Born Scared

by Kevin Brooks

  1 Christmas Eve

  2 Less Than Nothing

  3 Cheap and Nasty

  4 So Many Other Things

  5 Solid Gold Buttons

  6 Big Monkey Teeth

  7 The Snow Globe

  8 A Blood-Red Nightmare

  9 At Least a Million

  10 A Dead Black Line

  11 My Every Day and Night

  12 The Mother

  13 Moloxetine

  14 Let’s Get This Done

  15 The Snarl of the Beast

  16 One, Two, Three

  17 Kaylee

  18 The Lonesome Rattle

  19 527 Yards

  20 Shocked White

  21 The Door

  22 A World of Gray-Brown Skeletons

  23 Bits of Bone and Clicky Wet Things

  24 The Crazy Wolf

  25 The Snow Cave

  26 A Fluorescent Bird of Paradise

  27 The Guinea Pig

  28 Thirty-Five Heads (and Seventy Evil Eyes)

  29 The Strange Boy from the Big House

  30 Everything’s a Monster

  31 Half a Human Leg

  32 Lights at the End of the World

  33 A Whirling Darkness

  34 The Hillbilly

  35 One Lost Soul

  36 Psycho-Stink

  37 A Thing of Cold Silence

  38 Great Black Trees

  39 Do They Know It’s Christmas?

  40 My Skewered Skull

  41 Three Things

  42 Just Dead

  43 An Innocent Child

  44 Riding the Stars

  45 Flesh and Bone on Cold Steel

  46 The Fear

  I’m as far as the hallway now. Coat, hat, boots, gloves . . .

  Cold sweat running down my back.

  It’s three o’clock in the afternoon, Christmas Eve.

  The snowstorm’s getting worse.

  My heart’s pounding. I’m shaking, shivering. I feel sick. And every cell in my body is screaming at me to turn around and run.

  But I can’t move.

  Either way.

  I can’t go back.

  Can’t go out.

  I can’t do it.

  It’s impossible.

  I can’t go out there.

  I’m terrified.

  My fear pills are yellow, which isn’t a bad color for me.

  Red is blood (and Santas), black is death, blue is the drowning sea . . .

  Yellow is cheese and bananas.

  And pills.

  I don’t know why I call them fear pills. They’re antifear pills really.

  I’m chronically afraid of almost everything.

  Sometimes I think I can remember being scared when I was still in my mother’s womb. It’s not much more than a distant feeling really, and I have no idea what I could have been frightened of in there, or how — in my unformed state — I could have perceived it.

  Unless . . .

  Unless.

  It’s probably more accurate to say that I sometimes think I can remember being scared when we were still in our mother’s womb. There were two of us in there: me and my sister, Ellamay. We were twins, and I know in my heart that my embryonic fears — if that’s what they were — were as much Ellamay’s as they were mine.

  We were scared.

  Together.

  We were as one.

  As we still are now.

  And perhaps we knew what was coming. Perhaps we were frightened because we knew one of us was dying . . .

  No, I don’t think that’s it.

  I don’t think any of us knows what death is until it’s explained to us. And the strange thing about that is that although there must be a pivotal moment in all our lives when we find out for the first time that all living things die, and that at some point in the future our own life will come to an end, I certainly can’t remember the moment when I found out, and I’d be surprised if anyone else can either.

  Which is kind of weird, don’t you think?

  What I can remember though is the effect that moment had on me.

  I don’t know how old I was at the time — four? five? six? — but I clearly remember lying in bed at night with my head beneath the covers trying to imagine death. The total absence of everything. No life, no darkness, no light. Nothing to see, nothing to feel, nothing to know. No time, no where or when, no nothing, forever and ever and ever and ever . . .

  It was terrifying.

  It still is.

  . . . lying there for hours and hours, staring long and hard into the darkness, searching for that unimaginable emptiness, but all I ever see is a vast swathe of absolute blackness stretching deep into space for a thousand million miles, and I know that’s not enough. I know that when I die there’ll be no blackness and no thousand million miles, there won’t even be nothing, there’ll be less than nothing . . .

  And the thought of that still fills my eyes with tears.

  But sometimes . . .

  Sometimes.

  Sometimes it feels as if that memory doesn’t belong to me, that it happened to someone else. Or maybe I read about it in a book or something — a story about a mixed-up kid who lies in bed at night trying to imagine death — and I identified with it so much that over time I gradually convinced myself that I was that mixed-up kid, and his imaginations were mine.

  Not that it makes any difference, I suppose.

  A memory is a memory, wherever it comes from.

  I’ve sunk down to the hallway floor now, and I’m just sitting here with my eyes closed and my back against the wall. I’m trying to breathe steadily, trying to calm my thumping heart, trying to empty my mind.

  After a while, Ellamay comes to me, her silent voice as comforting as ever.

  It’s all right, Elliot. It’ll be okay.

  “I’m scared.”

  I know. But you won’t be alone. I’ll be with you all the way.

  “I don’t think I can do it.”

  Yes, you can.

  “It’s too much.”

  You have to do it, Elliot.

