Reading Adventure on the High Teas reminded me that I’ve had Dark Entries on my reading list for quite some time and that it was high time I got to it. I’m not quite sure how I came across the book, but I suspect the praise by Neil Gaiman on the cover played a part in having me add this to my reading list.

Dark Entries is a collection of six stories by Robert Aickman. Their genre is horror, but Aickman describes them as “strange stories”, which they certainly are. The six stories are:

1. The School Friend: When Sally Tessler moves back, the narrator, Amy, tries to reconnect. But Sally seems a little strange and as Amy digs deeper, she realises just how strange things are.
2. Ringing the Changes: Gerald and Phrynne (his much younger wife) are on their honeymoon, but the town in which they’re staying is constantly ringing with bells. The two try to ignore it, but it’s made clear that the bells foretell something evil coming.
3. Choice of Weapons: Fenville falls in love with a woman he sees at a restaurant, only to realise that she’s in love with someone else. The odd thing is that this man doesn’t seem to be a normal human.
4. The Waiting Room: Stuck in a train station, Edward manages to bargain for a place to sleep – the disused waiting room. But soon, he finds himself dreaming…
5. The View: Granville is headed to an island for rest, only to be offered stay at The Fleet. What starts off as a charming stay with a charming hostess soon becomes rather disconcerting.
6. Bind Your Hair: Clarinda goes to the countryside to meet her fiance’s family, who are exceedingly kind to her. But it’s their strange neighbour, Mrs Pagani, who draws her attention to peculiar nocturnal going-ons.

The blurb of the book mentions Ringing the Changes as the classic story, but my favourite of the six is going to be Bind Your Hair. It’s probably the story that’s closest to ‘horror’ for me and manages to invert Clarinda’s world completely. Ringing the Changes is also pretty clearly horror, but I didn’t feel the strange atmosphere as strongly as I did for Bind Your Hair.

One thing I realised is that “strange” really is the best description for these stories. I don’t think I was really scared by any of them; in fact, the discussion essays online made the stories sound scarier than I found them to be. Perhaps it’s the mystery in all the stories, but I found myself more perplexed and curious than I was scared. What I really enjoyed about this was the writing and the atmosphere. Most of the time, I really wanted to read on and dive deep into these worlds that are similar, but not quite, ours. It’s a pity that Aickman only wrote short stories – it would be amazing to see what he could have done with something longer.

The book comes with an introduction which takes a much broader look at his works, something that makes sense when you think about the fact that Dark Entries is part of a series republishing Aickman’s short stories. While I wasn’t scared by these stories, I certainly enjoyed them and I’ll definitely be reading more from this collection.