Aren't clowns meant to be funny?

"Oh!" shrieked Jobe at the top of his voice, "there's a clown at the window!"

"Easy boy" said Nervina parking himself on the window seat in between Jobe and the face peering in.

"It's only another ghost" he said - shaking his head at the reaction.

"Looks like a clown to me."

"Aren't clowns meant to be funny?" Goober asked joining them with a dish of fried potatoes.

Nervina explained: - "Every now and then a plague comes to the world and the mortals end up in a terrible mess just before they pass over ... with sunken dark circles and bleeding from their eyes, rashes around their mouths, all dribbling down. At that point their minds go and they start stumbling around. Well, clowns were fashioned on this type of ghost - and not the other way around. That is why so many folk have a morbid fear of them - because they aren’t so funny at all."

He'd been talking above the Priest who had continued to pray, and only now had just stopped and was walking towards them.

Nervina blushed with embarrassment realising that his talking had interrupted the effort.

Father Tooke shook his hand warmly and said: "Never understood the clown thing before - thank you".

-Gabriel Brunsdon, Puck in Hell, Azlander Series