Clown in the Moonlight by Tom Piccirilli Read Free Book Online Page A

questions about your girlfriend.   It'll only take a few minutes."
    The windows rattle.   The storm has found me again.
    I check my rage and perform the way I did in prison, with a cold and crystalline vision and efficiency.   I don't get angry.   I don't want to hurt this man.
    But I do.   I swing my forearm around and strike him in the jaw under the ear with my elbow.   There's a large cluster of nerve ganglia there, and I know what it feels like to have it struck.   The guard sees nothing but solar wheels as the inside of his skull ignites.   He flails backward, unconscious.
    More guards appear at the far end of the hall.   The ER nurse starts screaming. Other patients, despite their illnesses and wounds, back away to the wall as one.   A twelve-year-old with a broken nose flinches from me.   His mother moves in front of him in a display of maternal protection. She's breathing heavily, pale in the muted light, her breasts heaving.   She waits for me to rape her.   The glass keeps shaking.
    I stomp through the automatic doors.   I climb into the Coupe, buckle up, rev the engine until it's shrieking, throw it into gear, and burn out.
    I light up.   I check the rearview.   The front of the hospital is full of brash action and motion and shadows.  
    Linda wasn't even on Ricky's list but she might as well be counted a victim.
    His, her father's, Satan's, or mine.  

10.
     
    T he moon goes into hiding.   The dark squall circles and dives and breaks against the side of the Mustang.   The night is blacker than the back of the Devil's eyelids.   I can feel Ricky and his circle out there performing their death celebrations.   I send myself to him.   I let him lead me there.   I drive blind for a while, eyes shut, letting my other senses guide me.  
    I turn left, I turn right, I hit it on the straightaway.   I spin out in gravel and branches of swaying trees scrape the hood.   I don't let it dissuade me.   I keep my eyes closed tightly.   I listen to the oncoming traffic blaring, speeding past.   I head south for the bay.   I burn rubber, I take wide curves.   The magnetic pull of the earth carries me.   I drift for a half hour, blind as Gary Lowers.
    When I open my eyes, I'm skidding on a beach lane covered by sand.  
    He's close.   I picture him clearly.   He's got a little campfire going and he's practicing moves with his knife, deciding on what he's going to do to the next kid.   It looks like he's going for the internal organs.   He's drilling on how to cut out the kidneys, the liver.   He's going to make haggis and feed it to everybody at the next party.
    The other Knights of the Black Circle flicker in and out of being, by the light of the fire.   They provoke him, they drape themselves around him, full of love, full of hate. The blade swerves, slashes, and severs.   Ricky's breathing heavily.   He dances on the sand as the waves crash behind him.
    I see him stabbing down, slashing, sneaking up, pulling hair, tonguing, nipping.   I crack the window an inch, and I can hear him singing another heavy metal song, the trite lyrics almost laughable.
    A half-mile away I tumble to an old south shore graveyard.   I drive slowly, keeping an eye out.   Ricky's flames ought to lead me right to him, unless he's caught on.   He might've kicked the fire out by now.  
    The dead have their grievances.   They tug for my attention.   They pack decades-dead names into my head.   Above it all I hear Gwen's voice, asking to be fucked.
    I park and get out.   The graveyard is nothing more than a few scattered stones.   The area's been eroded, the graveyard buried by sand and sawgrass and snow fencing.   I drift past the headstones, waiting for Ricky and his circle to fall down on me from the dunes.   I light a cigarette and smoke, leaning back against the side of the Mustang.   I give myself up to them.   My headlights offer a dim illumination.   The clouds of night birds have followed me to