Dancing Clown Shadows

The smell got me first.

Not the sewer smell. Everyone talks about the sewer smell, the rot, the shit, the standing water. That's what you'd expect from a drain. That's what I expected when I dropped through the grate behind the old cannery on Neibolt Street, my flashlight beam cutting a nervous cone through the dark. I was seventeen, stupid, and filming everything because that's what you did in Derry that summer. You filmed. You documented. You acted like capturing something on your phone meant you controlled it.

The smell wasn't sewage. It was cotton candy. That fake strawberry sweetness they pump through the vents at carnivals, the kind that sticks to the roof of your mouth and makes you thirsty for hours. It hit me halfway down the ladder, so thick I gagged and almost lost my grip. My phone clattered against the rungs, the light spinning wild across wet brick before I caught it. I hung there one-handed, breathing through my mouth, trying to understand how a storm drain could smell like a state fair.

That was the first wrong thing.

The second was the quiet. Derry in July is never quiet. Cicadas scream from every tree, the Kenduskeag gurgles and slaps against its banks, some car alarm is always going off three blocks away. But down here, ten feet below the street, the silence was total. Not empty. Pressed. Like the air itself was holding its breath.

I should've climbed back up. I know that now. I knew it then, too, if I'm being honest. But I was seventeen and I had a YouTube channel with 203 subscribers and a theory that the disappearances in Derry weren't random. I had a map on my bedroom wall with red pushpins marking every kid who'd vanished since 1989. I had a voice recorder in my pocket and a flashlight in my teeth and the kind of confidence that only comes from never having been truly afraid.

So I kept climbing down.

The tunnel at the bottom was wider than I expected. Taller, too. I could stand straight up, and I'm not short. The walls curved into an arch overhead, brickwork so old it looked like it had grown there naturally, like the city had been built on top of something that was already waiting. Water ran along the center in a thin channel, black and slow. My boots splashed through it, and the sound echoed too long, bouncing back from somewhere far ahead.

I pulled out my phone and started recording.

"Okay, so," I said, and my voice sounded wrong. Too small. I cleared my throat. "It's July 14th, 11:47 PM. I'm beneath Neibolt Street, approximately forty yards from the entry point. The tunnel extends north-northeast, which doesn't match any of the city's sewer maps. I'm going to follow it and see where it goes."

I sounded like a park ranger. I sounded like an idiot. But the camera was on, the red light blinking, and that made it real. That made it something I could edit later, something I could post, something that would prove I wasn't crazy for spending my summer chasing ghosts.

The tunnel ran straight for maybe a hundred yards. Then it opened up.

I don't know how to describe what I saw. My flashlight swept across the space and the beam just kept going, swallowed by distance. The ceiling arched up into darkness, higher than the cannery above, higher than any building in Derry. The walls were still brick, but they were covered in something that glittered when the light hit it. Wet. Reflective. I stepped closer and touched it before I thought better.

It was slick. Warm. Like the inside of a mouth.

I pulled my hand back and wiped it on my jeans. The fabric darkened where I touched it, and the stain spread, slow and deliberate, like ink in water. I watched it crawl across the denim, and my heart started doing something I didn't like.

"Okay," I said. "Okay, that's. That's fine."

The recording light was still on. I pointed the camera at the wall and narrated what I saw, because narrating made it manageable. "The walls appear to be coated in an organic substance. Unknown origin. Possibly fungal. Possibly something else. I'm going to keep moving."

I didn't keep moving. Not right away. I stood there in the dark with my flashlight and my phone and the smell of cotton candy so thick I could taste it, and I listened.

That's when I heard the breathing.

Not mine. Mine was fast and shallow and way too loud in my own ears. This was something else. Something deeper in the cavern, slow and rhythmic, like the sound of a sleeping animal the size of a house. In and out. In and out. The air moved with it, a faint pressure against my face, warm and moist and carrying that same sickly sweet smell.

I should've run. Every instinct I had was screaming at me to turn around, climb the ladder, get back to the surface, forget this ever happened. But I didn't. Because I was seventeen, and I was stupid, and somewhere in the back of my mind a voice that sounded a lot like my father was telling me that real men didn't run from the dark.

My father was an asshole. I knew that even then. But knowing something and believing it are two different things, and the part of me that believed him was the part that kept my feet moving forward.

The cavern narrowed into another tunnel, and this one was different. The walls weren't brick anymore. They were smooth, curved, organic in a way that made my skin crawl. The floor sloped downward, and the water channel widened, until I was walking along a narrow ledge with black water rushing past below me. The sound of it was wrong. Too musical. Like the water was humming.

