Born Scared

by Kevin Brooks

  She shook her head. “I don’t know . . . he doesn’t live with them, I know that, but I don’t know anything else about him. Gordon’s never even mentioned him.”

  “So it’s just the two of them in the house.”

  “Yeah.”

  Kaylee had gone on to assure Jenner that on Christmas Eve Gordon would be back home by one o’clock at the latest.

  “The bank closes at twelve,” she explained. “Then most of us are going to the King’s Head for a few drinks. It’s kind of a Christmas tradition.”

  “Does Gordon go with you?”

  “Only for about ten minutes, thank God. He forces himself to make an appearance — he thinks it’s good for staff morale — but once he’s bought the first round of drinks, and taken a microscopic sip from his half pint of lager and lime, he makes his excuses and leaves us to it.”

  “So what time is it by then?”

  Kaylee shrugged. “About twelve thirty. He’s got to walk back to the bank to pick up his car, which is another five or ten minutes —”

  “Then another ten minutes to drive home.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So he’s back by one.”

  “Yeah.”

  “As long as he doesn’t stay longer in the pub, or do some Christmas shopping in town, or stop off in Costa for a cup of coffee and a grilled cheese sandwich . . .”

  Kaylee laughed.

  “What?” said Jenner.

  “Well, for a start, Gordon doesn’t drink coffee. It doesn’t agree with him, apparently. The only thing he drinks is tea from a flask that his mummy makes for him. And as for Christmas shopping . . .” Kaylee shook her head. “He will have done it all months ago. And he never stays longer in the pub.” She shrugged. “He’s Gordon — you can set your watch by him.”

  Let’s just hope you’re right, Jenner thought, smiling at her. For your sake.

  Nine o’clock in the morning, Christmas Eve.

  The snow was falling heavily, the sky low and dark with thick black clouds, and the wind was getting wilder by the minute.

  Mum had called the pharmacy, and they’d confirmed my prescription was there, and now we were in my room, and Mum was ready to go.

  Coat, hat, boots, gloves . . .

  Car keys in her hand.

  She’d told me last night that she was going to call Shirley and ask her to come down and stay with me while she went to the pharmacy, but I’d told her not to bother, that I’d be okay on my own again.

  “Are you sure?” she’d asked me.

  “Yeah.”

  The truth was that if Shirley was here she’d want to talk to me, which normally I don’t mind at all — I really like talking to her — but today wasn’t a normal day. It was hard enough talking to Mum and Ellamay today, let alone anyone else. I needed the silence of solitude.

  “I’ll be as quick as I can,” Mum said. “Okay?”

  I nodded . . .

  “Are you sure you’re all right on your own?”

  I nodded again, and again . . .

  I couldn’t seem to stop nodding my head.

  Mum cupped my face in her hands and held me gently, steadying the manic movement of my head.

  “Okay?” she murmured after a while.

  “Yeah.”

  I smiled at her, trying to show her that I was okay, but I got the feeling — partly from the look in her eyes, and partly from an image that had suddenly appeared in my head — that my smiling face was a grinning skull.

  Mum kissed the skull.

  “Stay in here, all right?” she told it. “I’ll see you in half an hour.”

  Thirty seconds after she’d left, I opened my door, went down the hallway, and stood by the front door. The double garage (where Mum keeps her car) is no more than ten yards away from the front door, so when I put my ear to the door and listened hard, straining to hear above the gusting wind, I could just about make out the metallic screech of the garage door opening. A few moments later, I heard the chunk of the driver’s door being pulled shut . . . then another short pause . . . and then finally the whir of the engine starting up . . .

  And then, almost immediately, the sound of it spluttering and dying.

  Mum tried it again.

  The ignition whirred, the engine whined — yurr-yurr-yurr, yurr-yurr-yurr, yurr-yurr-yurr, yurr, yurr-yurr-yurr — then it coughed once, rattled, and stopped again.

