Early in the book, Professors Coote and Childermass discuss the Windrow family, whereupon Coote notes that Zebulon Windrow had "gotten rich in the lumber business back in the 1880s, and hehad built a mansion and an enormous church on a hilltop not estate overlooking the Hudson River, not far from Haverstraw, New York. The church at the estate was an exact replica of Salisbury Cathedral in England, and it had a four-hundred-foot high steeple." [44]
Once they were outside the town, they followed a narrow two-lane blacktop out to the Windrow estate. Long before they got there, they could see the tall stone steeple rising over the trees. One side of it glowed reddish-orange in the late afternoon sun, and the birds were wheeling around the bases of pinnacles. The professor and Fergie were driving along next to the red sandstone wall that surrounded the grounds of the estate. The enormous church loomed very near, shadowy and somehow threatening, like a crouching monster of stone. Next to the church was the mansion, a grim square block with a large, egg-shaped copper dome rising up out of the middle. Atop the dome was a funny little doodad shaped like saltshaker, and from it sprouted a short pole with a metal flag on it. [60]
The actual cathedral sits in Salisbury, England and was built between 1220 and 1258. Its most photogenic item seen from miles around is the soaring spire, reaching a height of 404 feet that was constructed between 1320 and 1380. The majestic medieval gothic architecture of the cathedral is without a doubt the thing that attracts the most tourists to the city.
If we follow this road for a while, we wind up in a little bitty town called Van Twiller, and the entrance to the Windrow estate is only a mile or so outside the town. [55]
The downtown part of the town was just a collection of old red-brick buildings grouped around a grassy town square. In the center of the square, on a low pedestal, stood a statue of a fireman and a brown sandstone drinking fountain. [56]
As should come as no surprise, Van Twiller is not a "little bitty town" in New York but another cleverly used regional name by the author. No city bears the name of
Wouter van Twiller, the former Dutch Director General. Van Twiller was a clerk in the warehouse of the Dutch West India Company and employed to ship cattle along the Hudson river. Van Twiller was somewhat acquainted with the geography of New York, having made two voyages to the country from his native Holland, and the condition of its affairs and was chosen in 1633 to become the West India company governor of New Netherlands.
Windrow Familiar
The Windrow Familiar is a short, hunched figure associated with the black magic of its presumed creator, or at least master, Zebulon Windrow. Little description is attained due to a robe covering its face. From one of the long, draping sleeves you could see something that dangled like an octopus's tentacle.
Familiars are attendant spirits, often taking animal form and serving its masters with unquestionable loyalty. Windrow’s familiar is first seen by Johnny Dixon in a nightmare, where both Windrow and the creature appear in a stained glass window and announce their intention of possessing Johnny for his interruption of the Windrow curse upon the Childermass family.
Later, when Professor Childermass and Fergie Ferguson investigate the Windrow Estate outside Van Twiller, New York, they come across an ornamental folly, or small decorative building, called The Temple of the Inner Light on the grounds:
Suddenly the professor stopped talking. He was staring at a statue that stood in a niche on the front of the temple. It was a statue of a short, hunched figure in a monk's robe. The hood of the robe was large, and hung down over the creature's face, but you could see something dangling from one long, drooping sleeve. It looked like an octopus's tentacle [67].
From behind this building they hear a dog barking; soon its long, anguished whines and howls are dramatically cut off. Behind the temple they come across a gruesome scene:
Lying on the grass was the body of a small collie dog. It was dead. There was not much doubt about that. All the flesh had been sucked away from the dog's head, leaving only a bleached white skull [69].
After snooping through the mansion, the professor and Fergie separate momentarily, enough time for Fergie to be lured back to the temple by what he thinks are the desperate cries of help from the professor. It is in fact the evil intelligence of the Windrows at work and Fergie is lured to his doom by the monster: "tentacles reached out from the long sleeves, and they whipped around Fergie's arms, gripping them tightly... [106]." The professor returns in the nick of time with a bottle of Holy Water in hand and puts an end to the creature: it shrivels up and disappears when sprinkled with the water.
Bellairs was extremely well read in the works of M.R. James and pays tribute to that author by including small literary devices in his novels, such as this hooded creature. In one of James' most popular short stories, Count Mangus, it is the titular Count who maintains such a companion, discovered after embarking on the Black Pilgrimage - and, no, this was hardly a humanitarian endeavor. This very mysterious yet very handy (tentacley) companion soon sets out to do the Count's dirty work:
The figure was unduly short, and was for the most part muffled in a hooded garment which swept the ground. The only part of the form which projected from the shelter was not shaped like any hand or arm. Mr. Wraxall compares it to the tentacle of a devil-fish.
Even after the Count has died, men trespassing on his land to hunt end up dead or having gone quite mad thanks to good Brother Tentacles. Here is the fate of one of these men:
And I tell you this about Anders Bjornsen, that he was once a beautiful man, but now his face was not there, because the flesh of it was sucked away off the bones.
"Count Magnus" -
Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (text at Project Gutenberg)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnus_Gabriel_De_la_Gardie
Who was Count Magnus?
