Kevin Brooks - Born Scared

First published in Great Britain in 2016 by Electric Monkey,

an imprint of Egmont UK Limited

The Yellow Building, 1 Nicholas Road, London W11 4AN

Text copyright © 2016 Kevin Brooks

The moral rights of the author have been asserted

First e-book edition 2016

ISBN 978 1 4052 7619 1

Ebook ISBN 978 1 7803 1685 7

www.egmont.co.uk

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Stay safe online. Any website addresses listed in this book are correct at the time of going to print. However, Egmont is not responsible for content hosted by third parties. Please be aware that online content can be subject to change and websites can contain content that is unsuitable for children. We advise that all children are supervised when using the internet.

Cover

Title Page

Copyright First published in Great Britain in 2016 by Electric Monkey, an imprint of Egmont UK Limited The Yellow Building, 1 Nicholas Road, London W11 4AN Text copyright © 2016 Kevin Brooks The moral rights of the author have been asserted First e-book edition 2016 ISBN 978 1 4052 7619 1 Ebook ISBN 978 1 7803 1685 7 www.egmont.co.uk A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Stay safe online. Any website addresses listed in this book are correct at the time of going to print. However, Egmont is not responsible for content hosted by third parties. Please be aware that online content can be subject to change and websites can contain content that is unsuitable for children. We advise that all children are supervised when using the internet.

1. CHRISTMAS EVE 1 CHRISTMAS EVE I’ve got as far as the hallway now. Coat, hat, boots, gloves . . . Cold sweat running down my back. It’s three o’clock in the afternoon, Christmas Eve. The snowstorm’s getting worse. My heart’s pounding. I’m shaking, shivering. I feel sick. And every cell in my body is screaming at me to turn round and run. But I can’t move. Either way. I can’t go back. Can’t go out. I can’t do it. It’s impossible. I can’t go out there. I’m terrified.

2. LESS THAN NOTHING

3. CHEAP AND NASTY

4. SO MANY OTHER THINGS

5. SOLID GOLD BUTTONS

6. BIG MONKEY TEETH

7. THE SNOW GLOBE

8. A BLOOD-RED NIGHTMARE

9. AT LEAST A MILLION

10. A DEAD BLACK LINE

11. MY EVERY DAY AND NIGHT

12. THE MOTHER

13. MOLOXETINE

14. LET’S GET THIS DONE

15. THE SNARL OF THE BEAST

16. ONE, TWO, THREE

17. KAYLEE

18. THE LONESOME RATTLE

19. 482 METRES

20. SHOCKED WHITE

21. THE DOOR

22. A WORLD OF GREY-BROWN SKELETONS

23. BITS OF BONE AND CLICKY WET THINGS

24. THE MAD WOLF

25. THE SNOW CAVE

26. A FLUORESCENT BIRD OF PARADISE

27. THE GUINEA PIG

28. THIRTY-FIVE HEADS (AND SEVENTY EVIL EYES)

29. THE STRANGE LAD FROM THE BIG HOUSE

30. EVERYTHING’S A MONSTER

31. HALF A HUMAN LEG

32. LIGHTS AT THE END OF THE WORLD

33. A WHIRLING DARKNESS

34. THE HILLBILLY

35. ONE LOST SOUL

36. PSYCHO-STINK

37. A THING OF COLD SILENCE

38. GREAT BLACK TREES

39. DO THEY KNOW IT’S CHRISTMAS?

40. MY SKEWERED SKULL

41. THREE THINGS

42. JUST DEAD

43. AN INNOCENT CHILD

44. RIDING THE STARS

45. FLESH AND BONE ON COLD STEEL

46. THE FEAR

CREDITS

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I’ve got as far as the hallway now. Coat, hat, boots, gloves . . .

Cold sweat running down my back.

It’s three o’clock in the afternoon, Christmas Eve.

The snowstorm’s getting worse.

My heart’s pounding. I’m shaking, shivering. I feel sick. And every cell in my body is screaming at me to turn round and run.

But I can’t move.

Either way.

I can’t go back.

Can’t go out.

I can’t do it.

It’s impossible.

I can’t go out there.

I’m terrified.

My fear pills are yellow, which isn’t a bad colour for me.

Red is blood (and Santas), black is death, blue is the drowning sea . . .

Yellow is cheese and bananas.

And pills.

I don’t know why I call them fear pills. They’re anti-fear pills really.

I’m chronically afraid of almost everything.

Sometimes I think I can remember being scared when I was still in my mother’s womb. It’s not much more than a distant feeling really – and I have no idea what I could have been frightened of in there, or how – in my unformed state – I could have perceived it.

Unless . . .

Unless.

It’s probably more accurate to say that I sometimes think I can remember being scared when we were still in our mother’s womb. There were two of us in there: me and my sister, Ellamay. We were twins, and I know in my heart that my embryonic fears – if that’s what they were – were as much Ellamay’s as they were mine.

We were scared.

Together.

We were as one.

As we still are now.

And perhaps we knew what was coming. Perhaps we were frightened because we knew one of us was dying . . .

No, I don’t think that’s it.

I don’t think any of us knows what death is until it’s explained to us. And the strange thing about that is that although there must be a pivotal moment in all our lives when we find out for the first time that all living things die, and that at some point in the future our own life will come to an end, I certainly can’t remember the moment when I found out, and I’d be surprised if anyone else can either.

Which is kind of weird, don’t you think?

What I can remember though is the effect that moment had on me.

I don’t know how old I was at the time – four? five? six? – but I clearly remember lying in bed at night with my head beneath the covers trying to imagine death. The total absence of everything. No life, no darkness, no light. Nothing to see, nothing to feel, nothing to know. No time, no where or when, no nothing, for ever and ever and ever and ever . . .

It was terrifying.

It still is.

. . . lying there for hours and hours, staring long and hard into the darkness, searching for that unimaginable emptiness, but all I ever see is a vast swathe of absolute blackness stretching deep into space for a thousand million miles, and I know that’s not enough. I know that when I die there’ll be no blackness and no thousand million miles, there won’t even be nothing, there’ll be less than nothing . . .

And the thought of that still fills my eyes with tears.

But sometimes . . .

Sometimes.

Sometimes it feels as if that memory doesn’t belong to me, that it happened to someone else. Or maybe I read about it in a book or something – a story about a mixed-up kid who lies in bed at night trying to imagine death – and I identified with it so much that over time I gradually convinced myself that I was that mixed-up kid, and his imaginations were mine.