History

Man of the Family

Clark was born on April 12, 1976, in Atlanta, Georgia, to Ike and Sarah Hudson. The Hudsons were a blue-collar family, with blue-collar anxieties, always struggling to scrape by. From an early age, Clark had to contend with the violent temperament of his father, who drank heavily to assuage the aches and gripes of long days on an assembly line. His mother was plagued by nervous disorders, and was dominated by her husband’s violent moods, leaving Clark to act as the presumptive man of the house, defending his mother and sister, Tina, from his father’s fists.

The abuse did nothing for Sarah’s health, and she died of an undiagnosed brain aneurysm when Clark was 16. The absence of his live-in helpmeet did nothing for Ike’s already deteriorating faculties, and he didn’t long outlive his wife, perishing from an alcohol-induced heart attack two years later.

It came as an act of dubious fortune that Clark had just come of age when he was orphaned, sparing him the vagaries of the child welfare system. Tina, an unruly hellraiser, had already come to see Clark as a stand-in authority figure, and her resentment only deepened when it became official.

Due to the Hudsons’ financial situation and his spotty academic record, Clark hadn’t been hinging any hopes on college. He did, however, have a career path in mind: law enforcement. A lifetime of playing peacekeeper in the home had instilled a certain appreciation of rules in Clark’s mind, and he felt the career path would put him on the way to being the first “respectable” person in the family.

Clark used his father’s pension to pay for night school in preparation for the competency tests, at the same time working odd jobs to supplement his income. The time and energy invested paid off, and Clark went on to complete his term in police academy among the top of his class, officially beginning his career as an Atlanta PD officer in the summer of 1997.¹

Family Planning

During this time, Tina, now a teenager constantly teetering on the brink of dropping out of high school, had made the streets her playground. With Clark absorbed in his work and studies, there was nobody to stop her from going out and having fun. Her primary partner in these nocturnal adventures was Eileen Cates, a girl who lived in their building. The girls had known each other their whole lives, and the free-spirited, fiery Tina brought the fun side out of the more withdrawn Eileen. “Teeny and Leeny” came to see each other as sisters, with Tina confiding in Eileen far more than she’d ever have in her uptight authoritarian brother.

Clark, of course, hardly approved of his sister’s choices, and his concerns only deepened now that he was a cop. If it came out that his minor sister was in the habit of sneaking into nightclubs and drinking over the limit, it would be an indelible stain on Clark’s competency as a young officer.

Knowing he wouldn’t be able to make Tina see reason himself, Clark appealed to Eileen to take it easy and convince Tina to do the same. The emotional overture came as a surprise to them both and, as Eileen attempted to comfort Clark, they fell into an embrace, with Eileen losing her virginity to her best friend’s brother. She was 16, to Clark’s 21.

Ashamed to have taken advantage of a teenager, Clark deliberately distanced himself from Eileen, only to learn their one night together wouldn’t simply go away.

Eileen was pregnant. Tina discovered this fact before Clark did and, not knowing who the father was, tried to convince her friend to get an abortion, at which point Eileen admitted the truth of her entanglement with Tina’s brother.

Tina was furious with Clark, seeing the tryst as a violation of her friendship with Eileen. To make matters more complicated, Eileen didn’t want to abort the child. Frightened as she was at being pregnant, the idea of being a mother appealed to her.

Clark was less romantically affected, but after the grueling childhood he and Tina had experienced, he couldn’t abandon Eileen to raise the baby on her own. Clark made arrangements to move Eileen into his apartment (her parents had disowned her after the news came out), and they were married in the winter of the following year, once Eileen was 17 and eligible to marry in the state of Georgia.

The shotgun wedding caused no end of gossip around the station, but the boys’ club nature of the precinct meant Clark was viewed more as a player than a lech, and his decision to “do right” by marrying Eileen earned him some respect. Clark’s partner on the force, Lorraine Brock, one of the few women in their class at police academy, was candid about her contempt for Clark’s sleeping with a teenager, but she nonetheless did her part to keep the others off his back, acknowledging he’d done the right thing in the end.

Clark and Eileen’s son Kieran was born on March 13, 1998. The family funds were stretched thin, and their apartment was crowded to capacity. Clark had to pull extra shifts just to keep the lights on. Eileen had dropped out of high school during the pregnancy and was unable to look for steady work due to the difficulty of caring for a newborn.