  “I know.”

  For Mum.

  “I know.”

  For us.

  We were born prematurely, at twenty-six weeks. I weighed just under a pound; Ella was even smaller. It was a traumatic birth, and at first the doctors weren’t sure if any of us were going to survive. Mum had lost a lot of blood and was in a really bad way, and while she was rushed off for an emergency operation, Ellamay and I were taken to the neonatal intensive care unit, where we were put in incubators and hooked up to all kinds of stuff to keep us alive.

  It didn’t work for Ellamay.

  She only lived for an hour.

  I almost went with her.

  Our hearts stopped beating at virtually the same time. But although the doctors and nurses somehow managed to save me, they couldn’t do anything to bring Ella back.

  Part of me died with her, and part of her lived on with me.

  We’re dead and alive together.

  The first time I experienced fear in the outside world — as opposed to the inner world of my mother’s womb — was the first time I woke up in the incubator after Ella had died. It’s a moment that’s as much a part of me as all the other things that make me what I am — my heart, my brain, my flesh, my blood.

  I was just lying there — on my back, my eyes open — looking up through the clear-plastic dome of the incubator at the white sky of the ceiling above. Muted sounds were drifting all around me — soft beeps, hushed voices, a low humming — and although I didn’t know what these noises were, I wasn’t scared of them. They were the sounds of my world, as normal to me as the sound of my own stuttered breathing.

  Then, all at once, everything changed.

  Th
e white sky suddenly darkened as three unknown things appeared out of nowhere and loomed down over me. I didn’t know what they were — moving things, menacing things, things that made strange jabbering noises — wah thah . . . pah banah . . . al tah plah . . . tah yah ah lah . . .

  Monsters.

  Then one of them moved even closer to me, stooping down over the incubator, getting bigger and bigger all the time . . . and that was when the fear erupted inside me. It was uncontrollable, overwhelming, absolute.

  Pure terror.

  It was all I was.

  The three unknown things that day were my mum, her older sister Shirley, and Dr. Gibson, and the funny (peculiar) thing about it is that although they were the first people to scare me to death, they’ve since become the only three people who don’t scare me to death.

  They are, to me, the only true people in the world.

  Everyone else is a monkem.

  The two men in the stolen Land Rover were both dressed as Santa Claus. The Santa disguises had been a last-minute decision, and because it was Christmas Eve, most of the local shops and costume rental places had run out of Santa suits. The only store that hadn’t sold out was the PoundCrusher at the retail park in Catterick, and the only reason they had any left was that their costumes were so cheap and nasty that Scrooge himself wouldn’t have bought one. The red nylon they were made from was so thin it was virtually see-through, and the stringy white trim on the hats and jackets was glued on rather than stitched. Parts of the trim were already falling off, the loose white threads sticking to the static cling of the flimsy red nylon like dandruff. Both of the costumes were XXL — the only size left in the shop — and since neither of the two men were anywhere near “extra extra large” they’d had to make some rough-and-ready adjustments to their outfits. Extra holes had been made in the belts, sleeves and pant legs were rolled up, and the Santa hats had been made to fit by wearing beanie hats underneath. The costumes didn’t include Santa boots, so both men were wearing sneakers.

  The worst time for Mum was the first couple of years of my life when all I did was scream and cry almost constantly. People kept telling her not to worry — it’s perfectly normal for babies to cry all the time — but she knew this was different. I wasn’t just crying like a normal baby, I was bawling and howling, trembling all over, cowering away from just about everything.

  “It’s not right, is it?” Mum said to Dr. Gibson. “There’s something seriously wrong with him.”

  The Doc looked at me — I was cradled in Mum’s arms — then turned back to Mum. “I don’t know what it is, Grace. I honestly don’t. The only irregularities that have shown up on his regular hospital checkups are a faster-than-average heart rate and high blood pressure, but considering the trauma he went through at birth, it’s perfectly understandable for him to have an instinctive fear of the hospital environment.”

  “But his heart rate and blood pressure go up when you’re examining him too,” Mum pointed out.

  “Not as much as when he’s at the hospital. And again, it’s only natural for him to be scared of me when he knows I’m going to be prodding him and sticking needles in him.”

  “No,” Mum said firmly, shaking her head, “there’s more to it than that. I could understand it if he only got upset and agitated when he’s being examined, but there are so many other things that bring it on too — unfamiliar people, strange sounds, cars, birds, dogs, rain, wind, darkness . . . he’s terrified of the dark, Owen. I mean, he’s not just frightened of it — I could understand that — he’s absolutely petrified of it. He’s never once slept without a light on.”

  The Doc frowned and scratched his head. “Well, physically, there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with him. As I said, the hospital checkups have all been clear, and you know yourself that I’ve been testing him for everything I can possibly think of — heart, liver, blood, allergies, infections — and I haven’t found anything out of the ordinary.” He paused, hesitating for a second, glancing at me again. “The only thing I can think of at the moment is that the underlying cause of his extreme agitation isn’t directly physical.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The symptoms we’ve been talking about — increased heart rate, high blood pressure — are classic indicators of fear and anxiety, and while I still think it’s fairly normal for Elliot to have an instinctive fear of the hospital, and — to a lesser extent — me, it’s possible that his problems have a psychological basis rather than a specific physical cause.”

