15 Amityville Horrible (4 page)

A third victim came after that, this one in a cleaning uniform and ponytail, the exact period difficult to guess but obviously modern. She ran in, she saw me, she entreated me to help her, to save her, then “he” came and she died. Again I tried with all my power to pull her attacker through—to no avail.

Then it started anew, with the first victim. That time, I concentrated on trying to make contact with the attacker, to get him to speak to me. Still nothing. She died, the second girl returned. I asked her questions, begged her to reply. She didn’t. She looked right at me. She tried to get me to hide with her. But she wouldn’t—or couldn’t—answer me.

“I need you to talk to me!” I said, as she faded. “I can’t help unless—”

“You can’t help.” It was a man’s voice behind me.

I turned. “Show yourself.”

His laughter fluttered around me.

“Who are you?” I said.

No answer.

“What am I seeing?” I said. “What did you do down here?”

Silence.

“Are you showing me this? What do you want?”

“Run,” his whisper snaked past, raising goose bumps on my arms.

“You’re a ghost,” I said. “I don’t run from ghosts.”

His voice, right at my ear. “You will.”

I stumbled back in spite of myself.

“Help me…”

I looked down to see the first girl, on the floor, lifting her hand.

“Help me…” the girl from the Fifties appeared beside me, both hands reaching for me.

As I backed away, the cleaning girl whispered behind me. “Help me…”

“Help us,” all three said, all reaching for me, their hands covered in blood. “Help us or join—”

The doorknob rattled. I staggered away from the dead girls and pushed into the far corner. A crack, then the door flew open, light flooding through, and all I saw was a figure silhouetted there and I pushed back into the corner—

“Jaime?”

I ran into Jeremy’s arms.

…

The natural first question, on finding your girlfriend locked in a basement room, would be, “How’d you get in there?” or at least, “What happened?” Jeremy just held me until I got myself together. Then I told him the whole story.

When I finished, I walked over to the door and looked at it. “It was just jammed, wasn’t it?”

“We should go upstairs,” he said after a moment.

“The door. It wasn’t locked, was it? And don’t lie to make me feel better. There
is
no lock. I can see that.”

“Then the knob was jammed, because I had to break
something
to get in here.” He walked over and put his arms around me. “You were trapped in here, Jaime. Don’t tell yourself you made a mistake. And don’t tell yourself those were residuals, either.”

I nodded, but said nothing.

“Residuals don’t talk to you,” he said.

“They didn’t talk
to
me. They talked at me.” I paused and shook my head. “I don’t know what they were. Maybe they were residuals and I’m just under a lot of stress and—”

“No.”

“It’s a new show and I—”

“No.” He took my chin in his hand and titled my face up to his. “You have never hallucinated in your life. I don’t have an explanation for what you saw, but you saw something.”

“Can we stay somewhere else tonight?”

He chuckled. “We can absolutely stay somewhere else tonight. In fact, I insist.”

I paused.

“No,” he said.

“I was just—”

“There’s nothing here for you to do and you’re not going to feel guilty about leaving.”

“Maybe I should try to contact any spirits—”

“I’ll have Elena research past crimes connected to this inn. If we find anything, we can come back after the show and you can attempt a proper summoning.
After
the show. You saw three victims spanning almost a century?”

I nodded.

“I’m not even sure how that’s possible, but it means we aren’t dealing with a serial killer who’ll strike in the next three days. You can walk away.” He met my gaze. “Guilt free.”

I kissed him. “Thank you.”

…

“Is it haunted?” Mike asked as he followed us down the front inn’s steps.

I threw a look over my shoulder.

“Okay, okay,” he said. “There’s no such thing as ghosts. But that
could
be why you’re checking out. We could
say
that’s the reason.”

“I don’t think the inn would appreciate that,” Jeremy said as he steered me toward the parking lot.

“Then you’d be dead wrong, my friend. Pun intended. Being haunted is a marketing bonus with places like this. People love to stay in a haunted house. The trick is that you can only have a room or two with ghosts, so guests have the option.” He paused. “Which room were you in?”

“My room was not—”

“Of course it wasn’t. But imagine the publicity. Oh! Hold on. We need to
film
you guys leaving. We’ll use digital. Make it seem very spur-of-the moment. You’re freaked out and fleeing—”

“Michael?” Jeremy said.

