Claire, which were collected as The Psychic Detec-
tivein 1993.
Chetwynd-Hayes produced more than two
dozen collections of short stories, most of which
are quite enjoyable, if unmemorable. The best of
these collections are The Monster Club(1975), The
Other Side(1983), and Shudders and Shivers(1995).
Several of his stories are worthy of being singled
out, particularly “Which One?” (1981), which
challenges the reader to figure out which of several
people is actually a ghost, the chilling “Something
Comes in from the Garden” (1975), “Long Long
Ago” (1986), and “Moving Day” (1987).
In addition to writing his own fiction,
Chetwynd-Hayes edited a very large number of
horror anthologies, including almost a dozen vol-
umes of the prestigious Fontana Books of Ghost
Stories. His nonseries novel The Curse of the Snake
God(1989) is quite good but long out of print. He
also wrote movie novelizations, of which The
Awakening(1980) is of note because it was based
on Bram STOKER’s 1903 novel The Jewel of the
Seven Stars.
“Children of the Corn” Stephen King(1977)
Horror fiction often allows readers to vicariously
confront those things that frighten them, some-
times fears that are not even consciously acknowl-
edged. When Stephen KINGwrote Carrie(1974),
he addressed many of the situations that trouble
adolescents, and when Ray BRADBURYwrote “THE
SMALL ASSASSIN” (1946), he was giving form to
our vaguely perceived and rarely acknowledged
fears about the alien nature of children. King, who
has proven himself extraordinarily skillful at evok-
ing the feel of childhood in such works as “The
Body” and IT(1990), gave this fear an even more
substantial form in “Children of the Corn,” which
has since been the inspiration for a series of five
horror films of varying quality.
Burt and Vicky Robeson are traveling across
the country trying unsuccessfully to salvage an in-
creasingly rocky marriage. Burt leaves the highway
in a remote part of Nebraska to relieve the
monotony but instead finds himself traveling
through seemingly endless fields of corn. He and
Vicky are arguing again when, distracted, he hits a
child in the road, although when they inspect the
body they discover the boy’s throat had been cut
and that he was dead or dying when the collision
took place. They take the body to nearby Gatlin, a
small town of about 5,000 and find it deserted,
with every indication that it was abandoned 12
years earlier. Vicky grows increasingly frightened,
but Burt is determined to find someone to take
charge of the body.
Burt investigates a strangely transformed
church and finds evidence that the children
slaughtered all the adults years before in service to
a mysterious entity known as “He Who Walks Be-
hind the Rows.” Vicky is attacked and carried off,
and Burt is forced to kill one of the children before
fleeing into the cornfields. The pursuit continues
until darkness falls, and he discovers that he has
been guided by some unseen force to a clearing
where his wife has been mutilated and crucified
adjacent to the long-dead corpses of the local po-
lice chief and minister. All hope of escape is lost
when he is confronted by both the children and
the monstrous creature they worship.
Unlike the movie version, in which the couple
survive and even rescue some of the children,
King’s short story is relentlessly grim. We never
learn the explicit nature of the entity, but it is im-
plicitly the evil that can grow within ordinary peo-
ple if they allow their religious beliefs to grow so
narrow that they no longer have room for compas-
sion or humanity. On the surface the evil lies in
the demonically motivated children. In reality it
lies within each of us.“The Chimney”Ramsey Campbell(1977)
Many of the best horror stories involve childhood
fears with the elements of suspense doubly effec-
tive because those are the primal fears we never
quite outgrow, even though we may think we do,
and because the protagonists are usually children
as well, which lends a special air of vulnerability to
the characters. Ramsey CAMPBELLis a prolific short
story writer and steadily productive novelist who is
particularly noted for his ability to describe the in-
tricate workings of human psychology so that his
characters become multidimensional and easy to
identify with.“The Chimney” 55