The Collected Short Fiction

by Robert Aickman

Mary had dark, frizzy hair, which stuck out round her head; and a rather flat face, with, however, an already fine pair of large, dark eyes, which not only sparkled, but seemed to move from side to side in surprising jerks as she spoke, which, if permitted, she did almost continuously. Generally she wore a shirt or sweater and shorts, as little girls were beginning to do at that time, and emanated extroversion; but occasionally, when there was a school celebration, more perhaps for the parents than for the tots, she would appear in a really beautiful silk dress, eclipsing everyone, and all the more in that the dress seemed not precisely right for her, but more like a stage costume. Mary Rossiter showed promise of natural leadership (some of the mums already called her "bossy"), but her fine eyes were for Hilary alone; and not only her eyes, but hands and lips and tender words as well.

  From within the first few days of his arrival, Hilary was sitting next to Mary at the classes (if such they could be called) and partnering her inseparably in the playrooms and the garden. The establishment liked the boys to play with the boys, the girls with the girls, and normally no admonition whatever was needed in those directions; but when it came to Hilary and Mary, the truth was that already Mary was difficult to resist when she was set upon a thing. She charmed, she smiled, and she persisted. Moreover, her father was very rich; and it was obvious from everything about her that her parents doted on her.

  There were large regions of the week which the school did not claim to fill. Most of the parents awaited the release of their boys and girls and bore them home in small motor cars of the wifely kind. But Mary was left, perhaps dangerously, with her freedom; simply because she wanted it to be like that. At least, she wanted it to be like that after she had met Hilary. It is less certain where she had stood previously. As for Hilary, no one greatly cared—within a wide span of hours—whether he was home or not. There was a woman named Mrs Parker who came in each day and did all that needed to be done and did it as well as could be expected (Hilary's father would not even have considered such a person "living in"); but she had no authority to exercise discipline over Hilary, and, being thoroughly modern in her ideas, no temperamental inclination either. If Hilary turned up for his tea, it would be provided. If he did not, trouble was saved.

  Hilary and Mary went for long, long walks; for much of the distance, hand in hand. In the midst of the rather droopy and distorted southern-Surrey countryside (or one-time countryside), they would find small, worked-out sandpits, or, in case of rain, disused, collapsing huts, and there they would sit close together, or one at the other's feet, talking without end, and gently embracing. He would force his small fingers through her wiry mop and make jokes about electricity coming out at the ends. She would touch the back of his neck, inside his faded red shirt, with her lips, and nuzzle into the soft, fair thicket on top of his head. They learned the southern-Surrey byways and bridlepaths remarkably thoroughly, for six or eight miles to the southeast, and six or eight miles to the southwest; and, in fact, collaborated in drawing a secret map of them. That was one of the happiest things they ever did. They were always at work revising the secret map, by the use of erasers, and adding to it, and colouring it with crayons borrowed from Briarside. They never tired of walking, because no one had ever said they should.

  One day they were badly frightened.

  They were walking down a sandy track, which they did not exactly know, when they came upon a large property with a wall round it. The wall was high and apparently thick. It had been covered throughout its length with plaster, but much of the plaster had either flaked, or fallen completely away, revealing the yellow bricks within, themselves tending to crumble. The wall was surmounted by a hipped roofing, which projected, in order to throw clear as much as possible of any rain that might descend; and this roofing also was much battered and gapped. One might have thought the wall to be in a late stage of disease. It was blotched and mottled in every direction. None the less, it continued to be very far from surmountable, even by a fully grown person.

  Hilary took a run at it, clutching at a plant which protruded from a gap in the exposed pointing, and simultaneously setting his foot upon the plaster at the bottom of a large space where the rest of the plaster had fallen away. The consequence was instant disaster. The plant leapt from its rooting, and at the same time the plaster on which Hilary's small weight rested fell off the wall in an entire large slab, and shattered into smaller pieces among the rank grass and weeds below, where Hilary lay also.

  "Hilary!" It was an authentic scream, and of authentic agony.

