The fucking salesman promised the car was clean.
Dan’s knuckles creaked as he gripped the steering wheel like it was his salvation, eyes on shifting traffic on the rain-soaked highway. He heard them all around him, furtive movements in the hidden spaces of the car: the rustle as they moved under the back seat, the stifled titters echoing from inside the glove box, the squeak of red plastic noses crushed against each other.
The car was still full of them.
Dan kept his eyes fixed on the lane ahead, squinting past the steady swish of the wipers to the snarl of fast-moving cars on the expressway.
No sirens, no flashing lights in the rearview, good.
Back at the dealership, the salesman had oozed up to Dan, who stared at the jaundice-yellow VW Bug. “I can see you’re a collector,” he’d crooned and nodded at the horrid little lump of a car contained by the circle of velvet ropes.
Like one of those magic circles, Dan had thought.
“It’s from that show.” Dan had gulped. “Uncle Hasty’s?”
“Sure,” the salesman nodded, and his smile grew stale as his eyes flicked between the Bug and Dan. “A good price, too.” Dan nodded, and looked back across the street, where the police cars’ blue and red lights flashed like a ballyhoo over the arch, the arcade, the big top. He needed to make a getaway.
Aversion therapy. Dan had shuddered at the thought.
On the highway, a shadow fell over the car.
An 18-wheeler breached the waters of the downpour and loomed over him like a wall. Dan slammed on the brakes, palm crushed against the horn. He panted, legs trembling, and jerked his hand off the horn. Its bleating trailed off into nothing like a deflating balloon. Faded letters framed a big top on the truck container’s doors. Dan wiped at the fogged glass to peer through the rain. A smiling clown loomed over the cartoon tent like a bloated, hungry moon. Dan hurled himself backwards against his seat with a cry. He threw his arms up to cover his face and lifted his feet off the pedals. The car lurched forward, shuddered and drifted–its motor dead.
The rustling became louder.
“You’re not listening,” his little girl had said, raising her voice over the laughter of the crowd around them. Dan could not believe Emily liked the circus, but there he was, watching a clown car loop around one of the three rings.
“Hm,” Dan said. “What’s that, Em?” His eyes followed the clown car zippping over the packed dirt, wary as someone watching a large spider scurry across the floor.
“What’s going on between you and mom?” Emily craned her head to look over his shoulder, past the stands where her mother had gone to find the restrooms.
Dan glanced at the clown car as its doors popped open.
“We–I, that is,” Dan stammered. “I need to go away.”
“Why?” Emily’s face scrunched up. “For how long?”
Dan shook his head and thought of what he could say, but his eyes were drawn to the clowns tumbling out of the car.
The ring will hold them, he had mumbled. They can’t cross.
The glove box door popped open with a giggle. Coasting behind the semi, Dan leaned across, eyes squeezed shut. He slapped the glove box door closed with a whimper. He snapped his eyes open as he heard the back seat thud into place. His gaze darted to the rear view mirror. Was the tip of an oversized red shoe sticking out like a tongue between black vinyl lips? The giggles grew into crazed shrieks before Dan remembered what could happen if the car stopped without a circle to contain them. He turned the key and pumped the gas pedal until the engine chirruped to life. He jammed the car into gear, and turned to accelerate past the 18-wheeler. The sounds, the movement stopped. He flipped the painted clown face the finger as he moved past, caught in the flow of traffic again.
“Why,” Em repeated. “Why?”
Dan had wanted to explain how after he’d been abandoned as a kid it chipped away at him, how his wife could no longer love his brokenness.
“I don’t know, honey,” he said and squeezed her hand.
He’d read the reports about the day his momma disappeared, and left him strapped in his high chair in front of the TV, the awful Clown in Yellow show playing. The neighbors found him, hours later, in a soiled diaper, shrieking and pointing at the TV. None of reports explained what he saw: his momma transformed into a cartoon clown on TV, the Clown in Yellow turning and smiling at Dan through the screen.
What could he have told Em–he was cursed?
Haunted by clowns?
He had opened his mouth, teetered on the edge of confession, when he had felt a hand on his shoulder.
A white gloved hand.
He whirled with a shriek and pounded his fists into the chalk-white face again and again until, panting, he’d found teeth embedded in his greasepaint and blood covered knuckles.
Dan felt his blood drain as he’d looked at the mime sprawled at his feet, at the row of clowns, lined along the edge of the ring, looking at him and smiling. He had shrunk before his wife’s and Em’s open-mouthed horror and fled.
He popped the clutch and felt a gloved hand brush his ankle. His throat clenched around a shriek.
There was a clown hidden under his seat!
A shiver crawled up his leg and up his back, grew into a shudder. The minute he stopped, unbound, they would tumble out of their hidey-holes in the car and out into the world in wave after wave. He couldn’t inflict this horror on the rest of the world. Dan revved the motor. The world would not fall under an endless stream of painted, leering faces and oceans of seltzer water.
The low titters of the hidden clowns sounded quizzical, as he drifted across three lanes of traffic.