By confronting imagined terrors, we rehearse for the real ones, learning that courage, wisdom and empathy are the true charms that keep the darkness at bay
H
ere is one of my earliest memories: I was around four years old, standing in a playground somewhere in Preston, staring in wonder at three big rocks, each one splattered with red spray paint. I asked my nan about it. She could have told me the truth, that the paint was graffiti.
Instead, she told me the rocks were a species of monster called bloodsuckers, and that at night they came alive to eat children who were foolish enough to stray outside after dark. I believed her with all my heart. Why wouldn’t I? She was my nan!
When my parents arrived to pick me up that day, I threw myself into the back of the family station wagon and demanded we leave before the sun went down. On the drive home, I asked my mum if bloodsuckers were real. Not only were they real, she told me, but she’d been attacked by one when she was a little girl and only narrowly escaped.
