+++

My hotel room is red and dark but kind of nice. The lights sometimes dim going out without my noticing, just this kind of slip-sliding around, following the TV glow. I was sent here. My friend. He told me he would give my mom money. She’s having a hard time with all that’s going on. (I picture her and hope she is well but it’s best we not talk.) This is Amityville, New York, a great place, different now, much smaller but also much safer, more “focused,” someone called it too, which I didn’t really get.  

The mirror on the other side of the wall is dark. I don’t look like much of anything at all. I think I wrote it but the girl I was dating then may have. I just don’t remember, which I guess is fine, is maybe to be expected when you travel a lot, which I feel like I’ve been doing even if I can’t quite remember the places. I paid extra for two TVs. I have to have them both on. Try to cut through the noise. How long have I been here for? I ask him when he calls.  

“After he kills his family and himself, a part of him stays in the basement, where he hears, every few years, a few gunshots, or sees someone enter, terrified, then leave. He listens for a long time, and he hears the voices of other families, another Ronnie,” in some sense they are another Ronnie,” someone seems to say, a voice, as in another version of himself, and though they may not be named Ronnie, and though he knows they are not him –– one may be a high school student, may have blond hair, or may be a Led Zeppelin fan club member, or may have been molested by his father –– or maybe are named Ronnie, or probably are named Ronnie, he knows that they are different and will experience different things. Like Dungeons and Dragons characters, born of dice rolls––randomness––but rigidly held to some gameboard, which like life cannot be reversed through, but that one has to move forward upon, barrelling toward a bad conclusion, death & loss, a true losing, but within a hard sequence, a series of events that are fixed, and between forced events, little playable movies that function like checkpoints, like a series of baseball pitching machines, organized into a straight line, feeding the ball forward, thump thump thump of slow sliding, being *popped* forward ushering them toward a conclusion, the hard ending. He stays like this awhile, listening, until the thing that he is –– he imagines himself as resembling a little black smear on a hardwood floor, or a black spill in the carpet. Stiff & hard, or a black swirl, a mound like self-snuggling rope, or shit, black shit, raising with a point out of the gully of a toilet bowl –– dissolves, or evaporates, or vanishes (probably sinks) down, down, down toward ever less clarity & feeling, an inevitable sequence that glides trackwise, toward an end and exit, experienced as nothing (first ending his relationship to the world, and then himself) & whatever insensate trace flattens like march snow, and he is gone.”  

Ronald DeFeo lived with his family in a house, large, haunted, and with fan-shaped windows. His house is so big. He gets lost in it sometimes, just a kind of falling around, like slipping but never falling, moving on ice, leaning forward, slipping, then a *woosh* and he’s upright like someone weightless, a tiny piece of red string, on fire, taped to a big brass pendulum. Like the guy in 2001 A Space Potty a Space Party I don’t remember what it’s called, he thinks, kind of says, lips moving, no sound except like TV fuzz. The static on TVs are cool he stands up hands out like a baby reaches for a TV but misses like is there even a TV in this room, you dumbbell. Who cares he says, raising his hands like uh, and holding them there for a while, going white and sweaty, like the mummy, no, not mommy, mummmy. Mummy mummy mummy you idiot. In National Geographic. You can tell that the skin on them bones is fake. Made out of jerky, boiled down, and stretched over the bone with a rubbersqueaking keekyeekykeky –– sounds like something –– or one other some dumbass running, i bean tubbing. i don;t know haha cme on and kill me .haha take me over satan and run me down (like the fan, a bat) beautiful by paid professionals, bunch of queers in California, I bet, he kind of whispers, looking down, slipping forward. huhpihip lips flapping to h t k take eat get them too, bathroom fan screaming a bat up there i bet aaaa He’s a good looking guy. His uncle said he could be on a beer commercial.  