  Mum’s face visibly paled.

  “It’s not uncommon, Grace,” the Doc said, putting a reassuring hand on her arm. “Small babies have all kinds of curious problems, and sometimes we simply don’t know what’s wrong with them. And of course, they can’t tell us anything themselves until they start talking. But in my experience, by the time they do start talking, the vast majority of them have left these problems behind.”

  “The vast majority?” Mum said, raising an eyebrow.

  “Elliot’s going to be okay, Grace,” the Doc said softly. “Trust me, everything’s going to be fine.”

  Everything wasn’t fine, though. I didn’t leave my problems behind. And by the time I was talking well enough to express my feelings, there was no doubt what was wrong with me.

  “I’m scared, Mummy.”

  “Scared of what, love?”

  “Everything.”

  The Santa in the passenger seat of the stolen Land Rover pulled down his stringy white beard and cursed again as he scratched his unshaven chin.

  “This is killing me,” he said, flicking angrily at the beard. “It feels like it’s made of asbestos or something.”

  “Put it back on,” the Santa in the driver’s seat told him.

  “I don’t see why —”

  “Put it back on.”

  The driver’s voice was calm and measured, but there was a chilling edge to it that his companion knew better than to ignore. He’d seen firsthand what his partner could do to people who didn’t take him seriously, and although they were partners — of a kind, at least — he knew that didn’t make any difference. Partner or not, if the man sitting beside him wanted to hurt him, he wouldn’t think twice about doing it.

  “I was only saying,” he muttered, pulling the elasticated beard back up and refixing it to his face.

  “Yeah, well don’t, okay?”

  The Santa in the passenger seat shrugged sulkily, then turned away and gazed out of the window.

  It was 11:42 a.m.

  They were taking the back way to the village, driving across the moors, and the Santa in the passenger seat knew this area like the back of his hand. He used to come up here with his friends when he was a kid, happily ignoring the KEEP OUT! MILITARY FIRING RANGE warning signs to search for anything the army had left behind after their maneuvers the night before — spent rifle shells, burned-out flares, even live ammunition, if you were lucky. He knew that on a clear day you could see for miles up here, all the way across to the distant Hambleton Hills, but today the snow was so thick and heavy that visibility was practically nil. The raw moorland wind was blowing so fiercely that great sheets of snow were gusting horizontally across the desolate landscape, and he could feel the car struggling to stay in a straight line.

  As he rested his head against the cold glass of the window, he wondered once again what he was doing here. Why do you keep getting yourself into these things? he asked himself. I mean, what’s your problem? What’s so difficult about saying no?

  His name was Leonard Dacre. Most people called him Dake.

  The driver’s name was Carl Jenner.

  “When this is all over,” Jenner said, breaking the silence, “you can go out and buy yourself the most expensive Santa Claus costume in the world.” He glanced at Dake. “Solid gold buttons, silk pants, a snakeskin belt . . .”

  “A beard made from polar bear fur . . .”

  “Yeah.”

  The two men grinned at each other, and the Land Rov
er drove on through the snow.

  I don’t like hiding things from Mum — it makes me feel like I’m betraying her — but I learned a long time ago that sometimes it’s best for both of us if I keep certain things to myself.

  Like Ellamay, for example.

  I was about four years old when I first realized that I had to keep Ellamay to myself. The Doc had been around to see me, and afterward — while he was talking to Mum — I was sitting on the floor looking through one of my favorite picture books, and it just so happened that Ellamay suddenly came to me.

  Are you all right, Elliot? she asked. What did the Doc say this time?

  “He wants me to see a special doctor,” I told her.

  What kind of special doctor?

  “A brain doctor.”

  Why?

  “To stop me being frightened.”

  “Elliot?”

  It wasn’t Ellamay’s voice this time, and for a second I didn’t know what was happening. Then Mum spoke again.

  “What are you doing, Elliot? Who are you talking to?”

  I looked up at her. “It’s Ellamay.”

  “Who?”

  “Ellamay.”

  Mum looked puzzled, and as she turned to the Doc, I could see that she was worried too.

  “Who’s Ellamay, Elliot?” the Doc asked me.

  “My sister.”

  “Your sister?”

  I nodded.

  The Doc turned to Mum. “Ellamay?”

  Mum shook her head, and I could see now that there were tears in her eyes. “He didn’t get it from me . . .” she muttered, her voice catching in her throat. “You know I couldn’t bear to give her a name . . . he must have made it up himself . . .”

  “Have you heard him talking to her before?”

  “I always thought he was just talking to himself.”

  She was crying now, tears running down her face. I got up and went over to her and put my arms around her neck.

  “Don’t cry, Mummy. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you cry.”

  “It’s all right, darling,” she said, sobbing. “It’s not your fault . . .”

  But it was my fault. Who else’s fault could it have been?

  And ever since then, I only talk out loud to Ellamay when we’re alone.