The Amityville Horror (3 page)

By eleven o'clock that night, the Lutzes were ready to settle down for their first night in their new home.

It had gotten colder outside, down to almost 6 degrees above zero. George burned some now-empty cardboard cartons in the fireplace, making a merry blaze. It was the eighteenth of December, 1975, the first of their twenty-eight days.

3 December 19 to 21 - George sat up in bed, wide awake. He had heard a knock on his front door.

He looked around in the darkness. For a moment, he didn't know where he was, but then it came to him. He was in the master bedroom of his new home. Kathy was there, beside him, hunched down under the warm covers.

The knock came again. "Jesus, who's that?" he muttered.

George reached for his wristwatch on the night table. It was 3:15 in the morning! Again a loud rapping. Only this time, it didn't sound as if it was coming from downstairs, more from somewhere off to his left.

George got out of bed, padded across the cold, uncarpeted floor of the hallway and into the sewing room that faced the Amityville River in the back. He looked out the window into the darkness. He heard another knock. George strained his eyes to see. "Where the hell's Harry?"

From somewhere over his head came a sharp crack. Instinctively he ducked, then looked up at the ceiling. He heard a low squeak. The boys, Danny and Chris, were on the floor above him. One of them must have pushed a toy off his bed in his sleep.

Barefooted and wearing only his pajama pants, George was shivering now. He looked back out the window. There! Something was moving, down by the boathouse. He quickly lifted the window, and the freezing air hit him full blast. "Hey! Who's out there?" Then Harry barked and moved. George, his eyes adjusting to the darkness, saw the dog spring to his feet. The shadow was close to Harry.

"Harry! Go get him!" Another rap sounded from the direction of the boathouse, and Harry spun around at the noise. He began running back and forth in his compound, barking furiously now, the lead holding him back. George slammed the window shut and ran back to his bedroom. Kathy had awoken. "What's the matter?" She turned on the lamp on her night table as George fumbled into his pants. "George?" Kathy saw his bearded face look up.

"It's all right, honey. I just want to take a look around out back. Harry's onto something near the boathouse. Probably a cat. I'd better quiet him down before he wakes the whole neighborhood." He slid into his loafers and was heading for his old navy blue Marine parka lying on a chair. "I'll be right up. Go back to sleep."

Kathy turned off the light. "Okay. Put your jacket on." The next morning, she wouldn't remember having awakened at all.

When George came out the kitchen door, Harry was still barking at the moving shadow. There was a length of two-by-four lumber lying against the swimming pool fence. George grabbed it and ran toward the boathouse. Then he saw the shadow move. His grip tightened on the heavy stick. Another loud rap.

"Damn!" George saw it was the door to the boathouse, open and swinging in the wind. "I thought I'd locked that before!"

Harry barked again.

"Oh, shut up, Harry! Knock it off!"

A half hour later, George was back in bed, still wide awake. As an ex-Marine, not too many years out of the service, he was fairly accustomed to emergency wake-up calls. It was taking him time to turn off his inner alarm system.

Waiting for sleep to return, he considered what he had gotten himself into-a second marriage with three children, a new house with a big mortgage. The taxes in Amityville were three times higher than in Deer Park. Did he really need that new speedboat? How the hell was he going to pay for all of this? The construction business was lousy on Long Island because of the tight mortgage money, and it didn't look like it would get better until the banks loosened up. If they aren't building houses and buying property, who the hell needs a land surveyor?

Kathy shifted in her sleep, so that her arm fell across George's neck. Her face burrowed deep into his chest. He sniffed her hair. She certainly smelled clean, he thought; he liked that. And she kept her children the same way, spotless. Her kids? George's now. Whatever the trouble, she and the children were worth it.

George looked up at the ceiling. Danny was a good boy, into everything. He could handle almost anything you gave him to do. They were getting closer, now. Danny was now beginning to call his stepfather "Dad;" no more "George." In a way he was glad he never got to meet Kathy's ex-husband; this way he felt Danny was all his. Kathy said that Chris looked just like his father, had the same ways about him, the same dark, curly hair and eyes. George would reprimand the boy for something, and Chris's face would fall and he'd look up at him with those soulful eyes. The kid sure knew how to use them.

