Betty Ripsom

> **MENTIONS OF: kidnapping, murder, brief mentions of suicide, clowns**
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## Biography

Bethanie Ann Ripsom was born into a small, tight-knight and highly religious family. They spent every Sunday together from sunrise to sunset, making sure they always had family time between them. Her father worked at the post office as a mail carrier and her mother spent most of her time being involved in school PTA meetings and helping out at the church.

To many people, Betty’s family might seem strict and uptight, but it was normal for her. Everything was normal until the first time she saw that clown.

Betty had never been afraid of clowns. In fact, she actually kind of liked them. The little kids on her block would cower in fear from the smiley strangers and Betty would show them there was nothing to fear, and walk right up to them with a grin to match. She never had any reason to fear clowns, or anyone really. Other than the smite of God, she feared very little and lived her life bravely and happily. But when the circus rolled around one year, her life was changed forever.

She had never been to the circus. She was fourteen at the time and perhaps a bit too old to be going to childish events like the circus, but she was utterly intrigued by the freaks and bizarre nature of it all. So, when her neighbors asked her to take their children to view the tents, she happily obliged. Betty was a responsible and diligent young girl and everyone trusted her, so it only made sense.

At that time, crime wasn’t common. Or at least not murders. Robberies were a somewhat commonplace, but she wasn’t scared. There had been rumors of kids her age disappearing recently, but she paid no mind to it. She had faith in God and in the police units in Derry to protect its citizens from harm. As long as she remained faithful, no harm would find her. For the entirety of her life, it had been true and she had no reason to believe otherwise. She had no reason to believe that the Devil himself resided in Derry.

While perusing the red and white tents, the two kids she was with somehow split up and she lost sight of them. A young boy and a young girl both had very different interests and Betty couldn’t be in two places at once. Trusting that the boy would be okay on his own, she ran off in search of the young girl. While jogging around the tent, Betty became overtaken with the smells and sights within the big top tent. Losing herself for a split moment, she wandered off, following the smell of caramel corn and fried dough. It was as though she were in some sort of trance, her stomach guiding her feet. A trance that was only broken when she managed to bump into someone.

The blonde apologized profusely until the stranger turned around and Betty noticed that it had no face, just a clean stretch of skin across it’s head. Frozen in fear, she fell onto her backside and quickly garnered a crowd of onlookers who offered to help her up. Upon second glance, Betty realized that the faceless person was no longer there. Thoroughly spooked and ready to leave, she rushed out of the tent for fresh air.

Her plan was to calm herself down enough to find the kids and head home. She took deep breaths as she clutched the cross pendant around her neck. She wasn’t the type to be easily spooked, and so getting so frightened was frightening in itself. After cooling off and saying a quick prayer, she headed back inside to find the kids. As if they hadn’t moved at all the entire time, both of the siblings stood at the entrance of the tent like a pair of motionless mannequins. It was creepy to Betty, but she was truly just relieved to see the kids at all without having to step foot back inside the tent. She hurriedly took their hands and started towards the direction of home.

When she returned home without further incident, Betty played it off as a fluke. Her senses were overwhelmed and she allowed herself to panic. It wasn’t real and she just had to let it go. But that same night, she was kept awake by the muffled arguments between her parents.

Her mother and father never argued. Or at least, not that Betty was aware of. So, naturally, she was curious to see what the commotion was about. Truthfully, she was still a bit spooked from the events earlier in the day and she hadn’t been anywhere close to sleeping yet. Creeping down the stairs quietly, she hid behind the bannister and listened in on her parents talking.

From what she could understand, it seemed as though her mother had heard something sinister and her father didn’t believe her. Mrs. Ripsom had heard voices coming from the sink and she had been thoroughly terrified. Her father, seemingly out of character, waved away her concerns and went to bed, brushing past Betty on the steps as though she weren’t even there. Surely, she thought, this was some sort of bad dream. Perhaps there was a tension in the air brought upon by something that she wasn’t aware of.

Over the next two weeks, the arguments between her parents grew increasingly worse. Their voices raised in volume each night, over the same kind of argument. Her mother claimed to have heard something, seen something, and her father refused to acknowledge her concerns. Upon eavesdropping, Betty learned that her mom had apparently seen the same faceless stranger that Betty had seen in the circus tent that day and it sent chills up her spine.

The thought stayed with her all day, distracting her from schoolwork and drawing attention from teachers. Betty had always been a good student, smart and energetic, but on that day she seemed scattered and paranoid. She decided that she was going to talk to her mother about the things she saw that day in the tent. Holding it in was driving her crazy and she thought that, maybe, if she said she saw it too, her father would listen.

On the walk home from school, she gripped the straps to her backpack so hard that it left imprints in her palms. Little crescent moon shapes decorated the inside of her hands as she approached the crosswalk. There, across the street, she saw it again. The faceless person, standing completely still as other people walked around it. Did no one else see what she was seeing? Was she going crazy? Rubbing her eyes, Betty looked again, but this time the person had changed. Instead of a faceless man, there stood a clown. It wasn’t a familiar looking clown by any means, and yet it stared at her as though she were the only one there.

