A Christmas Inheritance 08: Epiphany

### Players

Joseph Chance as Edward Caister, Dominic Allen as Sidney Wagner, Dan Wheeler as Rev. Peregrine McCutcheon

### Podcast Link

https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-hbhmp-117828c

## Synopsis (Spoiler Warning)

The episode begins by picking up the conversation between Sidney and Peter as they enter the maze, then the intro is presented, and we hear Peter saying he's only just arrived, and that they should play a "prank" on the other men. At the family plot, Edward and Peregrine have a proper look at the graves: there are three ornate ones, and multiple smaller tombstones. The largest ones are for Henrietta Caldwell, Bartholomew Caldwell, and Sarah Lee, while among the smaller graves they see the names Lawrence Caldwell, Johnathan Caldwell and Thomas Caldwell; the oldest graves seem to be Henrietta (1592-1634) and Bartholomew's (1571-1635), while Sarah's is more recent has no date upon it. It's plain to Peregrine that only Sarah Lee's grave has been tended to, and that Thomas' seems to be the most recently created one.

Sidney has started to feel a little hazy while he speaks with Peter about the missing child and the center of the maze, and the same happens to Peregrine and Edward, the former of which begins to wonder if any of the herb garden's poisonous plants, wolfsbane in particular, would have other drugging effects in smaller doses. Suddenly, William appears behind them. In the maze, Sidney notices that Peter is acting strangely and attempts to punch him; Peter stops him, punches him back, and while Sidney tries to fight back he asks who he is. At his words, Peter seems relived and says it's just him as he punches Sidney once again and knocks him out. In the family plot William tells the men that Peter Ainsworth has arrived, and Edward responds by pointing his cane at him, while Peregrine resorts to brandishing the whistle he found earlier which seems to unsettle the groundskeeper; Edward hits William at the leg, but he's rather unfazed as he gets back up and suggests that spores might be affecting them.

Meanwhile, Sidney is unconscious but is able to feel his hands being tied behind him and his neck being placed onto something cold; because of this, Dom suggests trying to accomplish a sort of out of body experience/astral projection/possession in order to escape or least inform the others about his situation. With the expenditure of all his luck, Sidney manages to possess Peter and is now looking at himself tied up on a pedestal, and at the same time he can see Peregrine and Edward through William’s eyes, and continues to slip between the two. As Peter, he sees a row of headless berserker statues and Sidney’s body chained down and with his mouth placed over a shield while a loop of rope is also tied around his head; he tries to force Peter’s body to untie himself by latching onto Peter’s memories and risking to lose a part of himself in the process. Because of a fumble, however, through revisiting his shared memories with Peter, Sidney realizes how much the other man actually disliked him all along and begins to feel Peter’s body smash the bronze hammer into Sidney’s unconscious body in front of him.

Edward and Peregrine feel even more nauseous as William helps them up, and Peregrine decides to blow into the whistle, causing a whistling similar to that he’s been hearing since arriving at the house. Soon, a strong wind sweeps in and William tells him not to do such a thing as Edward runs over to where he believes Sidney to be. Peregrine and William go after him, the latter of which starts laughing strangely as he points towards the ruins by the temple, where the men see a pale figure holding its hands in the air; they recognize him as Leaf, and soon notice that his hands are thoroughly destroyed as he smiles and waves them in the air. When he attempts to stop Edward, Peregrine is also tripped up by William and falls into the holly bushes, which are littered with robin’s bones; almost out of spite, he also decides to play the whistle once again.

Meanwhile, Edward keeps yelling for Sidney and walking through the gorse, but he and Sidney both feel the wind pick up once more and this time it sounds distinctly like a death rattle which causes the impression of dead things throwing themselves into a particular direction. William follows Edward and directs him through the maze until he reaches the center and the groundskeeper is gone: once he's there, Edward sees the statues, a brass sphere and Sidney’s body. Outside the maze, Peregrine heads towards the house in hopes of finding something to help the others, and Leaf runs along looking very excited, slapping himself on the head and laughing as Peregrine shouts “Go up you baldhead!”.

Sidney seems to be breathing and returning to consciousness, but he’s still tied in place as he tries to tell Edward about how Peter hates the three of them only to then point towards a “green man”; this smiling figure appears to be covered in bushes, and it immediately charges towards Edward and Sidney. Peregrine tries to get into the house but the front door is locked so he tries the dining room’s windows with Leaf running after him: the man doesn’t respond to the questions he’s asked, but he proudly shows Peregrine his damaged hands as he makes a sound reminiscent of that which they heard the previous night from Edward’s bedroom door. When asked how this happened, Leaf points to the temple.

