Coulrophobia
Sabrina Petri sat on the couch in the psychiatrist's waiting room, nervously tapping her fingertips on her purse.
"The doctor will see you now," Judy Stanfield, the doctor's administrative assistant, announced with a smile.
Sabrina was shown into the doctor's office, which, like the reception area, was decorated with a nautical theme. Dr. Lionel Penn sat behind his mahogany desk, looking at the new patient form on the clipboard in front of him.
"Hello, Mrs. Petri," he said, rising to shake Sabrina's hand. "Please have a seat. Would you like a cup of coffee?"
"Thank you."
Lionel had discovered early in his practice that patients were often more relaxed and willing to talk freely in a coffee break atmosphere. The woman held the coffee mug tightly in her hand, stirring long after the milk and sugar had been blended into the rich brew.
"What would you like to discuss, Mrs. Petri?" Lionel asked after the usual small talk was out of the way.
"It's my friend—a perfectly normal person, mind you," Sabina began.
She saw Lionel quickly suppress a smile.
"It's my husband, Douglas," she then admitted. "Actually, Doug is my second husband; we were married sixteen months ago. Anyway, I have a four-year-old daughter, Laynie, from a previous marriage, and she was invited to a birthday party two weeks ago. Since the children were all under the age of five, the parents of the guests were invited to stay for a barbecue while the children were having their party. Everyone was having a wonderful time, especially the youngsters. The parents of the birthday girl arranged for both a pony and a clown to entertain their daughter's friends."
Sabrina momentarily stopped speaking and took a long sip of her coffee.
"Douglas was fine one moment, and the next .... We all thought at first that he was having a heart attack. He could hardly breathe; he broke out in a sweat."
Sabrina put her hand over her face to hide her anguish.
"I'm sorry," she said once she'd recovered some of her composure.
"Think nothing of it, Mrs. Petri. It must have been quite a frightening experience for you."
"Yes, it was. All the way to the emergency room, I prayed he wouldn't die. At the hospital, he had an EKG, and everything was fine. The cardiologist suggested he might have suffered from some kind of panic attack."
"And what do you think?"
"I think it was the clown. Ever since the day of the party, my husband has been having nightmares. He denies it, of course, but he wakes up screaming night after night."
"Does he talk in his sleep?"
"Yes, he cries out 'Don't let him get me.'"
"And you believe 'him' refers to the clown?"
Sabrina nodded.
"Coulrophobia—which is a ten-dollar word for the fear of clowns—is fairly common in children," Lionel explained. "Usually, they outgrow it but not always. Perhaps your husband was frightened by a clown when he went to the circus as a child, or maybe he saw a horror movie with a killer clown in it."
"Is this condition dangerous?"
"Not normally, but I'm afraid it might be in your husband's case. Those panic attacks of his can be serious."
"Should I have him come see you?"
"That's up to you, Mrs. Petri. If you'd like, my secretary can schedule an evaluation and consultation visit. Afterward, we can discuss whether or not therapy is warranted."
* * *
Three weeks later Douglas and Sabrina Petri were both drinking coffee in Lionel Penn's office. The two men discussed sailing for several minutes, and then Lionel asked Douglas to explain, in his own words, what had happened at the birthday party.
"Honestly, Dr. Penn, I don't remember much about that day."
"Then tell me what you do recall."
"The adults were sitting at snack trays out on the back lawn, and Laynie and the other children were gathered around the picnic table on the patio. My wife was having a conversation with the woman sitting next to her, and I was talking baseball with the man across from me. Suddenly, I heard one of the children start yelling. You know how noisy small children can be at birthday parties."
Lionel nodded, although he was a bachelor and hadn't been to a child's birthday party in over twenty-five years.
"I turned around to see what all the commotion was about, but all I remember seeing were dozens of balloons. I must have choked on my hamburger because I couldn't breathe, and subsequently, I blacked out. The next thing I knew I was in the emergency room at the hospital answering Dr. Ryerson's questions."
"So you never saw the clown then?" Lionel asked, watching Douglas intently.
"No. My wife told me there was a clown there, but I never actually saw him."
"Mr. Petri, would you mind taking an inkblot test?" Lionel asked, topping off all three coffee mugs. "Just the standard Rorschach test."
"Not at all. It sounds like fun, in fact. Is it true that all the images are really meant to represent naked women?"
"I don't know," Lionel replied with a laugh. "I'll let you tell me."