  "It's all right, Mary." Hilary resolutely raised himself, resolutely refused to weep. "I'm all right. Really I am."

  She had run to him and was holding him tightly.

  "Mary, please. I'll choke."

  Her arms fell away from him, but uncertainly.

  "We'd better go home," she said.

  "No, of course not. I'm perfectly all right, I tell you. It was nothing." But this last he did not really believe.

  "It was terrible," said Mary, with solemnity. She was wearing a skirt that day, a small-scale imitation of an adult woman's tweed skirt, and he could see her knees actually knocking together.

  He put his arm round her shoulder, but, as he did so, became aware that he was shaking himself. "Silly," he said affectionately. "It wasn't anything much. Let's go on."

  But she merely stood there, quivering beneath his extended arm.

  There was a perceptible pause. Then she said: "I don't like this place."

  It was most unlike her to say such a thing. He had never before known her to do so.

  But always he took her seriously. "What's the matter?" he asked. "I am all right, you know. I truly am. You can feel me if you like."

  And then the dog started barking—if, indeed, one could call it a bark. It was more like a steady growling roar, with a clatter mixed up in it, almost certainly of gnashing teeth: altogether something more than barking, but unmistakably canine, all the same—horribly so. Detectably it came from within the domain behind the high wall.

  "Hilary," said Mary, "let's run."

  But her unusual attitude had put Hilary on his mettle.

  "I don't know," he said. "Not yet."

  "What d'you mean?" she asked.

  "I see it like this," said Hilary, rubbing a place on his knee. "Either the dog is chained up, or shut in behind that wall, and we're all right Or else he isn't, and it's no good our running."

  It was somewhat the way that Mary's own influence had taught him to think, and she responded to it.

  "Perhaps we should look for some big stones," she suggested.

  "Yes," he said. "Though I shouldn't think it'll be necessary. I think he must be safely shut up in some way. He'd have been out by now otherwise."

  "I'm going to look," said Mary.

  There are plenty of stones in the worn earth of southern Surrey, and many old bricks and other constructional detritus also. Within two or three minutes, Mary had assembled a pile of such things.

  In the meantime, Hilary had gone on a little along the track. He stood there, listening to the clamorous dog almost calmly.

  Mary joined him, holding up the front part of her skirt, which contained four of the largest stones, more than she could carry in her hands.

  "We won't need them," said Hilary, with confidence. "And if we do, they're everywhere."

  Mary leaned forward and let the stones fall to the ground, taking care that they missed her toes. Possibly the quite loud thuds made the dog bark more furiously than ever.

  "Perhaps he's standing guard over buried treasure?" suggested Mary.

  "Or over some fairy kingdom that mortals may not enter," said Hilary.

  They talked about such things for much of the time when they were together. Once they had worked together upon an actual map of Fairyland, and with Giantland adjoining.

  "He might have lots of heads," said Mary.

  "Come on, let's look," said Hilary.

  "Quietly," said Mary, making no other d
emur.

  He took her hand.

  "There must be a gate," she remarked, after they had gone a little further, with the roaring, growling bark as obstreperous as ever.

  "Let's hope it's locked then," he replied. At once he added: "Of course it's locked. He'd have been out by now otherwise."

  "You said that before," said Mary. "But perhaps the answer is that there is no gate. There can't always be a gate, you know."

  But there was a gate; a pair of gates, high, wrought iron, scrolled, rusted, and heavily padlocked. Through them, Hilary and Mary could see a large, palpably empty house, with many of the windows glassless, and the paint on the outside walls surviving only in streaks and smears, pink, green, and blue, as the always vaguely polluted atmosphere added its corruption to that inflicted by the weather. The house was copiously mock-battlemented and abundantly ogeed: a structure, without doubt, in the Gothic Revival taste, though of a period uncertain over at least a hundred years. Some of the heavy chimney-stacks had broken off and fallen. The front door, straight before them, was a recessed shadow. It was difficult to see whether it was open or shut. The paving stones leading to it were lost in mossy dampness.

