Sometime back when I was in elementary school, let’s say 60 years ago, I read a story by Saki (aka HH Munro) titled “Sredni Vashtar”.

The story has remained vivid in my mind for the six decades since I read it. It truly is the story that keeps on giving.

Periodically, I ask myself, why? Why did that particular story become a part of me? What magic did Saki imbue into the tale that grabbed hold of my youthful imagination? And what magic is in the story to keep it in my mind all these many years after reading it?

Wikipedia has an article on the story here, where you can read all about it. Take a read and familiarize yourself with the tale. The plot summary tells all. So if you want to read the story, skip the wiki plot summary.

Munro was a master storyteller and achieved maximum effects with a minimum of means. His death in World War I cut short a brilliant literary career.

With the very first sentence, Munro sets the stage and tells us what the story is about:

Conradin was ten years old, and the doctor had pronounced his professional opinion that the boy would not live another five years.

“Sredni Vashtar” is a story about youth and death. As the tale progresses we learn the source of death: Conradin’s cousin and guardian, Mrs. de Ropp. Her smothering and malicious attention is killing the boy: quite literally sucking the life out of him.

And because Mrs. de Ropp is an adult, the story is also about authority and its destructiveness.

Being only ten, Conradin is powerless to fight his authoritarian cousin and guardian; so he retreats to the world of his imagination. And part of that world is an abandoned toolshed that is almost completely hidden from view by shrubbery.

It is in the shed that Conradin can breath and escape, for a time, the domineering attention of “The Woman”.

Aside from the legion of imaginary beings in the shed, there is a Houdan hen and a polecat-ferret.

The hen was the recipient of all the love the boy could muster. The polecat-ferret, which Conradin feared, became his god — Sredni Vashtar — which he fervently worshipped.

However, Mrs. de Ropp, taking a dislike to the boy’s trips to the shed, discovers the hen and has it taken away.

Conradin is crushed, and resorts to his god, asking him to “Do one thing for me.”

And when The Woman notices that the trips to the shed continue, she resolves to clear out the little building. And all Conradin can do is helplessly watch her snuff out the last shred of his life.

I won’t spoil the ending. Read it for yourself. It is deliciously wicked.

So why do I like the story?

I think it’s because I identify with Conradin. Back then, when I first read the story, I saw myself the victim of overbearing parents who had a need to control virtually all aspects of my life, regardless of what I wanted.

Conradin took to his imagination for relief from his cousin’s oppression and I did the same.

The boy suffered physically and emotionally. His only refuge was the shed. The same with me. Only I had my grandparents’s woods instead of the shed.

Mrs. de Ropp represented the ultimate in capricious authority. Her word was law and she was always right. She was in essence a bully.

My father was an autocrat, demanded absolute obedience, was never wrong, and was a bully. My mother had to have control of everything. There was no allowance for individualism. There was no respect for my feelings. Children were to be seen and not heard and were to do without question what they were told.

Like Conradin, I withdrew into myself to escape the horror of my reality. And I, too, had my god.

Rainer Maria Rilke advised the young poet to look to his childhood if he found himself with nothing to write about. For one’s childhood is an inexhaustible well of material to draw from.

This post came from that well. And that well might explain why I like horror stories and write them.

As a writer, “Sredni Vashtar” is a vivid reminder to create characters that are alive and that people can connect with.

Without characters the reader can identify with fiction falls flat. The story is in the living, breathing characters. Not the plot. No one remembers plots. But we all remember well-drawn and vibrant characters.

There’s more that can be said about “Sredni Vashtar”, but I’ll leave it there for now. Give the story a read. It is a superb example of the power one can achieve in a well-written short story.