Dark Entries is another collection of previously published “strange stories” by Robert Aickman (1914-1981), first published in 2014. The contents:
- The School Friend. The old friendship of two women is severely tested when one of them sinks into a bizarre and mysterious house and depression.
- Ringing the Changes. A couple’s honeymoon to a remote coastal town is disturbed by its rather peculiar inhabitants and customs.
- Choice of Weapons. An impetuous young man falls for a mysterious beauty who turns out to have more baggage than he can handle.
- The Waiting Room. A depressed businessman is forced to spend a cold night in an empty, or perhaps not so empty, train station waiting room.
- The View. An impetuous middle-aged man falls for a mysterious beauty whose house turns out to have more baggage than he can handle.
- Bind Your Hair. Looking for a way to make a visit with the in-laws more enjoyable? This story won’t help.
All of these stories have vividly unsettling atmospheres — always a strength for Aickman but never more on display than here. My favorite is Ringing the Changes: the atmosphere is thick with foreboding, the characters are crisply drawn and for the most part sympathetic, and the bells and the rest of the plot are nightmarishly captivating — you can’t look away. The View is not quite up to that level, but has some wonderfully weird atmospherics, such as an enormous and detailed embroidered carpet that runs through an entire estate — and whose pattern never repeats. How could this be? Why did it come to be? The protagonist, Carfax, would really like to know, but Aickman, following his usual form, declines to spell it out for either him or the reader.
Reading Aickman is comfortably creepy, perfect for a dark and stormy night, a comfortable fireside chair, and a glass of Lagavulin. In fact, Aickman’s stories often begin in just such a way, with very common characters doing very common things. But in Aickman’s world, the common activity is interrupted by something a bit strange, and then another and another, until, before you know it, you are in a world where nothing is normal and nothing can ever hope to be normal again.
