second he’d pounded up the stairs to Ned’s bedroom. On his way back down, Ned’s dad was stowing something into one of the black bags. Just as he was dragging Ned out the front door, they heard behind them the sound of shattering glass from the sitting room.
“GET IN!” shouted his dad as he threw open the door of their Morris Minor and revved the engine, and before Ned knew what was happening they were tearing out of the driveway in a cloud of dust.
Slowly Ned started to surface from his stupor. A bank of grey fog had rolled into Grittlesby, just like the one from his dream, and as they sped through their little suburb, Ned wondered whether his dad was using his eyes or his memory to navigate.
“I’m not dreaming, am I? Dad, what’s going on? What was that thing?”
“A clown, and a particularly nasty one at that. I just hope he didn’t see you.”
“See me? I don’t understand. Why would that be bad?”
“Because I haven’t had enough time!”
“Time? Time for what?!”
“To get you to safety, to explain, you see … not everything we see is as we see it. The world is a complicated place. It has layers, Ned, lots of layers. What might be the norm for one person, is not really the same for …”
CRUNCH!
Just then something crashed into the right side of their car, hitting it hard. Through the fog, lit up by the streetlights, Ned saw a bright purple ice-cream van with a sign on it reading, MO’S CHILDREN’S PARTIES. Its driver was hideously fat, with the same monstrous grin and cracked make-up as the clown from Ned’s home.
“GET DOWN!” ordered his dad, before shoving Ned further into his seat and out of the clown’s line of sight.
“Please don’t tell me you hired these clowns for my birthday?!”
“Ned, the tickets and present I gave you, do you have them?”
“What?” said Ned, peeking between the seats at the grinning clown tearing after them.
“THE PRESENT! THE TICKETS! DO YOU HAVE THEM?”
Ned had never seen his father quite so crazed. Fumbling through his pockets he found both envelope and package, and pulled them out.
“OPEN IT! QUICKLY!” shouted his dad.
Ned tore at the present’s paper to reveal a smooth metal box. Just then there was another loud crash at their rear and the box flew from Ned’s hands.
“I’ve dropped it!” he shouted, scrabbling around by his feet. “It’s on the floor here somewhere …”
Terry cursed loudly and flicked on the car’s reading light, before making a sharp turn.
“Find it, Ned, that box is the key!”
“The key to what?”
“Just do it!”
Something in Ned’s dad’s voice made Ned do as he was told, and he soon found himself upside down in the passenger seat, scrambling around under the car seat to find his mysterious gift. Their old car wasn’t used to being pushed so hard and the engine groaned loudly as Terry hammered on the accelerator. Under his chair, Ned could just make out the glimmer of an edge.
“I think I can see it!” he shouted.
“Hold on, son, it’s going to get rough.”
“Hold on to what? I’m upside down!”
The car hit something hard, launched into the air and just as Ned’s fingers closed around it the box was gone again.
“Ow! What was that?”
“Speed bump … and another coming.”
Their car flew over another of the hard, tarmacked lumps, and Ned smacked his head again on the vehicle’s dashboard.
“One last bump, have you got it?”
“No I have not, and I won’t have a neck if we carry on like—”
The final bump hurt the most, but as they landed, Ned saw the glimmering metal box leap off the ground just before it hit him square in the eye.
“Ow!” he said, grabbing at it before it fell again. “OK. Got it …”
Ned felt his dad’s hand reaching for his neck and, in a single hard pull, he’d yanked him up and back into his seat.
“Don’t lose sight of it again, Ned. Not now, not ever. Do you understand?”
“Is this … is this what they’re after?”
“Only two people in the world know about that box. Those clowns are after me.”
“YOU! What could they possibly want with—”
Crash!
A horrible crunching sound rang through the car as Mo’s van smashed into the back of them again.
Through the fog, Ned could barely make out the ‘NO ENTRY’ sign to Grittlesby’s pedestrianised shopping arcade and the two metal bollards at its sides.
“Dad, we’re not going to make it!”
“Oh yes we are, my boy, oh yes we are!”
Their beloved old car hurtled through the barrier and there was a loud tearing noise as both of the Morris Minor’s wing mirrors were ripped off. Ned looked out the rear window to see Mo’s van screech to a sudden halt as it crashed into the bollards. At the other end of the arcade, their path was blocked by an even larger barrier, that Ned was sure not even his newly crazed father would try and break through. Terry went quiet, looking left and right, then left again.
“Hold on to your seat, son.”
Ned’s dad slammed the gearstick into reverse and spun the wheel. The old Morris Minor flew backwards, turning wildly up a narrow one-way street. Faster and faster the car sped, crossing one then two intersections, and then another. Ned now had no doubt that his father had gone mad when the car hit a high kerb and flew into the air.
In that moment of free fall, Ned saw his life flash before him. He saw his school surrounded by a flock of C’s, his dad staring at the inner workings of a toaster, Whiskers asleep on his pillow. And Ned did the only thing he could think of.
“Arggggggghhhhhh!”
The car landed with a loud crunch. Its boot popped open sending their bags flying as smoke poured out of the engine.
It took a good thirty seconds of his dad shaking him before Ned felt ready to stop yelling.
“It’s all right, Ned, we made it!”
But Ned’s thoughts were somewhere else. “Whiskers … what about Whiskers? Dad! We left him behind!”
“Don’t worry about him; he’s tougher than he looks. You need to move,” said his dad, thrusting one of the black bags into Ned’s arms. “Quickly, Ned, they’ll be on us in a second.”
The thought of the clowns brought him back to the moment with a thump.
“Where am I going? Why?”
“I was going to explain everything before the show, I wanted to prepare you, but my plans they … just get to the Circus of Marvels, Ned, they’ll keep you safe.”
Ned couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“We’re being chased by homicidal clowns and you want me to hide in a circus?”
“I’m sorry, it wasn’t supposed to be this way, I’ve tried to protect you …”
“What