Aickman's Heirs Read online

  Aickman's Heirs

  Edited by Simon Strantzas

  Published by Undertow Publications at Smashwords

  Copyright 2015 Undertow Publications

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold

  or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person,

  please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did

  not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your

  favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy.

  Also by Simon Strantzas

  Beneath the Surface

  Cold to the Touch

  Nightingale Songs

  Shadows Edge (As Editor)

  Burnt Black Suns

  These Last Embers (Chapbook)

  First Edition

  Aickman’s Heirs, edited by Simon Strantzas

  Introduction copyright 2015 Simon Strantzas

  Cover artwork copyright 2015 Yaroslav Gerzhedovich

  Cover design copyright 2015 Vince Haig

  Interior design, layout, and typesetting by Alligator Tree Graphics

  “Change of Scene” copyright 2015 by Nina Allan

  “Seven Minutes in Heaven” copyright 2015 by Nadia Bulkin

  “Infestations” copyright 2015 by Michael Cisco

  “Two Brothers” copyright 2015 by Vince Haig

  “Seaside Town” copyright 2015 by Brian Evenson

  “Neithernor” copyright 2015 by Richard Gavin

  “Least Light, Most Night” copyright by John Howard

  “Underground Economy” copyright by John Langan

  “The Vault of Heaven” copyright by Helen Marshall

  “The Lake” copyright by Daniel Mills

  “Camp” copyright by David Nickle

  “The Dying Season” copyright by Lynda E. Rucker

  “The Book That Finds You” copyright by Lisa Tuttle

  “A Delicate Craft” copyright by D.P. Watt

  “A Discreet Music” copyright by Michael Wehunt

  All Rights Reserved

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual events or persons—living, dead, or undead—is entirely coincidental.

  Undertow Publications

  Pickering, ON Canada

  [email protected]

  www.undertowbooks.com

  ‡

  Dedicated to

  the memory of

  Joel Lane

  1963—2013

  ‡

  Table of Contents

  Introduction /

  Seaside Town / Brian Evenson /

  Neithernor / Richard Gavin /

  Least Light, Most Night / John Howard /

  Camp / David Nickle /

  A Delicate Craft / D.P. Watt /

  Seven Minutes in Heaven / Nadia Bulkin /

  Infestations / Michael Cisco /

  The Dying Season / Lynda E. Rucker /

  A Discreet Music / Michael Wehunt /

  Underground Economy / John Langan /

  The Vault of Heaven / Helen Marshall /

  Two Brothers / Malcolm Devlin /

  The Lake / Daniel Mills /

  A Change of Scene / Nina Allan /

  The Book That Finds You / Lisa Tuttle /

  Contributors /

  Introduction

  Simon Strantzas

  Let’s get this over with, right off the bat: if you’ve picked up this book because you’re a fan of Robert Aickman’s fiction and are looking for more of the same, you’ve come to the wrong place. What follows in these pages are not pastiches of Aickman’s inimitable style—they couldn’t be: Aickman’s fiction straddled so many interwoven lines that the rest of us can hardly keep up. Reserved, yet undeniably sexual; obtuse, yet accessible; surreal, strange, bizarre. Yet funny. Very, very funny, in that odd witty way that sometimes doesn’t seem funny until later, after which it becomes chilling. Robert Aickman was a master of what he called “strange stories”, and though his fiction has been filed with Horror, it’s actually its own beast. Were this book merely a collection of writers doing their best to reproduce something so uniquely Aickman, I’m afraid the book would be interesting only as an example of how mistaken such a direction would have been.

  Instead, this book is a sampler of how Robert Aickman’s work has become a significant source of inspiration for contemporary writers. Born in 1914, Robert Fordyce Aickman penned only 48 short stories before his untimely death, yet each one of them was drawn deep from the well of his own psyche. A proponent of Freudian psychology, Aickman believed that writing a short story, especially the ghostly sort, was like writing poetry, and the way he practiced the art form involved obeying laws that were less literal than they were subconscious. In this sense, the true key to understanding Aickman’s stories existed only in Aickman’s head, and since his passing the only hope we have to fully understand them is what we bring to it ourselves. But our own keys do not fit those locks, not perfectly, and as a result some answers will forever remain out of reach.

  So if writing like Aickman is so impossible, why does this book exist? Because though Aickman’s work was idiosyncratic and unique, the way he worked was and is not. If anything, the influence of Aickman’s stories has only grown over the last few years. Less than a decade ago, his name was revered only by a small circle of literate ghost story aficionados, but as time has progressed there’s been an increase not only in authors aware of his work, but in those who site it as an influence. As we move further away from the horror boom of the last century and its focus on the mainstream appeal of small town horrors, we are encountering successive generations of writers open to exploring new avenues of the subtly bizarre, an area Aickman frequently mastered.

