Amityville Horror Christmas Read online

  When he said it out loud, it sounded even weirder than when the customer had said it on the phone … but Charlie tried to take the edge off. He forced a smile. “Hell, I wish they were all like that. Would make your job that much easier.”

  It was Owen’s turn to frown now. And when he spoke again, Charlie couldn’t hide his total amazement.

  “What was that address, again?”

  “One Twelve Ocean Avenue, Owen. Why?” Charlie asked quizzically. “You know it?”

  Owen waited his customary long moment before answering, and when he did, his words were little more than a mumble. “No. But it sounds familiar.”

  For a long, uneasy beat no one spoke. Then Charlie leaned back in his ancient desk chair. It squealed in protest. “Look,” he said, sighing, “maybe we should let this one go.” He rubbed at his chin. “Actually, this client sounded kind’a weird, and it is Christmas Eve. I’m sure you’d rather be with your family--”

  “What do you mean weird?” Randy asked, cutting him off.

  Charlie gestured his confusion with both hands. “I don’t know, just … weird, that’s all.” He thought on it and added: “Nervous. Really uptight and kind’a jittery.”

  “Well, hell,” Randy said, laughing. “You said he had kids, right? You know this season will do that to any parent. Turns me into a damned blithering idiot most every year.”

  Randy’s mood abruptly changed, just like that. For some reason, the mention of kids had either wiped away his concern or reminded him how much the extra money would help. He grinned and turned to Owen. “What do you say, Owen? Want to make some easy bucks before we call it a night?”

  Something about Owen’s demeanor made Charlie think he’d rather say no, but the boy was loyal – always had been. He wasn’t surprised when he shrugged lightly, turned and headed for the door without another word.

  Randy wheeled on his heels and quickly followed, calling back to Charlie as he went. “Don’t forget, this one’s triple. And a good couple of hours of traveling time, since I’m sure the traffics gonna be really heavy.” His raucous laugh filled the room; and back in his terrible Victorian accent, he said, “Merry Yuletide to yers and the fair Lady Emily, Squire.”

  Then he was gone.

  As the clang of the doorbell faded, Charlie sat alone for a few minutes, not wanting to move, but not really sure why. Then he picked up the ancient phone and called his wife. He explained he’d be a few minutes late; she said they could hold dinner for a little while, but he’d better get a move on.

  Charlie rarely discussed the business with Emily these days. Truth be known she just wasn’t all that interested. But this time he needed to talk. He told her about the strange call, and when he mentioned the address she did something she almost never did: she interrupted him.

  “Ocean Avenue, you say?” she asked, an edge of concern in her voice.

  “Yes,” he said. “Why?”

  “Charlie Danvers,” she shot back, her tone edging on reproach, “I swear you would forget your head if it wasn’t screwed on.”

  “What are you talking about?” Charlie had been a little worried about his memory lately; the last thing he needed was her teasing him about it. And he was thinking of Owen’s strange response to the address, too.

  “The murders, Charlie. The murders. The young boy who killed his entire family. Mother, father, even his sisters and brothers. They lived on Ocean Avenue.”

  “I’ll be damned; you’re right. It was on Ocean Avenue. No wonder Owen thought it sounded familiar.” Charlie rubbed at his chin. “Do you remember the exact address?”

  She thought for a long moment. Charlie imagined her frown and the shake of her head. He’d seen it a million times. “No,” she finally admitted. “No idea. But never mind: I’m sure it’s a different place.” He voice suddenly grew distant. “Still, it was a terrible thing.”

  Charlie started to say something, to break her mood – and then she took care of it herself. He could actually hear her straighten up and force a smile. “So!” she chirped, determined to be cheerful. “When will you be home? The Rasmussens and the Tilneys will be dropping by for some Christmas punch any time now.”

  “I just have to make a quick call and let the customer know Randy and Owen are on their way, so I’ll be there shortly.”

  “Good, darling,” Emily added, her natural warmth returning. “I’ll see you then.”