It may have been the use of his full name that stopped Mike mid-spiel, but I think it was the tone. It wasn’t loud or angry. But it’s a tone that’s been known to stop Clay mid-temper tantrum. It worked for Mike.

“I know this seems like a wonderful opportunity,” Jeremy said. “But are you certain it wouldn’t actually detract from the feature? If Jaime flees from an inn twenty miles from the set location, it’s clearly unrelated, and I would think it’s only going to dilute her reactions at the real house.”

Mike paused. “You have a point. How do I explain you leaving, though?”

“Don’t explain it,” Jeremy said. “There’s nothing wrong with a little mystery, particularly if you make it very clear that the inn did nothing to make her leave. Let people draw their own inferences.”

“Ah, that’s a good idea…”

“We’ll see you on set then.”

Jeremy left Mike standing there, thinking it through, and ushered me to his SUV.

…

We walked down the corridor to our new hotel room. I turned to say something to Jeremy and for a second, I forgot what. I just stared at him, that moment of “hot damn” that never seems to go away. I remember when we first got together, thinking, “Well, at least now I won’t be gaping at him like a love-struck teen.” Nope. Still was. Maybe always will be.

Jeremy was fifteen years older than me. With a werewolf’s slow aging, he doesn’t look it. Not that it matters. I think when he’s ninety, I’ll still be thinking “hot damn.” He’s good-looking, of course, not cover model material—thank God, had enough of those—but with the kind of face that catches your attention and holds it. Arresting. Dark eyes, dark hair, sharp cheekbones, sharp chin. A face more fox than wolf, which isn’t surprising. He’s also a kitsunegari, meaning he has Japanese kitsune—fox spirit—blood.

“Not exactly what you’re accustomed to,” Jeremy said, gesturing down the motel hall.

“I’ll live,” I said. “Amityville isn’t exactly booming with five-star hotels.”

We’d ended up in a Best Western or Days Inn or something like that. I hadn’t paid much attention. We’d driven past a few mid-range chains before I chose one that seemed a little less rundown than its brethren.

“There was the Hollywood Motel in Farmingdale,” I said. “Though it would have been a tough call, deciding between the Cheetah room and the Arabian room.”

“Arabian,” Jeremy said as he unlocked our door. “I’m not keen on cats.”

I laughed and let him usher me in. “Well, the website did mention an exotic dancer room, too. Complete with stripper pole.”

He paused in the open doorway. “Stripper pole?”

“And stage.”

“How far did you say Farmingdale was?”

“Not far, but I think we’d better pretend it is. Considering I am officially in town…”

“
Jaime Vegas Checks into Stripper Room with Lover
isn’t quite the headline you’re looking for?”

“No, sorry. Especially since, by the time it got through the rumor mill, I’d have checked in with three guys, all half my age, and invited the rest of the motel to watch the show.”

“Ah, well…” He pushed our bags aside and pulled me into the room. “I would defend your honor. In fact, I would go so far as to provide photographs proving that I was, indeed, the only person in the audience.”

I laughed and put my arms around his waist. “That’s very chivalrous of you.”

“I would, however, for the sake of discretion, refrain from posting videos. Although, I’ve heard such things can make people quite famous, even if they lack any other discernible talents. For someone with your proven abilities, it could be quite a marketing coup.”

“Twenty years ago maybe. I think my body’s a little past that.”

“Not unless it’s changed drastically since I saw you two weeks ago.” He slid his hands down my thighs and pushed the hem of my dress up to my hips, hands cupping my rear as he leaned over my shoulder. “Mmm, no, this half looks quite photo ready. As for the rest…”

One hand moved to unzip my dress. He tugged it off my shoulders and let it pool around my feet. His thumbs traced down my sides, sliding over my breasts before stopping to rest on my hips. Then, still holding me, he stepped back a bit for a better look.

“Definitely camera ready. And I have been told that my new phone takes excellent pictures.”

I laughed. “You are more than welcome to take photos anytime you want. Provided your phone is password locked and kept out of the reach of everyone at Stonehaven.”

“I just may take you up on that.”

“I hope you do.”

I slid from his grasp and circled around him, feeling his gaze on me as I walked across the room. I ran my fingers over the short post at the end of the bed.

“Not exactly a stripper pole,” I said. “And I don’t have much to strip.”

