Ninth House

We may wish to pass more quickly over Book and Snake, and who could blame us? There is an element of the unsavory to the art of necromancy, and this natural revulsion can be nothing but increased by the way the Lettermen have chosen to present themselves. When entering their giant mausoleum, one can hardly forget one is entering a house of the dead. But it is perhaps best to put aside fear and superstition and instead contemplate a certain beauty in their motto: Everything changes; nothing perishes. In truth, the dead are rarely raised beneath their showy pediments. No, the bread and butter of the Lettermen is intelligence, gathered from a network of dead informants, who traffic in all manner of gossip and who needn’t listen at keyholes when they can simply walk unseen through walls.

—from The Life of Lethe: Procedures and Protocols of the Ninth House

Tonight Bobbie Woodward coaxed the location of an abandoned speakeasy from what looked like little more than the remnants of a spine, a broken jawbone, and a hunk of hair. There is no amount of Jazz Age bourbon that can make me forget that sight.

—Lethe Days Diary of Butler Romano (Saybrook College ’65)