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.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

1. CHRISTMAS EVE

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

Back series promotional page

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

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.

Not that it makes any difference, I suppose.

A memory is a memory, wherever it comes from.

I’ve sunk down to the hallway floor now, and I’m just sitting here with my eyes closed and my back against the wall. I’m trying to breathe steadily, trying to calm my thumping heart, trying to empty my mind.

After a while Ellamay comes to me, her silent voice as comforting as ever.

It’s all right, Elliot. It’ll be okay.

‘I’m scared.’

I know. But you won’t be alone. I’ll be with you all the way.

‘I don’t think I can do it.’

Yes, you can.

‘It’s too much.’

You have to do it, Elliot.

‘I know.’

For Mum.

‘I know.’

For us.

We were born prematurely, at twenty-six weeks. I weighed just under a pound, Ella was even smaller. It was a traumatic birth, and at first the doctors weren’t sure if any of us were going to survive. Mum had lost a lot of blood and was in a really bad way, and while she was rushed off for an emergency operation, Ellamay and I were taken to the neonatal intensive care unit where we were put in incubators and hooked up to all kinds of stuff to keep us alive.

It didn’t work for Ellamay.

She only lived for an hour.

I almost went with her.

Our hearts stopped beating at virtually the same time. But although the doctors and nurses somehow managed to save me, they couldn’t do anything to bring Ella back.

Part of me died with her, and part of her lived on with me.

We’re dead and alive together.

The first time I experienced fear in the outside world – as opposed to the inner world of my mother’s womb – was the first time I woke up in the incubator after Ella had died. It’s a moment that’s as much a part of me as all the other things that make me what I am – my heart, my brain, my flesh, my blood.

I was just lying there – on my back, my eyes open – looking up through the clear-plastic dome of the incubator at the white sky of the ceiling above. Muted sounds were drifting all around me – soft beeps, hushed voices, a low humming – and although I didn’t know what these noises were, I wasn’t scared of them. They were the sounds of my world, as normal to me as the sound of my own stuttered breathing.

Then, all at once, everything changed.

The white sky suddenly darkened as three unknown things appeared out of nowhere and loomed down over me. I didn’t know what they were – moving things, menacing things, things that made strange jabbering noises – wah thah . . . pah banah . . . al tah plah . . . tah yah ah lah . . .

Monsters.

Then one of them moved even closer to me, stooping down over the incubator, getting bigger and bigger all the time . . . and that was when the fear erupted inside me. It was uncontrollable, overwhelming, absolute.

Pure terror.

It was all I was.

The three unknown things that day were my mum, her older sister Shirley, and Dr Gibson, and the funny (peculiar) thing about it is that although they were the first people to scare me to death, they’ve since become the only three people who don’t scare me to death.

They are, to me, the only true people in the world.

Everyone else is a monkem.

3
CHEAP AND NASTY

The two men in the stolen Land Rover were both dressed as Santa Claus. The Santa disguises had been a last-minute decision, and because it was Christmas Eve most of the local shops and fancy-dress hire places had run out of Father Christmas costumes. The only store that hadn’t sold out was the PoundCrusher at the retail park in Catterick, and the only reason they had any left was that their costumes were so cheap and nasty that Scrooge himself wouldn’t have bought one. The red nylon they were made from was so thin it was virtually see-through, and the stringy white trim on the hats and jackets was glued on rather than stitched. Bits of the trim were already falling off, the loose white threads sticking to the static cling of the flimsy red nylon like dandruff. Both of the costumes were XXL – the only size left in the shop – and since neither of the two men were anywhere near ‘extra extra large’ they’d had to make some rough-and-ready adjustments to their outfits. Extra holes had been made in the belts, sleeves and trouser legs were rolled up, and the Santa hats had been made to fit by wearing beanie hats underneath. The costumes didn’t include Santa boots, so both men were wearing trainers.