Edward manages to dodge the thing attacking them, only to see William’s face within the bushes and Peter behind him, dressed the same way; Edward lights fire to a handkerchief wrapped upon his cane and tries to set them ablaze. Peter dives into the hedge of an entrance to the center of the maze and as his legs kick around while the men see a weasel run along the top of the hedgerows, only to then realize it must actually be the size of a person, which then disappears. At the house, Leaf shows Peregrine the fresh knife wound in his stomach, and after pointing once more to the ruins and the temple he begins to run towards them almost like a weasel. In the meantime, William attacks Edward and hits him in the head as he brandishes a bronze hammer and sickle with which he breaks Sidney’s knees and elbows, tightening the rope so that his teeth break on the shield, and he slashes at his throat to then collect the blood in the bronze bowl. He brings the bowl over to the sphere and drinks it.

Peregrine is brought to the ruins by Leaf who points to some sort of claw-marked tunnel which it appears to have been dug by him; it looks like nothing large could pass through it, and it reveals some older bricks and stones below the fake Greco-Roman ones. Within the maze, Edward sets fire to his clothes and hurls himself at William as he shouts “Astra non obligant, astra inclinant!”, but his valiant action is rather ineffective. At the temple, Leaf points at the crack in the earth while he runs in circles and Peregrine reaches into the tunnel which appears to be the entry to a big cavity; from the maze, he hears William’s rejuvenated voice calling to him. This seems to make Leaf nervous, and when Peregrine asks if he knows the way to the town and tries to establish some trust between them, he drags Peregrine through the ruins, towards the temple and away from William’s booming voice. The two jump into a pond and Leaf guides Peregrine through water, mud and holly bushes until the sun rises on the following day and Peregrine is woken up by some sort of hand or paw in a field. He stands up, hears Tom Partridge’s voice nearby and realizes he’s in King’s Lynn, where Leaf must have brought him.

## Important NPCs

* William Purdue
* Peter "Polly" Ainsworth
* Tom Partridge

## Places

* Warham Hall
* King's Lynn

## Quotes

* ”Hastur is laughing at me!” (Dom)
* “I think I’ve worked it out, this is where Christmas comes to die…” (Joseph)
* “I’ve seen an elephant die, it’s what motivated me to become an activist for the abrogation of the elephant-running laws in Bangladesh” (Dom as Sidney)

## Trivia

1. ↑ This name is notably also the name of the fishing boat present in A Residence at the Bay and might be a reference to the character Jane Lee from M. R. James' *The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral*.
2. ↑ The same bronze hammer which had been hanging in the library.
3. ↑ This is the essential plot point of M. R. James' *Oh Whistle, and I'll Come To You, My Lad* ("Extraordinary wind, that, we had last night," he said. "In my old home we should have said someone had been whistling for it.").
4. ↑ Presumably a sphere very similar to the one in M. R. James' *Mr Humphreys and His Inheritance* ("On a first glance Humphreys had taken it for a celestial globe: but he soon found that it did not answer to his recollection of such things. One feature seemed familiar; a winged serpent— Draco— encircled it about the place which, on a terrestrial globe, is occupied by the equator: but on the other hand, a good part of the upper hemisphere was covered by the outspread wings of a large figure whose head was concealed by a ring at the pole or summit of the whole. Around the place of the head the words *princeps tenebrarum* could be deciphered. In the lower hemisphere there was a space hatched all over with cross-lines and marked as *umbra mortis*. Near it was a range of mountains, and among them a valley with flames rising from it. This was lettered (will you be surprised to learn it?) *vallis filiorum Hinnom*. Above and below Draco were outlined various figures not unlike the pictures of the ordinary constellations, but not the same. Thus, a nude man with a raised club was described, not as Hercules but as Cain. Another, plunged up to his middle in earth and stretching out despairing arms, was Chore, not Ophiuchus, and a third, hung by his hair to a snaky tree, was Absolon. Near the last, a man in long robes and high cap, standing in a circle and addressing two shaggy demons who hovered outside, was described as *Hostanes magus*.")
5. ↑ Edward's last words in Latin, which are more traditionally written as "astra inclinant, sed non obligant", translate to "the stars incline us, they do not bind us".
6. ↑ This ritual might be inspired by that of Mr Abney in M. R. James' *Lost Hearts*.