The burning house

If walls could talk, they would tell countless tales. Stories of every kind would spin from the brick or stone or wood of their surface. Sonnets of love, tragedies of heartbreak, epics of war, fairy tales of ancient times, fables, legends, tall tales, and parables would all be told. If walls could talk, you would listen to every word with delight. They would transport you into the past, into glimpses of lives lived, moments made, journeys taken.

If the walls inside this home could talk you would be terrorized with our words. You would run holding your hands against your ears to keep our words out. I tell you now to leave. To walk away from our horror. Yet, here you still stand waiting for me to weave our nightmare.

Since you are still here, not heeding our warning, this humble abode this charred, broken house will tell you the fearful tale of our once happy home. We will share the tragedy of how we were haunted by the monsters who came to live inside us. Last chance, still not leaving alright then, get comfortable, by the end of this you'll want to jump out of your skin. Now where to begin.

The bowers construction company built us in early spring before the summer of 1952. When the last nail was pounded into us we had bright yellow asbestos siding on our outside and a green lawn framed by a concrete walk leading to a driveway long enough for three cars to park end to end. We stood a proud cape cod style home residing at 1008 Club Drive with two windows of our upstairs looking out over the Sunnehanna golf course and country club, built just three years before us. Inside we had arching entryways, an eat in kitchen, a dinning room with light spilling in from a window looking out over a spacious deck, our living room had a fireplace with marble tiles and a bay window providing views of blue skies and mature trees. Hardwood floors stretched through every room of our first floor and wall to wall carpet adorned our upstairs.

William Audrant was our first owner. He moved inside our walls after retiring and closing the insurance agency that had carried his name for over forty years. William was widower who's wife Gayle died ten years before he came to reside within us. We enjoyed William. We were proud to be his house. His grandchildren lit our rooms up with their laughter. His children brought love to our house on their visits. We loved every time they gathered for Christmas dinners, Thanksgiving meals, and fourth of July barbeques.

When his children were off with their own lives William was a quiet man in his late years. He often enjoyed a bourbon on our back deck. He rarely watched television choosing instead to read dime store novels about detectives solving crimes in far off cities. Our rooms were often filled with music from his console stereo. He loved Jazz. John Coltrane's saxophone often resonated deep within our wooden walls. Coltrane was his favorite, followed by Eartha Kitt. We listened to her sultry voice serenade us many a night. Sadly, we lost William in 1963 eleven years after he came to be with us. We felt sorrow for the first time, after William was gone. We still miss him and the children who came to visit him, and the music, we miss the music too.

For two years after the medical workers wheeled William through our front door we sat empty waiting for a new owner. We were happy when the Dobry family decided to make us their home. But, we soon learned they were not the family they appeared to be when they came with their real estate agent to look at us.

The Dobry family were devout members of the Order Of Nine Angels. Which we discovered soon after they moved in. The first and second floor of our home appeared normal after they brought their belongings in and began to live within us. But, down below in our basement where the Dobry's never allowed outside people to go was a different story.

Anton Dobry was a theistic Satanist who was a self-proclaimed priest in the Order of Nine Angels. He disparaged the walls which made up the foundation of our home in our basement below our first floor. Every wall was adorned as an altar to one of his dark gods. Hermes, Lucifer, Baphomet, and the horned god of the Wiccans. His wife Abigail was his priestess, and his children Damian and Aradia were his followers.

Anton led his family in strange rituals with wax candles burning at the individual points of the sigil of Baphomet, black magic chants, blood sacrifices and incantations of the Satanic Bible spoken in demonic guttural growls.

"Oh great serpent of the night, harbinger of nine dark angels. Thou hast made my place of solace, You who rideth upon the blistering winds of Hell, who dwelleth in the devil's fane; Rise and come! Present thyself to those who sustaineth vile rottenness of wretched mind. Movers of gibbering mouth. Mockers of all the just and strong! Tear out their gaggling tongues and close their blathering throats, Oh Kali! Pierce their lungs with the stings of scorpions, Oh Sekhmet! Plunge their existence into the dismal void, Oh mighty Dagon! Plant their bodies in the scorched earth."

Anton's sermons seeped into us like a plague infecting every corner of our structure. We felt the shame of what was done within our walls, with as much shame as can be felt by a house. If we could have folded ourselves in upon ourselves we would have disappeared, vanishing into nothing.

We existed horrified by the Dobry family. Their rituals, their debauchery grew more sadistic in nature with almost every passing night. Anton growing more violent often inflicting harm on his family. With each passing invocation of their beliefs their seemed to be a rise in a type of violent crescendoing that ultimately culminated in Anton taking a large kitchen knife and plunging it into each of his families hearts before slicing his own throat with a razor blade and standing over each of his dead loved ones while his blood sprayed out over them until he fell dead across their bodies.

For years after the Dobry family's last ritual we sat empty. Known to everyone in the town as the hell house. Their was talk of tearing us down. The talk continued and we thought our time was drawing to a close before a Priest named Samuel decided it would be a victory for Satan if we were torn down. He asked the city, who had taken over ownership of us when no relatives for the Dobry's could be found, to donate us to his parish. The city agreed and Samuel preformed blessings in every one of our rooms. Members of his parish resurfaced our hardwood floors and painted our walls cleansing every trace of the Dobry's from us. After they were finished Samuel sold us and used the proceeds to benefit St. Clements church and their various charitable out reach programs. We were overjoyed to have real owners again and were excited when the Sullivans moved into us.