“Oh, you have enough. Those heels go very nicely with those stockings.”

I grinned over my shoulder. “I thought you’d approve.”

The heels were last year’s, but the rest of the “outfit” was new. It was a black-and-teal lace demi-bra, with matching garter and stockings and a very tiny pair of panties.

I reached up and pulled out the pins in my hair, letting it sweep down over my shoulders. Then I fingered the panties.

“These are supposed to go underneath the garter, but that means I have to take off everything. This way…” I plucked the side. “I can leave the rest on…if you’d like.”

I stretched out in bed, Jeremy warm against my back, sheets tangled around us. I idly pulled my knee up and fingered the protection rune tattooed on my ankle.

“Yes, it does appear to be defective,” Jeremy said. “The artist should give you your money back.”

I laughed softly and flipped over, curling up under his arm. “If it brought you to me in that basement, then it’s working just fine.”

“Actually, you left a scent trail.”

“Ah. Right. But if I hadn’t, you’d still have found me.”

“Perhaps. The tattoo, however, is only tangentially related to that.”

Both came from the same place—his kitsune blood—but they were separate powers. Powers he’d never comfortably rely on, having spent most of his life not knowing where they came from, only that he was different from other werewolves. Uncomfortably different.

He rose on his elbow and looked down at my foot.

“It works just fine,” I said. “The runes add protection; they don’t protect absolutely. Nothing can. Whatever I saw in the basement didn’t hurt me, just scared the crap out of me, and that only bothers me because it hasn’t happened in a very long time. I think I’m long past the point where a ghost can send me shrieking into the night and then…” I shrugged. “It happens. It seems there’s always something new lurking around the corner.”

I glanced up at him as he settled back on the bed. “Did Elena say she’d have time to check the inn?”

Elena was a Pack werewolf, the Alpha-elect, to succeed when Jeremy stepped down. She was mated to his foster son, Clayton. Along with their five-year-old twins, they lived at Stonehaven with Jeremy.

Elena was a freelance journalist, with access to online media searches I didn’t have. If there was a story on my dead girls, she’d have found it.

“She texted back while you were dozing,” he said. “There’s nothing.”

Now it was my turn to rise, hair tickling as it fell over my shoulder. “Nothing?”

He pushed the hair back. “No murders at the inn. No hauntings at the inn. No crimes matching that description in Amityville or the surrounding area. Which means you were
not
seeing a residual.”

“So I was hallucinating.”

He met my gaze. “No, you were seeing ghosts.
Real
ghosts.”

“But how? Why? What reason would ghosts have—”

He leaned down and cut me off with a kiss. “Questions for another time, though I strongly suspect I already know the answer.”

“Which is?”

“They were doing what ghosts always do. Trying to make contact. With added drama to get your attention. They’ve piqued your interest. Now, when they come with their message, you’ll be so curious that you’ll listen.”

That sounded good, but it left too much unexplained. Jeremy hadn’t been there; he didn’t know how real it seemed, trapped in that room with their terror. Still, it was a possible explanation, one I’d accept for now.

…

I stood in the Amityville front yard looking up at the house. It really was a ringer for the famous one. I wondered how much of that was original and how much had been cosmetically altered. That may seem like a lot of wasted money, for a single episode, but it would still be a damned sight cheaper than the expenses incurred by a scripted show. Afterwards, they could likely sell it for a profit. All the creeptastic allure of living in the Amityville Horror home, without that icky tragedy.

I met the cast—the “real” folks who’d be joining us—briefly. Very briefly. As I was saying my hellos, Mike waved from the front stoop. It was time for my closeup. Only…not so close. I was about to detail that tragedy from the second-story porch. It was a tricky shot, but Mike had insisted.

So I was led through, my first time setting foot inside. It looked like a typical family home. Nothing the least bit spooky. That was, I suppose, the point.
Look at this house. So nice, so normal. Just like yours. But this house holds a secret. A dark, bloody secret—Oh, wait. Not this house. The one three miles away that looks just like it. Close enough.

They set me up on the balcony as the cast and crew gathered below. An even bigger crowd—curious onlookers—waited beyond the security tape. I felt like I was about to deliver the Gettysburg address. Or start quoting Juliet. My Romeo was indeed below, off to the side, watching me, a faint smile on his lips. I returned it, then fixed on a proper look of gravitas.

