I press the call button and hold the phone to my ear. It rings once. Come on, George, answer. Before a second ring, I hear George’s ringtone blare from the hallway, behind the bedroom door. It rings and rings, and I close my phone. My heart leaps into my throat. The door bursts open and there stands George, drenched in his raincoat, staring at me with eyes as dark as hell’s abyss.
“George? George, what’s the matter? Why are you staring at me like that? Where is the car?”
As he stands in the doorway, I notice that he’s having trouble standing up straight. There’s a sway in his movements and his eyes are lost.
“George?”
“I—I didn’t drive. I walked.”
“Walked? From where? It’s raining outside. You could have gotten sick.”
“Had a drink.”
“A drink? Maybe more than a few.”
His eyes trail to the bed as he begins to nod his head, which seems to nod forever.
“So, as I expected,” he says, staring at the bed where my suitcases lie. “You truly are leaving.”
“I told you that, George. I wasn’t kidding. I do not feel safe in this house and you do not wish to leave with me. So, I’m leaving, staying with Beth back at home in the States.”
“I don’t…I don’t want you to leave, Eva…I—I need you.”
“But I am, George. I am leaving.”
“No…no you’re not.”
“George, I— “
He reaches behind his coat and pulls out a pistol. I jump back and place my hands on the window sill.
“George what are you doing?! Where did you get that?!”
“I found it…”
“Don’t point that gun at me! Have you lost your mind?!”
“You know, Eva,” he says with a slur in his voice, and a limp in his walk as he steps into the room. “You know where I found this gun?” He begins to laugh. “In the floorboards…”
“The floorboards?”
“Yes…In the floorboard, Eva…I found it and it was like this voice telling me to get it. So, I did. Then, while I was drinking after work, it—it said, ‘go home.’ And I said, ‘alright, let’s go home,’ and…” He shrugs. “Here I am.” He begins to laugh hysterically.
“George, what are you going to do with that gun?”
“You’re not leaving me, Eva…We are married and I have a job and we have this beautiful, beautiful house,” he says as he looks at the ceiling and walls and floor. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” He steps forward and I press my back against the window and nod my head.
“Y-Yes, George,” I say, trying not to cry. “It—it is beautiful, dear.”
“Yes,” he says. “Very beautiful…That’s why you can’t leave. Because it’s beautiful.”
“But I have to go.”
“STOP SAYING THAT!’ he yells. I drop to the floor in tears. “STOP IT! STOP IT! STOP IT!”
“George!”
“Get up!”
He grabs me by the hair and pulls me onto my feet. I try to break myself free of his grip, but he throws me across the floor. I hug the floorboards and he then drags me across the floor.
“George, please! Stop!”
He rolls me onto my back then slaps me. I gasp and the house becomes quiet and still.
“George,” I cry. “You hit me. You’ve never hit me.”
“There’s a first time for everything, dear,” he says. “Now, hold still.”
“Hold still? Why?!”
“We need to try again…”
“Try again?!”
He begins kissing into my neck and holding my face, the gun presses against my jaw and cheek bones.
“George, stop…”
He tries to undo my bra from beneath my shirt, but his aggression turns into a rage that starts ripping my shirt into threads.
“George, stop! Please!”
“George!” someone yells.
We turn to the doorway and it’s Beth.
“Beth!”
“I’ll get help!”
Beth turns away from the door, George aims his pistol, and I scream at the top of my lungs. The gun fires and Beth plops to the floor in the hallway. As I cry, George climbs off of me and drags Beth into the room. He lays her at the side of the bed, her eyes still open, staring lost into mine.
“Beth!” I cry to myself. “BETH! NO! GEORGE, WHAT DID YOU DO?!”
“I—She—She should not have been here…She was going to tell, Eva. I had to do it.”
“You’re crazy! Crazy! Crazy!”
“Stop calling me that!”
“You’re crazy, George! INSANE! You killed her!”
“Shut up!
“You killed her! Killed her! Killed her!” I cry.
“SHUT UP!!!!!” He climbs over me and before I can scream again, his hands grip around my neck. I kick and fight to breathe as he presses his face against mine.
“You can’t leave, Eva,” he whispers harshly into my ear as I fight to survive. He squeezes much harder and my vision begins to blur, but someone stands over George. “You can’t leave me…We have to stay here with our friends.”
Though I can’t see vividly, I know who it is. It’s Hugh. I look to my side at Beth and see Paul lying beside her, and sitting at the end of the bed is Frances, looking down on me with tears in her eyes. The room falls silent, and everything begins to go dark. As George holds onto my neck, I lose grip of his hands and lie there, until my body begins to grow cold and still.
Revelation of the Moment
The front door opens. Mike and Sara step into the house with one of London’s finest estate agents.
“Wow, it’s absolutely gorgeous in here!” Mike says. “You like it, Honey?”
Sara looks up and down and around the house, smiling from ear to ear. “I love it!”
