Custom Nightmare Wyllop
The creepy clown, whom people talk about all the time, does exist, or once existed. His name is Bartleby.
Bartleby was born in 1965, to a rich family. His father, Walter, wasn’t rich at all before he married Bartleby’s mother, Helen, who inherited a large amount of wealth and properties from her millionaire uncle. Helen loved Walter, but he only loved her money. Although Walter was not a good husband, he was indeed a wise businessman and a somewhat loving father.
As a young boy, rarely did Bartleby play outside with other children. Rather, he usually sat beside his mother for days, listening to her complains, and watching her weep. Or he would stay in his father’s study, observing the life of a workaholic. Whenever his parents started to shout at each other during arguments, Bartleby would cover his ears and hide under his bed, biting his lips till they bled.
At school, the bullies gave him a nickname, "mousy boy", because he was always quiet, timid, and weak. Well, Bartleby wasn’t really a coward at the time. He was just afraid of getting into troubles, and making his mother upset. The boy’s little heart always broke a bit every time he saw his mother cry. And the wounds never healed. However, when Bartleby stayed quiet and did not fight back, he was actually in a worse situation, as rage, shame, and hatred started to accumulate inside him.
Among all the properties and businesses the family owned, the funeral home was Bartleby’s favourite. Whenever he had the chance, he would sneak into the morgue at night, through the secret back door in room 107, using the key stolen from his father’s study. Sitting among the corpses made him feel peaceful. He thought he resembled the dead more than the living. The dead never made a sound. They only listened.
Ever since Bartleby was addicted to corpses, he had wanted to become a mortician. However, it changed at his 16th birthday. Walter booked an amazing Jazz band from a party company for Bartleby’s birthday. But the band was caught in a car accident, so they sent a birthday clown instead. It was awkward, of course, on a 16-year-old teen’s birthday party. Luckily Bartleby never had any guests. As the clown show began, Bartleby’s never smiling mother, under the influence of alcohol, started to smile and laugh at the clown. Bartleby had never saw his mother this happy before, and at the very moment, he told himself, he’d be a clown when he grew up, just to make mother smile.
Two years later, Bartleby refused to go to business school, and told his father that he wanted to become a clown. Walter was rather disappointed, but there was nothing he could do. Bartleby was just too timid to even talk to strangers, and his mind was too naive for the cruel world of business. So Bartleby started his clowning career in the amusement park their family owned.
You’ve probably guessed that he was the crappiest clown you would have ever seen. This man had no talent in performing. His singing was always out of tune. His voice was so quiet that the audiences could hardly hear his jokes, which he couldn’t even remember very well himself. Most of the time, he just awkwardly laughed and jumped around, excitedly talking gibberish, unconsciously scaring little children, and making balloon animals that looked like nothing.
So Bartleby became a clown with no audience, unless you were counting those boys who threw rocks at him.
However, the real tragedy was that not even his mother would look at him anymore. Once Bartleby came home in his clown costume, and he performed a magic trick for his mother. As he was expecting her to laugh and applaud, Helen said regretfully, "Bartleby, it is my fault that your life is wasted". That night, Bartleby went back to the funeral home again with his clown clothes and makeup on. In front of all the corpses, he started to sing and dance and laugh in an insane manner with high-pitched voice. Yet, the man’s eyes were flooded with tears. Since then, Bartleby visited the morgue almost every night. He was getting all the attention he desired, in his little world of the dead. The dead never turned their backs on him, or got tired of him. They were his most loyal audiences.
Years passed. No progress had been made in Bartleby’s life. As the age of 30, he still lived at home with his parents, worked at the amusement park as a clown, and visited the morgue often, performing lousy clown tricks for the dead. He was still called "mousy boy", constantly being pushed around by his coworkers. Even his father was too tired of defending him.
But nobody could stand loneliness for that long. Bartleby was eventually in love, with a corpse he met in the morgue. It was the body of a young woman, whose name was Crystal. The girl looked beautiful and innocent. She was to become a singer, but ended up as a striper. Two years into her stripping career, she swallowed a whole bottle of sleeping pills, never waking up from her never-ending dreams.
Bartleby fell in love with Crystal’s corpse the instant he saw her. He couldn’t let them bury her, letting this beautiful creature rotting under ground, eaten by worms, or digested by microbes. So, he stole the body, and kept her in his room. He dressed Crystal with his mother’s clothes, putting her on his bed, assuming she was just asleep. Then, Bartleby would strip down to his underwear, and lay down beside Crystal. Nope, he wouldn’t do anything dirty to her. She was an angel, an angel trapped in this crap hole, just like Bartleby himself. All he did was talking to Crystal softly all day long.
As the body started to decay and became more and more smelly, Bartleby bought many scented candles, and lighted up all of them in his room. The candles actually covered the smell very well. However, they didn’t stop people from going into his room. The angry Walter was to educate Bartleby about his recent absence from work, but only to find his son laying on bed with a badly decayed corpse. Shocked by the scene, the old man’s heart was too weak to take it. He suddenly lost conscious. The table with many candles on was flipped over, as Walter fell down. Bartleby’s room was on fire in an instant.
When the fire fighters got the situation under control, half of the house was already burnt down. They found Helen’s body in the kitchen. The old lady was too drunk to get away from the fire. Two other badly burnt bodies were found in Bartleby’s bedroom, and they assumed they were Bartleby and Walter. However, you, my clever readers, know that there should be four bodies if everyone was killed in the fire.
The family’s properties and money were inherited by Walter’s brother, whom soon sold the funeral home. After the workers moved away all the bodies, and got ready to tear down the building, strange things started to happen. The watchmen often heard creepy singing and laughter at night. And in the morning, they would find a few dead bodies, which were stolen from the hospital morgue or even the graveyard, laying inside the building. In a few cases, they saw a clown going into the funeral home. Some watchmen were brave enough to follow the clown, who always somehow disappeared in room 107. Because the investors were quite superstitious, they decided to abandon the funeral home.
For years, nobody ever went into the building, nor did anyone ever saw the clown again. There were still missing corpses, but the incident stopped after an advanced security system was installed in the hospital morgue.
Another 15 years passed, most people in the town have forgotten about the old funeral home. But whenever they pass it, they’d always feel the chill creeping up their spines. Parents or grandparents will start to tell the story of Bartleby to the kids, and sometimes, it is interrupted by a loud singing, a singing of a clown, a singing that is so out of tune. (The End)
Story, overlay, and profile layout all by me
(Special thanks to
Pan who helped to proofread the story.)Image from a french film named La rose de fer. Lyric by Placebo.
