When I was about 12 or 13, I bought a videotape called Stephen King’s World of Horror. It appeared to be a TV documentary pieced together from a couple of separate interviews with the author and padded out with footage from horror movies as diverse as Psycho and The Class of Nuke ’Em High. Already a King (and horror) fan by then, I watched that tape over and over, absorbing its surprisingly comprehensive overview of a genre that would eventually constitute a large part of my own fiction writing career.
During one of the interviews, the producer must have asked King something like, “What’s the most horrible thing you can imagine?” To which King replied, “The worst thing I can think of is going in to check on one of my kids and finding one of them dead.”
To a teenager, this was the most disappointing answer in the world. What about flesh-eating zombies? Getting buried alive? Radioactive monsters? Evisceration by a slavering werewolf? The master of horror is asked the ultimate question and that’s all he can come up with?
More than 20 years later, in August 2013, I welcomed my first child into the world. I never imagined myself as the fatherly type; I was 28 before I could stomach the idea of parenthood at all and after that it was a ‘take it or leave it’ prospect; I mainly agreed to start trying because having children was important to my wife. But once the hectic and stressful adjustment period was over, I was surprised at the depth and richness of love I felt for Chloe. The only thing that has ever come close is what I felt for my wife in the early days of our relationship. Fatherhood has been an unexpectedly rewarding experience, perhaps because I expected nothing from it.
In that frame of mind a few weeks ago, I was approaching Chloe’s basinet and my imagination offered up one of the hypotheticals it likes to indulge in from time to time. In this one, I would look into the basinet and find my little monkey still and peaceful... and dead. The vision – as vivid as any reality – was appalling beyond explanation. Although I’m sure any parents reading this won’t require any explanation; they’ll be nodding in perfect understanding.
It had been at least 15 years since I last watched Stephen King’s World of Horror, but my teenage musings came back to me with such a thud that it might as well have been last week. Flesh-eating zombies? I’d take an even dozen of them over finding my daughter dead in her basinet.
King was absolutely right. It would be the worst thing in the world.