CHM: The Same Dog

A tricky story to discuss, because it actually hinges on a little bit of a twist that I'd rather not give away. The story features two periods in time, the first when he was a young boy and the second having grown up and visiting the house he grew up in. As a boy he was a little bit of an outcast, but there was a little girl he was good friends with. They would go out exploring the English countryside together, roaming as far as they could get away with. One day they discover a strange house, guarded by a very frightening dog. As they leave, the boy thinks he sees something which creeps him out, but he catches only a vague glimpse.

Soon thereafter, the boy becomes sick and spends many days in bed. After he recovers he learns that his friend has died, but nobody will tell him what happened. He grows up never having known what happened to her. He returns to his childhood home from the army with a fellow soldier along. They go out exploring and discover the strange house that he had found as a child.

And to reveal anymore would be to give too much away. This again is Aickman at his most mysterious, with a sense of the strange but providing no ability to really puzzle out what has happened.

CHM: The Hospice

A man on a business trip finds himself lost and running out of gas. He decides to see if anyone at the very large house nearby can help him. They seem friendly enough but behave a little strangely.

It's a pretty well-worn premise, which I wouldn't be surprised is older than the novel. As often in horror, it's all about execution, execution, execution. (Yes, pun intended.) There's a certain quality to Aickman's strange stories--an atmosphere that manages to be both uncanny and subtle--that is done particularly well in this story.

The house turns out to be a hospice, named simply The Hospice, which seems to specialize in healing people with some undefined nervous condition. The host seems friendly enough, though it is not clear if he can be trusted. The staff, too, are polite, though with a strangely condescending manner. The protagonist has dinner at The Hospice, where he is served the same gigantic portions as everyone else, which he is strongly encouraged to eat.

He meets another resident, a woman who flirts with him. Then he ends up spending the night, having to spend the night sharing a room with one of the residents, whose behavior, much like everyone else's, is a little bit off.

This ends up being one of Aickman's pieces where the atmosphere is the strongest element. There's no real resolution, no revelation as to what is going on, or even a final shocking twist. But it still manages to be quite tense throughout.

CHM: Pages from a Young Girl's Journal

I'm not sure, but I think this story shows up frequently in anthologies. It did win a World Fantasy Award. I was aware when I started the story that it did deal with the theme of vampirism, and as the story opens I actually thought it might have been the journal of a "young" vampire girl. Even as the entries continue and that possibility seems less likely, I still couldn't quite be sure that there wouldn't be a final reveal that the author was a vampire all along. Again, Aickman does a great job with the atmosphere and keeping the reader just off balance enough.

The basic plot is that the narrative is a series of journal entries from a young Englishwoman as her family travels through Italy, where they tend to stay as guests of local landholders. There's an intriguing degree of allusions to other writers, particularly those of some Gothic importance. (As with Northanger Abbey, the narrator is fond of the Gothic works of Ann Radcliffe. She also learns that Shelley and Byron are staying nearby.) When it arrives, the vampire element is fairly conventional. (Who is that dark gentleman who the heroine is so drawn to?) The corruption of the narrator still makes more a compelling read and has a degree of ambiguity which reminded me of the end of "The Shadow Over Innsmouth."

CHM: Niemandswasser

Niemandswasser is German for "No Man's Water," which in this novel represents an interesting variation on the theme of the Borderland as a realm where reality is not entirely solid. The story concerns a young man from the Austrian nobility who after a failed love affair, sinks into despair. To flee society, who hides out in a home by a lake whose shores border on several nations. It is in this lake that a friend of his was horribly bitten several years ago, losing part of his hand and sinking into depression himself.

One day the young noble spots a boat on the lake and asks a peasant about it. The peasant advises him against venturing out to the boat, since it is in No Man's Water. When the young nobleman inquires from one of the local teachers, he is told that not only is that part of the lake under disputed nationality but that it also appears to have a considerable collection of superstitions and uncanny stories built up around it. Out of curiosity, the young noble decides to row out there one moonlit night.

While "Real Road" was mostly a building up of atmosphere with a climax, that while intriguing was rather ambiguous, "Niemandswasser" ends with a more traditional horror story resolution. Aickman never resolves the mystery entirely, but he has crafted a satisfying horror tale.

CHM: The Real Road to the Church

"The Real Road to the Church" is the story of an Englishwoman who is living on an unspecified European island, in which she has trouble communicating with the locals. She hears that the chateu she is renting is on "the real road to the church," a phrase which she finds vaguely troubling and which nobody appears capable of explaining to her. This is mostly a nicely atmospheric in which not that much happens until a subtle climax which may or may not be a hallucination. It's an intriguing story, though definitely on the quiet side.

Cold Hand in Mine: The Swords

Aickman has been on my TBR pile for a while now. To a large extent, this is mostly figurative since it was not until last year that I actually obtained some of his works. (I found Cold Hand in Mine for 25¢(!!) in a used bookstore in Madison, WI.) His work has been highly praised by (among others) Fritz Leiber, Robert Bloch and S.T. Joshi. One critic described his "strange stories" (as he called them) as "ghost stories in which there is no ghost." So, what I'm expecting is some good subtle weirdness.

"The Swords" certainly gets the collection off to a good start. The story is presented by the narrator as the story behind his first sexual encounter. It takes place during the two years in which he works as a traveling salesman. On one trip, he finds himself in a decayed English town holed up in a flophouse. (Accommodations having been arranged by the uncle who employes him.) With little to do, he visits a fairly pathetic carnival and wanders into a tent wherein a rather strange sideshow is being held.

The show features a young woman dressed up in sexy clothing and a collection of cheap-looking swords. The attendants to the show (who are all men) are each given the opportunity to stab the girl with one of the swords, after which they get to his her. Though she places her hands over the spot on her body into which the sword entered, no blood appears to flow and the girl evinces no pain. (Quite the contrary in fact.)

The boy sneaks off before his turn comes up, but he later runs into the girl and the showman in a restaurant. Here, the showman offers him a private performance by the girl. I'll skip summarizing what follows, since there's no way I could do it justice.

It's a perplexing story, one in which it seems pretty clear something strange is going on without it being really clear what.