The Moore House Read online

  I’m a big fan of religious-themed horror, and I enjoyed Tremblay’s approach. With plenty of haunted house mayhem, an interesting cast, and a flawed but likable crew of demon hunters, THE MOORE HOUSE is a fine debut and a quick read to get the chills going.

  ~ The Horror Fiction Review

  I adored this horror novel, in every sense. Author Tony Tremblay knows how to terrorize his characters and his readers. I read this over two evenings/nights, which was really brave of me, since THE MOORE HOUSE is super scary. I won't be forgetting this novel for quite a long time. I especially won't forget the explosively terrifying opening scenes involving a homeless, feckless, drifter—and THE MOORE HOUSE.

  ~ The Haunted Reading Room

  THE MOORE HOUSE is an unrelenting tale of possession, distantly echoing themes of The Amityville Horror, The Exorcist and Poltergeist. From the opening page the reader is pulled into the fictional hell of Tony's mind, and it doesn't stop until the final pages. There is no fat on this book—it is lean and muscled, at times brutally graphic. Typically it takes me roughly a week to finish a novel these days, but this treasure was devoured within two days. Not because it's an easy read, but rather the almost seamless and unpretentious style in which Tony writes.

  ~ Michael Upstills Reviews

  Tony's writing will fill any horror reader's appetite ~ rest assured.

  ~ Buttonholed Book Reviews

  THE MOORE HOUSE

  Tony Tremblay

  An imprint of Haverhill House Publishing

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination, used fictitiously or used with permission. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  The Moore House © 2018 by Tony Tremblay

  Cover design © 2018 Dyer Wilk

  978-1-949140-99-6 (Hardcover)

  978-1-949140-98-9 (Trade Paperback)

  First Edition

  All rights reserved.

  For more information, address:

  Twisted Publishing

  An imprint of

  Haverhill House Publishing LLC

  643 E Broadway

  Haverhill MA 01830-2420

  Visit us on the web at www.HaverhillHouse.com

  Dedicated to John McIlveen

  Acknowledgments

  I would like to acknowledge those who have inspired or help shape this novel into its published form. This includes my family, especially my Christian wife who has not read this novel and has no desire to. Though she believes I stand a good chance of divine punishment because of my writing, she still loves me. I love her, too.

  A heartfelt thanks to my classmates of the 2016 edition of The River City Writers – Write Better Fiction seminar, my fellow writers in The Blank Page writers group who meet at the Goffstown, N.H. public library, and to my Necon family.

  I owe a huge smile and a sigh of gratitude to Sandi Bixler, Robert Perreault, Holly Zaldivar, Stacey Longo, Rob Smales, Linda Nagle, Bracken MacLeod, Catherine Grant, Dyer Wilk, and Kevin Lewis.

  In some cases, a thank you seems inadequate. I want to express much more gratitude to the following three people but I’m not sure I have the words to convey how much their support meant to me during and after the writing process. The Moore House exists because of these men: Christopher Golden, the great James A. Moore, and John McIlveen. All of them good men, and even better brothers.

  RUINING TONY TREMBLAY

  An Introduction by

  Bracken MacLeod

  I’m here to ruin Tony Tremblay for you. I’m going to talk about him as much as I discuss his work here because I want you to see this guy for who he really is.

  You see, the writing community is small. It may seem large on the outside, but trust me, once you start publishing and going to professional conventions, the world shrinks. You see the same people, you meet friends who are also friends of people you had no idea were connected, and you hear stories. Oh, the stories you sometimes hear. This world gets smaller when you’re a genre writer. And even smaller still, depending on the genre itself. The community of professional horror writers is a pretty tight group. We can all fit in a phone booth. Okay, maybe it’s not that small. Still, my point is, word travels, and reputations are easy to make and hard to shake once they’ve gotten ahold of you. And boy does Tony Tremblay have a reputation.

  See, he’s widely known in horror circles. We’ve all had frequent encounters with Tony, and we all have a very strong opinion of him as a result. In fact, he’s even earned a nickname; and try as he might, he can’t slip it. See, no matter what Tony says now or how hard he fights to saddle someone else with this sobriquet (and I’ve seen him try to pawn it off on another writer), it’s his. Earned and paid for. We all know really well who he is.

  Tony Tremblay is…

  The Nicest Guy in Horror

  You wouldn’t know it to read his work though. If you’ve read him without ever having met him, you wouldn’t be blamed for pondering what core of darkness sits at the heart of the kind of a man who could write what he does. Don’t misunderstand me. He’s not a one-trick pony. Read his story collection, The Seeds of Nightmares, and you’ll know what I’m talking about. His short work has breadth, slipping easily from quirky, oddly humorous folk horror, like his story “Chiyoung and Dongsun’s Song,” to sentimental magical realism like in (one of my favorites), “Stardust.” But both those stories are still dark at their core. What Tony does really well is explore darkness. Read “Something New” or “The Visitors” in Seeds… and tell me he doesn’t know how to sell a shadow. Better yet, read his story “The Reverend’s Wife” in the anthology, Into Painfreak, and tell me this guy doesn’t have a mean streak that’d make you think twice about ever wanting to meet him, even in a brightly lit place. But like I said, I’m here to ruin Tony Tremblay for you. The guy is damn nice. That’s the nature he’s known for, and he has to live in it.

