Slade House

Freya Timms, Sal’s older sister, is at the Fox and Hounds, waiting for Fred Pink to finish smoking his cigarette so that they can talk about what happened to Sal. Freya still believes in the possibility that Sal is alive. She regrets that she failed to spend more time with Sal before her disappearance, turning down Sal’s request to visit her in New York since she was too busy with work. Freya has since moved back to London, where she works as a journalist for Spyglass Magazine and lives with her partner, Avril.

Freya prepares her digital recorder for the interview. After getting permission from Fred to record, Freya encourages him to begin. Fred acknowledges the fact that many people do not consider him a credible source. Nevertheless, he declares himself guilty for what happened to Sal and her friends because he gave the information on Slade House to Axel. He tears up making this admission. Freya brings up the backstory Fred mentioned in his initial email, prompting him to begin.

Fred begins his story in 1899 at Swaffham Manor in Norfolk, the ancestral home of the Chetwynd-Pitts. Jonah and Norah Grayer are born to the family gamekeeper and his wife, Gabriel and Nellie Grayer. Three years later, Gabriel dies in a shooting accident. The Chetwynd-Pitts keep Nellie and her children on the estate out of pity and commit themselves to the children’s education. Nellie dies in 1910, prompting the twins’ move from the gamekeeper’s cottage to the manor proper.

At an early age, the twins manifest a gift for telepathy. The lady of the manor, Albertina Chetwynd-Pitt, first observes this gift when Norah, while inside the manor, reports that Albertina’s eldest son, Arthur, has had a riding accident. Norah learns about the accident through her telepathic connection to Jonah, who is with Arthur. 

Albertina does not believe Norah until she sends a servant to investigate, validating her claim. With the help of their friend, Dean Grimond of Ely Cathedral, Albertina and Lord Chetwynd-Pitt test the twins’ abilities by making them psychically relay verses to each other from different rooms. The three adults accept this demonstration and advise the twins to keep their gifts a secret, for fear that other people may take advantage of them.

Freya is skeptical about Albertina’s account of the Grayer twins, so Fred cross-corroborates with the account of Dr. Léon Cantillon, as recorded in his memoir, The Great Unveiling. Cantillon is an Irishman who serves as a medic in the French Foreign Legion, which brings him to North Africa. In Algiers, Cantillon develops an interest in the occult and spiritualism, studying under a mystic called the Albino Sayyid of Aït Arif. In 1915, Cantillon meets Lord Chetwynd-Pitt. By this time, Albertina is suffering from immense grief after losing all three of her sons in one week to World War I. Lord Chetwynd-Pitt enlists Cantillon to use his spiritualist knowledge to console Albertina.

Cantillon gives Albertina a cocaine elixir, which causes her to experience a divine vision of her sons. Cantillon also functions as a grief counselor for Albertina. Around this time, Jonah is working as an apprentice clerk while Norah is attending boarding school in Cambridge. Cantillon learns about their psychic abilities and asks for a demonstration. He is so impressed that he proposes to give them a psychic education with the help of an occult teacher. In exchange, the twins can help Albertina speak to her dead sons more regularly. 

He brings the twins to Algiers, which Albertina does not expect and calls an abduction. Because of the war, it is legally difficult for the Chetwynd-Pitts to demand the twins’ return. The twins are placed in the care of the Albino Sayyid of Aït Arif, who belongs to an occult branch called the Shaded Way and lives in a secret valley not far from Algiers. 

Freya complains that the story still doesn’t explain what happened to Sal, and Fred continues his story. The twins change as a result of their occult education, shedding their Englishness to become more like their Algerian peers. They stay with the Shaded Way until early 1919, when the Sayyid informs Cantillon that he has exhausted his knowledge. 

Cantillon then moves the twins to New York to put their skills to use. The twins hold séances to earn money, using their telepathic abilities to draw pertinent details from their clients. This business proves very successful and offers emotional healing to a great number of clients. Cantillon also proves himself a very shrewd manager, electing to keep the business small to avoid unwanted attention.

Fred posits that the twins committed to this business strategy out of curiosity about the human condition. The business also enables them to satisfy their wanderlust, allowing them to travel across the United States before sailing to East Asia. They continue westward until 1925, when they reach England once again. Fred asks for a moment to use the bathroom. He points out that Freya hasn’t consumed any of her tomato juice yet. Freya admits that it doesn’t really appeal to her.

While Fred is away, Freya considers walking out. She gets a text from Avril offering to bail her out with a fake emergency call if she needs it. Freya declines and promises to be home soon. She goes downstairs to get snacks and tonic water from the bar. The landlady at the bar, Maggs, laments the tragedy of Fred’s life. She accuses Freya of enabling Fred’s obsession, which isn’t good for him.

