In a large study, Meiri et al. found that 1.2% of hospitalised children experience a fear of clowns (coulrophobia). –-Lennard T. van Venrooij & Pieter C. Barnhoorn, “Coulrophobia: how irrational is fear of clowns?”

We go out into the dark to hunt them. George brings a baseball bat, which seems barbaric and clunky to me, but who am I to judge, really? I carry my cell phone in my hand, thumb hovering over the record button. Just in case.

It’s one of those nights that begs for snow, one of those nights that desperately needs an additional element, something other than the murk, the saturated stars. I will be happy to find nothing. George swings his bat at his side. It keeps hitting saplings which seem to spring up from nowhere. Our shoes sink into the mud, make a sucking noise as we trudge. The air is cleanly scented, but George's body, even from a few feet away, smells feral.

“What are we looking for exactly?” I ask, breaking the long silence.

“How do you mean?” George says and turns to face me.

“Like, are we hoping they'll just jump out at us?”

He screws up his mouth. Even in the shallow glow of the full moon, I can tell he’s chewing on the inside of his cheek.

“We don't have to do this, you know?” he says.

“That's not what I mean. That's not why I'm asking,” I say.

“Then why are you asking?”

“Just like, maybe we can split up for a second?” I say.

“What?”

I sigh. “I really have to pee,” I say.

“Jesus,” he says and laughs. “Just go over there.” He gestures to the silhouette of a large tree. “I'll wait.”

I stare at the ground and kick a rock like I’m a small child stalling.

“What?” George says.

I hear a flutter of wings. A small thing scurries nearby.

“Look,” George says. “Take the bat. I'll wait. I'll listen.”

It was foolish to ever think I'd be brave. Just last night I woke from a nightmare and my roommate had splashed my face with water to calm me down, to bring me back to earth. I’d come out of the black screaming and throwing my fists. George knew a little of what was going on, mostly because my roommate whispered things to him, and I pretended not to overhear.

I put my cell phone in my pocket and creep with both my hands wrapped around the bat’s grip.

“Go along,” George says behind me.

On the other side of the tree trunk, the roots jut up from the mud, and I feel my way forward. Despite the cold, I take off my shoes and pants and underwear. There’s the sound of a branch breaking. The clear spastic bell of a phone. Not my phone. It’s distant but distinct. Then silence again. The moon, pushing through a bald gap in the branches, makes my thighs glow pale blue. After pissing, I dress hurriedly, feeling watched.

“George?” I say, coming around the side of the tree, studying the shadowed ground for knotty roots. “George?” I say again.

Something swoops above me. An owl, maybe. I raise both hands to shield my face and realize then that I no longer have the bat.

I take my phone out of my pocket, the screen so brilliant my eyes sting for a moment. I pull up George's number and dial.

“Hey there,” his voicemail says. “You've reached George. Please leave me a message.”

I glance around, will my eyes to adjust back to the dark. My heart starts to kick up to a speed that feels dangerous. I sit in the mud. I dial again.

“Hey there. You've reached George. Please leave me a message.”

“George,” I say into my phone. “George, where are you? I'm still by the tree where I went to go pee.”

I hang up and text him, They're here. I know it. In the distance I think I can hear a car engine switch on. I can't do this alone, I write. A bug—an ant or beetle—crawls against my ankle, and I slap at my skin. The sound echoes. The sound is a voice and it grows.

I need you. They're laughing at me.

In my dream, the dream that I had last night and the night before and the night before that, the clown wore black gloves wrapped around the strings of six balloons, three in each hand. His lips were as red as Marilyn Monroe’s, and when he bent down to kiss me, dead pigeons fell from his pockets. I am not the only one. A guy driving late, speeding to get home, saw a clown walk out of the woods. The clown wore yellow. He was holding a weapon at his side, or so it seemed. Once the driver was on the local news, we all loosened our lips about it. So many of us had been having nightmares for weeks.

Why did I think footage would show me the way out of my town’s deep sleep? As if the paused face of a sniggering clown—before he is struck down—would reveal his hunger, and therefore his weakness? Saplings sway in a new wind. I stare into the bleached light of my little white screen—bright and vacant.