Things between Clark and Tina grew the most contentious they’d ever been. Clark tried to browbeat his sister, herself not on track to graduate, to get a job and contribute to the family. Tina, who saw Clark as a white knight personally responsible for ruining her best friend’s life, ran out on him, disappearing among the masses of the city.

Clark exercised the most of his facilities as a police officer, but couldn’t turn his sister up and began to suspect the worst.

After more than a month, Clark was alerted by a friend on the force that his sister had just been admitted to an emergency room after collapsing at a club. He and Eileen raced to the hospital, having no choice but to bring 10-month-old Kieran with them.

At the hospital, Clark learned Tina had gotten her stomach pumped. More than that, though: the doctors had realized during the procedure that Tina was nearly two months pregnant. Clark was distraught, immediately assuming Tina had been raped or otherwise abused while she was on the streets. Eileen lost her temper with Clark, saying their priority should be helping Tina now instead of worrying about what they may have done differently.

It was almost a week before Tina came out of a medically induced coma. It was Eileen, not Clark, who had had to go back to work, who was there when she woke, and had been there every day. Clark never learned the details of what the two women discussed, but it came out that Tina had decided to keep the baby and Eileen was steadfast in supporting her with her pregnancy. The girls’ reconciliation pushed Clark further to the margins of his family. Feeling spurned by his sister and with his wife throwing herself into preparing for the birth of Tina’s baby, Clark had little choice but to work harder and for longer, in order to support his baby and the niece or nephew that would be forthcoming, never mind Tina’s medical expenses.

The Thin White Line

Clark increasingly found himself confiding in his partner. Lorraine’s no-nonsense approach could be harsh, but she mostly empathized with Clark as a man doggedly determined to make right in the world.

But the pressure got to be too much. Kieran’s first birthday came and went, with Clark pulling overtime to cover a fellow cop’s beat…Clark still being too green on the force to wriggle out of it. Eileen, who had planned the best birthday party she could afford for their baby, took it hard.

In his desperate search for something to assuage his feelings of inadequacy, Clark found a perilous outlet. The case he had been working on during these difficult months was a drug bust, involving the confiscation of several hundred kilos of cocaine that were being smuggled through the city. Alone and frustrated on long nights at the station, Clark began taking some of the confiscated drugs for himself, fudging the inventories he was doing so that his superiors wouldn’t notice.

Lorraine noticed, however, having been as intimately involved in the case as Clark. She confronted him about it, clocking his erratic behavior. Clark pressured her against filing a report, pointing out that, as his partner, she would be just as implicated as he was.

In a bind and forced to choose between her conscience and her career, Lorraine caved, keeping her silence and joining Clark in his drug abuse…just a little at first, and then more and more as the spring became summer. Their clandestine drug binges gained a sexual element, and the two began an affair, conducting coke-fueled trysts in the back of their patrol car and wherever else they could snatch some privacy.

Things spiraled further, and Clark’s dependence on his drug became untenable. He began missing shifts, sleeping at odd hours, and suffering increasingly erratic mood swings. These emotional outbursts, frequently directed at Eileen, sparked fears that something was wrong with him.

In the midst of these increasing tensions, Tina went into labor. Again, Clark wasn’t present at Tina’s bedside…not because he was at work, but because he was on a binge. Eileen raced to the hospital from the department store where she’d begun working as a checkout girl and was present for the birth of her nephew and namesake, Eli.

Things deteriorated further as the summer turned to fall. With two babies in the apartment and Tina as ornery as ever, Clark gave more and more of himself to the drugs. As his condition worsened, he became sloppier, culminating in Eileen finding traces of cocaine in the bathroom sink.

Horrified at the thought her husband may have been using drugs with their son…never mind the newborn…in the house, Eileen had a crisis of conscience. Wary of confiding in Tina, who wasn’t taking kindly to being a new mother, but terrified of confronting her husband with the truth, the betrayed Eileen went to the precinct and reported her discovery.

The subsequent investigation quickly uncovered the reporting discrepancies in the evidence locker and Clark and Lorraine were both investigated. Clark was forthcoming about his drug abuse, but when put under pressure, misrepresented the facts: claiming that it was Lorraine who had gotten him on cocaine, not the other way around. There was no material evidence for or against this perjury, but it was filed into the record nevertheless. It was left up to the discretion of the police department’s board of conduct how the two officers would be disciplined. Left to their own devices, they fired Lorraine, presumably influenced by Clark’s testimony and not believing Lorraine’s own assertions to the contrary. Clark, however, was suspended without pay, but did not lose his badge.