  "Haunted house," said Mary.

  "What's that?" enquired Hilary.

  "Don't exactly know," said Mary. "But Daddy says they're everywhere, though people don't realize it."

  "But how can you tell?" asked Hilary, looking at her seriously and a little anxiously.

  "Just by the look," replied Mary with authority. "You can tell at once when you know. It's a mistake to look for too long, though."

  "Ought we to put it on the map?"

  "I suppose so. I'm not sure."

  "Is that dog going to bark all day, d'you think?"

  "He'll stop when we go away. Let's go, Hilary."

  "Look!" cried Hilary, clutching at her. "Here he is. He must have managed to break away. We must show no sign of fear. That's the important thing."

  Curiously enough, Mary seemed in no need of this vital guidance. She was already standing rigidly, with her big eyes apparently fixed on the animal, almost as if hypnotized.

  Of course, the tall, padlocked bars stood between them and the dog; and another curious thing was that the dog seemed to realize the fact, and to make allowance for it, in a most undoglike manner. Instead of leaping up at the bars in an endeavour to reach the two of them, and so to caress or bite them, it stood well back and simply stared at them, as if calculating hard. It barked no longer, but instead emitted an almost continuous sound halfway between a growl and a whine, and quite low.

  It was a big, shapeless, yellow animal, with long, untidy legs, which shimmered oddly, perhaps as it sought a firm grip on the buried and slippery stones. The dog's yellow skin seemed almost hairless. Blotchy and draggled, it resembled the wall outside. Even the dog's eyes were a flat, dull yellow. Hilary felt strange and uneasy when he observed them; and next he felt upset as he realized that Mary and the dog were gazing at one another as if under a spell.

  "Mary!" he cried out. "Mary, don't look like that. Please don't look like that."

  He no longer dared to touch her, so alien had she become.

  "Mary, let's go. You said we were to go." Now he had begun to cry, while all the time the dog kept up its muffled internal commotion, almost like soft singing.

  In the end, but not before Hilary had become very wrought up, the tension fell away from Mary, and she was speaking normally.

  "Silly," she said, caressing Hilary. "It's quite safe. You said so yourself."

  He had no answer to that. The careful calculations by which earlier he had driven off the thought of danger had now proved terrifyingly irrelevant. All he could do was subside to the ground and lose himself in tears, his head between his knees.

  Mary knelt beside him. "What are you crying about, Hilary? There's no danger. He's a friendly dog, really."

  "He's not, he's not."

  She tried to draw his hands away from his face. "Why are you crying, Hilary?" One might have felt that she quite urgently needed to know.

  "I'm frightened."

  "What are you frightened of? It can't be the dog. He's gone."

  At that, Hilary slowly uncurled, and forgetting, on the instant, to continue weeping, directed his gaze at the rusty iron gates. There was no dog visible.

  "Where's he gone, Mary? Did you see him go?"

  "No, I didn't actually see him," she replied. "But he's gone. And that's what you care about, isn't it?"

  "But why did he go? We're still here."

  "I expect he had business elsewhere." He knew that she had acquired that explanation too from her father, because she had once told him so.

  "Has he found a way out?"

  "Of course he hasn't."

  "How can you tell?"

  "He's simply realized that we don't mean any harm."

  "I don't believe you. You're just saying that. Why are you saying that, Mary? You were more scared than I was when we came here. What's happened to you, Mary?"

  "What's happened to me is that I've got back a little sense." From whom, he wondered, had she learned to say that? It was so obviously insincere, that it first hurt, and then once more frightened him.

  "I want to go home," he said.

  She nodded, and they set off, but not hand in hand.

  There was one more incident before they had left the area behind them.

