Strange Stories

by Robert Aickman

  “Why not, chicken?” Almost beyond doubt, his surprise was largely real.

  “If you want to, climb up outside and look in through the window, first.” The volume and quality of her scream had given her a momentary ascendancy over him. “The other side of the church is easier.”

  He was staring at her. “All right. If you say so.”

  They went outside without his even holding on to her.

  “No need to go round to the back,” said Nigel. “I can manage perfectly well here. So can you, for that matter. Let’s jump up together.”

  “No,” said Millicent.

  “Please yourself,” said Nigel. “I suppose you’ve seen the bogey already. Or is it the black mass?” He was up in a single spring and adhering to nothing visible, like an ape. His head was sunk between his shoulders as he peered, so that his red curls made him resemble a larger Quasimodo, who, Millicent recollected, was always clinging to Gothic walls and descrying.

  Nigel flopped down in silence. “I see what you mean,” he said upon landing. “Not in the least a sight for sore eyes. Not a sight for little girls at all. Or even for big ones.” He paused for a moment, while Millicent omitted to look at him. “All right. What else is there? Show me. Where do we go next?”

  He propelled her back to the path across the churchyard and they began to descend towards the river.

  It was, therefore, only another moment or two before Millicent realized that the pile of wreaths was no longer there: no sprays, no harps, no hearts, no angelic trumpets; only a handful of field flowers bound with common string. For a moment, Millicent merely doubted her eyes yet again, though not only her eyes.

  “Don’t think they use this place any longer,” said Nigel. “Seems full up to me. That would explain whatever it is that’s been going on in the church. What happens if we go through that gate?”

  “There’s a big meadow with cows in it and then a sort of passage down to the river.”

  “What sort of passage?”

  “It runs between briars, and it’s muddy.”

  “We don’t mind a little mud, do we, rooster? What’s the river called, anyway?”

  “Winifred says it’s called the Waste.”

  “Appropriate,” said Nigel. “Though not any more, I hasten to add, not any more.”

  It was exactly as he said it that Millicent noticed the headstone. “Nigel Alsopp Ormathwaite Ticknor. Strong, Patient and True. Called to Higher Service.” And a date. No date of birth: only the one date. That day’s date.

  The day that she had known to be a Thursday when Winifred had not.

  The stone was in grey granite, or perhaps near granite. The section of it bearing the inscription had been planed and polished. When she had been here last, Millicent had been noticing little, and on the return from the picnic the inscription would not have confronted her in any case, as was shown by its confronting her now.

  “Not any more,” said Nigel a third time. “Let’s make it up yet again, henny.”

  At least, Millicent stopped. She was staring at the inscription. Nigel’s hands and arms were in no way upon or around her or particularly near her.

  “I love you, chickpeas,” said Nigel. “That’s the trouble, isn’t it? We got on better when I didn’t.” Seldom had Nigel been so clearsighted. It was eerie. Still, the time of which he spoke was another thing that had been long, long ago.

  “I don’t know what to say,” said Millicent. What other words were possible? No longer were they children, or young people, or anything at all like that.

  They went forward a few paces, so that the headstone now stood behind Millicent. She did not turn to see whether there were words upon the back of it.

  Nigel went through the second kissing gate ahead of her. “Don’t you bother,” he said. “I expect you’ve been down to the river with Winifred. I know you won’t run away now. I’ll just take a quick peek at the fishing.”

  However, there seemed by now no point in not following him, and Millicent pushed back the gate in her turn.

  “Please yourself,” said Nigel. But Millicent had become aware of a development. The animals formerly in the far and upper corner were now racing across the open space towards Nigel and her, and so silently that Nigel had not so much as noticed them: “cows,” she had described them, when speaking of them to Winifred; “stock,” as her stepfather might have termed them. There is always an element of the absurd about British domestic animals behaving as if they were in the Wild West. Still, this time it was an element that might be overlooked.

