Please note: this story was provided by the author and published as is.
Cigarette smoke stung my eyes as I sat at my desk, vulture-necked in the dark, watching the looping video of the clown standing behind the Clays Mill Junior High sign. The man was only half visible, standing near the trees with a heart-shaped mylar balloon anchored in his left hand. It was bouncing almost comically against his head as he peered at the camera. His electric blue wig whipped in the wind. A large smile with a row of shark-like teeth painted in the center covered his face. He lifted a hand and gave a small wave to the cameraperson before walking backward into the wood line, vanishing from sight.
The video itself was uncomfortable, but nothing overly strange. There are tons of assholes who get a kick out of scaring people and nearly as many who like to watch the result. We live in a world where people make a living producing prank videos and uploading them to YouTube. If I had only seen one of those clown videos, it would have been just another piece of pointless online content.
It wasn’t just one video, though. That was the seventeenth video I watched in the last month filmed in our small town. Clays Mills only has a population of nine thousand, so word gets around pretty quickly when anything out of the ordinary happens. Dozens of clowns started popping up throughout the area, watching people from alleyways and from behind trees in the city park. It was all the locals could talk about.
I hate clowns. I’ve always found myself recoiling at the sight of them. It’s not a simple aversion; it’s a visceral, instinctive reaction that has haunted me since childhood. I can’t pinpoint when the fear began, but the very essence of those painted faces and exaggerated expressions sends shivers down my spine. There is that uncanny valley effect about them like they’re almost human but not quite. It’s like they need those fake, painted smiles to cover the true emotion hidden behind them.
So why did I watch all of the videos?
My name is Paige Clemmons and I work as a general assignment reporter for the Clays Mill Daily News. It’s a small paper in a small town and there is almost no event here that my editor, Kara Gray, didn’t think was worth reporting. When the “Clays Mill Killer Clowns” popped up, it sparked local interest and Kara had me write twelve hundred words after the third sighting.
When I wrote the first article, there wasn’t much to tell. A few parents spotted the clowns watching their children from the woods near the park. They called the cops, but by the time they arrived, the clowns were already gone. My interview with the responding officers didn’t result in much information. I supplemented the article with a few of the eyewitness reports and included a brief account I found online about a similar incident from seven years earlier.
Back in 2016, men dressed as clowns were photographed roaming through Green Bay, Wisconsin. Some locals reported they were attempting to lure children into remote areas.
Others stated they would follow people through town at night, making threatening gestures. When police would arrive, the clowns would vanish.
It wasn’t long before some of the sightings were discovered to be the work of a local filmmaker who was attempting to promote a horror movie. After taking credit for the sightings, they died off for the most part, but it didn’t last long. Similar sightings began popping up across the country in the following months. National news outlets went wild reporting on the incidents, stirring up hysteria to the point that students at Pennsylvania State and Michigan State formed mobs to search for the clowns after rumors of local sightings.
The clown spotting column became a regular fixture in the paper. Kara would e-mail me links to the videos and ask for a short write-up. People seemed to eat it up and sent in tips almost daily. I would watch the handful of poorly filmed clips, write a brief description, and update the “Clown Count” at the end of each article. Not exactly the Pulitzer prize-winning work I daydreamed of in college, but what can you do?
While the public was still enthralled with the increasing amount of clown sights, by the tenth article, I was sick of writing about them.
The looped video of the shark-mouthed clown near the middle school was still playing on my laptop when I topped off my glass of Basil Hayden. I was just getting ready to open my word processor program when I noticed the bright spill of streetlight pouring in through my living room window. Skeletal shadows danced across the floor as the cold night breeze rocked the branches of the leafless fall trees.
Stubbing out my mostly forgotten cigarette, I stood from the desk and walked to the window to shut the drapes. It was rare that I kept them open this late, but the bourbon and unenviable writing task anchored me in the chair well past sunset. My mother, God rest her soul, would have chastised me for leaving them open, exclaiming that any Peeping Tom wandering the neighborhood could be staring at me.