4
SO MANY OTHER THINGS

The worst time for Mum was the first couple of years of my life when all I did was scream and cry almost constantly. People kept telling her not to worry – it’s perfectly normal for babies to cry all the time – but she knew this was different. I wasn’t just crying like a normal baby, I was bawling and howling, trembling all over, cowering away from just about everything.

‘It’s not right, is it?’ Mum said to Dr Gibson. ‘There’s something seriously wrong with him.’

The Doc looked at me – I was cradled in Mum’s arms – then turned back to Mum. ‘I don’t know what it is, Grace. I honestly don’t. The only irregularities that have shown up on his regular hospital check-ups are a faster-than-average heart rate and high blood pressure, but considering the trauma he went through at birth, it’s perfectly understandable for him to have an instinctive fear of the hospital environment.’

‘But his heart rate and blood pressure go up when you’re examining him too,’ Mum pointed out.

‘Not as much as when he’s at the hospital. And again, it’s only natural for him to be scared of me when he knows I’m going to be prodding him about and sticking needles in him.’

‘No,’ Mum said firmly, shaking her head, ‘there’s more to it than that. I could understand it if he only got upset and agitated when he’s being examined, but there are so many other things that bring it on too – unfamiliar people, strange sounds, cars, birds, dogs, rain, wind, darkness . . . he’s terrified of the dark, Owen. I mean, he’s not just frightened of it – I could understand that – he’s absolutely petrified of it. He’s never once slept without a light on.’

The Doc frowned and scratched his head. ‘Well, physically there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with him. As I said, the hospital check-ups have all been clear, and you know yourself that I’ve been testing him for everything I can possibly think of – heart, liver, blood, allergies, infections – and I haven’t found anything out of the ordinary.’ He paused, hesitating for a second, glancing at me again. ‘The only thing I can think of at the moment is that the underlying cause of his extreme agitation isn’t directly physical.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The symptoms we’ve been talking about – increased heart rate, high blood pressure – are classic indicators of fear and anxiety, and while I still think it’s fairly normal for Elliot to have an instinctive fear of the hospital, and – to a lesser extent – me, it’s possible that his problems have a psychological basis rather than a specific physical cause.’

Mum’s face visibly paled.

‘It’s not uncommon, Grace,’ the Doc said, putting a reassuring hand on her arm. ‘Small babies have all kinds of curious problems, and sometimes we simply don’t know what’s wrong with them, and of course they can’t tell us anything themselves until they start talking. But in my experience, by the time they do start talking, the vast majority of them have left these problems behind.’

‘The vast majority?’ Mum said, raising an eyebrow.

‘Elliot’s going to be okay, Grace,’ the Doc said softly. ‘Trust me, everything’s going to be fine.’

Everything wasn’t fine, though. I didn’t leave my problems behind. And by the time I was talking well enough to express my feelings, there was no doubt what was wrong with me.

‘I’m scared, Mummy.’

‘Scared of what, love?’

‘Everything.’

5
SOLID GOLD BUTTONS

The Santa in the passenger seat of the stolen Land Rover pulled down his stringy white beard and cursed again as he scratched his unshaven chin.

‘This is killing me,’ he said, flicking angrily at the beard. ‘It feels like it’s made of asbestos or something.’

‘Put it back on,’ the Santa in the driver’s seat told him.

‘I don’t see why –’

‘Put it back on.’

The driver’s voice was calm and measured, but there was a chilling edge to it that his companion knew better than to ignore. He’d seen at first hand what his partner could do to people who didn’t take him seriously, and although they were partners – of a kind, at least – he knew that didn’t make any difference. Partner or not, if the man sitting beside him wanted to hurt him, he wouldn’t think twice about doing it.

‘I was only saying,’ he muttered, pulling the elasticated beard back up and refixing it to his face.

‘Yeah, well don’t, okay?’

The Santa in the passenger seat shrugged sulkily then turned away and gazed out of the window.

It was 11.42 a.m.