He walks through the house showing his family to you: this is my mom this is my sister he points that’s my other sister  

Ronald DeFeo was born in 1973. He’s still doing the tour but its morning now. He forgot to fall asleep which is going to cost him with daddy  

his ass is crapgrass sees crabs in grass running crazily and reaching over the points.  

The string stadium-sized, as big as the moon, his tiny string flapping above the clouds. . walking past his mom as he goes to the kitchen, kind of grinning, to, um, get a Coke or something. He smokes pot. Does drugs. Whatever man don’t bug me, he thinks, perturbed, as he sits in a cool black puddle in a corner of the house.  

He walks around the house a shadow he kind of squeezes into sometimes if he takes a fall in the kitchen after drinking beer, pot, LSD, heroin, whatever man. Like I was saying you have to kind of like fall into it like lean a certain way when im falling to hit the dark spot –– right there, the black smearthing on the linoleum, a little kind–of room  

This is 1974, the early months, maybe summer; Ronnie, 24, lost in what he calls it “being concerned”–– meaning crazy. He had a feeling of deja-vu, remembering things, or seeing things in corners, Soon the fan- shaped windows.  

Ronnie did not know, could not have known that the windows of his house, two of them, the quarter-circle windows that are on the top floor in a room he rarely enters would be used as part of 40+ year marketing campaign––but they made him feel weird, like he needs to pee “Ronald told me we are reliving the DeFeos’ life. This has been the worst year ever. I am going to need help. How many dead bodies you think are in that wooded area?”  

On Nov. 13, 1974 six members of the DeFeo family were murdered inside their Amityville home. Ronald DeFeo Sr., 43, his wife, Louise, 42, their two daughters, Dawn, 18, and Allison, 13, and two of their sons, Mark, 11, and John, 9, were found dead, each with a single bullet in their back. They had apparently been killed in their sleep, and the family’s sole survivor, the DeFeo’s 23-year-old son, Ronald DeFeo Jr., would eventually confess to the murders.  

“Since I been involved with Ronald DeFeo, things going on in my house, with me. Nightmares. Scratching in my walls. Beds banging. Voices. My daughter saw a man, tall dark man. shadow. He’s in her room. Because it was open. He shut it. Somebody was banging on their door. I looked at the mirror in the bathroom. I saw myself different. I think it was Ronald’s mom.”  

If we don’t deal with this, and do it immediately, and Ronnie passes, this entity is going to find a new vessel. It may be a visitor in prison. A woman visiting her husband. Two or three months later. Kills her whole family. We’re going to have to get out of this also. If ghosts are souls, we maybe don’t have them.  

A soul is a thing that can escape like a dog, look at you. Or it’s emotional burn-in––an effect, a form of damage or scarring. or staining. A ghost is a memory seen on the outside. A memory that causes a refracting of the light, organizing, or concentrating it into a form.  

We see rainbows. the illusions are real, whether or not they are universal.  

The DeFoe family passed away quietly at home. November 14, 1974. Investigating police found “no signs of a struggle.” Contemporaneous crime scene photos show a large and tidy home, decorated to the tastes of the day. A few contain bloodied figures, or women, dead in bed but very alive-seeming. Any gore looks b-movie (fake). Still, six would die: mom, dad, kids, four of them, all dead of gunshot wounds.. Ronald and Louise each absorbing two rounds before letting go. The four kids, owing to inexperience, were killed much more quickly; four of four had only to be shot once.  

