The Pilo Family Circus Read Online Free PDF Page B

after a second or two passed in silence, he supposed the voice had been in his mind alone; the thought was not comforting. The lift took him down to the lobby, where the front doors were shut and locked just as he’d left them. There was no sign of life in the arcade outside, its gates locked at either end. How did the clowns get in here if not through the front doors? He thought of the door by the kitchen, which opened out to a small alley used for garbage pickups. They could have scaled the fence and somehow broken through the door, but a street full of people would have seen them. The only other way he could think of was to scale the side of the building, like Spiderman, and climb through a high window.
    At the front desk he sat for a moment and listened. All he could hear was the somehow peaceful sound of muffled traffic outside as a fleet of taxis carried drunk night-clubbers home. He switched on the two security monitors beside him, the little screens casting a thin greyish light in the dark lobby. The camera showed a black and white view of the kitchen, which was deserted. After a few seconds the view shifted to one of the hallways, also empty. Next, the back alley, the rows of black bins. All quiet out there. Next, the basement.
    And there they were.
    It took a few seconds for the scene to truly chill him. Goshy the clown was staring up into the camera, right at Jamie, and the sense of eye contact was quite real. Goshy’s arm was extended and in his hand was a cigarette lighter, its little flame dancing around like an extension of his thumb, flaring in the grey screen, distorting the picture around it. Behind Goshy were … one, two, three other clowns — they’d brought a friend along. Those three were busyingthemselves in the background. Jamie saw the thin clown swing an axe before the monitor’s image shifted to show another empty hallway, then the kitchen again.
    Why the basement? Jamie thought. A lighter. Fire. Why? What are they …?
    Then the chill set in. Built into the basement walls were three giant wooden vats, attached to pipes that led up through the club walls like veins, into the kitchen, bar and utility rooms. Sloshing around in those vats were many, many litres of cleaning products, isopropyl alcohol, turps and ethers. All of it highly flammable; all of it set to blow.
    A moan escaped Jamie’s lips and he clutched the front desk with both hands. The fire would spread up through the tubes, igniting the walls from within on each floor. Before any fire crew could get here, the club would become a spectacular blazing death trap. They would be too late to save the Brisbane Personalities charred in their beds.
    Jamie grabbed the phone. His hand was shaking. The monitor did its rounds again, showing no sign of other people. He dialled for an outside line and called emergency services. It rang three, four times. The monitor switched views to the kitchen. Finally a female voice answered: ‘Police, fire or ambulance?’
    The monitor shifted to the hallway. ‘Police,’ Jamie whispered hoarsely.
    ‘Police,’ said another female voice.
    ‘Hi. I got a problem with some clow— some guys. I think they’re going to …’ He trailed off as the monitor switched back to the basement. There were no clowns. In the background, the wooden vats sat embedded in the walls as normal.
    ‘Yes?’ said the voice in the earpiece.
    Jamie stared at the monitor until the picture shifted back to the kitchen, where one of the chefs was ambling over to fire up the ovens, yawning.
    ‘Yes? What is your location?’
    He hung up. He sat staring at the monitors as they did their circuit twice more: no clowns in the basement. Maybe there never were.
    Out the door he went, through the arcade, unlocking the gate and striding away in quick steps. Ringing in his ears was the question, Where were you on the night of Saturday, February tenth? He checked back over his shoulder twice to make sure the place was still standing, then