Excerpt

Want Some Ice Cream?

Jake blinked sluggishly as he slowly woke up. His head felt strange, and though he wasn’t fully awake, he had a vague sense of wrongness. It took several more seconds for his brain to catch up with the feeling: he wasn’t in his bed. That in and of itself wasn’t alarming. He often partied hard, so it wasn’t unheard of that he’d wake up on a friend’s couch or floor, or even sometimes in a friend’s bed. Usually, though, his friends’ accommodations didn’t poke him in the back so much. And they weren’t usually so cold. He groaned and squirmed, trying to get more comfortable. The sound of gravel scraping filled his ears and startled his mind into clarity significantly faster.

He opened his eyes with a snap and took in the sight of a bridge overpass above him. He gasped and sat up quickly, gravel cascading from his hair and down his back, and he grimaced and clutched his head. The world swam sickeningly. Jake looked around nervously as he was overtaken with the creeping realization that he didn’t know where he was, much less how he got there. For that matter, he couldn’t even remember the date or day of the week. Wednesday? Sunday? He truly didn’t know.

Jake pushed himself to his feet on shaky legs and wobbled a few steps until he could lean up against the middle support of the bridge over his head. He looked around the surrounding scenery, trying to see if he recognized where he was. He was dismayed, though, to find that everything was just gravel and grass. The area beneath the bridge could barely qualify as a road, little more than a gravel-dirt path slightly wider than the width of a single car. It seemed he was well outside of city limits, and he couldn’t figure out why. He didn’t know anyone who lived out in the boonies, so why would he have come all this way out for some kind of party? And why was he alone? No matter how drunk they might have gotten, none of his friends would have ever just left him behind anywhere, much less unconscious outside in the middle of nowhere. Jake shivered, looking around again. He hated being alone.

Except, he wasn’t alone. A shrill metallic chime to his right startled him and drew his attention. Jake looked down the road and jumped when he saw who…what?…was watching him. It was a man, or appeared to be, who was dressed like a very old-school hobo clown. His clothes were patched and raggedy, and his face was painted into an exaggerated frown that was accented even further by the severe downturn of his lips. He stared ceaselessly at Jake as he perched atop an old bicycle that had some kind of small wagon attached to the back. Just as Jake began to wonder if he were some kind of statue that couldn’t move, the clown man raised his hand in a jaunty wave that clashed appallingly with his frown, and he resumed riding his bike, pedaling on up toward Jake.

Jake looked around again, mildly alarmed by the clown’s approach. He’d never been a big fan of clowns, especially older style clowns, unsettled by their heavily painted faces that seemed designed to hide secrets. He was also still alarmed that he couldn’t figure out where he was or how he’d gotten there. He didn’t want to run, though, like some kind of chicken, so he stood and waited for the clown to get closer. Things did not improve, however, when the clown finally pulled up alongside him. He just rode up, stopped moving, then began staring again, that brutal frown still marring his face.

“Uh, hello?” Jake tried.

The clown ignored him and hopped off the bike to pat the top of a cooler that he was hauling in the wagon. “Want some ice cream?” he asked in a dreary voice that matched his haggard appearance, but not the joy that ice cream should be. Granted, ice cream from a weirdo hobo-clown was more of a nightmare than joy anyway, Jake supposed.

Caught off guard by the question, Jake looked at the worn-down cooler on the even rougher wagon. In extremely faded letters were the words Jeremiah Bob’s Gourmet Ice Cream. “Oh…no, thank you,” he said carefully. “Where am I?” he asked, looking around himself again as if any new clues about his whereabouts might have appeared.

The clown—Jeremiah Bob?—didn’t answer the question. Instead, he patted the ice cream cooler again, sad frown still pulling at his face.

Okay, clearly this man was not firing on all cylinders. Jake slowly backed away and shook his head. “No, thanks. I’m gonna go.” He continued backing up until there was a good distance between him and the clown before he turned around and began walking away.

“Ice cream!” the clown behind him yelled, beginning to sound angry.

The sound of gravel slowly crunching as the clown began pedaling the bike again was alarming in Jake’s ears. He increased his walking speed and cut across the scrubby grass to move from the road he and the clown were on to climb up to the road that the bridge ran along. Hopefully the steeper terrain and his dogged pace would clue Mr. Clown into backing off already. After cresting the edge of the hill to the upper road, Jake paused to look over his shoulder. Down at the edge of the road, the clown still sat astride his bike, staring intently at him.

“Want some ice cream?” he hollered up again.

Jake shook his head and turned to keep walking away. He didn’t want anything from that creepy man. After a few more quick glances over his shoulder to ensure he wasn’t being followed, he pulled his cell phone out of his back pocket to try and determine what the hell was going on. He scanned through his texts first and found that his friend Jordan had invited him and a few others to a party. What was alarming, though, was that instead of an address for the party, there was only a series of GPS coordinates. None of the surrounding details gave any additional clues for what that location was. He tried putting the coordinates into a search engine, but wherever he was had zero cell service, so he couldn’t use the internet. He tried calling a couple of people, but there was no signal to accommodate that either. Finally, he settled on writing a text message to Jordan, hoping that as he walked, he would finally wander into the range of a cell tower and that the text would send once service was restored.

