"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!" I'd screamed. "No, dear, it's Father Christmas," my mother said. "He always comes out of the chimney."//
Perhaps if she'd said "down" rather than "out of"..."
The Chimney is a horror short story written by Ramsey Campbell.
Taking the perspective of an adult looking back on his childhood, the narrator recalls he was an anxious, timid boy who, after watching a movie about Santa Claus, misinterprets the character and becomes convinced "Father Christmas" is a malicious boogeyman lurking in his chimney. Both his equally anxious mother and his neglectful, brusque father fail to dissuade him of the delusion, and the narrator becomes increasingly paranoid that Father Christmas will get him over the years, until his fear finally comes true...
The story was critically acclaimed and is regarded as one of Campbell's best works of short fiction. It won the 1979 World Fantasy Award for Best Short Story.
List of tropes applying to this work:
- Abusive Parents: Both the narrator's parents are a downplayed version of this. His mother is loving, but she's quite paranoid and prone to fits of fear she projects unto her child, often fueling the narrator's crippling anxiety. His father tries to counter this, but he's so neglectful and short-tempered that he never bothers to actually try and help his son.
- Asshole Victim: Downplayed. The narrator's father is a Jerkass, but his death in a fire is treated as legitimately tragic.
- Bad Santa: The narrator becomes paranoid that "Father Christmas" is a malicious boogeyman living in his family's chimney that is out to get him. He dreams of numerous encounters with Father Christmas, culminating in one where he discovers it is covered in horrific burns and sports a Glasgow Grin. The narrator eventually realizes it isn't real, only for him to discover his father has burned to death during a house fire caused by the chimney - and that his father's corpse is now the spitting image of Father Christmas.
- Death by Despair: The narrator's mother dies of grief a year after her husband dies.
- Downer Ending: The narrator's father burns to death, and his mother dies shortly after. The narrator realizes his father's corpse is the spitting image of his vision of Father Christmas, and speculates he somehow caused his father's death.
- Dreaming of Things to Come: As an adult, the narrator realizes after his father dies in a house fire that his dream of Father Christmas was a premonition of his father's death, and speculates his resentment of his father caused the man's death.
- Foreshadowing: Immediately after the narrator's vivid dream of being attacked by Father Christmas, his father wakes him up. This hints at the revelation "Father Christmas" was a premonition of his father's burned corpse.
- Jerkass: The narrator's father is a brusque and harsh man who frequently snaps at his wife and son, and makes it clear he views the narrator as an embarrassment for his timidity and anxiety. The narrator explains it comes from the stress of managing a failing shop, which makes him resent them for their fantastical and at times delusional fears rather than the very real threat of their looming poverty.
- Jerkass Has a Point: For as much of a jerk as the narrator's father is, it's hard to deny he's right about how crippling and irrational his son's fears are, and how his wife enables said fears with her own.
- Kill It with Fire: The chimney the narrator believed Father Christmas lived in malfunctions and spurts out fire, causing the narrator's family home to burn down. His parents ran out, but his father goes back in to do it himself and burns to death as a result.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: It's left ambiguous if anything supernatural actually happened in the story. The narrator believes his dream of Father Christmas was a premonition of his father's death and that he somehow caused it, but throughout the story he's been prone to delusional fears with no basis in reality and it's possible his father's death was simply an accident.
- Nervous Wreck: Both the narrator and his mother are constantly paranoid wrecks, always terrified of the next looming threat. The narrator gradually grows out of it to a degree, but his mother never does.
- Poor Communication Kills: Neither of the narrator's parents ever bother to explain what Santa is supposed to be to assuage his fears and cut themselves off when they try because of their own hang-ups, perpetuating his fear.
