Dark Entries

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usually banal to the point that we don't even acknowledge that they have been read, have now become two of the most horrifying words in the English language. As protagonist after protagonist is undone by temptation and lust, one can’t help but divine a sinister double entendre in the book’s title – something nocturnal and obscene. I felt that most of the stories are flawed as there’s not enough to them and were oddly insubstantial. He builds dread by the steady accrual of realistic detail, until the reader realises that the protagonist is heading towards their doom as if in a dream. Internally, very minor foxing to front free endpaper/half title, also to page fore-edges; otherwise, a clean, tidy copy.

A grotesque danse macabre of animated corpses and townspeople wends its way into their hotel room, sweeping them both up in it. A man named Pendlebury falls asleep on a train and ends up at the last stop, where he has no option but to spend the night in the waiting room. Such is his infatuation that he is not deterred by the way the landscape around the house is constantly changing or the weird, shambling figure – like some sort of nameless pagan god – who roams the grounds.Aickman's themes may be universal but at the same time his stories open doors to darker, more private places and the most frightening thing is that he always leaves the doors ajar. Lovecraft, for example, provided great food for the imagination often without properly descrive his horrors or apparitions, but the ending were often real "killers".

Often it is hard to decide whether the hauntings are genuine, or merely signs of psychosis projecting themselves outward on to the world. Introduction by Glen Cavaliero, "The School Friend", "Ringing the Changes", "Choice of Weapons", "The Waiting Room", "The View" and "Bind Your Hair".

And while that particular tale does not appear in Dark Entries, I was pleased to discover a similar tone with the stories in this collection.