Jake put the phone back into his pocket as he followed the winding road before him. He had no idea what would have possessed him to decide to go to a party based on the coordinates alone. Sure, Jordan was a good friend, but this was really sketchy. And it was extremely concerning that he still had no memory of anything from the night or two before waking up below the underpass. The surroundings were eerie too. Why was there no one around? No houses, no businesses, no passing traffic. Just how far out into the country had he gone? For that matter, where was his car? How had he even gotten out there? Had he taken a ride with a friend? But then where were they and their cars? Why would they have left him?

The path before him led into a small grove of trees, and he was relieved for the shade they provided. The sun was high in the sky, and each minute that passed, he became more and more aware of just how thirsty he was. His relief shriveled up immediately as he heard another chime from a bike bell up ahead. He looked down the path and was dismayed to see the same hobo clown from earlier pedaling his bicycle out from between the trees onto the path before him. How he’d gotten around him to show up in front of him, Jake had no idea. He stopped in the path, unwilling to close the distance between himself and the clown.

The clown grinned a sickening grin, completely incongruous with the frowning face paint over the top of his mouth. “Want some ice cream?” he asked again.

Jake bristled. “I already told you ‘no’!” he hollered back. He looked to the side, considering trying to cut through the trees to get away from the clown.

“Your friends wanted ice cream.”

Jake looked back to the clown in shock. “What? What do you know about my friends?”

The clown mimicked holding a cell phone. “See for yourself.” He resumed riding, cutting into the thick trees on the opposite side of the road that he’d come from.

“Hey, wait!” Jake screamed, all thoughts of safety vanishing as he rushed forward. Impossibly, though, the clown had disappeared already into the trees, though Jake could faintly hear him laughing in the distance. “What the heck?” His stomach twisted uncomfortably as anxiety overtook him. Who was that clown, and how did he know his friends? Had he hurt them? Jake remembered the clown’s pantomime of a cell phone and hurriedly pulled his phone back out. His photo gallery! Why hadn’t he thought of that before?!

He did indeed have photos of the party, but they raised more questions than they answered. They’d all been taken inside a house, but it was a house he’d never seen before and had no idea where to find. Most of the photos showed them smiling and hanging on each other, beer bottles in hand, as though they’d been having a fun time getting wasted. Jake didn’t feel like he’d gotten overly drunk, though, despite his failing memory; there was no hangover to speak of. Maybe he drank less than his friends? Even more uniquely ominous, each of his friends in one of their photos was seen holding an ice cream cone in their hands. What was with the ice cream? And what was with the freaky clown? The last photo showed them all posed together, arms over each others’ necks. Lurking off to the side was the same clown who’d been harassing him since he’d woken up.

Jake needed to find that clown again, frightening as he was. He was the only one so far who had any connection to his missing friends, probably the only one who could tell him where they were as well as where he was. But how would he find him? Should he try to run into the trees in the direction he saw the clown go? Or would that just get him more lost than he already was? Maybe if he continued along the road, it would come out around the wooded area and he might run into the clown again? But what if he kept going and then never ran into him? But then again, maybe the clown was dangerous and Jake should instead focus on finding help, like the police? He stared all around, not certain at all what he should do. Then ever so faintly, he heard the chiming bell from the clown’s bike again, but it was coming from the trees to the right, the complete opposite direction from where the clown had left just a moment ago!

Shivers crept through Jake’s body. “That doesn’t make any sense,” he muttered to himself. The bell chimed again. Everything within him screamed that this was dangerous and that he shouldn’t follow the sound, but he couldn’t shake the fear that something had happened to his friends. What if there was a clock ticking? What if he kept wasting time looking for help where there was none to be found, and they all died or got seriously hurt? He heard the bell chime a third time. Gathering all his courage, Jake took a steadying breath and then stepped into the trees, trying to follow the intermittent chimes of the bell.

He stumbled through the tightly packed trees for ages, sharp branches bruising his arms as they jabbed him. How could the clown have ridden his bike through all of this? Profusely sweating and covered in leaves and sticks, he finally found his way to a small clearing. The hobo clown was waiting for him in the center, the characteristically forlorn face staring back at him once again. The hair on the back of his neck stood up at the sight. Everything in him wailed that this was wrong, but he didn’t know what else to do but seek answers from this clown. There was no one else around, and he still had no cell service. He was out of options. Cautiously, but with an air of confidence that he didn’t fully feel, Jake walked across the clearing to the clown.

“I saw the pictures in my phone,” he said when he was close enough to not have to shout. “Where is the house this party was at. And more importantly, where are my friends?”

The clown replied, “Want some ice cream?”

Rage burst through Jake. “I already told you that I don’t want any of your fucking ice cream! Where are my friends?!”

The clown once again produced a smile that contrasted with his painted frown. “Friends are near. But first, there must be ice cream.” He patted the top of the cooler attached to his bicycle.

It took everything within Jake to keep from lashing out again. This was progress, as much as it also felt like a riddle. “Fine,” he spat, “I want some ice cream. Please, just tell me where my friends are.”

The clown shuffled around his bike to stand behind the cooler, leaning over it with dramatic flair. “Come closer,” he said.

Jake approached with halting footsteps.

“Your friends are right here.” He popped the cooler open with a flourish.

Jake leaned over to look in and saw that the cooler was filled with heads, the heads of all his friends, mouths opened in terror, eyes frozen forever in shock. With a cry, Jake lurched back and looked up. The hobo clown looked menacing now, a dark glare so deep that the paint across his face was beginning to crack. He pulled a machete from a deep pocket in his pants, and he lunged forward with a roar, the blade swinging in a deadly arc.