Chapter 4: The Painted Smile

Chapter 4: The Painted Smile

The whisper from the other side of the door was a key, unlocking a memory Lisa had buried under years of willful forgetting. A small clown trinket. He had won it for her at the county fair, a cheap plastic thing with a perpetually cheerful, painted smile. She’d thought it was sweet at the time. He’d told her it was so she would always have something to smile about, even when he wasn’t there. Now, the memory felt like a disease, a latent sickness that had finally revealed its symptoms. The voice in the hall belonged to the boy who had given her that trinket.

“I know you can hear me, Lisa,” the voice continued, losing its soft, crooning edge. A new tone was creeping in, a brittle thread of impatience. “Stop this silly game. Let me in.”

Lisa scrambled backward on her hands and knees, away from the door, her body moving on pure, animal instinct. Her back hit the wall beneath the window with a dull thud. Her world had compressed to the space of this small, dark room. Her desire was a prayer, a frantic, silent chant for the flashing blue and red lights to appear at the end of her street. Hurry, please, God, hurry.

On the floor, her phone was still active, the tinny, distant voice of the 911 dispatcher a meaningless squawk. “—isa? Ma’am, are you there? Can you hear me?”

A loud, frustrated sigh hissed through the keyhole. “Fine. If you won’t open the door for your lover… I guess I’ll have to knock a little harder.”

The gentle tapping was replaced by a single, thunderous BOOM.

A fist. He had struck the door with all his might. The wood shuddered, and the dresser slid a fraction of an inch across the floor, its old legs groaning in protest. Lisa screamed, a thin, strangled sound that was swallowed by the next impact.

BOOM!

Dust motes, invisible in the dark, were shaken loose from the ceiling. A framed picture on her nightstand—a smiling photo of her and her parents—tilted and fell face down with a muffled clatter.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

The obstacle was no longer just a door; it was a crumbling dam holding back a flood of violence. He wasn't trying to pick the lock or reason with her anymore. This was brute force. This was rage. The controlled, predatory calm had vanished, replaced by a furious, frantic assault. He was a child throwing a tantrum, and the toy he wanted to break was her.

Panic gave way to a desperate, wild need to act. She couldn't just cower here and wait for the end. Her eyes darted around the moonlit room, searching for a weapon. A heavy glass lamp sat on her nightstand. It wasn’t much, but it was something. She crawled towards it, her movements clumsy with terror. Her fingers wrapped around the lamp’s heavy base, the cold glass a stark contrast to her clammy skin. She ripped the plug from the wall and hefted it, positioning herself to the side of the door. If he got through, she wouldn’t go down without a fight.

CRACK!

The sound was sharper this time, higher-pitched. Not the dull thud of a fist, but the splintering of wood. He was using his shoulder now, throwing his full body weight against her last defense. The top hinge screamed. The dresser scraped another inch across the floor, then another.

He roared in frustration from the hallway, an inhuman sound of pure, thwarted entitlement. “YOU CAN’T KEEP ME OUT, LISA!”

Then came a different sound. A heavy, rhythmic thump… thump… thump. He had taken a few steps back. He was getting a running start.

Lisa squeezed the lamp base so hard she thought her knuckles would break. This was it. She braced herself, her gaze fixed on the center of the door where the wood was already bowing inward.

The impact was like a car crash. A deafening explosion of sound and force. The door didn't just splinter; it split. A jagged, vertical crack tore through the center panel from top to bottom. For a split second, through the newly formed fissure, she saw a flash of brilliant, garish color. A splash of crimson against stark white.

He hit it again. The crack widened into a hole. And through that hole, she saw an eye. Dark, manic, and utterly devoid of the warmth she remembered. It stared right at her, seeing her cowering in the dark.

And then she saw the rest of his face.

It wasn't a face. It was a mask of painted joy. A grotesque caricature of happiness stretched over the features of the man she once knew. His skin was dead white, a stark canvas for a blood-red, impossibly wide smile that curved up to his eyes. Two garish blue diamonds were painted over his eyelids. It was the face from the trinket, brought to life in the most horrifying way imaginable. The uncanny valley wasn't deep enough to describe this. It was a human shape wearing the skin of a cartoon nightmare, a monster pretending to be a man.

He was a jester. Her jester.

He saw her staring, and the eye in the crack widened in triumph. His real mouth, hidden somewhere beneath the painted one, moved. “Peek-a-boo,” he whispered, his voice a distorted rasp through the splintered wood.

He slammed his body into the door one last time. The top hinge ripped free from the frame with a shriek of tortured metal. The door flew inward, shoving the heavy dresser aside as if it were a toy. It toppled over with a thunderous crash, shattering the illusion of safety completely.

He stood there in the doorway, a hulking silhouette against the dim light of the hall. The colorful, grimy clown costume hung on his frame, a mockery of childhood innocence. He took one step into the room, his head tilted, the painted smile a fixed, predatory slash in the dark.

This was the end. Lisa raised the lamp, her arm trembling, a pathetic defiance against the inevitable.

And then, a new sound cut through the night.

Faint at first, then growing rapidly louder. A high, piercing wail that sliced through the suffocating tension in the room.

Sirens.

They were close. So close.

His head snapped toward the window. The painted smile didn't move, but the obsessive intensity in his visible eye curdled into pure venom. The game was over. His perfect, terrifying reunion had been interrupted.

The turning point was not a moment of salvation, but one of stolen victory. He looked from the window back to her, and in that one glance, she saw a promise. This wasn't over.

With a speed that seemed impossible for his size, he turned and vanished. There was no clumsy retreat, no panicked scramble. He simply melted back into the shadows of the hallway. She heard his footsteps, light and impossibly fast, pounding down the stairs. The sound of the back door, already broken, being thrown open. And then, silence once more, broken only by the approaching scream of the sirens and the ragged, broken sound of her own breathing.

Lisa stood frozen in the ruins of her bedroom, the heavy lamp still clutched in her hand. The immediate danger was gone, but the true horror was just beginning. He had gotten away. And the image that would haunt her waking and sleeping hours was burned forever into her memory: a grotesque, painted smile, floating in the darkness of her violated home.