The Clown Corner: A Free Ghost Story by Cat Thomas

Author:Cat Thomas [Thomas, Cat]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
ISBN: 9781916025127
Publisher: Gwillion Press
Published: 2019-02-28T00:00:00+00:00

She stared at the words, but her hand was shaking so much she could barely see them. Then her whole body started shaking, violently. As if in response to her shudders, the light flickered again, more rapidly.

How could she have misunderstood? How could she have been so wrong? About Clappy, about Susannah, about everything. A wave of grief and loss engulfed her. The light stopped flickering for a moment, as if it were holding its breath. Then it went out, plunging her into absolute darkness.

For a long moment it felt as if the world had stopped. The wave of sorrow that had taken her over subsided, leaving only fear in its wake. As she sat there in the cold, in the utter darkness of the church tower, the fear grew. It knotted up her stomach, it filled her mind, it constricted her throat and flooded her eyes with tears. She tried to stand up. But she couldn’t move.

For endless seconds, maybe for minutes, she sat there, paralysed in the cold and dark. She didn’t want to think about Clappy, about Susannah. About Toby, the cute little dog with the Pierrot ruff and pointy hat who had performed on stage with them. About everything that she now realised had happened. The horror of it made her just want to curl up on the floor and pretend she wasn’t there. But she was there.

And she wasn’t safe.

With everything that was left of her, she willed her legs, her feet to move. For a moment nothing happened. She stayed pinned to the spot, the cold of the stone tower seeping into her and freezing her even more. Then, her heart pounding, she managed to shift her frozen little body, very slightly. Summoning all of her strength of mind and body, she tried again. Another slight movement. Slowly, very slowly, over minutes that felt like hours, she managed to lift herself to an upright position.

Standing there, shakily, on weak legs, she tried to make herself breathe properly, deeply, in, out. But all she could manage was a shallow panting that deepened into sobbing. Tears were gushing down her face now, and she could barely move her hand to brush them away.

She had to get out of this place. Get away. She had to.

She willed her legs to move and gradually managed to edge herself in the direction of the stairs.

The stairs. What if she fell down them? What if Sparky found her tomorrow morning, dead at the bottom, her neck broken. Just like Susannah, she thought, with a lurch of horror and panic. Was this it? Was this what had to happen to her? Now she’d become Clappy’s Columbine?

The thought weakened her, wilted her and she lost her balance, tripped and fell. She felt the smooth, worn stairs falling away below her as she tumbled headlong down them, cracking first her knee, then her shoulder, her elbow. She carried on falling, in what felt like slow motion, her whole body being slammed against the unforgiving stone, one painful, vulnerable bit at a time.

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