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Claudia Mair Burney joins us today for more Spooky Legends fun. Emme Vaughn is the main character in The Exorsista paranormal YA series and Claudia here to tell us all about Emme’s take on the “The Clown Statue” urban legend and giveaway 5 copies of THE EXORSISTAH. See details below.
Claudia Mair Burney is the author of Murder, Mayhem & a Fine Man, Death, Deceit & Some Smooth Jazz (both titles in the Amanda Bell Brown Mystery series) and a young adult novel, Exorsistah. She lives in Michigan with her husband, five of their seven children, and a rabbit.
Another Day, Another Demon
Emme Vaughn on “The Clown Statue”
by
Claudia Mair Burney
I hate demons. I can’t seem to do anything without them showing their ol’ nasty preternatural behinds. All I wanted to do was make a little bread. Have my own pocket money, you know? I was in California with my boo, Francis, who was doing a gig out there with his jazz band. He had told me that some friends of his, this young, rich as sin couple, wanted to get out and enjoy a show with him. The dude had invented something like Facebook, only it wasn’t Facebook—anyway, he and his wife were totally into attachment parenting and stuff like the family bed, carrying their kids instead using strollers, and breastfeeding, like, forever. They didn’t do babysitters except for close family members. At all. But we were in Cali. None of their peeps were available, and Francis practically swore to them he’d trust me with his life. The deal was that I’d stay with the kids for a few hours after they went to sleep, Francis, Rod, and Kendra would hit some hot spots, and I’d make a nice piece of change for my efforts. It made me feel good not to have to depend on Francis for everything, so we jumped in his rental and drove to my “job” at Rod and Kendra’s house. Or rather, we drove to my job at their ginormous mansion.
Now, I’m naturally suspicious of people, and I’ve gotta admit, rich people don’t impress me much. In fact, I may be harder on them, but I dug these two immediately. At first glance Rod looked like a young Sam Rockwell—a little scruffy, but adorable. Not that his boyish looks fooled me. A potent, almost manic energy crackled like electricity beneath his skin, and I could imagine him awake for two days straight, drinking Red Bull, obsessing about the very things that made him a wealthier than most twenty-five-year olds in short order.
Kendra was model beautiful, with the kind of exotic, biracial good looks Francis has, only she isn’t blacktino. She’s more blackeuro. She may have looked like a model, but she was no diva. Sistah girl was kind of a goofball, ridiculously clumsy, and self-deprecating. She was the type of woman made you feel so at ease you forgot that she was drop dead gorgeous because she was too busy dropping food onto her shirt. I’d have bet good money that she balanced Rod’s intensity.
They showed us around and, dude! You could have put, like, five or six of the ghetto joints I’ve lived in inside of that big monster of a house, and still had all kinds of room. The place was sparsely furnished, like they started off with an Ikea and Pottery Barn catalog, ordered like crazy, then became overwhelmed with how big their joint was, and gave up. All the rooms I saw looked half done, but I only saw the children’s rooms, the living room, dining room, and television room, which, second to the children’s room, had the most stuff in it. The plain white wall held a colossal flat panel television, part of an impressive home theater system complete with theater seats and wall mounted surround sound speakers. But other than that electronics hub, the room was cavernous and empty.
Maybe boyfriend didn’t have much time to commit to the home front, building vast social networks and all, I thought. And girlfriend was probably overwhelmed with a two-year-old, and a three-year-old, and having all that money! They obviously wanted to decorate themselves instead of hire someone. I admired that. So what if they were a little frayed around their gilded edged.
They introduced me to their kids, Bijou, Rod’s look-a-like, a tow-headed blue-eyed two-year-old girl, with just a hint of gold in her skin tone, and a dark haired little future heartbreaker, a boy with caramel skin and liquid brown eyes. His name was Smokey. Even though those sounded like they should be cat names, the kids were cuties, and sweet tempered. Like most little kids with new people around they wanted to be a part of all the action, but were well loved enough to give their folks a kiss, and go into their brand new big boy and big girl bedrooms resigned to only the kind of drama expected from a couple of kids who’ve slept with their mama and daddy since birth.
This is too easy, the cynic in me said. And darn it if my skeptical inner Emme Vaughn isn’t right much of the time.
