Kevin Brooks - Born Scared

‘Hello, Elliot,’ the psychologist lady started to say. ‘My name’s . . .’

I didn’t hear the rest of it. I was already up and running for the door, screaming my heart out as I went.

About six months after that, Mum and the Doc arranged for another psychologist to visit me at home, but that didn’t work out either. The night before the day of the visit, I got myself into such a state just thinking about it that I ended up being physically ill. Vomiting, diarrhoea, cold sweats, a burning fever . . .

The home visit was cancelled.

‘How about if I talk to him?’ the Doc said to Mum. ‘I could ask him how he feels about everything, why he’s so frightened of things, and I could record our conversation, then pass it on to a child psychologist to see what they think.’

‘Would they be willing to do that?’ Mum asked.

‘There’s no harm in asking, is there?’

DOC: How do you actually feel when you’re frightened of something, Elliot?

ME: I feel scared.

DOC: Do you know why?

ME: What do you mean?

DOC: What I’m trying to get at is why you get so frightened. What is it that makes you afraid?

ME: It depends.

DOC: On what?

ME: Different things scare me in different ways.

DOC: Can you give me an example?

ME: Like what?

DOC: Cars, for instance. You’re frightened of cars, aren’t you?

ME: Yeah.

DOC: Why?

ME: Because they can kill me.

DOC: Could you expand on that a bit?

ME: When I’m in a car all I can think about is what happens if something goes wrong with it and it swerves off the road, or if something goes wrong with the driver and they lose control and drive into a wall, or if something goes wrong with another car or its driver and that car loses control and smashes into us . . . that’s why I’m frightened of cars.

DOC: Because you think they can kill you?

ME: Because they can kill me.

DOC: So it’s a fear based on a possible future reality.

ME: I don’t know what that means.

DOC: It means you’re frightened of something that could happen. It’s highly unlikely that it will happen, but there’s always a possibility.

ME: Right.

DOC: What about when you’re scared of things that don’t pose an obvious threat? Like colours. What is it about the colour red that scares you, for example? Is it the actual colour itself ?

ME: Not really, no.

DOC: What is it then? Does the colour red remind you of something scary?

ME: Blood.

DOC: Blood?

ME: Yeah.

DOC: Red reminds you of blood.

ME: Yeah.

DOC: And that scares you?

ME: Yeah.

DOC: Why?

ME: I don’t know . . . it just does. When I see something red, the redness of it just kind of fills my head with blood.

DOC: Is that why you ran away from that Santa Claus when you were little?

It happened eight years ago, when I was five years old. I was in town with Mum, clinging on to her hand as we made our way through the crowds of festive shoppers. It was so noisy and chaotic that I was already scared out of my wits, but that was nothing compared to the utter horror I felt when a hunchbacked Santa Claus suddenly appeared right in front of me.

I don’t know where he came from – he was probably part of some Christmas carnival or something – and I don’t know what on earth he thought he was doing either. All I know is that as he loomed towards me out of the crowd – stooped over (so his head was level with mine), and with his arms stretched out towards me – I was so shocked and horrified that I actually wet myself. He was hideous. His face all scabby and broken-veined, his eyes unfocused, his teeth just a row of rotten black stubs. His manky old Santa’s beard was yellowed with nicotine stains and dotted with cigarette burns and ketchup drips and God-knows-what-else, and underneath the beard, clearly visible, was a thick growth of bristly black stubble.

Although he had all the Santa gear on – red hat, red jacket, red trousers – he didn’t look anything like he was supposed to. He wasn’t very old for a start – mid-twenties at most – and he wasn’t fat or jolly either. He was just horrible. A blood-red nightmare. And he smelled bad too, like rotten fruit . . . rotten fruit mixed with cigarette smoke.

It must have been obvious how terrified I was, but as I cowered away from him, desperately hiding behind Mum’s legs, he just grinned and kept coming after me, as if it was some kind of game.

‘Don’t be scared, kid,’ he said, his voice all wheezy and croaky. ‘It’s only Santa . . . hey, come on, I ain’t gonna hurt ya . . .’

This all happened so quickly that I don’t think Mum knew what was going on at first, but when this monstrous Santa reached round her legs, pawing at me in what he must have thought was a playful fashion, and I tore my hand from hers and ran off into the crowds, she suddenly sprang into action. When the devil-Santa stood up straight, swore under his breath, and started to come after me, she lashed out at him, kicking him hard in the groin, and as he doubled over in agony and sank to the ground, she ran off after me, calling out my name as she went.

ME: I would have been scared of him whatever colour clothes he was wearing.

DOC: Do you think you would have been less scared if he wasn’t dressed all in red?

ME: Yeah, but I still would have run away from him.

DOC: What about all the red things you see every day? I mean, that Homer Simpson mug on your desk over there, the one with all your pens in . . . that’s got bits of red on it.

ME: I’m okay with bits of red. It’s only when there’s a big solid lump of it that it really gets to me. Like if someone’s wearing a red coat or something. And it doesn’t happen all the time either.

DOC: What do you mean?

ME: Sometimes I can see the scary colours and they don’t do anything to me at all, and other times they only bother me a bit. But on scary-colour days . . . that’s when it’s really bad.

DOC: What other colours are scary?

ME: Black, blue . . . purple sometimes.

DOC: Do they fill your head with frightening things in the same way that red does?

ME: Yeah.

DOC: What does blackness fill your head with?

ME: Death, darkness, night, nothingness . . .

DOC: Blue?

ME: The sea, lakes and rivers . . .

DOC: What is it about the sea that scares you?

ME: Drowning.

DOC: Do you have scary days and non-scary days with these colours too?

ME: Yeah.

DOC: Different days for different colours?

ME: No. A scary-colour day is the same for all colours, and so is a non-scary day.

DOC: What kind of day is it today?

ME: Not too bad. Not completely non-scary, but not totally scary either. Somewhere in between.

DOC: And what about all this, Elliot? All your books, the television, your laptop . . .

ME: What about it?

DOC: Well, a few minutes ago you were telling me about your fear of cars, but if the television was on now, you’d almost certainly come across a car on one of the channels. It might be in a film, an advert, a documentary . . . cars are everywhere on the television. So how can you watch it?

ME: It’s not real. A car on the television isn’t a ton of speeding metal, it’s just a digital image made up of millions of pixels. Pixels can’t kill you.

DOC: Doesn’t it remind you of cars though, like red reminds you of blood?

ME: No.

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.