light and so only hunts during the hours of dark-
ness, emerging from a swamp to kill cattle, wildlife,
and eventually people. Predictably, the only man
to suspect the truth early on is greeted with disbe-
lief by the authorities, who attribute the disappear-
ances to a human killer. The usual sequence of
events follows, though enlivened by Brennan’s
crisp, lyrical prose—he is also the author of several
volumes of poetry. A search is made, but there are
no bodies to recover. The magnitude of the danger
becomes obvious only after one deputy is killed
and another is driven nearly insane with fear.
There is a particularly exciting chase and conclu-
sion, with flame throwers destroying the monster
just as it is about to escape into the ocean.
“Slime” is in the tradition of such classic sto-
ries as “Dune Roller” (1951) by Julian May and
“IT” (1940) by Theodore Sturgeon and like these
stories is written in a noticeably restrained and
nonmelodramatic fashion, almost as though it were
a news account rather than a piece of fiction.
PHANTOMS(1983) by Dean R. KOONTZalso uses a
very similar explanation for the origin of his amor-
phous monster, which travels under the land rather
than the sea but is otherwise remarkably similar. It
is in some ways atypical of Brennan’s work, which
tended to be more sedate and intellectual.
“The Small Assassin” Ray Bradbury(1946)
Several writers have explored the potential conse-
quences of malevolent children whose capacity for
evil is suggested by the fact that they are too young
to be subject to the moral restraints we instill in
them as they grow older. Stories of this kind gener-
ally involve preteens and sometimes toddlers, but
rarely infants, since it is generally assumed that in-
fants are too physically impotent to provide much
of a menace. The physical weakness of the child is
usually compensated for in some fashion, such as
with the magical powers of creation invoked in
“IT’S A GOOD LIFE” (1953), by Jerome Bixby, or
possibly with the aid of an adult accomplice.
Ray BRADBURY took the concept to its ex-
treme with this nasty little story of the Leiber fam-
ily. Alice has just delivered their first child, a son,
but she is immediately estranged from the baby,
who she believes tried to kill her while still in the
womb. Her husband, David, and the family physi-
cian, Jeffers, both believe this is a temporary condi-
tion brought on by stress and post partum
depression, but as the days pass she refuses to lav-
ish any affection on the child, who David admits
does act a bit peculiarly. His suspicions do not
carry any weight at first, not even when one of the
baby’s toys is mysteriously placed at the top of the
staircase, nearly causing him a serious fall, and he
dismisses the feeling that someone is watching
them in their bedroom one night as just a dream-
spawned illusion.
David is recalled from a business trip after
Alice allegedly attempts to kill the child. Dis-
traught, he is preoccupied with her condition and
fails to notice other warning signs. Eventually, he
comes home to find her dead, having fallen down
the staircase after tripping on another misplaced
toy. Only then does he begin to believe the truth,
but Dr. Jeffers dismisses his conclusions as the re-
sult of shock and administers a powerful sedative.
When he returns to check on his patient, he dis-
covers that someone has turned on the gas and
that David is now dead also. More to the point,
the wind has blown the door to the nursery closed
so that the infant, who is now openly revealed to
be mobile and intelligent, could not return to the
crib and provide the illusion of innocence.
Although Bradbury wisely stops short of the
implied final scene, Jeffers recognizes the truth and
sets about killing the monster child. Bradbury
wrote his own screen adaptation for the Ray Brad-
bury Theater production, shuffling the order of
events and for some reason reversing the manner
of the Leibers’s deaths. The story was almost cer-
tainly part of the inspiration for the 1974 film It’s
Aliveand the two subsequent sequels.Smith, Clark Ashton(1893–1961)
Also noted as a poet, Clark Ashton Smith wrote
more than 100 fantasy stories, most published in
pulp magazines such as Weird Tales during the
1920s and 1930s, but no novels. Although he was
a correspondent of H. P. LOVECRAFT, his own fic-
tion tended more toward fantasy than horror and
was frequently set in one or another of his imagi-
nary lands, Hyperborea, Zothique, Posedonis,Smith, Clark Ashton 327