Hillsglade House

Hillsglade House is the ancestral home of the Thorburn Family, sitting between marshlands and the town. It has been around for generations.

Description

{{#if:BlakeBonds 1.1|

“	Books lined shelves in nearly every room with an available wall, some old with cracked spines, some new, recent bestsellers.  It was all sorted more like a library than a home, clearly by some arrangement of age and alphabetized. Anachronistic in design.	”
{{#if:Blake| –Blake{{#if:Bonds 1.1|, Bonds 1.1}} }} }}

The house has a long driveway leading up it's namesake hill.<ref name=":1">Looking up at the namesake hill, I could see the house.  Not big, but it

drew attention because of the way it looked down on the two-theater 

podunk town.  It wasn’t dark, and it wasn’t ominous.  Barring a slightly

overgrown garden, trees that had grown well beyond the quaint, tidy 

little decorations they might have been when the house was built, and the railing, it was nothing more than a nice house.  I’d dated a wannabe-architect at one point, a brief-lived fling.  I didn’t remember much, but I didn’t feel confident labeling the place as Victorian.  Three stories, with a one-room tower standing one floor higher, off one

corner.  Gray-painted wood siding, decorative ‘lace’ in carved wood 

beneath the eaves and around the railing on the porch, tall, narrow windows with open shutters. - excerpt from Bonds 1.1 </ref><ref name=":2">It was hard to sum up my feelings as the van drove up the long driveway to Hillsglade House.  It was supposed to be sanctuary, but it felt like the opposite.  Layered in snow, branches of the overlarge trees bent with snow and ice, the house was pale against a dark gray background.  The light siding only accented the effect.  If I closed my eyes enough to let my eyelashes blur the view, it looked almost like the windows were floating there. - excerpt from Bonds 1.3</ref> The property is ringed by shoulder-height stone walls topped with wrought-iron railings with a curling vine design to them.<ref>There was a car, my parent’s or my uncle’s, no doubt, parked in the middle of the gates, at the foot of a long driveway, leading up to Hillsglade House.  Symbolic, really, of everything that had gone on for most of my life.  Symbolic of everything I had walked away from.

My uncle… I was guessing it was my uncle, had parked the car at the entrance of the driveway to force everyone else to find a place to park. I looked down the length of the street.  The property was framed by a short stone wall, shoulder height, along with an elaborate iron fence of roughly the same height, shaped into curling vines with metal points at set intervals.  It had been covered in some black paint or coating, but rust and peeling paint made for a mottled texture. - excerpt from Bonds 1.1</ref>

The house itself looks down on the town. Three stories tall with a tower another story high, the house has grey-painted wooden siding and narrow shuttered windows, and wooden "lace" detailing. It may or may not Victorian in style.<ref name=":1">Looking up at the namesake hill, I could see the house.  Not big, but it

drew attention because of the way it looked down on the two-theater 

podunk town.  It wasn’t dark, and it wasn’t ominous.  Barring a slightly

overgrown garden, trees that had grown well beyond the quaint, tidy 

little decorations they might have been when the house was built, and the railing, it was nothing more than a nice house.  I’d dated a wannabe-architect at one point, a brief-lived fling.  I didn’t remember much, but I didn’t feel confident labeling the place as Victorian.  Three stories, with a one-room tower standing one floor higher, off one

corner.  Gray-painted wood siding, decorative ‘lace’ in carved wood 

beneath the eaves and around the railing on the porch, tall, narrow windows with open shutters. - excerpt from Bonds 1.1 </ref><ref name=":2" /> The front door has a doormat in front, with "RDT" and stenciled roses on it.<ref>My boots were heavy on the floorboards of the porch as I approached the front door.  I stopped to wipe them on the doormat.  No ‘welcome’ was printed on the mat.  Instead, there were stencil images of roses and thorny stems, as well as the initials ‘R.D.T.’ - excerpt from Bonds 1.1 </ref>

The interior is filled with books, and a mixture of old-fashioned decorations and modern conveniences.<ref>My lingering impressions of the house were soon banished.  Only a house.  Books lined shelves in nearly every room with an available wall, some old with cracked spines, some new, recent bestsellers.  It was all sorted more like a library than a home, clearly

by some arrangement of age and alphabetized.