  As they returned up the gently sloping, sandy track, Hilary kept his eyes on the ground, carefully not looking at the yellow wall on his left, or looking at it as little as possible, and certainly not looking backwards over his shoulder. At the place where the wall bore away leftwards at a right angle, the track began to ascend rather more steeply for perhaps a hundred yards, to a scrubby tableland above. They were walking in silence, and Hilary's ears, always sharper than the average, were continuously strained for any unusual sound, probably from behind the wall, but possibly, and even more alarmingly, not. When some way up the steeper slope, he seemed to hear something, and could not stop himself from looking back.

  There was indeed something to see, though Hilary saw it for only an instant.

  At the corner of the wall, there was no special feature, as one might have half-expected, such as a turret or an obelisk. There was merely the turn in the hipped roofing. But now Hilary saw, at least for half a second, that a man was looking over, installed at the very extremity of the internal angle. There was about half of him visible, and he seemed tall and slender and bald. Hilary failed to notice how he was dressed: if, indeed, he was dressed at all.

  Hilary jerked back his head. He did not feel able to mention what he had seen to Mary, least of all now.

  He did not feel able, in fact, to mention the sight to anyone. Twenty years later, he was once about to mention it, but even then decided against doing so. In the meantime, and for years after these events, the thought and memory of them lay at the back of his mind; partly because of what had already happened, partly because of what happened soon afterwards.

  The outing must have upset Hilary more than he knew, because the same evening he felt ill, and was found by Mrs Parker to have a temperature. That was the beginning of it, and the end of it was not for a period of weeks; during which there had been two doctors, and, on some of the days and nights, an impersonal nurse, or perhaps two of them also. There had also been much bluff jollying along from Hilary's father; Hilary's brothers being both at Wellington. Even Mrs Parker had to be reinforced by a blowsy teenager named Eileen.

  In the end, and quite suddenly, Hilary felt as good as new: either owing to the miracles of modern medicine, or, more probably, owing to the customary course of nature.

  "You may feel right, old son," said Doctor Morgan-Vaughan; "but you're not right, not yet."

  "When can I go back to school?"

  "Do you want to go back, son?"

  "Yes," said Hilary.

  "Well, well," said Doctor Morgan-Vaughan. "Small boys felt differently in my day."
r />   "When can I?" asked Hilary.

  "One fine day," said Doctor Morgan-Vaughan. "There's no hurry about it. You've been ill, son, really ill, and you don't want to do things in a rush."

  So a matter of two months had passed before Hilary had any inkling of the fact that something had happened to Mary also. He would have liked to see her, but had not cared, rather than dared, to suggest it. At no time had he even mentioned her at home. There was no possibility of his hearing anything about her until his belated return to school.

  Even then, the blowsy teenager was sent with him on the first day, lest, presumably, he faint at the roadside or vanish upwards to Heaven. His heart was heavy and confused, as he walked; and Eileen found difficulty in conversing with a kid of his kind anyway. He was slightly relieved by the fact that when they arrived at the school, she had no other idea than to hasten off with alacrity.

  The headmistress (if so one might term her), who was also part-proprietor of the establishment, a neat lady of 36, was waiting specially for Hilary's arrival after his illness; and greeted him with kindness and a certain understanding. The children also felt a new interest in him, though with most of them it was only faint. But there was a little girl with two tight plaits and a gingham dress patterned with asters and sunflowers, who seemed more sincerely concerned about what had been happening to him. Her name was Valerie Watkinson.

  "Where's Mary?" asked Hilary.

  "Mary's dead," said Valerie Watkinson solemnly.

  Hilary's first response was merely hostile. "I don't believe you," he said.

  Valerie Watkinson nodded three or four times, even more solemnly.

  Hilary clutched hold of both her arms above the elbows. "I don't believe you," he said again.

  Valerie Watkinson began to cry. "You're hurting me."

  Hilary took away his hands. Valerie did not move or make any further complaint. They stood facing one another in silence for a perceptible pause, with Valerie quietly weeping.

  "Is it true?" said Hilary in the end.

  Valerie nodded again behind her tiny handkerchief with a pinky-blue Swiss milkmaid on one corner. "You're very pale," she gasped out, her mouth muffled.