The trains that enter Chicago arrive like ships sailing across the roofs. They pass between towers jutting into the sky like long-necked sea beasts and the great gas-cylinders wallowing in dirty scrub like whales. In the depths below are lines of small shops and obscure franchises, diners with peeling paint and businesses tucked into the arches over which the trains pass. Top floor windows pass by so close that passengers can peer inside, into small bare offices and store cupboards. They can make out the contours of trade calendars and pip-ups on the walls.

He arrived here in search of his father Pendulum, his father sent word he had arrived here, where the rhythms of Chicago are played out in the sprawling flat zone between suburbs and center.

At the end of a day in March the train he is travelling on is making the journey toward Union station. Flanked by air, it progresses over the outlands of North Chicago, the city building up below it as it neared South Canal Street. The people beneath ignored its passage. Only children looked up as it clattered overhead, and some of the very young pointed. As the train drew closer to the station, it slipped below the level of the roofs.

There were few people in the carriage to watch the bricks rise around them. The sky had disappeared above the windows. A cloud of pigeons rose from a hiding place beside the tracks and wheeled of to the East.
The flurry of wings and bodies disturbed the thick set young man at the rear of the compartment. He had been trying not to stare openly at the women sitting opposite him. Thick with relaxer, her hair had been teased from its tight curls and was coiled like snakes on her head. The man broke off his scrutiny as the birds passed by, and he ran his hands through his own cropped hair.

The train was now below the houses. It wound through a deep groove in the city, as if the years of passage had worn down the concrete under the tracks. EvilClown glanced again at the women sitting in front of him, and turned his attention to the windows. The light in the carriage had made them mirrors, and he stared at himself, his heavy face. Beyond his face was a layer of brick, dimly visible, and beyond that the cellars of the houses that rose like cliffs on either side.

It was years since EvilClown had been in the city.

Every rattle of the tracks took him closer to home. He closed his eyes.

Outside, the gash through which the tracks passed had widened as the station approached. The walls on either side were punctuated by dark alcoves, small caves full of rubbish a few feet from the track. The silhouettes of cranes arched over the skyline. The walls around the train parted. Tracks fanned away on either side as the train slowed and edged its way into Union Station.

The passengers rose. Clown swung his bag over his shoulder and shuffled out of the carriage. Freezing air stretched up to the great vaulted ceilings. The cold shocked him. Clown hurried through the buildings, through the crowds, threading his way between knots of people. He still had a way to go. He headed underground…

A month had passed. Clown had walked the under currents and tasted the air. He had determined rather quickly that his father had fallen foul with a crime family early on in his life, the battered and yellow stained page of his diary's one page entry describing his arrival found inside the squalid rooms that he had rented from a local madam. The dreams of his Father had been extinguished before even ignited. This gave EvilClown even more reason and motivation to bring back his ancestors dream.

EvilClown drew the blind down shut him self off from the glowing neon lights and sounds of humanity and lit up an ancient gas lamp. Its light flickering and casting malign shadows of his distorted tattooed face around the room. He took out the finest of pens from his dresser drawer and began to write. Inconsequential nothings at first but these soon developing into formal strategies and the vaguest outlines of plans.

Things were stable here, the cities were growing and business was booming clown had established his family's ancient rackets and he was beginning to get a name for himself. Bloodlines familiar with the old days had been weeded out, contacts gained and the seeds of growth sewn. It was time, time to make the next step, unsure where to turn and what to do clown was aware that his restlessness was growing "Time and tide waiteth for no man" his old man always used to say. 

Little did he know that he was now just floatsam on that tide, the scavengers of the docks already picked his bones into shining white ivory, bones that would be caked in the filth of the city not even the most hardy of parasites would touch. 

Clown was determined this would not happen to him, an even worse fate to descend and die in a village idiots mediocrity, he ripped the page he was writing on, the prose had descended into jibberish and jargon something akin to what the fools he was once forced to train and live with back in the old countries travelling fayres would have put forward as their best. 

Best was not going to be good enough here. What was needed was genius, he needed time and the tide was rolling in fast…