached for the man’s right eye.

The coroner let out a gurgling scream as Art jammed his fingers into the socket and pulled the eye free. The optic nerve was still attached, and it flopped around like a tail as Art held the eye up to examine it. Then he rolled up the optic nerve and pressed the eye into his empty socket. When he was finished, he turned the right side of his face to the coroner, grinned, and spread his hands in a ta-dah gesture. He pointed to his new eye, then pointed to the coroner’s empty socket, and silently laughed.

The coroner was too busy writhing in pain and choking on his own blood to appreciate Art’s little prank, however. He shook his head back and forth, as if saying, No, no, no…

Joke ’em if they can’t take a fuck. Art picked up the postmortem hammer and continued smashing the coroner’s face, striking one blow after another, until the man stopped making noise and fell still. Art continued hitting the man’s face until the man’s features were utterly destroyed. Then he dropped the hammer once more, removed his new eye, and tossed it aside. He gripped the top of the coroner’s head with both hands and pried open his skull as easily as pulling apart a ripe melon. He reached inside, pulled the brain free, and lifted it with both hands, gazing lovingly upon it, as if holding something sacred and beautiful.

Then he shoved it into his mouth and sank his teeth into its sweet, warm meat.

Coming back from the dead sure gave a guy an appetite.

*   *   *

When Art was finished with his grisly repast, he upended a plastic container and dumped its contents onto the floor. Then he put the container back on the floor and removed the now empty garbage bag.

Time to go shopping.

He raided the cabinets and drawers, in search of new instruments of death. He stuffed his bag with knives, forceps, scissors, scalpels, bone saws, chisels, and whatever else he could find that appeared capable of inflicting serious damage on the human body. He might as well have been a kid in a toy store.

On a shelf containing bottles of various chemicals, he discovered one labeled fluoroantimonic acid. He had no idea what fluoroantimonic meant, but acid was just what the (dead) doctor ordered. He added it to his new collection. He spent a few more moments gathering items, mindful of the time. The 911 dispatcher had told the coroner that help was on the way, and he wanted to finish up and leave before they got here. He’d already died once today, and he really didn’t feel like doing it again.

He checked the pockets of the coroner’s lab coat, then his pants pockets, until he found the man’s wallet. He turned it upside down, shook it, and several quarters dropped out and clattered to the floor. The man didn’t carry a lot of cash—who did these days?—but Art found a few singles, took them, then tossed the wallet away. He put the money in his garbage bag, then stepped over to the coroner’s corpse. He gazed at it without expression, thinking nothing, feeling nothing. And then he cocked his head, grinned, gave the dead man a farewell salute, and headed for the door.

But before he could reach it, he heard someone approaching from the other side.

*   *   *

“That man is gonna work himself to death,” Roman said.

He and Roman took turns driving the medic van, and tonight Elston was behind the wheel. He liked driving. It occupied his mind so he didn’t have to think as much about the things they saw on the job. Like tonight. That warehouse had been a scene out of a fucking nightmare.

Right now, they were waiting in line at an all-night donut shop drive-thru to pick up Doc’s breakfast sandwich—a bacon, egg, and cheese croissant with extra bacon—as well as some food for themselves. He’d ordered a large soda and a blueberry muffin, while Roman had selected a large ice coffee and a bagel. A plain one, which Elston thought was the most boring bagel of all. Then again, he supposed a blueberry muffin wasn’t that daring a choice, either.

“Doc is kind of a workaholic,” Elston admitted, “but the Coroner’s Office really could use more staff.”

“Budget cuts,” Roman said, and Elston nodded.

The car ahead of them got their food and drove away, so Elston pulled up.

“That’ll be $21.98,” the woman at the window said.

She was an attractive woman with curly brown hair, and she looked like she could barely keep her eyes open. Elston could relate. Working nights could really take a toll on a person.

He smiled as he handed her his debit card.

“Busy night?” he asked.