  Like Oscar Wilde says, “One can… live down everything except a good reputation.”

  Now, unkind people can be nice—those qualities, kindness and niceness, are different, by the way. A real monster can even fake being kind for a bit, but after a while, they always slip and you see through the act. I’ve known Tony for almost eight years, and I’ll tell you, he doesn’t slip. He’s as kind and caring a person as you’ll ever meet. That’s his character, reputations be damned.

  And then, knowing I’m a firm atheist, he Tuckerized me in The Moore House as a hard-drinking, hard-screwing, sinner of a bitter priest.

  Think that’s the mean streak I was talking about coming out? The crack in the reputation revealing his true character beneath? Nope. The fact that he thought to name that character after me makes me laugh hard, and he knew it would. Because it wasn’t done out of malice or mocking, but with affection. Even when he tries to go low, he ends up on high ground.

  So, whatever you think about him after reading stories like “The Pawnshop” or “The Reverend’s Wife” (and I strongly recommend you read both of those either before or after this book—since they’re all connected), know that you’re probably wrong about Tony if you haven’t been fortunate enough to meet him. The man who could think of those things, and the rest of what is about to follow in The Moore House—let me assure you, it’s not cute little Bambis and Thumpers frolicking in a sunny dell—is indeed The Nicest Guy in Horror. Though, truth be told, there is a core of darkness in there. And he goes to that core to write stories like the one you’re holding in your hands. So turn up the lights.

  The Nicest Guy in Horror is about to do some pretty terrible things.

  God bless.

  Bracken MacLeod

  Massachusetts

  15 May 2
018

  THE MOORE HOUSE

  PROLOGUE

  It was said the Moore house had a black soul; many Goffstown residents would agree. Then again, there were those who considered it irrational that a man-made structure could possess or influence moral character. But if you were to ask the joggers, dog walkers, and kids on bicycles who had come within its vicinity, they would not deny that the Moore house intrigued them.

  While it may have stimulated a specific appetite in a victim, its initial assault on each of its targets was similar—the Moore house excelled at enticement.

  It tempted the uncertain who yearned for conformity. It called to the disaffected with assurances of acceptance. It welcomed the indigent with promises of sanctuary—the structure exuded a dominance the weak could not ignore. The strong may have felt a stab of guilt, a tug of regret, or an urge toward hostility when they crossed paths with the house. But those feelings were temporary—forgotten almost as quickly as they had appeared, once the building was out of sight.

  The Moore house’s soul had an appetite that it usually held at bay, but when the hunger rose, it became voracious. That afternoon it would feed again.

  

  Behind the house, a man squatted in a drainage ditch, stagnant water seeping into his boots. He rubbed his eyes with liver-spotted hands that hadn’t held a bar of soap in months. He inhaled deeply, the fluid in his lungs gurgling, choking off some of the incoming air. After regulating his breathing, he dropped his hands to his chin, ragged fingers combing through his steel wool beard, the nails catching on gray bristles. Yanking them free, lice in their dozens tumbled from their feeding grounds. He raked his mop of grease-hardened hair, not flinching at the legion of small insects that scampered across his scalp.

  The rains had moved on two days earlier, yet standing water surrounded him. He wondered why everything around the house was so damp when temperatures had been warm enough to evaporate a child’s swimming pool.

  The ditch traversed the property line behind the house. He peered through a neat row of red maples, so different from the thick, wild woods behind him, all pine and oak and dark silence. The maples were mature, the lowest of their branches hanging four feet off the ground, high enough for an unobstructed view of the structure.

  He scanned left and right in rapid motion. He’d been around long enough to know that patience was not only a virtue, but it could stave off a good ass-beating. He’d learned the hard way. Life on the streets was what it was, but he was damned if he’d be a victim of his own recklessness again.

  He had first noticed the house three days earlier.

  His scavenging didn’t usually bring him that far out of town, but harassment from the police and business owners had forced him to look for food and shelter farther afield. Intrigued, he’d stopped to inspect the house, despite the pouring rain.

  Now, he found himself revisiting it. He wanted more.

  Unremarkable though it was, the house seemed to call to his sense of adventure. It was a brown three-storied Victorian with no garage, and needed a fresh coat of paint, but was otherwise in good shape. The curtains, dull red and sun-bleached in spots, were closed but for a small gap, just like the first time he had been there. He peeked through the gap, searching for the flicker of a television screen – or indeed any source of light. He saw nothing.

  He turned his attention to the lawn, which was overgrown and speckled with weeds. There was an absence of dog shit or ugly urine-stains in the grass. He was relieved: he didn’t like to mess with dogs.

  As the man stepped out from the ditch, his boots made squishing sounds from the water that had seeped into them. He approached the rear entrance of the house, cautious, pausing along the way at a maple tree that caught his attention. He walked toward it and stopped. After a minute, he took hesitant steps to the rear entrance of the house.

