The Amityville Horror (13 page)

The voice on the other end came through loud and clear. "Father. This is George!"

The priest couldn't believe his ears. It was as if George was standing right in the room with him. He was so surprised that he blurted, "George?"

"George Lutz. Kathy's husband!"

"Oh! Hi! How are you?"

George held the receiver away from his ear and looked at Kathy standing next to him in the kitchen. "What's with him?" he whispered to her. "He sounds like he doesn't remember me."

Father Mancuso knew who George was, all right, but he was still stunned to hear from him on an open line without any interference at all. "I'm sorry, George, I didn't mean to be rude. I just wasn't ready for your call this way after all the trouble I've had reaching you."

"Yeah," answered George. "I know what you mean." Father Mancuso waited for George to continue, but there was only silence. "George? You still there?"

"Yes, Father," said George. "I'm here and Kathy's right beside me." He looked at his wife. "We want you to come back and bless the house."

Father Mancuso thought of what had befallen him the first time he had blessed the Lutzes' home. He looked at his white gloved hands.

"Father, can you come right away?"

The priest hesitated. He didn't want to go back there, but he couldn't tell George that in so many words. "Well, George," he finally answered, "I don't know if I can right now. I have the flu again, you see, and the doctor doesn't want me running around in this cold weather-"

"Well," George interrupted. "When can you come?"

Father Mancuso began to look for a way out. "Why do you want me to bless the house again? You don't do that just at the drop of a hat, you know." George was desperate. "Look, we owe you a dinner. You come, and Kathy will cook you the best steak you've ever had. Then you can stay overnight..."

"Oh, I couldn't do that, George ..."

"Well, we'll make you drunk enough to stay!"

Father Mancuso couldn't believe what he just heard. You just don't say such things to a priest. "Listen here, young man, you-"

"Father, we're in a lot of trouble. We need your help."

The priest's anger evaporated. "What's the matter?" he said.

"There are things happening around this house we don't understand. We've seen a lot of ..." The telephone line began to crackle on both ends. "What'd you say, George. I didn't hear you."

There would be no more conversation between the two men. There was no longer anything to be heard on the line but static and a loud whirring sound. Both men knew it was no use and hung up their telephones.

George turned to Kathy and looked around the room. "It's started again. It's killed the phone."

By the time Father Mancuso put down the receiver, his hands were burning again. "God forgive me," he said aloud, "but George is going to have to get help from someone else. There's no way I'm going back to that house!"

15 January 2 to 3 - Disappointed that they couldn't convince Father Mancuso to return to their house, George and Kathy discussed other ways of getting help. Both had agreed that now that they had already moved in, it would be unseemly to ask the local parish priest in Amityville to bless the house. Besides, he had been the confessor to the DeFeos, and George recalled from the newspaper accounts that he was an elderly man who pooh-poohed the thought of "voices" in the house telling Ronnie what to do. He wasn't much of a believer in occult phenomena.

At one point, George talked of vandalism. Possibly someone was trying to frighten them out of the house, using violent acts of destruction to hurry their departure? Kathy had her own opinions. When she had said something had touched her, had George thought it was just her imagination? He didn't. Could he explain the horrible figure burned into the brick wall of the fireplace? He couldn't. Had they really seen a pig's tracks in the snow? They had. Would he agree that there was a powerful force in the house that could hurt the family? He did. What were they going to do? When they went to bed at night, George told her he had decided to go to the Amityville Police Department the next day.

During the night of January 2, George again bad the urge to check out the boathouse and found Harry fast asleep in his doghouse. The next morning, he drove Harry to the animal hospital in Deer Park that he had been using and had them check the dog over thoroughly. It bad cost him $35 to discover that Harry was sound and didn't appear to be drugged or poisoned. The vet suggested that the animal's lassitude might possibly have developed from a change in his diet.

On the morning of January 2, Father Mancuso again blessed the Lutzes' home. He didn't perform the ceremony in Amityville, but at the church and the Long Island rectory. In the church the priest held a votive Mass-a mass that does not correspond with one prescribed for the day, but is said for a special intention, at the choice of the celebrant.

Father Mancuso had removed his gloves. He knelt at the altar and opened his missal. He began: "I am the Savior of all people, says the Lord. Whatever the troubles, I will answer their cry and I will always be their Lord."

The priest crossed himself and read aloud the opening chapter of the Mass: "God our Father, our strength in adversity, our health in weakness, our comfort in sorrow, be merciful to your people."