This was no consolation to Clark, who had to contend with the collapse of his marriage. All through the months’ long inquiry, Eileen had been adamant that she didn’t want him around her and Kieran in his state. Tina, disgusted by her brother’s fall from grace, took particular relish in rubbing in his hypocrisy, saying she at least never hid her inadequacies from people.

Eileen moved out of their apartment and took Kieran with her. Before the end of the year, she filed for divorce. Clark, at rock bottom, begged her to stay, that he would have nothing to live for without her and their son. But Eileen was steadfast in her conviction, telling Clark maybe things would change when he got clean, but she would not have their son around him in his condition.

The divorce was finalized with expedience, and Eileen was granted sole custody, owing to Clark’s substance issues. Eileen and Tina ended up pooling their limited resources in their search for a new place, leaving Clark alone, struggling to pay child support for Kieran. The details of Clark’s suspension were hushed up by the Atlanta PD. Still, Clark struggled to get sober and find steady work. Realizing he never had a hope of seeing his son again if he didn’t get clean, he decided the best thing to do was make a clean break from the city and start over. By the turn of the millennium, Clark had left Atlanta.

Law and Order

Clark found his new life in the small town of Lakewood, Louisiana: an upwardly mobile exurb of New Orleans where nobody had the slightest chance of recognizing him. While in Lakewood, Clark completed his rehab course, finding work as a contractor and earning a reputation as a dependable, hardworking young man.

He continued to send child support to Eileen for Kieran, but reports from Atlanta became sparser and more worrisome. It was from Tina that he learned Eileen had begun seeing another man: Dan Wilcox. Tina didn’t bother to disguise her dislike of Dan, but kept mum on everything else she might know or suspect, believing Clark wasn’t entitled to those details. In this way, it came as a complete surprise when, in the fall of 2000, he learned Eileen and Dan had not only gotten married, but had a child together: Deanna Wilcox, Kieran’s half-sister.

Clark was elected sheriff of Lakewood during the 2004 election season in a clean sweep.² While still a relative newcomer in town, he’d built a reputation as a dependable, hardworking citizen, and had earned the trust of his neighbors. Not quite 30, Clark’s life was finally on the up-and-up again…all he was missing was his family.

Fatherhood

Clark’s orderly trip into middle age was derailed in the fall of 2015, when Eileen and her husband Dan died in a car accident back in Atlanta. Clark hadn’t seen or heard from his ex in eight years, but still the news rocked him, not least because of Eileen’s children.

Kieran was 17 years old, almost but not quite an adult. Deanna was still a few months shy of 15. Without a legal guardian willing to step up, they would both be consigned to the system and there was no guarantee they wouldn’t be separated. Tina was certainly not about to take on the burden, and so it fell to Clark to act as a father for the first time in almost 20 years.

Arrangements were made quickly. Clark had planned to meet the kids after Eileen’s funeral, to talk the thing over with them, but he ultimately didn’t make it out to Atlanta, and had to reluctantly explain himself to Tina over the phone, speaking to her for the first time in nearly a decade.³

Clark planned a reception to welcome Kieran and Deanna to Lakewood…Kieran having insisted on driving from Georgia himself. Things were complicated by the fact that the very night of their arrival, October 18th, four people were murdered by person or persons unknown.

Stacy Winters, a freshman at George Washington High School, had been killed outside her home, along with her boyfriend, Brock Carmichael. Clark arrived at the scene to interview neighbor Paula Henderson, who’d discovered the bodies after the mortally wounded Stacy dragged herself across the street to Paula’s doorstep, where she breathed her last. The conversation was less than concluded and promptly abandoned so that Clark could keep roving reporter Eliza Taylor from harassing Maggie as she went about her work of examining the bodies. Talking to Maggie, Clark told her what he found most disturbing about the killings: the two teenagers had no phones, suggesting the killer made off with them himself. Before they could confer further, they were interrupted by Deputy Richard Steele, who informed them that Stacy’s parents, Robert and Gina, had also been found dead.⁴

After a long night on the case, which included breaking the news of Brock’s death to his family,⁵ Clark returned home early the next morning and found his new tenants had already moved in. Clark was shocked at the sight of Kieran, now a young man, calmly making breakfast. He sheepishly tried to explain he hadn’t been able to receive him and his sister because of the case, but Kieran was unmoved and unimpressed, pointing out Clark had been a no-show at Eileen’s funeral. Deanna was no more receptive, coming off as distant and withdrawn.⁶

Appearance

Clark was a sturdily built man with a shorter than average build: his son, Kieran, was significantly taller than him.⁷ He had short brown hair trimmed, regulation style, and dark brown eyes.