They chose to define coulrophobia as “an irrational fear of clowns.” We feel that the use of the word “irrational” in this definition can be called into question. –-van Venrooij and Barnhoorn

The clowns have troubled the town for only these last summer months, but they have been a problem for me for years. It all started when my father took me to the circus. I was five. Or six. It depends on who is telling the story. My father and I strolled the dirt paths through the concession stands and tents, my little body buzzing with sugar and fatigue. It was a lot—the red then yellow lights, the smells of barn animals and grease. All week I had badgered him to take me, but he worked too much to have the energy. I had to wait until Saturday. The sun had gone down, and though there were bright bulbs everywhere, it did little to meaningfully cut the dark. My father’s hand slipped out of mine. He was pointing at the sky.

“Baby girl.” That’s what he called me. “Look,” he said.

I looked at his finger. He laughed and picked me up.

“See,” he said.

I followed his eyes. I saw nothing.

“See it?” he asked.

I nodded my head yes, a little lie to keep him close.

He grinned and put me down, took me hand again. But then it happened. Something caught his eye. A buzzing machine, just a bit of gambling. Clink, clink, clink. Music to his ears. His gaze got distant and fuzzy and he walked me over to it as if in a daze, started putting dollars in, needed to feed the crumpled ones with both hands. Free, I wandered off.

I still don’t know what he was pointing at in the sky that night. We’ve never talked about it, because when we’ve talked about what happened next, we go over the basic facts, like bullet points. One, I wandered into a tent. Two, there was a clown. Three, the clown started to walk me towards the parking lot, and I was pulling away from him, and a security guard found the scene odd, and stopped us. There were no charges, because what was there to prove? An employee, the clown, had found a lost child, was trying to unite her with her father, a father who was negligent and in the midst of losing upwards of a few hundred dollars on a plugged-in slot machine. But I hadn’t told the officers what the clown had said to me. I’d gone mute, and it was four days before I spoke again.

In 2016, there were reports of clown sightings worldwide. These so-called killer clowns are menacing-looking clowns who scare unsuspecting passers-by… —van Venrooij and Barnhoorn

Social media influencers have been showing up to try to get material. Girls pose in front of the town sign, their midriffs bare, their hair slick as seals. They wear red plastic noses, an inch of scarlet lipstick around their mouths, teeth gleaming too white. They capture only their own jester face. The clowns are just for us. Which has frustrated the media. Reporters stopped covering the story quickly, presumably afraid we’d make them look like chumps. “Baseless Claims of Clowns” was the last headline run.

To begin with, a clown’s makeup can be unsettling. It hides not only the person’s identity but also that person’s feelings. Worse, the makeup can result in mixed signals if, for example, the clown has a painted-on smile but is frowning. —Amy Tikkanen, "Why Are People Afraid of Clowns?"

FUCK, I write to George. COME BACK NOW. I tap send.

A notification pops up on my screen. Your text could not be sent.

I dial 911, then hit the cancel button.

“Baby girl,” I hear a voice whisper. I whip my face around in the black. I hold up the light of my phone.

“Ha. Ha. Ha.” The laugh that comes from the dark is exaggerated, mocking.

I feel wet breath on the back of my neck. I go stiff as a startled doe. Something tickles the small of my back.

“Close your eyes.”

But my eyes are already shut tight. I feel two large hands on my shoulders. They slowly turn me around. Sour breath. A click. Then a light pressure around the perimeter of my lips. Slowly, an exaggerated oval is drawn. Another click. Then pressure around my nose. A gentle kiss on my cheek.

In our opinion, being afraid of something harmless may be irrational, until there is a realistic possibility that which is feared is actually harmful. —van Venrooij and Barnhoorn

My hand is in someone else’s hand.

“Remember what I told you before?”

I nod my head up and down.

There are two arms around my waist. I am rocked back and forth, slow dancing among the brush. My eyes will not open. I think I hear my name being called in the distance. I cannot scream. My lips are inching up into a sneer, moving towards my ears, pushing past the confines of my face.

Then, there’s the uncanny nature of the makeup itself. The oversized lips and eyebrows distort the face so that the brain perceives it as human but slightly off. —Amy Tikkanen

Soon, I will be nothing but a red, red mouth. A mouth that swallows its own tongue. Mocks the throat it eats.

“I have never forgotten you,” says the voice.