The woman mumbled something unintelligible, tapped his card, and returned it to him. She then handed him two bags, which Elston took and passed on to Roman, and their drinks, which he put in the van’s cupholders. He gave the woman at the window another smile.

“Hope you have a good rest of your day,” he said.

She muttered something that might’ve been “You too,” but which could’ve just as easily been “Fuck you.” Elston pulled away from the window, stopped at the parking lot’s exit to make sure traffic was clear, then pulled onto the street and headed back toward the Coroner’s Office. A good thing about working nights when you were an EMT: a lot fewer vehicles on the road than during the day. If you needed to get a patient to the hospital fast, there were fewer obstacles to slow you down. Elston sometimes wondered how many people had died en route to the hospital during the day who might’ve survived if they’d taken the trip during the night.

Roman took her bagel from one of the bags along with a small container of cream cheese. She unwrapped the bagel, then peeled the lid off the container and used a plastic knife to spread the cream cheese. She liked a thin layer on her bagels, while Elston saw bagels as cream cheese delivery devices and piled it on.

“You want your muffin?” she asked.

“Not while I’m driving. But I’d appreciate it if you could put a straw in my drink.”

“You got it.” Roman did and handed the cup to Elston. He thanked her and took a long drink. He sighed as the coolness hit his throat. It was the first time he’d paused to drink something since their shift began.

Roman finished preparing her bagel, took a small bite, and began chewing.

“Good?” he asked.

Roman swallowed. “Tastes like cardboard.”

She wrapped up the bagel and tossed it back into the bag.

He frowned. “You usually like their bagels.”

“I know, and on any other night, I’m sure it would taste fine. But after what we saw at the warehouse…”

Elston knew what she meant. As an EMT, you needed to get used to seeing some pretty awful shit, or you didn’t last long in the job. On his very first shift as a rookie, he and his partner at the time—a long-time EMT named Patty Willis—got a call to go to a house where there’d been a murder-suicide. A father had shot his wife and two oldest children with a handgun, killing them. He then turned the weapon on himself. For reasons unknown, he hadn’t harmed his four-year-old daughter. She’d been the one who called 911.

The little girl was sitting on the porch waiting for them when they arrived. She wore only underwear, and her face and chest were stippled with blood. Elston knew instantly what that meant. She’d not only witnessed her father committing at least one of the murders; she’d been close enough when it happened for blood to hit her. Four fucking years old…

When Elston and Patty hurried over to the girl, she looked up at them. He’d expected her to be crying, but she wasn’t.

“Daddy didn’t hurt me. He said I was his favorite ’cause I played with his thing when he told me to.” She’d looked at Elston then. “Do you have a thing? Does white stuff come out of yours, too?”

That had been Elston’s absolute worst moment on the job, and nothing he’d seen since had come close to topping it. Until tonight.

He was glad he didn’t like to eat while driving. If that muffin had been in his stomach right now, it wouldn’t be sitting very well. Not at all.

Just a couple more hours, then you can go home, have a couple drinks, crawl into bed, and hope to Christ you don’t have any dreams.

The donut shop was only a few miles from the Coroner’s Office, and they should be there in—

The dispatcher’s voice came over the radio.

“All units, we’ve received a 911 call from the Coroner’s Office. The individual who made the call couldn’t speak, and it’s presumed they’re in serious distress. We were cut off, and I’ve tried calling back, but there’s no answer. Whoever is closest to the Coroner’s, get there ASAP.”

“That would be us,” Elston said.

Roman grabbed the mic. “Unit 62, en route.”

“Acknowledged,” the dispatcher said.

Roman replaced the mic and turned to Elston. “What the actual fuck? We just left the man!”

She sounded as shocked as he felt. “Maybe he accidentally cut himself while he was working. He did say he’d been going almost twenty-four hours. When someone’s that tired, they make mistakes, sometimes bad ones.”

“Maybe he had a heart attack from all the junk food he eats,” Roman said.

Elston hit the sirens and lights and pressed his foot down on the accelerator. Neither of them said anything else as their vehicle sped through the empty streets.

