Born Scared

by Kevin Brooks

  I look up at the approaching car, shielding my eyes from the glare of the headlights.

  It’s moving slowly, tires crunching quietly in the snow.

  There are two old monkems in the front, a man and a woman. I can’t see if anyone’s in the back.

  The car’s getting closer . . .

  A ton of growling metal . . .

  Heading straight for me.

  I can’t think now. I’m too scared.

  I can’t move, can’t breathe . . .

  It’s all right, Elliot. It’s all right . . .

  “I don’t know what to do. What do I do?”

  You need to move to the side of the road.

  “I can’t move.”

  Yes, you can. You’re blocking the road. Just move over a bit and let them pass.

  “I can’t —”

  If you don’t move, they’ll have to stop.

  My legs don’t seem to belong to me anymore. I want to move, I’m telling them to move, but they aren’t responding.

  Hurry up, Elliot.

  The car’s slowing down now, getting ready to stop . . .

  Without really knowing what I’m doing, I lean over backward and slightly to the left, moving the top half of my body as far as it’ll go, and then a bit farther, and a little bit farther again, forcing myself off balance, until finally, just as I’m about to fall over, my legs react and instinctively do what’s necessary to keep me on my feet. And once they get going, staggering me backward (and slightly to the left) to retain my balance, all I have to do is use the momentum to steer my stumbling body over to the side of the road.

  “What’s he doing now?”

  “Do you think he’s drunk? He looks drunk.”

  “Maybe it’s drugs.”

  “He doesn’t look well, does he?”

  “He looks dreadful.”

  I’m standing at the side of the road now — head down, hands in pockets, eyes to the ground — and there’s plenty of room for the car to pass by. I realize the two monkems must have seen me stomping around in the middle of the road, then leaning over backward for no apparent reason, and I’m pretty sure they must think I’m insane. I hope so anyway. Because if they think I’m insane, there’s a good chance they’re not going to stop. You don’t stop your car for a stomping lunatic, do you? You don’t even make eye contact with them. It’s too risky. You never know what they might do.

  Unfortunately for me, though, these two monkems are either incredibly stupid or incredibly kind, because instead of just driving past, they actually slow down and pull up right next to me.

  I still can’t bring myself to look at them, but I know they’re there. I can hear the rattly old car engine chugging away. I can smell the exhaust fumes. I can sense them both looking at me. And as I hear the driver’s window sliding open, I can’t help thinking that if I don’t look back at them, I’ll be okay . . . they’ll go away . . . in fact, if I don’t look at them, they won’t even exist —

  “Are you all right, son?”

  The driver’s voice. Male, gruff, a North Yorkshire accent.

  I can’t reply, can’t raise my eyes, can’t stop the desperate pleading in my head — please go away, please go away, please go away, please go away . . .

  “Does your mother know you’re out here?”

  My head snaps up at the mention of Mum, and I look the old monkem in the eye. “Have you seen her?”

  “Who?”

  “My mum. Have you seen her?”

  The old monkem-man frowns. “I don’t understand . . .”

  I don’t like his mouth. It’s kind of old and worn-out and a bit drooly, and he can’t seem to close it properly — it just hangs half open all the time — and his teeth are all stained and crooked and snaggly, like they’ve been fixed in his gums by a blind person in a hurry . . . and when he opens his mouth wider to speak, a string of drool gets stuck between his lips, and for a few hideous moments, his mouth turns into a dark cave full of bits of bone and clicky wet things and slobbers of foul liquid oozing from the roof and the walls —

  “Are you looking for your mum?”

  It’s a different voice, a female voice. I blink hard — once, twice — forcing the image of the cave from my mind, and when it’s gone, I can see that the old monkem-lady in the passenger seat is leaning across the monkem-man and looking up at me through the open window.

  “What?” I say to her.

  “Are you looking for your mum?” she repeats.

  “No.”

  I don’t know why I say that. It just comes out.

  Ellamay doesn’t understand it either.

  Tell them, she says.

