Born Scared

by Kevin Brooks

  “Suspect vehicle turned right onto Beckshill Lane, now heading south. He’s coming your way, Griff.”

  “Do you want us to stop him?”

  “Stay where you are for now. But be ready.”

  “Received.”

  Griff Beattie glanced at his partner. “Okay?”

  Rick Tarn nodded, then reached down and started the car.

  “Put the rifle down, kid,” the anti-Santa-with-the-gun says dismissively. “You’re not going to shoot me, are you?”

  Without lowering the rifle, I take a step toward him. A flicker of doubt shows in his eyes — momentarily pricking his casual arrogance — and he instinctively steps back. He quickly regains his composure, straightening his gun arm and giving me a disdainful grin, but we both know it’s too late for him. He stepped back. He can’t change that now. He backed away from me.

  “I don’t want to hurt you, kid,” he says, “but I will if I have to. So why don’t you just put down the gun —”

  “Get out of the way,” I say, moving toward him.

  My voice is calm and confident. It doesn’t sound anything like me.

  The anti-Santa is backing away again now, shuffling backward along the hallway, still aiming his gun at my head.

  “All right, that’s far enough,” he says, trying to sound forceful. “I mean it. Any closer and I’ll pull the trigger.”

  “No, you won’t,” I tell him. “I’m just a kid. You’re not going to murder an innocent child, are you? You don’t want to be locked up for the rest of your life.”

  He stumbles over his feet, regains his balance, then glances quickly over his shoulder to see where he’s going. The stairs are on his right, the front door’s behind him, and the living-room door is just to his left. It’s half open. I can see the curtained front window — and in my mind, I can see Shirley’s snow globe on the sill behind the curtains — and I can see the settee beneath the window, and some of the bookshelf beside it. But there’s no sign of the second anti-Santa anywhere.

  Not that I care.

  I’m dead.

  “But if I kill you,” I say to the first anti-Santa, “if I shoot you dead, no one’s going to blame me, are they? You broke into my auntie’s house, you attacked her and my mum, you beat them up, tied them up, terrorized them . . . nothing’s going to happen to me if I kill you. Nothing at all.”

  He’s edging back into the living room now, nudging the door open with his elbow, and as I keep moving toward him, I begin to sense something — a distant voice, a faraway feeling, struggling to rise up through the deadness. It’s too faint to make out clearly, but it feels — or sounds — like some kind of warning.

  Everything happens in an instant then.

  I see the first anti-Santa glance to his left, looking down at the far end of the room, where Mum and Shirley are tied to the radiator, and at the same time I hear the sound of muffled grunting and thumping coming from them. I react instinctively to it, and as I start moving toward the doorway, and the first anti-Santa starts getting out of my way, I see him flick a quick look behind me. It’s an upward glance, and it’s so rapid that it takes a moment to sink in, and by then it’s too late. I spin around as fast as I can, but the second anti-Santa has already vaulted over the banister and is flying toward me, feetfirst.

  A sudden (and totally useless) realization flashes through my mind — Mum and Shirley did try to warn you, didn’t they? — and then a giant hammer slams into my head and everything goes black.

  The roller-coaster world in Gordon’s head had become his reality now. It was all there was to him, and all he wanted. To be up here in the endless black sky, riding the stars, the beautiful lights . . . a streak of silver flying high above the fields of white . . .

  The Corsa was touching seventy miles per hour when it hit the first speed bump on the approach to the village. The car took off, all four wheels in the air, and the engine screamed . . .

  “Whooohh!” cried Gordon.

  Then, “Oomff!”

  . . . as the Corsa crashed back down with a bone-jarring crunch. The trunk flapped open, a hubcap flew off — spinning across the road into a ditch — and as a loud metallic crack came from under the car, the front end dropped down and sparks started shooting out from the side.