Fred returns and apologizes for Maggs’ behavior. He continues his story in 1925, when Cantillon decides that he wants to write the Grayer twins’ biography, which will double as the foundational text for a new field of study he calls psychosoterica. The twins refuse, wishing to remain in obscurity. Against their wishes, Cantillon writes his memoir in secret, revealing everything about the Shaded Way and the Grayer twins’ history in the first two parts of the book. 

In 1927, a limited run of the book is produced, which Cantillon delivers to various intellectuals, patrons, and occultists across Europe. The morning after the copies are distributed, a policeman witnesses Cantillon die by suicide, leaping naked out of his fifth-floor window after quoting John Milton. Shortly after his funeral, the remaining copies of Cantillon’s biography are burned in the Grayers’ fireplace. Fred insinuates that the twins were responsible for arranging Cantillon’s death.

In 1931, the Grayer twins purchase Slade House, located in an industrial district. The location suits the Grayers’ purposes, as they hope to draw from the area’s working-class population for their experiments on immortality, which they complete three years later. Fred is aware that this aspect of the story elicits Freya’s skepticism, so he elaborates that it was in the Grayers’ interest to keep their discovery secret because it would make them easy targets. To guarantee immortality, the Grayers shy away from fame, using their invented system only to benefit themselves. This is helped along by the destruction of Slade House in 1940, during the Blitz. 

At this juncture, Fred explains the system behind the Grayers’ immortality. First, they constructed a lacuna, a space that exists outside the conventional rules of time. This allowed them to place their bodies in a space where they wouldn’t age. Next, they use their psychic abilities to possess other people’s bodies and interact with the outside world. 

The lacuna can only survive if the Grayers feed on the soul of someone who is Engifted, meaning that they have psychic potential. Each feeding cycle takes nine years. To initiate the process, the Grayers lure an Engifted into a reality bubble called an orison and coerce them to consume banjax, a chemical that weakens the link between soul and body. The orison is what convinces its visitors that Slade House still exists. Any additional visitors whose souls are not Engifted are summarily destroyed.

Fred reveals that Sal was one such Engifted person. He confirmed this by looking into Sal’s psychiatric reports from when she was still living in Singapore and Worcestershire. This information upsets Freya, so Fred explains that he made great efforts to secure Sal’s files to prevent the same outcome from happening to anyone else. Freya points out that Sal didn’t undergo therapy in Worcestershire, prompting Fred to reveal how miserable she really was after she moved there. Fred intuits that Freya may be Engifted too, though he has no real way to prove that this is true.

Freya worries that Maggs may have been right about indulging Fred’s obsession. She admits that in the absence of concrete proof, she doesn’t fully believe in Fred’s story. Fred offers to call Freya a taxi to send her home. He tells her to check her phone, which has been buzzing frequently with messages throughout their conversation. The texts, all from Avril, reveal that Freya has actually been at the Fox and Hounds the entire night. Avril is worried that Freya hasn’t come home and implores her to get in touch. Freya cannot text back because her phone has no reception signal.

Freya rushes downstairs and finds herself back in the same room where she was talking to Fred. She panics. Her phone rings and she picks up, only to hear the voice of Sal telling her that she is slowly asphyxiating. The call dies as Sal screams for mercy, warning her tormentors that someone will stop them one day. Freya gets a second call, this time from Maggs. Maggs tells her that she cannot help Sal anymore, as what she heard was merely the residue of her soul from nine years ago. Maggs also reveals that the real Fred Pink died several months ago of prostate cancer. Freya asks where Sal is, and Maggs assures her that Sal is dead.

Freya calls emergency services and tells the operator where she is. The operator indicates that she lives with her brother down the street from the Fox and the Hounds, and Freya realizes that she is still speaking to her captor. The operator tells Freya to look at the candle behind her.

Freya sees the mirror image of herself, a young Maggs, and a young Fred Pink. She understands at once that they are Norah and Jonah Grayer. Norah is upset with Jonah for telling Freya their life story. Jonah argues that it was necessary to convince her to stay. He adds that there is no risk of their story leaking out; Freya is a discreet listener who won’t publish a word of what he has told her. 

Once again, Norah complains that their operandi is too risky, relying on Freya to consume the tomato juice banjax they set before her. Jonah then explains to Freya that she actually decided to forego her interview with Fred Pink. When he learned this, he possessed another man’s body and incapacitated Freya. Freya was then brought to Slade House, which Norah redesigned to resemble the Fox and Hounds. Because Freya refused the banjax in the tomato juice, they gave her an alternative in the snacks she ordered from Maggs. 

Norah scolds Jonah again for revealing their biography, warning that it will come back to hurt him somehow. They perform the ritual to extract Freya’s soul. As they start to consume it, a woman in a designer jacket suddenly appears between them. She stabs a fox-head hairpin through Jonah’s neck. Norah expels the ghost from the room, but before the ghost vanishes, Freya sees that she is wearing the same Maori jade pendant she had given Sal.