The Undead Twenty-Six: Rye.: Season Five. The Rain. by RR Haywood

Author:RR Haywood [Haywood, RR]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: 1899 Inc Ltd
Published: 2024-03-27T00:00:00+00:00

8

Cookey stumbles into a deafening silence.

Except it’s not silent. It just seems that way from being out of the hard rain pelting his head and ears. Now it just hits the top and sides of the tented structure, painted in bright lurid stripes. Reds. Purples. Blues.

The dread spikes inside. An awful, gripping feeling of absolute terror as he spins around in a circle. His body soaked. His torn and shredded clothes clinging to his body. His blond hair plastered to his scalp. The filthy wet bandage sagging down. His single blue eye now not twinkling or full of mirth, but instead wide with crushing, debilitating fear.

This happened before.

The day when it was foggy. They ran and ran for miles, and ended up in a circus. Cookey froze up then too, but he had the others to get him out.

Now there’s nobody.

He’s alone and trapped in the worst place he could ever be trapped in, surrounded by cackling evil laughs and ragged hisses, and deep, long snarls coming from all sides.

He twists and turns. Gasping and whimpering. Wishing Charlie was here. Or Jess, but Charlie can’t see the tent in the pouring rain, and in her own sense of horror, she realises the circus ground is full of infected. All of them snarling and lunging in as she stays on Jess, firing her pistol to give Cookey a sound to aim for while he stands alone inside the big top. Not hearing the gunshots. His mind unable to function because of the terror inside.

His pistol in his hand that he aims at the snarls and cackles. Not knowing where they’re coming from, and that whimper gets worse when he realises with a deeper sense of terror and humiliation that he’s pissing himself in fear.

Just like when he was a child.

When the irrational fear started.

Only it wasn’t an irrational fear at all.

It was a fear created by his brain carving a neural pathway, designed to be used in times of pure survival to get him away from danger.

The danger posed by predators.

A predator of a different sort.

He was so young. Four, maybe five. He didn’t like clowns. He got upset at the circus. His mum called him a coward and said he needed to get over it. But to Cookey they were weird and sinister, and they didn’t look funny or sweet at all.

His mum made one of her drinking buddies dress as a clown with make-up and big feet, and a wig of thick, brightly coloured hair. Cookey was forced onto a chair in the kitchen as the clown stalked towards him. Cackling and jumping around. Cookey pissed himself in fear then as he does now.

His mother told her friend to keep doing it and said Cookey needed to be saturated with his fear to get over it.

She went out to the pub.

She left Cookey alone with the clown.

Cookey cried and wept, and the man inside the clown costume finally stopped. He said he was sorry. He spoke kindly.

The man noticed Cookey had wet himself.

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