{"id":6286,"date":"2026-04-03T19:09:37","date_gmt":"2026-04-03T17:09:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/?p=6286"},"modified":"2026-04-03T19:51:37","modified_gmt":"2026-04-03T17:51:37","slug":"we-are-for-the-dark-and-dark-entries-by-robert-aickman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/2026\/04\/03\/we-are-for-the-dark-and-dark-entries-by-robert-aickman\/","title":{"rendered":"We Are for the Dark<\/em> and Dark Entries<\/em> by Robert Aickman"},"content":{"rendered":"

While, with exceptions, I wasn\u2019t quite convinced by the collection Cold Hand in Mine<\/em><\/a>, I decided to keep at it and start at the beginning. These were \u201cThe Trains\u201d and \u201cThe View,” the only stories from the 1951 collection We Are for the Dark<\/em> I could lay my hands on without paying outrageous prices at eBay; followed by \u201cThe Visiting Star\u201d and \u201cYour Tiny Hand Is Frozen\u201d from 1952 and 1953, respectively; and finally \u201cRinging the Changes\u201d from 1955 and \u201cThe Waiting Room\u201d from 1956, the former first published in the 1964 collection Dark Entries<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Aickman gets more entertaining if you stop expecting a tight narrative with a final twist and instead start enjoying the often meandering details of the narrative\u2014to be enjoyed even more if a story happens to have all these details connected in the end and\/or has a final horrific twist, or at least doesn\u2019t leave you utterly dumbfounded. Or, it could be the clever horrific twist itself that leaves you terminally puzzled, so beware.<\/p>\n

Anyway, \u201cThe View\u201d is the best from this batch in terms of composition, with a very tight story structure and an ending that, as unforeseen as it comes, is expertly foreshadowed and makes a lot of sense; \u201cThe Train,\u201d in contrast, also has a lot of foreshadowings but drowns them first in ephemera and then in confusing events and is structurally less coherent (but has by far the punchiest ending of the lot). \u201cThe Visiting Star\u201d is interesting but quite opaque if you don\u2019t want to go full psychoanalysis in your reading. \u201cYour Tiny Hand Is Frozen\u201d attaches offhand opaqueness again to many of its details, but its weirdness in terms of technology and how people get entangled with it reads like a premonition of Philip K. Dick\u2019s motifs ten years later. (Plus, I still don’t understand the \u201cChe gelida manina\u201d La Boh\u00e9me<\/em> reference.) \u201cRinging the Changes,\u201d however, is a blast, and it doesn\u2019t need any final twist anymore after slowly working its horror up into a frenzy. \u201cThe Waiting Room,” well\u2014it\u2019s very atmospheric and has a nice twist within the expected twist at the end, but don\u2019t expect it to be a rocket like \u201cRinging the Changes\u201d\u2014rather, take it as a delightful caf\u00e9 gourmand to close Aickman\u2019s oeuvre from the 1950s.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n

Aickman, Robert, and Elizabeth Jane Howard. We Are for the Dark: Six Ghost Stories<\/em>. Jonathan Cape, 1951.<\/span><\/p>\n

Aickman, Robert. Dark Entries: Curious and Macabre Ghost Stories<\/em>. Collins, 1964. Reprint Faber & Faber<\/a>, 2014<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\ud83d\udcda Structural hints, but not outright spoilers.<\/p>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-6286","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-archive","7":"h-entry","8":"hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6286"}],"version-history":[{"count":56,"href":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6286\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6355,"href":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6286\/revisions\/6355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}