Slade House

A university Paranormal Society, led by postgraduate student Axel Hardwick, convenes for a field trip to investigate the Slade Alley Vanishings. The attending members of the society are Axel, Todd Cosgrove, Angelica Gibbons, Lance Arnott, Fern Penhaligon, and the narrator, Sally “Sal” Timms. Axel is disappointed that their party is so small, while Sal is relieved that Todd, her crush and society vice president, has elected to come. Too shy to talk to him, Sal tries to send Todd telegraphic messages, hoping to disprove Angelica’s claim that she had no psychic potential. Fern posits that attendance is low because the society’s last field trip was so underwhelming.

Axel briefs the group, sharing photographs of Nathan and Rita Bishop and Gordon Edmonds, with the dates and details of their disappearances. In the wake of Gordon’s disappearance, police were unable to locate Chloe Chetwynd and Slade House. This latter detail intrigues the group, who suggest that the only credible explanation is that Gordon falsified his report on Slade House before vanishing. Axel rebuts that the report is true, revealing that he is related to one of the Slade Alley witnesses—his uncle, Fred Pink, brought the information of the vanishings to him. Fred urged Axel to look into the vanishings because he has been interested in them for years. Fred believes that he is destined to learn the truth about Slade House, though Axel insinuates that this has caused Fred to live in a psychiatric hospital.

The group wonders how they might find Slade House when all other attempts to find it have failed. Axel points out that both disappearances occurred on the last Saturday in October, nine years apart. The night of the field trip is the last Saturday of October 1997, nine years after Gordon’s disappearance.

The group walks from campus to Westwood Road, with Sal trailing behind everyone else. This gives Sal space to think about her family, including her older sister Freya, who left for New York after finishing her studies. Todd sees Sal alone and waits for her, which makes Sal nervous. Sal wishes Todd, rather than creeps like Lance, would flirt with her, but she suspects she isn’t attractive enough for him. Todd is about to ask her something, but then Lance announces that they have arrived at Slade Alley. 

Axel leads the group in, but they do not find anything inside at first. Angelica detects a paranormal presence in the area, so Axel instructs everyone to observe any psychic anomaly indicators. Lance locates a small black iron door. No one is able to open it until Sal puts her hand on its surface. She feels a jolt of energy, and the door opens by itself.

The group passes through the door to find a large stone house on the far end of a lawn. A Halloween party is in full swing, revealing that Slade House is a student residence. The group believes that Axel tricked them into going to a party, but Axel is clueless and embarrassed. A woman dressed as the Wicked Witch of the West comes over to the group and introduces herself as Kate Childs, Fern’s American classmate in a previous seminar. Kate confirms that Slade House has been an Erasmus Scholarship Center since 1982. The group elects to stay at the party, except for Axel, who suspends the Paranormal Society in shame and leaves. Angelica chases after him. Sal asks Todd what he wanted to ask her, but he has already forgotten and invites her to join him inside.

Sal tells Todd about Freya, the reason she developed an inferiority complex growing up. Todd reassures Sal by positing that Freya may be jealous of her as well. Sal scoffs that this is unlikely, citing an emotional breakdown she had during her childhood in Singapore. This caused her parents to send her back to Worcestershire, believing that she couldn’t adapt to Singaporean culture. At her next girls’ school, Sal was viciously bullied by girls who called her “Oink.” Todd sympathizes, but Sal downplays her experience, citing other people who might have had it worse than her. A partygoer offers Todd and Sal some garlic bread, which they accept because of its aroma.

Todd and Sal can’t stop eating garlic bread as Todd tells Sal about his family. He chose to attend their university despite getting admission to the University of Edinburgh because he was afraid that his elderly father would die while he was away, leaving his mother, who is blind, alone. Todd invites Sal to meet his mother, which delights her. He then excuses himself to look for the toilet and tells her to wait. 

Sal fantasizes about being married to Todd. She looks at herself in the Tiffany compact mirror that Freya gave her and fixes her lipstick. Hungry, she goes to the food counter and picks from the pile of brownies that are marked “No Hash Brownies.” A man says he recognizes her, but Sal has never met him before. He introduces himself as Melbourne Mike and flirts with Sal, which gives her a thrill. Melbourne Mike informs her that someone switched the labels on the brownies, meaning that Sal actually ate a hash brownie.

Sal rushes to look for the nearest toilet to vomit into. She is directed to one upstairs by a girl in a Tin Man costume. Instead of finding the toilet, she finds Lance in a dance hall. Sal rushes through the rest of the house, ending up at a bay window. There she finds Fern, who observes that Todd is infatuated with Sal. Fern likes Todd because he reminds her of her brother, who died by suicide five years earlier. Fern admits that the reason she joined the Paranormal Society was to see a ghost and assure herself that her brother still existed somehow.

