Literature / Thirteen Storeys

TOBIAS FELL cordially invites YOU to attend a dinner party at I Banyan Court...

Thirteen Storeys is a 2020 British horror novel written by Jonathan Sims, known for writing the Rusty Quill podcast The Magnus Archives.

Banyan Court is a new, beautiful apartment complex, with a fully equipped, free-to-use gym and 24/7 concierges, ready to come at the beck and call of any of the residents—for the wealthy few who live in the front part, that is. The back of the complex tells an entirely different story: cheaper affordable housing, where the lift rarely works and the security cameras are clearly in place to watch the residents, not to keep them safe. But there is one thing all residents share, no matter which side of the complex they live in: Banyan Court is haunted, and its ghosts want to be heard.

Thirteen Storeys contains examples of:

• 13 Is Unlucky: Unsurprisingly, the number 13 is a major motif of the novel. There are thirteen floors to Banyan Court (including Tobias Fell's penthouse), twelve invited guests at his dinner party with him as the host and thirteen segments, not including the prologue and epilogue.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Carter Dwight's prototype virtual assistant Donna is an interesting variation of the trope, in that she never tries to outright harm him. In fact, she proves to be much better at impersonating Carter than the actual Carter when she traps him inside his apartment and proceeds to take over his life.
• Big Bad: Tobias Fell.
• Bizarrchitecture: Banyan Court, which on the surface seems like an ordinary tenement building is home to layer upon layer of supernatural happenings: a plethora of hauntings, corridors that appear out of thin air, shifting walls and apartments and a network of of pipes that physically make no sense.
• Blood for Mortar: Reclusive billionaire Tobias Fell has Banyan Court built to his specifications, whilst also burying the many of the workers and other people he decides to dispose of (such as disagreeable business partners) in the foundations and walls of the building. This is entirely designed to create a "spiritual faraday Cage" to protect him from the ghosts of his victims instead passing their vengeance off on other innocent people.'
• Body Horror: A number of the ghosts are hideously warped and their features are lovingly described in painstaking, grotesque detail. Special ghosts of note include Max, whose major traits include a rotting, skinless face which becomes worse when Jason's skin is stretched over his massive body, the broken corpses blocking the pipes and Penny and the being she calls her "mother".
• Capitalism Is Bad: Tobias Fell and the hauntings embody everything wrong with late-stage capitalism, from poor workman protection to pollution.
• Children Are Innocent: Anna Khan, being a six-year-old girl is confused by the more disturbing traits of her imaginary friend Penny. She also doesn't understand Tobias's explanation of the hauntings, and is the first to eat the cube of Tobias's cooked flesh when she mistakes it for bacon.
• Creepy Ballet: The conclusion of Caroline Fairley's story ("A Foot in the Door"). After discovering the hidden ballroom that is the heart of Banyan Court, Caroline begins a manic dance as the walls of the jewel-encrusted room start to weep blood.
• Creepy Child: The eponymous Penny of Anna's story "Bad Penny". Those besides Anna who can see her are disturbed by her sickly, uncanny appearance. She is also violently obsessed with food ( being the ghost of a child who starved to death) to the point she pushes another child down the stairs to get at a candy bar. Her idea of fun games are macabre to say the least and in one instance hovers over Anna's sleeping parents, threatening to eat them until she is told to stop.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Tobias Fell, one hundred per cent. He managed to keep a squeaky clean image as a wealthy philanthropist despite his businesses being complicit in everything from environmental destruction, to work-safety negligence to human rights violations until his death brought some of his shadier dealings to light.
• Destination Defenestration: The fate of poor James Andre. Max, after cruelly assaulting James, throws him out the twelfth floor window of Banyan Court.
• Dirty Cop: Tobias seems to have at least some members of the London police under his control, getting Jason out of interrogation when he is linked to the death of James Andre and getting some to be on stand by to protect him during the dinner.
• The Dog Bites Back: All of the guests, who were in some way or another victimized by Tobias Fell all eagerly participate in dismembering him. Special mention goes to Jason in regards to Max, who he has spent his entire story intimidated by. Jason stands up to Max and even manages to kill him in the climax, removing Tobias's main form of threat against his guests.
• The Dragon: Max, one of the concierges who is Jason's dark half and is later recruited by Tobias to serve as his muscle at his dinner party in the climax.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Characters' names are dropped here and there in earlier stories before they properly feature in later ones.
  • David Erikson is the writer of the op-ed that comprises the novel's prologue, and is a central character in "A Foot in the Door" and "Round the Clock."
  • Edith Kinney, mentioned in the prologue, is Violet's unnamed next-door neighbor but appears properly as a posthumous ghost in "Sleepless."
