The Devil I Know: My Haunting Journey with Ronnie DeFeo and the True Story ofthe Amityville Murders (34 page)

After we’d hung up the phone, I went to my room and waited. At first, I felt his restraint. He couldn’t get past the bars of his cell. Then I felt it—he was out, stretching beyond. I could feel his spirit escaping. I pulled my energy back and let him fly.

The next morning, midmorning on cue, he told me everything.

He had made it into another time. He was driving down Merrick Road in Amityville and checking himself out in the rearview mirror. The song coming from the car radio was Eddie Kendricks’ “Keep On Truckin’.” But
then the song had morphed from his car radio into Dawn’s radio at home, and now he was back in the driveway of 112 Ocean Avenue, and the piece of glass he’d held in his hands in his prison cell had now become the mirror in the bedroom of Ronald and Louise DeFeo.

It had been like walking through a movie set, Ronnie said. Like the whole thing has been built to detail for the benefit of the viewer or visitor. He touched the sleeve of his jean jacket, felt its rough denim. Then, in flashes, it all started happening around him. I had instructed him that the fear might surge, but that he had to resist it. He got frightened, Ronnie told me, but he’d held my picture close and told himself he could do it. He put his hand on the car door to open it, then looked at the boathouse, where the heart was buried, and stayed inside. Strength comes in steps.

“I looked at that sign,” he said. “
High Hopes
. Then I looked up at those two windows, the eyes to hell. I saw you standing in one of them and me in the other, in my prison greens. My whole family was standing behind me.”

“Did that give you comfort?”

“No. It scared the shit out of me.”

He had to find the strength to walk right up to the threshold. Until then, my own family, and my whole existence, was on a tightrope.

“My hand stayed on the knob. Then a hand come down on my left shoulder like a ton of bricks. I looked down and saw the long nails—the way mine are now. Oh Christ, Lucifer. I looked up and he’s got the black hair and real bright eyes. It hurt to look into them. I couldn’t
open my mouth. He said, ‘Welcome, we’ve been waiting for you.’ I jumped back. I know I shouldn’t have, but I did.”

“That’s okay. You’re almost prepared.” He had started calling out desperately.
Bring me back, Jackie! Please, bring me back!
I’d reached my spirit out to his and he’d clung to it like a child. We traveled back together, racing in rewind, until he was back in his cell, safe again in maximum-security prison.

“I opened my eyes and saw the ceiling of my cell. Then I looked over at the clock and saw it was 3:15. For a while I couldn’t move. But I think I’m ready.”

“You aren’t ready yet. But you need to keep going back to show him that you aren’t afraid. That no matter what he does, you’ll keep coming back.”

We repeated the same exercise the next night, and he went a little farther. This time the perception of a movie set began to take on dimension and sensation, as it will when one begins to release himself fully, and Ronnie began to inhabit not only the setting but himself. He became the twenty-three-year-old Butch DeFeo again. As he had the first time, he saw himself in one of the house’s upper windows and me in the other. This was a trick. It had worked the first time, so why not again?

“I was scared that you were stuck in my world, Jackie.”

“I’ve been stuck in lots of places. And I always got out. You can’t worry about that. The more you focus on that, the more distracted you are, and the easier it is for him to win. Stop worrying about me.”

“I’ll tell you the truth, I wanted to go into that house,
I wanted to confront it, but I didn’t want you to have to come with me. And I didn’t want to see them kids dead. Man, I can still smell the blood in my nose. I haven’t thought about that in years.”

“I’m sorry it’s so hard.”

“Yeah,” he said. “It’s hard. Listen, I gotta go. They’re taking me to sick hall again. My fever’s 104. But don’t worry. I’ll be okay.”

Though I wanted to continue his training, this was a relief. I was slumped in my chair with a blanket over me, my temperature nearly matching Ronnie’s. Joanne, Will, and Uncle Ray—who had decided, after everything, to stay—had sat me down the week before and insisted on sharing the poison spirit. I’d asked them what the hell they were talking about. “You know what we’re talking about,” Ray had said. “Whatever it is you have to do, do it. You can’t do this yourself. It’s going to get you first.”

