A Series Of Horror Anthologies
Led By Beasts by Clark Roberts
Series Excerpt
Whenever Marie had encountered the words ghost town, she inevitably experienced a chill at her spine, but the phrase clown town was doubly worse. Clown town—it sounded so bizarre, so bastardized, and even unsound.
Marie quickly read the historical landmark sign a second time to make sure she hadn’t misinterpreted the information because she could barely fathom the validity of it.
It claimed clowns had built a settlement along the Lake Michigan coastline around 1850. Economically Buffoonville had struggled right up until the Great Fire of 1871 ravaged Chicago. In exchange for a great financial windfall, the politicians and business owners of Buffoonville—did they all wear wigs and clown makeup?—shortsightedly agreed to timbering off the dense forests surrounding the settlement to help rebuild Chicago. The money rolled in, but without the protection of the massive oaks and tall pines, Buffoonville’s days were numbered. The constant winds of the Great Lake, always carrying sand, began burying the buildings, and most of the clown residents fled, leaving Buffoonville a relative ghost town.
The black and white photos accompanying the written record showed huge mounds of sand revealing only the peaks of a few gabled homes and businesses.
“Greg, I’m not so sure about this,” Marie muttered.
“This is part of our country’s history,” her husband stated. “It’ll be fine. The trail marker says it’s only three-quarters of a mile hike to the beach. The kids can handle it.”
“I’m not talking about the hike.” Marie nodded her head at the sign. “I mean a ghost town buried beneath the sand. It was a town supposedly inhabited by clowns of all things. The state campground is only four miles back.”
The family stood at the trailhead. Despite it being a Friday evening, not one other vehicle was parked in the dirt lot. Now that Marie thought about it, they hadn’t seen another vehicle since they’d zipped past the state campground into what Greg reverently referred to as no-man’s land.
“Suck it up, buttercup.” Greg hitched his shoulders to resettle his backpack. “They don’t even let you set up on the actual beach in the state campgrounds.”
“Yeah, Mom, suck it up,” Barry said from his dad’s side.
“But, Greg,” Marie’s tone was nearly pleading, “the sign says clowns.”
Greg shrugged a shoulder. “I can read.”
Rachel tugged at her arm, and Marie looked down at her daughter.
“It’s going to be okay,” Rachel said, pointing back to the sign. “The sign says the town was buried by drifting sands.”
“You see,” Greg grinned from ear to ear. “Even our ten-year-old daughter isn’t afraid. Come on, we made great time driving. If we hustle, we’ll have the tents up and everything situated before dark.”
They started up the footpath into the woods in single file, Greg leading.
After a couple rolling hills, the forest cleared completely; the trail began cutting a path through tall grass. Soft sand replaced the hard ground, and Marie began to feel the effort of each step in her straining leg muscles. They were passing some large rocks when, in one graceful motion, Greg turned and swung his backpack off his shoulders.
“Whew,” he woofed out. He plopped down on the flattest of the rocks. “Let’s take a quick break before we heft up the dunes. How’s everyone holding up?”
“I’m doing great!” Barry hollered. Searching for some type of treasure, he ran into the wispy grass, which was nearly as tall as his waist.
“How about you?” Greg asked Rachel. “You holding up, princess?”
“I’m fine,” Rachel said. She sat next to her father.
“How much farther do you think it is to the beach?” Marie asked. They’d stopped at the base of a sand-covered rise. Looking up at it, the very top of the rise seemed preternaturally even. Marie could not see its end in either direction.
“How much farther?” Greg mimicked in his most contrived, whining voice. He squirted a shot of water into his mouth, swallowed some, and spit out a stream. He offered the bottle up to Rachel. “Jesus, Marie, give it a rest already.”
“But really, Dad,” Rachel broke in. She took a long drink from the bottle. “Do you think we’re close?”
“Shhhhh!” Greg put a finger to his lips and stared down wide-eyed at his daughter. He contorted his face into a wild expression. In his goofiest voice, he bellowed, “I think I can hear the waves just over this here hill! Ayah, ayah, I think I can.”
Rachel giggled. When Greg reached to tussle her hair, she leaned away but continued to beam up at him.
Amazing, Marie thought, he can behave like such a dick to me at times, but in the next instant, play the role of doting father. She forced the thought from her mind, instead concentrating on the sounds just on the other side of the hill. All she heard was the breeze blowing through the light grass.
