Blessed Are the Wicked

by Steven A. LaChance

  May 2007

  Lydia’s graduation came quickly that year. My princess was graduating from high school. I went, of course, even though things between us were still very tense. I had mixed feelings through it all. As I listened to the scholarship awards, I shook my head knowing that Lydia could have been one of the award winners, if she had not made the decision to get married. I got to talk to her and give her a hug when it was all over, but she seemed so distant from me. I can never remember a time when we were so distant. She was getting married in a month, and the closer it came to the day of the wedding, the more we fought. I just could not bring myself to go. How would I give her away, in front of the eyes of God, when I would be lying that it was okay? I just could not do it. I was against it and I was not going to act any differently. And we were fighting on almost a daily basis.

  My dad bought me a pink tie to wear to the wedding with my black suit. I had, for a moment, decided I would go. The day before the wedding Lydia called me, screaming that I was supposed to get a tuxedo, and now they were not going to get a discount on her fiancé’s tuxedo because of me. She knew I was wearing my suit, and I even told her about the tie my dad bought for me to wear. I told her then that I was not coming. I explained to her that you can only push a person so far before they snap. I was heartbroken. I threw the tie away, because I would not and could never wear it. I did not go to my Lydia’s wedding, and in some ways I feel as if that moment in my daughter’s life was stolen from me.

  A few weeks later, in the middle of the night, I got a phone call from Lydia. “Why did you not come to my wedding?” she asked. I explained to her that she was never going to talk to me the way she had, the day before the wedding, ever again. I told her if she could not show me respect, then I had no room for her in my life. We talked for a long time and when I hung up the phone, I was sure we would be okay. It took almost a year for us to finally be good again. It was the worst year of my life. I could not live without my daughter any longer and I could not argue with her anymore. I felt such a loss when she was not around. It almost killed me. Daddy loves you, princess.

  With all of these things going on at once, I decided to write a book. Christopher Booth and I had long talks about me writing a book on the Screaming House, and why I should do it. “Haunting just did not tell the whole story, mate,” he would say. He had heard the whole story, and before we filmed Zombie Road, he went with me to the house. It was the first time I had been back since I had left it. Philip and Keith were with us. I was terrified in the car and could not move as we pulled up to the house. Philip immediately jumped out and began filming. I did not get out of the car. I stayed in the car with Christopher and Keith. Christopher saw the emotions hitting me just from being there in front of it. “You need to write the book, mate. If not for any other reason than that it might help you get over this. I know it is affecting you and your life still,” he said in the car, on the way back to the hotel. Keith and Philip had fallen asleep in the back. It was just the two of us talking; an instant connection between the two of us was made. There are certain things in life that are better kept a secret. The conversation between Chris and me was consecrated. Some things are sacred. That conversation sparked the idea of writing The Uninvited. Without that push, you wouldn’t be reading this sequel today.

  I can’t tell you how difficult it was to write the book. It came out of me so quickly. I wrote the entire first draft in less than a month. The difficult part was facing the emotions that were still left inside me for that horrible place. Activity around my house rose to meet those emotions. There were things flying out of cabinets, banging on the walls, shadow figures; it was almost as if something was trying to keep me from writing it. The more it tried to stop me, the more committed I became to get it done. Morning, noon, and night, I would be writing. The nights were the worst. However, in the end, I had a book. Laura Helbig took the book and did the edit. We then sent it off to four publishers and immediately got a response from Llewellyn Worldwide, which published the book. It was done, and it is true that I left part of me behind on those pages, and some of myself has been left here on these pages. I left a lot of things behind.

  [contents]

  Chapter 22

  June 2007

  We got a call about a family that needed help. They were living in a house, which they claimed was haunted, in the woods of Missouri. The wife had been held and beaten in the shower and the door to the oven had been ripped off its hinges by this entity. Bill and I decided we needed to send a team out to investigate. However, Bill was not able to make this one, so I asked Preacher, Rachel, and her boyfriend to assist.

  At first, when we arrived on the case, things did not seem as violent as the description given to us by the family. It was actually pretty quiet. We began the process of going through the house and taking initial readings, pictures, setting up equipment, and interviewing the family. The master bedroom was located at the end of a long hallway. The family had told us, during the interview process, that most of the activity was coming from there. Footsteps and figures would always lead to that bedroom and at times, it was an impossible room to sleep in. We entered the bedroom and I turned on the light. We looked around and then all of a sudden, everyone in the room began to taste what was described as gunpowder. I have never been a gun enthusiast, so I could only tell you that I tasted something burnt in my mouth. The taste was sort of like when you were a kid and you had those caps you use in a cap gun. Once discharged, they left a smoky residue and if you breathed it in, it tasted horrible. That was the best way I could describe it. It was something like that. We took some EVP samples along with some other things, and then set up equipment to monitor the room. When I turned the light off in the room, I looked back to make sure everything was working, and that is when I saw something glowing underneath a flag on the wall.