  To Gordon, the sparks were a mesmerizing blaze of burning stars, and he quickly realized that the faster he went, the brighter and fierier the stars became, so he put his foot down again, pushing the pedal all the way to the floor, and the screeching Corsa carried on speeding toward the village, leaving a trail of shooting stars in its wake.

  “Charlie Three Zero, abandoning pursuit. Suspect vehicle is damaged, but still traveling at high speed. Safer to let him go. Three Four?”

  “Go ahead,” Beattie said.

  “Don’t try stopping him when he gets to you, okay? It’s not worth the risk. Just let him go. We can pick him up later.”

  “Received.”

  Beattie clicked off his radio and looked at Tarn. “Did you hear what she said about stopping him?”

  Tarn shook his head. “The radio went a bit crackly at that point, didn’t it? I couldn’t quite catch what she was saying. Could you make it out?”

  “Nope, not a word of it.”

  Beattie smiled and fastened his seat belt.

  Time is meaningless to me now — it doesn’t seem to be passing anymore, it’s just there, all of it, all at once . . . the past, the present, the future . . . it’s all become the same thing . . . and I don’t even know what that means — but I’m fairly sure that I’m only fully unconscious for seconds, not minutes, and I’m already semiconscious as the two anti-Santas drag me into the living room and drop me on the floor in front of Mum and Shirley. My head feels twice its normal size, and it’s throbbing so violently that I can feel my brain thumping against my skull.

  The pain isn’t mine though. It belongs to another me. Not the other-me I was before, but a different me . . . a me that’s everything and everywhere all at once — sprawled on the floor in front of Mum and Shirley . . . looking down at us from the ceiling . . . looking up through a snow-filled glass sky at a vast swathe of absolute blackness stretching deep into space for a thousand million miles . . .

  And maybe we’re all somewhere else too. Somewhere warm and soft and secure . . .

  “I told you!”

  The harsh voice brings me back to the me that’s sprawled on the floor. It comes from behind me, and now I can hear the sound of a struggle — desperate movements, grunts, a muted yell . . . and then the harsh voice again ––“Right, that’s it!”— followed almost immediately by a muffled cry of pain . . .

  It’s Mum, I know it, and the sound of her suffering rips right through me, tearing all the chaos from my head, and in an instant, everything changes.

  There’s only me — there only ever was — and as I heave myself up off the floor and start getting to my feet, there’s only one thing that matters.

  Everything is unnaturally clear to me now — the room, the anti-Santas, Mum and Shirley and me . . . I’ve never felt so focused in my life.

  “Sit down, kid,” I hear the first anti-Santa say.

  He’s across the room, his back to the front window, facing me. He’s holding the pistol in both hands, arms outstretched, pointing the gun at me.

  “Hey!” he barks, as I turn my back on him. “Hey!”

  The second anti-Santa is standing over Mum and Shirley with the rifle in his hands. There’s a fresh cut on the side of Mum’s face, a small ring-shaped wound. It’s bleeding, but not much, and it doesn’t look too serious.

  The first anti-Santa shouts at me again, but I take no notice. I’ve tuned him out for now. The second anti-Santa is wavering, not sure whether to point the rifle at me or keep it on Mum and Shirley. There’s a small smear of red on the end of the rifle barrel, and I know how it got there. I can picture him getting annoyed with Mum —“I told you!”— and then, when she’d continued struggling —“Right, that’s it!�
�— he’d jabbed her in the face with the rifle. I can tell from the look in his eyes that he didn’t mean to hurt her, he was only trying to scare her, to make her shut up . . . he didn’t mean it, honestly . . . he’s not like that . . . he’s sorry . . .

  I go over to him, tear the rifle from his hands, and smash the butt into his head.

  As he slumps heavily to the floor, I desperately want to look down at Mum. I want to tell her not to worry, don’t be scared . . . I know what I’m doing . . . everything’s going to be okay . . . but I know that if I look at her, even for a moment, this thing I’ve become will shatter into a million pieces and the fear will have me again, and then I’ll just break down and die . . .

  So I force myself to ignore Mum, and I turn around to face the other anti-Santa.