I stopped recording. I don't know why. Maybe because the camera felt like an intrusion, like pointing a lens at something that didn't want to be seen. Maybe because I was starting to understand that whatever was down here wasn't a story I could tell. It was something else. Something private.

The tunnel opened into a chamber, and I forgot how to breathe.

It wasn't the size of it, though it was huge, bigger than the cavern before, the ceiling lost in shadow so high above that my flashlight couldn't find it. It wasn't the walls, either, though they were covered in the same slick organic stuff, pulsing faintly with a light that seemed to come from inside them. It was what was in the center.

A bed. An actual bed, with a mattress and sheets and a headboard carved from something that looked like bone. It sat on a raised platform of packed earth, and around it were things. Toys. A rocking horse with chipped paint. A stack of comic books, faded and curling. A music box, its lid open, the tiny ballerina inside frozen mid-turn.

And on the bed, a boy.

He was maybe twelve. Dark hair, pale skin, wearing jeans and a t-shirt with a logo I didn't recognize. He was lying on his back, arms at his sides, eyes closed. Sleeping. His chest rose and fell in that same slow rhythm I'd heard from the tunnel, and the air around him shimmered, like heat rising off asphalt.

I didn't move. I couldn't. My legs had turned to concrete, and my heart was beating so fast I thought it might tear itself apart. I stood there in the entrance to that chamber, flashlight pointed at the ground, and I watched a boy sleep in a place where no boy should be.

He looked familiar. That was the worst part. I knew his face from somewhere, from a poster or a news report or a missing persons flyer stapled to a telephone pole. I tried to remember, but my brain was too busy screaming at me to run.

Then he opened his eyes.

They were blue. Bright blue, like the sky on a clear day, like something that didn't belong underground. He looked at me without surprise, without fear, without any expression at all. Just looked. And then he smiled.

"Hi," he said.

His voice was soft. Normal. Like a kid greeting a friend at the playground.

I didn't answer. I couldn't.

"You're not supposed to be here," he said, and he sat up, slow and easy, like he'd just woken from a nap. "But that's okay. I get visitors sometimes. They don't usually stay long."

"Who are you?" My voice came out as a croak. I cleared my throat and tried again. "What is this place?"

He tilted his head, and something about the movement was wrong. Too fluid. Too smooth. Like a puppet with no strings.

"This is my home," he said. "I've been here a long time. Longer than you've been alive, probably. Longer than anyone."

He swung his legs off the bed and stood. Barefoot. His feet were pale and clean, and they made no sound when they touched the packed earth floor.

"What's your name?" he asked.

I shouldn't have told him. Every horror movie I'd ever seen, every story about monsters and ghosts and things that lived in the dark, they all said the same thing. Don't give them your name. Don't give them anything.

"Ben," I said.

"Ben." He repeated it like he was tasting it. "I like that. It's a good name. Strong."

He walked toward me, and I took a step back. Then another. My flashlight beam swung wild across the chamber, catching glimpses of things I didn't want to see. Bones. Small ones. Piled in the corners like kindling. A shoe, tiny and pink, half-buried in the dirt.

"Don't go," he said. "I haven't had company in a while. The others, they always run. It's rude, don't you think?"

I kept backing up. My heel caught on something, and I stumbled, nearly falling. The flashlight slipped from my hand and hit the ground, the beam pointing sideways, illuminating the wall. The organic stuff on the bricks was moving. Pulsing. Like it was alive.

"I'm not going to hurt you," the boy said. He was closer now. I hadn't seen him move, but he was closer. "I just want to talk. Don't you want to talk? You came all this way."

"I made a mistake." I found my voice again. It was shaking, but it was there. "I shouldn't have come here. I'm sorry. I'll leave."

"You can't leave." He said it simply, like he was explaining that water was wet. "Not yet. You haven't seen everything."

He raised his hand, and the chamber changed.

The light from the walls brightened, and I saw the full scope of the space for the first time. It wasn't just a cavern. It was a theater.

Rows of seats curved around the central platform, old wooden seats with faded velvet cushions, arranged in a semicircle like an amphitheater. They were empty, but they weren't dusty. They looked used. Worn. Like people sat there often.

And in the center, on the bed, the boy was still standing, but he wasn't a boy anymore. He was something else. Something taller. Something with too many teeth.

I screamed. I'm not ashamed to admit it. I screamed like a child, high and shrill, and I turned and ran.

The tunnel I'd come through was gone. The wall was solid brick, covered in that pulsing organic stuff, and I hit it at full speed and bounced off, landing hard on my back. The wind knocked out of me, and I lay there gasping, staring up at the dark ceiling, while the thing that had been a boy walked toward me.