  Charlie smiled as he broke the connection and looked at his scratch pad one last time. He could feel himself smiling as he dialed the number. It was amazing, but something about the way Emily called him ‘darling’ still made him happy, even after all their years together.

  He listened as the familiar burr of the dial tone was replaced by the elongated rings of the phone in Amityville. Once … twice …

  A wailing screech ripped at Charlie, so loud and sharp it felt like a spike had been shoved deep into his brain. He dragged the phone away from his head, but the rasping, nerve-shattering shriek didn’t stop. It grew louder. It swept out of the phone and filled the room … filled Charlie with such dread and horror he simply couldn’t move.

  Then came pain, a pain unlike anything he could ever remember. It tore at every nerve ending, ripped at the center of him – slashed at his spine, his knees, elbows, even his fingers. Charlie wasn’t a young man; he’d had a mild heart attack a few years earlier, and he knew what that felt like. This was nothing like it – nothing. It was fire and ice and cutting and crushing all at once. It was too much to bear, too much to even accept. All he could think of was somehow ending that pain – now, now.

  “One way,” he heard himself say through the suffocating ocean of pain. He knew it with startling clarity: One way: Death.

  Death was the only answer. He had to kill himself that instant. No thought, no wondering, no hesitation, just a swift clean death.

  He could see his pointed letter opener a few inches away on the desk, barely visible through the bloody haze of agony. He knew what he had to do. He reached out …

  Then, as abruptly as it started … it was over. Done. The terrifying sound, the unstoppable desire to end it all cut off as quickly, as viciously, as it had come.

  Charlie Danvers sat, panting like an animal, drenched in sweat. He fought to bring his gasping breath back under control. He forced his fingers to pull out of painful fists and flex, and only then did he realize that he’d been saved by pure instinct. Without any conscious thought on his part, his inner self had acted; while he was dying, in those awful endless moments, one fist had thumped down on the phone base and cut off the call. If it hadn’t -- if the phone was still pouring its evil into the room …

  It was a long time before he recovered at all. It was even longer before he thought of trying to reach Randy and Owen on the two-way-radio. It’s got something to do with that house, he thought. He didn’t know why, but he knew it was true. Something to do with that family.

  He pawed at the crumpled paper from his pad. It was him, him.

  George Lutz

  112 Ocean Avenue

  Amityville, New York

  * * * * *

  The air was already cutting-cold and getting colder as the Danvers & Son Ford van made its way into Suffolk County and on towards Amityville. It was going to be another freezing night, one of the worst of the season so far. Randy was willing to put a buck down that it would make it to the single digits. Owen didn’t care to bet.

  All that was normal enough; what wasn’t normal was that hickety-burp of the van’s heater. It had chosen today to start having a problem. It still worked enough to keep the temperature in the sealed-off cabin a little warm – maybe eight or ten degrees above freezing – but Randy and Owen were both glad they had decided to wear their heavy coats and gloves. “It’s like driving a damn icebox,” Randy grumbled.

  The older man was driving, as usual. As he turned the van onto Merrick Road and got it up to speed, he glanced over at Owen. His young partner was never exactly a gas-bag; he kept mos
t of his feelings to himself. But he had seemed even quieter than usual since they left the office.

  “Are you sure you’re okay with this, Owen?” Randy eased the van past a stalled car, then looked over at his partner. “Cause if it isn’t okay for you, it isn’t okay with me.”

  “I’m good, Randy. Truth is I don’t really have much planned for tonight. With most of the family out in California these days, it’s pretty much just me.” Owen clutched his hands for added warmth and then blew onto his tightly woven woolen gloves. “I just wish I could remember what it is about that address.” He frowned, even more introspective than usual, and pulled at his right ear lobe as best he could with the covered fingers of his right hand. It was his familiar I’m thinking gesture. “It’s right there on the tip of my tongue, but I just can’t get a handle on it.”

