Part One
I’ll spare you all the boring details that come with home buying and just get right to the point. We bought the Prescott House. I know how crazy that sounds. I spent a quarter of my life terrified of the place and now here I am walking into the belly of the beast with a measuring tape and paint samples. If it hadn’t been for my wife I would have never even thought twice about it, I would have tossed the paper after reading the sales listing and gone on with my life, but Ginny had other plans. When I showed her the listing I don’t know what I was expecting but her going wide eyed and saying immediately ‘We need to buy this place,’ was not it.
I tried to tell her it was crazy, that the house had a reputation already and clearly the people living there now had had enough of whatever the hell was going on. I told her houses that big selling for that little have to mean something bad and I wasn’t going to risk our sanities or lives just to be homeowners.Ginny saw it differently though. She said the house was always left to a family member, so the rituals and rules they followed were passed down, it must have become so routine at that point the current owners never questioned it. Maybe it started as a manifestation of untreated mental illness and just spiraled from there.
She was positive there was nothing supernatural in the house and that once we moved in and made it our own it wouldn’t be the Prescott House anymore it would be our home. I tried arguing that that thing had terrified every neighborhood kid within fifty miles but she just said that it was a creepy looking house because it was falling into disrepair. She said that once we got a fresh coat of paint and some new shutters it would look just like every house on the block.
I wanted to fight her on it, I really did, but one thing about my wife she is crazy persistent. Besides, she was making good points. For one, we had clearly outgrown our little apartment. We were cramped when we moved in and it only got worse the longer we lived there. We would at least have equity in a home, that if it turned out to be a complete money pit we could turn around and sell (which some of you already suggested). I guess after a while I started to give in a little. Yes, the house still terrifies me, but Ginny just kept saying that if everyone was still scared by the things that scarred them as kids then we would all still sleep with the lights on. So we bought the Prescott House.
The day we moved in we were met by the realtor who handed us a massive lock box.
“I was told to explicitly leave this in your hands only. No clue what’s in it and frankly I don’t want to know.” She left abruptly after that which in my head was another point towards something off about the house and to Ginny was a point that the realtor was pissed over her less than cushy commision.
I immediately cracked it open. Inside was the original deed to the house dated from 1880, a surveyors report of the property lines, a set of old brass keys, a leather bound notebook, a small crucifix and a letter. I know what you all want to hear about. So I transcribed the letter below.
To the new owners of number six Prescott Street,
We want to thank you for giving us the chance to leave this place. This house has been a burden on our family since it was built and to be finally free of such a curse is a blessing.
A brief history of the house. It was built between 1876 and 1880 and was deeded to my great-great-grandfather Edmund Black. Family lore says that Edmund was cursed from birth although some of our family believe the curse was put upon his head on April 15, 1884. On that day a train that was built using parts from Black Locomotive derailed. The derailment killed nearly everyone aboard and some think that the families of those who lost their lives cursed the Black name so much that it truly did curse the family and the home they built using money made from Black Locomotive.
The deaths started pretty quickly after the derailment. Edmund’s wife Clara was boiled alive in their bathtub, although it is unknown how the water became that hot that quickly or why she was unable to get out. Their eldest son Lawrence was killed when he was gored by a rabid stag while out in the orchard. Edmund took his own life in his study shortly after we believe what is left of him has become the Grey Man but we aren’t quite sure. The home was then left to the Black’s youngest son Matthew. As I am sure you can guess, tragedy followed soon after.
Matthew’s eldest son we believe is the young man seen hanging from the closet door. Shortly after his death one of the hired maids was found at the bottom of the servant’s staircase. Her name was Martha, she is the one that cries at night. But you must never go to comfort her especially if she calls for you by name! We lost my dear cousin Isabell that way.
The house was then left to my grandfather Cornelius Black. He lived here with my grandmother Dorris, my mother Agnes and my aunt Kate. I’m sure you can gather that Aunt Kate is the same Kate who tends to inhabit the kitchen. Please be kind to Kate, she is just a little girl. We don’t know if she understands that she isn’t alive anymore. She went skating on the pond the winter she turned eight. But it had just started to thaw and the ice was too thin and she fell through. They brought her back to the house but she never woke up. We think that’s why she’s confused, maybe all of this just seems like a dream to her. I hope it is a pleasant dream.
The drowning woman that you may sometimes see in the lake is my grandmother Doris. After Kate died she became so fixated on the thing it consumed every waking thought until she was driven mad and wadded out into the water with eight stones in her pocket, one for each year Kate was alive and let them drag her to the bottom. Unfortunately, it seems that right before she went under Dorris had a change of heart and tried to fight the pull of the water but was unsuccessful. That’s why you still see her struggling out there some nights. But you must remember not to help her as she will try and put the stones in your pockets.
There have been more deaths here, more than I care to write and much more than I care to remember. I hope what information I have granted you helps you to better understand your new situation. I understand that all of this sounds crazy and you must certainly think myself and my husband are unwell but I promise you every word of what I have written in this letter and what I wrote in our sales advert is true. I hope you have continued reading to this point but I must warn you of what is to come next. The house is going to test you. It does not like to give up its owners easily and it tries to weed out those who aren’t strong enough to handle it. The house will pull no punches and it will make you questions everything you think you know to be true. If you follow the rules it should keep you alive but I warn you what is to come will not be easy.
I thank you once again for freeing us from this gilded cage, and I will pray each and every night for your safety. In the notebook you will find every rule ever recorded by my family for the past 100 years. Treat this notebook as scripture. The crucifix should be kept on your person at all times. However, the more dangerous entities seem to fear any religious iconography so if you are not of the Christian faith, I suppose any holy items will do.
Be safe, be smart, and most importantly trust in the book.
May God have mercy on you.
Yours,
D. Montgomery
I haven’t shown my wife this letter yet. Knowing her she’ll just say it’s more proof that the previous owners were crazy. But to me this is proof positive that every gut feeling I’ve had about this place is true. I am about to walk into the mouth of hell and pretend like every nerve in my body isn’t screaming to get out. I still haven’t opened the notebook. I don’t know if I even want to. They say knowledge is power, but I don’t know if that’s the case here. Maybe the more I know about this house the more it will know about me? But on the other hand, what if the more I know about this house is more ammunition to use against when it throws everything at me? Or maybe I just go into that house and beg and plead with my wife to leave? What the fuck do I do? Seriously, what the fuck do I do?