  “I can’t.”

  They can help you.

  “You can’t what?” the monkem-lady says.

  “What?”

  “You said, ‘I can’t.’”

  They’re all right, Ella tells me. They’re just a nice old couple. You don’t have to be scared of them.

  “He’s got a cave in his face.”

  No, he doesn’t.

  “He’s not right,” I hear the monkem-man say quietly to the monkem-lady.

  Just ask them to take you up to Shirley’s, Ella says. They won’t mind.

  “I think I’d better take him back to his house,” the monkem-lady says.

  “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

  “We can’t just leave him out here.”

  “What if we take him back and no one’s there? What are we going to do with him then?”

  “I don’t know. But if we don’t take him back, we won’t know if anyone’s there or not, will we?” She stoops down and starts reaching under her seat for something. “Turn the engine off, Joe.”

  Two things happen almost simultaneously then. As the monkem called Joe reaches for the ignition, the monkem-lady finds what she’s looking for under the seat and starts pulling it out. It seems to get stuck. She adjusts her grip on it, wiggles it around a bit, then pulls again. This time it comes out more easily. And when I see what it is, my heart turns to ice. It’s fairly dark inside the car, and I only catch a quick glimpse of this thing the monkem-lady’s pulling out, and I don’t actually see all of it, so I could be mistaken . . . it might not be a rifle, but it’s definitely a longish metal tube (like a rifle barrel), and it definitely has some kind of handle attachment near one end (like the trigger guard of a rifle), and when I hear the car engine being switched off, and I see the monkem-lady opening her door, and a split second later an ear-splitting BANG! rips through the air . . .

  I run like a wild thing.

  Blind and thoughtless and crazed with terror . . .

  Heart screaming, legs pumping . . .

  Staggering and stumbling through the snow . . .

  And all the time I’m expecting to hear another gunshot . . . another crack of the rifle . . . and I can feel the terrible thud of the bullet hitting me in the back . . . I can physically feel it . . . it’s there, right there, between my shoulder blades . . . I can feel it. And no matter how fast I run, I can’t get away from it.

  But I keep running anyway.

  It’s all I have.

  My mind’s so fogged up with fear that I’m not really aware of direction or distance, but when I hear the old monkem-lady shouting out from behind me — HEY! HOLD ON! WHAT ARE YOU DOING? COME BACK! — and I instinctively glance over my shoulder, I realize that I’m about thirty yards from the monkems’ car, and that I’m running up the road, toward the village, rather than back to the house.

  I slow down, cautiously jogging to a halt, then turn around and look back at the monkems again. As I gaze down the road, my gasping breath misting in the ice-cold air, I see the monkem-lady standing next to the car, facing me, and I’m surprised to see that instead of holding the rifle to her shoulder and aiming it at me, she seems to be leaning on it, as if it’s a walking stick . . .

  “DAFFY!”

  The sudden shout comes from behind me, from up the road — a desperate yell that rips
through the air and crashes into my heart.

  “DAFFY! NO!”

  I spin around, my blood racing, and I see a great black beast hurtling toward me.

  “DAFFY! COME HERE! NOW!”

  In the snow-white gloom, I see it all in an instant — the monstrous black dog charging down the road toward me, its leash flapping loosely from its collar . . .

  “COME HERE!”

  . . . its fangs bared, its wild eyes fixed on me . . .

  “DAFFY!”

  . . . and the monkem-lady farther up the road, chasing after the beast, shouting at the top of her voice, trying to call it back . . .

  “HERE!”

  . . . and the other dogs she has with her, two nasty-looking brown things, both smaller than the black one, but just as wild-looking . . . both straining on their leashes, yapping and barking and growling at me . . .

  “COME HERE!”

  . . . and it all explodes inside me with a blinding blast of fear that shocks me into action and sends me scrabbling frantically through the snow toward a barred metal gate on the right-hand side of the road.