*   *   *

Roman didn’t like Doc much. She thought he was kind of a dick, but that didn’t mean she wanted anything bad to happen to the man. The fact he hadn’t been able to speak at all when he’d called 911 was worrisome. Any number of reasons could account for it, none of them good. Maybe his vocal cords had been damaged, or maybe he’d had a stroke. Maybe he’d been weakened by blood loss, or maybe he’d suffered a blow to the head and was barely conscious. Any way you sliced it, it looked like Doc was in big trouble. When he’d first asked them to bring him something to eat, she’d been irritated. Hadn’t the asshole ever heard of Uber Eats? But now she was glad he had asked the favor, since it meant they’d still been in the area and could get to him quickly. His craving for bacon might just end up saving his life.

Hold on, Doc, she thought. We’re coming.

Elston pulled the medic around to the back of the Coroner’s Office, where the bodies were unloaded. There was a rear entrance here that was always unlocked, and Roman and Elston grabbed their medical bags, got out of the medic, and ran for the door. Once inside, they hurried down a narrow corridor with a concrete floor and walls, and Elston called out, “Doc! Are you all right? Doc!”

No response.

Roman wasn’t sure what she expected to see when they reached the office, but it sure as shit wasn’t the scene waiting for them. Doc lay splayed out on the floor, blood all around him and soaking his white coat. His face… Roman almost threw up her single bite of bagel, and she was sure if she’d eaten more, it all would’ve come up right then. His face was gone, and what remained looked like ground hamburger meat. There were small wounds on his throat, and his head… His head…

Elston gave voice to her thought. “Someone cracked open his head like a fucking egg and removed his brain.”

“Jesus…”

She knew Doc was deader than the proverbial doornail—how the hell could you live without a goddamn brain?—but protocol dictated they try to find a pulse on him. Body shaking, she walked over to Doc, put her medical bag on the floor, removed a pair of rubber gloves and slipped them on. Then, still trembling, she averted her eyes from Doc’s ruined face and placed two fingers on the side of his blood-slick neck. She was not surprised she detected no pulse.

This is a crime scene, she realized.

She rose and carefully backed away from Doc’s body until she stood beside Elston again.

“Call the police,” she said.

Elston, looking paler than she’d ever seen him before, nodded and pulled his phone from his front pants pocket. Before he could call, Roman sensed movement behind them. She turned and saw a motherfucking blood-drenched clown standing there. She was about to scream when the clown grabbed both their heads and slammed them hard against one another. There was a sickening crunching sound, fireworks exploded in Roman’s vision, then everything went black.

CHAPTER THREE

Roman woke with the mother of all headaches. She suffered from the occasional migraine—they ran in her family—but the worst migraine she’d ever had was nothing compared to how her head felt right now. Despite the pain, she tried to sit up, but something stopped her. She looked down and saw that she was strapped to a gurney. What the hell had happened? The last thing she remembered was waiting in the drive-thru line to get their order.

Restrained as she was, she looked around as best she could and saw a guy in a black-and-white clown suit kneeling on the floor next to Elston. But there was something wrong with her partner. He’d been taken apart—head, arms, and legs separated from his torso—and there was blood everywhere. On the floor, on him, on the clown—

—and on the circular blade of the electric autopsy saw in the clown’s hand.

She recognized the clown then. He was the bastard who’d killed all those people in the warehouse tonight. But he’d committed suicide before the cops could take him in. How could…

She saw the exit wound in the back of his head, and she knew he had eaten his gun. With that kind of injury to his brain, there was no way he could be alive. Yet, he was, and while she’d been unconscious, he’d taken Elston apart like he was a life-sized doll. And if she couldn’t get out of here, it would be her turn next.

Roman started thrashing on the gurney, trying to loosen the restraints. She knew it was futile, but she had to try.

The noise she made alerted the clown, and he stood and turned in her direction. His black-rimmed mouth was twisted into a smile of insanity, but his eyes gleamed with cold, malign intelligence. He activated the autopsy saw. The blade whirred to life, and he started walking toward her.