Lionel removed the inkblot cards from inside his drawer, laid them face down on his desk and flipped over the top one.
"Look at the drawing and tell me what you see," he instructed.
Douglas shook his head and laughed.
"It certainly doesn't look like any naked woman I've ever seen. It doesn't really look like anything at all, except maybe an abstract rendering of a set of human lungs."
Lionel turned over the next card and asked, "And this one?"
Douglas turned his head this way and that.
"A butterfly?" he asked.
Again Lionel turned the card.
"Now that's a naked woman."
Flip. Douglas Petri turned white. His heart began to pound, and his vision began to blur. It was not an inkblot Lionel Penn held in his hand. It was an eight-by-ten photograph of a clown.
"Doug?" Sabrina cried, "Are you all right, darling?"
Douglas fell to the floor and appeared to have difficulty breathing.
"Don't let him get me," he cried. "Please!"
* * *
"I don't know how much your husband would benefit from the usual therapy sessions," Lionel told Sabrina when she phoned his office the following morning.
"I had hoped you could help him."
"Perhaps I can, but his case is a severe one. I can't bring him in here once or twice a week and have him suffer those panic attacks. They'll take their toll on his health."
"What do you suggest then?"
"Hypnosis. I want to find out just what it is that terrifies him."
"And hypnotizing him will help?"
"I believe it will. I think your husband's phobia has its roots deep in his childhood. I want to make him relive those early years through hypnosis."
After some persuasion from his wife, Douglas Petri agreed to the proposed plan of treatment. He sat in Lionel's office, a bit more nervous than he had been the previous time.
"Will it be all right if my wife sits in again?" he asked nervously.
"As long as she agrees to remain quiet."
"A quiet woman?" Sabrina laughed. "That's an oxymoron, Doctor."
Lionel Penn dimmed his office lights, lit a candle and placed it in the center of his desk.
"Concentrate on the candle," he commanded in a low monotone. "Stare deep into the center of the flame. As you watch the candle flicker, you will relax. That's it. Relax. Now you're getting sleepy. Your eyelids are becoming heavy. It's all right, Douglas. There's nothing to fear. Let your conscious mind go, and you will sleep."
Sabrina was fascinated. She wanted to ask Lionel a hundred questions but wisely kept silent.
"Okay, Douglas, let's take a long trip back to your childhood. Go back through your twenties and now your teens. Go all the way back to the first time you ever saw a clown."
The patient's face was transformed by a child-like smile.
"Where are you now, Douglas?" Lionel asked.
"At the circus. My parents took me there for my fifth birthday. It was so much fun. There were lions, elephants, dancing ponies and acrobats, but the clowns were by far the best. They wore bright clothes and silly makeup, and they did funny things to make everybody laugh."
"There's nothing there that frightens you in any way?" Lionel asked.
"No. I had lots of fun. It was the best birthday ever."
"Okay, Douglas, let's move forward a little. Tell me about the next time you saw a clown."
"I was eight years old at the time. I went on a school trip to Lincoln Park Zoo."
"Did you have a good time on that trip?"
"At first, but then it didn't turn out so good."
Lionel and Sabrina exchanged a meaningful look. Could this be the root of the patient's phobia?
"What happened at the zoo, Douglas?"
"It didn't happen at the zoo but on the bus ride home. I ate too many snacks that day—cotton candy, ice cream, popcorn and an apple on a stick. On the way back to school, I got sick and threw up. The other kids laughed at me, and for years I was referred to as 'the kid who threw up on the bus.'"
Lionel grinned.
"What about the clown, though? Tell me what the clown was doing at the zoo."
"He had long, skinny balloons and bent them into the shapes of animals."
"Did this clown try to hurt you in any way?"
"Heck, no! He gave me a giraffe made out of balloons."
"When you were a child, did you ever go to a birthday party that had a clown? Did one ever perform at your school?"
Douglas answered "no" to both questions. Lionel looked at Sabrina and shrugged.
"Did you ever go trick-or-treating as a clown or see another trick-or-treater dressed as one?"
"No, but one year my mother made me a pirate outfit. I even had a black eye patch and a hat with a skull and crossbones on it."
"That must have been something special, Douglas. But let's travel forward again and tell me about the next time you saw a clown."
Douglas stubbornly shook his and insisted, "No. I don't want to, and you can't make me."
"It frightens you to talk about it, doesn't it?"
The patient nodded.
"It's in the past. Whatever happened then can't hurt you anymore."