The photographer approaches the dead. Flash
Raises the camera. Flash
A police officer waits, listening, says, “You know what?”
“What,” another officer says.
“This is some, I hate to say it, but really very accomplished shooting.”
The man nods in the gloom, leans over the deceased, and says, “yeah, I just don’t–– I just don’t see how he was able to do this.”
Outside of the window, a––– 

The DeFoes’ surviving son (Robert Jr) was brought in for questioning by the police, who watched him act erratically, yelling or something about the mob, mafia, organizations of that nature, Eighteen hours later he would confess to killing his family. “Once I started, I just couldn’t stop. It went so fast,” he told detectives. He didn’t know the fine detail of the violence he inflicted, the hurting them, didn’t know the weapon or lines, like wisecrack, smart guy things. Like whatever he said is forgotten. Well, in bits he has it, the feeling of hurting them, a red elbow, the seagull sound, other things. What he would do. Exactly. Like remember: No. When Robert Jr. was young he did everything wrong. Everything wrong. He burned a kitten. He beat his brother. Why wouldn’t he? Who else would. He kind of remembered it even parts of the hurting. the way the light was + later, a smell  

\  

commercial for mesothelioma . . . commercial for smuckers . . . commercial for peanuts . . . commercial for adult diapers . . . the game show is back on. the host is telling the Barkl family to get on the floor and bark like dogs. they obey, winning 2000 dollars. they cone their hands and whisper in the host’s ear (sip sip sip sip ) as an airhorn goes off commercial for diamonds . . . commercial for Google . . . commercial for life insurance . . . the host is an enormous black man in a heavy linen suit. though he died 16 months ago, the reruns still air in the afternoons of the poor, aged, and infirm. after the commercials the Barker family wins, running onto an island set where they’re draped with their winnings commercial for beer commercial for carbonated CBD soda commercial for 1-800-4MY-MEDS, as a child watches porn in the green room

.  

he killed them, / maybe he was / he wasn’t / the worst thing / everyone was dumb is dumb murderer / he did do it then / worked up / am worked up / they tricked him / probably did / he did do it / then feeling like / these mfs / what even can I f’ng do / mf mf / this lightblue prison world, / this robins egg horse ass nonomine / wtf / mf mf mf.
Mf  

During his trial, Robert DeFoe Jr, revealed his diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder, a drug history involving heroin and LSD, and the auditory hallucinations he experienced and that he often believed to be the voices of his family “conspiring against him.”  

On November 21, Defoe Jr. was convicted of six counts of first-degree murder, and sentenced to six concurrent sentences of 25 years to life. Robert DeFoe Jr. would later claim his deceased 18-year-old sister Dawn had plotted the murders with him, and that she had killed the children, and that he had killed her after witnessing the murder of his siblings.  

He is in his cell now, he thinks.
”back to your cell,” a mindvoice tells him.

In Amityville 2, a character credited as “Removal Man 1” discovers a tiny door in the family’s basement. Hey lady, looka like you got another room in here, he asks. Want me to check it out for you?
The “room” is a black tunnel, featureless but for the glistening surface of wet antique stonework.  

Removal Man 1, played by Danny Aiello III, is not seen again for the remainder of the movie.  

First, a station wagon: the father, and two small children get out. A mother and her teenage daughter exit a black sedan. Ronnie arrives in a red sports car. Blood runs (briefly) from a kitchen sink. The daughter and the son openly flirt with one another in a room with fan-shaped/quarter circle windows. A handyman walks into a crawlspace. The house –– very much an obvious set with empty, void-like windows that flash during storms –– becomes the stage for escalating domestic abuse & disorder, interrupted only by “evil” events, akin to the arrival of fly swarms, or a teenage boy’s face turning green. the arrival of bugs. The family fights, a tablecloth floats, then enshrouds a candlestick, imitating a fake ghost, a kid in a sheet on Halloween in a blurred & woozy antique photograph.  

I saw the boy with a green face; he a priest. Something outside, a funeral, a priest, a green demonboy. Two or three A.M., a decade or so ago. On vacation. The others had fallen asleep. Vacation cable’s dim novelty. Blue TV strobe.  

