Review of Dark Entries by Robert Aickman

Aickman conveys subtleties of atmosphere.

His close interiority adds layers of dread. He favors first person narration in many tales. This is the second collection of his I’ve read.
He leaves some dangling threads of ambiguity in his plots, but I don’t mind. Also, he is sparing with startling imagery. Nothing happens for many pages in some of his stories, but you gather info if you pay attention, which will eventually contribute to the descent of horripilation.
The tales operate through accumulated tension.
The first 3 stories in the collection are top-notch. The fourth through the sixth stories are less engaging, more subtle, still readable. The entirety of the collection is well-written, as I expected from this consummate author. He wrote some 115 tales and a few novels. They tend to be long. It’s best if you read the tales in one sitting, I find.

For “The School Friend,” The ending is flabbergasting. After her violent fit, Mel flees the house and everything goes back to normal. The relationship between the two main characters is uncertain. Sally is fully recovered, back to her old ways. Her brief madness was precipitated by the house and the spirit that dwelt there.
There is a beautiful accretion of atmosphere.
The girls fear responsibility, intimacy, and being alone. They are susceptible to psychotic breaks. The shock manifests as a skeletonizing of the body. When the psychic impediment is removed, the body returns to stillness.
The house and Mel are both haunted and inhabited by Sally’s father’s spirit.
The mystery remains and pervades the mind after reading. Who is the father of the child? Could the spirit-father impregnate his daughter? That would certainly cause psychic dissonance.
There is only one male in the story so we must conclude that the ghost was responsible. The child is depicted as an animal – heard only, never seen, birthed by an unknown psychic method.
A truly unsettling story for its unanswered strangeness.
Sally is a prodigy. Dr. Tessler is her father. We are told he’s been carted away in a horse hearse but we do not see him. There is ambiguity as to whether he is dead in that scene.
Sally’s happily ever after is suspicious, hard to swallow.
She is radiant in the end after her descent into shabbiness.
The state of the house represents Sally’s deterioration.
An architectural succubus stars in this dark drama. Aickman appears to have high standards when it comes to interior comforts.

The second story.
The star here are the sounds of bells. So loud they shake the curtains? This improbably detail is used as a way to show that the sounds are getting closer. The appearance of the suit of armor is also telling. We get hints of an impending horror through such visual cues.
Tormented by bells, the couple is essentially in hiding while on vacation. The town is bent on waking the dead. Instead of relaxing they are attacked by the revelers who seem overcome by madness.
The slow building of the tintinnabulation and the slow increase in the distance between the main characters culminates in a climax which leaves them irreversibly damaged. Their relationship could not survive the ordeal.
Inexplicable, yet mesmerizing. It’s an allegory of excitations. Gerald is too old for her. She has been carried away by the dead or the revelers. Which to him, are the same things.

Choice of Weapons:
In a fancy restaurant, Fenville pays for a date with mom’s money. He’s fickle. Privilege and inherited wealth are his modus. He becomes fixated on a girl at another table and sabotages his own date.
It seems he believes his money allows him to take liberties with the feelings of others.
Sexual tensions build.
Fenville lacks common decency. His obsession with the girl is hard to justify or explain. Sphynx statues guard the girl’s mysterious residence.
Is he going mad? He wasted his night with stalkerish antisocial activities. His nosy landlady is unaccountably involved. Fenville is lovesick and self-sabotaging. The quack doctor hypnotizes him and believes infatuation can be fatal. Signs of decayed wealth intrude when he insinuates himself into her domicile. Her very old butler complicates an already complex atmosphere. This is a grand estate in disrepair. Does love at first sight exist? They are both believers. She is not surprised by his invasion. She pegs him right away as an admirer. Her tragic backstory unfolds briefly – unconvincingly— good family ruined. Keeping up appearances. Yet, there’s gobs of money in the almonry chest. Bank notes stashed everywhere. Is she pretending to be poor?
She vanishes from the mirror, has no reflection, which leads us to believe he is imagining her. The tasseled cane represents the dream lover. She believes she knows how to embroider but this is another symptom of her madness. Gauze hovers over her activities like a specter. Her laugh is a blemish on her character, a sign of madness. He’s in denial in regards to the whole situation. He succumbs to lust, puts up no resistance against her. His despair at her loving someone else spurs him to desperate action. Gunter, the butler, is given his freedom and loses his sickness. His sickness was thus connected to the estate. The house takes on the decay Gunter left behind. Free will seems to be an illusion. Ann’s suicide precipitates further devotion by Fenville to his elusive mistress. His former girlfriend was was destroyed by his deluded passion. The doctor prescribed her pills with which she died. Fenville is left with no choice but to duel his rival.
The ending is inconclusive. In the hands of a lesser writer, this setup would result in nonsense. With Aickman it’s all immersive. A dream. Are there pistols behind the mirror? Is reality behind the mirror?
what is behind the mirror?
Dr. Bermuda, his unhandsome son. Is the delusion part of his treatment? Was the doctor manipulating him?
Fenville stabbed Dorabelle, seeing her as his rival man, the man from the mirror. The clock is destroyed, the menacing cane is a sword. She’s making a wedding veil. Who’s the mad one?
It’s utterly baffling. But I loved it.

The other stories are, as mentioned, less memorable. A wonderful collection overall.