It’s Finally Time!

I can’t believe it but it is suddenly October, and I am currently trying to bury my worries about house problems into all things wonderful and spooky. I am in danger of becoming nothing but one of those annoying homeowners that only talks about everything wrong with their property. No, no, no. There is more to life than that. There is more to me than that.

And it’s spooky time and that means books and movies and candy and all of the things I love about this time of year and I have the choice to let go and not let things wreck it for me. End of story.

Classic and Contemporary

My first selection is a collection of Robert Aickman’s short stories from the late 1960s and early 1970s published by New York Review of Books and entitled Compulsory Games. It’s not the usual gothic fare, but instead is a bit more subtle in its spookiness. However, there is a spooky graveyard and a few scary desolate locations.

My particular favourite stories harken back to hints of the traditional. ‘Hand in Glove’ features a haunted graveyard and rectory populated with an interesting manifestation of souls betrayed by their partners and hungry for more fellow sufferers — which is a bit of a riff on a popular gothic motif. I also loved ‘Residents Only’, which is about a cemetery that becomes more and more putrid as the dead become more and more neglected. This is another modern take on a traditional story of what happens when those that have passed aren’t treated with respect and what can happen to hallowed ground. Lastly, ‘Just A Song at Twilight’ wraps up the collection with a perfectly unnerving tale of eerie happenings in unknown lands abroad.

Normal Life Until It’s Not

The most compelling aspect of Aickman’s stories are his ability to detail a very normal sounding scenario that quickly and inexplicably goes off of the rails. Part of why this is so effective is because Aickman is able to adopt this perfect stuffy, very English tone that brings to mind the non-spooky English literature of this era. Books about coming-of-age at Oxford or getting along in high society. Aickman takes this tone and twists it into vague and frightening nightmares of how suddenly everything can change and the world can become dangerous and unfamiliar.

Some Pitfalls

However, because Aickman’s point is often not to come out and say explicitly what the horror is or what is going on, he can sometimes overshoot. There were a few times where I had to go back and re-read passages in order to figure out what exactly had happened in physical space and in real time. There were also a few stories where I had to sit and think about it afterward in order to fully grasp the full implication of what Aickman was trying to say. These stories are very much worth that effort, but if you want a more linear narrative that doesn’t require any work from the reader, this might not be the collection for you.

Also? These stories are a product of a certain era of English literature that was rather rife with casual sexism and misogyny. Sometimes I had to put the book down and take a deep breath before I could keep reading.

Return of the Orb Weaver

I didn’t think it would happen this year, but an orb weaver has returned to our back window! I know it’s late in the season, but we’re going to enjoy her presence for as long as we can. We actually stumbled across her when we were retrieving the bird feeders from the back porch at around midnight. We were avoiding our skunky, stinky friend that usually hangs out in the rain but was also out there last night, being an impediment to our taking in the seed. So, it was late when we finally went out to retrieve our bird feeders, and we looked up into the porch lights and there she was in the window. An orb weaver.

It makes me less sad that it’s supposed to be a warmer October.