In London, Elizabeth, her health improved, encounters the fellows of the Society of Esoterica while seeking information on Kilphaun Hall. Meanwhile at that house, Lily comes to lunch and George has a run-in with her uncle.
Additional sound:
Music: Signs To Nowhere by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com
If you like THWDY, tell people about us! It will help us grow!
In London, Elizabeth, her health improved, encounters the fellows of the Society of Esoterica while seeking information on Kilphaun Hall. Meanwhile at that house, Lily comes to lunch and George has a run-in with her uncle.
Additional sound:
Music: Signs To Nowhere by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com
If you like THWDY, tell people about us! It will help us grow!
THIS HOUSE WILL DEVOUR YOU Season One
A Podcast concerning love, madness, mystery, murder and dead gods in 1920's Ireland and England
Episode 1.05
'An Investigation is Begun'
Bloomsbury, London WC
18th November, 1925,
My dear Jon,
I do hope things are going well for you at Kilphaun and no more odd occurrences have taken place. I must confess to having severe misgivings about George’s tenure there. It seems as though some old ghosts exist that feel they have a prior claim to the place, and they might not rest until they have wrought their vengeance.
This may seem melodramatic – perhaps you think I have taken advantage of my time in London to visit one of the picture-houses and see a lurid movie – but no, in fact I had a most curious encounter with an occultist, Mr. Forsyth, to whom I was recommended by Roland, and I am due to meet with another one of his cohort.
But firstly I must tell you about my sunbeam treatment. You know I did approach the idea with some trepidation but in view of the need to be fully restored to health I wanted to give it a try. In fact it was a most blissful experience in a small premises just off Harley Street. Once inside, I met with a somewhat starchy nurse in all the crisp white headgear garb, who looked at me and frowned. “Very pale, you slip of a lass,” she muttered, before ordering me to strip off and wear a thin gauzy gown and some rather horrendous goggles. Of course I was rather unsure about the stripping off, so she saw my hesitation and said, “Don’t worry, you’re in the private suite - not like the poor bairns” – so perforce I had to obey!
I was ushered into a small room much like a standard consulting room at a doctor’s practice with a couch and a large, angular metallic structure standing, much like a street lamp, proud in the middle of the room. Once undressed on the couch I was instructed to face this structure, the lamp, which was then switched on. There was some clicking and humming as the lamp warmed up, at which point I was quite unnerved by my decision to have embraced such a modern science. I almost called out, but the posture of the nurse was so forbidding that I thought it better to continue with the bed I’d made for myself.
In fact once it got going, a beautiful strong light, like the best days of summer, played on me. It was truly radiant although with the safety goggles I couldn’t really appreciate the visual intensity. I just had to lay there, turning from time to time, in much the way I imagine glamorous sun-bathers disport themselves on the beaches of the Riviera! It would have been nice to have a magazine to read, though of course the goggles prevent the ability to see much.
Anyway after my forty minutes was up, I felt curiously elated and full of the verve that I have been lacking of late. I felt as though I could take on the world! So after dressing, instructing where to send the bill, and brushing off the slight redness and tingling I could feel on my skin, I wrapped up again in scarf, hat and gloves, sauntered out of Sunbeam House, and headed a short walk away to a slightly grubby part of Fitzrovia where the Society of Esoterica has their premises. I had made an appointment the previous day to see Mr Forsyth. I apologise for not letting you know this before, Jon, but it was quite a spontaneous schedule and you would not have received my letter in time.
I knocked on a very heavy imposing door with a small brass plate beside it on which the Society’s name was engraved together with some obscure symbols, vaguely familiar to me but possibly simple magical emblems I have seen in illustrated books. The door was opened by an elderly retainer dressed in a very threadbare, pre-War dining suit with an old silk cravat, I would say of Indian make, around his throat. A faint aroma of boiled vegetables, together with something I could not place, filled the quarters and some of my verve dissipated with it. However my request to see Mr Forsyth was received readily and I was ushered into an ante-room in which the sunlight was filtering through a complex stained glass window I had not noticed from the street, casting a jewel-coloured glow across the space.
Mr Forsyth, when he appeared, was younger than the retainer but similarly dressed in a somewhat irregular, Bohemian manner. He lit a cigarette and offered me one, but mindful of my recent sunray treatment, I desisted. He murmured a strange sentence in an unfamiliar tongue, which I hoped was a blessing rather than a curse, and asked my purpose.
