The Fathom Flies Again Read online

  O’Riley stared after the tumultuous gaggle of mischief, unsure as to what had caused him to slam on the brakes. For all the world, it had seemed like a gang of circus clowns, merry old carnival jesters. Except one had appeared to be carrying a stick of dynamite, its fuse smoldering and fizzing. Another seemed to be actually ablaze, whilst a third had snaked past, dragging a seemingly innocent member of the public behind it. This was probably not good. At the very least, they probably didn’t have a permit, if there even was a permit for being on fire.

  He watched the chaotic conga line vanish into the next street, unsure of how to proceed. This was not the sort of thing they covered in basic training, or indeed any sort of training. Crowd control, yes. Blazing, explosive wielding clown control, not so much. It wasn’t even an image that sat well in one’s mind, let alone something that could be effectively dealt with.

  The night bellowed into life behind O’Riley, summoning his thoughts back into something resembling order. The back seat of the squad car heaved as someone bundled in through the rear door, slamming it behind them. “Drive!” A thin, reedy voice commanded through the tinted perp shield which separated O’Riley from his new passenger. It was an unexpected entrance, and an even more unexpected order, but given the bizarre scene unfolding in front of him, it seemed not without merit, and the still marginally confused cop stamped a foot down hard on the accelerator pedal, sending the squad car lurching forward.

  “Who’s back there?” O’Riley enquired weakly, all of his efforts channeled into making the steering wheel behave. Whilst he was committed to protecting and serving, amidst what appeared to be the first and only riot in the town’s history, showing and telling was pretty high on the order of business right now, too. The voice, however, seemed far too preoccupied with ranting. As the car veered into a connecting street, the babble from the back seat showed no signs of flirting with coherence. “They’re everywhere,” it gibbered, as O’Riley plunged the car down a deserted High Street. “The big one, all eyes and teeth,” the hysterical passenger continued, shrieking through the glass. “He’s around here somewhere, I saw him come this way.” The caterwauling was reaching levels that only dogs would be able to hear, and O’Riley suddenly wished that there was some kind of backup that he could call in. “It’s all so horrible,” the voice wailed. “So heinous,” it screamed. “So…much…fun!” it chuckled.

  O’Riley glanced into the rearview mirror, realizing too late that victims of wholesale devilry don’t usually tend to revel in it, before a pair of white gloved hands smashed through the glass between him and whatever was in the back seat. O’Riley had time to register just how few things actually had been covered in basic training, this being yet another that wasn’t, before his foot called an instinctive halt to proceedings, connecting violently with the brake pedal.

  The car jolted and skewed crazily to a stop, as the owner of those probing hands shot past O’Riley, and through the windshield in a blurry, brightly colored mass of whooping Hell No. Squad car, broken windshield and worryingly mysterious assailant, came to a skittering rest in the middle of the road. O’Riley blinked into the darkness, wondering if post traumatic clown disorder was an actual thing.

  Something ragged and jolly rose up into the car’s headlights, brushing shards of windshield from a gaudy waistcoat and grinning wickedly at the gawping lawman. If this was your standard, run of the mill kids’ party clown, he had left more than a few popped balloons and a broken piñata in his wake, O’Riley thought, as the ghastly jester extended white gloved talons and advanced. This kind of carnival carnage was going to require something more than standard police justice. These harlequins from hell were not going to go quietly. No, they were going to go gigglingly, snarlingly, possibly combustibly, and O’Riley couldn’t have that. He fought back the urge to heroically growl “Not on my watch!” and slammed a foot on the gas. The demonic prankster let out a toe curling squeal and spread its arms wide, beckoning the oncoming police car with a grand canyon sized grin. All thoughts that this might not be the best plan exploded along with the manic jester, as squad car connected with sparkly pantaloons in an eruptive fountain of brightly colored confetti, and careened off down the street, leaving naught but glittering paper flecks in its path.

  Not for the first time that evening, O’Riley attempted to haul sanity back into his mind. Did all clowns do that? In all fairness, he had never mown one down before, so he had no idea, but it didn’t seem like a particularly normal occurrence. Reality tapped him on the shoulder as more grease-painted freaks swept into his headlight beams, and he pulled up sharply, his resolve as a keeper of the peace shunning any further need to question his own sanity.