They were taking the back way to the village, driving across the moors, and the Santa in the passenger seat knew this area like the back of his hand. He used to come up here with his friends when he was a kid, happily ignoring the KEEP OUT! MILITARY FIRING RANGE warning signs to search for anything the army had left behind after their manoeuvres the night before – spent rifle shells, burnt-out flares, even live ammunition, if you were lucky. He knew that on a clear day you could see for miles up here, all the way across to the distant Hambleton Hills, but today the snow was so thick and heavy that visibility was practically nil. The raw moorland wind was blowing so fiercely that great sheets of snow were gusting horizontally across the desolate landscape, and he could feel the car struggling to stay in a straight line.

As he rested his head against the cold glass of the window, he wondered once again what he was doing here. Why do you keep getting yourself into these things? he asked himself. I mean, what’s your problem? What’s so difficult about saying no?

His name was Leonard Dacre. Most people called him Dake.

The driver’s name was Carl Jenner.

‘When this is all over,’ Jenner said, breaking the silence, ‘you can go out and buy yourself the most expensive Santa Claus costume in the world.’ He glanced at Dake. ‘Solid gold buttons, silk trousers, a snakeskin belt . . .’

‘A beard made from polar bear fur . . .’

‘Yeah.’

The two men grinned at each other, and the Land Rover drove on through the snow.

6
BIG MONKEY TEETH

I don’t like hiding things from Mum – it makes me feel like I’m betraying her – but I learned a long time ago that sometimes it’s best for both of us if I keep certain things to myself.

Like Ellamay, for example.

I was about four years old when I first realised that I had to keep Ellamay to myself. The Doc had been round to see me, and afterwards – while he was talking to Mum – I was sitting on the floor looking through one of my favourite picture books, and it just so happened that Ellamay suddenly came to me.

Are you all right, Elliot? she asked. What did the Doc say this time?

‘He wants me to see a special doctor,’ I told her.

What kind of special doctor?

‘A brain doctor.’

Why?

‘To stop me being frightened.’

‘Elliot?’

It wasn’t Ellamay’s voice this time, and for a second I didn’t know what was happening. Then Mum spoke again.

‘What are you doing, Elliot? Who are you talking to?’

I looked up at her. ‘It’s Ellamay.’

‘Who?’

‘Ellamay.’

Mum looked puzzled, and as she turned to the Doc I could see that she was worried too.

‘Who’s Ellamay, Elliot?’ the Doc asked me.

‘My sister.’

‘Your sister?’

I nodded.

The Doc turned to Mum. ‘Ellamay?’

Mum shook her head, and I could see now that there were tears in her eyes. ‘He didn’t get it from me . . .’ she muttered, her voice catching in her throat. ‘You know I couldn’t bear to give her a name . . . he must have made it up himself . . .’

‘Have you heard him talking to her before?’

‘I always thought he was just talking to himself.’

She was crying now, tears running down her face. I got up and went over to her and put my arms around her neck.

‘Don’t cry, Mummy . . . I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you cry.’

‘It’s all right, darling,’ she sobbed. ‘It’s not your fault . . .’

But it was my fault. Who else’s fault could it have been?

And ever since then I only talk out loud to Ellamay when we’re alone.

Another thing I learned not to say out loud was ‘monkem’. Monkems are all the people in the world except for Mum, Auntie Shirley, and the Doc. They’re called monkems because they come to me in my dreams as horrible scary things with hairy monkey bodies and long grasping arms and bandy legs and little human heads with vicious grinning mouths with their lips pulled back over nasty big monkey teeth . . .

That’s what other people are to me.

Terrible things that want to rip me apart and eat me.

Monkems.

The first time I said it in front of Mum she told me I mustn’t say it any more.

‘Why not?’ I asked her.

‘You can’t call people monkeys, Elliot.’

‘Monkems,’ I corrected her. ‘Not monkeys.’