  Ten minutes later Randy eased the van to a stop a few feet past the driveway of 112 Ocean Avenue. It was an old wooden-framed Dutch Colonial, painted white all around. There was a covered-in porch with a decorative balcony on the second floor above a latticework of vines, brown and stiff as arthritic fingers in the midwinter. Two curved windows, like glaring eyes, hovered in the wall just above the second floor landing. The property was deep and narrow; a gravel path led down one side in a gradual decline, all the way to the Amityville River. Randy could almost see the edge of the gray clapboard of a boathouse, half obscured by leafless brush and the dying midwinter light.

  It looked spooky … but every new place looked spooky on a day like this, with the color drained out of everything from the chalky sky to the beaten metal of the river.

  Suddenly Randy had a deep, almost biting desire to get this done, so they could get the hell out of Amityville.

  All Owen wanted was to remember what the hell it was about this place that was bothering him so much. It was important. It was.

  What was it …?

  CHAPTER TWO

  The boathouse at 112 Ocean Ave Amityville was a stout wooden box with a sharply peaked roof to slough off the snow. That wasn’t a concern at the moment, Randy thought as they made their way past the main house. The sky was cloudless, a hard, almost brittle blue, and there hadn’t been snow in the area all month. Cold enough for it, he grumbled to himself as he hunched inside his parka, but not yet.

  The house to their right was a little larger than normal, but otherwise pretty standard. His experienced eye could see a few problems along the eaves and some clapboard that could stand to be replaced but by and large it was in pretty good shape, especially for an older Dutch Colonial so close to the river. He wondered if the inside was as trim as the exterior, but he knew he wasn’t going to get a chance to find out, at least not on this trip.

  In the last instant before he turned his attention to the boathouse, he thought he saw a shadow at the second floor window. Just a quick movement, a flicker of shadow, but … something.

  Never mind, he told himself. Doesn’t matter.

  “Pretty sturdy,” he said, a minute or so later, as Owen joined him in front of the wide boathouse door. Randy tugged at the brass-plated handle again. Again it didn’t wobble under his gloved hand. The hinges didn’t rattle; the planking didn’t flex.

  He gave it a good jerk, but it didn’t budge. “Solid,” he said unnecessarily. No kidding, said Owen’s sidelong scowl.

  Randy pulled at it a third time, harder still and though it rattled this time, and gave off a faint, high-pitched clink, it stayed firmly shut. Owen stepped to the hinges on one side, then the other; he tapped them with a gloved finger and then shrugged. No problems there.

  “Well, I don’t get it,” Randy said. “Seems copacetic to me.” He huffed in frustration, a huge billow of warm breath bursting from his mouth. The sun was about to disappear below the sparse tree line, and it was getting even colder.

  Owen rapidly patted both arms with his gloved hands, trying to keep warm, and stepped back. He didn’t like it here. He wasn’t quite sure why, not yet, but he just didn’t like it here. He’d been having dark, tangled thoughts ever since they’d walked onto the Ocean Avenue property, and that big house … well, just looking at it made him shiver. Actually shiver, and not because of that icy breeze from the river. He would never say so, out loud -- even if he was one of those people who like to talk just to hear his own voice – but there was something not right about the entire gig. And what were those weird instructions from Mr. Lutz all about? What could make a client with a problem like this not want to explain it to the workmen he hired. Damn! Most of the time we can’t get rid of them, he thought. Usually they’d be out here, toolbox at the ready, not only explaining the problem, but trying to tell us how to fix it, even though they called us for help.

  Not really sure why he was doing it, Owen actually said as much out loud. “Usually, we’d be talking to this Mister Lutz already, but from what Charlie said, guess we better not. Weird, that … don’t you think?”

  “Hey,” Randy said, shrugging. “You know what I always say: don’t rock the boat.” He grinned at his partner. “Get it? Rock the boat?”

  Owen gave him a sleepy, unimpressed glare. Randy chose to ignore it. He just turned back to the boathouse door one last time. “Well, damned if I know what the problem is, but it ain’t getting any warmer here. Let’s hike on back to the van, call Charlie, tell him we got here okay and make sure the address is right. Then, if it is, we tell him the problem’s fixed and we head home for Christmas before we freeze our nuts off.”