Douglas continued to shake his head.
"Okay. Let's stay in this time period for a while, but we won't talk about the clown. Agreed?"
"Just don't talk about—him," Douglas cried.
"I promise. How old are you now?"
"I'm ten."
"That would make it, what? 1977?"
Douglas nodded, and Lionel noted the date on Douglas's file.
"Anything good happen to you when you were ten?"
"I went to summer camp where I rode in a canoe and learned to swim."
"Sounds like a lot of fun. What else happened that year?"
"I had to go to the hospital to have my tonsils taken out."
"That couldn't have been too bad. In fact, I'll bet the nurses gave you lots of ice cream after the operation."
"They did and then ...."
Douglas suddenly displayed signs of an oncoming attack.
"Keep him away from me," he whimpered.
"Douglas," Lionel called. "Douglas, listen to me. You're looking at a picture, a movie. You're not really ten years old; you're a grown man. You have nothing to fear from him anymore. Do you understand me? You're completely safe."
Douglas calmed down considerably.
"Tell me about what happened after you had your tonsils out."
"There was a clown at the hospital. He walked through the children's ward, handing out presents to the patients."
Douglas suddenly lapsed into silence.
"And what present did you get?" Lionel prompted him.
"A brand new Tonka truck. It was a yellow cement mixer."
"What else did the clown give you?"
"Nothing. He gave me the truck, and then he sat down next to me on the bed and talked to me for a few minutes."
"And did the clown touch you in any way that made you feel uncomfortable?"
"No. We just talked."
"Tell me what you talked about."
"He told me I was a nice looking little boy. He asked me where I lived, and I told him. Then he asked if I liked the cement truck. He promised me that the next time he saw me, he'd have an even better present for me."
In his peripheral vision, Lionel saw Sabrina remove a tissue from her pocketbook and use it to wipe a tear from her cheek.
"Did you ever see that clown again?"
Douglas broke into another sweat and began laboring for breath.
"As I told you earlier, you're completely safe. He can't hurt you."
This time, however, Lionel could not calm his patient.
"Okay, Douglas. When I snap my fingers you'll travel all the way to the present. You'll be here in my office with your wife, Sabrina. Okay?"
Snap.
Douglas blinked and looked from Lionel to his wife and back again.
"Is it over? What did I say?"
Lionel smiled reassuringly and replied, "You told us that you threw up on the bus back from the Lincoln Park Zoo."
"Oh, no," Douglas laughed. "It took me years to live that down."
"I think we've had enough of your boyhood memories for one day. Why don't you come back next week and we'll try again?"
* * *
Lionel was woken later that night by the persistent ringing of his bedside telephone.
"Hello?" he said sleepily.
"Dr. Penn? This is your answering service calling. One of your patients just phoned—or rather it was the wife of your patient. She said it's an emergency and that she has to see you right away."
"Okay, what's the name and number?"
After briefly speaking with Mrs. Petri, Lionel hung up the phone, got dressed and headed for the couple's Danvers Street home. When he pulled into the driveway, Sabrina ran out the front door to meet him.
"Thank you so much for coming, Dr. Penn!" she cried.
"Do you have any idea where Douglas might have gone?"
"None. On the way back from your office, we stopped at the Green Man Pub to eat dinner. He started talking about his childhood, telling me about his parents, his friends and his pets. He was in excellent spirits, Doctor."
"What happened next?"
"When we got back here, he drove the sitter home. I gave Laynie a bath, read her a story and then put her to bed. Later, Douglas and I watched a movie on HBO. After it was over, we went upstairs. He said he was too keyed up to sleep, so he decided to read for a while. Suddenly, he turned to me and asked if he ever showed me the old photographs he'd brought with him from Chicago. I told him that he hadn't, and he got up and went down to the den to get them. I must have dozed off. When I looked at the clock again, I noticed he'd been gone for over an hour. I called him, but he didn't answer. I've searched every inch of this house, and I can't find him anywhere."
"What about his car?"
"It's locked in the garage."
"You said he went to get some of his early photographs."
"Yes. There is a pile of them on the desk in the den. Do you want to take a look?"
Lionel sat at the desk looking at the photographs of Douglas as a young boy with his friends and family. Except for a single 35mm picture, the rest were all taken with a Kodak 110 Instamatic camera, which had been popular back in the Seventies. The psychiatrist picked up the 35mm photo of an abandoned house, with its windows boarded up and its lawn overgrown with weeds. Why would Douglas have kept such a picture? What special meaning did it have for him?