  I stopped Preacher and Rachel and we went over to check it out. I pulled the flag back and to my surprise there was a note written in glow-in-the-dark ink. The note read something like this:

  I write this note to whoever is going to find it and read it. I can no longer handle this anymore. He has taken my heart from me and has destroyed everything that I am. I am no longer a person inside this body. I think he is possessed and I am afraid that it is now coming after me. I will not become like him. I am ending my life tonight. I have no other choice but to do it. No one can give me any reason why I should not do it. I cannot be hurt anymore by him. I just can’t take anymore . . .

  The note broke off, just like that. There was something else there, but it was not readable. Below that was a series of claw marks scratched into the wall. They looked like they could have been made by human hands.

  Preacher and I immediately began to cleanse the house. We worked from the front to the back, sealing the four corners. When we approached the bedroom, something drastically changed. From the moment we began the blessing in the bedroom, the closet doors began to open and close violently. At one point, a growl filled the room. We continued the blessing until all of the activity had stopped. The house was finally quiet and you could feel that the negativity had been abolished.

  Rachel was desperately trying to decode what remained of the apparent suicide note. She sat on the floor with a pen and paper, and wrote down every word down along with anything else she could make out. She had a series of words, and for a few weeks afterward was trying to make sense of them. I would get e-mails from her almost daily with some kind of different interpretation. However, that night was the last night I would see her alive.

  I was working as a producer for talk radio at the time. I would produce six hours of talk radio during the day, and I had a show of my own as well. I can remember getting ready to go on the air when I heard a news story about a murder-suicide in Sullivan, Missouri. I did not hear the names. I can remember thinking that our little country bubble of safety had been popped once more. There are murders out here, away from the city. They do
not happen too often, but when they do, you can bet your bottom dollar they are going to be horrendous.

  I wasn’t even in my house when I could hear the phone ringing inside. I threw down my keys and darted to pick up the phone. It was Preacher and he began to ramble on so fast that I could barely make out what he was trying to say. “Slow down, Preacher. I am having trouble making out what you are saying,” I said. The next words he said were slow and deliberate.

  “Rachel is dead. She was shot in the head at close range with a shotgun.”

  I can remember thinking, “Please God, not a shotgun.” The case file history of “The Glow-in-the-Dark Case” found that the girl who wrote the suicide note had killed herself with a shotgun. She blew her head off.

  Preacher relayed all of the details. Apparently Rachel’s soon-to-be ex showed up with a box of gifts for the children. He used this as an excuse to get inside of the house. When he opened the box to show Rachel the gifts, he pulled out a shotgun, shooting her in the face at close range. Then he turned the gun on her boyfriend, just missing him by a hair. Rachel’s ex left and went down the street to the local car lot. Someone asked him what he was doing, and he put the gun on the ground for leverage, bent over it, and shot himself in the chest.

  I hung up the phone. I couldn’t think. I sat there on the couch in complete shock, and then I became violently ill. How do you begin to comprehend something like that? I just kept asking myself over and over, “Why?”

  Rachel’s viewing was a closed casket, because obviously there was nothing left to observe. Her boyfriend was in complete denial at the moment. You could tell by looking at his face he just simply was not there. I gave him a hug and we talked for a few minutes. While I was talking to him, I noticed the gunpowder burns on his face. It was a very close call for him. Rachel’s children were there, and it broke my heart to know they would now have to go through this life without parents. The youngest was not much more than a baby, and I just wanted to hold him and tell him it was going to be all right.

  The funeral service was beautiful and the minister spoke about anger and how you need to let those feelings go, but it is very hard when you are looking at a closed casket of a mother way too young to be in it, and her small children sitting right in front of you. How do you deal with that anger? Those poor babies will never know much about their mother. These children will hear stories, but in the long run that is all they will ever be, stories. I left the gravesite that day and I looked at Preacher and Marie and I told them I was done. I was leaving the group. In my right mind, I could not go on this way. Somehow I couldn’t help but to feel responsible. Could I have brought about the demise of Rachel by simply involving her in the case? The deaths were way too similar. The one thing I did not tell you about Rachel is that she lived on Captain Cromwell’s land in Beaufort, Missouri, when she was a little girl. While living there, she was terrorized by something unnatural. Too much had come full circle for me to ever be comfortable investigating again.

  “What do you mean, you’re leaving the group?” This was the overall reaction from everyone in the group when I told them I was leaving it all behind me. I didn’t give any specifics, really. I left quietly. Most of the group assumed it was so I could go be a writer, which was the furthest from the truth. I could no longer take a chance like this with anyone else. I didn’t want my curse to become the burden for another innocent soul. I was having a nervous breakdown because I felt responsible for so much. It seemed everything was coming to a head at once. I had the weight of the world on my shoulders and I was finally falling apart. What if the Screaming House was what really killed Tommy? What if all of the miscarriages that have happened to the females who were close to me were because of the evil that followed me? What if Rachel had died the way she did because of my connection to Cromwell, and I was stupid enough to let her go on that case? It was too much. The train was heading into the station much too fast for me and I felt like I was losing control. I had to walk away. Even today, I know there are those who do not understand why I gave up my group the way I did. But those people need to understand I should have never started the group in the first place. I had no business doing what I did.