Anachronistic.  That was a good word, to describe it.  Old and new.  A box of colorful cereal sat between the toaster and television in the kitchen, across from a small table with a crimson, lace-edged tablecloth.

- excerpt from Bonds 1.1

</ref> The floors and furniture are dark-laquered cherry, the curtains burgundy. The only pictures are of nature scenes, which clash with the reds of the rest of the house.<ref>Photographs.  Not a single family picture, I noticed.  Instead, there were pictures of nature, blue and green to contrast the dark-lacquered cherry floorboards and furniture, the burgundy curtains.  It made for a startling intensity, but it was jarring, overly saturated.

- excerpt from Bonds 1.1

</ref> The doors are heavy, solid wood.<ref>The door wasn’t the hollow plywood door that you saw in most homes.  It was wooden, through and through, and it closed behind Ellie with a heavy thud. - excerpt from Bonds 1.1</ref> There were knick-knacks throughout the house. Molly set about removing and packing away many of these touches, although she never completed her task.<ref>When I had first visited, the house had been my grandmother’s.  She’d

marked every surface with some token of her particular tastes and 

personality.  Molly, it seemed, had been systematically dismantling those touches.  Boxes sat by bookshelves, filled with books, paper-wrapped knick-knacks stowed away in the spaces between the books. 

Pictures were gone from the walls, neatly packed into more boxes, some 

stacked and shoved into the spaces beneath the few bookshelves that weren’t built into the house.

It wasn’t yet done, and it wasn’t an organized process, either.  Some

books here, some books there.  A few shelves on one bookcase, another 

shelf across the room.  Most seemed to be centered around the living room. - excerpt from Bonds 1.3 </ref><ref name=":3">I slowly patrolled the house.  The ground floor consisted of an expansive living room, a generous dining room, a smaller kitchen with only the basics, the hallway and a half-bathroom the size of my regular bathroom.

One floor up, I found my grandmother’s bedroom, the same as I’d seen it, though the bed was stripped bare, a small bathroom, a little tea room that might have been a bedroom at one point, and a narrow guest bedroom.  Molly had barely touched anything on the second floor, by the looks of it.  She’d used this bathroom, with a handful of items littering the counter, but that would be because it was the only bath and shower.

She’d been cooped up in this house, and she’d barely touched anything?  The living room, kitchen and this bathroom suggested she’d spent some time here, but how had she managed without losing it?  It had been four months.

The third floor had only three smallish rooms, though ‘small’ was something of a misnomer, with a house of this scale.  Two bedrooms on the right side, with little more than beds and a dresser each, and a small sewing room that was apparently assigned to storage.

A staircase took up the rest of the space, curving up and around to the fourth floor, but the door was locked. - excerpt from Bonds 1.3 </ref>

The ground floor consisted of an expansive living room, a generous dining room, a smaller kitchen with only the basics, the hallway, and a large half-bathroom. The second floor held Rose Sr’s bedroom, a small bathroom, a small tea room, and a narrow guest bedroom. The third floor had only three smallish rooms (at least by the standards of such a large house); two bedrooms on the right side, and a small sewing room used for storage. It also held a staircase to the tower.<ref name=":3" /> The third floor's small size is partly an illusion, however. The sides of the hallway are magically warped so that one is, impossibly, longer than the other. Between the two bedrooms, behind one of the bookcases lining the walls, is a hidden magical library which descends down into the second storey.<ref>I got to the third floor and stopped.  I held the map up.

Map: Three rooms on the left, one room and the stairwell on the right.

What I saw: Two rooms on the left, one room and the stairwell on the right.

[...]

From one outer wall to the next, the map said the house measured thirty-seven feet in length.  My estimate put it at twenty-one feet in length.

I tried again, going in the other direction, and I got the same estimate.  Houses were supposed to expand and contract with temperature and the like, but not that much.

To experiment, I crossed the hallway and tried once more.