THE BACKGROUND FALLS AWAY, IS BLANK. THERE ARE THESE EFFECTIVE FLIRTATIONS WITH AN ABYSS, ETERNITY –– A LONELY REALM, PERHAPS BLACK AIR, A TIRE FIRE, THEN DARKNESS, OR MAYBE NOT DARKNESS, LITTLE WHITE ISLANDS, OR DOORS LEADING TO THE BASEMENTS OF HAUNTED HOUSES, THE BASEMENT LIKE A KIND OF NETWORK, A BLACK AND VAST LOBBY, A NEGATIVE OF CENTRAL STATION, A CENTRAL STATION THAT CAN NEVER BE FULLY KNOWN, WITH SECRET DOORS, CAVES, BASHFUL CREATURES, GLIDING, LIKE FISH, THROUGH BLACK AIR, HEAVY MURK. BLINKING, LIKE THE SEA. FOR THINGS TO CREEP THROUGH, USED ON THE NIGHT YOU LEAVE, WALK UPSTAIRS, WANDER THE LONELY SUBURBAN HOUSE

It is like the works of Lovecraft, banality, homely prose, genre –– then a kind of pulling away or back so to reveal a vast image. The family seems trapped there, in a big fake house that seems infinitely complex, and that quietly mutates. One imagines walking out of this house, being confronted with a blank horizon, or a videogame like invisible barrier that encircles the house, forcing the residents back in, where the sequence –– the living or reliving or imitating –– that they participate in w/o understanding its meaning, or the way that it leads inevitably toward a conclusion in which everyone is dead.  

(One imagines a different family, also called the DeFoes, arriving at the house in the next few months, activating thee preordained sequence, and this reoccurs continually, a natural cycle. in the casual and uninterruptable manner of a moon circling its favourite planet.) I will be forced to finish the intractable sequence. It is like living in a bleak snowglobe. The effect is douglas sirk like.  

Ronald DeFeo, pictured, killed his entire family on November 14, 1974.
His house became “America’s Haunted House.” People would go and look at the windows, which looked to some people like fans. To other people the windows resembled eyes.  

People see Mary Magdalene in steam and the folds of their clothes. The Hope Diamond is haunted. James Deans car killed its owner(s). Joseph Smith spoke to angels in New York. The Amityville Horror was real. Newspaper horoscopes predict the future. Jesus Christ was resurrected. Muhammad flew to heaven on a winged steed. Dead people live forever. Humans believe in all sorts of things. Believing in one of these things, belief in something like one of these things, does not mean you?re crazy. It does not usher one toward an abyss of being ostracized. It does not protect one from rules, law’s cold codification, a morally neutral process. It doesnt protect one from anything. It shouldnt either. I don’t know.

I was living with my parents in 1994. I was twenty-two, then twenty-three. I had graduated from college and was in an office doing clerical work. It was fine. I was satisfied. I was normal, which is not to say that life was perfect. I was lonely, yes, and slightly overweight, and maybe at times possessed with a kind of dreaminess. Space cadet, my coworkers called me. I was normal. I wasnt using drugs. I had never been arrested. I was generally happy, and generally clear-headed, though like I said, was sometimes dreamy, sometimes indulging in nostalgia, a sometimes-painful nostalgia maybe abnormal, maybe sometimes between normal and abnormal.

The lights sometimes dim without my noticing, headlights from outside slip across the walls like a film projection of someone buttering a pan. A friendly ghost lives in the basement, emerging from a little hole, draped with cartoon chains and swollen padlocks, blurry face vibrating between drops of condensate falling like rain. Mom wants me out. He told me he would give mom some money for my rent. She’s having a hard time with all that’s going on, the flies and poltergeists, plus her son going nuts. This is Amityville, New York, a great place to raise kids; it’s just this big house with fan-shaped windows that’s so utterly fucked. 

The mirror on the other side of the wall is dark. I don’t look like much of anything at all. When I blink I forget my appearance. It’s hard to remember your name when your face is all blurry… 

+++

Ben Faulkner is working on a novel. His work can be found at Forever Mag, Expat, Idiomenon, Don’t Submit, and elsewhere.