  “Nigel!” exclaimed Millicent, and drew back through the gate, which clanged away from her.

  “Nigel!!”

  He went sturdily on. We really should not be frightened of domestic animals in fields. Moreover, so quiet were these particular fields that Nigel still seemed unaware of anything moving other than himself.

  “Nigel!!!”

  The animals were upon him and leaving little doubt of their intentions, in so far as the last word was applicable. In no time, on the grass and on the hides, there was blood, and worse than blood. Before long, there was completely silent, but visibly most rampageous trampling. Tails were raised now, and eyes un- typically stark. But the mob of beasts, by its mere mass, probably concealed the worst from Millicent.

  Seek help. That is what one is called upon to do in these cases. At the least, call for help. Millicent, recently so vocal, found that she could make no noise. The grand quietness had taken her in as well.

  “Oh, Nigel, love.”

  But soon the animals were merely nuzzling around interestedly. It was as if they had played no part in the consummation towards which they were sniffing and over which they were slobbering.

  Millicent clung to the iron gate. Never before that day had she screamed. Never yet in her life had she fainted.

  Then she became aware that the churchyard had somehow filled with women, or, at least, that women were dotted here and there among the mounds and memorials, sometimes in twos, threes, and fours, though more commonly as single spies.

  These women were not like the Willis in Winifred’s favorite ballet. They were bleak and commonplace and often not young at all. Millicent could not feel herself drawn to them. But she realized that they were not merely in the churchyard but in the meadow too, from which the tempestuous cattle seemed to have withdrawn while for a second her back had been turned. In fact, at that moment the women were just about everywhere.

  Absurd, absurd. Even now, Millicent could not overlook that element. The whole business simply could not be worth all this, and, in the world around her, everyone knew that it was not. Sometimes one suffered acutely, yes, but not even the suffering was ever quite real, let alone the events and experience supposedly suffered over. Life was not entirely, or even mainly, a matter of walking round a lake, if one might adopt Miss Stock’s persuasive analogy.

  None the less, it must have been more or less at this point that Millicent somehow lost consciousness.

  Winifred was looking from above into her face. Winifred was no longer pale, but nearly her usual color, and renewed in confidence.

  “My dear Millicent, I should have put you to bed instead of taking you out into the country! How on earth did you come to fall asleep?”

  “Where are the cows?”

  Winifred looked through the ironwork of the gate into the field behind her. “Not there, as far as I can see. I expect they’ve gone to be milked.”

  “They’re not really cows at all, Winifred. Not ordinary cows.”

  “My dear girl!” Winifred looked at her hard, then seemed more seriously concerned. “Have you been attacked? Or frightened?”

  “Not me,” said Millicent.

  “Then who?”

  Millicent gulped and drew herself together.

  “It was a dream. Merely a dream. I’d rather not talk about it.”

  “Poor sweet, you must be worn out. But how did you get down here? Have you been sleepwalking?”

 
“I was taken. That was part of the dream.”

  “It was shocking, that Stock woman going on as she did. You should have closed your ears.”

  “And eyes,” said Millicent.

  “I expect so,” said Winifred, smiling. “It was a hideous place. If you’re fully awake now, I expect you’d like to go? I’ve made a mess of the whole day.”

  “I couldn’t see the car. I was looking for it.”

  “I moved it. I wanted to be out of sight. You couldn’t have supposed I’d driven it through the churchyard.”

  “Anything seems possible,” said Millicent, as they walked up the slope. “Anything. For example, you saw all those flowers. You saw them with your own eyes. Where are they?”

  “They’ve been taken off to some hospital. It’s what people do after funerals nowadays.”

  “And the mushrooms down by the river?”

  “They were there from the first, as I told you.”

  “And Miss Stock’s stories?” “She just needs a man. Oh, I’m sorry, Millicent.”

  "And the inside of the church?” “That was really rather nasty. I’m not going to talk about it, I’m not even going to think about it, and I’m certainly not going to let you look at it.”