  He faced a padlocked, solid metal door. It looked impenetrable, which he considered it a good omen. No one could be living in a house that was locked from the outside.

  Moving on, he approached the nearest window. The bottom sill was chest-height, offering a limited view of the room within. He could see a bed—rather, two stacked mattresses, void of blankets and pillows. The bedroom seemed otherwise empty.

  Searching the ground for a rock, he found one large enough to break the window.

  “Try opening it first.”

  He dropped the rock. Where the hell did that come from?

  He wasn’t sure and wondered if it had come from inside his head—only the voice was so clear and so loud. He surveyed the backyard. Taking a deep, raspy breath, he struggled to control his nerves. He wasn’t prone to hallucinations, even after he’d been fortunate enough to score some weed or a bottle, so he discounted the notion that his mind was playing tricks on him.

  Maybe the house is trying to help me.

  The thought was comforting. People had been screwing him over since he was ten years old when his uncle had crawled into bed with him during a sleepover. If he couldn’t trust his own kind, maybe it was time he put his faith elsewhere. Putting it into a house was messed up, but what did he have to lose? He stepped closer to the window, placed his hands on the bottom sash, and lifted. It opened without resistance.

  He pushed the window up as far as it would go, and even with his many layers of clothing, there was plenty of room for him to shimmy through. He grabbed the bottom of the frame with both hands, jumped, and pulled himself up. He leaned forward through the opening, but his belt buckle caught on the sill. He’d found the thin belt in a dumpster months ago, the oversized buckle embossed with a lewd picture of a woman. He laughed at the notion that her tits were large enough to catch on the sill, then he backed out of the window a few inches. Teetering, he lowered himself onto his belly for balance as his lower half dangled outside. Taking a moment to catch his breath, holding the window frame tightly, he gazed around the room. There was a door, partially open, that led to a hallway. He tilted his head and listened. Except for his breathing, the house was silent.

  He had found sanctuary.

  Relaxing his arms, he leaned forward, extended his hands, and lowered them to the floor. As he touched down upon the worn floorboards, a tickle–not unlike a low-voltage current—ran through his palms. The sensation intensified, then transformed. Like a swarm of yellow jackets rising through the floorboards to attack, needles pressed into his palms. The pain traveled up his arms and he rocked his shoulders in a vain attempt to throw it off.

  What the hell is this?

  Despite the pain, he managed to raise himself up, using the wall for leverage. The needle jabs stopped as soon as his palms were off the boards, but his exertion had thrown him off-balance. He felt himself slipping towards the floor.

  Screw this place! I’m out of here!

  The window slammed down on his thighs with brutal force, breaking both femurs on impact.

  His screams echoed off the bedroom walls. He fell forward, yet somehow found the presence of mind to keep his hands from touching the floor. His palms landed flat against the wall beneath him; his limp legs hung outside the window.

  He fought through the pain, willing his lower limbs to move. He concentrated, willing them to spring to life and start crab-walking up the side of the house, but there was no response. Despite the agony below his hips, he struggled. His legs were useless, a dead, searing weight.

  He shifted his bulk onto his left hand, trying to twist his body so he could get a view of the window. The best he could do was a quarter turn, and from that angle, all he could see was a portion of the frame out of the corner of his eye. Pinned down with no way to escape, he eased back into his previous position. A sound, like the sweep of a broom, froze him.

  Is that sniffing? Oh, God, please don’t let it be a—

  A dog’s muzzle poked through the open bedroom door.

  Fear gathered his reserves and he marshaled them into action. The man’s back stiffened as if iron; he lifted his upper body until he was parallel t
o the floor. Despite the pain, he rocked his ass back and forth in the hope it would dislodge the gravity of the window. Reaching back, he tried to grab onto the sash in an attempt to lever himself out of the opening. The distance was too great. His adrenaline-fueled strength petered out; he fell forward, and this time his palms rested on the floor. Moments passed as he stared at his hands. He waited for the stinging, but nothing happened. He was confused, but the feeling was short-lived. The sniffling was getting louder, closer. He raised his head.

  Standing two feet in front of him was the biggest German shepherd he had ever seen. At least he thought it was a German shepherd. It had the colors of the breed, the pointed ears, and the snout, but that’s where the resemblance ended. This dog was twice the size of any he’d run into on the street. Its eyes were missing, the sockets dark, without a glimmer of life, but what held his attention was the dog’s mouth. It was open and filled with row upon row of teeth.

  The agony in his legs made it difficult to focus on the dog. The pain, the fear, was too intense. His bladder let go. The beast leaned in, jaws open to their full extent. When it was within inches of the man, the dog stopped, extending its neck until their noses touched. The man’s bowels let loose.

  “You think you’re in pain now?”

  Oh shit, oh shit! It talked!

  The dog nodded. “Oh yes, it talks, and oh, what conversations we will have after you die. You think you’re tired now? You think you’re hungry now? You have no idea how much more tired and hungry you are going to be. You have no idea how much pain awaits you.”