I looked in the mirror, though I didn’t need to do so to know they were right. And I could see in each of their faces that they weren’t going to take no for an answer. So I’d complied. We sat together, and I linked our spirits. I let it run between us until just enough had streamed out of me to allow me enough strength to do what I had to do. That evening, Ray came down with the shakes. The following night, Joanne kept bolting up out of bed and screaming, like she’d been pinched or poked, and through the disorientation of my fever I kept seeing a stretched-out black tarp above her, resembling a body bag. After that, Will’s throat got so raw and his cough so bad that he
winced trying to drink a glass of water. And they all did it with a proud smile.

I took the two large old mirrors out of storage. I’d used them with my mother during séances, and now seemed as good a time as any to break them in again. They hadn’t been touched since Mary Palermo was alive, though when I touched them, I felt her watching me.

“What are you doing?” Will asked.

“It’s time,” I said.

“Is he ready?”

“Maybe.”

Will and Joanne didn’t question. They helped me prepare. We placed the mirrors on either side of my bed, along with some of Mary’s personal effects. We drew a chalk circle with ritual symbols and voodoo signs of the gods, then filled it with offerings—liquor, cigars, perfume, fruit. Six large candles, three white, three black, were lit at the center, symbolic of the meeting of good and evil, the eternal struggle. I took out my grandfather’s war bonnet—a feathered headpiece—plus my protection bag, and my grandfather’s mojo bag. I also took from the storage shed a pair of old rosary beads that had been given to me in Rome by a monk I didn’t know. He had placed them in my palm and said simply, “Someday you will need these.”

I added as many of Ronnie’s items as I could to the circle: his photos, the lock of hair, the tooth, his prison ID, hospital bands, his watch, and several pieces of clothing, including the belt he’d been wearing the day they’d brought him in thirty-seven years before. I needed everything
I could to bring him through. Now that the devil knew the battle was on, there would be resistance and deception. Ronnie was the bait. I was the reinforcement.

Joanne and Will covered the windows and took everything out of the room that might be used as a weapon. I told them I felt scared. Laying your own emotions bare is part of the process. Being scared doesn’t mean you don’t do it. It just means you admit you’re scared.

I closed my eyes and called to the spirit of my grandfather. Then we began. Joanne and Will took notes. The next morning, when I came back, they told me everything.

I had instructed
them not to touch me or attempt to speak to me unless I was stuck in between. One can’t always tell, but the signs will be clear eventually. The person will seem gone, and then he or she will seem to return, but neither journey will achieve completion.

They had observed and made notes during my previous travels with Ronnie. The bedroom door, they told me, had opened and slammed closed several times, and they had watched my body rise inches off the bed. I understand well that to the logical mind this may not seem acceptable. My mind is logical, too. It is possible to live in both the logical world and the spiritual. The two are not mutually exclusive.

My eyes had rolled back in my head, showing whites, and my feet had contorted. Water began to drip from the ceiling, and smoke began to billow in the room. I had
told them that if they felt threatened, or if they needed to leave the room, they should. I had told them, but then again, I also knew both of them better than that. As Joanne was writing, lashes from an unseen hand came down and struck her across the wrists, staining the paper of her notebook with blood.

I had flipped over, so that I was facedown toward the bed, my shirt hanging down. Will told Joanne he didn’t know if he could take it. Joanne told him he had to stay strong and follow directions. The electricity in the house died, and Will ran to get flashlights and more candles.

When I returned, they said, I’d hit the bed with a thud and started coughing immediately. The room filled with the smell of gardenias. But there was little time to enjoy that. They took me immediately to the doctor’s, where I was given IV vitamin therapy to treat the dehydration and antibiotics to treat the cough.

Ronnie arrived at
the doorstep moments after I did. He had accomplished the feat, left his cell, traveled. We stood together at this threshold and steeled ourselves. I took his hand.

I was about to ask him if he was ready to enter, but I didn’t have time. The door flew open, letting out a stench of decay and coldness. I could feel Ronnie’s hand trembling in mine.

“There’s no going back,” I told him. “Right?” He nodded but didn’t say anything. “Be strong. You can do it.”

I pulled him through the entrance and I immediately felt the souls of the DeFeo family all around me, looking for a portal. I tried to open my spirit as fully as possible to the venom, make myself the most inviting target I could. Ronnie didn’t see them yet.

