The House of a Hundred Whispers
by Graham Masterton
A review
The House of A Hundred Whispers starts off with a bang. Or, to be more exact, with a hammer blow to the head. Herbert Russell, retired governor of Dartmoor Prison and owner of Allhallows Hall, avoids his mansion on nights when there is a full moon. He has good reason to. However, this time round, he is late in filing his tax return, and apparently, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs are scarier than the horrors lurking within the Hall. And so, Herbert returns to collect his accounts book. It turns out to be a fatal mistake and, before long, his children are called to Allhallows Hall for the opening of his will. There’s financier Martin and his stuck-up wife Katharine. There’s artist Rob – a disappointment to his late father – and his wife Vicky, with their little son Timmy in tow. There’s Grace and her partner Portia. The solicitor, once she arrives, announces that – surprisingly – Herbert has left the house in trust to Timmy. But right on cue, Timmy disappears. What at first appears to be a matter of a lost child, turns out to be something far ghostlier and uncannier, as Allhallows Hall unleashes its demonic influence and starts targeting its new residents.
A haunted house on the misty moors of Devon, ghostly manifestations, arcane rituals, nightly escapades, botched exorcisms… what’s not to like? While, quite a lot, unfortunately. Let’s start with the dialogue, which often feels wooden and unconvincing. Here’s a typical example - Rob, Timmy’s father, is answering police officers’ questions right after Timmy’s disappearance:
“Has he ever gone missing before? Did you have an argument with him, or tell him off for something?”
Rob shook his head. “Never, and no. We don’t have to read him the riot act very often, but when we do, usually he sulks and shuts himself in his bedroom and plays video games. But that never lasts for long. He’s not the kind of kid who bears grudges, especially when it’s teatime and there’s beans on toast”.
For a distraught father whose son has just disappeared into thin air, Rob plays pretty cool.
Then there are the unnecessary details which are so irrelevant to the narrative that they sound unintentionally funny. Such as when on the night of Timmy’s disappearance, when one would have thought that everybody would be at their wits’ end, all the family order a takeaway:
“…Their steaks and pies are terrific. When they’re ready I can whizz over and collect them”. He looked up The Rock’s menu online, and they all chose what they wanted to eat. Grace asked for a chicken salad bowl but Portia was vegan, and so she opted for the butternut squash risotto. Rob went for the fisherman’s pie. Vicky insisted that she didn’t feel like anything to eat, but he knew she might be tempted to share it with him. Martin ordered the Devonshire rump steak, cooked rare. Katharine wanted nothing more than crushed avocado on toast with a hen’s egg”.
If that wasn’t enough, there are the attempts at high-flying metaphors, such as the search dog taking “a deep and enthusiastic sniff at Timmy’s jacket, a connoisseur of what tragedy smelled like”, or Rob about to face a diabolical foe – “Vicky had always said that he looked like Lord Byron, but this morning he thought he looked like Lord Byron when the poet was suffering from the fever which eventually killed him”.
Every supernatural novel expects us to suspend our disbelief. But Masterton throws in so many elements into the mix that it becomes, depending on your tastes, either an over-the-top horror extravaganza, or a self-parodic mess. In their desperation to rid the house of its presences, the family call an ill-assorted bunch of unlikely paranormal investigators: a modern-day “witch”, a sceptical scientific-minded “wizard” who does not believe in ghosts but is not averse to using Druidic magic, and a Catholic priest “trained at the Vatican” whose methods and beliefs are, to say the least, quite unorthodox. They can’t seem to agree on what’s wrong with All Hallows Hall except that, whatever it is, it’s really bad. And that’s a great excuse for Masterton to combine elements of witchcraft, folk-horror, pagan deities, Catholic exorcism rituals and straight out splatter horror.
To be honest, there were times when I thought
of abandoning this novel. That was until
a decided to enjoy it for what it is, a supernatural romp which is by turns
scary and silly.
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