When I think back on when I first started reflecting on fear, the foundational memory I have is from a Biology class, back when I was in middle school. Some topics were highly philosophical at this time, and my teacher was talking at some point about the importance of the natural responses of our bodies, using fear as an example. There I first learned, and I still have this on my notes of the classes, while she spoke and my mind was racing thinking about it, how fear is essential to life and surviving. We've only survived until this point as species because of it. Because we have instincts, and we are ready to fight or flight anytime. Without fear we wouldn't avoid things that could potentially harm us, and, most importantly, we wouldn't be capable of learning from experiences, so we could not do that again, or change things when needed.
I don't know why I was so fascinated by that discovery in that class, but the philosophy it involves, how we are constituted, how we made it to this point and how important it is to feel the "bad" things (which Inside Out would reinforce years later, especially at a time I was still processing depression and how to deal with normal sadness after that experience), that yet strikes me today.
My foundation, who I am and what I know is all on the books I read when a kid, so it's no surprise that theme would come to me again in the books I love. There are two important books for me, the two of them being middle grade but a bit horror too, since one of the authors is Neil Gaiman, known for his gothic style, and the book and film are known for scaring kids although it is directed to them.
I always loved the movie Coraline, being the fan number 1 of Alice since I started reading, but when I found that there was a book and got so excited buying it at a Book Fair, I didn't imagine how it would change my life. The story is way darker in the book, including many lonely passages in which Coraline has to deal with things by herself, without her parents, neighbours or any adult. I think that's absolutely scary for children because we rely so much on our parents as kids, but it talks to us when we grow up too. As teens we start to make our first decisions, later we just have ourselves to count on and decide, and it's scary as hell. Discovering the world alone, with no adults to point out what to do, calling to the school and solving everything, we only have ourselves. We are like Coraline, sitting in the bed and pretending our pillows will help us (sometimes quite literally).
The movie tries to be more dynamic, since it doesn't have the resource of narration, trying to insert characters or make them appear more, insert dialogues, but the beauty of the book - and I love that the two mediums are so different, so I can appreciate them both by their differences - is those silent passages, that solitude and despair. For some moments, we don't know what she will do, all alone without her parents, being haunted by ghost kids and a freaking magical universe that it's not what she thought it was. We contemplate this fear, this uncertainty with that beauty children books bring.
My favourite quote from the book is: "When you're scared but you still do it anyway, that's brave". That phrase always sticks with me. Through Coraline and the scary challenges she overcame, I learned that we don't necessarily are brave or cowards. We aren't born that way. Taking the necessary steps to thrive through what scares us to death, starting small and never giving up, even after taking our time and talking to the pillows, sitting and looking to the ceiling, dreading, even when it still scares us, we stand on our feet and go fight that monster, face that call or whatever haunts us. I learned the most valuable lesson a kid could learn when I read this book: that bravery is not having no fear. Because everyone is afraid at some point and everyone avoids something. It's cool to feel this fear, you just need to acknowledge it and face it. As long as you make it regardless of how afraid you are, you can be proud of yourself. You are brave.
Coraline needed to stop for a whole day because she was scared. She went after her neighbours seeking some comfort. She wasn't going there right now face this and that's it, because that's normal too. Process, fear and then decide it's more important to face it even if it makes you want to run away.
I bring this early example of "horror" and dealing, reflecting upon and facing fear (after all, the end of the book is even scarier than in the movie. I still remember the sensation of reading it), to show that horror is not only a matter of killers, blood and having many die and scream. Actually, the moments of silence and solitude can be the most horrific experiences to us, and those scenes drenched in this sentiment of being on your own, scared and contemplating things, are one of the most dreading and disturbing things I've read. This is to show, also, how children books can and should introduce these themes to younger kids, because horror is something all of us experience since we are born. And it brings discussions and, why not, philosophical questions every kid should be able to have a part in. These books are a serious matter: I'm not kidding when I say I think on that quote still on a daily basis. Because I have to constantly remind myself how brave I am, regardless of the anxiety I face, the fear I feel every day and, probably, will never really go away.
Although I avoided horror as someone would run from the devil (believe it or not, after all this account), as soon as I entered the horror fan club, I realized how horror was already very present in my life, since much earlier than my first "real horror movie". From Coraline, undoubtedly one of the greatest contributions to child horror, to topics, sensations, feelings and small things covered in many books I used to read. Hell, I used to watch a movie adapting Alice (an unknown yet really faithful to the book) and that was scary. When she grows and shrinks, and when her neck gets to the heights of the trees, scaring some angry bird mother who thinks she is a snake, well that makes me feel. It's uncertain because Alice doesn't know what will happen to her. Will she ever go back to how she used to be? That's a question she makes from the very start, one of the themes of the book, growing up and not being the same, and all those questions are scary to us as we go from childhood to teen years to adulthood.
