Tyler felt a sense of doom wash over him as he stepped into the foyer and approached the front desk. The feeling of hopelessness inside this house of the damned was physical and real and unrelenting.

  * * *

  Rufus Stowe gazed at Tyler steadily, a mocking contempt dancing in his eyes as Tyler entered the interview room. Tyler’s terror threatened to overwhelm him and he knew Stowe could sense it. He had expected to be separated from the madman who had massacred his family by a Plexiglas window or bars or something, but Stowe sat unmoving across a small wooden table that looked barely more substantial than a house of cards.

  Stowe’s ankles were manacled to the thick maple front legs of his chair, which in turn were bolted to the faded institutional green linoleum floor. His hands—the hands which had hacked his entire family to pieces—were unsecured but even if he were to flop forward onto the table and stretch as far forward as he could, Stowe would not be able to reach Tyler. Assuming, of course, the angle irons fastening the chair to the floor were in better condition than the bars covering the windows. The thought provided little comfort.

  Tyler settled into the straight-backed wooden chair provided for visitors—it looked identical to the one holding Stowe, with the exception of the manacles—and clasped his hands in his lap. He clutched his cell phone in his sweaty left hand like a talisman, flipping it over and over. He had powered it off after hanging up on Debra, knowing she would immediately try to call him back, knowing if he talked to her he would relent and allow her to talk her way back into this madness. He could not allow that to happen.

  Summoning all the courage he could muster, Tyler forced himself to look into Rufus Stowe’s amused face. He remembered seeing news coverage of Stowe almost two decades ago when the authorities arrested him on multiple homicide charges, and at that time the man had appeared dazed and uncomprehending as he stumbled in handcuffs out of his home—the home Tyler Beckman was now renting—escorted on each side by a uniformed officer of the law.

  Today, however, the man looked cunning and calculating, his eyes clear and sharp and focused. His body had aged—it had been close to twenty years, after all—but overall he appeared fit and healthy. Hell, Tyler thought, he looks like he’s in better shape than me. I’m sure he’s sleeping better, if nothing else.

  He cleared his throat and tried to decide how to begin. He had spent so much energy worrying about forcing himself to confront Stowe that he had not even considered what he might say once he actually got the man alone in a room. His dilemma was solved, though, when Stowe spoke first. “How are you enjoying my home? Living in that old house is a little different than you expected it to be, isn’t it?” The man still hadn’t moved, although a wide smile now creased his face, giving him the look of a guy sharing an inside joke with a buddy.

  Tyler blinked in surprise. He hadn’t expected Stowe to be aware of his living arrangements, although now that he thought about it, it only made sense. The lawyer handling Stowe’s estate would undoubtedly have informed his client that he had rented out the property, especially considering the identity of the man now living there.

  “Wh-what do you mean by that?” The words slipped out before Tyler could stop himself and he immediately wished he could take them back; they were weak-sounding, even to him. This conversation wasn’t going anything like he had hoped and it was just beginning.

  Stowe laughed. “I know this place is a run-down, rat-infested, piece of shit dump, but I do have access to outside information, you know. And I already know exactly why you’re here, even if you don’t.”

  “What are you talking about?” Again Tyler had spoken before thinking. He shook his head in disgust. This creepy house of horrors had really gotten to him. He cast his eyes toward the ceiling and saw a spider suspended in the corner, hard at work spinning delicate threads into an intricate web. The insect was enormous and had clearly been a resident of the shabby interview room for a very long time.

  Stowe followed Tyler’s gaze and grinned. “It’s happening to you, too, isn’t it?” he whispered so softly Tyler could barely make out the words.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “We have television here, you know.”

  “So?”

  “So I’m a big fan of the news, and do you know what the lead story on the local news was this morning?” Stowe laughed again, the sound sharp and staccato, echoing in the sparsely furnished room like a gunshot.

  A roaring noise filled Tyler Beckman’s ears and he felt sick to his stomach. What the hell was he doing here? What had he expected to accomplish?

  Rufus Stowe chuckled this time, quietly, like a slightly nutty uncle might, and Tyler cringed. “Of course you know what the lead story was,” Stowe said. He adopted the clipped, officious-sounding voice of a television news anchorman. The impression was amazingly good. “Authorities are releasing few details regarding the murder of eighty-eight-eight year old Joshua Newton in Darkness Falls. The elderly man’s badly butchered body—love the alliteration,” Stowe cackled—” was discovered early this morning when his elderly housekeeper/caregiver reported to work. This tiny northern New Hampshire community was rocked eighteen years ago by a similar killing, when the entire family of novelist Tyler Beckman was hacked to death by a crazed lunatic.”

  Tyler sat shaking, unable to stop himself, as Stowe laughed uproariously. In the corner the spider worked on, spinning its web obliviously, its movements jerky and insectile. Tyler felt trapped, like the walls were closing around him and the water-stained ceiling falling. The roaring in his ears threatened to drown out Rufus Stowe’s voice, which Tyler felt would be a blessing. His stomach lurched and he could feel sweat ringing the armpits of his shirt.

  He had to get out. Now.

