The Trains: transporting readers with sensory details

Robert Aickman doesn’t tell you a story. He transports you. When I read Aickman, I am among mysterious women on an island in a wine-dark sea, night-walking through a woodland maze, slogging across a wind-blasted valley. Let me show you what I mean. For just a moment, follow Margaret and Mimi, the protagonists of “The Trains,” as they enjoy a brisk walk through the English countryside:

They had descended to the town quite suddenly from the wildest moors, as one does in the North. Now equally suddenly it was as if there were no towns, but only small, long-toothed Neaderthals crouched behind rocks waiting to tear the two of them to pieces. Air roared past in incalculable bulk under the lucent sky, deeply blue but traversed by well-spaced masses of sharply edged white cloud, like the floats in a Mediterranean pageant.

Aickman doesn’t tell you a story; he immerses you in an atmosphere capable of drenching you to the bones with dread, like poor Margaret out on the moors in her flimsy raincoat. His prose could be described using the same words Margaret uses to describe the roaring air of the barren wilderness: it certainly is like itself.

What makes Aickman’s writing so like itself? For one thing, he masterfully selects the most visceral sensory details to capture the essence of a place. Here’s his handy description of the dingy guesthouse where the women stop for a cup of tea:

There was no one else in the room, which was congested with depressing café furniture, and decorated with cigarette advertisements hanging askew on the walls…

A door opened from behind and the taciturn woman brought Margaret’s coffee. The cup was discoloured round the edge, and the saucer, for some reason, bore a crimson smear.

Sensory details are the descriptive elements in writing that engage the reader’s five senses. They create a more vivid experience. You feel the push and shove of the wind across the moor. You smell the stale smoke in the claustrophobic dining room. You recoil at the smear of red on the discolored cup.

But these little artifacts of the real world can do so much more when we add them to our stories. Aickman’s versatile sensory details rumble back and forth across “The Trains” with all the rhythmic predictability of a departure timetable, and it’s that predictability (and the disruption of it) that ultimately leads to unease. He lures you into his world with familiar details, leads you off the trail with misleading trail markers, and ensnares you with sensory cues that circle back on themselves. Let’s follow Aickman’s train of thought into uncanny terrain for inspiration for our own strange short stories.

TL;DR: “The Trains” Plot

Margaret and Mimi, two civil servants on a walking holiday, take a wrong turn into the Quiet Valley. Any more than that would spoil it.

Invite the reader into the story with familiar details.

Like all of my favorite stories, “The Trains” starts with a perfectly lovely day just waiting to get ruined by some malevolent-minded writer. Here’s the first paragraph:

On the moors, as early as this, the air no longer clung about her, impeding her movements, absorbing her energies. Now a warm breeze seemed to lift her up and bear her on: the absorption process was reversed; her bloodstream drew impulsion from the zephyrs. Her thoughts raced from her in all directions, unproductive but joyful. She remembered the railway posters. Was this ozone?

When we lived aboard our sailboat in New Orleans, a cat named Oidos from a neighboring boat would become wild and frisky in the fall when the weather suddenly (and briefly) changed from unbearable, stifling heat to slightly less stifling heat. I did, too. I bet you’ve had a similar experience.

Aickman’s description is familiar to us because of the sensory details he chooses. You’ve sweated through your clothes in the clinging air. You’ve smelled the ozone after a thunderstorm. You’ve felt the joy of release from whatever meteorologic misery is weighing down on you.

That familiarity gives you immediate entrée into the story, and of course you want to come along on this joyful little jaunt. Alas, that was exactly what Aickman hoped you would do. Now, you’re caught up in his snare, unable to escape once the story begins to transform into something less pleasant. Now, you’re in until the final, inevitable conclusion.

Lure them deep into the wilderness with false trail markers.

Due to the windy conditions, our intrepid travelers Mimi and Margaret must use stones they find along the way to hold down their deteriorating map. Thus, they leave in their wake trail markers for the reader to follow from happy holiday to bitter end:

“Let’s go,” said Mimi. With difficulty they folded up the map, and Mimi returned it to Margaret’s rucksack. The four grey stones continued to mark the corners of a now mysterious rectangle.

After leaving two more sets of stones “demarcating nothing,” the young women are left with a near-shredded map and “no anchoring stones. Walls had long since ceased to line the road, and there appeared to be no stones larger than pebbles. While they were poking under clumps of heather, a train descended, whistling continuously.”

The image of the four stones calls to mind old tombs or cairns or mesolithic stone circles, and you, dear reader, curious as to what they might mean, follow them straight into the inescapable Quiet Valley. You follow because Aickman misdirects your attention with the rhythm of the informal stone-laying ceremony. He lures you into the inescapable moor of his story, and by the time the road and the walls and the stones vanish into heather, you’re too attached to the characters to leave them there alone.

Ensnare your reader with circular sensory cues.

While the wind-ravaged valley and the four stones create an atmosphere of dread, only the titular trains travel the entire landscape of Aickman’s story. Initially, the sound of a distant train gives the two travelers a false sense of their bearing when they fear they are lost:

“Surely, that’s a train?” said Margaret, when they had walked for two or three hours.

“Oh God,” said Mimi, the escapist.

“The point is it’ll give us our bearing.” The vague rumbling was now lost in the noisy wind.

Later, a passing train lets us peek into Mimi’s memories:

“…Drivers always wave to girls.”

“Only to girls?”

“Only to girls.” Mimi couldn’t remember when she hadn’t known that.

Trains act as proof:

“Not much traffic,” said Margaret, dangling a squashed tomato.

“They all go by train.”

The distant crowing of an engine whistle seemed to confirm her words.

To mark the passage of time:

…it took them thirty-five minutes by Mimi’s wrist-watch, and the crawling train passed before them almost as soon as they started.

And to evoke the eerie and unpleasant:

The fireman was stoking demoniacally. As the engine passed to windward of the two women far above, and the noise from the exhaust crashed upon their senses, the driver suddenly looked up and waved with an apparent gaiety inappropriate to the horrible weather.

Aickman brings us back to trains over and over, and with each whistle and roar, he speeds us unavoidably towards the terminus of this ill-fated trip. We can feel the story’s engine lurching forward, hurtling us towards oblivion.

You can play with the same tactic by weaving a signature sensory cue through your short horror story to create a rhythm, establish and then obliterate particular patterns, reveal characters’ insights and understanding of their situation (and how those change over the course of the story), and finally, to tie it all up with an unbreakable ouroboros bow.

Sensory details lay tracks for readers to follow through our literary landscapes.

As writers, we can take inspiration from Aickman’s mastery of sensory details to craft our own stories that lure, enthrall, and ultimately disquiet our readers. Invite readers into your story with familiar sensory experiences. Lead them astray with false markers. Ensnare them with circular sensory cues. Whether it’s the distant sound of a train whistle or the scent of ozone after a storm, carefully choose hard-working sensory details to transport readers to the heart of your unsettling tale.

Don’t forget!

If you’re local, and you find that you’ve got a five-minute thriller on your hands, come out to the Carteret Writers’ event Ghosts of the Coast. We’ll be meeting at the Morehead City Library on October 19, 4 pm – 6 pm, to share and scare at a Halloween-themed open mic. Learn more.

Writing Challenge

Channel your inner Aickman and craft a short scene or story that uses sensory details to evoke an eerie atmosphere. Begin by immersing your reader in a familiar sensory experience, then take them on a journey into the uncanny using false markers and circular sensory cues.