  In return, with anger as a catalyst, the group tried to wipe me away. They erased my name from EVERYTHING. I was no longer remembered as the group founder; I was nonexistent. They had expunged my name from the website I had built. It was almost like a divorce and the children were taking sides. There should have never been sides to take. They tried to eliminate my presence, when they should have been trying to help me get through it all.

  The people who were the closest to me became my enemies overnight. Why couldn’t they see what the truth was and what was happening to me? Everybody was worried about Children of the Grave coming out, but at that moment, I felt no one was really worried about me. They just stole what was mine and left me out in the cold, without a second glance. The rational is the irrational when you have been through everything I have survived. Marie, Preacher, and Tom were the only ones who stuck by my side through it all. They may not have completely understood what it was that was happening, but they knew something was wrong.

  Looking back now, I can understand why the team felt the way they did. I was always the rock they could count on. Through the worst of times, I was always there, solid and moving forward. They did not know or understand what was going on. Years later, after we put it all behind us, I still don’t think they realized what actually had happened and how bad it truly was. I should have listened to Zaffis in those early days when he told me, “You cannot be a case and an investigator at the same time. It’s dangerous and it will not work.” He was right: it did not work. As a matter of fact, it was disastrous. Instead of turning down the dance, I went right along with the devil’s waltz. In the end, it not only almost killed me, but broke me completely down.

  In the aftermath, I was treated as an outcast by those who did not understand that all I was trying to do was protect them. They did not understand that the group should have never existed in the first place. It was the wrong thing for me to do. The group was born out of hell, and I had no business leading it into further disaster. All of the feelings came out in an instant. And no one could see I was hurting. No one could understand there was something terribly wrong. The best thing for me to do was to walk away. I did it for them as much as I did it for myself. It was something that had to be done. I do believe it would have destroyed us all had I not.

  August 2008

  The phone rang one afternoon, about a year later. It was Helen, and I could tell by the sound of her voice she was under, once again. “Steven, I want to tell you something. I just happened to find, in Charlie’s dresser drawer, a pen knife. Now I want you to keep it a secret, because I took it and put it under some magazines next to the bed. Some place where I can easily reach it while he sleeps.” The line went dead. I knew instantly, she was going to try to kill him once more. At this point, I was ready to say fuck it, and let her do what she was going to do. I was not willing to ride in at the last act once more and save the day. I had no more hero left within me. If it were not for Marie, I would have done just that.

  “Steven, you have to call the police. You cannot let her kill him. If she does and they find out you knew what she was planning, you are going to be just as guilty,” Marie pleaded with me. She was trying to talk some sense into me but it was a really hard sell, because at this point, I’d had it with Helen and the monster she held within. Why should I go out of my way to once again save the woman who tried to kill me? She wanted to shoot me in the head and then commit suicide herself, and I stopped her. Why should I do it again? Wasn’t God asking too much from me? And then Marie spoke the words that would change my mind, “If you let this happen without trying to stop this, you are playing into the demon’s hands. Don’t you see that?”

  I called the sheriff’s department and I told them Helen had a knife and what she was planni
ng to do with it. I explained to them that if they did not get to her before she got to Charlie, she would kill him. They agreed to dispatch someone out. After I hung up with the cops, I picked up the phone and called Helen. I spoke to her calmly and deliberately, like I was speaking to a child. “You need to get the knife and put it in the middle of the kitchen table, do you understand me?” She calmly responded with “yes” to everything I was telling her to do. “Now when the police arrive, they are going to ask you where the knife is. You need to tell them it is in the center of the kitchen table. Do not point to it or move toward it in any way. Let them get the knife without your help,” I said to her, afraid if she reached for the knife they might feel it was an aggressive move. “Do you understand me?” I said to her. Once again she calmly responded with a “yes.”

  The police came and got the knife and then gave her a choice; she could either go to the hospital right then or go to her daughter’s house. She chose her daughter’s and they took her there. If you ask her today, she will tell you that she does remember her actions on that night. She will also tell you I called the cops on her, which we both find funny.

  Today, Helen and Charlie are divorced. Helen is doing well now, and there have been no more homicidal episodes. In some ways, I think if the demon was still with her, it left when it understood that I no longer cared what it did. I know that attitude sounds cold, and maybe it is, but it ended up saving Helen’s life. That was the last incident that I had with her. From that moment on, I understood that I needed to keep a safe distance between Helen and me. There have been times when we see each other, but they are few and far between. Sometimes distance is the best move you can make when the haunted are involved, and from where Helen stood, it was the best thing to do for both of us.