“Yes, this is one of our best homes in London,” the estate agent says. “Great scenery. Minutes away from bars and clubs and restaurants for such a nice, young couple as yourselves.”
“We love the night life,” Mike says. “But no bars for us,” he laughs.
“Why not? No drinky drink?”
“No, no,” Sara says. “Not for another six months.” She cradles her stomach.
“Ah, someone expecting?! Well, good luck on raising a family!”
“Thank you!”
“So, this house,” the estate agent says. “Yes?”
“Oh,” Mike says turning to Sara. “We’ll take it!”
“Just one question?” Sara says.
“Ask me anything.”
“How come it’s so affordable? You can easily sell this house for a much higher price on the market. There isn’t like some disgusting mould in the walls, is there?”
“No, no,” the estate agent says. “This house is perfect. We make it affordable to bring more lovely Americans here, yes.”
“Well,” Mike says. “I guess that answers that. Where do we sign?”
After signing for the house, the estate agent takes his leave. Sara and Mike spend their evening relaxing beside boxes, with glasses of champagne. Mike seemed rather excited about moving into the house. They are from California, and this London home offers them a desirably vast expanse. Sara, too, is very excited to have the beautiful house, but what she couldn’t wrap her head around is its affordability.
“What’s wrong?” Mike asks her. “You feeling sick again?”
“No, no,” she replies. “I just—I don’t know, Mike. This house is unbelievable.”
“Isn’t it?! It’s perfect.”
“Yeah,” she says rather bleakly. “Almost too perfect.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Well, I still can’t wrap my head around the price.”
“It was affordable. You heard what the agent said.”
“Yeah, well, I used to be a real estate agent remember? I would’ve brokered this house another, or even a couple more zeros
to a couple like us…easily, and it still would have been seen as affordable. My problem is, this house was TOO affordable.”
“I wouldn’t worry too much about it, Love,” he says as he takes a sip from his glass. “At the end of the day, this house ours, we are married with a baby on the way, and I have a new job while you get to stay at home and paint. I really believe things are going to be just fine. We’re going to love it here. I just feel it.”
“I hope so,” she says.
After Sara and Mike had dinner that evening, they decided to call it in early for bed. Mike seemed to easily fall asleep, but Sara remained awake, staring left and right at the walls of the room. She kept thinking to herself that there was something odd about the house and, she believed as Eva had, that the wallpaper was alive. Earlier, the price bothered her, but now it was the energy she felt living in it. It didn’t feel welcoming. It felt cold, old, and heavy.
She rose from the bed, careful not to waken Mike. She pulled the curtains back from the window and looked across the water. If she stared long and hard enough, she might have been able to see the States, perhaps, in her imagination. Rather, her eyes then gathered below, into the garden. She steps back with a gasp and turns the light on. Mike jumps from his sleep.
“What’s the matter?”
“I saw someone outside!”
“Outside? On the property?”
“Yes!”
“I’ll go look!”
“Hurry!”
Mike shoves his feet into his slippers and throws on his gown. Sara stands at the window and watches as Mike shines his flashlight around the rainy terrain of their garden and lawn. He looks up at her at the window and shrugs. When he gets back upstairs to Sara, he places his hands on her shoulders to calm her.
“You okay?”
Sara shrugs. “I saw someone.”
“Well? What did they look like?”
“I don’t know. It was dark, but it must’ve been some man in a black trench coat just staring up at me. I know I saw him.”
“Maybe you just need to get some rest. Could be the jet lag.”
“It’s not, Mike. I know someone was there.”
“Let’s get some rest and we can talk about it in the morning.”
“Fine,” she says, but before she can crawl back into the bed, she feels sharp splinters beneath her feet. She looks down at the floorboards and runs her fingertips across the wood.
“Mike look at this.”
“What is it?” Mike makes his way over and crouches beside her.
“What does that look like to you?” Sara asks him.
“Hmmm, well, it looks like—scratches.”
“Yes…Scratches.”
Sara stares at him, but Mike fails to see what her eyes are saying.
“You’re not thinking— “
“Something happened in this house? Yes, Mike. I am.”
“Look, we can call the agent in the morning.”
“No, call him now.”
“Sara, it’s— “
“Now, Mike, please.”
“Alright, alright.”
Sara stands against the kitchen counter as Mike talks on the phone with the agent.
“Yes, sir. Yes, and she says she saw someone in the backyard. There’s no intruders in our neighbourhood or anything like that, right?...Okay…Alright, I’ll let her know.”
Mike hangs up the phone.
“What’d he say?”
“He said we have nothing to worry about?”
“And about the previous owners?”
“He wouldn’t speak about them.”
“He wouldn’t speak about them?”
Sara frowns, then hurries up the stairs. Mike calls after her, but unable to keep up, he remains in the kitchen. When Sara returns, she rests her laptop on the dining room table and Mike stands over her.
“What are you doing, Sara?”
“Researching.”
“Why?”