One hallway, with right angles at each corner, twenty-one feet in length down the north side, thirty-seven down the south side.  The ends were each an equal six feet across.

I narrowed my eyes, looking down the length of the hallway.  There was no distortion in the floorboards, and every bookshelf on one side somehow had a bookshelf opposite, of matching dimensions.

I began moving books aside on the shelves down the ‘short’ hallway.

It took me two tries to find the keyhole.  Tucked in the corner just beneath one shelf, at bellybutton level.

The key required a fair bit of effort to turn, and rewarded me with an audible, heavy click.

The bookcase swung inward.  Oversized hinges managed the heavy burden

as it swung all the way around and sat flush against the wall.

“Fuck me,” I muttered.

The room was a study.  A library.  There were two parts to the room, suggesting it took up two floors in the house.  The upper half was a ring, looking down through an opening, bordered with bookcases on the four exterior walls, with a wrought iron railing keeping people from falling through the hole in the middle.  Soft, mottled light shone down from a dust-caked window in the ceiling, lighting both halves of the library better than lightbulbs lit the rest of the house.

- excerpt from Bonds 1.3 </ref>

The library's walls are lined with books on magic, which tend to be thin and in better condition than those in the rest of the house. There are ornate wheeled stepladders attatched to the bookcases on rails, and a stepladder leading down to the second floor.<ref>I slowly circled around, taking it in.  Each wall had ornate stepladders on wheels, which could coast along rails that had been inset

in floor and ceiling.  Another stepladder led from a gap in the railing
on the far end to the floor below.

I looked at the books, noting the differences from the ones in the rest of the house.  They were better taken care of, for one thing, and they tended to be narrow. - excerpt from Bonds 1.3 </ref> Many of the books are in foreign languages, including ancient Sumerian.<ref>The next shelf seemed to be a continuation from O to Z, in the same theme.  The bookshelf adjacent to that one seemed to be in a variety of different languages.  French, German, and a language with characters formed out of triangles.

The barrier to understanding was a reason to stop, where I might have kept walking and reading indefinitely.

[...]

Finish three out of four of the books in this library.  You will need some assistance with foreign languages.  Making a bargain with an Other to learn Sumerian may be novel, I know, but it is easier to ask for it to be translated aloud by a servant or summoning. - excerpt from Bonds 1.3 </ref> The lower floor holds the study; with an old-fashioned desk and chair, an armchair, a leather psychiatrist’s couch, a blackboard on wheels, a book stand with a book on it, a large mirror, cabinets, and smaller bookshelves holding more personal books<ref>Feeling restless, I reached the ladder that led down to the first floor and climbed down.

A desk and chair, a cozy armchair, a leather psychiatrist’s couch, a book stand with a book on it, and cabinets.  There were more bookshelves, but many were smaller, squat, set on top or beneath the cabinets.  More private, with personal books.  A blackboard on wheels that could be flipped over to write on either side. A blanket was thrown over one piece of furniture.

[...]

“Covered mirror,” I said, as I threw off the blanket.

- excerpt from Bonds 1.3 </ref><ref>The wood had brown leather inlaid into it with big brass buttons.  I saw pens and inkwells, regular pens, pencils, a calculator, a brush and scalpel and other tools in jars and cases in the corners.  A mug held what might have been tea or coffee, though it had sat for long enough that the milk had congealed into a cloud of white on the surface.  There

were books and papers, too.

- excerpt from Bonds 1.3 </ref> - including the Index for the library, Rose's diaries, Rose's homemade guide to the local powers titled Dramatis Personae,<ref>The Index is a catalogue of all things found in my library, which I penned myself, and will help direct you to solutions to whatever

ails you. 

[...]

My diaries can be found on the shelf behind the desk.  I welcome you to read them if they might shed light on matters.  Perhaps my own realizations will help you find a way to your own.

[...]

Mr. Beasley, as well as individuals you’ll find in Jacob’s Bell and the surrounding area, is described in a little black book I playfully dubbed

Dramatis Personae, when I was younger. - excerpt from Bonds 1.3

</ref> and books on diabolism written by Rose herself.<ref>The Worst of the Others.Devils and Details.