  What I’d hoped for when inviting authors to be part of this volume was that they might mine their own personal psychology, tap their own subconsciousness, much as Aickman had, and create works that were impossible from another’s pen. Each of us learns something different from Aickman; something about ourselves that we hadn’t realized was buried until his pen unearthed it. Reading Aickman is like reading the dream journal of a stranger and trying to make sense of its meaning. It’s impossible, and yet the joy is in the trying. I hope you get that same joy in reading the pieces in this book, which range in style and subject matter, but all share that same mystery at their heart.

  You may not understand what follows. But you will remember it. That is the sort of legacy of which Aickman would be proud.

  Simon Strantzas

  Toronto, Canada

  May, 2015

  Seaside Town

  Brian Evenson

  In past years, Hovell had simply not bothered to vacation away, but the arrival of Miss Pickaver had changed that. Her arrival had, in fact, changed a lot of things. In the past, Hovell’s idea of vacationing had been sitting around in his ratty sweater and khakis in his bedroom, reading the newspaper very slowly, savoring it even, letting his cigarette ash fall where it would, each day like the next until he had to return to work. But then Miss Pickaver had swept into his life and into his bed, and taken him to hand, and slowly taken him to task, and now, yes, he’d been made to understand that, as a vacation, this simply wouldn’t do.

  “But where would I go?” he pleaded.

  “We, you mean,” said Miss Pickaver, “where would we go? Because it isn’t just you anymore.”

  But Hovell didn’t care to go anywhere. A man of regular habits, he was an incurious person. He did not care to learn about new things. Even the old things he already knew about he often thought it was better to forget. He still
lived in the house he’d been born in, the house he’d inherited when his mother died. And he had some difficulty understanding how it was that Miss Pickaver had suddenly jimmied her way into his life, coming in a matter of weeks to have so much of a say in everything.

  “To Europe,” Miss Pickaver said decisively.

  “Europe?” he repeated, as if confused.

  “You have the money. You’ve never been to Europe. It has to be Europe, James.”

  It made Hovell wince when she called him by his first name—nobody called him by his first name and even to himself he was simply Hovell, but he had given up correcting her. Miss Pickaver had a first name she used, but he suspected he would always think of her as Miss Pickaver.

  And so, Europe. He did not, he was surprised to find, immediately give in. He had the presence of mind to at least let her know that if he had to go to Europe he wanted to stay put, to stay in one place. And once he told her that if she wanted she was welcome to do one of those tours—6 countries in 4 days or some such—as long as he could go somewhere and stay put, she agreed. She’d stay with him for a few days on either end of the trip, she told him, get him established at the beginning and help him pack at the end, but in the middle he’d be on his own. She couldn’t help it if he didn’t want to make the most of the trip. But no worries, she said: she would be sure to tell him all about everything he missed.

  #

  The plane flight from the U.S. alone all but killed him. Though Miss Pickaver had managed to sleep for most of the flight, Hovell had hardly even blinked. When they landed in Paris, Miss Pickaver had delicately stretched and given a little yawn, exposing what had always looked to Hovell like too many teeth, as if she had an extra row of teeth, and then proceeded to lead Hovell implacably through the nightmare that was French customs. Did monsieur have anything to declare? No, monsieur did not. Was monsieur sure? Would monsieur please open his bags? The sight of the officers fingering their way through his carefully folded underthings while Miss Pickaver tittered was too much for him, and when he lost his temper it was only Miss Pickaver’s quick action and heartfelt apologies on his behalf that kept him from ending up detained in a back room for hours. When he tried to sleep later, on the train to the seaside town whose name even the French themselves were apparently unsure how to pronounce, she told him no, considering what time it was, he would be better off staying awake until night came. Thus, every time he began to nod off she would nudge him awake.

  He arrived at the seaside town half blind with fatigue and disoriented. There were no taxis waiting at the train station, and Miss Pickaver wasn’t willing to wait while they figure out how to call one, and so they walked along the road and into town, he pulling both bags while she turned the map over and about, trying to figure out where they were heading.

  “But I thought you’d been here before,” complained Hovell.

  “I have been,” said Miss Pickaver. “With that German gentleman I used to know. But he was the one knew the place. I just followed along in his tracks.”

  “German gentleman?” he asked. “I’m staying in a house you stayed at with some previous lover?”

  “Surely I told you about him,” she said. “It was years before we met. Well, months anyway.” She frowned, smoothed the map over her belly. “And I can’t imagine what objection you could possibly have to me taking you to a place that I’ve been to before and can vouch for,” she added, as if the whole reason for her taking a German lover had been entirely for his benefit here, now.