“Mom, catch!” Barry’s hollering voice broke her daze. She turned in time to awkwardly fumble but then grasp the object Barry had tossed at her. “I found it half-buried in the sand!”
Marie turned the red ball over in her hand. It was about two inches in diameter. She squeezed it, squishing the foam, before turning it over in her palm. On the backside, she found a slit. Realizing it for what it was, she yelped while simultaneously jumping and kicking the object as if it were poisonous.
“Settle down,” Greg crabbed. He leaned down to pick up the clown nose. He turned it over much like Marie had, but instead of panicking, he probed his thumb into the slit. “You’ve got a good eye, son. This is something special.”
“It’s a cheap costume accessory!” Marie spat. “It’s disgusting.”
“No,” Greg answered. He wonderingly held the nose up to his eyes. “Don’t let your mother buffalo you. This is valuable. This is a historical artifact. Barry, exceptional find. We’ll treasure this forever in our family.”
Greg wedged the red ball onto Barry’s nose.
“How does it look?” Barry asked.
“Looks perfect,” Greg reached out and gave two squeezes. “Beep, beep!”
“Take it off,” Marie ordered.
“I say he doesn’t have to.” Greg cast a flat stare at Marie, drawing a figurative line in the sand and challenging her to cross it, to challenge his God-given parental rights as a father.
“Why not let him wear it?” Rachel said, sounding like the voice of reason. “It’s just part of a costume. Besides, he likes it.”
Inside, Marie ached for her daughter. Too many times, she’d played mediator to the tiffs between her parents. Marie broke from the stare down with Greg. Her daughter was right; in the end, this battle wouldn’t be worth it. Still, she was shaken at the sight of her youngest child wearing that abomination. It wasn’t just part of a costume. It was a clown nose, possibly over a hundred years old. She couldn’t shake the feeling that some degenerate who’d not been able to offer anything to society and had settled on buffoonery as a career had worn that exact nose, or even worse than a degenerate—some creep-o.
“So, I can keep it?” Barry asked.
Marie shrugged.
“Glad that’s settled.” Greg stood, hiked his pack up to his shoulders. “Onward we march.”
The top of the dune revealed the shoreline was not immediately on the other side. In the not too far distance, Lake Michigan could be seen, but in between where the family stood on the crest and the Great Lake were several oddly shaped dunes. From this vista, Marie could form the town in her mind. The larger dunes running off to either side created a sand valley between them which had obviously been the main street. Beyond those main dunes were smaller sand hills that must have been homes or cabins.
She imagined the bustle of Buffoonville from all those years ago—a clown mother in chase of her rapscallion clown kids as they dodged horses and buggies through the street; a clown or two brushing dust from their silken suits as they left the sawmill after a hard day’s work; probably there’d even been a clown blacksmith banging away and molding heated metal as his clown makeup sweated from his face all the day long. It was crazy to think they’d stayed in costume every minute of their lives, but she’d always thought of clowns the way children think their teachers live only for multiplication tables and grammar lessons.
Greg led them down into the valley. Marie shivered, feeling watched. Maybe not all the clowns had left. Her gut told her that there’d been some stubborn clowns that had refused to leave. There always were some stubbornly crazed occupants refusing to break when it came to dying towns. They’d been buried in their businesses, their homes. Their souls roamed these dunes. She imagined their icy stares tracking her family.
Stop this—stop scaring yourself with these silly ideas!
It wasn’t difficult to believe that clowns had built the town. Marie could see the mounds literally ran right up to the shoreline. Any city planner with a straight mind would have known to leave at least the minimalist buffer zone between the lake’s edge and the settlement—any city planner except for maybe a clown. Over time, the town would have been doomed even without all the lumbering that occurred.
They passed by one more obvious valley to the periphery. Marie concluded it must have been a side road, a short route out to the residential sections to either sides of the town. Just beyond that long-gone side road, the glistening lake opened up to them as vast as an ocean.
There was still a breeze building low waves. The waves crested, broke before peacefully lapping at the shoreline. Marie didn’t voice it aloud, but inside she admitted this was true beauty.
As if to remind her of the great tragedy that had occurred over a hundred years ago, the breeze amped up to a gust, spitting sand that bit like teeth against her face.
Greg turned south, another hundred yards, and plopped his pack off while first assessing the layout of the beach. He faced his family and said, “This is camp.”
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