Born Scared

by Kevin Brooks

  DOC: Why not?

  ME: I don’t know. That’s just how it is. I don’t have any control over what scares me and what doesn’t.

  DOC: Does anything on the television frighten you?

  ME: No.

  DOC: Not even horrific things on the news?

  ME: It’s not real.

  DOC: It’s a representation of reality though, isn’t it?

  ME: It’s still not real.

  DOC: And that’s the same with all your books and the things you see on the internet, is it? It’s not real, so it’s not frightening?

  ME: I can’t explain it. I don’t even bother trying to understand it myself anymore. I just . . . I don’t know. I just do my best to live with it.

  DOC: Do you ever get used to being scared all the time?

  ME: No, but I’ve kind of become used to not getting used to it.

  “Are you sure you can trust her?” Dake asked Jenner.

  They’d left the moors behind now and were driving along a narrow road that would eventually bring them out at the top of the village. The snow had eased off a little, and although the icy wind was still blowing hard, the Land Rover was shielded from the worst of it by the high banks and drystone walls on either side of the road.

  “I don’t trust anyone,” Jenner said matter-of-factly.

  “So how do you know she’s not lying?”

  “Because she knows what I’ll do to her if she is.”

  Dake didn’t doubt there was a veiled threat to him in Jenner’s answer — and you’d better not mess me around either — and he also knew that Jenner didn’t make idle threats. He made promises, and he kept them.

  “It just seems a bit odd, that’s all,” Dake said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The timing, you know . . . Christmas and everything. I still don’t get it. I mean, you would have thought they’d empty the place over Christmas, not keep it all there.”

  Jenner sighed. “How many more times do I have to tell you? The whole point of this, the reason it won’t be expected — and why we’re going to get away with it — is precisely because of the timing. They usually would keep all the branches empty over Christmas, but when their internal computer system crashed last week, it messed up the program they use to schedule and track the collections —” Jenner paused, glancing sideways at Dake. “Do I really have to go over all this again? Don’t you remember anything, for God’s sake?”

  “Yeah, of course I remember,” Dake said defensively. “It’s just . . . well, you know . . . I can’t be expected to remember everything, can I?”

  Jenner shook his head in disbelief. He’d always known that Dake wasn’t particularly intelligent — he could barely read or write, for a start — but Jenner was beginning to wonder now if there was something seriously wrong with him. How could he not remember what he’d already been told at least three or four times?

  Jenner slowed the Land Rover and pulled over to let a tractor go by. Once it had passed, he lit a cigarette and turned to Dake.

  “The money’s there, okay?” he said, as patiently as possible. “It’s in the vault. That’s all you need to know.”

  “How much?”

  “I’ve already told you that.”

  “I know.” Dake grinned. “I just want to hear it again.”

  “At least a million, according to the girl. Probably more.”

  “At least a million . . .” Dake echoed dreamily.

  “Yeah, and the best thing about it is they won’t even know it’s gone until the day after Boxing Day.”

  “He’ll know though, won’t he?”

  “Who?”

  “The manager guy, you know . . . the one who’s going to open the safe for us. He’ll know the money’s gone.”

  “He won’t tell anyone.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because he’ll know what I’ll do to his mother if he does.”

  ME: Do you think I’m crazy?

  DOC: Do you?

  ME: I don’t know . . . sometimes, maybe. I’m definitely not normal, am I?

  DOC: None of us are normal. We all have things wrong with us. It’s just that some of those things have a much bigger effect on our lives than others.

  ME: Do you think something could have gone wrong in my head when I was a baby?

  DOC: Do you mean when your heart stopped?

  ME: Yeah. Maybe my brain stopped too, or it got damaged or something.

  DOC: Well, that can happen, yes. If you’re starved of oxygen at birth, it can lead to irreversible brain damage. But in all the instances I’ve ever come across, the oxygen supply has been stopped for at least two or three minutes, usually quite a bit longer. But that wasn’t the case with you, Elliot. Your heart stopped beating for less than a minute.