The Sullivans were a nice family and we were happy with them for years. Though we were always a little concerned for their child. A son they named Mark Chapman Sullivan who was a quiet, odd little boy. David the father and Martha the mother were sweet loving people who filled our spaces with warmth. But, Mark was not like them. He often sat in his room drawing pictures using rough angry strokes to create dark violent images using only the black crayons from the packs he was given.

David and Martha always seemed to us to be trying to give Mark the best childhood he could have. But the more they tried the more Mark seemed to pull away from them. At sixteen he started capturing neighborhood cats and torturing them in our garage letting some go maimed and killing some.

We were concerned with the growing darkness inside Mark. But admittingly enough we used the light from David and Martha to overshadow our growing concerns for Mark.

When Mark turned eighteen he left our house and we were happy to see him go. We spent almost two decades happy in the warm glow of David and Martha without Mark even visiting once. We thought, we prayed, we'd never see him again.

And, when David and Martha left one night pulling out of our driveway the same way they had always done we thought they would be back just like all the other times their headlights had arched away from our front window. We never thought that it would be the last time they would reside within us.

We overheard the people who came after David and Martha were gone say that a man had run a red light and that David and Martha had never seen it coming. After the people who came put sheets over the furniture in our rooms and drained the water from our plumbing lines we were left alone again.

We sat empty, again for years with no one coming through our front door. With no one coming to check on us. Until one day we felt a key slip into us before our door was opened and a grown up Mark stood in our doorway.

The first time we learned of what Mark had become was not when he brought one of his victims inside us, which he eventually horrifyingly did. The first we learned of his predilection was in the newspaper articles he hung in framed pictures on our walls in our basement. We felt a profound sadness deep within our foundation as we realized that a darkness as vacant of light as the darkness that had come from the Dobry's had come to reside in us once again. With every word we read we could feel the old sickness, the old plague seeping back into every splinter of us.

The first victim he brought home. The first victim he killed inside our walls made us feel as though we were being pulled apart nail by nail. As if the world outside of us somehow knew what was happening. Dark clouds covered a black night and a driving rain thundered against our roof. We prayed that our shingles would blew off in the gusting wind and fly away. We hoped lightning would crash down and ignite our framed walls with fire. We wished rain water would turn into a mighty flood and wash us from our foundation. We longed to be broken apart in the surging waters of that imagined flood.

Every day the sickness inside us grew worse. Watching Mark huddling over his black drawings we were appalled knowing that when he got them just the way he wanted they would be carved into an innocent girl's torso. We pushed at the cracks that had formed from years of settling determined to make them worse. We yearned for the water inside our water heater to boil and explode. We could not stomach the evil within us. We had to find a way to destroy our sickness. We had to kill Mark.

We searched for ways to do it without finding one. We slipped into a malaise. Mark came and went with his wretched rituals and habits, but thankfully he did not bring another victim inside us. There were no new polaroid's of disturbing images carved into the flesh of young girls displayed on the table in our basement. No new articles of victims being found were framed and hung on our wall beside the table. We began to hope that somehow he had stopped. That maybe the desire inside him had been quenched. We started to believe that we could find a way to abide this existence. To live in a type of purgatory we could survive as long as Mark didn’t murder anymore women inside us. As long as he didn’t take anymore polaroid's or hang any new articles.

Days past and then weeks and somehow we managed to find a rhythm and to our surprise we started to feel a small part of the house we once were coming back despite the evil worm that was living inside us. We started to believe we could go on like this, but, we were naive. An evil like Mark doesn't stop. It may go dormant. It may pause briefly, but it never goes away.

Still we persisted surviving more than we were existing until a night in late August when the leaves had just started to fall on the lawn outside our front door. There was something different in the way Mark carried himself when he left us that night. An ominous foreboding settled over us as he walked out, got into his car, and drove away. When his headlights returned and his car was back in our driveway a feeling of dread spread through the air inside our rooms.

She was unconscious when Mark carried her inside. A rejection swept through us as he laid her down and stretched her out on the floor. A single thought reverberated within us echoing off our surfaces as he tied her to the floor. We could not allow this to happen. We had to come alive. We had to stop this evil worm from existing.

When her screams erupted in a volcano of sound filling us with her fright. An energy deep inside us came alive. When her eyes went wide as the first cuts from his knife sliced deep into her flesh we became determined to end his life. To end his nightmare for good. A fire burned red hot inside us as her blood began to spill on the floor. Smoke started to rise from our rafters as more of her life bled out of her with each cut.

When her last breath escaped her lips a rage rose within in us. The earth shook with our fury as the worm smeared her blood on his face. A hurricane of vengeance shattered the glass in our windows as he took polaroid's of her body. Sparks ignited in every part of us. We burned with fire as he began to dance around her euphoric with her death. Parts of our first floor crashed down on him pining him to the floor, engulfing him in our flames. We cherished his cries of pain. We rejoiced as he died screaming.

In the morning we floated in a cloud above the charred remains of what had once been us. Taking one last moment outside ourselves to look down at the two disfigured forms lying at the bottom of our rubble. An immense feeling of relief at the ending of one and a great sadness for the other came over us. We stilled in the air for a moment before we let go our freedom to settle back down in our charred remains. We waited for years to be torn down, but when no one ever came we accepted our fate and here we have remained. A reminder, a warning for all to see of the evil that resides hidden behind walls in big cities, in small towns, on quiet neighborhood streets, in homes that appear normal to the rest of the world.