She shook her head violently back and forth. “No! You can’t do this! Stay back!”

The clown’s smile widened, as if to say, Yes, I can do this. And I am.

This couldn’t be happening! Her sister Adrienne’s wedding was next week, and she was her bridesmaid. Roman had just started dating a firefighter named Cherise, and she’d been debating if it was too early in their relationship to ask her to be her date for the wedding. She had asked this morning, in fact, and Cherise had said yes. Roman had been so happy…

The clown stopped when he reached the gurney, and Roman looked up at him, tears in her eyes.

“I’ve still got so much living to do,” she said.

The clown looked at her for a second, then threw back his head and roared with silent laughter.

Then he went to work with the autopsy saw, and Roman spent the next five minutes shrieking in agony.

*   *   *

When Art was finished playing, Roman’s toes and fingers lay on the floor, along with both nipples, her ears, her nose, her clitoris, and her tongue. By that point, he was starting to get bored, so he rammed the saw into her abdomen just below the sternum and drove the saw upward until it found her heart and pureed it. She spasmed a few times then fell still.

Art switched off the saw, left it buried inside her, then turned away from the table. He retrieved his new bag of toys from the floor where he had left it, and was about to go, when he reconsidered. He returned to Roman, knelt, picked up her severed parts, and dropped them into the bag. You never knew when sweet tidbits like these would come in handy.

He left through the rear entrance, and as he walked past the EMT’s medic, he stopped. He sniffed the air, then opened the passenger-side door. He saw a couple of paper sacks sitting on the floor, so he lowered his bag to the ground, reached in, took them out, and inspected their contents. One held a blueberry muffin, but he hated blueberries, so he tossed it over his shoulder. The other sack contained a bacon, egg, and cheese croissant breakfast sandwich. He dropped the sack, unwrapped the sandwich, and discarded the wrapping paper. He took a bite, chewed, swallowed. The process was a little tricky considering the roof of his mouth had been obliterated when he’d killed himself, but he managed.

Not bad, but it was missing something.

He looked down at his new garbage bag and grinned.

A few moments later, he was walking away from the Coroner’s Office, garbage bag slung over his shoulder, eating the breakfast sandwich. It tasted so much better now that Roman’s tongue lay on top of the bacon. He took another bite and continued on his way. Art walked down a deserted alley, the trash bag with his new toys slung over his right shoulder, breakfast sandwich devoured and gone.

When he’d almost reached the end of the alley, he heard police sirens, and stopped. A trio of cruisers zipped by, one after the other, lights flashing, sirens whoop-whooping. He assumed they were heading toward the Coroner’s Office. He hoped the cops had strong stomachs. He’d left a hell of a mess for them.

He giggled silently.

He waited several seconds, and when no other cruisers came, he started walking again.

Ten minutes later, he reached his destination—a small business with a neon sign in front, blue letters blazing into the night: Clean Around the Clock: 24-Hour Laundry. And in smaller letters beneath that: We Never Close.

When Art had woken on the gurney in the Coroner’s Office, he’d felt recharged and ready to slaughter the world. But that energy had deserted him during the short walk to the laundromat, and now he felt bone-weary. What’s more, the various injuries he’d suffered tonight—some of which were damn significant—were starting to really hurt. So when he pushed open the glass door and trudged inside, he was in no mood for foolishness.

A man sat next to the door in one of the gray plastic chairs lined against the large front window. Forties, shaved head, mustache and goatee, wearing a gray quilted vest over a long-sleeved gray shirt, gray-and-black pajama pants, and brown boots. Art approved of the man’s monochromatic aesthetic. He was slumped in the chair, head back, eyes closed, hands clasped around his middle, fast asleep. Art had no idea if the man was an employee or a customer, and he didn’t care, just so long as the guy continued sleeping and left him in peace.