Personality

Clark was a career law enforcement official and known for being fair and forthright, though he had no shortage of baggage he kept well concealed from his contemporaries. Still, he was well intentioned and harbored honest desires to prove himself as a family man, though these were partially informed by a desire to “prove” he wasn’t as much a failure as he’d been in his younger days, when his addiction destroyed his relationship with Eileen.

Equipment

Truck: In his capacity as sheriff, Clark had an official truck, black with white lettering.⁸

Development

Clark was a main character in the first season of Scream the TV Series and was consequently part of the 2015 Season 1 AU from the beginning. In the forum, he was portrayed by TellatrixForever, who also played his son Kieran. Clark’s storylines over the forum’s two completed episodes were concerned less with investigating the ongoing murder spree but with attempting to be a good father to Kieran and his half-sister Deanna, an original character created by Fate.

The canonical Clark was killed in the penultimate episode of the first season. Consequently, his death was assumed as canon when the Season 2 AU began in May 2016, which had Kieran living on his own, and reintroduced Deanna (a late entry to the game, as Fate herself as joined after the forum launched) by explaining she’d run away owing to trauma from Clark’s death.

Clark’s SRU story was ultimately concluded in the summer of 2019, in the first volume of The Story so Far, which kept the fact of Clark dying on Halloween night, albeit in much different circumstances. Since 2024, Clark has recurred in Lakewood: Year One, where he is portrayed by Snafu Guru.

Other Interpretations

Season 1 AU

The 2015 forum’s iteration of Clark was intended to appear as more competent than his canon counterpart who, in the grand tradition of his genre predecessors, was routinely stumped by the masked killer and ultimately dispatched by them. This intention was muddled by storylines focused on Clark assuming new responsibilities as a father, not just to Kieran but to original character Deanna. By contrast, he doesn’t spend much time investigating the murders.

Notably, the timeline of Clark’s career…specifically, that he’d been in law enforcement 20 years and sheriff for 10 of them…originated from Clark’s debut post in the forum.⁹

Clark displays a deal of emotional sensitivity, decorating Deanna’s room with pictures of her (then unnamed) mother for her to find when she moves in.¹⁰

Cut Developments

As outlined by TellatrixForever, Clark would be forced off the case following Deanna’s murder, but would continue to investigate as a vigilante. However, the game went defunct before Deanna could be killed, so this development never occurred.

Clark was also meant to become a sort of protective authority, teaming up with Kieran to teach Emma practical self defense, possibly as she recovered from being attacked in the game’s first “episode”. Emma would be armed with a taser following this training. A version of this made it into the game’s second episode, where Deanna ends up receiving the taser.

Trivia

Clark was the first recurring character to debut in the 2015 Season 1 AU, following the introductory post which killed off Stacy and Brock. Effectively, this makes him the first character introduced in the SRU, though the 2025 Story so Far rewrite bumped his introductory scene down a few spaces, so that he debuts after the core teen characters.

Quotes

I was a beat cop in South Atlanta. I’m not a stranger to dead kids. But…this is new.

Clark tells Maggie the murders of Stacy and Brock have disquieted him

Gallery

1. The Story so Far, Vol. I: Chapter 1, Scene 8 ↩︎
2. The Story so Far, Vol. I: Chapter 1, Scene 8 ↩︎
3. The Story so Far, Vol. I: Chapter 1, Scene 11 ↩︎
4. The Story so Far, Vol. I: Chapter 1, Scene 8 ↩︎
5. The Story so Far, Vol. I: Chapter 1, Scene 12 ↩︎
6. The Story so Far, Vol. I: Chapter 1, Scene 11 ↩︎
7. The Story so Far, Vol. I: Chapter 1, Scene 11 ↩︎
8. The Story so Far, Vol. I: Chapter 1, Scene 14 ↩︎
9. Season 1 AU: Pilot, Post 4 ↩︎
10. Season 1 AU: Pilot, Post 26 ↩︎