Father Mancuso lifted his eyes to the figure on the cross. "As you have given us the punishment we deserve, give us also new life and hope as we rest in your kindness. We ask this through Christ our Lord."

He closed his missal, but kept his eyes on Jesus. "Lord, look kindly on the Lutzes in their sufferings, and by the death of your Son, endured for us, turn away from them your anger and the punishment their sins deserve. We ask this through Christ, our Lord. Amen."

After the votive Mass, Father Mancuso returned to his apartment to find a stupefying odor of human excrement pervading his rooms!

He gagged but managed to throw open all the windows. The freezing air rushed in, providing momentary relief, but then the stench overpowered even the cold wind. Father Mancuso ran to his bathroom to see if somehow the toilet had backed up. But no, there was nothing amiss-not until you tried to breathe!

The priest knew there was a cesspool under the front lawn of the rectory and dry wells behind the parking lot. He enlisted the aid of the maintenance man and together they found that no animals had been trapped in the wells and that the cesspool was in good working order. There had been no apparent leaks in the plumbing.

Father Mancuso feared that the horrible odor might begin to pervade the entire rectory. Other priests might be driven from their rooms to the school building across the yard. The Pastor would be extremely upset over the incident. Finally, Father Mancuso decided to bum incense to dispel the noxious stench.

Up to that point, Father Mancuso had not attributed the source of the smell to his own apartment. But after lighting the incense in his rooms and returning to the school building with the others, the priest realized that his apartment had been the first struck-evidently while he had been celebrating the special Mass for the Lutzes. He then made the terrifying connection-a disembodied voice in 112 Ocean Avenue had told him to "Get out." Whoever that voice belonged to, it had reached clear across to the Rectory to give him the same message.

There was another connection Father Mancuso had been trying to make. He realized it when he stood by the windows in the lobby and looked across to his apartment in the Rectory, remembering one of the lessons he learned in demonology-the odor of human excrement was always associated with the appearance of the Devil!

In the afternoon, Detective Sergeant Lou Zammataro of the Amityville Police Department went along with George, saw the wrecked garage door and the animal tracks still visible in the frozen snow, and then went into the house. He was introduced to Kathy and the children. She repeated her story of the ghost-like touchings and took the sergeant into the living room to show him the image burned into the fireplace wall.

Even after George and Kathy showed him the red room in the basement, they sensed Zammataro's skepticism. He had listened to George's version of the evil, use of the hideaway, nodded when George mentioned Ronnie DeFeo as the builder of the secret room, then asked the Lutzes whether they had any concrete facts to base their fears on. "I can't work on what you believe you've seen or heard. Maybe you ought to get a priest in here," he suggested. "It sounds more like his kind of job than a cop's."

Sergeant Lou Zammataro left the Lutz house and got into his car. He knew he hadn't helped the young couple at all. BUt there was really nothing he could do for them, except maybe have a cruiser stop by once in a while. There had been no use in frightening them anymore, he, bad told himself as he drove off. Why make things worse by mentioning that he bad felt strong vibrations, "a creepy feeling" the moment he once again walked into 112 Ocean Avenue?

When the sun went down, there still wasn't very much relief from the stench at the Long Island rectory. The C, heavy smoke released by the burning incense had gotten into the eyes and lungs of everyone who had entered Father Mancuso's rooms. His visitors were no longer able to tell whether they were nauseous from the smoke or from the original smell.

Father Mancuso had left his windows wide open in the hope that the cold air would eventually drive the odor from his rooms. But that effort backfired; the inrushing wind had only blocked the smoke and smell from getting out. The priest had wanted to tell the others that he knew what had happened and why, but he kept his own counsel, praying for a quick deliverance from this latest humiliation.

Immediately after Sergeant Zammataro bad left, George noticed the compressor in the boathouse had stopped. There was no reason for the machine's stopping-unless it had overloaded the circuits and blown a fuse. That meant he would have to go down to the basement in the main house and examine the fuse box.

George knew the box was in the area of the storage closets and took a fresh box of fuses down with him. In the cellar he quickly discovered the blown fuse and replaced it. He heard the compressor start up again, making a loud racket as it began to chum, but waited to see if another overload would occur. After a few moments, he was satisfied and started to go back upstairs.

When he was halfway up the cellar steps, George became aware of the smell. It wasn't fuel oil.