Why would Douglas have kept such a photograph? he wondered. What special meaning did it have for him?
As he was about to place the photo back in the stack, Lionel noticed the vehicle parked in the street, visible on the right side of the picture. It was a car he immediately recognized, one that was quite popular in the New England region, an area well known for its harsh winters.
"Sabrina, do you know where this picture came from?" he asked, handing her the photograph.
Sabrina studied it carefully before replying.
"No. I've never seen it."
"Has Douglas gone back to Chicago recently for any reason?"
"No. He hasn't been there since he was a little boy."
"Does he have any family there—aunts, uncles, cousins—anyone? What about old friends?"
"No one that I know of. He's never received any letters or phone calls, not so much as a Christmas card. But then he never really talked about his past, not until tonight that is. Why?"
"Because this is a much more recent photograph than the others. That car," he explained, pointing to the vehicle in the picture, "is a Subaru WRX. It was first introduced to America in 2002. It has Illinois plates, so I'm assuming this photograph was taken in either Chicago or one of its suburbs."
Later, when Sabrina's mother arrived to stay the night with her daughter, Lionel Penn decided to go home.
"Are you sure you don't want me to give you something to help you sleep?" he asked.
"No, thank you, Doctor. I'll be all right."
"Do you mind if I borrow this picture? I have a friend who's an attorney in Chicago. I'd like to send him a copy of it and see if he can recognize the house."
"Go ahead, Doctor. Just let me know if you find out anything."
* * *
Lionel Penn scanned the photograph and e-mailed it to his former college buddy, Reese Forman. Reese replied that he didn't recognize the building but said he would check with his investigator, a former policeman.
Two days later, while the psychiatrist was between patients, his assistant buzzed his office.
"It's a long-distance call from Chicago. A Mr. Reese Forman."
"Thanks, Judy," he said as he pushed the button for the outside line. "Hi, Reese. Have you found my building?"
"That's not all we found! My investigator knew the place well. It was recently torn down by the city as part of an urban renewal project. When the bulldozer went through, it uncovered a body buried under the foundation."
"A body? Any idea whose it was?"
"None. The medical examiner thinks the skeleton is that of a young boy. It had to have been down there since at least 1977 because that's the year the foundation was poured."
"It shouldn't be difficult to match up the victim against the names of missing children back then," Lionel suggested.
"I'm sure they will eventually."
"Eventually? Is the Chicago P.D. that complacent about finding the killer of a young boy?"
"They already have a damned good idea who the killer is—the contractor who put up the building. That bastard once bragged that we'd have to dig up most of Chicago to find all of his victims."
"So you've already got the killer behind bars?"
"We did. He was executed in 1994."
Lionel Penn had a sudden and frightening premonition.
"Who was he?"
"You must have heard of him. He was one of the most famous serial killers in the country: John Wayne Gacy."
Lionel closed his eyes as though he could keep the horror at bay by doing so.
"Wasn't he the one who occasionally dressed up like a clown?"
"The one and only. Gacy called himself Pogo the Clown. He used to volunteer for the Jaycees and visit kids in hospitals."
"One last thing, Reese, and I'll let you go. If I gave you a name of a little boy who lived in Chicago back in the Seventies, could you tell me what became of him?"
"I can try. What's the name?"
* * *
After Lionel Penn finished with his afternoon appointments, he told his assistant, "You go home now, Judy. I'm going to hang around here awhile and do some paperwork."
Judy raised her eyebrow.
"On such a beautiful day? I'd have thought you couldn't wait to get out to the marina."
"I can't," he admitted, "but I'm expecting an important phone call."
Shortly after six, Reese's call came.
"That name you gave me—Douglas Petri. The kid was reported missing by his parents in 1977. I phoned them. They told me their son had been in the hospital to have his tonsils out, and that while he was there he met our friend, Pogo the Clown."
"I was afraid of that," Lionel said sadly. "Reese, you might want to pass that information on to the police. I have a feeling it will save them a great deal of time when they try to identify the corpse found under the demolished building."
Lionel hung up the receiver and sat quietly at his desk, staring at his telephone. It would be nearly an hour before he picked it up again to call Sabrina and give her the bizarre, unbelievable news that Douglas Petri had been murdered when he was ten years old and that the man she married never really existed.
Salem has suffered from coulrophobia ever since a clown tried to twist him into a balloon animal.
