The Twelve Chimes of Maligna Manor

Keep away in the Playroom.

The room they entered was a playroom. This was not an obvious fact straight away, but Ben managed to deduce it fairly quickly. It took a moment because Ben first had to contend with the strangeness of the place.

At first, he believed he had been shrunken down. That would explain all the large towers of alphabet blocks that covered the walls. The humongous teddy bear sitting in an equally huge rocking chair. The giant birds which seemed to fly around the ceiling attached to strings. But most of all, it would explain the humongous jack in the box that stood at the far end of the room.

"There's something in the jack in the box," said Sara.

"How do you know that?" asked Ben.

"Because of course there is," said Sara, "I bet there's like a weird Pennywise clown in there."

"Who's Pennywise?" Croaked Jamie.

"You know," said Sara, "From the movie IT."

"I've been trapped here for twenty-three years," croaked Jamie, "I've missed a few things."

"The book came out in the 80's," said Tia Maggie.

"I didn't really read much," admitted Jamie.

Ben began to look more closely around the room for anything of interest, which was difficult because everything was of interest. Most of the rooms had at least the familiar shape that he recognised, but this one was such a strange collection of toys and games that it was difficult to decide what was important and what was just set dressing.

One thing Ben did notice pretty quickly was the fact that the floor was some form of trampoline. In Fact, it actually seemed to be a connected group of five trampolines, four of which formed a square around a larger fifth.

"Might get to show off our new gymnastic moves ay, Sara," said Tia Maggie.

"Okay, you were pretty cool back there, Aunt Mag's, but let's not milk it," Sara said.

"Oh, I like Aunt Mag's," said Tia Maggie, "Cool name for your cool aunt."

"Yeah, she's getting less cool by the second," said Sara.

The four of them made their way into the centre of the room as they continued to try to take in the area. Ben was beginning to wonder if the goal of the game might not just be to find the key in all the strange clutter, like those old computer games he used to play at school, but it was around this time that something happened.

"See, I told you," was about as much as Sara could say before the sound of the Jack in the Box's whirring handle cut her short.

It was almost the second she finished that an incredibly loud music box rendition of Pop Goes the Weasel began. When it concluded, the top of the box burst open with fanfare and confetti.

What leaped out of the box was a clown, though it didn't look like the ones Ben was used to seeing, it was wearing a mostly white costume with three red poms on its chest like large buttons. On their head, they were wearing a pointed hat with a red trim with a little red pom on top. The worst thing, though, was the make-up.

Ben didn't like clowns. He felt bad about this because he was sure that they were nice people just trying to entertain, but Ben was scared by most things, and clowns were unfortunately not an exception. The makeup was what did it. The strange, exaggerated lips locked in an impossibly large grin, the strangely highlighted mad eyes, and even the pure white face made Ben squirm a little.

One strange thing about the Clown was how small they were. Admittedly, they were actually the size of a normal clown, but that in itself was unexpected due to the box it had come out of being the size of a small building.