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

twelve clowns loaded themselves in the same rehearsed formation they’d often performed under the Big Top. Their opening bit was to have Otis drive to the Center Ring, and then all thirteen, including Otis, exited the car one at a time—flopping, tripping, somersaulting and cartwheeling; Poco even came out on stilts, wearing a gray top hat, coattails, and oversized bow tie—to much audience laughter and amazement.
    Otis explained their destination on the way.
    “We’re going to the Circus World Museum in Baraboo, Wisconsin,” he said. “That’s where the five original Ringling brothers started everything. From there, we’re going to Milwaukee and we’re marching in the Great Circus Parade.”
    The pronouncement was met with cheers and applause.
    “But we’re taking a side trip before the parade,” Otis said. “This is a personal pilgrimage. We’re going to visit Uncle Uther, who lives in Bark Creek. It’s a small town in rural Jefferson County west of Milwaukee. Uncle Uther performed for eighty years, and now he’s in assisted living at an old clowns’ home. I first saw him when my father took me to a Shriner’s Circus forty years ago and his performance inspired me to become a clown. He had this hysterical bit with a handshake buzzer. I saw him perform many times, and that bit always cracked me up. I want to pay my respects in person, clown to clown.”
    The museum was fun for everyone and surprisingly educational to the younger apprentices. After spending the day in Baraboo, Otis drove them toward Bark Creek.
    The July twilight gave way to the silvery darkness of a full Buck Moon. The lunar light cut through the thick leaves of low-hanging maples, burr oaks, willows, and hickories that canopied the back roads of Jefferson County.
    At midnight, Benny Buzzy passed around the kazoos. Midge the Dwarf and Ms. Pinkyfoot got high-pitched piccolo kazoos. Big Galoot and Poundfool got deeper-sounding bass kazoos. Poundfool played a mean bass.
    “I’m like the Geezer Butler of kazoo players, y’know,” Poundfool often said.
    They played a remarkably accurate—albeit buzzing—version of “Entrance of the Gladiators” as the VW motored along Riverbank Road next to the Bark River.
    Otis was driving too fast and did not have time to swerve from the deadly obstacle left in the narrow lane. He put his hands up and screamed.
    The front tire hit the banana peel head-on. The Bug spun wildly, flipped once, twice, bounced off an oak, slid down the embankment, and splashed into the river. The car sank under the surface of moon-glimmering ripples as the kazoo music turned into gurgles.
    “How tragic,” Mr. Flonkers said, swirling in the smoke.
    “Yes, but that’s not the worst part,” Toodles said.
    “What’s worse than thirteen dead clowns?”
    Beep-Beep.
    “Well, yes, fourteen would be worse.”
    “Do you feel their presence, Mr. Flonkers?” Oswald asked.
    Mr. Flonkers paused. The ghost swayed in sync with the flames. The mobile home was eerily quiet as the clowns waited.
    “No, they’re not here in the afterlife,” he said after a moment. “How can that be?”
    “That’s the worst part,” Clem said. “Look into my mind’s eye again to watch what transpired one month later.”
    • • •
    There are no streetlamps on the rural roads of Jefferson County, but the full Sturgeon Moon draped its brightness over the homesteads, farms, orchards, and groves like luminescent silk.
    Nobody was near Riverbank Road to witness the Volkswagen Beetle drive out of the river and over the bank. Nobody was close enough to hear the still night disrupted by a macabre kazoo orchestra playing the well-known circus theme. Nobody saw the car patrol the country lanes like a spider on asphalt webs.
    At first.
    The Lowenbacher family was driving home after an evening game—“cap night”—at Miller Park. Alex wore his Brewers hat backward as he drove the Ford Focus. Beside him, his wife Kristine had taken hers off for the