  Owen was so caught up in his own thoughts that for a few seconds Randy’s words didn’t sink in. Then, abruptly, they registered, loud and clear. His partner was suggesting they get the hell out of there, and he couldn’t wait to do just that. “Yeah,” he said gruffly. “Not much point in trying to fix something that isn’t broken.”

  Owen was two full strides ahead of Randy as they retraced their steps from the boathouse, across the rear lawn, to the main building and the gravel path. But as they reached the left-most corner of the house there was a huge crash behind them.

  The two men turned as one and just stood there, stunned, as the boathouse door creaked open to the full extent the solid hinges would allow. It stayed there for a minute, waving slightly, and Randy realized he was actually holding his breath…

  …until the door again thundered shut, so hard the entire boathouse shuddered. Without a hand or even an errant breeze touching it.

  “Well I’ll be damned!” Randy was genuinely astonished. He stood there, hands on his hips, a deep frown creasing his broad forehead. He chewed on his bottom lip. “Guess there is a problem here.”

  Given what happened to them both over the next four hours, it was too bad Randy didn’t take that moment to look at Owen. Things might have been different. As it was, he was focused entirely on the mysterious slamming door, and didn’t see Owen grunt and double over in pain as if he’d been punched in the stomach.

  Every molecule in the younger man’s body was screaming in pain, a series of microscopic explosions ripping his nervous system to shreds. His face was sickly white, as if all the blood had drained from it. His eyes were locked in a fearful glare -- dull, staring, devoid of any expression. If he’d been able to, he would have spun himself around and bolted along the side of the house back to the van. But the pain, and the paralyzing, all-encompassing fear that accompanied it, held him tightly in its grip.

  He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t speak. He couldn’t move at all.

  Breathe, he told himself. Breathe or you’ll die. He forced himself to gulp in a single mouthful of air … and it was enough. His lungs abruptly unlocked with an almost audible pop. He took in a huge breath and staggered back a step as his vision cleared. A moment later he found he could straighten up, heart still pounding, and all the while Randy remained complete unaware, still surveying the boathouse and scowling.

  And all over a slamming door, Owen told himself. What the hell just happened here? And why am I feeling like we should run, not walk, away?


  Randy was holding his breath, too, but for an entirely different reason. He was poised, waiting to see if the damn door would open and slam shut again. But … no. After a long couple of motionless minutes, he decided nothing more was going to happen.

  “Well, hell,” he mumbled “Don’t that beat all.” He sauntered back to the boathouse, resolved to checking it out one more time. “So much for leaving right away,” he muttered, his good humor evaporating for the moment.

  Owen didn’t follow him – not right away. Even though he was able to move again, he just couldn’t force himself to do it. He thought of calling out to his partner, but there, too: nothing happened. It was more than strange. Owen never had trouble talking to Randy, telling him what he thought, what he felt. Not usually. They were partners; they had a special kind of connection, and had for years. Of course, Charlie was another matter entirely. He’d always had a hard time talking to him. He was their boss, after all, and Owen was never comfortable airing his thoughts around the person paying his wages. Besides, Randy was verbose enough for both of them, so it worked out well.

  But not today. Today something stopped him. He just couldn’t bring himself to tell Randy about the uneasiness he’d felt since the moment they’d arrived back at the shop; about the weird feelings he was getting every time he looked up at the old house, or the unaccountable, inexplicable fear that was banging at the back of his brain, turning him into a veritable basket-case. Something was telling him they should get out of there, and get as far away from this place as possible, as soon as they could. But he simply … couldn’t … speak.

  It took all the effort he could muster for him to push all that aside and walk slowly back to the boathouse.

  Randy didn’t notice a thing.

  * * * * *

  Back at the office, Charlie lowered the radio-microphone and clicked off the main unit. He’d tried calling Randy and Owen again and again with no response. It wasn’t likely another call or two would make any difference.