![]() Mr Arcularis begins to dream that he is walking through the stars, and starts sleepwalking. The ship is fogbound, surrounded by icebergs. Faber recently did the world the inestimable service of bringing many of his books back into print.Ĭonrad Aiken – Mr Arcularis (1931) A middle-aged Harvard professor, recovering from surgery, takes a voyage to Europe on a ship which, he learns, is also carrying a corpse home to Ireland. Caught in the right mood, his stories are unforgettable. Aickman was a magnificent writer of short fiction at its most unsettling and uncanny – in the Freudian sense of not being at home with oneself. And so they find themselves in the Kurhus, where they wander the labyrinth of paths in the wood all night. Sleepers cannot live with them for long, and drive them out. Insomniacs, she is told, are unearthly and mysterious, and often seem to acquire foresight they are like trolls, like lost souls, like witches, like vampires. She travels to Sweden on a business trip with her husband, where she finds herself staying overnight at the Kurhus, a sanitorium for insomniacs, some of whom have not slept for years (there is a young girl who has never slept in her life). ![]() Robert Aickman – Into the Wood (1968) Margaret Sawyer, the wife of a prosperous Manchester building contractor, is bored and unsatisfied with her life. ![]() ![]() Think of them as doors into secret gardens, or haunted attics, or forbidden cellars. Here are 10 of the best – stories which have haunted me for years, which I can’t get out of my head. The horror short story flourished in great anthologies, often containing unforgettable works by forgotten writers, or by familiar writers straying into unfamiliar territory, as well as by established genre titans. Horror works most effectively in concentrated, intense bursts – which is why the short story has always been its great literary medium.
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