  The black dog’s less than thirty feet away from me and closing fast, and although I’m fairly sure I can just about get to the gate before it gets to me, I can see now that the gate’s locked with a padlock and chain, which means I’m going to have to climb over it, but I can also see that it’s covered with wire mesh, which means there are no easy footholds, so climbing over it isn’t going to be easy.

  I glance over my shoulder.

  The black dog’s fifteen feet away now, getting bigger and wilder with every step.

  “IT’S ALL RIGHT!” the monkem-dog-lady yells at me. “HE WON’T HURT YOU!”

  The gate’s about six feet tall, and as I race up to it, I know I’ve only got a couple of seconds before the dog gets to me, so rather than stopping and trying to clamber over the gate, I just launch myself at it, leaping as high as I can, hoping my momentum will take me over the top, and that the snow in the field on the other side will cushion my fall.

  But unfortunately it doesn’t work out that way.

  Instead of flying over the gate, I somehow end up draped over the top of it — my upper half hanging down on the field side, my legs dangling down on the road side. I hang there for a moment — just long enough to realize that the top bar of the gate is digging painfully into my belly, and I’m badly winded, and for some reason my left knee hurts like hell — and then the whole gate clatters violently as the great black beast crashes into it, and as it stands there on its hind legs, its front paws against the gate, barking fiercely through the fence at my upside-down face — OWROWROW-OWROWROWROWROW! — I reach down with both hands, grab hold of a metal bar through the wire mesh, and pull as hard as I can. I have to wriggle around quite a bit and kick out with my legs, but eventually my weight starts to shift and I feel myself tipping over the gate into the field. I’m almost there, just giving my body a final heave, when the dog leaps up and clamps its teeth into my Wellington-booted right foot. I let out a yell, and so does the monkem-dog-lady . . .

  “NO! DAFFY! LEAVE!”

  . . . but the beast takes no notice. It just keeps yanking and tugging at my foot — snarling, growling, shaking its head from side to side — and the only thing that stops me being badly bitten and dragged back over the gate is the fact that the Wellington boots are too big for me. The crazy wolf has hold of the front end of the boot, where my toes would be if the boots fit me properly, so instead of biting my foot, all the beast’s got is a mouthful of rubber and scrunched-up newspaper.

  It snarls viciously and yanks hard on the boot again, but this time, instead of tensing up and trying to fight back, I let my right foot go limp. The loose-fitting boot immediately slips off, taking my sock with it, and just for a moment the dog is caught by surprise — stumbling back with the boot in its mouth, not quite sure what to do — and that brief moment is all I need. By the time the dog’s recovered — dismissively flinging the boot to one side and launching itself at me again — I’ve already heaved myself over the gate, and now I’m lying on my back in the snow on the other side.

  The beast roars furiously at me through the wire-meshed gate — OWROWROW! OWROW! — and as I quickly get to my feet, I catch a glimpse of the monkem-dog-lady turning the corner into the gateway, red-faced and out of breath, scowling, still struggling to control the two yapping and snarling brown dogs.

  “DAFFY!” she screams at the beast. “COME HERE! RIGHT NOW!”

  The beast ignores her — OWROWROWROWROW!

  She looks at me. “I’m so sorry about this . . . are you all right?”

  I turn and run.

  It’s not easy running through snow that in places comes up to your knees, especially with one bare foot, but nothing matters when you’re running scared, nothing can stop you.

  Nothing at all . . .

  Nothing.

  I’m running alongside the hedge to my left (the one that runs parallel to the road), and as I’m leaping and bounding like a startled deer through the snow, I’m vaguely aware of shouting voices calling out to me from the gate —“HEY! HOLD ON! IT’S ALL RIGHT! COME BACK!” I think one of the voices is the monkem-dog-lady, and the other one sounds like the old-monkem-lady-with-the-rifle. Part of me wants to turn around and shout at them —“GO AWAY! PLEASE! JUST LEAVE ME ALONE!”— but another part of me, the deep-down primitive part, just wants to disappear into a hole in the ground and lie there curled up into a ball with my eyes closed tightly and my hands clamped over my ears . . . and that desire is so overpowering that when I come to a chest-high snowdrift that’s half hidden behind a massive old oak tree, there’s nothing I can do to stop myself diving into it.