  • James Andre, also mentioned in the prologue, first appears in "Night Work" but his death is the climax of "Round the Clock."
• Eat the Rich: What Penny and Anna do to Tobias as a karmic punishment for his business practices causing untold numbers of children to starve to death.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: In the end, Tobias Fell overestimated how willing his guests would be to kill another person just to receive a billion pounds in exchange, and underestimated how willing they would be to risk their own lives to save an innocent man.
• Found Footage Films: Damian's story ("Point of View") is a transcript of the footage his camera captured in the days leading up to Tobias Fell's party.
• Foregone Conclusion: Tobias Fell's death is reported on in the novel's prologue. The strange circumstances surrounding it and the fact that twelve other people were witness to his violent end but refuse to say what exactly happened, is another mystery entirely...
• Fun with Homophones: The title plays on Banyan Court having 13 floors (storey in UK English) and the book being divided into 13 chapters (not including the prologue and epilogue).
• Howard Hughes Homage: Fell, being a recluse who never leaves his own apartment because of the numerous hauntings seeking to tear him apart.
• How We Got Here: The book opens with an Op-Ed on the mysterious disappearance of reclusive billionaire Tobias Fell after a dinner party he threw. The rest of the book chapter by chapter introduces the books guests before ending in said dinner party.
• I'm a Humanitarian: Part of Tobias's ritual to have his dinner guests take on some of the weight of his sins, by literally consuming slivers of his amputated leg.
• The Insomniac: Alvita Jackson, the protagonist of "Sleepless," has trouble falling asleep and spends the entirety of the novel in a dreamy, half-awake fugue state.
• Karma Houdini: Invoked by Tobias Fell, as the entire reason for gathering the other twelve main characters together for a dinner party is so he can pawn off the many hauntings threatening to destroy him onto them instead and not face any consequences of the many heinous actions committed in the name of becoming a billionaire. Becomes a Karma Houdini Warranty when the guests become fed up with Tobias's manipulations and instead personally deliver the brutal punishment he rightly deserves.
• Laser-Guided Karma: The residents who have actually done something bad end up getting hauntings related somehow to their crime. Leon does PR for a company with a long history of pollution, so he gets a stain he can't clean out. Carter, a hypocritical tech bro, has his electronic assistant take over his life and make him do all the things he claims to do but doesn't (eat healthy, donate to charity, etc). Finally, Tobias Fell is destroyed by the very ritual he set up to get out of punishment for all his horrible acts.
• Last-Minute Hookup: Violet and Cari are mentioned to be a couple in the epilogue; before that, they only met briefly at the dinner and Cari had thought Violet was cute when she saw her in security footage.
• Lipstick Lesbian: Cari is a lesbian and is one of the more feminine attendants of the party, with even her haunting manifesting as bleeding jewelry.
• Money Is Not Power: Tobias attempts to persuade his guests to kill Diego by promising them a billion pounds each. They don't take the bait.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Ironically, Tobias Fell setting up the ritual the way he does is exactly what dooms him. He thinks he's getting rid of a thorn in his side and saving his soul by making Diego a Human Sacrifice who will channel the power of the hauntings into the protagonists. But because Diego is now the locus of all the ghosts who hate Fell's guts, when the protagonists instead choose to free Diego, that also explosively unleashes the ghosts. Right inside Fell's apartment.
• The Night Owl: Violet Ng is this by necessity of her night occupation, as she works from evenings until mornings in a soulless, grueling office job.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: All James Andre wanted to do was return Violet's phone, and for his troubles gets murdered by a psychotic ghost.
• Not-So-Imaginary Friend: Six-year-old Anna Khan has an imaginary friend named Penny, a sickly looking girl who is always hungry and has a disturbing, macabre sense of humor. She is shown to be very much real (albeit a ghost) as certain other people are able to see her like Alvita Jackson and Diego Santi.
• Ominous Knocking: Two major examples:
  • The first is in Jesús Candido's story, appropriately titled "The Knock": Jesús buys an ominous painting and begins to hear a strange knocking outside his door. The knocking is a portent of his fate after being kidnapped by the evil painting.
  • The second is in Janek Kowalczyk's story "Old Plumbing." Janek is hired to look into a series of mysterious blockages that are inconveniencing the richer tenants of Banyan Court. Once he starts investigating on his own and opens up an access pipe, revealing the mangled corpse of a repair worker. The animated body leads him to the source of the block by tapping from within the pipe.
• Once More, with Clarity: As the story recounts roughly the same number of days from the point-of-view of multiple characters, some events are bound to overlap and are retold from different angles. Once such example is James Andre's murder, which is first hinted at in Violet's story, is the centerpiece of Jason's story and further clarified upon in Damian's story.
