Kevin Brooks - Born Scared

‘No, it’s not that,’ I tell her, opening the cabinet above the sink. ‘I’m just checking to make sure there aren’t any pills in here that I’ve forgotten about.’

You’ve already done that.

‘I’m double-checking.’

You’ve already done that as well.

‘I’m triple-checking then.’

There are four empty brown-glass pill bottles in the cabinet. I always keep a few empty ones, just in case I break one or something. And Ellamay’s right, I have already checked each of them twice. But sometimes I get riddled with doubts – about all kinds of stupid little things – and there’s something inside me that won’t let me rest until I’ve hammered those doubts into the ground.

So I check all the bottles again – take one out, shake it

like this

unscrew the cap, look inside, turn it upside down and tap it against my palm . . .

Nothing, empty.

I put the cap back on, place it to one side, take the next bottle out of the cabinet. Shake it

like this

unscrew the cap, look inside . . .

Nothing.

I go through the same process with the other two bottles, but they’re both empty too, as I knew they would be.

Satisfied?

‘Not yet.’

I start removing everything else from the cabinet – packets of pills (for headaches and indigestion), eczema cream, toothpaste, toothbrush – and when the shelves are completely empty, I stand there scanning the dusty emptiness for any specks of yellow, hoping against hope that if I look hard enough I’ll find a stray pill. But I don’t. So then I reach up and start running my fingers through the dust, feeling around in every little corner of the shelves, every little gap between the shelves and the back of the cupboard, every possible place where a small yellow pill could be lodged . . .

There’s nothing there.

No doubt about it.

I close the cabinet, reach into my pocket, and pull out my current pill bottle. I give it a shake

like this

and the last remaining pill rattles thinly against the glass. I close my eyes for a second and think again about taking it now. The last one I took is beginning to wear off, and I can already feel the first faint stirrings of the thing I dread the most – the beast that is the fear of fear itself – and I know that if I don’t take the pill now . . .

Save it for later , Ellamay says.

‘I don’t think I can.’

You’re probably going to need it later a lot more than you need it now .

I know she’s right.

I know I have to wait.

I shake the bottle one more time

like this

and put it back in my pocket.

Is that it? Ellamay says. Can we go now? It’s going to be completely dark outside if we don’t go soon.

‘I know,’ I tell her, crossing over to the bedside cabinet and picking up my torch, ‘that’s why I need this.’

I switch it on to make sure it’s working. I already know that it is – I check it every night, and I only put new batteries in it a couple of days ago – but I go ahead and check it anyway.

It works, the beam’s strong and bright.

I drop the torch into my coat pocket, turn to leave . . .

Then stop.

And slowly turn round.

What now? says Ella.

The snow globe was a gift from Auntie Shirley. She’d been on a day trip to Whitby with her son Gordon, and when she was looking around one of the souvenir shops she’d spotted a snow globe that she really liked. In fact, she’d liked it so much that she’d bought two of them – one for herself, and one for Mum.

I’d never seen a snow globe before, so when Mum finally showed it to me – after thinking long and hard about whether it would frighten me or not – I had no idea what it was. I remember holding it my hands and gazing curiously at it, wondering what on earth it could be. A small glass dome, filled with clear liquid, with a miniature woodland scene inside. It was a fairytale scene – Little Red Riding Hood walking through the woods with the Big Bad Wolf – and although the small plastic figures and plastic trees weren’t particularly well made or anything, there was something about them, something about the whole thing, that felt very special to me.

‘Shake it,’ Mum said, smiling.

I didn’t know what she meant.

‘Like this,’ she told me, gesturing with her hand.

I copied her, awkwardly shaking the globe, and I was so surprised when it filled up with a blizzard of tiny snowflakes that I actually cried out in delight.

Mum was so relieved that I wasn’t scared of the snow globe, and even more pleased that I actually seemed to like something for a change, that she let me keep it. And it’s been sitting on my shelf ever since.

Shirley keeps her snow globe on the windowsill of her front room, and on the few occasions when I’ve been in Shirley’s house – visiting with Mum – I’ve always wondered if there’s some kind of connection between our two identical snow globes, some kind of at-a-distance awareness of each other . . .

Or something.

I don’t know.

What is it, Elliot ? says Ella.

‘Nothing,’ I tell her, looking away from the snow globe.

What did you see?

‘What do you mean?’

You know what I mean . W hat did you see just now in the snow globe?

‘Nothing . . .’

She knows I’m lying. She always knows.

Just tell me , she says quietly. 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, Elliot? What did you see?

I was in there, in the snow globe. Or something of me was in there . . . a bedraggled figure, limping along the pathway through the woods . . . snow falling in the darkness . . . great black trees all around me, their white-topped branches glinting in an unknown light . . . and up ahead of me an endless climb of rough wooden steps leading up a steep-sided slope . . .

That’s what I saw.

It was all there, all in a timeless moment, and then it was gone again, and all that remained of it was an unfamiliar – and unsettling – feeling of deadness in my heart.

I was six when Mum took me to see a child psychologist. I don’t think she really wanted me to see one – partly because she knew it would terrify me, and partly because it meant admitting to herself that my problem was mental rather than physical, which she still didn’t want to accept. But deep down she knew it was true, and she knew she had to do something about it. So she’d asked the Doc to recommend someone, and he’d asked around and come back with a name, and Mum had got in touch with her and made an appointment.

We got as far as the waiting room.

When the psychologist (or therapist, or whatever she called herself) came out of her consulting room and called me and Mum in, I simply couldn’t move. The sheer sight of her terrified me so much that I went into some kind of shock – paralysed in my chair, my muscles locked up, my eyes bulging, my throat too tight to breathe. The psychologist lady also froze for a moment, and I could tell by the look on her face that she was a bit startled by my petrified reaction to her. But, to her credit, she composed herself pretty quickly. Forcing a friendly smile to her face, she came over to where I was sitting with Mum and stopped in front of us. I didn’t want to look at her, but I just couldn’t help it. She was fairly old, but not ancient or anything. She had longish white hair tied back in a plait, and she was wearing a big necklace made out of shiny gold discs. She had a pea-sized mole or something on her upper lip, a hard-looking dark-brown lump, and as I sat there staring helplessly at it, I suddenly began to imagine it pulsing and throbbing, turning red, and then I saw it splitting open, and a big fat yellow fly crawling out . . .