Sounds scared me: the scream of the power saw at Billy Williams’ woodyard, and the honk of toucans in the local zoo. Other than that, it was the usual stuff: clowns, ghosts, policemen... and the big bad wolf.
The wolf was really just a single picture, in a book which otherwise I loved. But that one image used to scare the hell out of me, every time I saw it. The wolf wore dungarees and a straw hat, and he was staring, straight off the page, straight at me, greedy, drooling and lascivious. This wasn’t just some dressed-up animal. This was the perv who hangs around the school gates, twitching and lunging: “I’m going to gobble you up!”
Do children have a special fear of being eaten? It figured in so many of those early stories. Unable to control their own lives, constantly subject to the whims of adults, the threat of being swallowed, consumed, might well take on a grim, if not entirely literal significance. But I digress...
I loved the book, and quickly worked out when the wolf was coming up, so I could flip two pages and avoid him. But sometimes I’d fumble, miss, and catch a glimpse. Ugh! Then other times - this is the weird bit - other times, I’d look. Deliberately. Purposefully. And if I could see the wolf, so childhood logic ran, the wolf could see me, too...
Of course, a lot of things just never scared me. Moving on a few years: Dr. Who, not even once. Not Dracula or Frankenstein. Not H.P. Lovecraft. But The Pan Book of Horror Stories - yes. I didn’t mind the monsters, but the stories about leprosy, or medical horrors, or anything I thought might actually happen... they scared, and sickened.
And I went on reading.
The hypothesis, I suppose, is that on some level, we’re drawn to things that frighten us. Eros and Thanatos, slugging it out. Life and death, love and horror, fear and fascination, all wrapped up in one.
So let’s find something really scary.
The scariest thing of all is - well. It’s you, isn’t it?
You, or me. Whichever way you want to look at it.
The chance that maybe we’re not who we think we are; that the monster isn’t out there, shut behind the door, but in here, with us - and we don’t even know.
I’m going to tell you something now that I have never told a soul, not when it happened, and not since. This is the joy of the internet - that it feels intimate and personal, while being just about as private as sky-writing.
Here, then, is my confession.
I don’t recall how old I was. Seven or eight, perhaps. Small enough, I’d got my own special child-sized chair, and through the day, especially in winter, I’d pull it up as near the fire as I could get. We had an open fire - coke, not coal - and I just loved the heat of it against my shins, feeling the skin grow pink and tender, running my hands over my legs to shield them if they got too hot; but never, never moving back.
I was a solitary kid. I liked to sit and read, maybe write or draw. My Mum was in and out, though sometimes she’d be gone a while - to the neighbours’, or the local shops. And it was then, when I was totally alone, it happened.
It started out as such a silly, stupid little thing - a thought that seemed to jump into my head, as if from nowhere:
Put your foot in the fire.
The fire was right in front of me. All I’d have to do was stretch out -
Put your foot in the fire.
It wasn’t a voice. It was an impulse. A need. And suddenly, it wasn’t quite so silly, either. It was sharp, urgent, and demanding.
Put your foot in the fire.
Put your foot in the fire.
It happened maybe half a dozen times, always the same way, always when my Mum was out. It never even dawned on me to try and break the spell, get up, go somewhere else. Maybe I couldn’t. All I could do was try and hold out, just a few more minutes, begging that my Mum would get home, quickly, quickly - before I gave in.
Put your foot in the fire.
I’d be practically in tears sometimes, fingers clutching at the fabric of the chair, squirming back, all else forgotten. Put your foot in the fire. I’d stare at the ornaments on the mantelpiece. I’d stare at the vase and the china dog. Put your foot in the fire, put your foot in the fire -
Then the back door opened, and my Mum was home. And it was over, just like that.
I never talked about it. How could I? “Something’s trying to make me put my foot in the fire.” It was ridiculous. It made no sense. Besides, it wasn’t “something”. It was me. I knew that even then.
It was like a game that had got out of hand, a dare that somehow spiralled up into this horrible ordeal, and I had no idea why.
It lasted - well, probably about a week. Then, like any other childhood ailment, it was gone, and never bothered me again.
What caused it? I don’t know. I wasn’t, so far as I’m aware, particularly stressed or anxious, and in the years since, I’ve suffered neither OCD nor command hallucinations; and while I’ve done a few things that might well call into doubt my judgement, if not my sanity, I’ve generally been no more psychotic or delusional than most people. And never again have I had a thing like this, coming, as it did, out of a clear blue sky, with such power, and such - this was the nasty bit - such intimacy.
Like I say: it’s not the monster outside that’s the scary one.
Tim Lees is a British author living in Chicago. He is the author of Frankenstein’s Prescription (Tartarus, UK) and the Field Ops novels for HarperVoyager (The God Hunter, Devil in the Wires and Steal the Lightning). His last published story was “The Shuttered Child” in Black Static #60.
He tweets @TimLees2, posts on Instagram as tim.c.lees, and occasionally posts on his website at https://timlees.wordpress.com/.
You can find his Amazon page at https://www.amazon.com/Tim-Lees/e/B006E4I288 (US)
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tim-Lees/e/B006E4I288 (UK)
Or go direct to the publishers:
http://www.harpervoyagerbooks.com/book-author/tim-lees/
http://www.tartaruspress.com/lees-frankenstein-s-prescription.html
http://ttapress.com/