‘Well, that’s as maybe,’ she said (which made no sense to me at all), ‘but people might think you’re saying monkey, like I just did, and they might think you’re being horrible to them.’ She gave me a look. ‘You don’t want anyone to think you’re being horrible to them, do you?’

I told her I didn’t, and since then I only ever use the word when I’m on my own or with Ellamay. Not that it makes any difference. The way I react to monkems – screaming my head off and running away in terror – they must think I’m mad anyway, so what does it matter if they think I’m horrible as well? And besides, even at that age – three or four years old – I was very rarely seeing anyone else apart from Mum and Shirley and the Doc, so the chances of me upsetting a monkem by calling them a monkem were virtually non-existent.

I wish this was easier. I wish I could just lay my hands on your head and transfer what’s inside me to you. I wish you could be me, if only for a moment, so you’d know exactly how I feel.

But that’s not going to happen, is it?

Wishes never come true.

7
THE SNOW GLOBE

shake it . . .

like this

It’s twelve minutes past three now and I’m back in my room. Still hatted and booted and gloved, still sticky-skinned from the drying cold sweat, and still sick to my bones with fear.

What are you doing, Elliot? Ellamay says, sounding confused and slightly frustrated. I thought we were ready to go. I thought we’d –

‘It’s all right,’ I tell her. ‘I’ve just remembered something, that’s all. I won’t be a minute.’

I cross the room and go into the bathroom.

Oh, right, Ellamay says. I see.

She thinks I’m going to the toilet.

‘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. What 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.

8
A BLOOD-RED NIGHTMARE

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 . . .

‘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.

DOC: It’s a representation of reality though, isn’t it?

ME: It’s still not real.

DOC: And that’s the same with all your books and the things you see on the internet, is it? It’s not real, so it’s not frightening?

ME: I can’t explain it. I don’t even bother trying to understand it myself any more. I just . . . I don’t know. I just do my best to live with it.

DOC: Do you ever get used to being scared all the time?

ME: No, but I’ve kind of got used to not getting used to it.

9
AT LEAST A MILLION

‘Are you sure you can trust her?’ Dake asked Jenner.

They’d left the moors behind now and were driving along a single-track lane that would eventually bring them out at the top of the village. The snow had eased off a little, and although the icy wind was still blowing hard, the Land Rover was shielded from the worst of it by the high banks and dry-stone walls either side of the lane.

‘I don’t trust anyone,’ Jenner said matter-of-factly.

‘So how do you know she’s not lying?’

‘Because she knows what I’ll do to her if she is.’

Dake didn’t doubt there was a veiled threat to him in Jenner’s answer – and you’d better not mess me around either – and he also knew that Jenner didn’t make idle threats. He made promises, and he kept them.

‘It just seems a bit odd, that’s all,’ Dake said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘The timing, you know . . . Christmas and everything. I still don’t get it. I mean, you would have thought they’d empty the place over Christmas, not keep it all there.’

Jenner sighed. ‘How many more times do I have to tell you? The whole point of this, the reason it won’t be expected – and why we’re going to get away with it – is precisely because of the timing. They usually would keep all the branches empty over Christmas, but when their internal computer system crashed last week it messed up the program they use to schedule and track the collections . . .’ Jenner paused, glancing sideways at Dake. ‘Do I really have to go over all this again? Don’t you remember anything, for God’s sake?’

‘Yeah, of course I remember,’ Dake said defensively. ‘It’s just . . . well, you know . . . I can’t be expected to remember everything, can I?’

Jenner shook his head in disbelief. He’d always known that Dake wasn’t particularly intelligent – he could barely read or write, for a start – but Jenner was beginning to wonder now if there was something seriously wrong with him. How could he not remember what he’d already been told at least three or four times?

Jenner slowed the Land Rover and pulled into a passing space to let a tractor go by. Once it had passed, he lit a cigarette and turned to Dake.

‘The money’s there, okay?’ he said, as patiently as possible. ‘It’s in the vault. That’s all you need to know.’

‘How much?’