  Detective O’Riley darted from the squad car, frankly a few dents south of road worthy, and drew his gun. “Sir!” he barked at the largest of the cavorting jesters. “Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to come with me.” He levelled the pistol at the lead clown, who had already turned, and leered silently at him. Placing a trembling finger against the trigger, O’Riley motioned towards the tragically stricken squad car. “Let’s go, sir. Don’t make me turn you into a pile of party streamers.”

  The loping clown eyed O’Riley darkly, as two of his sneering lackeys fell in behind him. Their heads pivoted and craned sickeningly, maintaining a mask of glee guaranteed to call a premature halt to any children’s party. With jerky, inhuman movements, the clownish trio juddered towards the now rapidly re-evaluating police officer, a mixture of cheerful malevolence and curiosity dancing madly across their ghostly white faces.

  O’Riley grimaced. “I’m gonna need a bigger cell,” he said as he led the sneering felons away.

  Chapter Ten

  Even before a gigantic robotic parrot topped pirate galleon had come to rest upon its sweeping turf, Stellar Island’s miniature golf course could have feasibly claimed ‘Wonder of the World’ status. The likes of the Taj Mahal and the great pyramid of Giza were undoubtedly impressive, but it could be argued that they were somewhat lacking in interactivity, and probably had less hot dog stands, so it was safe to make the assumption. It was a hit all year round, and with good reason. From the imposingly centrifugal ‘Large Hole-One Collider’, to the all-consuming finality of the ‘Eighteenth Black Hole’, it was a cosmic free-for-all of monoliths, craters, and asteroids. Aside from the occasional floating punter in need of rescue within the zero gravity of Hole Nine, satisfied customers would flock and re-flock to its massive airlocked doors on a daily basis.

  The patrons who had chosen this particular evening to do their flocking however, were not here for a spot of planetary pitch and putt. They hadn’t even brought clubs with them, and from their appearance were certainly unlikely to have paid any green fees. They seemed totally uninterested in the twirling, strobe casting UFOs which orbited Hole Four, and completely disregarded the friendly looking little green men who stood conspiratorially around the distinctly Roswell-esque Hole Five. All of their attention, and forward momentum was towards the Flying Fathom in the center of the course, momentum which didn’t cease as they reached it.

  Half a dozen hooting clowns barreled into the side of the hull, pounding at it with every available ghastly appendage, and attempting to scramble upwards as the boat rocked at the force of the collision. The crew of the Fathom, now heavy a few passengers, clung to whatever they could as the deck creaked and listed to one side. Peering over the edge at the demented broadsiders, Marty dearly wished that his ability to plan was as swift and readily accessible as his ability to panic, and immediately shrank back from the deck rail. Whether the course of action that presented itself to him was borne from fight or from flight wasn’t clear, but as he bolted over to the port side of the deck, he barked out an order to the ranting crew, who were pinwheeling in disarray around him.

  “Get the Fathom airborne, I’ll try and lead them away.” Even as he finished the sentence, Marty simultaneously questioned his own sanity, inwardly requesting clarification of this supposed plan, and mental
ly congratulating himself for being such a big damn hero. Even as he dropped in a hopefully unseen, unheroic heap in the shallows of the water hazard, Marty knew that someone would be right behind him, mainly because she had been right beside him ever since he had awoken from that dream. Kate landed back on terra-fairway with far more grace than Marty had managed, and shot him a smug, but markedly defiant look.

  Women were funny creatures, Marty mused, ignoring the oozing mud filling up his sneakers. Every instinct within him commanded that he valiantly order her back to the relative safety of the Fathom, where she could squeal theatrically at his feat of almighty bravery. Women loved being the damsel for their knights in stagnant water, right? Not this one, and Marty immediately revised his concept of chivalry to include ass kicking girlfriends. Beaming with pride and relieved to have the company, Marty motioned towards an oversized effigy of Saturn’s rings which circumnavigated Hole Six, and grabbed Kate’s hand. That was surely still allowed in the minefield of equal rights chivalry.