I asked Mr Forsyth if places could have spirits, being anxious to distinguish from typical ghost sightings – not, therefore, the sudden appearance of a Grey Lady from behind the wainscot in an old house, nor even the hauntings that must exist by so many of those poor men who lost their lives in the trenches and at sea – but a longstanding ancient animus that was very location-specific. Imagine my excitement when Mr. Forsyth said, absolutely, definitely, the genius loci was a cornerstone piece of his current research, that he was busy tracing such occurrences in the archives and annals they hold in their library, as well as by collecting anecdotal evidence.
This so aroused me I had to know more, and, Jon, I offered to assist in his research. He said, somewhat dryly, that they always keep an ear out for new “phenomena” and where exactly was the place in question. As I hadn’t discussed this with you first, I was reluctant to be too specific, so I said “an old house in Ireland”.
Well, the reaction was immediate, and not as I had hoped. Mr. Forsyth harrumphed and said that was an entirely different matter, that land was full of faeries and any investigation was best left to the many “experts” in the paranormal that abounded on Erin’s shores. I was somewhat taken aback, I can tell you! I have come across here enough examples in recent years, since the War of Independence, of a feigned disinterest, if not actual animosity, toward the people and matters of Ireland, but I was very surprised such an unhelpful attitude would have penetrated the doors of the Society of Esoterica!
While I was floundering for words, Mr. Forsyth excused himself with the suggestion to make use of their library if I wanted to find out more, and he ushered me to that small, dingy interior space across the corridor.
Never disheartened, I signed in, noting there had been only two other visitors that fortnight, a Mr. C. King and a Dr. Rookfield. In fact, one of whom brushed past us as Mr. Forsyth took his leave.
“Ah, Forsyth,” said he, cheerily, “you’ll be letting the fillies loose in the book room now will ye?”
I bristled at such derogatory language in my hearing, but hearing a faint Irish twang to his speech I decided not to ignore him and introduced myself, asking if he knew of any haunted houses, particularly in Ireland, that were covered in the library’s material.
“Indeed”, said he, “though the best of it’s in the telling, not the writing, and there’s some stories I could let ye have.” And then the fellow invited me to luncheon!
Well, this was very sudden, and I didn’t want to decline, but after my busy morning and the decision to rest at cousin Celia’s after the treatment, I demurred. “Dinner, then,” said he, and now I have a date for tomorrow evening at seven o’clock at the Leitrim Rooms with Dr. Hugh Rookfield!
I do hope this meets with your approval, Jon. I do feel I’m on to something.
Your loving fiancée,
Elizabeth
-----------------------------------------
'A Most Unseemly Spectacle'
-------------------------------------------
Kilphaun Hall
20th November 1925
My dearest Elizabeth,
It is very good to hear that you are sufficiently recovered to travel to London and have adventures but do please be careful! You do not know who these Society of Esoterica men are and by the very nature of their interests, I would be concerned about their intentions and character. I know you well enough to not bother saying be sensible and stay in Wiltshire but please tell me that you took your cousin Celia with you as a chaperone at the bare minimum. Be safe please!
My first thought on reading that you had gone to London was I admit a selfish one - that if you could travel to that madhouse of a city, you could come join me and your brother here. But I too am in a mad house, and you are better off there! We had the most extraordinary encounter with Lord Clonlaw which I will record in due course. I continue to have strange dreams, sometimes now also of that dark, dreary mound and in them I am searching for something except I do not know what it is but, always, eventually of roaring, consuming, burning fire. My left hand aches and I fear the prick I received in that fall in the north wing, though minor, is infected after all.
First some good news. I have properly met the mysterious Lily over lunch at the house and she is intelligent, opinionated and quite charming. In person she is slim and pale, with dark hair cut in a modern bob and makes quite the contrast with George in his tweeds. I think you will like her too, which is good because George is clearly intent on making her a fixture of the family. I could see your great aunt Edith practically composing the letters to your mother during the meal. George and I somewhat threw Lily to the wolves by retreating into talk of the estate management. Lily took Aunt Edith’s attentions in good grace but god help me, your aunt got very keen on the idea of a joint wedding for the Sanderson siblings.
It was a relief when the three of us were able to escape into the demesne on horses. I had the chestnut again. Her name is Poppy by the way, I realise I neglected to tell you before now. It was a crisp clear day again with the sun low in the sky though the next set of rain clouds was gathering in the east. We cast long shadows ahead of us as we rode the boreens east of Kilphaun village.