The rational part of me chuckled at the thought, but that ever-present inner child made me move quickly to close the curtains. Scratching from the brass rings against the rod raised the hair on my neck as I drew them closed. Stealing a final peek into the night, I thought I saw something moving just outside the pool of illumination from the light across the street.
My heart pounded for a moment as I stood there, gripping the curtains. I told myself to turn around and head back to the couch. The article needed writing, the bourbon needed drinking, and I needed to get to bed. Looking down at my watch, I saw it was already 10:45 pm and I had to be at work in less than eight hours.
I had nearly resolved to turn around when I heard the abrasive sound of a horn honking on the other side of the window. My right hand brushed the curtain just slightly, letting in an inch-wide sliver of street light. The air settled heavily in my lungs as the light filtered back in.
Through the gap, standing directly below the streetlight was a clown. His head was bald aside from a crown of long, red hair falling to his shoulders. A pair of bright yellow overalls sagged from his body, patched and heavily stained. The stark white paint on his face glowed under the fluorescent light, contrasting with the exaggerated orange frown painted on his face. Red teardrops were drawn near the corner of his eyes, making him look like he was crying blood.
I watched, transfixed by the horrifying image, and he lifted a white-gloved hand and honked an antique bicycle horn. Heart hammering, I closed the drapes again and ran for my phone. I dialed 911 and a woman’s soft voice answered, asking my name and location. At first, I spoke calmly but as I began to tell her about the man in the street, heavy knocks rained down on the door. I screamed and listened as the woman assured me an office was en route.
The sounds of a hand hammering against the door filled the house as I ran to the kitchen and pulled a knife from the block. I could hear the woman talking in a soothing tone, asking if I was still there, but I couldn’t answer. My head leaned around the corner of the door, watching as the silhouette of the clown washed over the curtains from the glow of the street light. He tapped lightly on the window, before lifting the horn, honking it loudly again.
And then the outline vanished.
Blue strobing lights replaced the horrifying figure a few minutes later and I slowly crept to the window. My heart felt as though it were in my throat as I pulled back the curtain again, just wide enough to glance toward the lights. A Clays Mill PD car was parked in the road in front of my house and a young officer began up the walk.
*****
It’s not much of a surprise to say that the officers didn’t see the clown as they searched the neighborhood. They never did with any of the others, so why would the one outside of my house have been any different? I sat shaking at Kara’s desk the next morning, recounting the horrible night as she listened intently. She nodded in all the right places and seemed concerned, but her response when I was finished was a punch in the gut.
Her only question was why I hadn’t finished the article.
To say I was shocked at how unbothered she was would be an understatement. All of the stories had been so uneventful in my mind, and I hate to admit that I would laugh at the witness accounts as I wrote my column, but experiencing it myself had been sobering. It never occurred to me that my editor would be less concerned with my safety than she was about an article that essentially provided the same story over and over.
I went to my office and slammed the door, struggling to convince myself that I needed the job. Telling Kara how absolutely shitty her response had been would not be in my career’s best interest, but I was scared and seething with anger. The feeling of horror the other people seeing those damn clowns settled on me like a ship’s anchor and my stomach turned with guilt at how dismissive I had been. So many of the other residents were the same way. It was more entertaining than terrifying because it hadn’t happened to them.
So I wrote the damned column.
When I dropped it on Kara’s desk two hours later, she smiled and thanked me. I lingered at her desk for a few seconds expecting an apology, but she had already turned back toward her computer and began scanning the pages I had just given her. As I turned to walk out, she called my name and I turned to look at her. In an almost casual voice, she mentioned that two thousand words on my own experience from the previous night should be on her desk by close of business the following day.
*****
I sat in my kitchen the next night, chain smoking as I typed away on my laptop. The article, which I was hesitant to write, was coming slowly and I’d already deleted it and started over a half dozen times. The quarter bottle of bourbon I drank didn’t help anything. Any time the words began to flow, the tone was sarcastic and spiteful. I wanted to slap down two thousand words on my editor’s desk that weren’t printable, but I knew that would be a quick ticket to the unemployment line.