• Our Ghosts Are Different: Each haunting manifests in different ways, from stains that won't go away, Creepy Children, Humanoid Abomination manifestations of guilt, et cetera. Each one represents one of Tobias Fell's sins, being trapped by Banyan Court before they can reach him and latching onto the residents.
• Paranoid Thriller: Gillian Barnes's story ("Inbox") has her uncovering a vast web of conspiracy related to Tobias Fell and becomes convinced she is being watched and followed. Her vignette is a dip into this genre with a supernatural edge to it.
• Paranormal Investigation: Cari dabbles in ghost hunting, but apparently just as a hobby.
• Rasputinian Death: Tobias's ultimate fate, as each of his party guests take the opportunity to exact their revenge in a supernaturally brutal fashion. In order:
  • Gillian painfully sears and cauterises Tobias's mouth shut.
  • Laura wills the floorboards and nails of Tobias's own home to impale his limbs and torso.
  • Anna and Penny disembowel him and feast on his entrails.
  • Alvita removes his eyes with her bare hands.
  • Caroline rips into his chest with her jewel-encrusted hands.
  • Jason stomps on Tobias's face, crushing his nose and tearing open his fused jaw.
  • Leon regurgitates a reservoir of toxins and pollutants down Tobias's re-opened throat.
  • Janek crushes his skull with a machine-like grip.
  • And finally, Jesús draws out every last drop of blood from his mangled corpse and returns it to the earth.
• Rotating Protagonist: The novel consists of thirteen short stories, all featuring characters who either live or work in the same haunted apartment complex.
• Sadistic Choice: Tobias Fell's proposal to the twelve guests: eat a sliver of his flesh and become complicit in his wrongdoings by participating in the murder of an innocent man (Diego Santi) and they will be handsomely rewarded with a billion pounds each. If any of them refuse this offer Max, a violent behemoth of a ghost, will beat them to death. Fortunately the guests Take a Third Option by dispatching Max and choosing to murder Tobias instead.
• Spooky Painting: The locus of Jesús Candido's haunting in "The Knock." He purchases a captivating painting that seems to have a woman's face hidden within the brush work, but morphs into a screaming face as he finds himself staring at the piece for days on end. The painting ends up kidnapping him into an abyssal pocket space after he attempts to destroy it, and he returns later shell-shocked and is left absently knocking at his own apartment door.
• Surprisingly Happy Ending: In spite of the protagonists' previous stories ending in trauma and fright by the building's various ghosts, everyone who attends the fateful dinner not only survives but defies Tobias's attempts at corrupting them into killing an innocent man. Tobias himself, the villain of the novel is rightfully punished for his crimes.
• Switching P.O.V.: The final story "The Builder" introduces Tobias Fell but also freely switches from him to the other previous narrators as they all gather at the penthouse dinner party.
• The Television Talks Back: Overlapping with Ominous Television, Alvita Jackson discovers a peculiar late night talk show that among other things advertises sleep as a new product, directly addresses her inner thoughts, features her deceased elderly neighbor as a guest. Alvita appears as a guest herself later on, while she is sitting at home watching the show.
• Tomato in the Mirror: The twist of Jason Brown's story. Max's entire existence is revealed to be Jason's darker thoughts and violent fantasies given corporeal form, and nobody who works with Jason has ever seen or met Max. This is to the point Tobias's invitation is addressed as Jason "Max" Brown.
• Trans Tribulations: Damian is mentioned to be a trans man, and this is implied to be the reason he lived on the streets for years and fell into addiction; his parents were clearly not supportive and even deadnamed him in his father's obituary.
• Twisted Eucharist: In a perverted reversal of the biblical Last Supper, by making his guests eat his body Tobias Fell forces them to take on his sins instead of the other way around. Jesús is even quick to note the corrupted messianic imagery in his narration.
• Urban Segregation: A smaller-scale version of this, limited to a singular apartment building. Those who live in the "front end" of Banyan Court are the rich folk who reside in well-kept luxury apartments, have access to a private gym and 24-hour concierge service. In stark contrast, the people in the "back end" of the complex are the poorer folk who live in squalid flats that need constant repair and whose security measures are designed to keep them in line rather than offer any sort of genuine protection. This sharp class divide was in fact by design to exacerbate the hauntings that occur on the property.
• Villainous Rescue: When everyone at the dinner comes after Tobias, Donna, Carter's haunted AI, joins in and blocks the panic button app on Tobias' phone from reaching the police.
• Villain with Good Publicity: Downplayed. Tobias Fell was charismatic and very good at never being associated with the excesses of his businesses, but after his disappearance cracks began to show.
• Worthless Foreign Degree: Janek Kowalczyk, the protagonist of "Old Plumbing," was a freelance engineer and repairman in his native Poland and did contracts for major construction firms, one of which was affiliated with Insegur Group (one of Tobias Fell's international companies). He works as a small-time plumber when he moves to England, and is hired to look into the mysterious blockages plaguing Banyan Court.