  I heard someone laughing then, and the sound of it made my skin crawl. And then I realized it was me.

  Mum tried the engine again.

  Yurr-yurr-yurr, yurr-yurr-yurr, yurr-yurr-yurr, yurr, yurr-yurr-yurr . . .

  The yurring was getting weaker now, and when it stopped this time, there was no cough or rattle, just a hopeless-sounding whine.

  I heard the car door opening, then a creak as Mum opened the hood, and then everything went quiet.

  After ten minutes or so, I heard the slam of the hood closing, the chunk of the driver’s door, and then the sound of Mum trying the ignition again. This time it didn’t even whine. It just made a dull clonk.

  Mum’s gloves were covered in oil and grease when she came back in, and her face was streaked with black smudges. She must have realized right away that I’d heard her trying (and failing) to start the car, because the first thing she said when she came through the door was, “It’s all right, Elliot, nothing to worry about. Everything’s okay.” She shut the door and started taking her coat off. “Shirley’s going to pick up your prescription,” she explained. “I just called her. She’s on her way to Northallerton at the moment, but all she has to do when she gets there is collect a Christmas present that she ordered last week. Once she’s done that, she’ll drive right back to town and get your prescription.” Mum looked at me. “She won’t be long. An hour, hour and a half at the very most.”

  I tried to hide my disappointment, but Mum knows me too well to be fooled. And it works the other way around too, which was why I knew that she was slightly annoyed with me for being disappointed.

  “The car won’t start, Elliot,” she said, unable to keep a hint of irritation from her voice. “I can’t do anything about that right now. And the only other options I have are walking downtown to get your prescription, which I’d rather not do in this weather, or getting a taxi, and they’re all going to be really busy today, so I’d probably have to wait hours for one anyway, by which time —”

  “Sorry, Mum,” I said quietly. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  She paused, looking at me, then she let out a long sigh. “I know you didn’t, love. And I’m sorry too. It’s just . . . well, you know . . .” She smiled sadly. “We could have done without this today, couldn’t we?”

  I did my best to smile back at her, but it was a pretty feeble attempt. My mouth seemed to have forgotten how to do it.

  “Listen,” Mum said, “I’ll try the car again in a few minutes, okay? And if it still doesn’t start —”

  “It’s all right, Mum,” I told her. “You don’t have to do that. I’m okay waiting for Shirley.”

  “Really?”

  I nodded. “I’ve still got two pills left, so even if she’s a bit late, I’ll still be all right.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah, honestly, it’s not a problem.”

  She smiled at me.

  “You need a wash,” I told her. “You’ve got black stuff all over your face.”

  At 10:15, I took my second fear pill of the day.

  Then, out of habit, I shook the bottle.

  The lonesome rattle of the last remaining pill sank me to my knees. Yeah, honestly, it’s not a problem . . .

  My eyes filled with tears, and I broke down and sobbed like a baby.

  At 10:47, Shirley called. She was on her way back now, she told Mum, but there were long delays near Brompton-on-Swale because of a serious car accident. She didn’t know how much longer she’d be, but she’d let us know as soon as she was on the move again.

  “At least she’s not far
from town,” Mum said, trying to be optimistic. “Once she gets going again, it won’t take her long to get here.”

  I just nodded, not trusting myself to speak. I’d put my brave face back on after I’d finally stopped crying, but it was getting harder and harder to keep it on now, and I didn’t think I could do it much longer.

  11:31.

  Mum called Shirley.

  The call went to straight to voice mail — please leave a message after the beep.

  “It’s me,” Mum said into the phone. “Just checking to see what’s happening. Call me as soon as you can, okay?”

  She ended the call and turned to me. “The reception’s not very good out that way. I’ll try her again in a few minutes.”

  11:38.

  Mum got Shirley’s voice mail again.

  11:49.

  And again.

  12:04.

  And again.

  12:16.

