I have an admission: I don’t like Roald Dahl and I never have. Occasionally I’ll have to read a chapter of Matilda or The BFG to a class that’s halfway through the book and it’s their daily story time… but, like Marvin, I won’t enjoy it. Dahl is a great children’s author and nearly everyone I’ve met loves his work… but I don’t. It’s not him; it’s me. Or is it?
We all have our thresholds, and Roald Dahl’s stories fall outside of mine. Too grotesque, too floridly exaggerated—and far too much of child abuse/neglect for my tastes. Children are always starving, or used as free labour, or pushed down a garbage chute by sentient squirrels, or similar. I can’t enjoy scenes where children are getting victimised. Even the Jurassic Park movies go a little too far, in my opinion, with the traumatic experiences inflicted on minors. A teenage boy has to survive on his own in a derelict bunker, surrounded by predators; or a child has to hide in a cupboard, pursued by raptors. If you’ve ever had anything to do with children, you don’t just enjoy the story: you wince at the child’s psychiatric future and that of the next generation after them. 
Am I the only one? Specific publishers frequently stipulate “No child abuse” in their submission guidelines. Maybe readers don’t mind picturing an alien monster pursuing/capturing/dismembering a human, but let’s not have the victim underaged, because that’s a layer of ugliness too far.
There are only three places I’ve put children in my scary stories:
- Non-graphic or implied victimhood in a fictionalisation of real events/issues. A story you could write biographically, perhaps, in order to blow the whistle on a system that’s not working—but you find that a fictional version is tidier, more impactful with the things that need to be said.
- The young person presents the horror element of the story. The ghost of a child attached to an antique toy, for instance, or a student who loses the distinction between game world and real life.
- The child is unaware of the horror element, and thus unhurt. Perhaps the child is an “unreliable narrator” of events beyond their understanding, or perhaps a young child accepts as normal things that have profoundly disturbing implications to the rest of us.
This one’s a Number 3:
The Cold People (first published by Black Hare Press)
“Welcome to Goldstone Cryonic Facility,” I said in my professional tone. “I’ll give the three of you a brief tour before we discuss your contract, sir?”
The client and his daughter nodded. She turned his wheelchair to follow me, her child trotting alongside.
“Is that why you call it Cryonic?” the granddaughter asked. “Because of the people crying?”
“No, no,” I assured her. “Crying? Nobody’s crying!”
She stared at me. “The thin grey people, walking in circles, waiting.”
“W-waiting?”
“The cold people.” She gestured around us. “Can’t you see them crying?”
I lost that sale. People shouldn’t bring small children.
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Fiona M Jones writes short-form and micro fiction, CNF and sometimes poetry. Her work is published everywhere except Antarctica, and most of it sits somewhere in here: https://fionamjones.wordpress.com/.