“The Unsettled Dust” (1968)

What’s most enjoyable for me about Robert Aickman at this point is that I’m still discovering how good he is, still finding these above-average “strange” stories, and they still surprise me a lot. His floor is higher than the ceilings of many who are better known. The first-person narrator in this one is a corporate officer of the Historic Structures Fund, an organization dedicated to preserving buildings of interest. He’s telling the story of a past experience by way of contributing to the work of a new group within the Fund, the Psychic and Occult Research Committee, whose mission is to investigate reports of hauntings. The haunted house in this story is one of the Fund’s properties, where the narrator stayed while he was working on another project in the region. The former owners of the house, and the last remaining heirs of the family who originally built it, still live there—two sisters, Agnes and Olive. They are required to put him up because the Fund now owns their home. They are reasonably cordial. “The Unsettled Dust” has lots of Aickman touches, perhaps most notably the dust. It covers everything and no one does anything about it—no one can do anything about it. Even the dining table where they eat is dusty. Rings created by glasses and plates are covered again by dust by meal’s end. No one really knows where it comes from, but they take it as a given, with their own theories—wind, unpaved roads, high country, etc. The narrator thinks there must be a cement factory nearby. The expectation for the sisters is that they will be old, crotchety types, and Agnes certainly is. But the narrator finds himself strangely attracted to Olive. He also sees a ghost, a man he finds in his bedroom one afternoon who says nothing to him and eventually leaves. The housekeeper (“the grey Elizabeth”) assures him he will only see it that once—everyone sees it only once—and that turns out to be true. I like the dust in this story, it’s a very strong and, yes, unsettling element. It makes the narrator’s hands visibly dirty just living there day to day, and the thought of eating at that dining table makes me a little sick. I also like the narrator’s attraction to Olive, who is eerie, ethereal and a little indeterminate even within the story, but also indeed somehow attractive. She plays the piano and bears an air of melancholy. The narrator’s infatuation is wrapped into his stiff manner, but it’s quite evident. Through him, Olive becomes attractive to the reader as well. Neil Gaiman: “Reading Robert Aickman is like watching a magician work, and very often I'm not even sure what the trick was. All I know is that he did it beautifully.”

Robert Aickman, The Unsettled Dust
Listen to story online.