‘I’ve already told you that.’

‘I know.’ Dake grinned. ‘I just want to hear it again.’

‘At least a million, according to the girl. Probably more.’

‘At least a million . . .’ Dake echoed dreamily.

‘Yeah, and the best thing about it is they won’t even know it’s gone until the day after Boxing Day.’

‘He’ll know though, won’t he?’

‘Who?’

‘The manager guy, you know . . . the one who’s going to open the safe for us. He’ll know the money’s gone.’

‘He won’t tell anyone.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because he’ll know what I’ll do to his mother if he does.’

10
A DEAD BLACK LINE

ME: Do you think I’m mad?

DOC: Do you?

ME: I don’t know . . . sometimes, maybe. I’m definitely not normal, am I?

DOC: None of us are normal. We all have things wrong with us. It’s just that some of those things have a much bigger effect on our lives than others.

ME: Do you think something could have gone wrong in my head when I was a baby?

DOC: Do you mean when your heart stopped?

ME: Yeah. Maybe my brain stopped too, or it got damaged or something.

DOC: Well, that can happen, yes. If you’re starved of oxygen at birth it can lead to irreversible brain damage. But in all the instances I’ve ever come across, the oxygen supply has been stopped for at least two or three minutes, usually quite a bit longer. But that wasn’t the case with you, Elliot. Your heart stopped beating for less than a minute.

ME: Yeah, but what if –?

DOC: There’s absolutely nothing wrong with your mind, Elliot. Trust me. If you’d suffered any brain damage I’d know.

ME: So are you saying it’s perfectly all right for me to be terrified of everything?

DOC: No, of course not.

ME: So there is something wrong with my brain then.

Sometimes I have no sense of the present. All I can feel is a sense of the past and a sense of the future – the ‘then’ and the ‘when’. I can look back and remember things – things that happened, things that I did – and I can look forward to things that haven’t happened yet. I can imagine things happening in the future – the next half hour, the next day, next Monday afternoon, next year. I can do all that. But the present . . . the present seems to pass me by. I can’t get hold of it. It’s like a shapeless and senseless void that moves, like a cursor, between the past and the future. A dead black line, forever moving, forever being . . . but never actually there.

ME: I know you think I’m weird.

DOC: What makes you say that?

ME: I heard you talking to Mum once. You told her it was really weird how sometimes I sound really grown up, almost like an adult, but other times I seem almost babyish.

DOC: I didn’t say it was ‘really weird’, I just said I’d noticed it, that’s all. And I didn’t say ‘babyish’ either. All I said was that sometimes the way you talk makes you sound older than you are, and sometimes you come across as being younger than you are. I didn’t say it was ‘weird’. And I wouldn’t use that word anyway.

ME: What word would you use?

DOC: I don’t know . . . ‘different’, perhaps.

‘Unusual’. There’s nothing wrong with being unusual.

I’ve never met my father. According to Mum, she met him at a party, they spent the night together, and that was that. They never saw each other again.

‘It was all perfectly amiable,’ she told me once. ‘He was a lovely man, and we had a very nice time together. But neither of us wanted to take it any further, and we were both quite happy to go our separate ways.’

‘What was his name?’ I asked her.

‘Martyn.’

‘Martyn what?’

‘I honestly don’t know. He introduced himself as Martyn, and I told him I was Grace, and that’s all we needed to know.’

Even if she had known his surname, she still wouldn’t have made any effort to contact him when she found out she was pregnant.

‘It would only have complicated things,’ she explained. ‘And besides, apart from his name, the only other thing I knew about Martyn was that he lived in Los Angeles and he was a writer, but he didn’t write under his real name. So I couldn’t have tracked him down even if I’d wanted to, which I didn’t.’

I don’t miss having a father – you can’t miss what you’ve never had, can you? – and on the rare occasions when I do wonder what it would be like to have a dad, the mere thought of it makes me shudder. A man living in my house? A monkem? A man I’d have to share Mum with . . .?

