Automatonophobia

- Floor 3, part 2 -

oo0oo

Kole couldn't help the shudder that ran through her body as the three of them made their way out of the animatronic jester troupe. There wasn't much that she was afraid of in this world, and it was a good thing too since she had seen some pretty terrifying things in the past few months with the Winchesters. But, everyone has their own irrational fears. Maybe hers seemed more irrational than most – after all, going to sleep or driving a car was not a fear a lot of people had in this country – but clowns? Well, there was nothing that could convince her that that phobia was unreasonable.

The crowd of clowns, motionless and moving alike, was getting more compact as they made their way to the center of the room. Soon, they were nearly climbing over and around them to get through.

"This is ridiculous," she heard Dean say just as an arm slid around her waist, trapping her own arms at her sides, and a large gloved hand reached up and covered her mouth. She gasped, but the sound was lost amid the crashing of clown statues, as she was yanked off of her feet and pulled away.

Kole couldn't move her arms to fight off her captor and couldn't connect her kicks to either his legs or any of the statues around them. As a last resort, she shook her head violently and, when she was finally able to open her mouth, she bit as hard as she could into one of the white-gloved fingers.

Her captor promptly dropped her to the ground and cradled his hand while cursing. She tried rolling away and screaming for help, but both efforts were thwarted as she collided with another live clown who shoved a strip of duct tape over her mouth before she could yell out any more than 'HE-'.

Between the two large jokers, they made quick work of tying her feet together and her hands behind her back. Then, one of them lifted her up and hauled her over his shoulder as if she were nothing more than a bag full of dirty laundry. As they made their way through the crowd, Kole attempted to see where they were taking her. Unfortunately, this was impossible as the way she was being carried caused her dark thick hair to fall into her face, rendering her blind.

---

"Dean, some of these are broken," Sam scolded his brother as he walked through a broken pile of clown statues. To be honest, he really didn't care. After that last floor, Sam would be perfectly content to leave now and simply burn the place down. Well, that is, of course, unless there really are missing people in here.

"So. Are we worried now about pissing off the evil haunted house caretakers?" Sam didn't have to look at him to know Dean's eyebrows were raised in disbelief. But, he also knew his brother. There was no amount of denial that would convince Sam that Dean didn't get a little gratification out of his act of destruction.

And, to tell the truth, as Sam looked down at the wreckage, there was a strange sort of satisfaction running through him as well. In fact, he considered copying his brother's actions; only, something registered in his mind before he had the chance.

"Umm," Sam backed up and stood next to his brother, "Dean?"

Dean followed his gaze, and Sam could see that he was also following his thoughts. Out of the seven ruined figures in front of them, only one of them remained more or less in tact. More, because it was not chipped or broken; less, because the wound on the clown's face shouted one thing: this clown was human.

One of the flying pieces of debris had obviously marred the cheek of the human clown, but no blood dripped from the deep wound. Which meant that the blood was not flowing. Which meant that this human clown was not alive.

Dean opened his mouth, not really knowing what to say, but feeling he needed to say something. But, before anything came to mind, the boys heard a scream. An interrupted cry for help. Both Winchesters spun on the spot and were greeted with nothing but more clowns. Their cousin was no longer behind them.

The boys began running in what they hoped was the right direction. After reaching a small clearing in the clown forest, they stopped and looked around.

"She was right behind me," Sam said. "How could she just have vanished?"

"What?" Dean studied his surroundings, trying to find the trail. "You mean, like the way you seemed to have just vanished? Yeah, it doesn't make sense."

"You know what I mean."

"Of course," Dean said as he walked up to a statue, "I mean, it's not like she's a foot shorter than you or anything. How could she possibly disappear… I think they went this way." He started off carefully in a path towards the very center of the room.

"Do you hear that?" Sam asked as he followed his brother.

"Yeah. What is that?"

"It's calliope music. Circus music," Sam told him. "I think you're right."

"About what?"

"This is the right way," Sam said ominously. "The music is getting louder the closer we get."

"Ah, and is that your prophetic opinion?"

Seeing movement in the distance, Dean and Sam fell quiet. They each crouched down, finally feeling a little of the equanimity that came with being back in their element as hunters. They instantly fell into the easy pattern of stalk and study, moving silently and unseen.

