Everyone remembers being afraid of something as a child. Maybe it was the shape in the dark corner of your room, the sound of footsteps in an empty hallway, or the feeling that something was watching from just out of sight. Most of us laugh at those memories as adults, but the truth is, those fears never completely disappear. They change shape. They become quieter, more sophisticated, and sometimes harder to recognize. Alex Grant’s story, The Very Terrible Thing, from his collection, A Different Approach and Other Stories, captures this idea perfectly through a single, powerful image: a child terrified by a shadowy figure on top of a church.
In the story, the narrator recalls a fear from childhood that was never clearly defined. Each time he walked past a particular church, he felt certain that something sinister was lurking there, watching them. It wasn’t the building itself that caused the fear, but what the imagination filled in the unknown presence that seemed to be watching. Even as the years pass and the narrator grows older, the feeling never completely goes away. The fear fades into memory but leaves behind a lasting curiosity: why did it feel so real?
That is what makes The Very Terrible Thing so relatable. It reminds us that the line between childhood and adulthood is thinner than we like to believe. As adults, we may not fear monsters on rooftops, but we still face invisible worries about health, relationships, work, and the future. The shapes that once frightened us in the dark have turned into new, abstract forms of anxiety. Just as the narrator’s imagination filled in the details of what couldn’t be seen, adults do the same with uncertainty in their lives.
Grant’s story also shows how fear is rarely about what’s in front of us; it’s about what we think might be. The child’s fear of the church steeple figure mirrors the way adults project their worries onto situations that may not warrant them. A child imagines danger where there’s only a shadow. An adult might imagine failure before even trying. Both fears come from the same place in the mind: the need to make sense of the unknown.
One of the most striking aspects of The Very Terrible Thing is that the mystery is never solved. We never learn what the figure really was, or if it was ever there at all. That lack of closure is exactly what gives the story its power. It forces readers to confront the fact that fear doesn’t always need an answer to feel real. The story becomes less about what the child saw and more about how the mind works when faced with uncertainty.
Through its simple but haunting imagery, The Very Terrible Thing captures how early fears echo into adulthood. It reminds us that what frightened us as children still shapes how we see the world today, just in quieter, more complicated ways.
To explore this and other thought-provoking stories, read Alex Grant’s A Different Approach and Other Stories and discover how fear, morality, and imagination intertwine in the most unexpected places.
Available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FF3PZ1QT/.