No.

I wouldn’t like that one bit.

DOC: We might not know the precise cause of your problem, Elliot, but we know how it affects you, and it might be possible to lessen those effects to some degree.

ME: How?

DOC: There are anti-anxiety medications that might help. They’re obviously not intended for treating the level of fear that afflicts you, and normally I’d never even consider this type of medication for a child, but you’re a far from normal case, Elliot.

ME: Thanks a lot.

The Doc looks totally different when he smiles, which isn’t very often. But when he does smile, it lightens his face, makes him look younger. It lifts his mask of sombre gravity and reveals a twinkle of the child in him.

DOC: Anyway, I’ve talked to your mum about it, and although she hates the idea of putting you on medication as much as I do, she agrees that it’s worth giving it a go. But only if you want to try it.

ME: Will the drugs stop me being afraid?

DOC: No, but they might lessen the severity of your fears.

ME: So I’ll still be scared of things, but not so much.

DOC: Possibly, yes. It’s also possible that medication won’t help you at all. In fact, it could actually make you feel worse. But the only way to find out is by trying it. You also need to bear in mind that there are dozens of different types of anti-anxiety medication, and it could easily take months, or even years, to find out which of them – if any – is best for you. Now I know this is a lot to think about, but at the moment that’s all I want you to do – just think about it, okay? There’s no rush, you can take as much time as you want. And if there’s anything you’re not sure about, anything you want to ask, just let me know, okay?

ME: Yeah.

DOC: We can do this, Elliot. We can do everything possible to make you better. But we have to do it together. We have to do it between the three of us – you, your mum, and me.

And Ellamay, I added silently.

Thank you, she said.

You’re welcome.

11
MY EVERY DAY AND NIGHT

It’s twenty-one minutes past three now, and I’m back in the hallway, making some final adjustments to my Wellington boots. They’re actually the Doc’s boots. He left them at our house once – I don’t know why – and they’ve been here ever since. They’re far too big for me, which is why I’ve had to customise them by stuffing the toe-ends with scrunched-up newspaper. I used to have my own pair of Wellingtons, but it’s been so many years since I wore them – so many years since I’ve needed them – that I don’t have a clue where they are. In fact, it’s quite possible that Mum got rid of them a long time ago. And even if she didn’t, and I did know where they are, they’d be at least a couple of sizes too small for me by now.

I don’t feel very comfortable in the Doc’s Wellingtons, but they’re the only boots I could find, so I don’t really have much choice.

The gloves and the coat and the hat I’m wearing aren’t mine either. They’re Mum’s. As with the boots, I used to have my own coat and everything, but if you hardly ever leave the house – and I hardly ever leave my room, let alone the house – there’s not much point in having outdoor clothing. And besides, I can always borrow Mum’s if I need to. She’s only a bit bigger than me, so they’re not too bad a fit.

Although, having said that . . .

What are you doing now? Ellamay says.

‘These gloves are a bit loose. I’m just going to try padding them out a bit with a few scraps of wadded-up newspaper. It won’t take long.’

That’s enough, Elliot.

‘What?’

We have to go. You can’t keep putting it off.

‘I’m not –’

Yes, you are. You know you are.

She’s right, of course. I keep trying to convince myself that I’m ready to do this, that I’ve got my fear under control . . . but the truth is, I’m as terrified now as I was twenty-one minutes ago. All I want to do is go back to the sanctuary of my room and stay there for ever. It’s the only place I feel safe, the only place I ever want to be. My room.

My everything.

My world.

The countryside can be a scary place when darkness falls. Before I had my own specially modified fear-proof room, I’d often lie awake at night just waiting for the horror-sounds to begin. The piercing screech of an owl, the scream of a fox (like someone in terrible pain), the pitiful cries of rabbits being killed . . . and monkem noises too – gunshots from night hunters, the shattering roar of a speeding car or motorbike, drunk monkems passing by, shouting and laughing. And on top of all that there’s the constant sound of army manoeuvres up on the moors – the distant pop-popping of gunfire, the rumble of tanks, soldiers’ war cries, the whizz-bang of flares going off . . .