He walked over to an empty chair on the opposite side of the waiting area from where the man was snoozing. He dropped his garbage bag onto the chair, and the instruments inside rustled and clanged against each other. He hoped the bottle of fluoroantimonic acid didn’t break. It wasn’t the sort of thing you came by every day.

Laundry carts stood against the wall near where Vest Boy slept, and Art walked over to one and removed a wooden hanger from its hanging bar. He carried the hanger back to where he’d left his toys and used its metal hook to snag the zipper on the back of his blood-soaked costume. He then used the hanger to pull the zipper down.

He stopped halfway to take off his oversized shoes, then pulled the zipper the rest of the way down, and slipped out of his clothes. He wore nothing underneath his costume, and after the night he’d had, the warm air of the laundromat felt good against his skin. His face and upper body were covered with blood, and he smelled like an overflowing porta-potty in an abattoir, but luckily for Vest Boy, the stench didn’t rouse him.

Art stripped off his fingerless gloves and wiggled his fingers to get the kinks out of them. He then removed his skull cap and detachable fake collar and tossed the whole mess into one of Clean-Around-the-Clock’s front-loading washing machines. Art didn’t like old, dried blood. There was no life in it. But fresh living blood? That was a different story. He fished the quarters and the dollar bills he’d taken from coroner out of the garbage bag. He went to the change machine, inserted the bills one by one, and scooped up the quarters the machine deposited.

He bought a small box of detergent from a wall-mounted vending machine, considered, then bought another. He emptied both boxes into his washer, fed quarters into it, and then started the machine. He tossed the empty boxes into a trashcan and saw someone had left a newspaper behind on top of one of the machines. He grabbed it and headed back to the chair where he’d left his bag. He moved the bag to a top-loading machine next to the chair and sat with a sigh. It was nice to sit down for a change. He perused the paper’s front page.

The headline for the top story was printed in bold, capital letters, and the instant Art read it, he roared with silent laughter. HEAD-ON CRASH KILLS FAMILY OF FOUR. He laughed so hard tears fell from his one eye.

Suddenly, there was a loud crackle of electricity, and the washing machine with his clothes in it shut down. Like an animal sensing the presence of a threat, he lowered the paper, listened, looked around. Vest Boy was still asleep, and there were no other customers in Art’s line of vision. But there was a hallway with dryers behind him on his left, and he leaned forward and turned his head to look around the corner.

A young girl sat three chairs down from him, also leaning forward, head turned toward him, as if she’d known he was going look in her direction. She was in costume, which wasn’t so strange given that it was Halloween. What was strange was that she wore the same outfit as he did, or at least a version of it. Hers was a dress with a skirt and short sleeves, and the color scheme was reversed. Where his costume was black, hers was white. She also wore a little top hat—white, of course—on the opposite side of her head, only her long hair had been pulled through the hat and it stuck out in a messy ponytail. The hair on the other side of her head hung loose. Her tights were black on the right side, white on the left, and she wore no shoes. Her face was covered with white makeup, and she had black circles around her eyes and lips, as well as the same pencil-thin cartoon brows drawn on her forehead. She even had a little black dot on her nose. Her teeth looked like his, too, but her smile was more of a grimace, and madness danced in her cold blue eyes.

There was something else about her too, an aura of dark power that he’d felt before, and recently. The weird energy storm in the Coroner’s Office—that was it! This Little Pale Girl felt exactly like that, only her power was contained and controlled.

Her expression remained frozen on her face, and the rest of her body stayed motionless as she raised her left hand and waved at him. He hesitated a moment, then slowly raised his own hand and tentatively returned the wave. He tried to smile but didn’t quite succeed.

She continued staring at him, body stiff, eyes unblinking. Black fluid gushed from between her legs then—thick, foul-smelling, chunks of something solid in it—and splattered to the floor beneath her dangling feet.