  ME: Yeah, but what if —?

  DOC: There’s absolutely nothing wrong with your mind, Elliot. Trust me. If you’d suffered any brain damage, I’d know.

  ME: So are you saying it’s perfectly all right for me to be terrified of everything?

  DOC: No, of course not.

  ME: So there is something wrong with my brain.

  Sometimes I have no sense of the present. All I can feel is a sense of the past and a sense of the future — the “then” and the “when.” I can look back and remember things — things that happened, things that I did — and I can look forward to things that haven’t happened yet. I can imagine things happening in the future — the next half hour, the next day, next Monday afternoon, next year. I can do all that. But the present . . . the present seems to pass me by. I can’t get hold of it. It’s like a shapeless and senseless void that moves, like a cursor, between the past and the future. A dead black line, forever moving, forever being . . . but never actually there.

  ME: I know you think I’m weird.

  DOC: What makes you say that?

  ME: I heard you talking to Mum once. You told her it was really weird how sometimes I sound really grown-up, almost like an adult, but other times I seem almost babyish.

  DOC: I didn’t say it was “really weird,” I just said I’d noticed it, that’s all. And I didn’t say “babyish” either. All I said was that sometimes the way you talk makes you sound older than you are, and sometimes you come across as being younger than you are. I didn’t say it was “weird.” And I wouldn’t use that word anyway.

  ME: What word would you use?

  DOC: I don’t know . . . “different,” perhaps. “Unusual.” There’s nothing wrong with being unusual.

  I’ve never met my father. According to Mum, she met him at a party, they spent the night together, and that was that. They never saw each other again.

  “It was all perfectly amiable,” she told me once. “He was a lovely man, and we had a very nice time together. But neither of us wanted to take it any further, and we were both quite happy to go our separate ways.”

  “What was his name?” I asked her.

  “Martyn.”

  “Martyn what?”

  “I honestly don’t know. He introduced himself as Martyn, and I told him I was Grace, and that’s all we needed to know.”

  Even if she had known his last name, she still wouldn’t have made any effort to contact him when she found out she was pregnant.

  “It would only have complicated things,” she explained. “And besides, apart from his name, the only other thing I knew about Martyn was that he lived in Los Angeles and he was a writer, but he didn’t write under his real name. So I couldn’t have tracked him down even if I’d wanted to, which I didn’t.”

  I don’t miss having a father — you can’t miss what you’ve never had, can you? — and on the rare occasions when I do wonder what it would be like to have a dad, the mere thought of it makes me shudder. A man living in my house? A monkem? A man I’d have to share Mum with . . . ?

  No.

  I wouldn’t like that one bit.

  DOC: We might not know the precise cause of your problem, Elliot, but we know how it aff
ects you, and it might be possible to lessen those effects to some degree.

  ME: How?

  DOC: There are antianxiety medications that might help. They’re obviously not intended for treating the level of fear that afflicts you, and normally I’d never even consider this type of medication for a child, but you’re a far from normal case, Elliot.

  ME: Thanks a lot.

  The Doc looks totally different when he smiles, which isn’t very often. But when he does smile, it lightens his face, makes him look younger. It lifts his mask of somber gravity and reveals a twinkle of the child in him.

  DOC: Anyway, I’ve talked to your mum about it, and although she hates the idea of putting you on medication as much as I do, she agrees that it’s worth trying. But only if you want to.

  ME: Will the drugs stop me being afraid?

  DOC: No, but they might lessen the severity of your fears.

  ME: So I’ll still be scared of things, but not so much.

  DOC: Possibly, yes. It’s also possible that medication won’t help you at all. In fact, it could actually make you feel worse. But the only way to find out is by trying it. You also need to bear in mind that there are dozens of different types of antianxiety medication, and it could easily take months, or even years, to find out which of them — if any — is best for you. Now I know this is a lot to think about, but at the moment, that’s all I want you to do — just think about it, okay? There’s no rush. You can take as much time as you want. And if there’s anything you’re not sure about, anything you want to ask, just let me know, okay?