And even when the night is silent, it’s a silence of darkness and dread, a silence that’s always waiting for the next unholy scream.

But I don’t hear anything of the night any more.

My fear-proof room is one hundred per cent soundproof.

I don’t know exactly how it works, but basically the walls and the ceiling are made up of several layers of various kinds of stuff that either absorbs or reflects sound, and the only window is quadruple glazed. The window looks out over the fields at the back of the house, but I very rarely actually see them because there’s a blackout blind that totally obscures the view. I can raise the blind if I want to – and occasionally I find the courage to have a quick look – but most of the time it stays down, shielding me from the outside world.

The room’s painted white all over. I chose white because for me it’s the colour that comes closest to nothing. It’s the most non-scary colour, the colour that doesn’t fill my head or my heart with anything. I can lie on my bed staring up at the ceiling, sometimes for hours on end, and I don’t have to worry about the sky of whiteness invading my thoughts and feelings. It leaves me alone . . .

It leaves us alone.

Me and Ellamay.

Solitude becomes us.

My room has everything I need. I’ve got my own bathroom – shower, basin, toilet . . . but no bath. Baths are too scary. You can drown in a bath. I’ve got a kettle and cups and stuff, so I can make myself a hot drink whenever I want (tea or hot chocolate only – coffee makes me twitch and shake like a mad thing). I’ve got a little fridge (cold drinks, milk, yoghurt, butter), and a little kitchen area with plates and cutlery and a bread bin, so I can have a sandwich or something whenever I feel like it. I’ve got a bed, of course, and all my own furniture – settee, armchair, desk. I’ve got a laptop, a 24-inch flat screen TV, a landline phone and a mobile. The landline is set up so it only receives incoming calls from Mum (and instead of ringing, a green light flashes on and off when she calls), and the mobile is for emergencies only.

I’ve got all the clothes I need in here, which isn’t a lot, and I’ve got all my ‘school’ stuff too – pens, notebooks, textbooks. (Mum tried her best to get me into the local school, but after two disastrous attempts – both of which traumatised me for weeks – she accepted that normal schooling was out of the question for me, and since then she’s taught me herself at home.)

Most importantly of all, I’ve got all my ‘non-school books’ in here too, the books I just like reading. Two walls of my room are completely taken up with bookshelves, and the shelves are packed solid with thousands of books. I don’t know exactly how many I’ve got, but the last time I counted them – just over a year ago – the total was 1,762.

So that’s it, basically.

That’s my world.

My sanctuary.

My every day and night.

12
THE MOTHER

Jenner glanced at his watch again.

It was 12.28.

They were parked across the road from the house, and so far things hadn’t been going quite as Jenner had planned. For a start, he hadn’t given any consideration to the possibility that the mother might not be at home, so when they’d arrived at the house twenty minutes ago and seen that her car wasn’t there, it had completely thrown Jenner off balance. And for another thing, once he’d decided that the only thing to do was wait, and hope the mother came back soon, he’d begun to realise that maybe their Santa Claus outfits weren’t such a good idea after all. As disguises, plain and simple, they were excellent. No one who saw them in their Santa gear could possibly give a meaningful description of them. Unfortunately, no one who saw two cheap-and-nasty Santas sitting in a parked Land Rover would ever forget them either, especially if they’d tried making conversation with them, which several curious passers-by had already done.

But there was no point in worrying about it, Jenner told himself. It was what it was, and there was nothing they could do about it. And besides . . .

‘About bloody time,’ he said as a silvery-grey Volvo pulled into the driveway.

‘Is that her?’ Dake asked.

‘Of course it’s her. Who else is it going to be?’

‘I don’t know, do I?’

Jenner watched as the mother got out of the car and scurried over to the front door, digging into her handbag as she went, looking – no doubt – for the door key.

