Jenny

IN a night filled with countless horrors, killing Lanz had to be the worst one of all.

Jenny huddled with the children once again, not even knowing what she was saying, but continuing to speak in soothing tones until their hysterics leveled off. Then she found a spare blanket and draped it over Lanz's body so they wouldn't have to look at it. She kicked something wet and lumpy--is that his stomach?--underneath the cover and then retreated back to the corner of the storage room.

"It's okay now," she said. "We're all going to be--"

But she heard something that stopped her.

Squeak...

Squeak...

Squeak...

Could it be...?

The boys screaming in unison, so loud and shrill it hurt Jenny's ears. She whipped her head around, following their shocked stares and saw...

That clown. That damn clown.

It stood next to the window, peering inside. Benny the Clown's teeth were gone, and it looked like he'd been gumming barbed wire. But the red nose and the fright wig remained, as did patches of white make-up, reflecting multicolored hues of pastel in their glow lights.

Jenny summoned up courage she didn't know she had and said, "It's okay, kids. It's okay. He can't get in."

"I hate clowns!"

"That's not a real clown," another boy said. "That's just some guy dressed up like a clown!"

"It's a monster clown!"

She hugged them. "Don't worry. The monster clown is out there. We're in here."

"He's doing something!"

Jenny didn't want to look at the creepy thing again, but she felt compelled to. Benny the Clown was holding something in his hand and waving it into the broken window.

A blue handkerchief?

Squinting at it, Jenny realized it was sticking out of the vest pocket of his clown outfit. Benny the Clown gave the cloth a sudden tug.

The first handkerchief was tied to a second, yellow handkerchief. He fed both through the window and kept pulling.

Attached to it was a red one.

Then a green one.

"Go away, you goddamn clown!" Jenny ordered.

But Benny the Clown continued to pull out handkerchief after handkerchief. Five...ten...fifteen...then...

That's not a handkerchief.

The next thing he yanked from his pocket was a human spleen.

The spleen was attached to a kidney.

The kidney was attached to a gall bladder.

Then a lung. A bladder. A descending colon. And something that might have been a trachea.

Jenny was speechless. Not only because this horrible perversion was being presented to her and the kids. But because of the effort that went into it. Benny the Clown had taken the time to tie all of these unconnected parts together.

Finally, with flourish, he ended the ghoulish display by tugging out the last organ. A human heart.

Then the bastard actually bowed.

"You sick son of a bitch!" Jenny screamed. "Get the hell away from us!"

But Benny the Clown didn't go anywhere. He continued to stare at them, as if expecting a round of applause.

Jenny turned away, hugging the children. "Don't look at him, kids. We don't have to worry about him. He's just a big bully, trying to scare you. He doesn't even have any teeth. He can't hurt us. The big loser can't even get in."

Then Jenny heard a sound that chilled her to the very core.

A sound that was both familiar, and totally out of place.

BRRRR-RRRR-RRRRR-RRRREEEEEEEEEE!

The starting and revving of a chainsaw.

The blade poked through the aluminum door like a finger through a wet tissue.

The children screamed. So did Jenny. She screamed for their lives, and hers, and for Randall's, because she knew it was her husband's chainsaw, and he never would have let Benny the Clown take it, which meant he wasn't going to save her because he was dead.

As Benny the Clown cut the door off its hinges and stepped into the storage closet, Jenny's biggest regret was that she hadn't gotten to tell Randall how much she loved him.