Creeped out and feeling scared, she ignored the clown and kept on her track back home. She kept her eyes down and focused on the cracks in the sidewalk. Upon reaching another crosswalk, the last one on her way, she noticed the clown again. Then she began to run. Betty ran until she couldn’t breathe. When she reached her street, she paused to catch her breath, glancing behind her skittishly, determined to spot the clown before it could see her.

**But as she was looking around, she noticed a little shoe. A toddler’s shoe, resting right outside of the sewer drain. From afar, it didn’t look too odd, but when she got closer, Betty recognized the shoe as belonging to the little girl she had brought to the circus. Panicked and worried that somehow the girl had fallen down the sewer, Betty forgot about the clown completely and ran towards the drain.**

She threw her backpack onto the ground and knelt in front of the hole, peering into the darkness. She called for the little girl, quietly at first, but slowly growing louder until something popped up from the sewer and scared her.

*“Hello, Betty.”*

Two amber eyes stared at her, glowing in the dark. She felt back onto her butt, hands pressed into the asphalt as she crawled away from the eyes staring back at her. The clown laughed and it sent a chill up her spine. But more than being scared for herself, she was determined to make sure that the girl was okay. She swallowed her fear and asked the clown if he had seen the girl she was looking for. Surprisingly, he said yes.

***“Y-You have?”***

He told her that the other shoe had fallen down into the drainage system too and that he had gone down to save the girl. Seemingly forgetting about the clown sightings down the road momentarily, she believed his words and crawled closer again. He told her that he had found the other shoe, but that he wanted to make sure it was a match before he came back up to the surface. Gullible and naive, Betty nodded. It made sense to her, somehow. She picked up the shoe on the concrete and held it out to the clown.

**“Does it look like this one?”**

*“I can’t quite see it. Why don’t you bring it a little closer?”*

**“Okay..”** Hesitantly, Betty moved a little closer, until her hand was nearly inside the drain. The clown had gone silent and all she could hear was the beating of her heart in her ears. For a second, she thought the clown had disappeared and went back to look, but before she could do anything else, it grabbed her by the wrist and yanked her through the slit.

Betty woke up later, falling to the moist and dirty ground inside the sewer. Her head ached, and she felt completely dizzy.  She had no idea where she was or how to get out. It smelled terrible and the darkness surrounded her like a cold, wet blanket. She shivered and cried until she couldn’t find any more tears to shed. Alone and frightened, she began to wander. Her bones jittered with fear and paranoia, expecting to see the clown around every corner. Why had he pulled her down here? Where did he go? Was he still looking for the other girl?

Eventually, after what felt like hours of wandering, Betty saw the light at the end of the tunnel. It was bright and it hurt her eyes but it was a welcomed ache. When she looked around, she noticed that she was in the creek near her house, where the sewer led out. Rather than ask any questions, she ran home as fast as she could, desperate to find refuge in her parents’ arms.

But when she reached her home, there was a fresh coat of paint on the house and a for sale sign stuck in the grass. She had only been gone for a few hours, right? What had happened since then? She stood in her front yard, dazed and confused for what felt like an hour before one of the neighbors came wandering over.

*“Betty? Betty Ripsom?”* The older woman asked, surprised to see the girl standing there, soaking wet but alive. Betty nodded, speechless and shivering. Everything after that moment was a blur for her, but it went a little like this:

Betty Ripsom had been missing for an entire year and some change. She had disappeared on her walk home after school one day and no one had seen her since. Her parents were hysterical, her father going on every news station that would listen, begging his daughter to come back home. The police had searched for her for days, and ultimately gave up when another kid went missing. And then another, and another. Betty was completely forgotten within weeks and was just added as a name to the list of missing children in Derry.

At the police station, she learned what had become of her parents and her house. After Betty disappeared, her parents seemed to lose their minds. They went crazy, yelling and fighting, calling the police every night to ask where their daughter was. Her mother cried herself to sleep each night and spent every waking hour glued to the pews in the church. She was certain that the Devil had come to Derry to steal good kids away and that her daughter had to be dead. Her father had left her mother, filing for divorce and abandoning the church in the process. In fact, the police officers told Betty that only a week prior to her being ‘found’, her father had called into the station, frantic.

He said that he had heard Betty’s voice in the kitchen sink and that her ghost was haunting him. He swore up and down that the police were to blame for her death and that he would haunt every officer on the force until Betty was found. Slowly, all the pieces of the puzzle fell together and Betty realized what they were saying. Her parents had both died, because of her. Because she disappeared. Because of that clown.

Scared and speechless, Betty couldn’t even bring herself to ask about the clown. After all, how did she know it was even real to begin with? She couldn’t remember a single thing about the time she was gone, except for an awful nightmare. Mourning and grieving, she was sent to live with her aunt in Derry and slowly rehabilitated. The cops were worried about her, and nervous that there was a kidnapper loose in Derry, but all of the worry seemed to stop when the disappearances ceased. Betty had been the only child to come back so far, and they needed to protect her in case the lunatic wanted to finish the job.

To this day, Betty suffers nightmares every night. When she touches someone, she can see how they will die. Flashes of red and black, of death and despair plague her every day. She doesn’t sleep well and she’s paranoid, but she’s slowly returning to her life. It’s been five years since she vanished, and yet it feels like it happened just yesterday.