The night started to deteriorate once Francis and Kendra had gone to the car and Rod pulled me to the side saying, “Uh… Emme?” I could tell whatever followed was not going to be a pleasant. “We’ve never had a babysitter other than family in the house before.”
“Frank told me,” I said.
He looked sheepish. “I would appreciate it if you stayed in the television room. The one with__”
“The one with really big television in it. No worries.”
For the record, Emme Vaughn does not steal. Been there. Did that. I trust God now, do my darndest to work for my keep, and don’t need to steal to survive anymore. Besides, Emme Vaughn travels light, and boosted stuff brings the kind of weight that’s too heavy, spiritually and otherwise, for this sistah to bear. But it was Rod’s house. If wanted me in the room where he hid the nanny cam, that’s where I’d stay. I’d try to restrain myself from doing rude, unchristian gestures before whatever I thought it could be.
They took off and I checked on the kids one more time. They were fast asleep, so I trudged back into the TV room to chillax. That’s when I felt a chill. I mean a real, goosebump inducing chill. The whole vibe in the room had changed. Something funky had entered therein, and I recognized it: it was evil, a specific malevolence that I’d bumped up against too many times in foster care. This was the kind of demonic influence that made a brotha pin a girl against the wall, and when I say girl, I mean a lil’ kid. It was the kind of foul spirit that stole my innocence, channeled through the hands of evil, all to willing men. But there were no men in the house. Or were there?
“Hello?” I called out. I didn’t want to say it too loud and wake up the kids, though when I considered it that was the least of my concerns if a demon possessed pedophile was in the house. I surveyed the room. Everything I saw before was there: gigantic television; theater seats, awesome sound system, bangin’ speakers on the wall, scary clown statue—wait. Was that clown statue there? It had to be, where else would it have come from? But how could I have not noticed something so hideous? And weird. That sure as heck didn’t come from Pottery Barn.
I sat down on one of the theater seats to think, and pray. See, I have this extraordinary ability, whether is a blessing or a curse, I haven’t decided: I can see in the spirit world. I see demons. I see angels, too, and on occasion, I can see the dead, but mostly I see demons. But the thing is, I can’t turn it on or off at will. I’d like to think when I’m prayed up I’m more sensitive, but to tell you the truth, at the time it came and went without me being able to control it at all. All I knew is that I felt something. I didn’t see a single supernatural thing; just felt that familiar evil. I picked up the cell phone I borrowed from Francis and called him.
His voice mail came on, and I hung up, but a few moments later he called me back.
“Everything okay, X?” He calls me X, which is short for Exorsistah, among other things.
“Yeah, I think so. Francis, you know how your gift is to, like, feel the presence of evil, and how, sometimes, that’s my gift too since we’ve gotten involved with each other?”
“What’s going on, X?”
“I’m feeling some real bad vibes.”
“What kind of vibes?”
“A pedophilia demon thing.”
He sucked in his breath. “Are you kidding me?”
“You know my history. Would I kid about something like that? What do you know about Rod?”
“Enough to know he ain’t about that! Did you see that on him?”
“I didn’t, and don’t see nuthin.’ I feel it.”
“So what do you want to do?”
I sighed. “Just let me think. And pray. You pray, too. I’ll call you back soon.”
Francis sighed like he’d just lost ten years off his life span. “Fine.”
“Hey, Francis,” I asked before I hung up. “Did you notice the clown statue in the TV room?”
“What clown statue?”
“The butt ugly one in the corner.”
“I don’t remember any ugly clown statue, but that may have been because all I could concentrate on was how many years it would take for me to buy a TV like that.”
“I’m gonna call you back, okay?” I snapped the phone shut, and sunk deeper into the theater seats, staring at the television screen. Reflected in the powered off dark expanse dark expanse I saw the image of the theater seats, my own tense body, the speakers against the back wall, and grotesque clown sculpture. I stared at it for a long time. It was short, maybe three and a half feet tall, realistic but gross. Yellowed teeth barred in a grimace, frightening exaggerated make-up, menacing eyes. I wouldn’t have anything that looked like that around some kids! For a moment, I thought maybe that wretched clown was the dang-gone nanny cam, but my gut said that clown was no. It was… something else. After awhile I turned to face it. I stood to go over to it, but felt a palpable force, a benevolent one, hold me back. What in the world is going on? Maybe I’m not meant to rumble with this one?
