Obsolete Fears
“Clowns?” Bruce laughed.
“Stop laughing at me,” Lyla whined as Bruce continued to chuckle.
“We are a quarter of the way into the twenty-first century,” he stuck his arm out and waved it backwards a bit as if he was presenting everything around them. “The future Ly, clowns are no longer a thing.”
Charles sat quietly at the picnic table of the campsite listening to them discuss their fears.
Lyla made a face pretending her feelings were hurt and Bruce continued, “Might as well be afraid of Claymation.”
Charles lifted his head, “A fear of clowns and a fear of Claymation aren't too different.”
“Because they are both silly?” Bruce laughed again.
“Because they are probably rooted in the same, very real, fear.” Charles said quietly as he looked back down. “I’ll tell you guys about it later.”
Charles, Bruce’s best friend from high school, was in town visiting. It had been eight months since Bruce had seen him and they had the idea to go camping. Lyla, Bruce’s girlfriend, came along for the ride because she came along for every ride for the last two years they had been together.
“Why not now Chuck?” Lyla asked, expecting Charles to go off on his standard rant at being called Chuck. Charles hated being called Chuck.
Charles looked up and, not breaking the smile that had formed upon his face, said, “Tonight.”
The norm for friend groups the age of these three is for one or more of the friends to separate and go off to college. This wasn't the case for Charles, he had simply moved to be with his mother.
Charles's mother had abandoned him and his father when he was young, six or so, and he had mysteriously reconnected with her a month before he moved. He wouldn't say too much about how, nor why he decided to move in with her. Charles wouldn't even give a clear answer on where it was that she and he lived other than “a ways away”.
The evening progressed and Bruce and Lyla had no trouble noticing that Charles was far quieter since he had come back from his mother’s house. They hadn't wanted to bring it up, concerned that maybe the change wasn't working for him, but during this trip he had said very little.
“Everything okay with you bro?” Bruce asked, sitting down on the bench facing the small slivers of orange through the trunks of the trees as the sun made its way elsewhere.
“Of course. Just enjoying my time back.” Charles answered. The monotone way in which he said it piqued Bruce’s interest more.
“Feel like telling me about your mom?” Bruce had asked a few times, and so far the subject would get changed. This time, however, Charles gave a new answer.
“Tonight.” He said, smiling once more.
To Bruce and Lyla, Charles’s smiles didn't look quite right. Yes, there was an air of mischievousness to them he didn't usually possess, but something different as well. Something they couldn't put their finger on.
“Promise us?” Lyla chimed in, sounding more concerned than she had intended.
“Promise.” Charles responded, still with a smile.
The sun was down now. The weather was nice and their plan was to sleep on the ground. “Roughing it” Bruce called it. Lyla had grown up with four brothers, and the prospect of sleeping in the forest with no tent reminded her of her childhood. Charles had no objections to the idea either. All in all, this saved them the time and trouble of finding level ground and building a tent.
A small camp fire laid in the center of where they intended to camp. The area was a secluded campsite, and by the time night was upon them no one had shown up to any of the adjacent ones, so poaching wood and making noise were of no concern to them. They had the forest to themselves.
“Ghost stories?” Bruce asked.
“As long as they aren't clown ghosts,” Lyla joked.
“That reminds me, you said something about that earlier,” Bruce looked at Charles, now sitting by the fire.
From Bruce’s vantage Charles seemed off. The fire danced, casting shadows on his down turned face that gave him a slightly unsettling feeling.
“Yes,” Charles said, looking up.
Seeing Charles’s face fully in the fire light made the shape with the shadows worse. His face appeared smoother than normal except for deep dark areas of shadow around his nose.
“Clowns and Claymation, right?” Charles asked, grinning.
To Bruce every change of Charlie's facial expression or head position made the feeling worse. He looked over to Lyla and could swear she was looking at Charles with the same strange uneasy feeling that he was feeling.
“Yeah,” Lyla replied, sounding as if Bruce was right.
“Best guess is they are the same, or from the same root fear,” Charles started, his grin remaining. “A holdover, perhaps. Something…” a pause, perhaps for dramatic effect, but Bruce could swear his face looked worse. Not right. “deep and primal. An encounter that left a genetic imprint.”
Bruce wanted to lighten the mood, not only for himself but for Lyla. Her eyes shone differently in the light of the fire than a moment before, he could swear she was tearing up. Chills ran down his spine, but he mustered a joke, “Jehovah's Witnesses?”
Charles’s face was definitely different. He could not only see it in the light of the campfire, but feel it in his bones. Something was telling him that it wasn't right. It wasn't Charles, or anyone for that matter.
Charles, or Chuck, or whatever’s too smooth face with slightly off features snapped to look directly at Bruce. The grin was unnaturally wide.
“Your species calls that root fear ‘The Uncanny Valley' now.” Not Charles said, letting his facade drop. “My mother remembers the old name. It was just a scream.”