Crybaby - Chapter Seven
Chapter Seven of the blockbuster new novel, Crybaby by best selling, multi-award-winning author Mark Watson...
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.
Another memory rose unbidden—a safari, the vacation before this one. It had been in Africa, where he’d seen so many elephants. He had thought he loved elephants; they were his favorite animal. Well, they had been until the massive, crazed elephant, Crybaby, came into his life. At the reserve where they’d stayed, there was a pool they were told not to go near at night—it was the animals' pool. The tourists were told that breaking curfew and approaching the pool would mean leaving the safety of the enclosure. As darkness fell, the animals would come to the water to drink and bathe. The order was the same every night. The bigger animals first, the elephants and the rhinos, then the big cats, the lions, and finally the smaller animals. Anyone who disturbed them would be on the menu. There was a viewing platform situated at a safe distance with darkened glass where they could observe the wildlife naturally. Jack had loved seeing the elephants come first. He knew then that they were the true kings of the animal kingdom—huge, stately, fun-loving creatures, yet massively large and powerful.
“My iPod’s s…s..stuck...” he mumbled again and held the tree trunk tighter.
It felt like hours had passed already, but he knew in his head that it had only been minutes. Creatures crawled on him; he could hear rustling and shuffling in the undergrowth all around.
“You g..g..got this, Jackie-boy,” he stammered, using the childhood nickname his dad had given him.
“You g..g..got this.”
The villagers found Jack’s body the next morning, near the edge of the rainforest. He hadn’t gone far—just far enough to escape the rampaging mad elephant, Crybaby, but not far enough to avoid being bitten by one of the many types of poisonous snakes. The signs were unmistakable: his face was contorted in a grimace of excruciating pain, his hands tightly clutched to his chest. This indicated death by a Krait—a highly venomous snake that hunts at night, its bite often unnoticed due to its small fangs and the minimal pain inflicted at the time of the bite.
They assumed Jack must have disturbed the snake, perhaps stepping on it without realizing it. In its defensive response, the Krait delivered a single, lethal bite. As the venom coursed through his veins, Jack had likely stumbled a short distance before collapsing, clutching his chest in a futile attempt to ease the suffocating paralysis. His death would have been agonizingly slow, with his final moments marked by an overwhelming sense of fear and helplessness.
When they found him, his body was already stiff, and his blackened, swollen skin bore the unmistakable marks of the Krait’s deadly bite. There was no irony in the fact that it wasn’t the rampaging elephant—his expected nemesis—that had killed him. He had escaped Crybaby twice, but that hadn’t been enough to save him from another of the rainforest’s deadliest creatures. They placed his body next to Chief Constable Nisheed’s, in a separate area from the others, which were piled in a grisly heap. There was no time for further examination; Jack’s body was covered in insect bites, with some insects still crawling on him as they carried him into the village.
Unlike the beggar victims of Crybaby, who would be handed over to the medical students at the town hospital, Jack’s body would be shipped back home to his family.
The police station and post office had been flattened, but the rest of the village was spared. Through this devastation, two black Land Cruisers crawled into the village just after sunrise. The doors opened, and a troop of green-clad forest rangers climbed out, spreading through the village. The last to emerge was a young female forest ranger. She sighed, her shoulders slumping at the sight of the awful destruction. Another rampaging elephant—these incidents were becoming more common, with at least one person being killed daily. Her name was Ahanna Gupta, and she had been working with rogue elephants for almost her entire life.
She thought she’d seen it all, but she had never seen anything like this.
This was different.
Crybaby was different.
END OF CHAPTER SEVEN
Next Chapter: Gold in the hills
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"Flat as piss on a plate" Ha! What an adventure!
I’m living the flow of this story! Can’t wait for the next chapter 💛