The movement that they had noticed did not come from an animatronic character. The strides taken and gestures made by the tall clown they were watching were smooth and stilted all at once, the way a live human would walk and retrace steps.

But, they didn't see Kole.

They followed the clown further on, stopping only when he passed through an opening in a large partition that set a circle in the center of the room off from the rest. As they got closer, they realized what the partition was: stadium-style seating, about ten rows high. Here and there, filling some of the seats, were more dummies and mannequins of all shapes and sizes. Some were moving, some weren't.

Carefully climbing into the bleachers, rather than walking through the entry and standing out in the open, Dean and Sam looked into a circus's center ring. There was a small show going on in the heart of the haunted house. They saw jugglers, acrobats, and magicians, all in clown make-up.

"How many of them do you think are real?" Sam whispered to his brother.

"It's hard to tell with some of them," Dean whispered back. "I'm trying to see a repeating pattern in some of the more realistic-looking ones' movements."

Sam couldn't help but grin a little to himself. Dean was smarter than he let on, smarter than Sam or Dad gave him credit for, smarter than Dean gave himself credit for. Sam just needed to make sure to tell him so once they were out of this madhouse.

As he was making a mental note for himself, Sam noticed non-clown attire at the far side of the circle. There was so much brightly-colored traffic moving in front of them that he only spotted her because of her comparatively drab dark blue jeans and grey sweater.

"Dean," Sam pointed her out.

"Yeah. OK, of course she's at the opposite corner of the ring," Dean said with a sigh, and Sam decided not to point out the problem with that statement. "So…" but instead of completing the thought, Dean merely acted out his plan and began climbing through the bleachers.

When they were close enough to see her clearly, Dean and Sam had reached another opening in the partition. They looked around, once again trying to see who was real and who wasn't. Neither of them wanted to rush in, only to be taken by surprise by a supposed statue. But, there was no sign of the clown they saw earlier, which could mean that he was hiding in plain sight in the seats above them.

A loud thud and a muffled gasp brought the boys' attention back to their cousin. She was standing against a wall, looking very much like bait in a trap. She had a thick piece of duct tape over her mouth; her feet were shoulder width apart and her arms were stretched out to either side. They could see metal rings near her hands and feet, each appendage tied in place with multi-colored rope. No, not multi-colored – there were several strands, each brightly colored. They had used long, animal-sculpting balloons to hold her in place.

But, the thud is what made all three pairs of eyes grow large. Sticking out of the wall and still quivering near Kole's right hip was a gleaming, fearsome double-edged knife.

When the boys looked to see where the knife had originated, they weren't sure if it was a good or bad thing that it wasn't the live clown that threw it. The contraption might have been fascinating in other circumstances, but both brothers were slightly horrified to see an ersatz clown with an animatronic arm. The arm seemed to work like a baseball pitching machine, only with a second wheel that dug into a supply of knives and fed them to the throwing mechanism.

They watched as another knife was loaded onto the arm and then hurled. Apparently, the principle of aiming was lost on the machine because this time the knife landed to Kole's left. And this time, it didn't miss her completely. This time the knife nicked her left bicep, causing blood to begin soaking into her grey sweater.

At the sound of his cousin's muffled cry, Dean leapt into action.

"OK, Sammy, you find a way to try and shut that thing off. I'll get Kole out of there."

"Dean, what about the guy? What if he's waiting to pick us off as soon as we run out there?"

"I'm not really willing to wait for him to show himself if it means watching her get skewered." And, with that said, Dean sprinted towards Kole.

Sam took off for the demented pitching machine. It didn't take him long to reach it, but he couldn't see any switches or plugs on the thing. Another knife was loaded and flung before he could stop it.

"Dean," he shouted as quick as he could, "Look out!"

Dean turned to see the knife in mid-flight. He grabbed the closest clown doll and placed himself and it in front of Kole, using the doll as a shield. He felt the impact as the blade hit and risked a quick look at where the doll was struck.

Sam looked over at them as well and felt himself get a little lightheaded at what he saw. Had his brother, his wonderful and quick-thinking big brother, stood frozen, that knife would have hit Kole square in the face.

At that point, Sam didn't much care for turning the machine off. Instead, he found himself kicking the mechanical arm which caused the next loaded knife to be thrown in a completely perpendicular direction. Then, he kicked and hit the machine itself and didn't stop until the thing was on the ground in a jumbled heap.

