I'm Not Scared by Niccolò Ammaniti Read Free Book Online

there, because he was a Navajo Indian, and hewas fearless and invisible and silent as a puma and could climb and knew how to lie in wait for his enemies and then stab them with his knife.
    I’m Tiger, even better, I’m Tiger’s Italian son, I said to myself.
    Pity I didn’t have a knife, a bow or a Winchester.
    I hid my bike, as Tiger would have done with his horse, ducked into the wheat and crawled forward on hands and knees, till my legs felt as stiff as pieces of wood and my arms were numb. Then I started hopping like a bird, looking right and left.
    When I reached the valley I stopped for a few minutes to get my breath back, flattening against a tree trunk. And I flitted from tree to tree like a Sioux shadow. With my ears pricked up for any voice or suspicious sound. But all I heard was the blood throbbing in my ear-drums.
    Squatting behind a bush I scanned the house.
    It was silent and still. Nothing seemed to have changed. If the witches had been there they had tidied up afterwards.
    I squeezed through the brambles and found myself in the yard.
    Hidden under the corrugated sheet and the mattress was the hole.
    It hadn’t been a dream.
    I couldn’t see him clearly. It was dark and full of flies and a sickening smell welled up.
    I knelt on the edge.
    â€˜Are you alive?’
    Nothing.
    â€˜Are you alive? Can you hear me?’
    I waited, then I picked up a stone and threw it at him. I hit him on the foot. A thin, slender foot with black toes. A foot that didn’t move a millimetre.
    He was dead. And he would only get up from there if Jesus in person ordered him to.
    My flesh crawled.
    Dead dogs and cats had never affected me like this. Fur hides death. But this corpse, so white, with its arm thrown to one side, its head against the wall, was repulsive. There was no blood, nothing. Just a lifeless body in a dismal hole.
    There was nothing human about him any more.
    I must see his face. The face is the most important thing. From the face you can tell everything.
    But going down there scared me. I could turn him over with a stick. It would take a pretty long one. I went into the cowshed and found a pole, but it was too short. I went back. A small, locked door gave onto the yard. I tried pushing it, but although it was rickety it held. Above the door there was a little window. I climbed up, supporting myself on the jambs, and got through head first. A couple of kilos heavier, or a bum like Barbara’s, and I wouldn’t have got through.
    I found myself in the room I had seen while I was crossing the bridge. There were the packets of pasta. The opened cans of tomatoes. Empty beer bottles. The remains of a fire. Some newspapers. A mattress. A drum full of water. A basket. I had the same feeling I had had the day before, that someone came here. This room wasn’t disused like the rest of the house.
    Under a grey blanket there was a big box. Inside I found a rope that ended in an iron hook.
    With this I can get down, I thought.
    I took it and chucked it through the little window and climbed out.
    On the ground there was a rusty crane jib. I tied the rope round it. But I was afraid it would come undone and I would be left in the hole with the corpse. I tied three knots, like theones papa tied on the tarpaulin of his truck. I pulled as hard as I could, it held. So I threw it into the hole.
    â€˜I’m not scared of anything,’ I whispered to hearten myself, but my legs were wobbly and a voice in my brain was screaming at me not to go.
    Dead people can’t hurt you, I said to myself. I crossed myself and went down.
    Inside it was colder.
    The dead boy’s skin was dirty, caked with mud and shit. He was naked. About the same height as me, but thinner. He was skin and bone. His ribs stuck out. He must be about my age.
    I touched his hand with my toe, but it remained lifeless. I lifted the blanket that covered his legs. Round the right leg he had a big chain fastened with a padlock.