‘She’s left it running,’ Dake said.

‘What?’

‘The car . . . she’s left it running.’

13
MOLOXETINE

My fear pills are a drug called Moloxetine. It’s not a commonly prescribed medication, and I only ended up taking it after the Doc had tried me on just about every other anti-anxiety drug he could think of. None of the others had been right for me. Some of them just hadn’t worked at all, and others had helped a little bit, but not enough to outweigh their sometimes quite drastic side-effects – hallucinations, mania, aggression, extreme fatigue, hyperactivity, acute diarrhoea, vomiting, panic attacks, severe depression, suicidal thoughts . . .

As I said to the Doc once, ‘I’d rather be terrified all the time for the rest of my life than wake up every morning wanting to kill myself.’

My fear pills don’t stop me being scared. I still live in constant fear, and my life is still ruled by that fear, but with Moloxetine . . . well, it’s hard to describe exactly what it does for me, but basically it makes everything feel not quite so terrible. Of course, there’s a massive difference between feeling ‘not quite so terrible’ and feeling ‘good’, or ‘okay’, or ‘not too bad’, but the way I see it is that any relief, no matter how small, is a lot better than nothing. It’s like offering a coat to a naked person caught outside on a rainy winter’s day. The coat’s not going to solve their problem, it’s not going to stop them being cold and wet, but they’d have to be pretty stupid to not wear it.

The very worst of my fears, the thing I dread more than anything else, is the fear of fear itself. It’s a truly monstrous thing, like a howling demon whirling around inside me, an insatiable beast that keeps getting bigger and bigger all the time . . . bigger, faster, stronger, hungrier. It feeds on itself, so the bigger it gets, the more it needs to eat, and the more it eats, the bigger it gets . . . and if it isn’t kept under control, it can end up dragging me, screaming, to the very edge of my sanity.

Moloxetine helps to keep the beast at bay. I know it’s still there. I can hear it sometimes, a distant low growl, and every now and then I can taste the foul odour of its demonic breath creeping into the back of my throat. But as long as I keep taking my fear pills – six a day at regular intervals, regardless of how I’m feeling – the beast doesn’t get any closer. But if I’m late taking a tablet, or I completely forget to take one – which usually only happens when I’m feeling so (relatively) good that I can’t (or don’t want to) have anything to do with not feeling good . . . when that happens, the beast comes back with a vengeance.

It’s as if it’s there all the time, skulking around inside me, locked in a cage of Moloxetine’s making, just waiting . . . waiting . . . waiting for its chance to escape and come after me. And if the Moloxetine begins to wear off for any reason, the lock on the cage begins to weaken, and the longer I go without the drug, the weaker the cage becomes – the lock cracks and crumbles, the door swings open . . .

The insatiable beast is set free.

Which is why it’s so important that I never run out of pills.

Because if I do, I have to face the beast.

‘It’s coming, Ella. It’s getting closer. I can smell its breath.’

Me too.

‘It stinks.’

It’s only a smell, Elliot. It can’t hurt you.

‘Yeah, but the beast can hurt me. It’s hungry. I need to put it back in its cage before it’s too late. I need the last pill, Ella. I need to take it now.’

Silence . . . the silence of Ellamay’s thinking.

Then, All right. Take it. We’ll just have to hope that we find Mum and Shirley sooner rather than later.

‘And that they’ve got my prescription.’

Yeah.

I take the pill bottle from my pocket, shake it

like this

then I unscrew the cap and carefully tip the last remaining tablet into the (slightly cupped) palm of my hand.

Mind you don’t drop it, Ella says.

‘Yeah, right . . . like I hadn’t already thought of that myself.’

She gives me an imaginary cuff on the back of my head.

‘Hey! I nearly did drop it then.’

Sorry.

I pop the pill in my mouth and swallow it dry.

Bye-bye for now, Mr Beastie . . .

Bye-bye.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.