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The terror, which would not end for approximately ten minutes, began with a strange object floating down a siding swollen with rain.
A little red caboose, cheering and giggling, followed the object as rain pelted his pristine red paint, until it bobbed with the rush of water and disappeared into a storm drain.
“Oh no!” the red caboose cried, kneeling down to see where his possession had gone, peering into the darkness of the storm drain. He recoiled as suddenly, two fire-orange eyes glowed in the darkness, and a grinning clown stepped closer, a clown with porcelain-white skin and marks like red wine lining his cheeks.
“Hiya, CB.”
CB blinked. “Um… Hi?”
“What a nice… uh wha…” The clown’s wicked grin slowly faded as it held up the object that had floated down its storm drain, getting a good look at it for the first time. “… What… the hell am I holding here exactly?”
“That?” CB shrugged. “That’s a spike, Mister Clown.”
“A sp… is this blood??”
“Well yeah, I just chainsawed it off a mouthy slate truck not five minutes ago. Left him bleeding in a ditch. He deserved it.” CB smiled fondly at the memory, running his finger over the plating of his arm with a squeak, scraping off the last of the blood. “What’s your name?”
The clown shuddered, jingling the bells on his costume as he did so. “I’m Pennywise, the… well, not going to lie, I’m the Nauseated Clown at the moment. Do you want this thing back? I really don’t want to be touching it.”
“Yeah, I mean, I’ve already cleared a space in the murder shack so…”
“Ugh, here. Just… take it.” Pennywise held the spike between his long thumb and forefinger, dangling it just inside the entrance of the storm drain. CB shrugged, reached for the spike, only half-registering the sound of a sudden growl and a powerful hand grabbing his arm, pulling him down.
CB made a token show of resistance as teeth sank into his arm, tearing through his plating, and a moment later there was a loud pop and a flare of pain that left CB writhing and moaning on the rain-soaked ground. “Oh Starliiiight!”
Pennywise gaped at him, mouth open with bloody drool collecting at his chin. He nearly dropped the severed arm in shock. “Are you… Did you just… enjoy that??”
Dazed and bleeding, with a highly satisfied grin, CB pushed himself into a sitting position. Hearts practically danced in his eyes as he peered back into the storm drain while blood poured from his shoulder. “You’re being awfully forward there, tiger, but… hey, I’m liking it. Dinner later?”
Pennywise gaped for a few more moments, stricken with a sudden existential crisis, and finally tossed the severed arm and retreated into the darkness of the sewer. He needed to re-think his life a bit.
“Hey, wait!” CB cried. “Aren’t you going to rip off the other one?”
The pained voice echoed off the sewer walls. “Nope. Floating away now.”
“What if I ripped it off myself?”
“FLOATING FASTER.”
“CALL ME!”
And that was the end of the terror that lurked beneath the sewers of the Apollo Victoria train yard.
***
“Hey, have you noticed a… change in CB lately?”
Pearl, calmly rolling arm-in-arm with Rusty, shrugged delicately. “A change as in…?”
“Ever since something ripped off his arm, he keeps walking around with bloody severed spikes. With hearts carved on them.”
“I mean, it’s CB, so…”
“And he keeps chucking them in the storm drain with a lovesick look on his face.”
“Like I said, it’s CB,” Pearl airily said. “Maybe he’s just getting into the spirit of Halloween.”
Rusty nodded thoughtfully. “I suppose you’re right. It’s weird though, if I listen real closely to the storm drain, I could swear I hear a clown sobbing…”