The thing in the basement moved a little more, dragging itself on elbows thin like fallen branches, clothes all but faded away, skin limp and dead over stringy muscles. Pieces of the tattered throw rug which had been its funeral shroud slid away. All of which, the carpet and the body itself, should never be, should have long decayed and blended with the earth. Still, the body moved, stumps of its thighs dragging behind. The severed legs themselves remained in the hole, abandoned, forgotten like discarded chicken bones. The clown was free, however, and this freedom was an overwhelming sensation. That, and the presence of two things which drove the body forward.
First and foremost, the necklace, powerful and having rested for so long mere inches above the clown’s head, never within reach. No longer confined, the creature inched forward, hands once soft and pliable that could do so much to so many children, were now draped with skin hanging like oversized gloves on a little boy’s hands. It reached out, not close enough to touch the chain. It dragged itself farther on elbows of exposed bone. The body hissed in its rags across the floor, sounding like a broom. It reached out again, and dead fingers closed around the rings orbiting the silver ball, felt new life pouring in. The fingers were as thin and dead in their equally dead skin-gloves, but there was an energy in them now, power as it fumbled its fingers to the chain and dragged it along like a toy toward the stairs.
The second thing urging it forward, less so than the necklace but as important, was the presence of his son in the house. Once-beloved, but turned traitorous, a murderer. Billy—Jacob’s Billy—was an adult now. The creature slid a few more inches closer to the bottom step. The boy still called himself Will, never wanted to use the name his old man had for him. There was another presence, too, the child whom the clown touched for the first time only a few days ago with its sleeping, half-dead mind. Jacob had a grandson. Rather, the thing which used to be Jacob had a grandson.
A second chance.
Lips, once traced with paint but now with the barest remnants of flakes along gray skin, parted. They opened and closed, opened and closed, and in that time one word, like a first, tentative breath, escaped as sound into the darkness. “Billy…” It pulled itself and the necklace along. The hiss of its skin and clothes across the dusty, rubble-strewn floor, an occasional hitch when shriveled lungs attempted to take in air, and the whisper again of one name, “Billy,” were the chorus it moved to, stronger every second. The necklace glowed ever so faintly, offering the slow warmth of its power growing inside the otherwise cold, dead basement, and inside the clown. Strong, it thought. I am strong. I have life.
No, the necklace whispered into its shriveled pit of mind, we have life.
The clown worked its voice, turning it over like a long used engine, parts inside a body unused for so long. Diaphragm weak and quivering, vocal chords the thinnest of membranes like discarded spider webs, tightening, stretching, coming to terms with the world again. The eyes of the clown were always open, since most of the lids had disintegrated below the dried remnants of the black tape, disintegrated like the rest of the body should have done if not for the preserving power of the amulet so close above it—stupid, stupid woman, it thought with growing humor, you should have thrown it away, destroyed it. Then your children, our children, would have been safe.
Billy-Now-Will had trashed the altar, shattered any weak powers it might have had over the thing which had once been Jacob Pallasso, over the necklace and all that lived within it. Had that been Will’s own doing, or could the spirits within the necklace control his son as Jacob himself had been so willingly controlled when he was alive, when he was human? Probably.
Likely.
No matter. Eventually the altar would have been removed by another, and the necklace would have reclaimed its own. Certainly those within wouldn’t have let Jacob rot away, or would have found someone else to carry on their purpose. Now, it thought, as one unfeeling hand reached out and touched fingertips to the dusty wood of the first step, there was an opportunity to mend the severed line. Return the necklace to the path it had been traveling through so many generations of Pallassos, before Will broke the cycle.
The clown used the step to pull itself up to the bottom landing as the necklace banged against the wood, then the creature rolled sideways along the landing and stared up, toward the basement door. Eyes bulged in their sockets as if something within the skull was inflating them. Nothing else changed, no miraculous healing. Only the eyes, and the strength stored for generations inside the necklace, filled with so much innocent blood. The forces within, coiled like a hundred thousand snakes, had preserved him for this moment. One purpose. Protect the line.
Now it was the clown’s turn for redemption.
Billy, the younger, the grandson, was waiting to be a true Pallasso.
It pulled the necklace to its chest, having to roll farther on its side to do so. The thing that had been Jacob could not put it on, for its life had ended, its time had passed. But the hundred thousand snakes had waited too long and they were hungry. More strength flowed from the talisman, more anger and hatred recycled and used as blood and air in its dead heart and lungs. It—for he was an it now, neither male nor female nor even human—sucked in a deep, dusty breath, felt a sudden sharp pain through every inch of its body. Wonderful pain. It meant life, to touch and feel and now shout, “Billy!” toward the basement door and beyond.