  "Oughtn’t whatever it is to be reported somewhere?”

  “Not by me,” said Winifred with finality.

  As they had passed for the last time through the gate leading out of the churchyard, Winifred had said, “We’re going home as quickly as possible. I’m taking you to my place, and I’m putting you to bed with a sedative. I don’t really know about this kind of trouble, but I’ve seen what I’ve seen, and what you need in the first place is a good, long sleep, I’m sure of it.”

  Millicent herself knew that grief, especially repressed grief, was said to induce second sight, let alone second thoughts.

  None the less, Millicent woke up at just before half past eleven. Long ago, in the early days with Nigel, one of them had each night telephoned the other at that time, and often they had conversed until midnight, when it had been agreed that the closure be applied. Such simplicities had come to an end years and years before, but on no evening since she had given up Nigel had Millicent gone to bed before that particular hour.

  There was little chance of Nigel even remembering the old, sentimental arrangement and less chance of his now having anything easeful to say to her. Still, Millicent, having looked at her watch, lay there sedated and addled, but awake; and duly the telephone rang.

  An extension led to the bedside in Winifred’s cozy spare room. Winifred herself could not relax in a room without a telephone.

  Millicent had the receiver in her hand at the first half-ping of the delicate little bell.

  “Hullo,” said Millicent softly to the darkness. Winifred had drawn all the curtains quite tight, since that was the way Winifred liked her own room at night.

  “Hullo,” said Millicent softly, a second time. At least it could hardly now be a call for Winifred. It was all the more important not to waken her.

  On the line, or at the other end of it, something seemed to stir. There could be little doubt of it. It was not a mere reflex of the mechanism.

  “Hullo,” repeated Millicent softly.

  Third time lucky, because at last there was a reply.

  “Hullo, feathers,” said Nigel.

  In all the circumstances, Millicent could not possibly just ring off, as rationally she should have done.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  "What a sight you look in Winifred’s nightwear. Not your style at all, crop.”

  Every inch of Millicent’s flesh started simultaneously to fall inwards. “Nigel! Where are you?” “I’m right outside your door, gizzard. Better come at once. But do wear your own pajamas. The scarlet ones. The proper ones.”

  “I’m not coming, Nigel. I’ve told you that. I mean it.”

  “I’m sure you mean it since you left me to be trodden upon by a lot of bloody heifers without doing one thing except grin. It makes no difference. Less difference than ever, in fact. I want you and I’m waiting outside your door now.”

  She simply couldn’t speak. What could she possibly say?

  “You come to me, three toes,” said Nigel, “and wearing your own clothes. Or, make no mistake, I’m coming to you.”

  The receiver fell from Millicent’s hand. It crashed to the bedroom floor, but the carpet in Winifred’s guest bedroom was substantial, and Winifred heard nothing. In any case, Winifred herself had just passed a trying day also and needed her rest before the demands of life on the morrow, the renewed call of the wild.

  A group of concerned friends, male and female, clustered round

  Winifred after the inquest, for which a surprising number had taken time off.

  “I have never been in love,” said Winifred. “I really don’t understand about it.”

  People had to accept that and get on with things, routine and otherwise. What else could they do?

  Mark Ingestre: The Customer’s Tale

  I met an old man at the Elephant Theatre, and, though it was not in a pub that we met, we soon found ourselves in one, not in the eponymous establishment, but in a nice, quiet little place down a side turn, which he seemed to know well, but of which, naturally, I knew nothing, since I was only in that district on business, and indeed had been in the great metropolis itself only for a matter of weeks. I may perhaps at the end tell you what the business was. It had some slight bearing upon the old man’s tale.