He had his flashlight with him, but the lights in the basement were still on. From his position on the stairs, George had been able to see almost the entire cellar. He sniffed and then sensed the foul odor was coming from the area near the northeast corner-by the plywood storage closets that shielded the secret room.

George went back down the stairs and warily approached the storage closets. As he stood before the shelving that hid the small room, the odor became stronger. Holding his nose, George forced open the paneling and shone his flashlight around the red painted walls.

The stench of human excrement was heavy in the confined space. It formed a choking fog. Nauseated, George's stomach began to heave. He had just time enough to pull the panel back into place and shut out the mist before he vomited, fouling his clothes and the floor.

Father Mancuso and the Pastor of the Long Island rectory had been friends for several years, ever since the priest had taken an apartment in the rectory. Even with Father Mancuso's heavy workload and busy schedule within the diocese, their friendship had ripened and the two priests had become close companions. There was a twenty year difference in their ages, Father Mancuso being forty-two, but there was no generation gap.

On the night of January 3, all that changed. Depressed with the unrelenting, disgusting odor that permeated Ms apartment, Father Mancuso turned on the Pastor and their comradeship was irrevocably destroyed. It started in the Pastor's office, where Father Mancuso had gone to pick up some reports that had been typed for him. He was about to return to his own rooms when the Pastor walked in with three other priests. Father Mancuso had just finished dinner-such as it was, since he had been unable to rid himself of the odor that clung to his clothes. He glanced across the room to the Pastor who was standing beside a desk. "I don't know why the stink is in my rooms only," he barked. "Why am I the only one chosen for this high honor?"

The Pastor was stunned. He couldn't believe what he had just heard. Why, he thought, the man's completely irrational over the incident. "I'm sorry," the Pastor said gently in reply, "but I really can't give you a logical explanation."

Father Mancuso waved his hand at the Pastor in dismissal. The other priests had looks of amazement on their faces. Father Mancuso had never spoken like this, particularly about his close friend. Now his face became red with rage. "How come you're so nice to me, eh?"

What had gotten into the man? The Pastor looked at the other priests, who were avoiding his glance, embarrassed at being included in the outbreak. Then the Pastor spoke up. "I think this business with the smell is getting the better of you, my friend. It would be better if we talked at another time and in another place."

He rose to leave the room. His determined calm deflated Father Mancuso. He retreated, but continued to glare at the Pastor. There was a look in his eyes that came from someone or something within the priest's body. This emotion bad momentarily taken possession of Father Mancuso, just as something had taken possession of, and befouled, his apartment in the rectory.

George had finally managed to clean himself up after the disastrous trip to the basement. He and Kathy were sitting in the kitchen over coffee. It was after eleven P.M. and both were tired from the tension of the ever increasing incidents. Only the kitchen seemed relatively safe; and they were reluctant to go up to bed.

"Listen," George said, "It's getting chilly in here. Let's at least go into the livingroom where it's warmer." He got up from his chair, but Kathy remained seated.

"What are we going to do?" she asked. "Things are getting worse. I'm really scared something can happen to the kids." Kathy looked up at her husband. "God knows what's going to happen next around here."

"Look," he answered. "Just keep the kids out of the cellar until I set up a fan down there. Then I'm going to brick up the door to that room so it never bothers us again." He took Kathy's arm and pulled her up from the chair. "I also want to talk to Eric at my office. He says his girl friend's got a lot of experience investigating haunted houses ..."

"Haunted houses?" Kathy interrupted. "Do you think this house is haunted? By what?" She followed him toward the livingroom, then stopped in the hallway. "I just had a thought, George. Do you think our TM had anything to do with all this?"

George shook his head. "Nah. Nothing at all. But what I do know is that we've got to get help somewhere. It might as well be ..."

As they entered the livingroom, Kathy's scream cut off the rest of George's words. He looked to where she was pointing. The ceramic lion that George had carried -up to the sewing room was on the table next to Kathy's chair, its jaws bared at George and Kathy!

16 January 4 to 5 - George grabbed the lion off the livingroom table and threw it into a garbage can outside the house. It took him quite a while to calm Kathy down because he couldn't possibly explain how the porcelain piece had managed to come back down from the sewing room. She insisted that something in the house had done it and didn't want to spend another minute in 112 Ocean Avenue.

George had confided to Kathy that he too felt uneasy about the lion's sudden reappearance. But he couldn't agree on running away without taking a chance at fighting back.