"I told you," it said, and its voice was different now. Deeper. Layered. Like a dozen voices speaking at once. "You can't leave. Not until the show is over."

I scrambled backward, my hands slipping on the wet floor, my heart hammering so hard I could feel it in my throat. The thing stopped a few feet away and crouched, its shape shifting, resolving back into the boy. He smiled, and his teeth were normal again. White and even and almost friendly.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to scare you. I forget, sometimes. What it's like for you."

"For me?" I managed.

"For people. For the living." He sat down cross-legged on the floor, like a kid at show-and-tell. "You're all so fragile. So temporary. I forget that."

I didn't say anything. I couldn't. I just stared at him, at this thing that wore a boy's face, and tried to remember how to breathe.

"My name is Pennywise," he said. "But you can call me Penny. Everyone does."

"Penny." I repeated it because I didn't know what else to do. "Okay."

"I've been watching you, Ben." He said it casually, like he was commenting on the weather. "For a few weeks now. You're interesting. Most people in this town, they're not. They're predictable. Boring. But you're different."

I thought about the map on my wall. The pushpins. The hours I'd spent in the library, scrolling through microfilm, tracking disappearances. The camera in my pocket, still recording, the red light blinking in the dark.

"You've been watching me," I said.

"Always." He smiled again, and this time there was something in it that made my stomach turn. "I watch everyone. But you, I watched special. You're looking for something. You don't know what, but you're looking. And I thought, maybe, you'd like to see."

"See what?"

He stood and offered me his hand. A child's hand, small and pale and clean. I didn't take it. He didn't seem to mind.

"The show," he said. "The one I've been putting on for a very long time. You're the first person who's ever come close to finding it on their own. That deserves a reward."

I should have said no. I should have closed my eyes and covered my ears and waited for him to kill me, because that was clearly where this was going. But I didn't. I sat there on the wet floor of that impossible chamber, and I looked at his outstretched hand, and I thought about the pushpins on my wall.

"Okay," I said. "Show me."

He smiled, and the chamber changed again.

The seats filled.

Not with people. With shapes. Shadows that moved and shifted and whispered, forms that were almost human but not quite, flickering at the edges of my vision. They filled the amphitheater, row after row, and they all faced the center, where the bed sat on its platform like a stage.

"This is my audience," Penny said. "They've been with me for a long time. Some of them longer than Derry has existed. They like to watch."

"Watch what?"

"Everything." He gestured, and the bed changed. The sheets pulled back, and on the mattress, two figures appeared. A man and a woman, naked, tangled together, their bodies moving in a rhythm I recognized but had never seen in person. They were beautiful. They were terrible. They were doing things I'd only ever glimpsed in blurry videos on my phone, things I'd imagined but never witnessed.

I looked away. My face burned, and my stomach turned, and something else stirred in me, something I didn't want to name.

"Don't be embarrassed," Penny said. He was beside me now, though I hadn't seen him move. "It's natural. It's what you are. What all of you are, underneath the clothes and the rules and the pretending."

"I don't want to watch this."

"Yes, you do." His voice was soft, almost kind. "Everyone wants to watch. That's the secret no one admits. The audience, they've been watching for centuries. They never get tired of it. The coupling. The mating. The desperate, messy, beautiful way you all try to connect."

The figures on the bed moved faster. The woman arched her back, and the man buried his face in her neck, and the sounds they made echoed through the chamber, amplified by the walls, by the audience, by the thing beside me that wore a boy's face.

I closed my eyes. But I could still hear. And worse, I could still feel. The heat in my chest. The tightness in my jeans. The shame that came with it.

"You can look," Penny whispered. "It's okay. This is what the show is for. This is why I do it. To see. To be seen. To share the things that people hide."

I opened my eyes. I couldn't help it. The couple on the bed had changed positions. The woman was on top now, riding the man with a slow, deliberate rhythm, her hands on his chest, her head thrown back. She was beautiful in a way that hurt to look at, all curves and shadows and skin that gleamed in the strange light.

And she was looking at me.

Not at the audience. Not at Penny. At me. Her eyes were dark and knowing, and her lips curved into a smile, and she moved faster, harder, like she was performing for me alone.

I felt something break inside me. A wall I'd built without knowing it, a barrier between what I wanted and what I let myself want. It crumbled, and I was left exposed, raw, my breath coming in short gasps, my hands clenched at my sides.

"That's it," Penny said. "Let go. Let yourself see."