  Shirley finally called. She was on the move again, just coming into town. She’d see us in twenty minutes.

  Mum smiled at me. “All right?”

  “Yeah,” I said, almost managing a smile.

  The snarl of the beast was fading again.

  I could still hear it though.

  And I knew it wouldn’t fall silent until the fear pills were in my hand.

  By 12:45, Shirley still hadn’t arrived.

  When Mum called her this time, her phone didn’t even go to voice mail. All Mum got was an automated message. This person’s phone is currently unavailable. Please try again later or send a text.

  Mum frowned, then tried again.

  She got the same message.

  She called the pharmacy. They told her that Shirley had collected my prescription half an hour ago.

  “I know what it’ll be,” Mum said, ending the call and glancing at her watch. “When I first spoke to Shirley earlier, she said she was going to take the back way to the village so she could stop at her house to pick up our Christmas presents and bring them down to us with your pills. I asked her to come straight here instead. She said she would, but I bet you she stopped there anyway.”

  Mum didn’t sound very convinced, and I guessed she was thinking — as I was — that it wouldn’t take Shirley half an hour to stop and pick up some presents, and even if it did, that didn’t explain why she wasn’t answering her phone.

  “I’ll try her landline,” Mum said.

  She called the number, put the phone to her ear, listened for a few moments, then frowned again.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Hold on . . .”

  She redialed, listened again, then shook her head.

  “That’s odd,” she said.

  “What?”

  “It’s not ringing. There’s no answering machine or anything. The line’s just dead.”

  She thought about it for a few moments, then went over to our landline and picked up the handset. She keyed in a number and put the phone to her ear, then nodded to herself and put it back in the cradle again.

  “Ours isn’t working either,” she said. “The phone lines must be down.”

  She glanced at her watch.

  It was just past one o’clock.

  Mum was really worried now, and I knew what she was thinking. Something must have happened to Shirley. Maybe her car had broken down or was stuck in the snow on the way back to the village, or maybe she’d been involved in an accident of some kind, or she’d suddenly been taken ill, and no one had been able to let Mum know because the phone lines were down . . .

  Or maybe . . .

  No.

  There was no point in guessing.

  I took a deep breath, closed my eyes for a moment, then said what I had to say.

  “You have to go up there, Mum. You have to go up to Shirley’s house to find out what’s going on.”

  Mum looked at me. “What makes you think Shirley’s at home? She could be anywhere.”

  “I know, but you have to start looking for her somewhere, don’t you? And your car’s broken down, don’t forget, which means you’ll be walking, so it makes sense to check out the closest place first.”

  Mum thought about that for a while, staring at the floor and nodding quietly to herself, then I saw her go still, and a few seconds later she sighed and shook her head.

  “I can’t,” she muttered, looking up at me. “I can’t leave you here on your own, not now. You’re almost out of pills. What if —”

  “I’ve got two pills left,” I lied. “I’ll be all right for hours yet.”

  “I thought you were down to your last one?”

  “So did I, but I found another one in an old pill bottle at the back of the cabinet. And it doesn’t matter anyway.” I tried a smile. “Once you’ve found Shirley, I’ll have tons of pills.”

  “But what if I don’t find her? What if I get to her house and she’s not there? What are we going to do then?”

  “We’ll deal with that if it comes to it,” I said.

  My voice, and my words, sounded so alien to me that for a moment or two I felt really strange. It was as if I’d become a different person, a different me, and the real me was somehow floating in the air above this other-me, looking down at him. It only lasted a few seconds though, and when I came back to myself — and took a few calming breaths — I felt comparatively normal again.

  Keep going, Elliot, Ellamay said. You’re almost there.

  “What are you waiting for, Mum?” I heard myself say. “Just go.”

