XXXI

In Which the Funniness of Clowns Is Doubted

THINGS WERE GOING FROM bad to worse inside Wreckit & Sons, which was surprising given how bad things were to begin with. It seemed that, as Samuel and the others drew closer to the highest floor of the store, the nature of reality was becoming more and more distorted. In fact, as far as Samuel was concerned, reality had pretty much given up on Biddlecombe and gone to live somewhere slightly more down-to-earth.

First off, there were the clowns. Everyone trapped in the store was beginning to realize that Wreckit & Sons had been designed with one purpose in mind: to provide a series of threats that would gradually drive the humans to the top floor. While they had made the best use that they could of whatever weapons they could find—bats, balls, bows and arrows, and foam blasters, for the most part—it wasn’t as if the store had been littered with rocket launchers or heavy artillery. The dangers on each floor were simply meant to force them upward, not kill them, or so Samuel believed, although Dan and the dwarfs were pretty convinced that, had the Nosferati managed to get their fangs into them, they would soon have been singing in some heavenly choir, assuming Heaven was willing to let them in.

They saw that the next-to-last floor had been given a circus theme. There was a Ferris wheel in one corner, large enough for very small children to ride, and the wooden façade of a big top. There were signs that read HOOP TOSS and, slightly worryingly, GHOST TRAIN. Over them all hovered the head of a ringmaster in a top hat, his black mustache curling almost to his eyebrows, and his smile wide enough to swallow a person.

The ringmaster was Hilary Mould.

Beneath the ringmaster stood three dummies dressed as clowns. One was bald and entirely covered in whiteface makeup. He wore a suit of broad yellow checks, and a little red hat was positioned on the side of his head. Samuel wondered how it stayed in place: glue, perhaps, or a very thin rubber band. It was only as he drew closer to the clown that he saw the hat had been nailed to his skull.

The second clown wore a huge pink wig that looked like the aftermath of an explosion in a cotton candy machine. Only the areas around his eyes and mouth were painted white: the rest of his face was a sickly yellow. He wore a long green coat with tails, and purple trousers decorated with pink polka dots. A huge plastic flower was pinned to the buttonhole of his jacket.

The third clown was female. She was wearing white one-piece overalls decorated with big red fluffy buttons, and her wig was black. So, too, was the makeup around her mouth and her eyes, while the rest of her face was very pale. Strangely, her mouth had been painted into a frown instead of a smile. Her fingernails were long and pointed, and varnished a deep, dark red, as though she had recently been tearing apart raw meat.