He liked the way both boys looked after little Missy. She was a little terror, but smart for a five year old. He'd never had any trouble with her from the first day he met Kathy. She was Daddy's girl, all right. Listens to Kathy and me. In fact, they all do. They're three nice kids I've got. It was after six before George finally fell into a deep sleep. Kathy woke up a few minutes later.

She looked around this strange room, trying to put her thoughts together. She was in the bedroom of her beautiful new home. Her husband was next to her and her three children were in their own bedrooms. Wasn't that marvelous! God had been good to them.

Kathy tried to slip easily from under George's arm. The poor man worked so hard yesterday, she thought, and today he's got more ahead of him. Let him sleep. She couldn't; she had too much to do in the kitchen and she had better get started before the kids got up.

Downstairs, she looked around at her new kitchen. It was still dark outside. She turned on the light. Boxes of her dishes, glasses, and pots were piled up all over the floor and sink. Chairs were still sitting on top of the dinette table. But, she smiled to herself, the kitchen was going to be a happy room for her family. It might be just the place for her Transcendental Meditation, which George had been practicing for two years; Kathy, one. He had been into TM ever since the breakup of his first marriage, when he had been attending sessions of group therapy; out of that grew his interest in meditation. He had introduced Kathy to the subject, but now, with all the work of moving in, he had completely ignored his established pattern of going off by himself into a room and meditating for a few minutes each day.

Kathy washed out her electric percolator, filled it, plugged it in, and lit her first cigarette of the day. Drinking coffee, Kathy sat at the table with a pad and pencil, making notes for herself on the jobs to be done around the house. Today was the nineteenth, a Friday. The kids would not go to their new school until after the Christmas holidays. Christmas! There was so much still to do....

Kathy sensed someone was staring at her. Startled, she looked up and over her shoulder. Her little daughter was standing in the doorway. "Missy! You scared me half to death. What's the matter. What are you doing up so early?"

The little girl's eyes were half-closed. Her blonde hair hung across her face. She looked around, as if not understanding where she was. "I wanna go home, Mama."

"You are home, Missy. This is our new home. C'mere."

Missy shambled over to Kathy and climbed up on her mother's lap. The two ladies of the house sat there in their pleasant kitchen, Kathy rocking her daughter back to sleep.

George came down after nine. By that time, the boys had already finished their breakfast and were outside, playing with Harry, investigating everything. Missy was asleep again in her room.

Kathy looked at her husband whose big frame filled the doorway. She saw he hadn't shaved below his jawbone and that his dark blonde hair and beard were still uncombed. That meant he hadn't showered. "What's the matter? Aren't you going to work?"

George sat down wearily at the table. "Nope. I still have to unload the truck and get it back out to Deer Park. We blew an extra fifty bucks by keeping it overnight." He looked around, yawning, and shivered. "It's cold in here. Don't you have the heat on?"

The boys ran past the kitchen door, yelling at Harry. George looked up. "What's the matter with those two? Can't you keep them quiet, Kathy?"

She turned from the sink. "Well, don't bark at me! You're their father, you know! You do it!"

George slapped his open palm down on the table. The sharp sound made Kathy jump. "Right!" he shouted.

George opened the kitchen door and leaned out. Danny, Chris, and Harry, whooping it up, ran by again. "Okay! The three of you! Knock it off!" Without waiting for their reaction, he slammed the door and stormed out of the kitchen.

Kathy was speechless. This was the first time he had really lost his temper with the children. And for so little! He hadn't been in a bad mood the day before.

George unloaded the U-Haul by himself, then drove it back to Deer Park, with his motorcycle in the rear so that lie could get back to Amityville. He never did shave or shower and did nothing the rest of the day but gripe about the lack of heat in the house and the noise the children were making in their playroom up on the third floor.