  Sighing, he trudged on.

  #

  The place was part of a gated community, a little triangle of buildings full of apartments, some of which had motorized metal shutters that could be brought down at night, sealing you in like a tin of preserved meat. The courtyard between buildings seemed deserted—no sign of habitation visible through the windows, and no people out walking on the compound grounds.

  Miss Pickaver found the right building, managed to extract a key from the concierge despite she having no French and the concierge having no English. They were on the third floor, room 306. The tiny elevator was too small for him to ride in with the suitcases, and so she went up first, and he sent the bags up one at a time to her. When, finally, he climbed in, he found it to be even smaller on the inside than it looked from the outside, a kind of lacquered wooden box with a sliding grate for a door. He felt as if he were riding in a coffin.

  As the elevator slowly trundled up, creaking, he felt panic beginning to rise. By the time he reached the third floor, he was a nervous wreck.

  “Don’t be so dramatic,” she said. “It’s just an elevator.”

  And true, yes, it was just an elevator, but he had lived fifty years of his life to this point never having to ride in such an elevator as this. Why should he have to ride in one now?

  She had already turned away, was looking for their apartment. There was one long, dingy hallway stretching away, apartment doors dotted to either side of it, odd on one side, even on the other. They ran out at 305. There was no 306.

  “Are you sure the concierge said 306?” he asked.

  But the look she threw him made him wish he hadn’t asked. Yes, of course she was sure—she was always sure. Even though there was no number on the key fob, she still claimed to be sure.

  “It’s simply not here,” he said.

  Stubbornly she went down the hall again, scrutinizing each door in turn with such intensity that Hovell wouldn’t have been surprised if 306 did suddenly appear. But, of course, it didn’t.

  “There must be another third floor,” she said.

  “Another third floor,” he repeated dully.

  “Sure,” she said. “That you can’t get to from this elevator. That you have to get to from another elevator.”

  He was dispatched to question the concierge, but he refused to take the elevator this time, trudging instead down the tight winding stairs that circled the elevator shaft. The light in the stairwell was dim, and he had to grope, but it was better, even if just a little, than the elevator.

  He reached the bottom to find the concierge’s lodge locked, and nobody answered when he rang the buzzer. He waited as long as he dared, then trudged back up to deliver the bad news to Miss Pickaver. Miss Pickaver, he knew from experience, did not take bad news well. But when he arrived on the third floor he found only the pile of their bags; Miss Pickaver was nowhere to be seen.

  #

  He trudged nervously up the hall and back. He opened the elevator and looked in. And then, quietly, and somewhat hesitantly, he called her name. There was no answer. Maybe she had gotten tired of waiting and taken the elevator down to find him. But surely, if that had been the case, he would have heard the elevator, would likely have even seen her in it when he crossed the first or second floor landing on his way back up. Or at least seen the cable moving.

  He knocked again on the concierge’s door for good measure. Still no answer. He poked his head out of the building, but it was still just as deserted outside the building as it had been before.

  When he finally headed back upstairs, she was there, arms crossed, waiting.

  “Where have you been?” she said. “I’ve been calling for you.”

  “I was just...” he started, and then took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. He didn’t want to fight. But he wasn’t sure he could help himself. “Where were you?” he asked, trying not to sound accusatory.

  “I,” she said, drawing herself up, “was busy finding our place.” And then she led him up the dim stairs, up halfway between the third floor and the fourth, where, in the round wall of the stairwell, off one tread, was a small door.

  He leaned in close, peered at it in the dim light. He had to squint to read the numbers.

  “It says 309,” Hovell said.

  “That’s a mistake,” Miss Pickaver said. “It has to be. You saw the hall only went to 305, and there are no other halls.”

  “I thought you said there had to be another elevator,” he said.
“Another third floor.”

  “Don’t be difficult, James,” said Miss Pickaver. “This is the right room.”

  But there had been no rooms in the stairwell between the first and second floor, or in the stairwell between the second and third floor. Why would there be a room here? Maybe it was just that he was tired, but it didn’t seem right to him.

  “It says 309,” he insisted.

  “Someone must have taken the 6 out and put it in upside down, as a joke.”

  “What kind of joke is that?” he asked.

  She ignored this. Instead she pushed past him, jostling so that he almost slipped and tumbled down the stairs. A moment later the door swung open.

  “The key works,” she said. “It has to be the right place.”

  But even after that, as he hauled the suitcases one by one up the stairs and inside, as he ducked down and made his own way in, as he watched Miss Pickaver opening the windows and airing out the apartment, he still wondered if they were in the right place.

  #

  2.

  From the window, the courtyard looked not busy exactly, but at least not deserted like it had when they had come in. At a distance, he could hear the sound of the waves. He watched people come and go.