Something crunched underfoot when he landed. When he looked down he saw part of a human femur, a caved-in rib cage, delicate frond-like finger bones. He followed the tunnel ahead. Human skulls looked up at him from the floor, their empty eye sockets beseeching him without words.

As he went deeper he began to see more recent victims, body parts rotting, and he covered his mouth and nose with a cloth. Drag marks on the ground marked where Pogo had taken the Pilkington man.

The tunnels twisted and branched, but he followed the drag marks and the sporadic patches of blood, and just when he thought he was lost he found Clem.

The Pilkington man was sitting bound to a chair that stood in the middle of a circular opening in the rock. His mouth was gagged with a bright red ball. His nose was bloodied and his eyes stared with unholy horror at the Stranger.

The eyes moved. The Stranger followed their gaze. He stepped through as the false clown’s machete swung at him. The Stranger grabbed hold of Pogo’s wrist and it was like holding an iron bar. The false clown bared his teeth at him. With his costume shredded and his makeup running he was something feral and sick. There was nothing in his eyes the Stranger could understand. He kicked, hitting Pogo between the legs, and stepped around him as the false clown howled in pain and rage. He twisted Pogo’s arm behind his back and pushed, hard, until there was the sickening sound of breaking bone, and Pogo cried again.

The Stranger pulled out his gun and put it to the back of Pogo’s head, intending to put him down, but he had underestimated the thing. With a howl of rage, Pogo wrenched his broken arm free and with the other he shoved the Stranger, with such inhuman force that the Stranger flew off his feet and hit the far wall. His head rang with the pain. Then Pogo was on him, kicking and screaming, and the large red rubber boots hammered against the Stranger’s ribs until he felt his own bones break. Desperately he reached for the knife strapped to his leg and he pushed the blade up, burying it with the last of his strength in the false clown’s belly.

Pogo didn’t cry now. Blood trickled out of his mouth and onto the Stranger, and his lips moved without clear speech, but only an inane mumble. He took one step back, and then another. He stared dumbly at the knife buried in his stomach. Then he turned on his feet and half-stumbled, half-ran into one of the dark tunnels.