Blog-o-ween 2023: "The Chimney" By Ramsey Campbell

Parents think they are, oh, so smart. They assume they know so much about the inner lives of their children, and how they think, and how they’ll react to a given situation that parents never stop to remember that a child’s mind is so open to all possibilities that the littlest things can be misconstrued and become a source of fear. In a vain attempt to protect their kids’ psyches, many parents shield them from the world’s obvious sources of terror and anxiety — upsetting world news, the death of older family members, scary television programs and movies, rap music and heavy metal...you know, the usual stuff.

Part of this assumed understanding (or arrogance depending on the parent) stems from misremembering their own childhoods. Parents never seem to recall the mundane moments that happened to their younger selves, the ordinary items that, when seen from the perspective of a child, sent shockwaves of terror through them and opened the door in their minds to a world of fear. Sometimes it was a jacket hung on a chair that looked like a ghoul crouching in the dark of a bedroom when the lights went out that sent shivers up a child’s spine. Or maybe it was when the child turned the crank on a jack-in-the-box, and the tune “Pop Goes the Weasel” played in that off-kilter way, and the anticipation of the lid springing open to reveal the clown within. But what if, the child’s mind proffers, what if it isn’t a clown at all under there? What if...it were something else...something with teeth and claws...and hunger...

Other times, children simply misunderstand the words that their parents say, and that opens vistas of horror to them. Stephen King, in his 1981 history of horror in print, TV, radio, film, and comics, Danse Macabre, talks about the child who couldn’t sleep without the light on because he’d heard his father, who was a baseball fan, talk often of the “twi-night double-header.” King also passes along the story of author John D. McDonald’s son’s fear of something he’d overheard adults talking about, “The Green Ripper.” I myself, growing up as a Planet of the Apes fan, was terrified when I heard Walter Cronkite talk about the “gorilla war” that was happening in Central America in the early 1980s.

I mean, c’mon, I think my fears were justified! It's only a matter of time before our ape overlords take over!

Today’s short story from Ramsey Campbell is also about a child’s misunderstanding of what should be one of the joys of childhood: Christmas. Let’s take a look at the terrors that live in “The Chimney.”

“Maybe most of it was only fear. But not the last thing, not that. To blame my fear for that would be worst of all.”

An unnamed narrator, now an adult, looks back at the time he was twelve years old and afraid of the chimney in his bedroom. He was a socially awkward child, someone who was picked on by those above and below him at school. Everything affected him and caused to feel anxiety and fear — the shout of a teacher, examinations, the size of his school, his mother’s own fears, and his father’s exasperated anger at the both of them.

But the narrator’s worst fears were in his own room. These fears were centered upon the large fireplace there and what the narrator imagined was waiting for him within the chimney. He recalls the time, when he was three years old, that he had seen a movie on television and how that movie had planted the seeds of his fears deep in his little mind:

“I’d seen two children asleep in bed, an enormous crimson man emerging from the fireplace, creeping toward them. They weren’t going to wake up! ‘Burglar! Burglar!’ I’d screamed, beginning to cry. ‘No, dear, it’s Father Christmas,’ my mother said, hastily switching off the television. ‘He always comes out of the chimney.’”

Always? Gulp!

And so a child’s terror is born. It is one that will follow the narrator throughout his young life. Though he tries to confront it and control it, that fear of someone — something — coming out of the chimney persists. But is it just an irrational fear? What of the noises the narrator hears in the chimney? What of the massive form that stands at the foot of his bed one night, its face “like a charred turnip carved with a rigid grin?”

“The Chimney” is one of those slow-burn horror stories that only British writers seem able to tell successfully. On top of that, Campbell uses the perspective of a child (even though the narrator is an adult when he tells his tale) to great effect. Everything for the boy is a source of anxiety. Every sentence seems to depict a world that can never be understood, and therefore, never be controlled. The adults around the narrator are just as confused, just as anxious, so there is no succor to be found there. Anxiety and fear seep from the page into the reader, and we become like children again, confused, powerless, and afraid. All in all, it’s a fantastic story of quiet horror and dread.

Ramsey Campbell was born in Liverpool, England, in 1946. He grew up in a broken home, his parents having become estranged shortly after his birth. His mother, also a writer, but one who went largely unpublished, encouraged Campbell from an early age to send his work off to publishers. Growing up a fan of H.P. Lovecraft, Ambrose Bierce, and Franz Kafka, Campbell wrote stories of the supernatural and the macabre from an early age.

Having published many short stories throughout the 1960s, it wasn’t until Arkham House came out with his collection of tales, Demons by Daylight, in 1973 that he quit his job working in a tax office to become a full-time writer. His first published novel was The Doll Who Ate His Mother in 1976. This was followed up with The Face That Must Die in 1979. Both were well received, and Campbell was on his way.

“The Chimney” won the World Fantasy Award in 1977. It was first published in Whispers: An Anthology of Fantasy and Horror. Later, it would be a part of Campbell’s own collection, Dark Companions.

For myself, this is another Blog-o-ween story that I found in the excellent Stephen Jones collection Terrifying Tales to Tell at Night (see also the entry on Robert Shearman’s “Granny’s Grinning”). Like the other tales in that book, “The Chimney” is accompanied by some fearsomely creepy illustrations from the pen of Randy Broecker.

That’s all for today, kiddies. Just remember that the world can indeed be a scary place, but our fears are often caused by our not fully understanding what we are seeing and hearing. So, when you hear something scraping its way down the chimney towards you, do not be alarmed! Know that it is only a soot-covered man waiting for the fire to die out so he can bring you...pleasant dreams? Hmmmm? Heh-heh-heh!