My back was beginning to ache from hours in the kitchen chair, but moving to another room in the house was an unappealing option at best. The kitchen was the only room without a window, and a small voice in the back of my mind assured me that the greasy, frowning clown would be standing under the streetlight again. If he saw me, he would come knocking once more.
A call to the police department earlier that evening had done nothing to calm my nerves. I spoke with the shift commander, requesting that they send a car to patrol the neighborhood, but he was politely dismissive. With the increasing number of clown sightings and near-constant calls, he couldn’t commit a unit to my neighborhood. He did concede to having an officer pass through the neighborhood once or twice that night but assured me the clowns had never been reported in the same place twice.
I looked away from my laptop toward the wooden-gripped revolver my father had left me when he passed away a few years before. It had lived in a wooden box on the top shelf of my closet all that time, but after seeing the clown the night before, I felt a little better having it nearby. Not that I was much of a shot, mind you, but it was better than nothing.
My phone rang, the piercing sound making me jump like a startled cat. After settling myself back in the chair and taking a few calming breaths, I looked down to see Spam Risk listed below the unknown number. I hit the reject button, ending the call and bringing up my home screen again.
It was 10:45 pm.
I don’t know how many horror movies I’ve seen, but I know I always yell at the television, telling the unsuspecting babysitter not to investigate the noise in the dark bedroom. They always do, though. It never made sense to me and I always told myself that I would never be so foolish in a situation like that, but it turns out I was.
He’s not out there, the little voice in my mind whispered. He won’t be there. Just check and maybe you’ll be able to get some sleep tonight. Take the gun, of course! But just take a look because he won’t be there. It’ll settle your nerves.
Before I had time to register the movement, I could already feel the smooth grip of the gun in my palm as I walked silently into the living room. The streetlight was piercing through my cheap curtains. My bare feet were sticky with nervous sweat as I got closer, reaching up slowly to pull them open. I jerked the curtain aside quickly before I could stop myself.
The street was empty. Nothing moved aside from the bobbing tree branches across the street, rattled by a high night breeze that sent the first autumn leaves scattering across the ground. My grip began to ease on the revolver and I began to laugh, relieved to see nothing out of place.
As I closed the curtain, a shrill noise sounded from outside. Standing just out of the bright circle of light on the sidewalk was the clown, the old bike horn in one hand. He was partially obscured by the trees and further away than he had been the night before, but his frowning face was fixed on mine. As we locked eyes, he slid something from behind the tree, the tip of it reflecting the streetlight.
An axe.
I pulled the curtains closed and ran for the door, disengaged the lock, and pulled it open. The storm door slammed against the side of the house as I bounded onto the porch, leveling the pistol in front of me and scanning the treeline. Catching a glimpse of the shining axe head, I fired the gun toward it and the clown ran back into the woods. I emptied the remaining chambers as he vanished into the trees.
*****
My second visit with the police wasn’t as friendly as the first. Three of my neighbors had called 911, reporting the gunshots. While my earlier request for a night patrol had gone unfulfilled, it seems like my late-night escapade was worth three cruisers and six thoroughly pissed officers. Going to jail seemed like it was firmly on the table until two additional clown sightings came in over their radios during our heated discussion.
It wasn’t exactly a clean ending to the interaction, though. Jeffrey Randolph, chief of police, came by my office the next day. I expected the ass-chewing of a lifetime, but instead, he surprised me by sitting down across from my desk and telling me that reports of clown sightings were on the rise.
As if that weren’t troubling enough, the witnesses reported they were becoming more menacing; following people downtown at night. Showing people weapons as they silently smiled at them. Prowling in backyards during the night and banging on windows.
And still, they always managed to vanish before the police arrived.
It was as though they were there for no other reason than to cause fear and chaos.