“Many of us have heard the story of the house in Amityville,” I began, addressing the crowd. “How the horror truly began, on an autumn night in 1974, when Ronald DeFeo Jr. murdered his entire family, urged on by voices no one else could hear. A year later, the Lutz family moved into what they thought would be their dream home. Instead, it turned out to be a nightmare few of us could imagine…”

Actually, “dream home” was a better description, if your dream includes exploiting tragedy for profit. Amityville was a hoax. Oh, sure, the Lutzs still claimed it was “mostly true,” but when they sued and were countersued, scrabbling for the profits, a judge decided, based on the evidence, that the book was a work of fiction. Maybe something did happen in that house, but there were no demon-pigs and secret Satanic rooms.

Of course, I was forbidden to mention that. Forbidden by contract. Also, by contract, I had refused to say anything to suggest I believed it. So the script was worded like a campfire tale.
They say that deep within that house, there is a room, painted red, not found on any blueprint…

I said my spiel. Then I joined the crew on the lawn and it was Gregor’s turn. He’d been assigned the much less exciting task of telling other tales from Amityville’s past. Because we weren’t, you know, actually at
the
house, so we weren’t going to see
that
haunting. But who knew what other deep, dark secrets this sleepy New England town might hold…

No one. Because there weren’t any. Put haunting and Amityville together, and you got a certain Dutch Colonial home by the water. That was it. So Gregor’s script had to stretch. A lot. He mentioned a massacre of Native Americans in 1644 and a suicide cult in 1931. There were even Hollywood connections. Maurice Barrymore died in the Amityville Asylum and Jim Morrison’s Wiccan High Priestess wife, Patricia Kennealy-Morrison, grew up in the township. The researches had found another so-called Satanic connection—a teen named Ricky Kasso, who’d held some kind of ceremony on the Amityville Horror house front lawn and later convinced friends to help him kill another teen as part of a ritual. Not surprisingly, Kasso was also an alumnus of the Amityville Asylum.

It should have seemed like a desperate attempt to find scandal in a quiet town. Yet Gregor managed to make it sound as if the Amityville region was a hotbed of horror. Part of it was just him, his bookish looks, his Russian accent, his slightly stilted diction, all giving the ludicrous script an air of academia.

I was making a mental note to congratulate Mike on choosing Gregor for the role—give credit where it’s due—when Gregor said, “Yet there is one more tale, perhaps the most tragic, an untold story of Amityville: the disappearance of three young women, from three eras, connected only by the mystery of their vanishing. Or, perhaps, by their killer.”

I glanced over my shoulder at Jeremy, staying off camera. He caught my eye and I caught the message.

Don’t jump to conclusions. Relax. Listen to the story. Everything is all right.

Except it wasn’t all right, because Gregor went on to tell the story of those three young women, one from 1924, one from 1952 and one from 1988. Clara Davis, the first girl, left a wedding reception and was never seen again. Polly Watson, the second girl, had been last spotted leaving a church dance with a young man. And Dawn Alvarez had disappeared while walking home from her job as a chambermaid.

And what had I seen in that basement room? A young woman from the Twenties in a formal dress, a girl from the Fifties in a party outfit and one from the Eighties in a maid’s uniform.

I glanced back at Jeremy again. He stood poised, watching me. I waved for him to stay put. I didn’t need to—he knew not to rush to my side on camera unless I was convulsing on the ground. He nodded and texted me with, “I’ll have Elena look into it.”

Gregor continued, “These three young women all disappeared, never to be seen again. It would appear they are unconnected cases. How could they not be, spanning nearly seventy years? Yet it would seem there is indeed a connection, for after each, the local newspaper received a letter from a man claiming responsibility. Claiming to have killed these pretty girls. Claiming to have stabbed each one to death.”

I swallowed and struggled not to look at Jeremy again.

“Three murders. Decades apart. It could not possibly be the same killer. Yet all signs pointed exactly to this conclusion. Each letter provided details only the killer could know. How is this possible?” 

Gregor paused and glanced surreptitiously to the side, where his script was displayed on a hidden screen. “That is what we hope to discover tomorrow. When we enter this house—the home of Polly Watson—the second young woman to vanish. We will enter this house, haunted by the spirits of these girls. We will speak to them. We will help them find peace. We will help them find their killer..