Friday, April 27, 2012

The Amityville Incident

I've wanted to begin a writing blog for over a year now and have finally gotten around to do it. I imagined my first post would always go something along the lines of, "Hello world, I'm a fiction writer who especially loves writing horror and I'm dedicating this site to share my work, and recommend the work of other writers to you."


But it didn't happen that way because The Amityville Incident happened two nights ago, and it was too perfect a story to not have it be the first post of a horror writer's blog. It also scared the shit out of me and I haven't been able to forget it.


For those of you not familiar with the novel The Amityville Horror, it was a novel written in the 70's by Jay Anson. It's based on a true story about an evil house that made a 23 year old man murder his entire family in their sleep. A year later, the Lutz family moves in, and one night Mrs. Lutz was up screaming, "he shot them in the head!" which is how the previous family was murdered, though Mrs. Lutz was not aware of this detail about the killings.


My better half has never seen this movie or read this book.


The other night, I was watching TV in bed and couldn't sleep. The was something about our bedroom window that was creeping me out, and I didn't know why. Usually after I watch a scary movie or read a scary book, I usually revert back to my eight year old self who is convinced their is an evil Hell lizard lurking in my closet just waiting for me to nod off so he can dark me down into the fiery depths to his master. I know this is not true, but it still keeps me up at night. This is the state of mind I was in that night though I hadn't read or watched anything scary for several weeks, but I still couldn't sleep.


Finally, as the midnight hour began to approach (I know began It's Always Sunny had ended and Family Guy was coming on at its midnight slot), I finally started to nod off. But in my hypersensitive state, I woke up not five minutes later because I felt something move in my bed. I open my eyes to see my better half (who had been snoring with his back to me for the last two hours) began to sit up in bed.


"What are you doing?" I asked.


He sits up, points towards our living room, and begins screaming at the top of his lungs, "he killed them all in there! He smashed them all in there! They're all dead! He killed them all!"


I bolt up, panic stricken and frantic. "What are you talking about?"


And then he begins to laugh. Not his regular funny laugh, not his I-drank-myself-so-stupid-I'm-snorting laugh, not his I'm-mocking-you-because-you're-dumb laugh. This was the most unnatural, maniacal sounding laugh I've ever heard in my life, one that he's never done before, one that would rival an Oscar winner for best lunatic laugh. This laugh made my skin grow cold and tight and made my heart try to escape through my chest.


He keeps laughing as he lays down, and pushes a pillow over his face while all the while I'm smacking him and telling him to be quiet and stop scaring me. But he doesn't stop. He keeps laughing as he sticks his head out from under the pillow, his eyes wide, face strained, hair sticking out, smiling at me like Jack Nicholson in The Shining.


"He smashed them all," he says in a strained voice as his hand reaches out and begins to try to claw my eyes out. "He smashed them all and he'll smash you too. He smashed them all, and he'll smash you too." He just keeps repeating it over and over, and all the while I'm trying not to lose it in total panic as I'm smacking his hand away.


And then he stops.


Just like that. He stops the laugh, stops the clawing, stops everything and just rolls over and goes to sleep while I'm sitting there completely terrified and wondering what in the hell just happened. I had no idea what to do. Usually when I'm afraid my first reaction is to superglue myself to him, but he was a freaking lunatic so that wouldn't be a good idea. I froze every time he moved, not wanting crazy man to come back. I thought about going to the couch, but that wasn't an option because there was obviously something very bad out there. I thought maybe about going through the window and sleeping on the back porch, but the window was what had been freaking me out in the first place. So there I was. Trapped in my own room with a crazy man and evil things lurking outside my walls.


Needless to say I got very little sleep that night.


The next day when I asked my better half why he had done that, he had no idea what I was talking about. Now he does like to scare me from time to time, but he always laughs right after he does and I get a night of cuddling because he know I want sleep well after I've been freaked out. So it doesn't make sense that he would do that on purpose, and it scares me that he had no recollection of the event at all. He doesn't usually talk in his sleep, when he does its always something so funny he wakes me up laughing, yet he remembers it the next day. He hadn't done anything different or out of the ordinary in his day. There's no explanation that I can think that would make sense of why The Amityville Incident occurred.


And the second worst part, no one believes me that this really happened except for my parents! I have the most terrifying night of my life and everyone says, "that's a cool story, is it part of your new book?" No! It did happen. It's comical in a way. All my life I've written horror stories where no one believes the main character had actually experienced any paranormal events, and now I am the one who is doubted when I tell a real life tale. Kind of ironic, isn't it?


So that was my night of terror, and since very few believe me, maybe I will go ahead and turn it into a short story. Why not? It already sounds like something from a dime store fiction novel.


And so I ask again, what better a way to begin the blog of a horror writer than with a true life tale of terror? For these are the fears from which fiction is made.