Blood Lite II: Overbite by Kelley Armstrong Read Free Book Online Page A

tad apprehensive about conducting another séance. Last time, his neighbor Andrei filed a noise complaint with the neighborhood association. Clem took a deep breath. He began the séance.
    “We call you, spirits of the dead,” Clem concentrated his mind’s eye. “We call to the departed souls from this mortal world. Come now. Come!”
    The flames swayed as a mysterious breeze developed inside the blackened mobile home.
    “Are you there, Mr. Flonkers? Come to us. Come to us now!”
    The flames lapped as the mystic wind escalated. The house trailer wobbled. Shadows trembled around the four clowns. Loose debris fluttered about as the wind intensified—bits of cellophane, used Post-it notes, Slurpee receipts from 7-Eleven, hamburger wrappers. Clowns love hamburgers. And Slurpees.
    “Come, Mr. Flonkers! Come to us!” they shouted in unison over the supernatural gale, except for Beeps, who honked his horn.
    Beep-Beep.
    The wind died quickly as pale smoke rose from the burning wicks. The smoke twisted into shapes, the shapes curled into a form, and the form became a figure. Above the candles, floating in a vaporous cloak, the ghost they summoned manifested itself.
    Mr. Flonkers wore a maroon bowler hat with a daisy in the band and an oversized scarlet ascot. He had pinpricks of white light in otherwise hollow eyes. His countenance was jovial with a red-painted grin and skull-white face.
    “Who calls me?” Mr. Flonkers’s voice reverberated as if it emanated from the bottom of a well.
    “We need your help.”
    “Toodles, dear, is that you?” Mr. Flonkers asked.
    “Yes, it is. Nice to see you again.”
    Mr. Flonkers removed his hat in greeting. “Likewise.”
    The spirit assessed her green frizz, her emerald eye shadow that matched her lipstick, and her white face. She wore a jade-and-black checkered unitard over her lithe body. “You’re as beautiful as I remember.”
    Beep-Beep.
    Mr. Flonkers moved towards Beeps. The vapor twisted with his movement. “You’re here too, my loquacious friend?”
    Beep-Beep.
    “Oswald as well?”
    “Yes, I’m here.”
    “How did you summon me from the Big Top in the Sky?”
    “That’s my doing,” Clem said.
    The spirit turned and the smoke curled once more.
    “Clem, my boy!” Mr. Flonkers said with affection. “Four of the finest apprentices of the Mr. Flonkers Clown Alley, present and accounted for. Again, how did you summon me?”
    “My gypsy heritage,” Clem said. “My clairvoyant parents were fortune-tellers and psychic readers in the circus. I never turned professional, much to my parents’ dismay. After numerous arguments about my career choice, I ran away from home and joined the other part of the circus. My clairvoyance is still active, though.”
    “I see.” The ghost nodded.
    “We summoned you, sir, for a specific reason. We need help, and as our mentor—our departed mentor—you’re uniquely qualified to help.”
    Beep-Beep.
    “What’s the situation?”
    “Do you recall Otis Oddbody?” Clem asked.
    “Of course,” Mr. Flonkers said. “I worked with him in the early days, before he formed his own alley.”
    “Tragedy has struck the Oddbody Alley, and that tragedy has mutated into an unspeakable horror.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Show him,” Oswald said.
    “Look into my mind’s eye.”
    Mr. Flonkers’s pinprick white pupils gazed into Clem’s eyes as Clem opened a wider psychic connection with the spirit. Mr. Flonkers watched everything unfold in Clem’s clairvoyant mind as if he were sitting in a cinema.
    “This is what I saw two months ago.”
    All twelve professional and apprentice members of the Otis Oddbody Clown Alley—Poco, Mooch, Cindy Candy, Big Galoot, Joey Jelly, Smarty Artie, Ms. Pinkyfoot, Choo-Choo, Poundfool, Midge the Dwarf, Benny Buzzy, and Sir Donald Dollarshort, Esq.—saw Otis’s neon yellow and purple-polka-dot 1968 Volkswagen Beetle pull up to the tent.
    “Road trip!” Otis yelled from the driver’s seat.
    The