The petrol ran out when me and Ghost were still 30 miles from the job. I pulled the car to the edge of the road in the middle of some woods. We couldn't pick up a signal on our phones, and we might as well have been a thousand miles away. The last of our money had gone on petrol, and we'd prayed it would be enough to reach the corporate booking, a payday that would turn our lives around. Now we waited, past the time when we should have checked in with the organiser.

Ghost was an odd name for a clown, but she was the palest pierrot, her skin so colourless that it needed only the barest touch of white face. She stared at her lap, understanding the situation as well as I did. Our clowning days were ending.

"Someone's coming," I said.

Headlights in the distance. I hurried out of the car and hid in the undergrowth. The chance of two clowns being picked up was minimal, but maybe Ghost by herself would stand a chance. She stood in front of the car, beside the road's centre lines, and the driver slowed, winding his window down a crack. I couldn't hear what he said, but I could make out Ghost's reply.

"I ran out of petrol. I need to get to a show."

The driver opened his passenger door, and she went round to get in. The last thing I heard was Ghost telling him that her name was Lulabelle.

Ghost liked disposable names and had borrowed this one from an augustine we knew who had once given Mr. Giggles a thrashing. The first time I met Ghost, she told me her name was Hope.

I waited till morning, but Ghost didn't return. I set off walking at dawn, picking up a signal a short distance down the road - if I'd walked a little further the night before, it might all have been OK. There were no messages from Ghost.

Maybe the car was picked up. Maybe it was left abandoned. Maybe it was retrieved and impounded. Or maybe it was overtaken by the forest, and the children in the town told stories about a haunted car, and the people who'd once driven it. It didn't matter to me, the same way clowning no longer mattered.

Background

There were a few clown stories that didn't make it into the published version of True Clown Stories. Most of the ones cut were tiny stories written over a decade before that now felt glib and insubstantial. This was one of two new pieces I worked on for the book, but I was already far beyond deadline with Happy the Dunk, so it didn’t make the final edition.

The ebooks from the True Clown Stories kickstarter went out just before Christmas. We're hoping to get an Amazon link set up but, in the meantime, copies of the physical edition are available on etsy for £10.

Recommendations

Elsewhere, I’ve shared my ten favourite books of 2024. From that list, Hannah Bervoets’ We Had To Remove This Post was recommended on the substack in June and I talked about Buck 65's autobiography Wicked and Weird in August.

Probably my favourite of the ten was Daisy Johnson's book The Hotel. It started out as a radio 4 series, the same as Barrowbeck, another good collection from 2024. The Hotel in the book is never named, but it is a familiar place, cursed and haunted. Johnson uses well-known tropes - the tainted room, recurring words, ghostly guests - but the writing makes it all seem fresh.

The first chapter of this was superb, as Johnson writes an overture about this appalling place, starting with a list of ‘what we know about The Hotel’ ("Do not go into Room 63"). And there are many other incidents related to the hotel, such as "The cathedral in Ely, which occasionally reported sightings in the night of a mirage hotel room set before the alter, the bed made, the TV on."

While this is a short book, each of the stories feels rich, and The Hotel feels more satisfying than many longer novels.