  He leaped to his feet and in a mounting panic turned blindly toward the door, banging into it with his head and then on it with both fists, not even registering the pain in his injured knuckles. On the other side of the window reinforced with heavy chicken wire, Tyler could see an orderly rushing down the hallway, his hand reaching for a baton secured in a leather holster at his hip.

  “I’ll let you in on a little secret,” Stowe said, his voice quiet now but crystal clear. “It’s the house. I was a normal guy before I moved to Darkness Falls and I only lived in the goddamned house for two weeks before it took me over. So don’t blame yourself or anything. It’s really not your fault. It’s the house.” He snorted, his voice dissolving into a succession of throaty giggles that sounded to Tyler like the devil dragging his fingernails across a blackboard.

  Finally the orderly reached the door and unlocked it, swinging it open wide and bursting in, baton raised, like he expected Stowe to somehow have gotten free.

  Tyler brushed past him and dashed down the hall as he felt the walls closing in. He had expected the place to be filled with the sounds of insanity—moans, screams and the like—but the utter funereal silence inside the facility was much worse than anything he had been expecting. It was as if Rufus Stowe was the only resident of the damned place.

  The building felt like a gigantic casket as he ran toward the exit; like his gigantic casket. He half-expected to reach the front door of the Granite State Home for the Criminally Insane and find himself buried alive inside it, the door pressed shut by tons of moist earth, gigantic squirming worms crushed up against the glass window, leaving him trapped inside forever with Rufus Stowe.

  But of course Tyler wasn’t buried alive.

  He hit the door at a dead run, the pain in his injured ankle forgotten, and burst into the half-light of another gray New Hampshire day, gulping huge mouthfuls of fresh air as he sprinted to his car. His hair was plastered to his head and sweat rolled in streams down his back. He felt clammy and sick and his panic was, incredibly, still building.

  He leaped inside the car and turned the key in the ignition with shaking hands and jammed the vehicle into drive, jouncing and jolting over the rutted surface of the visitors’ parking lot, hitting Route 112 at thirty miles per hour and accelerating away from the Granite State House of Horrors like a man possessed.

  * * *

  Tyler weaved through the traffic, knowing he was driving recklessly and doing it anyway. He ignored the angry honks and rude gestures of passing motorists who undoubtedly thought he was driving drunk, climbing the road snaking up the side of Sunrise Mountain, passing slow-moving vehicles on turns, not caring whether a car might be traveling the opposite direction or not.

  Maybe he would get lucky and be crushed by an oncoming eighteen-wheel logging truck which would be unable to stop in time and would smash his Toyota like a bug. At least then he would not be forced to confront the words of the madman Rufus Stowe. Was it really possible that his house was somehow cursed? Had Stowe been living a normal life before buying the property, only to be turned into a scythe-wielding, murdering maniac just two weeks after moving in?

  As he drove, the road becoming more and more deserted the closer he got to Darkness Falls, Tyler suddenly remembered a news report he had seen after Stowe was arrested for the triple murders. In it he recalled seeing authorities carrying canvas after canvas of stunningly beautiful artwork out of the man’s house; dozens of watercolor and oil originals, still life renderings and breathtaking scenic vistas, all of which the man had supposedly painted during the short time he lived there.

  Had the damned house stimulated that astonishing creativity while at the same time driving Stowe insane, twisting and turning him into a murderous psychopath? Had Stowe set up shop much like Tyler did, innocently selecting a workplace and then painting all hours of the day and night, losing himself in his artistic expression to the point where entire six or eight hour blocks of time had simply disappeared? Had Stowe awoken later, startled, unable to recall his actions or even his whereabouts during those lost hours?

  And what about Tyler himself? Was he a killer now, too, just like Rufus Stowe? A gibbering homicidal lunatic who butchered an old man in his bed even as he wrote what might be his best material ever? Was it all because of the house?

  He wracked his brain, trying desperately one more time to recall even a few lucid moments from the previous night, a few scraps of memory which might convince him he hadn’t broken into an elderly man’s home for the second night in a row, that he hadn’t sliced and diced the old guy in his bed as he slept.

  He couldn’t do it. His memory was a complete blank.

  The Toyota crested Sunrise Mountain and started down the other side toward Darkness Falls. Tyler could not shake his feelings of confusion and fear. He had visited the killer of his family with the intention of getting some sorely needed answers, but had never imagined what truths might be revealed inside the Granite State Home for the Criminally Insane.

  The road wound through the thickly forested mountain and it occurred to Tyler that he was about to drive directly past poor old Joshua Newton’s tiny residence. He approached the old man’s home, slowing and eyeing the property. Newton’s body undoubtedly had long since been removed, but law enforcement officials continued to work the area. Yellow crime scene tape encircled the yard, strung from tree to tree, a jarring reminder of the tragedy. Men and women in Sheriff’s Department uniforms bustled in and out of the house, collecting evidence while doubtlessly trying to comprehend what would possess anyone to murder a defenseless elderly man in his sleep.