At the same time, Dean grabbed one of the knives from the wall behind Kole and began severing the balloon ties around her left wrist. He was a little worried about how cold her hand felt and wasn't sure if it was due to her wound or her circulation being cut off by the tightly pulled balloons. Either way, when he had finished, her arm merely fell limp to her side.

"Kole?" he asked, trying to see her face while he bent down and got to work on the ties on her left ankle. "You OK?" Once he noticed Sam knocking the mechanical arm off balance, he tried to throw the shield-clown away without showing Kole exactly where she was almost stabbed. He finished with her left ankle and had moved to the right when Sam came running up to help.

"Kole, are you all right?" he repeated Dean's question, only Sam thought enough to pull the tape from Kole's face before he retrieved the knife from near her hip and got to work on her right wrist.

"Ouch!" she screeched, the sting of the tape was apparently enough to wake her from her daze. She reached up with her now-free left hand and quickly wiped away the one tear that had slipped down her cheek.

"Kole," Dean attempted to get her attention once more as he stood up, having finished with her ankle, "did you see where he went?"

"He?" Kole asked and began scanning the audience. "Dean, there were two of them."

"What?" Sam asked as he finished with her wrist.

"I think it was the twins," she told them, still searching the clown crowd. "From outside? Hard to tell with the make-up, but I think they looked the same underneath. And one of them had the scar. You can't hide a scar like that under make-up."

"I say we get out of here," Sam said as he grabbed Kole's right hand once more and began cautiously walking towards the partition opening that he and Dean had come through. Dean was right behind them, also keeping a watchful eye on his surroundings.

"Oh no, oh no, oh no, no, no," Kole started mumbling and shivering again. "Please tell me I'm imagining things." She shut her eyes tight as she whimpered her plea and allowed herself to be lead out of the center ring.

But, without lying, Dean and Sam could tell her no such thing. They, too, noticed that the calliope music died with their first step towards the ring exit. They also saw what had upset her. At the same time that the music ceased, all of the clowns, the audience and the performers, turned to face them with sightless eyes and painted on smiles. As they walked carefully from the circle, the heads followed them.

"Sam," Dean murmured as they stepped out of the ring only to find all of the clowns and jesters and mimes staring inanimately at them. Dean slowly passed a gun to his brother and then took one out for himself.

Kole had opened her eyes when they stopped and immediately wished she hadn't.

"Yeah," Sam whispered, and gripped Kole's hand in his left and the gun in his right. All the while, he monitored his surroundings, watching for movement.

"OK," Dean took a breath, gripped his gun in his left hand and took Kole's hand in his right. "Run!"

The three of them took off for the exit, Sam leading the train and keeping an eye out for live clowns. More than once, one of them knocked into and over a stature, but none of them stopped. Sam shot a couple of times, blowing a waving arm from an animatronic dummy. Dean shot once and thought he saw a figure fall, but he kept running.

They reached the wall, bright yellow with polka-dots in every color, where the exit should have been but the door seemed to be missing.

"What the…?" Sam started, but hearing footsteps behind him, spun himself around. He was immediately facing countless clowns. Bright red noses and big grins were all he could see. He hadn't been afraid of clowns before, but these statues were making him rethink that position.

"It has to be here," he heard Dean say, unnerved. Sam placed himself between the lifeless crowd and Dean and Kole, still watching and expecting an attack.

"Wait," he heard Kole's voice. "It's an optical illusion. One of these dots…" her voice trailed off.

Sam looked over his shoulder and saw Kole lean her head against the wall, then twist to the right and then the left.

"There!" she pointed, then placed her hand on the wall and kept the contact until she reached the doorknob. She opened the door as she turned back to face them. "Sam!"

Sam spun back towards the clowns and both he and Dean unloaded a couple shots into a unicycle-rider on a collision course with the younger Winchester. The clown fell to the ground, fragmenting on impact.

Sam took a deep breath, one that did little to calm his nerves, and walked toward the open door backward. Kole followed him. Dean took one last look around and, satisfied with the lack of activity, walked through the door then slammed it closed.

Automatonophobia: the fear of ventriloquists' dummies, animatronic creatures, and/or wax statues