  Ten minutes later, after Mum was all bundled up again — coat, hat, boots, gloves — and after we’d double-checked that our cell phones were working, and agreed on a plan to keep in touch, and after Mum had given me one last hug before opening the door and stepping out into the snow . . . after all that, I finally let go of the relatively self-controlled me that I’d been forcing myself to be for Mum’s sake, and as I let out a long sigh of relief and let myself slump down to the floor, it was almost a pleasure to be the real me again, the hopelessly scared-to-death me.

  Hello again, Mr. Beastie.

  Welcome back.

  The plan I’d agreed with Mum was that she’d call me on my cell phone every five minutes — to make sure that I was okay and to let me know that she was okay — and that she’d also call me when she got to Shirley’s, no matter what she found when she got there.

  The first phone call went ahead almost as planned.

  “Elliot?”

  “Mum?”

  “Can you . . . shhhkkorr . . . me?”

  “What?”

  “. . . kahshhh . . . you hear me?”

  The connection kept going crackly and cutting out, and Mum was having to shout to make herself heard above the roar of the wind as well, so I could only make out parts of what she was saying.

  “. . . shhhkkorr . . . you okay?”

  “Yeah. Where are you?”

  “. . . shhhkkk . . . kaaahh . . . kahshhh . . . village . . .”

  “What?”

  “. . . go now . . . kaaahh . . . signal . . . kahshhh . . . later . . .”

  “What? Mum? Are you there? Hello?”

  She’d gone.

  We’d spoken to each other, though, that was the main thing. We’d let each other know we were okay. And now all I had to do was wait for the next call.

  But it never came.

  Shirley’s house is the first on the right as you head up into the village. I’ve only ever walked up there a couple of times, and that was with Mum a long time ago. At that time, she was still following the advice she’d been given — by almost everyone — that the best way for me to get over my fears was to face up to them. She hated making me do it, and she soon realized that — for me — it was actually the worst thing to do, but she didn’t know that then.

  But although I’ve only physically walked up to Shirley’s a few times, I’ve made the cyber-journey countless times on my laptop — studying the satellite view, zooming in and out on Google Earth, following the route ste
p by step on street view, calculating times and distances . . .

  I do this for every journey Mum makes. I need to know where she is, how far away she is, and how long it’ll be before she gets back.

  Which is why I know that:

  1) the distance between our house and Shirley’s is 527 yards.

  2) the average human walking speed is roughly three miles per hour.

  3) so normally it would take Mum about six minutes to walk up to Shirley’s.

  But today wasn’t a normal day.

  Even if the snowplow had been through, and the worst of the snow had been cleared from the road, the conditions out there were still going to be pretty bad, and it was bound to take longer than usual for Mum to walk up to Shirley’s. I doubted she’d make it in under ten minutes. It was probably going to be closer to fifteen minutes, or even longer. But as long as she kept calling me every five minutes, as long as I knew she was okay, and as long as I knew she was still on her way . . .

  I wasn’t too worried at first when the second five minutes had passed and she still hadn’t called. It probably doesn’t mean anything, I told myself. She’s probably just lost the signal on her phone or been distracted by something or maybe her hands are so cold now that it’s taking her a bit longer to get the phone out of her pocket . . .

  I stared at the phone in my hand, willing it to ring.

  A minute passed.

  Two minutes . . .

  Three.

  Now I was worried.

  Four.

  More than worried.

  My hand was trembling as I pressed the speed-dial key and put the phone to my ear.

  The connection went straight to voice mail.

  I ended the call and tried again.

  It went straight to voice mail again.

  “Mum?” I said after the beep. “Where are you? What’s happening? Why aren’t you answering your phone?”

  I ended the call again and immediately called Shirley. Her cell phone went straight to voice mail too, and when I tried her landline, all I got was the empty crackle and hiss of a dead line.

  I was desperate to try Mum’s phone again, but I forced myself to wait. She might be trying to call me now, and if I kept calling her all the time, she’d never get through. I sent her a text — r u ok mum? pls call me x — and then I just sat there, staring at the phone . . .