After Chief Randolph left my office, Kara came in and asked what the visit had been about. I recapped the meeting and a Cheshire smile plastered her face. Fifteen hundred words, she said, would be just the right amount for Monday’s paper. It was Friday and she wanted to lead the next week with an insider article from the chief.
I wrote the article as soon as I got home that afternoon. It was the sloppiest work I had ever done, but I didn’t care. Sitting in the kitchen late into the night, typing while I swilled whiskey wasn’t how I wanted to spend the evening. No, I expected my horrific visitor again, and I wanted to be ready.
*****
That night, I sat hunkered in the bushes beside my front door. An early autumn chill was settling in and I felt half insane as I shivered, crouched on the ground. I opened the lapel of my jacket to shield the light from my cell phone and looked at the time. It was 10:43 pm and in two minutes, I would know if that bastard clown was going to pop up again.
Almost on cue, I could hear a heavy rustling in the trees across the street. Fallen branches cracked under clumsy footsteps and dry leaves crunched. I expected him to stay in the woodline like he had the night before, but the loud clop of hard-bottom shoes began tapping across the pavement toward my front door. A bicycle horn honked and I jumped slightly before ducking back down, scared he would see my back above the hedges.
I pulled back the hammer of the revolver with a dull click and inched myself forward, watching a shadow creep up the walkway and crawl up my front door. He couldn’t have been more than ten feet away when I bolted upright, aiming the gun at him. The light was on his back, his face washed over in the dark of night, but the costume was unmistakable.
The coveralls hung loosely from his thin frame and the greasy, male-pattern baldness hair was scattered on his shoulders. There was no axe this time, but the bike horn was clutched in his hand. He stumbled back a few inches when he saw me and froze in place, his dull eyes locked on my revolver.
Created by: Luke Previs
“Get on the ground or I’m going to shoot you,” I said, my voice shaking.
The clown just stood there, head cocked to the side, looking like a confused dog.
“I said get on the ground, asshole!” I shouted. He dropped the horn to the ground, a small honk erupting as it hit the pavement. He lifted his hands in the air and got on his knees without saying a word.
Porch lights flicked on down the street and I could see my neighbors sticking their heads through their front doors, staring at me as I pointed my gun at the clown. Paul and Sarah Johnson, my next-door neighbors were standing on their walkway, clad in robes while Sarah talked into her phone. I could hear giving her address to the operator and breathed a sigh of relief, certain she had called the police.
“On your stomach,” I said to the man, and he settled forward, stretching his arms to his side. “If you move an inch, I’ll shoot you in the leg. I’m a bad shot, though. No telling where I might hit you.”
To my surprise, the clown began to cry. Heavy, wailing sobs filled the night air.
I walked toward him slowly, the gun shaking in my hand. There was something different about him now that I could see him in the light. The saggy overalls had been yellow before, but that night, they were a vibrant purple with no stains or patches. His hair was a similar violet color, and a red smile arched up his face, not the menacing frown from before.
Had he changed his costume? Was it the same man?
In the distance, I could hear the soft wail of sirens.
*****
It was almost three in the morning when I got back home from the police station. A Clays Mill officer interviewed me followed by a detective from the state police. They showed me photos of the man and asked if I could identify him as the same clown who had been outside my house the two previous nights. I told them I was pretty sure it was, but added that he must have changed his outfit. I spent a few more hours in the interview room by myself, before an officer finally drove me home.
I slept till almost five that evening. Once I’d gotten home, I finished off the bourbon sitting on my kitchen table and fell into the deepest sleep I’d had in days. The sun was setting when I woke up and I forced myself to eat a few pieces of toast and a glass of water before settling into my recliner and flipping through TV channels. I was awake for less than four hours before I drifted off to sleep again.
I woke in the early hours of Sunday morning when my phone chirped at the arrival of a new e-mail. It was from the chief, so I opened it quickly and scanned it over. The clown outside of my house had been identified as Wilson Pickering from Lexington, Kentucky. He said he and dozens of other clown party clowns had been hired by an anonymous person to appear throughout Clays Mill, but none of them understood why. A viral stunt, maybe?