He had been a bear all day, and by eleven o'clock that night, when it was time to go to bed, Kathy was ready to crown him. She was exhausted from putting things away and trying to keep the kids away from George. She'd start cleaning the bathrooms in the morning, she figured, but that was it for tonight. She was going to bed.

George stayed down in the livingroom, feeding log after log into the roaring fireplace. Even though the thermostat read 75 degrees, he couldn't seem to get warm. He must have checked the oil burner in the basement a dozen times during the day and evening.

At twelve, George finally dragged himself up to the bedroom and fell asleep immediately. At 3:15 in the morning, he was wide awake again, sitting up in bed.

There was something on his mind. The boathouse. Did he lock the door? He couldn't remember. He had to go out and check. It was closed and locked up. Over the next two days, the Lutz family began to go through a collective personality change. As George said, "It was not a big thing, just little bits and pieces, here and there."

He didn't shave or shower, something he did religiously. Normally George devoted as much time to his business as he could; two years before, he had had a second office in Shirley to handle contractors farther out on the South Shore. But now he simply called Syosset and gave gruff orders to his men, demanding they finish some surveying jobs over the weekend because he needed the money. As for arranging to move his office to his new basement setup, he never gave it another thought.

Instead, George constantly complained the house was like a refrigerator and he had to warm it up. Stuffing more and more logs in the fireplace occupied almost his every moment, except for the times he would go out to the boathouse, stare into space, then go back to the house. Even now, he can't say what he was looking for when he went there; he just knew that somehow he was drawn to the place.

It was practically a compulsion. The third night in the house, he again awoke at 3:15 A.M., worried about what might be going on out there. The children bothered him too. Ever since the move, they seemed to have become brats, misbehaved monsters who wouldn't listen, unruly children who must be severely punished.

When it came to the children, Kathy fell into the same mood. She was tense from her strained relationship with George and from the efforts of trying to put her house in shape before Christmas. On their fourth night in the house, she exploded and together with her husband, beat Danny, Chris, and Missy with a strap and a large, heavy wooden spoon.

The children had accidentally cracked a pane of glass in the playroom's half-moon window.

4 December 22 - Early Monday morning, it was bitter cold in Amityville. The town is right on the Atlantic side of Long Island and the sea wind blew in like a nor'easter. The thermometer hovered at 8 degrees and media weathermen were forecasting a white Christmas.

Inside 112 Ocean Avenue, Danny, Chris, and Missy Lutz were up in the playroom, slightly subdued from the whipping the night before. George had still not gone to his office and was sitting in the livingroom, adding more logs to a blazing fire. Kathy was writing at her dinette table in the kitchen nook.

As she worked over a list of things to buy for Christmas, her concentration wandered. She was upset about having hit the children, particularly about the way George and she had gone about it. There were many gifts the Lutz family still hadn't bought, and Kathy knew she had to go out and get them, but since they had moved in, she never had any desire to leave the house. She had just written down her Aunt Theresa's name when Kathy froze, pencil in midair.

Something had come up from behind and embraced her. Then it took her hand and gave it a pat. The touch was reassuring, and had an inner strength to it. Kathy was startled, but not frightened; it was like the touch of a mother giving comfort to her daughter. Kathy had the impression of a woman's soft hand resting on her own!

"Mommy! Come up here, quick!" It was Chris, calling from the third floor hallway.

Kathy looked up. The spell was broken, the touch was gone. She ran up the stairs to her children. They were in their bathroom, looking into the toilet. Kathy saw the inside of the bowl was absolutely black, as though someone had painted it from the bottom to the edge just below the rim. She pushed the handle, flushing clear water against the sides. The black remained.

Kathy grabbed toilet paper and tried vainly to rub off the discoloration. "I don't believe it! I just scrubbed this yesterday with Clorox!" She turned accusingly to the children. "Did you throw any paint in here?"

"Oh, no Mama!" all three chorused.

Kathy was fit to be tied; the incident in the breakfast nook was forgotten. She looked into the sink and bathtub, but they were still gleaming from her scouring. She turned on the faucets. Nothing but clear running water. Once more, she flushed the toilet, not really expecting the horrible black color to disappear.