  Nothing at all . . .

  Nothing.

  White nothing, cold dark white . . . I dig down into it, burying myself deep in the snow . . . down into the icy silence . . . down, down, down into my hole in the ground . . . and then I just lie there, curled up into a ball, with my eyes closed tightly and my hands clamped over my ears . . .

  And the outside world disappears.

  It’s all right now, Elliot, Ellamay says quietly after a while. They’ve gone.

  “Are you sure?”

  The voices stopped ten minutes ago, and about five minutes later the car started up and drove off down the road.

  “What about the dog?”

  It’s gone. They’ve all gone. You’re safe. You can uncover your ears and open your eyes.

  I cautiously take my hands from my ears and slowly open my eyes. Silence. Just the soundless fall of the snow and the faint sigh of a low wind skimming across the field. The snow cave is dark, but not scary-dark — its pure-white walls lightening it enough to keep the black-fears at bay.

  Are you okay now? Ella says.

  “My foot’s cold. It hurts.”

  Give it a good rub. You need to keep the circulation going.

  I do as she says, rubbing my bare foot with both hands.

  Have you got anything you can use to wrap it up?

  As I search through my coat pockets, hoping to find a scarf or a woolly hat or something, I realize with a sinking heart that all the stuff that should be in my pockets is no longer there — phone, house keys, flashlight . . . all gone. They must have fallen out when I was throwing myself over the gate.

  Check your pants pockets, Ellamay says.

  I shake my head. “I never put anything in my pants pockets.”

  Why not?

  “I don’t know . . . I just don’t.”

  Check them anyway.

  I know they’re empty, but there’s no point in arguing about it, so I quickly search through them, front and back.

  “Nothing,” I say.

  Ellamay sighs.

  I wouldn’t blame her if she was annoyed or exasperated with me. If I’d put all my stuff in my pants pockets, I probably wouldn’t have lost it. But I know Ella isn’t annoyed with me. She never is. She understands . . . she always understands.
She knows I don’t have much practical pocket experience — if you barely ever leave the house, you don’t need to know much about pockets — and as we both lapse into a snowbound silence, we’re as together as we always are.

  Together.

  As one.

  And here in the sanctuary of our snow cave we feel as safely cocooned as we’ve ever been — curled up together, keeping each other warm, our hearts beating as one . . .

  It becomes us.

  It is us.

  It was us.

  Before it all went wrong.

  “Maybe we could just stay here this time,” I whisper.

  Ella doesn’t answer for a while, and I can hear the depth of sorrow in her silence.

  “Sorry, Ella . . . I didn’t mean to —”

  It’s okay, she mutters. I just . . . I don’t know . . . it just got to me for a moment, that’s all.

  “Can you remember it?” I ask hesitantly.

  Dying?

  “Yeah.”

  I’m not sure. I remember something. I remember being alive, with you, inside Mum, but after that . . . there’s nothing . . . less than nothing . . . no darkness, no light . . . no time, no where or when . . . no nothing, forever and ever and ever and ever . . .

  “It was terrifying,” we say together, our eyes filling with tears.

  It still is.

  We sink back into our silence again, and for a while we just sit there together, gazing around the snow cave, remembering, imagining, wondering what might have been . . .

  Eventually Ella sighs again and says, We can’t stay here, Elliot. We have to get going.

  I nod reluctantly and glance at my watch.

  What time is it, Cinders?

  “What?”

  Ella smiles, glancing at my bare right foot. Cinderella lost her glass slipper, you’ve lost your Wellington boot. If you don’t get home by midnight, you’ll turn into a pumpkin.

  “No,” I say, shaking my head, “you’ve got it all wrong. It’s Cinderella’s golden carriage that turns into a pumpkin, not her. And she gets home before midnight anyway.”