Wake In Fright by Kenneth Cook

Author:Kenneth Cook
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction classics
ISBN: 9781921921780
Publisher: The Text Publishing Company

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When he awoke he did not know where he was or when it was; he knew only that if he moved the pain would start.

For a time he lay secure in the calm that precedes the agonies of a hangover.

Then the tortures began to happen to him, approaching stealthily, penetrating deeply and swelling.

He was sick.

Memory struggled within him and deliberately he subdued it. But it came back.

Slowly he raised his head. He was back in Tydon’s hut.That was not really a surprise. He could see bloodstains on his arms.

Last night’s orgy flitted back to him in hideous little cameos. But he was too sick to know remorse yet.

That bare, whitish, heaving thing there? It was his chest. He raised his head a little more. He was naked. He turned his head. His clothes were in a heap on the floor. Tydon was lying on another stretcher, asleep, covered by a sheet of some sort.

Grant let his head fall back. He had so many things to regret and so little strength to regret with. Perhaps he could sleep?

But now the arid wakefulness that comes to the drunkard was upon him and he knew he had to face a day of living.

Suddenly—what about those spasms of light in the night?

An awful sickness washed over him. What had happened to him in the night? Something appalling had happened to him, but what was it?

Driving thought and memory back, Grant sat up quickly. And the pain started flooding his mind in blinding waves.

Never mind, while his head hurt he could not think. But get out of here. Get out of here now.

He rolled his legs off the stretcher and stood up. He felt as though small leaden weights had been sewn to his intestines, his eyes, his nerve-ends. Oh God! the pain in his head.

Slowly, but not caring whether he woke Tydon, Grant dressed. His clothes were stiff with blood and they smelt.What had happened to that kangaroo that had disappeared after he had shot it? Things half remembered and terribly feared, shrieked at him; tears of mystic terror rimmed his eyes. And that blasted, damnable, bloody light in the night. What had that been? What had happened?

Careful, Grant, careful, he didn’t really want to remember.

Tydon woke up as he was lacing his shoes.

‘Going?’

‘Yes.’The word seemed to come from a long way away.

‘Where?’

‘Sydney.’The thought formed in his mind as he answered the question.

‘How?’

His jaws did not seem to be working properly and he did not answer; in any case he didn’t know.

He was not looking at Tydon, but he knew Tydon was smiling at him.

‘Want a drink before you go?’

Grant shook his head, slowly.

‘Food?’

‘No.’

He could not see very clearly and it took him a long time to tie his shoelaces.

At last he stood up and looked about him for the door of the hut.

‘Don’t forget your gun,’ said Tydon.

Grant turned and looked at him, confused. He thought Tydon looked like an emaciated rat thrusting his face out from under the sheet. Dear God, what had he done last night?

‘What gun?’

‘The boys made you a present of the gun.

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