Lowering myself back in the chair, I thought again about all I knew about evil things. I knew that sometimes spirits possessed inanimate objects, but I never much worried about anything like that. And why would a demon that created monsters like pedophiles choose a piece of ugly art as a host. Nah, baby, pedophiles are born of the kind of diabolical force that favored the human kind. This I knew. I’d seen far too many freaks like that in my short life. The pedophiles I knew were men, not statues.
“God, why am I feeling what I’m feeling? Show me something here.”
Of course, I’ve learned you don’t depend on any extraordinary abilities alone, including seeing demons to, get you through a thing. Even though Francis calls me the Exorsistah, I ain’t no superhero. I survived the mean streets by using my wits, and plain old common sense. And I pray. I follow my heart and instincts, and what I believe is God’s guidance. So I asked again. “What do I do, Lord?”
I didn’t spend too much time ruminating. I jumped up from my seat without giving that ol’ creepy clown statue another look, grabbed those babies and got out of that house like somebody shot us out of a gun. Struggling to hold the kids on my skinny hips and fumble with the phone, before I could dial it, it rang and I found the dexterity to answer it. Francis was on the line.
“Emme, get out of the house and call 911.”
“I’m already out the door, kids in my arms.”
“I talked to Rod. I couldn’t get that clown statue thing out of my head, especially if you thought it important enough to bring it up in the conversation we were having. Rod and Kendra don’t have a clown statue!”
It turns out the clown statue was not a statue at all but, like, some kinda homeless, clown midget pedophile that somehow got in that big ol’ house and lived there for weeks undetected. He thought we’d left, and had gone into the TV room. When I came in, he froze in place in the corner. Dude used to be a street performer in San Francisco—a mannequin, so he could stay crazy still. Ain’t that a trip? And you know what? Those babies tried to tell Rod and Kendra a clown kept coming in their bedroom at night, but they thought they were just trying to get back into that family bed they loved so much. Out of the mouth of babes, the Bible says.
With all the commotion that night, Rod and Kendra forgot to pay me. Man! I so hate demons! As bad as I needed that money! For the record, I ain’t crazy about clowns, either.
Oh, well. Another day, another demon, I suppose. I’m the Exorsistah. That’s how I roll.
Visit Claudia Online:
Website
Want to read more from Claudia Mair Burney?
Amanda Bell Brown Mystery
2. Death, Deceit & Some Smooth Jazz
2. Murder, Mayhem & a Fine Man
3. Deadly Charm
Exorsistah
1. The Exorsistah
2. X Returns
3. X Restored
Zora and Nicky: A Novel in Black and White
Wounded: A Love Story
Giveaway
Giveaway courtesy of Simon & Schuster
5 copies of THE EXORSISTAH by Claudia Mair Burney
She just wants a home, a hottie, and some kickin' boots. Does she really have to fight the devil to get them?
After the creep who's married to her friend Kiki tries to assault her, Emme Vaughn finds herself in an all-night Walgreens at 3 a.m. with a quarter in her pocket and a rumble in her stomach. She sure does wish she'd gotten to eat her french fries before she had to kick and run. But God has his plan, and apparently tonight he means for her to whip some serious demon butt.
Ever since her mom went crazy, Emme's been wary of the gift they share for seeing demons, but she's not about to let one get to her. So when an ugly beast lurks into Walgreens behind a dude who's clearly up to no good, Emme tells it exactly where it can go. Problem is, the beautiful guy beside her at the magazine rack just helped her conquer the nasty duo, and now he wants her to join a group of demon-fighters led by an aging exorcist bombarded by requests to deliver people from evil. Shoot, and all she really hoped for was some breakfast.
Click HERE to read an excerpt from THE EXORSISTAH
Giveaway Guidelines
- Open to US/CA only, no PO Boxes
- Fill out the form
- Enter by November 6th. All Spooky Legend winners will be announced on November 7th
I would greatly appreciate if you shared this giveaway on your blog or favorite social networks. And please tell Claudia what you think about “The Clown Statue” in the comments. Thanks!
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