Dark Contracts

Classifying Others: Fiends and Darker Beings.

Hellfire: Bindings

Infernal Wrath

Pacts and Prices

I tried to swallow, but my mouth was too dry.  I didn’t know much, but I knew this was a bad idea of the worst kind.

These were the books that held a place of prominence on grandmother’s

bookshelf.  These were the tools she expected us to employ.

No small wonder she’d made the enemies she had.

These books?  They each had the same set of initials on the spine.  R.D.T.

She’d written them. - excerpt from Bonds 1.3 </ref> The library has eight sides.<ref>
“Which shelf?”
“Ummm… Bookshelf seven, shelf five.”
I looked at the sheet I had sitting beside me.  I’d drawn out two octagons, with numbers at each side, excepting the sides that opened out

into the second and third floor hallways.  I identified bookshelf 

seven, looked, and was pretty sure I could see the book she’d mentioned. 
- excerpt from Damages 2.3</ref>

The deed to the house also includes the nearby marshlands<ref name=":0">What you should do is sell the property.  Let the town knock down the house, level the hill, drain the marshland and expand like they

need to, make them happy.  Split the money between your kids and grandkids, make us happy.   - excerpt from Bonds 1.1</ref> and woods.<ref>“Those woods behind this house?  The marshes?  All grandmother’s property. - excerpt from Damages 2.3</ref> It's said to be worth millions.<ref>You took advantage of those things, making all of this one big fucked up
game.  Laying down the rule, that only one person gets the property and
the millions from selling it. - excerpt from Bonds 1.1</ref>

The entirety of the house has been claimed as Demesnes by various Thorburn Family members, making it a haven against magical assault.<ref>Study and enact the ritual found in Demesnes.  Baba Yaga had her hut, I have my room.  Unfortunately, the rest of the house has been claimed by our predecessors, and while it is a haven, you will need to find your own place to make your own, where the rules bend as you need them to, and where your power is greatest. - excerpt from Bonds 1.3</ref><ref>The lawyers are the only ones this house doesn’t protect against.  Them and the witch hunters. - excerpt from Damages 2.3</ref> However this does not apply to the rest of the property.<ref>“They wanted me outside,” I said.  “The house is a sanctuary, the property isn’t.  Staying behind the railing like they were, it was meant to mislead us.  I might have fallen for it, if Laird hadn’t come all the way to the front door.” - excerpt from Bonds 1.6</ref>

Chronology

History

The house has many stories, some of them true, from incest to murder.<ref>“I remember how we used to make up stories about this place,” Paige said.  “Gruesome ones.”

“Yeah,” Molly said, hugging herself tighter.  “They weren’t all made up.  That bit about great-grandpa and great-grandma being related?”

I shivered a little.  “Thanks.  Thank you for that reminder.”

“The duel where one of our ancestors murdered someone?”  Molly asked.

“Killed,” Paige said.  “I don’t think it counts as murder if it’s during a duel.”

- excerpt from Bonds 1.1 </ref><ref>“You remind me of my father,” she said.  “He had passion, and an interest in justice.”

“He also fucked his cousin, if I remember right.”

She smiled a little.  “You heard of that?  Yes.  That would be him.”

- excerpt from Bonds 1.1 </ref>

Story Start

In the modern day it is acting as a barrier against the expansion of the town itself. For this reason many people want the property to be sold.<ref name=":0" /> It is one of the most heavily fortified locations within the Jacob's Bell against the supernatural that only a few entities can siege.

Mala Fide

The house's protections were brought down by Dionysus, leaving it vulnerable, and in the subsequent arcs it is wrecked.

Sine Die

Faysal then sinks it into the Abyss entirely, turning it into a new addition akin to the Library.<ref>Sine Die 14.10</ref>

Trivia

• Was glimpsed in Worm, presumably as a fragment of what the main character had read.<ref>A quaint old house on a hill, surrounded by rose bushes, a grandmother… Not my grandmother. I barely knew my Gram. I shook my head. The house on a hill had been a memory of something I’d read, once. - Speck 30.4</ref>

References

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