CHILDHOOD FEARS- WHAT DOESN’T HAPPEN TO PEOPLE LIKE ME BY VINCENT TIRADO

CHILDHOOD FEARS: WHAT DOESN’T HAPPEN TO PEOPLE LIKE ME BY VINCENT TIRADO

21/3/2022

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BIO:
Vincent Tirado is a nonbinary Afrolatine Bronx native. They ventured out to Pennsylvania and Ohio to get their bachelor’s degree in biology and master’s degree in bioethics. They have had short stories published in Desert Rose and FIYAH magazine. After writing Burn Down, Rise Up, they take turns between sewing new cosplay or napping with their cat.

WEBSITE LINKS:

Vincent Tirado’s debut YA novel Burn Down, Rise Up will be available June 3. You can pre-order your copy at:

Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Burn-Down-Rise-Vincent-Tirado/dp/1728246008/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3LUUUH16820WB&keywords=burn+down+rise+up&qid=1647375766&sprefix=burn+down+rise+up%2Caps%2C137&sr=8-1
Book Depository: https://www.bookdepository.com/Burn-Down-Rise-Up-Vincent-Tirado/9781728246000?ref=grid-view&qid=1647375744631&sr=1-2

CHILDHOOD FEARS: WHAT DOESN’T HAPPEN TO PEOPLE LIKE ME ARTICLE BY VINCENT TIRADO

“[Insert horror thing] doesn’t happen to Black people.”

This was my mantra growing up. Every time I watched a too-scary movie and had trouble falling asleep, every time I recollected an urban legend that sent chills up my spine, every horror novel I read that influenced my nightmares, I would force myself to fixate on the single common denominator in all these things: that at the center of the terrifying story was a white person experiencing it. Maybe there would be one Black friend who got roped into the story, but the main character was always white. And as long as I wasn’t the only Black person in a friend group, I could guarantee my survival against things that went bump in the night.

However, it was also absolutely not true.

My earliest memories in the Bronx were of living in a six-story apartment building on Southern Boulevard. My brothers, my mom and I lived on the sixth floor and unfortunately for us, there wasn’t a single elevator. The hallways were badly lit, the walls always smelled like cigarette smoke and our neighbors were loud. But nothing scared me quite as much as the closet that my brothers and I shared. The closet’s sliding door was broken so closing it meant I would have to partially lift it to move. Because of this, it always remained open–and at night, so was my imagination. The closet became a void, one where monsters emerged and as long as I stayed perfectly still or at least pretended to be asleep, they wouldn’t eat me.

For some reason, I imagined the monsters holding a clipboard, watching me, studying me. I didn’t know what they wrote or why, just that if I gave any indication of being awake, I would be dragged into the void, never to be seen again. The fear of being watched by something unknown–of living so closely to the unknown was overwhelming.

And then we moved to a third story apartment building on Beck Street. Again, we lived on the last floor and again, there were no elevators. The building was much smaller, including the hallways but it didn’t smell, and it was much better lit. The closets were not the types that had a sliding door, but that didn’t matter because my fear had latched onto something else.

The hallway. Or rather, the end of the hallway, right before the sharp turn into the living room. My imagination made it so that there was always something terrifying just on the other side, waiting to get me. Every time I walked past it, my heart jumped a little, like I just narrowly avoided the long spindly arms of a ghost. Of course, there was never anything there. But I could never shake the feeling that there was always something more in these small spaces.

As a horror writer now, I like to play around with the fear of the unknown in my stories. I like to shape the unknown, hiding it just enough to cause that same dread and unease that a closet and hallway used to instill in me as a child. It’s not enough to simply think “there is a murderer somewhere in my house waiting to get me”, because a murderer is still human and has many of the same fleshy weaknesses that I have. Sure, it is unnerving to not know where the murderer will emerge from but if physics remains intact, if what I know about the world isn’t shaken, then there’s no cosmic cause for concern.

I like the kind of horror that is a bit like a magic trick–partially hidden, unexplained. I like the idea of nameless demons (or demons who simply shouldn’t be named), liminal spaces crawling with eldritch creatures. If a horror movie is centered around an app that literally curses people, I am interested in the origins of the app and how it can do what it does. These kinds of scary stories open a door to endless possibilities.

Of course, the previous examples could be boiled down to a child’s overactive imagination, but that doesn’t mean I don’t believe anything lurks beyond the veil of reality. According to my mother, I was always a little more open to it.

A few days ago, my mother told me about the first apartment I ever lived in, just a few weeks after I was born. Apparently, it was cheap, and the landlord was very quick in getting her settled in. But then I would be inconsolable at night, and something would always be amiss in the apartment. For one thing, she would always hear a strange wooden creaking sound, as if someone was walking around in the apartment. And then after 11pm, she would hear something like a rocking chair.

In that apartment, we lived on the sixth floor too and we didn’t have a rocking chair, so my mom went to the superintendent to get answers. The landlord confessed that there was a previous tenant that had died, sitting in a rocking chair. And at night, every single tenant, including my mother, would hear that unsettling squeaking.

So, my mother decided to bring my grandmother over. My grandmother was a devout Christian who prayed over the apartment with her other Christian friends. They marked every corner of the apartment with anointed oil and spoke loudly, rebuking whatever demon had taken residence in our home.

After that, there were no more issues, no sounds of a rocking chair.

Burn Down, Rise Up
by Vincent Tirado

Mysterious disappearances. An urban legend rumored to be responsible. And one group of friends determined to save their city at any cost. Stranger Things meets Jordan Peele in this utterly original debut from an incredible new voice.

For over a year, the Bronx has been plagued by sudden disappearances that no one can explain. Sixteen-year-old Raquel does her best to ignore it. After all, the police only look for the white kids. But when her crush Charlize's cousin goes missing, Raquel starts to pay attention-especially when her own mom comes down with a mysterious illness that seems linked to the disappearances.

Raquel and Charlize team up to investigate, but they soon discover that everything is tied to a terrifying urban legend called the Echo Game. The game is rumored to trap people in a sinister world underneath the city, and the rules are based on a particularly dark chapter in New York's past. And if the friends want to save their home and everyone they love, they will have to play the game and destroy the evil at its heart-or die trying.