  He’s moved a few steps closer to me now, but he’s still just standing there with his arms outstretched, pointing the gun at me. His hands are shaking, and there’s a look of bewilderment in his eyes, but he’s still got something in him — some kind of last-ditch pride — and we both know this isn’t over just yet.

  I drop the rifle and start moving toward him, walking slowly but steadily, my eyes fixed firmly on his.

  He adjusts his feet, shuffling a bit, but this time he doesn’t back off. He stays exactly where he is, staring down the barrel of the gun at me.

  “You don’t know what’s going on here, do you?” he says. “I mean, you don’t have a clue what any of this is about.”

  I don’t say anything.

  I take another step . . .

  And another . . .

  What is it, Elliot?

  Nothing.

  What did you see?

  “It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” the anti-Santa says. His voice is distant and detached, as if he’s talking to himself. “It should have been easy . . .”

  Just tell me. What did you see?

  It was snowing . . . like someone had shaken it up. That’s what made me look at it. And I saw something . . . or I thought I did.

  In the snow?

  In the whole thing.

  What was it?

  “. . . get in there, get him to open the safe, get the cash, and get out.”

  What was it, Elliot? What did you see?

  I saw the deadness in my heart.

  “Here he comes,” Rick Tarn said. “You ready?”

  Beattie nodded.

  Tarn put the car into gear, tightened his seat belt, and edged out across the road. The two officers had already worked out the best place to block the road, so all Tarn had to do now was maneuver the patrol car into position. Once he’d done that, and they were both satisfied that nothing could get past them, Tarn turned off the engine, but left the lights on, and Beattie switched on the emergency lights.

  I pause for a moment when the blue light starts flashing through the curtains. I’m only a few steps away from the anti-Santa now, and I can tell from the way he reacts to the lights that he’s not surprised to see them.

  “Police,” he says simply. “They’ve been out there a while. I expect their backup just arrived.” He smiles. “Now the fun’s really going to start.”

  I’m beginning to lose myself now — or at least whatever self I’ve become — and I need to hold on to it, if only for a few more moments. So I wipe everything from my mind — the voices in my head, the strangely insistent memories, the pulsing blue light strobing around the room, making everything look weirdly stuttered — and I take another step toward the anti-Santa. This time he responds, stepping toward me and putting the barrel of the pistol to my forehead. I can feel it — cold and hard — pressing into my skin, and I can see his finger resting on the trigger.

  “You’re not right in the head, are you?” he says.

  “Who is?”

  He smiles again.

  I know what he’s doing, or at least planning on doing. I’m his way out of here, his hostage. The police won’t risk anything if he’s holding a gun to a kid’s head.

  But it doesn’t matter.

  It’s not going to happen.

  As I slowly raise my hand toward the pistol, I keep staring right into him, letting him see what’s behind my eyes, letting him know what’s there . . .

  “Don’t,” he says. “No . . . don’t be stupid . . .”

  My hand rises to the gun, and I gently — but firmly — take hold of the barrel. I don’t try to take the pistol off him, I just hold it.

  “You can’t kill me,” I say, looking deep into his eyes. “I’m already dead.”

  The patrol car was positioned sideways across the road, just a few yards down from Shirley’s house. It was the narrowest part of the road — made even narrower by the cars parked on either side — and the blockade was so solid that even a cyclist would find it hard to get through.

  With the emergency lights flashing, coloring the black sky with waves of blue, and the patrol car’s headlights on full beam, the roadblock was unmissable, and Gordon saw it in plenty of time to stop.

  Not that he had any intention of stopping.

  Stopping meant a return to reality, and Gordon had had enough of that. He’d lived all his life in reality. He’d never known anything else. He’d never known he could be up here, riding the stars, riding the roller coaster, singing his heart out . . . and now that he did know, he was never going back.

  It was as simple as that.

  He was staying up here.

  And nothing was going to stop him.