Pickering had provided dozens of names and the state police were contacting them for questioning.
Toward the end of the e-mail, the chief said two things that caught my eye.
There haven’t been any more clown sightings since the arrest at your house.
That was welcome news, but the final sentence left me disturbed.
Wilson Pickering stated that he was only outside of your house on the night he was arrested. The other clown, according to him, must have been someone else.
*****
Monday morning rolled around and I sluggishly prepared myself for work. The weekend had been long and the lingering discomfort still hung heavily in the air. My mind was a cluster of conflicting thoughts as I digested the events from the past few weeks. I was relieved that the chief seemed to think the clown sightings had died off, but I couldn’t make sense of it.
Who would pay dozens of clowns to terrify a town for seemingly no reason?
Was it a viral event like the chief thought? In a disconcerting way, it made sense. The internet was full of hateful, useless content, but the clowns didn’t seem to have an endgame.
They were unsettling but not much more than a distraction from day-to-day events.
I was finishing my fifth smoke of the morning as I pulled into the parking lot at the Clays Mill Daily News. The parking lot was unusually full and it took longer than it should to register the half dozen police cruisers parked in a messy half circle around the front door. Yellow caution tape fluttered in the cool morning breeze and a few officers stood beside their cars.
Parking haphazardly near the cruisers, I grabbed my bag and headed for the door. A tall man with gray hair and thick glasses slipped between the police cars and headed toward me. It was Chief Randolph, and his face looked grim.
He ushered me without speaking from the front doors of the office. The pain of glass on the right side had been broken in and the shards crunched under my feet. I wanted desperately to ask him what happened, but his firm grip on my left arm pushed me forward and we approached the IT office in the back hall. I looked down the adjoining hall toward Kara’s office and saw a group of officers crowded around her door. The wooden frame was splintered as though someone had kicked it in.
Chief Randolph sat down in a chair in front of the computer and opened a black and white security video on a small monitor. In the corner, I saw the date was from two days ago. The time stamp read 10:42 pm and I watched as the first camera view showed an interior view of the front door. Something was approaching the double door slowly.
A figure, obscured by the window tint, appeared to be knocking on the door. It was late and I thought to myself no one would be in the building. Just then, I was surprised when the camera view switched abruptly to the hallway. Kara Gray, my editor, walked out of her office and approached the lobby hesitantly. As soon as she peeked her head around the corner to look through the door, the glass exploded inward.
A man dressed as a clown squatted beneath the broken glass and leaned through the opening, waving excitedly at Kara before she turned and ran for her office. He darted across the camera view and down the hall. Everything was still for a few moments. I could feel my pulse quickening as I waited for one of them to reappear.
After what seemed like an eternity, the clown peaked his head around the corner from the hell and gazed at the camera. His greasy hair dangled toward his shoulder, and now frozen, I could see the painted frown stretching down his face. Dark teardrops dotted the side of his face. He lifted an old bicycle horn and honked it silently at the camera before stepping fully back into the lobby.
It was the clown from outside of my house. Pickering had been a decoy.
He was dragging Kara’s limp body behind him.
*****
Four people were taken that night, as it turns out. Andrea Wells, a nurse, vanished from her home. Phillip Redmond, a middle school math teacher, was taken from the parking lot of the grocery store. Jacob Denny, a student, was taken while smoking a cigarette outside of the community college library.
Kara Gray, my editor, made the fourth.
I’ve been working as a stand-in editor at the paper for the last few months, and not an issue goes by where the clowns and the missing people aren’t slathered across the headlines. For most people, it’s a sick fascination, but for me, I still need answers. I’ve spent a lot of sleepless, drunken nights pouring over the videos of the “Killer Clowns”. Chief Randolph has become all too accustomed to my late-night calls.
The conversation is the same each time for the most part. He’ll update me on the recent interviews. In return, I tell him any relevant information I gathered on the anonymously hired clowns, but the conversation always comes back to the four people they took.
I always end the call the same way.
“They just wanted a distraction.”