  ME: Yeah.

  DOC: We can do this, Elliot. We can do everything possible to make you better. But we have to do it together. We have to do it between the three of us — you, your mum, and me.

  And Ellamay, I added silently.

  Thank you, she said.

  You’re welcome.

  It’s twenty-one minutes past three now, and I’m back in the hallway, making some final adjustments to my Wellington boots. They’re actually the Doc’s boots. He left them at our house once — I don’t know why — and they’ve been here ever since. They’re far too big for me, which is why I’ve had to customize them by stuffing the toe ends with scrunched-up newspaper. I used to have my own pair of Wellingtons, but it’s been so many years since I wore them — so many years since I’ve needed them — that I don’t have a clue where they are. In fact, it’s quite possible that Mum got rid of them a long time ago. And even if she didn’t, and I did know where they are, they’d be at least a couple of sizes too small for me by now.

  I don’t feel very comfortable in the Doc’s Wellingtons, but they’re the only boots I could find, so I don’t really have much choice.

  The gloves and the coat and the hat I’m wearing aren’t mine either. They’re Mum’s. As with the boots, I used to have my own coat and everything, but if you barely ever leave the house — and I barely ever leave my room, let alone the house — there’s not much point in having outdoor clothing. And besides, I can always borrow Mum’s if I need to. She’s only a bit bigger than me, so they’re not too bad a fit.

  Although, having said that . . .

  What are you doing now? Ellamay says.

  “These gloves are a bit loose. I’m just going to try padding them out a bit with a few scraps of wadded-up newspaper. It won’t take long.”

  That’s enough, Elliot.

  “What?”

  We have to go. You can’t keep putting it off.

  “I’m not —”

  Yes, you are. You know you are.

  She’s right, of course. I keep trying to convince myself that I’m ready to do this, that I’ve got my fear under control . . . but the truth is, I’m as terrified now as I was twenty-one minutes ago. All I want to do is go back to the sanctuary of my room and stay there forever. It’s the only place I feel safe, the only place I ever want to be. My room.

  My everything.

  My world.

  The countryside can be a scary place when darkness falls. Before I had my own specially modified fear-proof room, I’d often lie awake at night just waiting for the horror-sounds to begin. The piercing screech of an owl, the scream of a fox (like someone in terrible pain), the pitiful cries of rabbits being killed . . . and monkem noises too — gunshots from night hunters, the shattering roar of a speeding car or motorbike, drunk monkems passing by, shouting and laughing. And on top of all that, there’s the constant sound of army maneuvers up on the moors — the distant pop-popping of gunfire, the rumble of tanks, soldiers’ war cries, the whiz-bang of flares going off . . .

  And even when the night is silent, it’s a silence of darkness and dread, a silence that’s always waiting for the next unholy scream.

  But I don’t hear anything of the night anymore.

  My fear-proof room is one hundred percent soundproof.

  I don’t know exactly how it works, but basically the walls and the ceiling are made up of several layers of various kinds of stuff that either absorbs or reflects sound, and the only window is quadruple glazed. The window looks out over the fields at the back of the house, but I very rarely actually see them because there’s a blackout blind that totally obscures the view. I can raise the blind if I want to — and occasionally I find the courage to have a quick look — but most of the time it stays down, shielding me from the outside world.

  The room’s painted white all over. I chose white because for me it’s the color that comes closest to nothing. It’s the most nonscary color, the color that doesn’t fill my head or my heart with anything. I can lie on my bed staring up at the ceiling, sometimes for hours on end, and I don’t have to worry about the sky of whiteness invading my thoughts and feelings. It leaves me alone . . .

  It leaves us alone.

  Me and Ellamay.

  Solitude becomes us.

