In my cell, lying on the bed. The pain is worse than ever. My head throbs and my fingers tremble wildly. I had the dry heaves a while ago, my body in revolt. I tried exercising and keeping active, but now it hurts too much when I move. I think I'm close to the end. All I want is to shut my eyes and drift off. I don't care if I never regain consciousness.
"I'm sorry," I whimper, but I don't know if I'm apologizing to the ghost of Tyler Bayor for killing him, my mum for letting Dad beat her up for so many years and not reporting him, myself for giving up, or somebody else. I'm not at my sharpest at the moment.
There's a screeching sound from the corridor and I jam my hands over my ears, groaning weakly. The noises have increased over the last few minutes. I've been hearing all sorts of things, explosions, tearing metal, screams. I know they aren't real. It's just my brain cascading out of control, warping ordinary sounds out of recognition.
Is this how it is all the time for regular zombies? Is that why they moan so much? I try to imagine a lifetime of this crazy noise, shaking from the hunger, nearly blind, scouring the ruins of the world in search of brains. Some life! Maybe I should end it all before I regress.
I lower my hands and stare at the sharp bones sticking out of my fingertips. It would be difficult, but I'm sure I could crack open my skull and scoop out enough of my brain to put myself out of my misery. It would be a gruesome way to die, but wouldn't it be better than shuffling around as a lost, tormented soul for the rest of my wretched years?
As I'm staring at my fingers, trying to work up the courage to end it all, the door to my room slides open. The sounds outside amplify immediately and I wince. I glance up from my hands, expecting Reilly, or maybe Dr. Cerveris and Josh. But whoever it is, he's standing in the corridor, not showing his face. I can see his shadow, but that's all.
"Don't be shy," I growl. "Come on in and have a good look."
The man giggles. It's a strange, jangly sound. It makes me grit my teeth. I start to sit up angrily. Then the man steps inside and I sink back with confusion and disgust.
It's a clown, but no clown that you'd ever see in a circus, not unless it was a circus in hell.
He's dressed in a pinstripe suit, but with colorful patches stitched into it in lots of different places. There are plenty of bloodstains too.
A severed face hangs from either shoulder. The faces have been skinned from the bone. I think one came from a woman and the other from a man, but it's hard to be sure.
Lengths of gut are wound around both his arms, long strands of intestines, glistening and dripping. Along his legs several ears have been pinned to the fabric of his trousers.
He's wearing a pair of oversized red shoes, a small skull sticking out of the end of each. They could be the skulls of some breed of monkey, but I don't think they are. I think the skulls came from human babies.
The clown's hair has been sourced from a variety of heads. There are all sorts of locks, every type of color, shade and length, stuck to his skull. No... not stuck. As he comes closer and giggles again, he bends slightly and I see that the clumps of hair are stapled to his scalp. There are dried bloodstains around many of them, and fresh blood flows from a few.
The clown has a painted white face, but that's the only traditional touch. The flesh around his eyes has been carved away and filled in with what looks like soot. A pair of v-shaped channels run from beneath either eye to just above his lips, which have been painted a dark blue color. The channels have been gouged out of his cheeks and the exposed bone has been dyed bright pink. Instead of the usual red ball over his nose, he's somehow attached a human eye to it. Little red stars have been dotted over it.
I do nothing as the surreal clown advances. I'm frozen in place. I'm praying that this is an illusion, a product of my fevered brain. But he doesn't look like a dream figure. By all rights he shouldn't belong to this world, but he certainly seems at home in it.
The clown hops from foot to foot, performing a strange little shuffle, still giggling, drawing closer. Now I spot a button on his chest, round and colorful, the sort a child might paint. Daubed on the button, in very ragged handwriting, is what I assume is his name.
Mr. Dowling.
He reaches the foot of my bed and beams at me, lips closed, eyes wide, looking crazier and more menacing than anything I've ever seen. His eyes continually twitch from one side of their sockets to the other. His skin is wriggling, as if insects are burrowing beneath the flesh, close to the surface.
I want to kick out at the nightmarish clown, or slide past him and race from the cell. But I can't move. It's like I'm locked down tight. I can't even whine.
The clown reaches out and slowly strokes my right cheek. His fingers are long and thin. Much of the flesh has been sliced away from them. I glimpse bones through a mishmash of exposed veins and arteries. He's not a zombie - he has normal-looking nails, and I can feel his pulse through the touch of his fingers - so I can't understand how he tolerates these open, seeping wounds.
Withdrawing his hand, the clown - Mr. Dowling - leans over until his face is in front of mine. His eyes steady for a moment and he looks straight at me. Only it's more like he's looking through me. I feel as if he's reading my thoughts, stripping my mind bare, unraveling all of my secrets.
The clown's smile spreads. His eyes start dancing again. He opens his mouth.
Spiders fall from his blue lips, a rain of arachnids, small and scuttly. Hundreds of legs scrape my face as they pour upon me, over my eyes, into my mouth, up my nose.
With a scream of shock and terror, I snap back to life, hurl myself from the bed and roll across the floor, swiping spiders from my face, mashing them to pieces with the heels of my hands, spitting them out, picking them from my eyes, screaming over and over. I never thought of myself as an arachnophobe. Then again, I've never been covered with spiders until tonight.
I shake my head and wipe my hands across my face and scalp, brushing the last of the spiders away. Some scurry across the floor, seeking the shelter of the shadows under the bed. I poke the bone of my little finger into my right ear, then my left, as carefully as I can, not wanting to rupture the drums within. Then I explore slowly with my fingers.
They're gone.
With a shudder, I stand, squash a few more of the spiders underfoot and turn to face the otherworldly clown.
He isn't there. If he was real in the first place - and I wouldn't think that he was if not for the spiders - he slipped out while I wasn't looking.
And he left the door open.
Still shaking, I glance around my cell to make sure he's not lurking, waiting to pounce on me from behind when I think I'm safe. Once I'm convinced that he really has gone, I call out shakily, "Hello?"
There's no answer, but the noises outside are louder than ever, the screams especially. I no longer think that they're the product of my skewed senses.
Steeling myself against every sort of imaginable horror, I edge closer to the open doorway. I keep thinking that it will slam shut, but it doesn't, and seconds later I ease out of my cell, into the corridor and the middle of a blood-red storm.
