Painted Hollow

A Hurtville Horror Story by Scott Farmer

The carnival came to Hurtville in the summer of 1949.
The river was low, the air was thick with locusts, and folks were hungry for distraction. The big top rose fast—red and yellow stripes flapping beside the White River like a wound trying to heal. Jugglers, fire breathers, snake women. But the one everyone remembers was the clown.

His name was Buttons.

Big red smile painted too wide. One blue shoe, one yellow. A laugh that started high and ended in a rasp, like someone choking on a secret.
He wasn’t the main act, but kids loved him.
Until the night he snapped.

Nobody knows what set him off. Some say it was the heat. Others swear they saw Buttons staring too long into the water down by the old ferry post, whispering to something beneath the surface. But that night, during the final show, Buttons walked into the center ring, holding a red balloon and a meat cleaver.

He didn’t tell a joke.
He didn’t juggle.
He just stood there and said, “The river wants to laugh tonight.”
Then he started screaming.
They pulled eleven children out of the tent that night—some were trampled, some cut. One little girl vanished completely, her red shoe found floating in the river two days later. Buttons disappeared too. Some said he drowned. Others said the river took him as payment.
But Hurtville never forgot.

Ten years passed.
And then, in 1959, a traveling preacher arrived in town.
He called himself Brother Felix, and he brought a revival with him—tent sermons, hymns, fiery speeches about sin and salvation. He wore a white suit. He spoke in tongues. And when he smiled…
Folks got chills.

It wasn’t until a child pointed out the blue and yellow shoes beneath the pulpit that someone remembered.
The eyes. The voice. The laugh.

Brother Felix was Buttons.

He swore he was saved. Claimed the river had washed his soul clean. That he’d wandered for years in the wilderness, finding God in the shadows.

People believed him. At first.
Until the dreams started.

The kids in town began waking up screaming about a clown in the trees.
One boy was found with a balloon animal twisted so tight around his throat he couldn’t speak for a week.

A girl saw a clown face staring up at her from the lake surface--paint running like blood.

Then the revival tent burned to the ground.
They never found Brother Felix.

But he’s still out there. They say he walks the banks of Table Rock Lake on stormy nights, wearing a white suit stained with river mud, makeup smeared like war paint. Some nights he preaches to the water. Other nights, he whispers to children through cracks in their bedroom walls.

And if you ever hear a balloon pop with no one around,
or a laugh that starts like a hymn and ends like a scream,
run.
​
Because Buttons doesn’t want to make you laugh anymore.
He wants to baptize you in something much, much darker.

Some clowns paint on a smile.
Others never take it off.
Painted Hollow.