The man on the bed reached up and pulled the woman down, and they kissed, deep and hungry, and the audience sighed, a sound like wind through dead leaves. I felt it in my chest, in my stomach, in the base of my spine. I felt it everywhere.

And then the scene changed.

The couple was gone. In their place, two men, their bodies pressed together, mouths open, hands roaming. Then two women. Then more, configurations I'd never imagined, positions I'd never seen, acts that made my face burn and my pulse race and my mind go blank with a want I couldn't name.

"It's all the same," Penny said. "Underneath. It's all just bodies. Just wanting. Just the desperate need to not be alone."

I couldn't speak. I could barely breathe. The images kept coming, one after another, a parade of intimacy that I couldn't look away from, couldn't stop watching, couldn't stop wanting.

And then, in the middle of it all, I saw myself.

I was on the bed. Not watching. Participating. My body tangled with someone else's, someone whose face I couldn't see, and I was doing things I'd only ever dreamed of, things I'd only ever touched myself to in the dark of my bedroom, things I'd never told anyone, never admitted, never even fully acknowledged.

"That's your future," Penny said. "One of them, anyway. The one you want most. The one you're most afraid of."

I tore my eyes away. I looked at him, at this monster wearing a child's face, and I saw something in his expression that I hadn't expected. Curiosity. Hunger. But also something else. Something almost like loneliness.

"What do you want from me?" I asked.

He smiled. "I want you to stay. Just for a while. Just to watch. It's been so long since I had someone who could see."

"See what?"

"Everything." He gestured at the chamber, at the audience, at the bed where my phantom self was still tangled with a stranger. "The truth. The things people hide. The things they do when they think no one's watching."

I thought about my phone, still recording in my pocket. I thought about the map on my wall, the pushpins, the hours of research. I thought about my father, who told me real men didn't run.

"Okay," I said. "I'll stay."

Penny's smile widened, and for a moment, just a moment, I saw the thing beneath the boy's face. The teeth. The hunger. The endless, ancient patience.

"Good," he said. "Now watch."

And I did.

The show went on for hours. Or maybe minutes. Time moved differently in that place, stretched and compressed like taffy, until I couldn't tell if I'd been there for a night or a week. The scenes on the bed changed and shifted, each one more intimate than the last, each one peeling back another layer of what I thought I knew about desire.

I watched a woman touch herself while a man watched from a chair, his hands gripping the armrests, his face a mask of want. I watched two people make love in the rain, their bodies slick and shining, their mouths open in sounds I could almost hear. I watched things that made no sense and things that made too much sense, things that repulsed me and things that drew me in until I couldn't tell the difference.

And through it all, Penny sat beside me. He didn't touch me. He didn't threaten me. He just watched, his eyes moving from the bed to my face and back again, cataloging my reactions, learning me.

"You're different," he said, after a scene that had left me shaking, my hands pressed to my mouth. "Most people, they break by now. They cry, or they scream, or they beg to leave. But you. You keep watching."

"I don't have a choice."

"You do." He turned to face me, and his eyes were blue and bottomless. "You've always had a choice. You could close your eyes. You could turn away. You could refuse to see. But you don't. You watch."

I didn't answer. Because he was right. I watched. I couldn't stop watching.

"Why?" he asked. "Why do you watch?"

I thought about it. The question deserved an answer, even if I didn't want to give one. Why did I watch? Because I was curious. Because I was lonely. Because I'd spent my whole life on the outside, looking in, and this was the first time I'd ever been invited inside.

"Because I want to know," I said. "What it's like. To be that close to someone. To be seen."

Penny nodded, slow and thoughtful. "You want to be watched."

"No." The word came out too fast. "I don't. I want to watch. I want to see. I want to understand."

"You want both." He smiled, and it was almost gentle. "That's okay. Everyone wants both. To see and be seen. To know and be known. It's the oldest story there is."

He stood and walked to the bed. The phantom figures disappeared, and the mattress was empty, pristine, the sheets smooth and white. He sat on the edge and patted the space beside him.

"Come here," he said.

I didn't move. Every instinct told me to run, to find a way out, to escape while I still could. But there was nowhere to run. The tunnel was gone. The walls were solid. And somewhere in the back of my mind, a voice that sounded like my own was telling me that this was what I'd come for. This was what I'd been looking for.

I stood and walked to the bed. I sat beside him, close enough to feel the cold that radiated from his skin.

"Good," he said. "Now close your eyes."

I did.

"Now open them."

I did.

And the chamber was gone.

I was standing in my bedroom. My map was on the wall, the pushpins red and bright. My phone was in my pocket, still recording. And on my bed, sitting cross-legged in the middle of my Star Wars comforter, was Penny.