  Tyler wished he knew the answer. He examined the cuts and bruises on his knuckles and palms; injuries consistent with those a man might sustain breaking a window and crawling through the shards. Two knives were missing from the cheap carving set in his kitchen; a set which had been complete just three days ago. He had blacked out two nights in a row and awoken each morning to discover mud and blood staining his clothing. And, of course, the unexplained sprays of window glass on the floor of his office.

  What else could all this evidence mean? Nothing. Tyler knew. He had visited the horror upon Joshua Newton, not once, but twice, the old man inadvertently extending his life by twenty-four hours when he spent the night of the first break-in somewhere else—a sister’s home, maybe, or a grown son’s or daughter’s.

  Tyler stomped on the accelerator and his little SUV screeched away toward Rufus Stowe’s home, the home he had so foolishly rented upon his return to Darkness Falls. Curious Sheriff’s Department deputies stopped what they were doing and watched his car drive away with their flat cop stares but he didn’t care. Tyler Beckman had reached a conclusion, one which was long overdue. He had made up his mind what must be done and there was not a moment to lose.

  12

  The inside of the small stand-alone shed erected behind the house reeked of gasoline and oil. A snow blower stood at the far end, facing the back wall like a student sent to the corner as punishment for some transgression. An ancient lawnmower had been rolled directly behind it, ready for use by the teenager down the street who had been contracted by the realtor to maintain the yard.

  Next to the mower stood a decades-old five-gallon gasoline can, rust corroding the metal edges where age and carelessness had chipped its red paint away. Tyler lifted it and gave it a shake, listening to the liquid slosh around inside. It was roughly two-thirds full. He hoped it would be enough. There was no time to drive to the gas station in downtown Darkness Falls to top off the can. His fevered brain was telling him to do it now; to get this chore done before that cursed house got someone else killed.

  And there was a practical reason for haste, as well. Despite the fact he was now a murderer, Tyler Beckman was no criminal. He had never so much as shoplifted a piece of candy off a drugstore counter, so the chances that he had broken into Joshua Newton’s house two nights in a row, the second night brutally stabbing the man to death, and not left behind a mountain of evidence leading investigators directly to his door were so slim as to be laughable, if any part of this fucking debacle could be considered funny.

  He was a little surprised the authorities hadn’t already come knocking on his door, just for routine questioning if nothing else. Once that happened it would be over, because Tyler knew there was no way he could hide his guilt and shame. And getting caught didn’t bother him—he was a fucking murderer, after all, prison was where he belonged—but he couldn’t bear the thought that the Sheriff’s Department might come and slap handcuffs on him and take him away, perp-walking him into the tiny downtown police station in front of the news cameras of every TV station in New England, before he had a chance to complete the chore he now realized he had been sent back to Darkness Falls to do.

  Tyler hefted the can and lugged it out of the shed. A gusty breeze slammed the wooden door shut behind him. He unscrewed the cap as he approached the house and began circling it, splashing gasoline onto the wood frame above the fieldstone foundation, making it almost all the way back to his starting point before emptying the can, which he then tossed onto Rufus Stowe’s rickety wooden farmer’s porch.

  The cuts on his hands burned and stung from the corrosive liquid and fumes but Tyler barely noticed. His mind was racing. Long-buried memories of that horrible scene from twenty years ago in his family’s living room competed with the freshness of Stowe’s words, less than an hour old: “…hacked to death…I was a totally normal guy…it’s the house…”

  He was breathing heavily now, almost panting, standing bent-over with his hands on his knees, unsuccessfully willing the thoughts of blood and death and destruction to stop. With a shaking hand Tyler pulled a book of matches from his pocket and tore one off the cardboard package. He pulled it across the strip along the bottom and it flared brightly, the sharp smell of phosphorous competing with the oily gasoline stench in the air. For one awful second Tyler imagined the gas fumes igniting, blowing him to bits but leaving the cursed house intact. Then the flame was extinguished by the combination of strong winds and his shaking hands.

  He yanked off a second match, shielding it from the wind with his body, sliding it across the strip and in one single motion tossing it against the side of the house, where the gasoline had already soaked into the tinder-dry siding. The accelerant ignited with an audible whump! and Tyler could feel the oxygen rush toward the fire. He watched, enthralled, as the bright orange and yellow flame raced around the corner, following the now-invisible trail of gasoline. The flames greedily licked their way up the side of the house, stretching and reaching as if they were alive.

  In seconds the lower half of Rufus Stowe’s hell-house was ablaze. The back of the house was of course invisible to Tyler but he knew it was burning as well. He felt a tremendous weight lifting off his shoulders as he watched the flames spread. He wondered if the home would burn completely to the ground before the authorities came to take him away; wondered if he would spend the rest of his life in the Granite State Home for the Criminally Insane like Rufus Stowe and he realized he didn’t care—all he had left in this world anyway was…was…

  Oh God, the book! His book! His new manuscript was almost finished and it was trapped upstairs inside this building, the building which was now burning completely out of control! He should have rescued the manuscript before setting the fire; what the hell was he thinking?

  Tyler pounded up the steps of the farmer’s porch and reached for the doorknob. He knew the glowing metal would burn the skin off his hands but he didn’t care. He had to save his book. He reached for the doorknob and—

 

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