But to the incident with Lord Clonlaw - a most shocking spectacle. The day had slowly turned soft and damp, low cloud in the trees and threatening rain that never quite came. We had returned to the house. Tea was being served. The dark was already crowding at the windows and we were glad of the steady glow of those new electric lights. We have had informative conversations with Mr Harrison, the historian, who joined us at the house a few days ago. My instinct regarding the triskelions was correct - he told me they were often seen as protective, representing life, death and rebirth. Interestingly they are often associated with Manannán mac Lir, the old god of both the sea and the underworld. I’m not sure I like the idea of the symbol of the underworld, of hell I suppose, being everywhere here. Young Mr Harrison it turns is one of those academics who mistakes questions for enthusiasm and he was busy over tea telling us stories of the various Irish gods. Lily asked him if he knew of a god called Crom, a particular favourite of her uncle’s researches. He had just launched into a long tale of an ancient king and his army who all died while worshipping this Crom, when there was the most extraordinary banging on the front door. It gave us all quite the start.
Like action in a play that takes place in the wings, we heard first a maid cross the hall in hurried light steps to answer the door, a loud male voice and her flustered retreat to the kitchen. Then Mrs Moore’s more measured heavy tread moving to engage the visitor. The raised voice came again, muffled and infuriatingly difficult to make out, talking over the housekeeper’ calmer tones. Silence then as we heard Mrs Moore’s footsteps once more. George raised an amused eyebrow in my direction, assuming the matter dealt with. But Mrs Moore appeared at the door to our room looking very put out, which was enough of a change from her usual irascible demeanour to gather everyone’s attention. Well, Elizabeth, it turned out that Lord Clonlaw himself was at the door demanding Lily return at once with him. George went to talk to him to no avail and rising voices, and the end of the matter was that Lily left to keep the peace.
George was extremely angry, as much at Lord Clonlaw as at his embarrassment for not being able to control his own affairs in front of others. When I asked him why he had not invited Clonlaw in, he said he had but the blighter said the strangest thing, that Kilphaun Hall was built wrong and he would not enter. George said he was so confused by this statement that he forgot his anger and said no, he was mistaken, 200yrs old and still standing without a problem, apart from that troublesome damp spot on the east wall. Clonlaw had leaned in at this point, and I can picture it, his spidery limbs all angles towering over George’s shorter plumper frame in the damp misty light, and hissed, “No, you young pup, this house is wrong. You’d have to be blind or a fool not to see it. I’ll not have any of my family risk stepping foot in it”.
George said he was at a loss for a response to that and was also trying not to gag at Clonlaw’s rancid breath. The lord was quite red in the face and looked to have a heart attack so it was probably just as well, he said, that Lily appeared at his side then and said she would leave with her uncle.
Well it was generally agreed to have been most unbecoming and extraordinary behaviour and quite put a dampener on the rest of the day. Poor Mr Harrison didn’t know where to look or what to say and soon retreated to his room.
I found Clonlaw’s words unsettling, for I do think there is something strange about this house. George’s bad humour settled around us like a miasma so I slipped up to my den to smoke my pipe in peace and start writing this letter. I was about to enter when I noticed another door, half hidden in one of the mean corridors of this upper service floor. How had I not seen it before? Today’s explorations are not over yet, Jonny boy, I thought. Behind the door was a narrow stair that turned once before letting out onto the roof through a hatch.
The roof is gabled at the back and flat at the front, and lightly forested all over with tall chimney stacks. My eye was drawn however to the stained glass pyramid that protruded from the flat roof and glowed from the lamps of the hall beneath. There was something unearthly about its bright shape seeming to float in the dimming light like a visitation from another world or time. It was easily eight or ten feet across and six high at the apex. It sits squarely on top of the entrance hall and is in fact the skylight I’ve previously remarked on. The glass at the base of the pyramid has an inscription in a language unknown to me. The four panels depict scenes which seem peculiarly brutal for a family home. There is an awful lot of smiting going on in them, with what looks like a crooked old man within a circle of stone statues either doing it or, in one case, being the one done unto to. What gave me pause though was the old man. I have seen you before I thought, but where?
Around every corner of this house is another puzzle, another mystery. Was this some strange coincidence or something more sinister? I felt suddenly chilled and retreated from the roof, any chance at recapturing my good mood of earlier gone.
I’m tired now though I dread to sleep, to face my dreams again . What does Lord Clonlaw know? It was a very peculiar thing to say about a house, but I cannot help reflecting on the fact that in the last week, a boy and two dogs have gone missing in its vicinity and two people claim to have been assaulted by the very building. Who of us is next?
And one other thing, be very careful with these Society men. It has just occurred to me that Lord Clonlaw’s ordinary name is Charles King - could he be the Mr C. King you saw in their sign-in book?
Take care, my darling,
,
Jon Ross