  My room has everything I need. I’ve got my own bathroom — shower, sink, toilet . . . but no bath. Baths are too scary. You can drown in a bath. I’ve got a kettle and cups and stuff, so I can make myself a hot drink whenever I want (tea or hot chocolate only — coffee makes me twitch and shake like a crazy thing). I’ve got a little fridge (cold drinks, milk, yogurt, butter), and a little kitchen area with plates and cutlery and a bread box, so I can have a sandwich or something whenever I feel like it. I’ve got a bed, of course, and all my own furniture — settee, armchair, desk. I’ve got a laptop, a twenty-four-inch flat-screen TV, a landline phone, and a cell phone. The landline is set up so it only receives incoming calls from Mum (and instead of ringing, a green light flashes on and off when she calls), and the cell phone is for emergencies only.

  I’ve got all the clothes I need in here, which isn’t a lot, and I’ve got all my “school” stuff too — pens, notebooks, textbooks. (Mum tried her best to get me into the local school, but after two disastrous attempts — both of which traumatized me for weeks — she accepted that normal schooling was out of the question for me, and since then she’s taught me herself at home.)

  Most important of all, I’ve got all my “nonschool books” in here too, the books I just like reading. Two walls of my room are completely taken up with bookshelves, and the shelves are packed solid with hundreds of books. I don’t know exactly how many I’ve got, but the last time I counted them — just over a year ago — the total was 1,762.

  So that’s it, basically.

  That’s my world.

  My sanctuary.

  My every day and night.

  Jenner glanced at his watch again.

  It was 12:28.

  They were parked across the road from the house, and so far, things hadn’t been going quite as Jenner had planned. For a start, he hadn’t given any consideration to the possibility that the mother might not be at home, so when they’d arrived at the house twenty minutes ago and seen that her car wasn’t there, it had completely thrown Jenner off balance. And for another thing, once he’d decided that the only thing to do was wait and hope the mother came back soon, he’d beg
un to realize that maybe their Santa Claus outfits weren’t such a good idea after all. As disguises, plain and simple, they were excellent. No one who saw them in their Santa gear could possibly give a meaningful description of them. Unfortunately, no one who saw two cheap-and-nasty Santas sitting in a parked Land Rover would ever forget them either, especially if they’d tried making conversation with them, which several curious passersby had already done.

  But there was no point in worrying about it, Jenner told himself. It was what it was, and there was nothing they could do about it. And besides . . .

  “About bloody time,” he said as a silvery-gray Volvo pulled into the driveway.

  “Is that her?” Dake asked.

  “Of course it’s her. Who else is it going to be?”

  “I don’t know, do I?”

  Jenner watched as the mother got out of the car and scurried over to the front door, digging into her handbag as she went, looking — no doubt — for the door key.

  “She’s left it running,” Dake said.

  “What?”

  “The car . . . she’s left it running.”

  My fear pills are a drug called Moloxetine. It’s not a commonly prescribed medication, and I only ended up taking it after the Doc had tried me on just about every other antianxiety drug he could think of. None of the others had been right for me. Some of them just hadn’t worked at all, and others had helped a little bit, but not enough to outweigh their sometimes quite drastic side effects — hallucinations, mania, aggression, extreme fatigue, hyperactivity, acute diarrhea, vomiting, panic attacks, severe depression, suicidal thoughts . . .

  As I said to the Doc once, “I’d rather be terrified all the time for the rest of my life than wake up every morning wanting to kill myself.”

  My fear pills don’t stop me being scared. I still live in constant fear, and my life is still ruled by that fear, but with Moloxetine . . . well, it’s hard to describe exactly what it does for me, but basically it makes everything feel not quite so terrible. Of course, there’s a massive difference between feeling “not quite so terrible” and feeling “good,” or “okay,” or “not too bad,” but the way I see it is that any relief, no matter how small, is a lot better than nothing. It’s like offering a coat to a naked person caught outside on a rainy winter’s day. The coat’s not going to solve their problem, it’s not going to stop them being cold and wet, but they’d have to be pretty stupid to not wear it.