“To put your minds at ease, I can tell you that we haven’t lost a bus over the cliffs in the past three weeks. That trip, I hear, was very exciting for a few seconds. But I miss the guide. She and I were pretty good friends. Her name was Bubbles.”
“Give me a break,” Monica muttered.
“Not Sandy?” asked a man in an aisle seat just in front of Patty.
“Good one,” she told him.
“How about Rocky?” suggested another passenger.
“Actually, all three perished. It was a terrible accident. But I’m sure we’ll fare better. Won’t we, Al?” The driver raised his arm and gave a thumbs-up. “He doesn’t let a little thing like cataracts get in his way.” After a short pause, Patty asked, “How many of you have been to Beast House before?”
Looking around, Owen saw eight or ten of the passengers raise a hand.
“What’s that, about one out of five? Pretty good. That’s about typical. We get a lot of repeats. There’s something about Beast House that just keeps drawing people back to it. Especially weirdos. No offense.”
A
“The house has had a long and colorful history. Mostly, the color has been red. I won’t get into much of that, though. What I want to do, now, is tell you a few things that won’t get covered to any extent on the tour.
“Beast House has been a popular tourist trap...attraction...since 1932. For those of you who aren’t whizzes at math, that’s a while ago. The Great Depression was going on. Herbert Hoover was President of the United States. Edward the Eighth sat on the throne of Great Britain. Germany’s comeback kid, Adolph Hitler, was defeated that year in a run-off election for the presidency when a guy by the name of Hindenburg burst his balloon...so to speak.”
“Oh, the humanity, ” someone threw in.
“Exactly,” Patty said. “In 1932, the Japanese invaded Shanghai. Al Capone was sent to prison in Atlanta. The Lindbergh baby got himself kidnapped and murdered. Amelia Earhart was still among the unvanished. Gary Cooper starred in A
“There you go,” Owen whispered to Monica. “Liz.”
“But the
“Beast House had been built in 1902 by Lilly Thorn, widow of Lyle Thorn. Lyle, the leader of the Thorn Gang, was an outlaw known throughout the west during the latter years of the nineteenth century. You name it, he did it. He robbed banks, stage coaches, and trains. He rustled cattle and horses. It’s said that he committed so many murders and rapes that nobody could keep track of them all. The brutal massacres of several entire families in the Arizona territory have been attributed to Lyle Thorn and his gang, but that’s mostly speculation. Some people think the massacres were the work of Apaches. Nobody knows for sure. Nor does anyone know the fate of Lyle Thorn or his gang. Their depredations simply stopped in the early 1890’s. We can only assume that he and his band of cut- throats came to a sudden, violent end.
“On their way to the end, however, they worked up a ton of bad karma. Lyle must’ve passed it on to his wife and children, and I think it all ended up in Beast House.
“As I mentioned, his wife’s name was Lilly. They were Lyle and Lilly Thom. But nobody around Malcasa Point ever saw Lyle. He had apparently ‘bought the ranch’ before Lilly and the kids ever showed up in town. The boys were named Sam and Earl. It’s believed that Lyle was their father, but nobody knows for sure.
“Anyway, Lilly and the two boys arrived in town in early 1902. And they were loaded. Apparently, Lyle’s life of crime had been very lucrative. Before you know it, Lilly had a crew hard at work building her dream house.
“And they all lived happily ever after in the dream house until August 2, 1903, when the beast came up out of the cellar and ran amok, committing wholesale slaughter on her family. You’ll hear all about that on the tour, though, so I won’t get into it now.
“For now, we want to skip ahead about twenty-eight years. During most of that time, the Thorn house stood deserted. Nobody wanted to live there because of the killings. But in 1931, the Kutch family bought it and moved in. Maggie Kutch lived in the house with her husband, two little girls, and her baby son. For just about two weeks. Then one rainy night, her entire family was brutally slain by what she described as a ‘raving, white beast.’ Maggie was the only survivor.
“You might think that Maggie would’ve left town after such a tragedy. But she stayed and built a home for herself directly across the street from the old Victorian. Her new house was a fortress made of brick. And it didn’t have a single window. You’ll see it today. Unfortunately, the tour doesn’t include the Kutch house. Maggie’s daughter still lives there, so it’s off limits.”
A blonde kid a few rows ahead of Owen raised his hand.
“Question?” Patty asked.
“Yeah. If Maggie’s whole family got slaughtered by the beast, how come she still has a daughter?”
“Good question. What’s your name, friend?”
“Derek.”
“Well, Derek, here’s the thing. Maggie gave birth to this daughter
“But you said her husband got killed by the beast.”
“He did. Later on, though, Maggie met someone else. This new man in her life became Agnes’s father.”
“Oh, I get it. Okay. Thanks.”
“Thank you for asking, Derek. Now...” Patty frowned. “Let’s see, we’d just gotten Maggie moved into the brick house. Nobody quite knew what she was up to...why she would want to live there, right across the road from the house where the beast had murdered her family. That place was abandoned, boarded up. Some of the town-folk thought it should be torn down or burnt. At that time, they called it Massacre House. They said it was a blight on the good name of the town.
“But it remained standing, and pretty soon, large, mysterious crates began to arrive. The crates were carried up the porch stairs and into Massacre House. Can anyone tell me what was in them? Lab equipment for godless experiments? Or maybe...”
Derek raised his hand. Before Patty could call on him or anyone else, he blurted, “I know what they had in them! Wax dummies of the dead guys!”
“That’s right. Wax dummies of dead guys
“Maggie put up one other sign before she opened Beast House to the public. My favorite. It was painted in red letters on an old wooden door. Unfortunately, it disappeared years and years ago. But you can see photos of it in Janice Crogan’s Beast House Museum on Front Street. It goes like this.
Patty grinned and said, “Love it. Plenty of the townfolks didn’t, though. They tried to stop Maggie from opening the house, but she wasn’t someone easily stopped and the first tour of Beast House took place, as scheduled, on July 1, 1932.
“Only a few people showed up for it. They were mostly locals. Some were the very people who’d protested against the place. Apparently, they were eager to see just how bad it really was. According to newspaper accounts, what they found was worse than they’d expected. The good folks were shocked and outraged. Several fainted. Others ran from the house, shrieking.
“Now that they’d seen the tour, they considered it an offense against human decency, God, motherhood, and