But as we made our way farther into the house, he began to see. We stepped into 1974, and there they all were, asleep in their beds. Louise and Ronald. Marc and John. Allison. His parents and his siblings, once more occupants of the house, figures from purgatory temporarily returned. Only Dawn and Butch were awake. Music was coming from Dawn’s room, soft at first. Ronnie started shivering. I held his hand tighter. Kept myself open.

I took him up the flight of stairs, and there was the twenty-three-year-old Butch, in his room, loading the shotgun. Ronnie moved for him, wanting to pull the gun out of his hands. I yanked him back.

“No,” I said. “You can’t. That isn’t what we’re doing.”

Fear coursed through me, but I couldn’t show Ronnie. He couldn’t be strong if he didn’t believe I was strong.

I felt the spirit of the warrior suddenly rise up in me. The music grew louder. This was it. I ran to the basement and started opening doors and windows, outlets for tormented souls. I ran back upstairs and told Ronnie to execute the task I’d given him, quickly: repeat the pact he’d made all those years ago. Repeat it out loud, and bring him forth. Ronnie was still shaken. I felt their spirits start to flow into me one by one. As their dark souls rushed into me, I sank to one knee.

“Jackie!” Ronnie said.

“Ronnie, do it! Now!”

They were up, out of their beds, their cursed spirits entangled with mine. The spirits thrashed and spun. I tried to hold them there, but my strength would soon fail.

“You came to me at night, in my cell, and promised me the world!” Ronnie said. “All I got out of it was sickness and misery! I don’t belong to you anymore!”

The front door slammed shut, and I heard the windows and doors I’d opened in the basement do the same, one after another. Ronnie and I both felt his presence at the same time, behind us.

We both turned, and there he was, wearing a black suit.

“You’ve lost a soul today,” I said, falling to both knees, but still holding Ronnie’s hand tightly.

“I don’t belong to you anymore,” Ronnie said in a trembling voice.

“You’re devoted to me,” he said to Ronnie.

I squeezed Ronnie’s hand again.

“No,” he said.

Lucifer lunged at Ronnie, knocking him to the ground and separating his hands from mine, then pounced on him like a wolverine. With fear and fire in his eyes, Ronnie shouted, “You can have my body, but not my soul! I’ll never be yours!” The devil battered him, incensed.

As I collapsed backward, I realized that the fires in Ronnie’s eyes were reflections of actual flames. The surge of heat first came from behind us. Then it was everywhere. The curtains caught with a sound like a deafening rip, then the fire started to climb. Heat pressed against my
face, searing my eyelashes. I tried to remain strong, but I was waning. Disappearing.

Wood started peeling and splintering, and large pieces began to fall from the house. Then the whole structure began to crumble, beam by beam. The devil was still on top of Ronnie, growling and spitting, and still Ronnie was yelling that his soul was his own to keep.

Then I saw them, running, running past us and out of the house. Louise first, followed closely by Ronald DeFeo Sr. Behind them, Marc, John, and Allison. At first, I didn’t see Dawn. Then she was behind them, in her nightgown, running, too. Running past the devil, out the door of 112 Ocean Avenue, forever.

They were gone. Flames hissed up the walls and across the ceiling, hungrily licking at whatever else might provide fuel. In moments, we would be engulfed. I reached my hand out to Ronnie. “Take it!” I yelled. “Take it!”

As he struggled blindly with the devil, Ronnie DeFeo stuck his hand out. I grabbed it and pulled with all my might.

We were standing
on the beach of Coney Island, our hands joined. The littered boardwalk and boarded-up arcade stood sadly, the former neon sign that once flashed
Surf Hotel
long dead. Other than Ronnie and me, the beach was empty, except for a solitary figure approaching us across the hot sand. As he came nearer, I could see that the tall man in the black suit was looking at the old sign and laughing.

“Don’t,” I said to Ronnie. I could see him being pulled, still tempted, still vulnerable.

Lucifer walked up to us and looked me in the eye. I watched Ronnie closely.

“You may have freed these souls,” he said in an elegant voice, “but you can’t change the fact that my little warrior here took care of the deeds.”

“It’s a trick, Ronnie,” I said, never averting my eyes from the devil’s gaze. “Your family is free. Don’t fall for it.”