  “The Customer’s Tale” I call it, because the Geoffrey Chaucer implication may not be far from the truth: a total taradiddle of legend and first-hand experience. As we grow older we frequently become even hazier about the exact chronology of history, and about the boundaries of what is deemed to be historical fact: the king genuinely and sincerely believing that he took part in the Battle of Waterloo; Clement Attlee, after he was made an earl, never doubting that he had the wisdom of Walpole. Was Jowett Ramsey’s Lord Chancellor of Clem’s? Which one of us can rightly remember that? Well: the old man was a very old man, very old indeed; odd-looking and hairy; conflating one whole century with another whole century, and then sticking his own person in the center of it all, possibly before he was even born.

  That first evening, there was, in the nature of things, only a short time before the pubs closed. But we met in the same place again by appointment; and again; and possibly a fourth time, too. That is something I myself cannot exactly recollect; but after that last time, I never saw or heard of him again. I wonder whether anyone did.

  I wrote down the old man’s tale in my beautiful new shorthand, lately acquired at the college. He was only equal to short installments, but I noticed that, old though he was, he seemed to have no difficulty in picking up each time more or less where he left off. I wrote it all down almost exactly as he spoke it, though of course when I typed it out, I had to punctuate it myself, and no doubt I tidied it up a trifle. For what anyone cares to make of it, here it is.

  ***

  Fleet Street! If you’ve only seen it as it is now, you’ve no idea of what it used to be. I refer to the time when Temple Bar was still there. Fleet Street was never the same after Temple Bar went. Temple Bar was something they simply couldn’t replace. Men I knew, and knew well, said that taking it away wrecked not only Fleet Street but the whole City. Perhaps it was the end of England itself. God knows what else was.

  It wasn’t just the press in those days. All that Canadian newsprint, and those seedy reporters. I don’t say you’re seedy yet, but you will be. Just give it time. Even a rich journalist has to be seedy. Then there were butchers’ shops, and poultry and game shops, and wine merchants passing from father to son, and little places on corners where you could get your watch mended or your old pens sharpened, and proper bookshops too, with everything from The Complete John Milton to The Condemned Man’s Last Testimony. Of course the “Newgate Calendar” was still going at that time, though one wasn’t supposed to
care for it. There were a dozen or more pawnbrokers, and all the churches had bread-and-blanket charities. Fancy Fleet Street with only one pawnbroker and all the charity money gone God knows where and better not ask! The only thing left is that little girl dressed as a boy out of Byron’s poem. Little Medora. We used to show her to all the new arrivals. People even lived in Fleet Street in those days. Thousands of people. Tens of thousands. Some between soft sheets, some on the hard stones. Fancy that! There was room for all, prince and pauper; and women and to spare for almost the lot of them.

  Normally, I went round the back, but I remember the first time I walked down Fleet Street itself. It was not a thing you would forget, as I am about to tell you. There were great wagons stuck in the mud, at least I take it to have been mud; and lawyers all over the pavement, some clean, some not. Of course, the lawyers stow themselves away more now. Charles Dickens had something to do with that. And then there were the women I’ve spoken of: some of them blowsy and brassy, but some soft and appealing, even when they had nothing to deck themselves with but shawls and rags. I took no stock in women at that time. You know why as well as I do. There are a few things that never change. Never. I prided myself upon living clean. Well, I did until that same day. When that day came, I had no choice.

  How did I get into the barbershop? I wish I could tell you. I’ve wondered every time I’ve thought about the story, and that’s been often enough. All I know is that it wasn’t to get my hair cut, or to be shaved, and not to be bled either, which was still going on in those days, the accepted thing when you thought that something was the matter with you or were told so, though you didn’t set about it in a barbershop if you could afford something better. They took far too much at the barber’s. “Bled white” meant something in places of that kind. You can take my word about that.

  It’s perfectly true that I have always liked my hair cut close, and I was completely clean-shaven as well until I suffered a gash from an assegai when fighting for Queen and Country. You may not believe that, but it’s true. I first let this beard grow only to save her Majesty embarrassment, and it’s been growing and growing ever since.