“Mike, I don’t expect you to understand, but as a real-estate agent, I can tell when someone is lying or hiding something about a house. That man is hiding something and I’m going to find out what.”
Mike pulls up a chair and, as Sara examines a variety of search engine results on the house, she finds articles about a man named Hugh and a woman named Frances. She shows them to Mike and he seems to not worry much about ‘the past.’ She then finds recent articles about a couple from the U.S. who were living in the house just over two years ago. It seems to capture Mike’s attention much more as Sara reads the similarities between Hugh and Frances’ story and George and Eva’s story.
“They both killed their wives?”
“Yes,” Sara says. “And look at this, ‘George was sent to prison and was found guilty of first-degree murder. His attorney pleaded insanity, but it was denied.’ Mike, just four months ago, George committed suicide in his cell. Sound familiar?”
“It—it does, but what does that have to do with the house now?”
“I know you don’t believe in such things, but I am feeling a bit superstitious right now and what I feel about this house doesn’t feel good. It doesn’t feel like a home.”
“Sara,” Mike says, closing her laptop. “Those stories, yeah, they were creepy and coincidental, but I assure you nothing is wrong with this— “
The living room begins to rumble and quake. The furniture and boxes begin to rise. Sara and Mike run out of the living room and into the kitchen, but stop in their tracks. It isn’t the sight of their cabinets, drawers, and a fridge full of rotten food that scares them. It is the sight of a man, drenched in rain, wearing a black trench coat, that freezes them. As eggs and bacon sizzle in a frying pan, bread pops up in the toaster oven. Mike grips Sara in his arms as the man turns to them, his dark eyes feasting into theirs. He bursts into a black fog then appears before them. Sara then realizes that the man before them is George Greene.
“GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!”
Sara and Mike scramble around the floor to the front door, but stop in their tracks. A pregnant woman with tears flowing down her eyes, a white chrysanthemum in her hair, and bruises around her neck, places her hand on the doorknob.
“Eva?” Sara says. “Eva Greene.”
Eva opens the door. Mike and Sara nod as they then run out and onto the streets of London, their voices yelling into the raining sky: The house. Don’t go into that house!
The Haunting of Perry Property
By Riley Amitrani
Prologue
20th May, 1970, Houndsville, Virginia
Houndsville has always been just a wide spot on the road over these many decades. The kind of place that a traveller might miss if they passed through the scenic surroundings of southwest Virginia. Indeed, there is not a city of any size of considerable population once you go south of Roanoke. That is not to say, though, that it is entirely inconsequential. Small towns like Houndsville are not unique to the U.S. You can find them in every country, and most likely, the quiet and unassuming people who live in these places just go about their days with no real worries or anxieties. However, in May of 1970, this idyllic depiction of Houndsville, Virginia was shattered. The story is as bizarre as it is unsettling, and if you would ask current residents of the town, they most likely would deny what actually happened.
In the peaceful recesses of hundred-year-old beech and elm trees that make up the glen known to the locals as Maura Valley, sat the largest church in Houndsville, The Maura Community Church. The simple white clapboard structure had undergone many alterations since its initial construction in the mid-1800s, but even in 1970 it still presented basically the same footprint as it always had. The congregation in general were serene, generous, conservative country people. They all knew each other and it would have been hard to find any members there that would not lend a hand when needed, or display the actual characteristics of true Christianity.
No one really seems to know why or from whence
the Righteous Warriors arose, but what the people of Houndsville did know was that they were using the good name of the Maura Community Church as a cover for their cult. Victor Perry was the leader of this organization and, though he publicly professed deep Christian values to appease the occasional outside inquiry, what he preached to his followers was anything but. Some of his teachings had roots in Christian doctrine but, as is almost always the case with cults, those tenets were twisted to suit the leader’s insidious values and personal agenda.
Victor drew his initial members from the church itself, but they were a small part of the overall congregation. Most members of the church were in fact entirely unaware of the cult, and those who had heard of it were quick to make sure it was known that the church itself had no association with the Righteous Warriors. Victor had grown up in the church, but as he reached adulthood, he became disillusioned with what he saw as a softening of the laws of God within the church. The changing times in the 1960s and 1970s were abhorrent to Victor, and the fact that the church would not condemn the evolving behaviour and mores of the times, pushed him to create his group.
It was slow to catch on at first, but with Victor’s charismatic personality and gift for oratory, he had soon attracted a number of dedicated followers who were completely on board with his new ideas to combat what they saw as the erosion of traditional and religious standards. Most of the ideas were not new. They were just the regurgitation of older like-minded organizations who saw the foundations of society being slowly eroded by loose morals and lack of adherence to God’s word. Among the strictest of Victor’s rules was that children born out of wedlock were an unforgiveable offense. The punishment for this transgression was severe, and he meted out this punishment not only upon the guilty, but on the members of the Righteous Warriors as well: they were to sacrifice any member found to be guilty of such a sin.
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