Crybaby - Chapter Seven

CRYBABY IS HERE! By popular demand, the blockbuster new novel, Crybaby by best selling, multi-award-winning author Mark Watson. Now available on Amazon.

CRYBABY

©Copyright 2024 by Mark Watson

CHAPTER 7

Jack

Jack ran headlong and uncontrolled into the forest, wearing only the pajamas he’d been woken up in at the police station. After just a few steps of blind panic, he realized he couldn’t go any further; the forest was blacker than the darkest night, and the trees and bushes blocked his path. He turned and was fortunate enough to spot that he could still see some light from the village; he hadn’t run too far into the forest to get lost. Jack turned back and made his way to the very edge of the forest and village, too afraid to leave the darkness. As the adrenaline wore off, he began to wonder if he could make it to safety by running at full speed across the clearing to the houses, where he would bang on a door until someone let him in. Safety! What a joke, thought Jack. He should have been safe in the police station; where could be safer? It had been the strongest building in the town, and Crybaby had knocked it down flat.

“As flat as piss on a plate,” Jack said aloud, using a phrase his uncle had often used, and he laughed briefly.

He felt over himself; the pajamas were already soaked from the rainforest and were ripped and caked with mud. He felt cuts on his arms and legs, which were swollen and bumpy, probably infected, he thought grimly.

Jack found a tree he could wrap his arms around and clasped his fingers together, holding onto it tightly.

“I’m staying right here,” he said.

He could see the faint glow of the village from where he was, and he planned to wait it out until first light by staying there, stock-still, so as not to disturb a jaguar or tiger or God-only-knows-what-else. He knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep in such a position, and his mind kept replaying recent events. He was in that state between hallucination and shock, like trying to sleep after too much coffee. He remembered the last few days: he had been so high up, on the back of the elephant, crossing the stone bridge over the ravine, hundreds of feet above the ground. He’d somehow slipped off but hadn’t fallen to his death. He must have landed on the floor of the bridge behind the mad elephant, and it hadn’t stepped on him, he was keenly aware of how lucky he’d been. He’d survived the destruction of the police station too; if he were a cat, he’d surely be running out of lives by now. A song began to play over and over in his head, and he couldn’t shake the vision of that awful long drop into the ravine.

“Like my iPod’s stuck on replay,” he tried to sing the song aloud, but it sounded weak and distant in the darkness.

When he looked around into the forest, the darkness was so black it seemed like a void. A childhood memory suddenly rushed back. He had been on a cruise ship with his family, his younger brothers and his little sister. They’d had a great time the first day, exploring the huge ship, but at night, in their cabin, a purely internal one with the relentless sound of the ship’s machinery thudding and clunking, his sister had wailed when the light was switched off. It was blacker than black, blacker even than this forest…