Art looked at the pool of disgusting muck for a second, unsure what to make of it, then he looked at the Little Pale Girl once more. She remained statue-still, eyes wide, not blinking. After a few seconds, she hopped off her chair—jumping far enough forward so she didn’t land in her own horrid discharge—and walked over to stand in front of him. Her smile remained frozen on her face, and now that she was close, he could see her eyes were dry and dull, as if made from plastic.

All in all, she was a creepy little thing.

His smile was genuine this time.

She reached toward Art’s face, and he remained perfectly still while she pinched the tip of his nose. Then her hand moved toward the ruin of his eye socket. She touched it with her index finger, gently at first, then inserted the finger inside and swirled it around. Art liked the squishy noises this action made.

He laughed silently, and the girl laughed with him, equally as silent. He put his hand in front of his socket and mimed the eye shooting outward, then he shrugged as if to say, Waddya gonna do?

They laughed even harder at that.

His socket started itching then, but he ignored the sensation.

The Little Pale Girl then clapped her hands together and held her right palm out to Art. It took him a moment to understand what she was doing, but when he did, he grinned and nodded. They began playing pattycake, slowly at first, but with increasing speed.

Pattycake, pattycake baker’s man

Bake me a cake as fast as you can

Pat it and prick it and mark it with “B”

And put it in the oven for baby and me!

When they reached the end, the Little Pale Girl mimed rocking a baby.

Art laughed with silent delight. He felt much better than he had when he’d walked into the laundromat. Stronger, full of energy.

He felt good.

The Little Pale Girl clapped with delight, and Art did the same.

*   *   *

Sherman Maldonado was dreaming his girlfriend Kendra was triplets, and they were having a foursome on stage at Carnegie Hall. At least, they were trying to. The house was packed tonight, and everyone in the audience had high-powered binoculars so they could get a close-up view of the action. Sherman suffered performance anxiety under normal circumstances, but with over two thousand people watching, his dick wasn’t just soft—it had withdrawn into his body like a turtle pulling its head into its shell.

The audience was thunderously chanting, Where’s your cock? Where’s your cock?

Sherman woke with a start. For an instant, he didn’t know where he was, and when he saw a naked, blood-covered clown sitting against the opposite wall, playing pattycake by himself, he thought he was still dreaming. But when the clown finished the game and started clapping excitedly, Sherman realized he was awake. He wasn’t startled by the clown’s appearance. Sure, he was weird as fuck, but Sherman had been working here most of his adult life. The clown didn’t even make the list of the top ten weirdest things he’d seen on the job. Besides, it was Halloween. All kinds of strange shit happened then. He closed his eyes and clasped his hands around his middle and settled in to catch a few more winks.

He hoped he wouldn’t go back to his nightmare about Carnegie Hall, but if he did, he’d try to dream up a bottle of extra-strength Viagra to help him out.

*   *   *

One wash wasn’t enough to clean Art’s costume. He would have to run it through again, and maybe one more time after that for good measure. Since he didn’t have enough money to do that, he used the postmortem hammer—its striking surface still sticky with the coroner’s blood—and a stainless-steel chisel to break into the change machine to get more quarters. It took only two strikes to crack that piggy bank, clank-clank! Quarters poured out of the broken machine, and, while he caught as many as he could in his cupped hands, quite a few fell to the tiled floor—ting-ting-ting-ting-ting… Art—still bare-assed—looked over his shoulder to see if the noise had woken Vest Boy.

The Little Pale Girl stood in front of the man, waiting. The instant he started to wake, she moved swift as a striking snake and grabbed his wrist. Vest Boy frowned when her flesh touched his, and he mumbled something unintelligible, as if the contact upset him on a subconscious level. His eyelids twitched a couple of times, but they remained closed, and soon his breathing deepened, became slow and regular. Good trick! Art hoped the Little Pale Girl would teach it to him sometime.

His costume wasn’t the only thing that needed washing. Art himself was covered with dried blood—most of it not his—and after he’d cleaned himself, he’d need to reapply his makeup. Except he carried his makeup in his original trash bag, which he assumed was still somewhere in the warehouse where he’d had his fun tonight.