As I said before, one book that's really important to me, besides Coraline, is quite an obscure one, few of you will know it, I presume, but it stands as my favourite series of all time. I have such nostalgia for this that is hard to explain and make it understandable to anyone who hasn't read it. Most importantly, this book was a bit more YA than middle age, although not quite. The Spook's Tale is darker - it's horror. It has witches, ogres, monsters, the Evil itself, in a far more scary way, because everything has consequences and people die. We are told since the start that our protagonist's Master will die soon, and that affects us while we're reading. I feel alarmed, uncertain and afraid reading Tom's adventures.
It's important to add: the experience begins before opening the book. The dark colours of the covers, especially the black one from the first and the blood-red from the second, together with the message on the back cover: "Don't read it at night", bring all of this to the reader. I used to read at night, under the blankets, dying of fear but so so curious. And I learned a lot of things with this series, which I got more aware of as time passed. In the very first book, the most frightening scene is not even the confrontation with the powerful witch, but almost at the beginning, when Tom needs to prove his worth as a Spook.
He is afraid. Since the start, he is afraid and he talks about it. That's what connects me to him since the start, since the Master is introduced and the story reveals itself. It's about fear. The overall theme is fear, the things bumping in the night (or day) and how to face them. So when Tom is alone in a haunted house, I'm afraid with him. And the fear, the description of the disturbing solitude in that place, the quietness, this is what I take as one of the most haunting things I've read, again. Not blood nor violence, but that tension in the air, that fear we all have, no matter how big or small.
Before this life-threatening experience, when he and the Master were just leaving the property to start the journey back to the Master's house, there's a poetic and beautiful scene, which is also very disturbing. We get to know that, in the past, being only a child, Tom used to hear screamings from the trees beyond the property. Till one day, his mother went there and made them stop. There's something so beautiful in this image, of a scared child and a mom who faces the dark and make it stop scaring her kid. Even more powerful, though, is when the Master tells him not to be afraid of the dead. In our world, we hear so often that we should be scared of the alive, not the dead, but in a fantasy world, where the supernatural is indeed a threat, how not to be scared? Well, it is because ghosts can't touch you. They're only lost spirits.
I think of that as poetic. The ghosts can't harm me because they're so afraid as I am. And that carries me through some of my days. There are things that scream and threat, but they're only afraid.
In the rest of the series, far more dangerous creatures are introduced, posing a challenge to the character. My personal favourite book is the second one, where we have a thing called Bane. I love its name, especially in Portuguese (how I first and second read the books), since it's something we hardly use in our day-to-day. I love the scenery, the story, everything about this book, but I especially love the fear it made me feel. I still can remember the taste of it and it's special. Because I could face this big fear together with Tom, and I could use some of his courage. Tom is not a superhuman. He is afraid and he questions whether he will survive, but he doesn't go away or let himself die without fighting. I value that till this day so much. It doesn't really matter if you won't get out of this, only that you face it. It can be a bit radical putting it this way since Tom faces a situation from which he can not come back alive, and I still believe it's worth it if you think it's important to face it, but it's true to the small things as well. You might be rejected. This might not go well. But if you don't avoid it and paralyse, you will be doing your part. Even afraid, even if the monster is big and terrifying.
One of the ways by which the monster can defeat Tom is by reading his mind. That's too scary. That's too powerful, a real threat and I get so afraid reading it. What does Tom do to overcome this? He manages to clarify his mind, control it and not think of things that could expose him. That's difficult. And reading this scene is powerful because it is improbable, but not impossible. We wonder if we would be this brave, if our minds would have the witty necessary whenever we read or watch anything. It doesn't matter, in fact. Because what these stories want to tell us, is not that we could indeed defeat a monster who reads minds, but that we can do anything. I'm not Tom and I'm not going to fight witches or reading-minds creatures anytime soon, because that's not my story.
My story is about a writer and student who fights her own anxiety, the difficulty dealing with people because of it, and discovering herself again after dark times, overcoming insecurity, imposter syndrome and all that jazz. Maybe I won't cave a pit to imprison an ogre never in my life, but just knowing that someone could do it, while his heart raced and everything was so uncertain, makes me believe that every challenge can be transposed, even the impossible ones. Tom's story speaks to me in a sense of letting me experience what he did, and I'm always more than satisfied after reading this kind of adventure and realizing that, yeah, someone has this story and it's so different from mine (and from everyone, I suppose, since these creatures don't exist in our world), but I can understand and appreciate this journey. Good for them they fight monsters and face their fears. I feel that I can face mine too.
After all, fiction is a way of seeing things differently, experiencing things we can't in the real world and feeling what the characters feel in many instances. That's why I believe in horror so passionately. Because it's a safe and meaningful way of addressing our darkest times, our most intimate fears, feeling all of this and going out renewed. Because it's important that we fear, and I consider it of extreme importance to fear, better yet through books and stories, which help us to cope with our real-world stuff and are essential for us to learn and reflect on others fears.
