Recapturing the Power of Childhood Fear

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When I moved into the basement in fifth grade, there were certain rules that had to be followed in order to stay safe.

The light always had to be on at the bottom of the stairs. No amount of parental scolding could convince me to turn that light off, or to reach back into the hallway to flip the switch once I was free.

The hall had to be taken at a sprint. While the idea of not showing fear seemed like a good one, speed was always preferable over bravado. Because once I hit the stairs to go up or closed my bedroom door, I was safe.

But I could never, never look behind myself as I ran. That was the biggest rule of all. The most important, the most sacred, the most vital.

What was I afraid of? Nothing bad ever happened to me in that basement (unless you count the time a boy asked me to a dance by filling my mortifyingly messy room with balloons). But the dark basement hallway radiated menace, and I respected that menace. I followed the rules. My sisters did the same, including the time I screamed in the hallway and my older sister just…stayed in her bedroom. Her door was shut, after all, so she was safe.

Everyone had these rules as a kid. (“Everyone did not,” my brutally practical older sister just informed me, and yet she didn’t set foot in the basement hallway when I screamed…) My little sister was afraid of the spots of light you see when the lights go out, so she used to climb in my bed. The lights were still there, but as long as she was with me: safe. My kids can’t sleep without a blanket no matter how hot it is, because if a single limb is uncovered, a nebulous something can get them. But as long as the blanket is in place: safe. And as a kid and teen I could keep my parents from dying in their sleep as long as I told them “I love you,” every single night before they went to bed.

Safe.

There was the fear of everything the darkness held, and there were the rules that kept the darkness from hurting me.

I think back on that hallway, the sheer irrationality of my fear, but also the absolute certainty that I was doing what I needed to. I knew there was nothing behind me in the hallway, just like I knew if I turned around to make sure, there would be something there. Those two ideas coexisted in my head, the rational and irrational perfectly at home, holding hands like twin girls in blue dresses asking if you want to come play.

In Mister Magic, I tried to write a book that captures the same surreal coexistence of the known and unknown. I want to tap into something primal, the dream state of fear and wonder and awe that we existed in as a children, when the world was incomprehensible and filled with limitless threat and possibility. Where elemental magic existed alongside basic math, where fairies might visit in the night to take away the baby teeth abandoning us as we grew, where wishing on 11:11 could make the boy who sits in front of you in Mrs. Voss’s class have a crush on you, too, at least until he gets a haircut and you lose the strange fascination that had fallen on you like a spell.

And honestly, part of my obsession with recapturing what it felt like to be afraid as a child is selfish. Childhood fear is overwhelming and filled with wonder and awe and terror and, for the most part, solved with the flick of a light switch or the click of a door latch. Adult fear is simple and brutal and devastating. I have gotten a letter from the IRS that no door could shield me from. I have listened to my dad’s cancer diagnosis that no amount of whispering “I love you” could protect him from. I have spent infinite moments holding an unconscious, seizing child, wondering if they were about to die and powerless to help them. And I have walked away from an organization that told me my entire eternal salvation depended on staying faithful.

There was no magic in any of those moments, no tricks or rituals that could save me. No light to keep the darkness at bay. There was only the held breath, the desperate hope, the placement of one foot in front of the other because what can you do but keep walking toward the stairs out?

And so, in fiction, I turn to horror softened with wonder. I tap into my childhood brain, so close to me still, and ask it: What might have been behind us in the hallway if we had ever been brave enough to look? What can I learn now by at last letting myself peer into the hidden spaces of the world that felt so close to the surface back then? What might have happened if I’d held my fear close as part of my heart and learned from it, rather than feeling ashamed of its existence?

I don’t believe my older sister, by the way. I think she had these little rituals, these superstitions, these bargains with the unknown, too. It’s easy to forget, as you grow into adulthood and gain some semblance of actual control over your life. It’s easy to close the door on that hallway, looming ever longer and darker, waiting for you to stumble into it on accident now that you’ve forgotten its power. All it takes is one step over the threshold, away from a world where you’ve convinced yourself things make sense, where your fears are now devastatingly realistic but even harder to protect against.

Give me back the dream logic of childhood, the power of racing down a hallway in the light, the talisman of the blanket over my feet, the barrier of a slammed bedroom door. Give me back my 11:11 wishes; I’ll use them all to be brave enough to stop and look at what’s been waiting in the dark of my childhood brain all this time.

And, if you let me, I’ll take you with me. The darkness is still waiting for us, and there’s so much to learn inside.

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