CHILDHOOD FEARS BY DAVID MARK

I’m writing a piece about the stuff that scares me.”
“Yeah? What, like scrutiny? Telling the truth? Exposure …,”
“No, the inside stuff. The things from when you’re young. Spiders. Doll’s eyes. Being eaten alive by flesh-eating plants. An infected blackhead on school-photo day. That kind of thing.”
“Oh, right. You don’t really get scared though, do you? You go for walks in the woods in the dark just so you can feel your own heartbeat. You don’t even jump when something goes bang. That’s what comes from being dead inside.”
“You’re not nice to me.”
“Sorry, go on. What were you scared of when you were little?”
“I don’t know. Weird stuff. The big things that looked after the radishes on Fraggle Rock. Muppets were weird too. The hand coming out from under the bed and dragging me into some slimy netherworld – that never sounded great. Oh, and the thing Peter Duncan stuck his hand inside in Flash Gordon.”
“Out of context, this all sounds a bit mucky.”
“Sorry.”
“Did they proper scare you though? Like, terrify you to the point of paralysis, the way I get with needles and wasps?”
“They’re sensible fears, I think. But no, they didn’t. Oh, actually …,”
“Go on.”
“I do remember being absolutely pant-wettingly frightened at the end of Superman. Lois Lane being eaten alive by the earth when she got caught in that landslide. The soil going into her mouth. Going from alive to dead in these tiny increments – the dirt getting into her nostrils, her ears. And there was a cowboy movie with Sean Connery. Somebody choked Honor Blackman to death by pouring sand down her gullet. I used to wake up choking for breath after seeing that.”
“There you go, see. Nailed it. Does it still scare you now?”
“Well, it didn’t until you mentioned it. How are you with buttons these days?”
“Aaaagh!”

This entire conversation recently took place between myself and Elora, my 15-year-old daughter. She’s the second oldest of my five offspring and the one best placed to give me useful perspective on complicated things like human beings. She’s very nearly human herself, and watches an ungodly amount of Netflix, so she can offer perspective on what the next generation consider thrilling, scary and weird.

Movies we’ve watched together have had quite the effect on her, but really haven’t done much more than entertain me. The Ritual, Mama, Sinister – all reduced her to a shivering wreck, while I devoured popcorn even as the blood spurted and the limbs plopped off in HD. 

At this point, it’s best I make aware that Elora, who claims to a true horror fan, spent months in a state of follicle-bleaching, knicker-wetting terror after she was allowed to watch the movie Coraline at the age of eight. As such, if she’s ever mean to you, just show her a button and look at her eyes with purpose, and she’ll back off.

The conversation got me thinking about what it is that makes the flesh crawl – why it is that watching maggots wriggling about on the TV or spiders scuttling across the page, can produce a physical reaction like gooseflesh, or causing the hairs upon the nape of the neck to rise up as if stroked with a ghostly finger. Are fears formed in childhood ?Are we hardwired to dread things with sharp teeth and yellow claws and eyes that glare like twin peroxide moons? Is the sight of dripping blood and the crunch of gnawed bone a sensory mélange guaranteed to reach into brains and play our nerves until they screech?

I asked the question of my friend Babs, who is utterly encyclopedic on old horror films. She’s seen so much Christopher Lee that it’s genuinely staggering she can sleep without gluing her eyes shut (or replacing them with buttons). She has quite the tolerance for fear, which is why it gives me quite the thrill when she says that my books really freak her out.  I take great delight in this, as the books that have freaked me out have been few in number.  I do recall reading The Rats and Lair by James Herbert and coming to the conclusion that death was infinitely preferable to being nibbled on by blind, hairless, ravenous rodents.  But I think I knew that already.

Babs was quite candid when asked what had scared her the most in all her grisly viewing. It was a sketch in The Muppets that left her gasping for air – a weird dancing puppety thing with an extra head trying to burst its way out, to the tune of Got You Under My skin. She still hasn’t got over it and can’t begin explaining the terror without giving in to tears. 

I told this to Elora and showed her the clip in question. She said it was horrible, but not scary. To be fair, she was distracted at the time, taking herself off for a walk in the woods. She sits in a tree overlooking the river near our house, and reads Supernatural fan fiction. This, in itself, represents a major fear on my part, but we won’t get into that.

My new book takes a fear of mine and lets it drip, spurt and congeal. I have a terror of hospital beds and immobility. I am mortally afraid of coming to in surgery, hands bound, machines whirring, and being unable to move. In Rush of Blood, this scenario is turned into something far more than frightening. It is part of a process of transfusion; the withdrawal and replacement of blood from the veins of unwilling donors – the injection into necrotic tissue of pure and perfect blood. I would tell you who’s doing it and why, but that would spoil the surprise. Incidentally, they’re behind you ….

One final thought on childhood fears. When I was seven I had an operation to remove my adenoids. I had to be put to sleep using a gas mask. On my journey into unconsciousness, I saw things. Truly awful, terrible, evil and repulsive things. Every time I get a high temperature, I see them again.  I sometimes wonder whether I brought something back with me. On my worst days, I wonder if I came back at all. There’s a story in that, I’m sure. 

A Rush of Blood by David Mark 

Ten-year-old Hilda's search for her missing friend has terrible consequences in this gripping psychological thriller. When her friend Meda fails to turn up for dance class one evening, 10-year-old Hilda is convinced that something bad has happened to her, despite Meda's family's reassurances. Unable to shake off her concerns, Hilda turns to her mother, Molly, for help. Molly runs the Jolly Bonnet, a pub with links to the Whitechapel murders of a century before and a meeting place for an assortment of eccentrics drawn to its warm embrace. Among them is Lottie. Pathologist by day, vlogger by night, Lottie enlists the help of her army of online fans - and uncovers evidence that Meda isn't the first young girl to go missing. But Molly and Lottie's investigations attract unwelcome attention. Two worlds are about to collide in a terrifying game of cat and mouse played out on the rain-lashed streets of London's East End, a historic neighbourhood that has run red with the blood of innocents for centuries.

---

David spent several years a crime journalist before his debut novel, DARK WINTER, became an international best-seller. It was the first in the McAvoy series, which has been published in several languages and been critical successes around the world. He also writes standalone thrillers for publishers Severn House, and is recognized as one of the darkest voices in British fiction.  He lives in rural Northumberland with his family. He also writes for radio and the stage.
​
Website Links
You can find his website at www.davidmarkwriter.co.uk or follow him on twitter @davidmarkwriter
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Rush-Blood-David-Mark/dp/0727889052

---