The Wind-Up
Zoe heard the first toy before she saw it. An odd clank-clank-clank sound disturbed the quiet in the upstairs hallway, and Zoe wandered around trying to find the noise.
Her husband Troy glanced at the ceiling and smirked. “Maybe it’s mice.”
Zoe shuddered. “That’s not funny. We just moved here.” She pulled down the attic ladder. The clanking grew louder as she climbed.
“Whatever that noise is, it’s up here,” she called down to Troy.
“Be careful, sweetie.”
Zoe sneezed and then sneezed again in the dusty, stale-smelling air. Sweat began beading on her forehead as she clicked on the overhead light.
Something lay on the floor in the corner of the attic and as she drew closer, the clanking sound stopped. She saw the source of the noise and burst out laughing.
“What is it?” Troy’s voice sounded muffled now.
She picked it up. “You know perfectly well what it is.”
“What do you mean?” The ladder creaked and Troy hauled himself into view.
Zoe held a metal wind-up clown that looked older than she was. The clown, whose swooping eyebrows took up most of its face, wore checked clothes and held rusty cymbals. An enormous key stuck out of the toy’s back. Zoe wound it and the clown began bashing the cymbals again, its face frozen in an expression Zoe found sad.
“Ugh, creepy.” Troy scowled over her shoulder. “No wonder someone left that here.”
“Oh please. You left it here.” Troy loved doing things like this. Rubber snakes in her underwear drawer. Plastic dog crap on the new living room rug. Now he’d graduated to clowns in the attic.
He shot her a baffled look. “No, I didn’t. Not this time.”
“Sure, Troy. It just wandered up here on its own.” She rolled her eyes. The Who, me? act was always part of his game.
“Seriously. Someone must have left that behind. I can take it down to the trash if you want.” Troy stuck a hand out.
Zoe closed her fist around it, silencing the cymbals. “So it can end up in my makeup bag later on? I don’t think so.”
Two more wind-up toys turned up in the house the following week. One, a female clown in a pink polka-dot dress, started randomly clapping its little hands in the top of Zoe’s closet. Another one, shaking tiny maracas, was concealed in the back of a kitchen drawer.
“The people who lived here before us must have been seriously weird,” Troy muttered, fishing the thing out from under a stack of dishtowels as he and Zoe cleaned up after dinner.
“C’mon, Troy. How much longer are you going to keep this up?”
Troy had the world’s worst poker face when called out on a prank; the corners of his mouth twitched, or he’d make snuffle noises trying not to laugh. But there was no sign of a smile on his face when he spun around to look at her.
“I told you. It isn’t me.”
“Don’t give me that. Who else could it be?”
“I’m serious.” He scowled, and she dropped it. He was leaving on a business trip tomorrow, and she didn’t want to send him off with an argument. Maybe the denial game was his new angle. For now, she’d allow it.
The next day at the office, a grinding sound coming from Zoe’s desk disrupted the silence in her row. Heads swiveled towards the noise.
He didn’t. Zoe grabbed her purse from the desk drawer where she stashed it and dug out another wind-up clown. This one wore a blue suit with a red tie and waved its arms around as if it were trying to summon help. Something about it struck Zoe as oddly familiar. Maybe Troy had sprung it on her before.
“Oh god.” April, one of Zoe’s colleagues, scooted her chair backwards so fast she almost tipped over. “I hate clowns. Like, I’m seriously terrified of them.”
“Sorry. My husband’s an idiot. He thinks sticking these things everywhere is funny.” She’d barely seen him that morning. He’d had to get up early to catch a flight, and she was still half asleep when he kissed her goodbye. He must have snuck the thing into her bag on his way out the door.
The toy continued its grinding sound, and April’s lips trembled. “Can you get rid of that thing? Seriously, I can’t be around them.”
Fed up with Troy’s little game, Zoe took the clown outside and tossed it in a nearby dumpster.
Back at her desk, she grabbed her phone and texted Troy: Not funny. My neighbor has coulrophobia.
He didn’t respond. In fact, he hadn’t even texted her when his flight had arrived, and it should have landed by now.
She texted him again. You there?
No response.
Zoe left work early that afternoon, unable to concentrate. She still hadn’t heard from Troy.
As she stood in the driveway checking her phone, a voice sounded behind her, making her jump.
“You just moved in, yes?” An older woman with a round, pink face stood behind her. “I’m Joyce Carter. I’m in that house on the corner.”
“Nice to meet you. Zoe Green.”
Joyce’s eyes narrowed and she leaned in.
“Took a while for someone else to buy this house. I’m not surprised.”
Zoe had an urge to tell Joyce that now wasn’t a good time. But the tone of the older woman’s voice made her pause.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, it’s the strangest thing. The last families who lived here just up and left. Didn’t move their stuff out or leave a forwarding address. They were gone, just like that. Realtor didn’t tell you, huh?”
“No, she didn’t.” Zoe felt a faint stab of annoyance. Was there some kind of trouble connected to this house? That sounded like something they should have been told about.
“Anyhow, be careful. It’d be nice if you stuck around longer.” Joyce gave Zoe a smile that Zoe supposed was meant to be friendly. It looked more like the overwide jack-o-lantern grin of someone who enjoyed delivering bad news a little too much.
In the house, Zoe called Troy and got no answer. Her texts got no replies. Her stomach churned as she checked flight information. He hadn’t been at the job all that long and she didn’t have the numbers for any of Troy’s colleagues. The main phone at his company went to after-hours voicemail.
Zoe told herself she was just being stupid. Maybe the conference center had terrible reception. Maybe he’d lost his phone.
She fell asleep on the sofa thinking she’d put up with all the stupid clown toys in the world if he’d just let her know he was OK.
Zoe woke up shrouded in the musty reek of the attic. A click-click-click noise sounded in the darkness.
She felt stiff and terribly wrong. And her arms moved back and forth in time with the click sounds.
Her arms were making the click sounds.
Something jammed into her back; it rotated, making her arms jerk up and down. She couldn’t turn her head to see what was happening. As her eyes got used to the darkness, the attic seemed to be the size of an airplane hangar. How was it so big? How had she gotten so small?
This was a bad dream. She’d wake up downstairs on the sofa any time now.
Whatever was turning in her back was slowing down, and as it did, something occurred to her. She pictured the clown toy she’d fished out of her purse at work. Something about it had looked familiar and now she remembered why: the clothing it wore looked just like Troy’s best suit. The one he wore on important trips.
The thing in her back stopped turning and her consciousness faded away just as she remembered Joyce Carter’s grinning face and the clown toy sailing through the air as she’d tossed it in the dumpster.
Troy. No…