Sal falls asleep on the couch. When she wakes up, Fern is gone and so is the bay window. A man in a dressing gown is sitting next to her. Sal asks the man how to find the kitchen, so that she can get back to Todd. The man responds slowly, asking if he is still in the house. He tells Sal that his name was taken away, and he isn’t even allowed to die properly. He tells her he found a weapon in the cracks and gives her a sharp hairpin decorated with a fox’s head before suddenly disappearing.

Sal sees an iron door in the wall nearby, left ajar. She looks through it and finds herself back in Slade Alley. She worries that this is the effect of the drugs on her perception. She considers exiting, but then Kate catches her attention and asks if she lost something. Sal tells her about the door, but then the door disappears. Kate offers to call her a cab home, but Sal declines, preferring to walk. Kate then suggests that Sal find Todd to walk her home and tells her to look for him in the games room upstairs.

Sal passes through the TV room, where several people are watching a news report about a local university girl who was recently abducted and has been missing for five days. The girl’s compact mirror is the only personal item that has been recovered thus far. The reporter announces that the missing girl’s name is Sally Timms, which shocks Sal because it has only been an hour since the Paranormal Society entered Slade House. 

A picture of Sal appears on the TV, confirming that she is the missing girl. The reporter interviews Lance, who explains that she disappeared at the party and portrays her as a troubled figure. This upsets Sal, who bumps into a sideboard and touches a Miss Piggy mask. The mask reminds her of her bullies’ moniker for her. Fearing their provocation, Sal puts the mask on and searches her handbag for her compact mirror. It is missing.

Sal proceeds up the stairs and passes several portraits and a grandfather clock with an engraved face. She knocks on the first door she sees but hears nothing inside. When she looks in, she sees a grotesque fusion of Axel and Angelica’s bodies, teasing Sal the way her school bullies used to. Sal rushes out, believing that what she saw was Axel and Angelica having sex.

Sal continues up the stairs and passes more portraits. She stops when she recognizes Nathan Bishop in one of the portraits. Next, she sees Gordon Edmonds and connects him with the man in the dressing gown she spoke to earlier. The next portrait is of her without eyes. 

Sal rushes past the portrait and opens the next door she sees. On the other side, she finds Todd, who is terrified of the house. He whispers to her that the twins are actively trying to stop them from leaving because they want to consume Sal’s soul. He explains that Sal’s soul belongs to a rare category that will power Slade House, which functions like the twins’ life-support machine. 

Todd coordinates a movement plan with Sal so that they can escape the house through a passage he identifies as the aperture. He adds that all their friends are likely already dead and urges Sal not to interact with anyone on their way out. Sal asks why he knows all of this. Todd answers that he is a bodyguard and promises to explain more when they return to his house.

The two begin their escape. Todd explains that the layout of the house keeps shifting to confuse them. The Tin Man girl tries to interact with Sal, but Sal ignores her. Next, Todd and Sal walk past duplicates of themselves, reenacting their conversation from earlier. Finally, they pass by Lance, who begs them to liberate him from the house. Sal agrees to bring Lance with them, which causes his face to melt off and transform into a beast. 

Todd draws signs into the air, which scares the Lance creature away. He then pulls Sal on, warning her that the twins will awaken soon. He opens the doors and nearly takes them through the iron gate, but Fern reappears and tosses Sal her compact mirror. Sal catches the mirror, and a dark force hurls her to the ground. Figures disguised as people from Sal’s past close in on them. 

Todd picks Sal up and urges her to open the door with her palm before the figures reach them. Sal does so, but it doesn’t work. Todd tells her to stop being afraid, and to help her, he kisses her. The door opens, and Todd pushes Sal through into an endless void.

The void is formless and timeless. Sal does not know how much time she spends there, but she uses that time to think of her family and Todd. Finally, she sees a light that turns into the flame of a candle. The flame illuminates a mirror image of herself in the Miss Piggy mask, an older Kate Childs, and an older Melbourne Mike. 

Sal realizes that Kate and Mike are twins, and that she is in the “games room” of Slade House. She cannot move. Kate introduces herself and Mike as twins, Norah and Jonah Grayer, and informs Sal that Todd and her other friends are dead. The Todd who tried to save her was performed by Jonah to trick Sal. Jonah adds that everything she experienced from entering the iron door in Slade Alley to the moment of her escape was staged, all projected by the twins.

Jonah compliments Norah’s projections of the Halloween party and the escape, which he refers to as orisons. They comment on the unexpected appearance of Gordon, whose spirit maintained enough residue in the house to warn Sal. Norah reminds Jonah of her previous warning, but Jonah remains stubborn, mocking her to take another sabbatical if she isn’t satisfied with the outcome. He points out that the independence of their operandi liberates them from having to serve any troublesome masters. Norah comments that the only things they have to serve are their birth-bodies, which sicken her. Jonah urges her to begin eating.

The twins begin their ritual, summoning the mass that draws out Sal’s soul. Sal wonders at the beauty of her soul, which the Grayer twins suck in. The Miss Piggy mask hits the floor as Sal disappears.