  They vaulted towards the luminously bathed green, making as much racket as humanly possible in an attempt to make their presence known. “I haven’t seen you since this morning,” Kate cut in as they ran. “How was your day?”

  Marty blinked, almost breaking stride. Amidst all of this other worldly chaos, inviting calamity upon themselves as they were, Kate was as calm and unwavering as ever. Or to put it another way, she was pretty damned spectacular.

  The clowns had heard them, and snaked from either side of the Fathom to give chase. Even so, Marty was now completely caught up in this domestic couple bubble that Kate had flung up around them, and suppressed a smirk as he ran. “Oh, not bad. Ran around the park in a beagle suit, almost got eaten by an invisible monster, met up with the pirates. Pretty standard really. You?” Deep down inside Marty, something cheered. Somewhere amidst the smothering tedium of the day, he had stopped existing, and started living again.

  “Pretty humdrum actually.” Kate replied, now halfway around Styrofoam Saturn. “Stopped off for a drink at the Judge - awful band. Escaped a bunch of clowns and met up with a glowing koala.” She paused, as though searching for something more interesting than this Salvador Dali painting of an evening. “Oh!” she added “And I got my nails done. Nice huh?” She hoisted Marty into the upper atmosphere of the mighty plastic planet and flourished her fingers.

  The clowns were getting closer, but Marty felt only a wild exultation, and faint curiosity as to what color Kate’s fingernails were now. He barely glanced at them, his eyes instead fixed on hers, which betrayed the same disconnected euphoria that was currently blazing like a tornado through his mind. He nodded his approval, nonetheless.

  They were passengers in reality, and they both knew it. This return ticket back into the express lane which should have brought with it confusion and terror seemed instead to carry a sense of familiarity. Marty glanced back at the cavorting, gibbering freaks, barely feet from where they stood. Okay, maybe some terror as well.

  Somewhere behind the drooling freaks, Zephyr roared triumphantly. Marty squinted into the darkness, making out the outline of the Fathom drifting majestically into the air. Several feet in front of it, something gangly and seemingly made of twisted limbs sprang into hideous clarity. They had stopped moving and the clowns were upon them.

  Grabbing Kate’s hand again, Marty leapt from the edge of tiny Saturn’s rings, dropping to the ground and leaving the rotund platform spinning haphazardly. The two lead clowns sprang into mini-Saturn’s orbit, scuttling and stumbling across the rings like devilish DJs on some gigantic, cosmic turntable. It was a short scamper up to Hole Seven-ly Bodies, festooned with mystifyingly mobile meteors and asteroids. Marty had never bothered to enquire as to the mechanics behind some of the physics bending props of the golf course—it was sure to ruin the illusion—and he wasn’t sure he wanted to meet the mad genius behind it all. Pursued as they were by grisly carnival hellspawn however, they could not have chosen a better battleground to retreat into. Several smaller portions of space debris floated past, and Marty plucked the nearest one out of the ether, hefting it purposefully in his hand. It was polystyrene, and painfully inadequate, but in the absence of a heavy caliber firearm, it would have to do. He heaved it at the clowns still hopelessly spinning about Saturn, catching the lead giggler square in the bright red hooter. It dropped like a fairground sideshow coconut, although admittedly with more screaming and face clutching, and Marty grinned, spectacularly failing in his attempt to suppress a fist pump. Another, goodly sized meteor hurtled past Marty, and he spun to see Kate winding in her pitching arm. This might have been fun, had their targets not been so intent on grabbing and devouring them. Ducking past another whirling asteroid, Marty sped towards the next hole, motioning for Kate to follow.

