Dark Entries

by Robert Aickman

As she grew, she seemed to wear later editions of the same dress, new and enlarged, like certain publications.

we’ve no right to scrutinise other people’s lives too closely.’

The word “black” comes from an ancient root which means “to bleach”.’

‘At heart, women are creatures of darkness all the time.’ The Commandant’s seriousness and bitterness left Gerald without a reply.

‘It’s extraordinary how frightened one can be,’ said Phrynne, ‘even when one is not directly menaced.

Steadily the fire brightened and sparkled into a genial crepitation of life.

the party was advancing into a communal phantasmagoria, as parties should, but in Pendlebury’s experience seldom did; an ombre chinoise of affectionate ease and intensified inner life.

the handsome woman in evening dress (Edwardian evening dress, Pendlebury thought, décolleté but polypetalous)

Normally a man of second, third, and fourth thoughts, he, like all habitual vacillators, varied vacillation with occasional gross precipitancy. When decision is required, reflection avails only a few.

You live surrounded by the claims of other people: to your labour when they call it peace, your life when they call it war; to your celibacy when they call you a bachelor, your body when they call you a husband. They tell you where you shall live, what you shall do, and what thoughts are dangerous. Does not some modern Frenchman, exhausted by it all and very naturally, say, “Hell is other people”? But here there are no other people: therefore no war, no marriage, no Government orders, and only such work as you choose and like and Nature herself requires you to do. Here a distinction is drawn. I am surrounded only by my friends – who are not like other people.’

‘You must have noticed it is always too late when questions are answered and hopes fulfilled and sacrifices made and murder done. Because it is always later than you think.’

Things only exist as long as you see them. And we are all of us nothing but the sum of our moods.’

‘Only children, and unhappy people, who are like children, distinguish the commonplace from the exceptional.

‘Flaws, my dearest,’ she answered, ‘are your delight. I shall dress tonight in odd stockings, to put your mind at rest.’

None the less, Carfax began to translate to himself one or two of the fables picked either at random or for their brevity. The first, so far as he could make out, told of a youth who, on being offered by a sage alternative gifts of Wisdom, Wealth, or Virtue, the gifts losing nothing of impressiveness by their Teutonic initial capitals, selected Wealth. The sage thereupon remarked that the choice proved the youth already had Wisdom as he would now be able to afford Virtue.

She saw herself, her real self, for ever suspended in blackness, howling in the lonely dark, miserable and unheard; while her other, outer self went smiling through an endless purposeless routine of love for and compliance with a family and a community of friends which, however excellent, were exceedingly unlike her, in some way that she did not fully understand.

‘No Rite of Way,’ read Clarinda. ‘Persons Proceed Beyond This Point By Favour Only.’

boscage

Stone of Scone.