"See?" he said. "I can go anywhere. Be anywhere. And now, so can you."

I looked at him, at this thing that had followed me home, and I felt something shift inside me. Fear, yes. But also something else. Something that felt almost like gratitude.

"Why me?" I asked.

He tilted his head, and his smile was a boy's smile, innocent and sweet. "Because you're the first person in a long time who looked at the dark and didn't look away. You're the first person who wanted to see."

He lay back on my bed, his hands behind his head, and stared at my ceiling. "I'm going to stay here for a while," he said. "I hope that's okay."

It wasn't a question. We both knew that.

"Okay," I said.

And I sat down on the floor, my back against the wall, and watched him. I watched him close his eyes and breathe, slow and even, like a child sleeping. I watched the rise and fall of his chest, the flutter of his eyelids, the small movements of his fingers. I watched him the way he'd watched me, the way the audience had watched the bed, the way I'd always watched the world.

I watched, and I didn't look away.

That was the first night.

There were many more after that.

Penny stayed. He came and went, disappearing for hours or days, returning without warning. I never knew when I'd find him in my room, on my bed, in my closet, under my desk. He liked to surprise me. He liked to watch me react.

And I liked it too. That was the thing I couldn't admit, even to myself. I liked the uncertainty, the danger, the way my heart raced every time I opened my door. I liked knowing that something was there, waiting, watching. I liked being seen.

The shows continued. Not every night, but often. Penny would appear beside me, or I'd find myself back in that chamber, sitting in the audience while the bed came alive with bodies and sounds and secrets. I watched things I'd never imagined. I learned things about myself I'd never wanted to know.

And through it all, Penny watched me. He watched me watch. He studied my face, my reactions, my breathing. He learned what made me lean forward, what made me look away, what made my hands clench and my pulse race. He learned me better than I knew myself.

"You're a voyeur," he said one night, after a scene that had left me breathless and ashamed. "That's what they call it. Someone who gets pleasure from watching."

"I know what it means."

"Do you?" He was lying on my bed, his head propped on his hand, watching me with those blue, bottomless eyes. "Do you know what it means to be one? To need to watch, the way other people need to touch? To feel most alive when you're on the outside, looking in?"

I didn't answer. Because I did know. I'd always known. I just hadn't had a word for it.

"It's not a bad thing," he said. "It's just a thing. A way of being. Some people are made to participate. Some are made to observe. You're one of the observers. That's not a flaw. It's a gift."

"A gift?"

"You see things other people miss. You notice the details. The small movements. The things that happen when no one thinks anyone's watching." He smiled. "That's why I chose you. Because you see."

I thought about the map on my wall, the pushpins, the hours of research. I thought about the way I'd always felt like I was on the outside, looking in, never quite part of things. I thought about the camera in my pocket, the videos I'd never shown anyone, the things I'd captured because I couldn't participate.

"Okay," I said. "I see."

And I did. I saw everything.

The summer passed. July bled into August, and August into September, and still Penny stayed. He was there when I woke up and there when I went to sleep. He was there when I ate breakfast and when I did my homework and when I lay in bed at night, staring at the ceiling, wondering what he was thinking.

He never hurt me. That was the strangest part. He had every opportunity, every chance, every reason. But he never hurt me. He just watched. And made me watch.

The shows became more elaborate. The scenes more intimate. The audience grew, until the amphitheater was packed with shadows, all of them watching, all of them hungry. And in the center of it all, Penny sat beside me, his hand sometimes brushing mine, his voice a whisper in my ear.

"You're part of it now," he said one night. "Part of the show. The audience and the performer. The watcher and the watched."

I looked at him, at this monster who had become my friend, my teacher, my obsession. I looked at his blue eyes and his boy's smile and the ancient hunger beneath.

"What happens now?" I asked.

He smiled. "Now we wait. The show isn't over. It's never over. There's always more to see."

He leaned close, and his breath was cold against my ear. "And I want to see it all with you."

I closed my eyes, and I felt him there, beside me, watching. Always watching. And I knew, with a certainty that went deeper than fear, that I would never be alone again.

The show would go on. And I would watch.

That was the beginning.

The rest, the part that matters, the part that changed everything, came later. But that's another story. One I'm not sure I'm ready to tell.

Not yet.

But soon.

Penny is patient. He's been waiting a long time. He can wait a little longer.

And I'll be watching. I'll always be watching.

That's what I am. That's what he made me.

A voyeur.

And the show, the beautiful, terrible, endless show, goes on.