  Free of the asteroid belt, they skirted the short path down into Hole Cape Canaver-Eight, with its massive space shuttle launch pad. Marty briefly wondered how the guy who had named the holes of this course hadn’t been fired yet, before returning his attention to the advancing clown horde. Five of them remained, and they were already negotiating the remaining celestial flotsam of Hole Seven. With unsettlingly jerky movement, and yet also with unerring speed they came, causing Marty to almost stumble as he and Kate clattered into the launch gantry of Hole Eight. Wheezing, he held himself up against the mighty structure. Running had been so much easier in his dream, where gasping lungs and a fervent aversion to exercise had not been a factor. Here, he was at the mercy of his annoyingly real muscles, who were even now crying out for a comfy couch and something deliciously fried. The grotesque carnival procession that hunted them was already past Hole Seven, and chuckling its way down the path they had just traversed. Several hands stretched to almost inhuman lengths, even for killer clowns, and Marty could hear the gnashing of horribly pointed and seldom brushed teeth in their wake. He cursed his love of calories, and attempted to summon a last iota of energy with which to continue his flight. This had clearly been a bad idea, his mind pedantically reminded him as the nearest clown reached neck breathing proximity. Marty winced as familiarly ragged, grasping claws found purchase on his shoulder. Had he been able to summon up any breath, it would most certainly be hurtling out of him on the back of a startled cry as his pursuer cackled in triumph.

  With unholy glee hauling Marty backwards, something overhead turned the sky an ear shattering shade of fiery orange, and a huge cloud of confetti erupted, where once a squealing harlequin had stood. Looking up through the festively dissipating clown, Marty spied the broadside of the Flying Fathom, Timbers standing defiantly atop a smoking cannon on the ship’s quarterdeck.

  “Ahahaha!” The little captain spat, hands set firmly on hips. “Hole in one, ya red nosed bilge rat!”

  Turning back to the frantically reloading Oaf, Timbers continued his pirate ranting. “Get another one ready to fire, Oaf. I’ve thought up a bunch of zingers, and I don’t want to waste them.”

  The Fathom veered sideways, blasting off another cannon volley into the onrushing clown phalanx. “Gonna need a sand wedge to pick that one out,” Timbers crowed. “Who says golf’s boring?”

  Caught up in the immensely satisfying clown bashing, Marty hadn’t noticed that Kate was making her way up the steel launch gantry. “Are you coming, or waiting for them to play through?” she called, snapping Marty back into the moment. He glanced up at her, one foot already on the steel rig, a smile back on his face, and adrenaline poking his muscles into further action. He tried to tell himself that the head start had carried Kate to the top before he arrived, but his need for breath deprived him of the means to impart the excuse. Still, what mattered was that they were at the apex of the ridiculously high launch pad, and the Fathom was sweeping around for another pass.

  Three clowns remained below, and were doing their best to join them. Marty held out a hitchhiker thumb, and was already running alongside Kate as the mighty galleon drifted past them. Once again the smile returned, and Marty fought to regain hi
s composure as a familiar song swam through his head.

  “Clowns to the left of me, pirates to the right.”

  “We’re going to have to jump,” Kate cut in with a dose of good sense and reality as the end of the gantry loomed. The Fathom was only a few feet away, and below them, a few dozen feet of unforgiving gravity. How Marty wished that they were on gravity taunting Hole Nine.

  The clowns reached the summit behind them, and whooped chaotically as one galloping, biting mass of teeth, claws, and cheerful red noses. With only one course of action left, Kate and Marty reached the end of the launch pad and leapt, screaming at the deck of the Fathom.

  Had this been a dream, or indeed one of the four million action movies that Marty had seen countless times, this moment would probably have slowed down, to give time for ample reflection, a few explosions, and possibly some soiling of undergarments. Reality however, has a habit of screeching by at the speed of now, and saw both Kate and Marty clatter to a painful rest amongst the rigging of the main sail. Painful, but safe at least. Marty peered up from his haphazardly stuck landing, into the eyes of Kate’s new koala friend. Benji blinked, wide eyed at the sudden flurry of things apparently beyond his realm of understanding, and pulsed an alarming shade of bright red. “You nearly landed upon me, sir,” he whimpered, casting a worried glace across the deck. Although already unassuming, the tiny marsupial had shrunk back against a clutch of barrels which were tethered to the main sail. Looking up into the rigging, Benju clucked disapprovingly. “This isn’t a tree. I can’t hide in there. This place is not safe at all.”

  Of course, Benji was probably right. As was so often the case when attempting to escape murderous clowns, or indeed murderous anything, safe was a precarious and temporary state. One given to collapse into incendiary chunks of unexpected adversity at any given moment, whatever reality you happened to be in at the time. On this occasion, safe lasted approximately five or six seconds, before exploding into brilliant white chaos, and several shrieks of surprise.