  “What the hell’s he doing?” Beattie said, staring in disbelief at the rapidly approaching car.

  The front end of the Corsa on the driver’s side was hanging down even more now. Sparks were still shooting out from under the car, half the front bumper was missing, and the left-side wheel arch had broken off and was jammed up under the chassis.

  “He’s not slowing down,” Beattie said.

  “He will.”

  “He’d better hurry up then. Unless he hits the brakes pretty soon, he’s never going to stop in time.”

  The roadblock was less than thirty yards away now, and Gordon knew exactly what was going to happen when he got there. He could see it all in his mind, every little detail. It was as clear to him as if it had already happened. The shocked faces of the police officers as he hurtled toward them . . . the sudden fear in their eyes as they realized he wasn’t going to stop . . . and then, at the moment of impact — or the moment of expected impact — their amazement and wonder as the Corsa became what it really was — a magnificent silver stallion — and instead of crashing into them, it took off into the air and, with one mighty bound, leaped effortlessly over the patrol car . . .

  Gordon smiled.

  That’ll give them something to talk about.

  There’s nothing in the universe now but me and the anti-Santa. We’re all there is, joined together by our eyes and the gun. My hand gripping the barrel, keeping it pressed to my head . . . his finger on the trigger, flesh and bone on cold steel . . . my eyes showing him my deadness, his showing me that there’s a lot more to him than I thought. I can see his whole life in his eyes, and I can see the real possibility that this, for him, is where it’s meant to end.

  He doesn’t fear it.

  In fact, there’s a part of him that welcomes it.

  I feel an almost imperceptible movement in the pistol, and I don’t have to look at it to know what it is. I can see it in his eyes — his finger is tightening on the trigger.

  The tire blew just as the Corsa was passing the second house up from Shirley’s. It was the front right tire, and the car was traveling at sixty-five miles per hour when it burst. As the Corsa veered violently to the right — angling in toward the line of parked cars — Gordon reacted instinctively, stamping on the brake pedal and yanking the steering wheel hard to the left. The car turned just in time, narrowly missing a black Jeep parked in front of the Land Rover, but now the Corsa’s wheels were locked up and it was skidding uncontrollably across the road in the opposite direction,
still traveling at speed and heading straight for the houses . . .

  Gordon was fighting the steering wheel, swinging it from side to side, desperately trying to control the skid, but he didn’t really know what he was doing, and the car wasn’t responding to anything he did anyway. It was as if it had a mind of its own, and it knew where it was going, and there was nothing anyone could do to stop it.

  As it hurtled through a gap between two parked cars and mounted the sidewalk with a shuddering thunk, Gordon suddenly recognized what he was seeing through the windshield. The Volvo in the driveway to his right, the low picket fence straight ahead, and on the other side of the fence the snow-covered patch of lawn — which he dutifully mowed every Sunday in the summer — and beyond that the all-too-familiar house that had been his home since the day he was born . . .

  Gordon smiled.

  “It’s fate,” he muttered.

  As the Corsa smashed through the picket fence and careened across the snow-whitened lawn toward the house, Gordon took his foot off the brake and let go of the steering wheel.

  We both hear it at the same time, and without changing position or letting go of the gun, we both instinctively look over at the front window. The sound we hear is familiar, but wrong. It’s obviously a car, but it’s not the kind of sound a car usually makes when it’s passing by, and it’s rapidly getting louder and closer . . . much closer . . . and all we seem able to do is stand there in the middle of the room, frozen together in our absurd pose, both of us staring numbly at the curtained front window.

  We hear a shuddering chunk, then a loud crash of splintering wood . . . then a fleeting moment of relative silence . . . and then, with a thunderous crash, the room explodes.

  It’s all over in a matter of seconds — the massive crash as the car demolishes the living-room wall, the violent eruption of bricks and metal and broken glass flying across the room . . . the air choked with dust and smoke . . . the hazy awareness that something terrible is happening . . . then a sudden shattering pain in my head . . .