Palace
of Ghosts
by Thomas
S. Flowers
Date of Publication: March 5th 2019
Publisher: Shadow Work Publishing
Cover Artist: Luke Spooner
Genre: Paranormal Thriller
Tagline: Evil resides in Amon
Palace. Something worse came to visit.
BLURB
Four veterans of the Iraq War seeking a cure for Post-Traumatic-Stress Disorder arrive at a notoriously haunted house in the bogs of Galveston Island called Amon Palace.
Four veterans of the Iraq War seeking a cure for Post-Traumatic-Stress Disorder arrive at a notoriously haunted house in the bogs of Galveston Island called Amon Palace.
Samantha Green, a friendless
former Army K-9 handler looking for a way to put her loss behind her.
Brad Myers, a lighthearted former
Military Police Officer severally wounded in war wanting nothing more than a
good night’s sleep.
Andy Lovejoy, an overweight light
spoken drone operator who once watched the war from above now questions who he
has become.
Marcus Pangborn, a headstrong
Marine who desperately wants a dead friend’s forgiveness.
The group joins Doctor Frederick
Peters, an experimental psychologist looking to prove his exposure theory
hypothesis, and his two assistants, Tiffany Burgess and Dexter Reid.
At first, their stay seems to
conjure nothing more than spooky encounters with inexplicable phenomena. But
Amon Palace is gathering its powers—and soon it will reveal that these veterans
are not who they seem.
Palace
of Ghosts
By
Thomas S. Flowers
Chapter
1
Missing Persons
Detective Carter
studied the man across the table through the smoky haze of stale cigarettes. He
paid close attention to any clue that could give away some other reasonable
explanation than the insanity that had just been confessed. Manila envelopes
and folders spread out before him, containing recent photographs and reports of
what remained of the old mansion out in the bogs on Galveston Island by
Boddeker Road. The fire was substantial to say the least, leaving only skeletal
remnants of charred stone and soot of what was once a magnificent estate. And
among the destruction spread out on the table in interrogation room 2B, six
separate missing persons reports. Reaching down, he switched off the recorder,
flipped the tape and resumed the interview.
“Maybe we should
throw you back in holding for another twenty-four hours—see if that gets you to
start talking reasonably,” Carter’s partner, Detective Harley Warren, growled.
He walked around the room and stood behind the suspect. He leaned close to his
ear and whispered, “What you’re giving us, Doc—well, we ain’t buying it. I
think maybe you’re a shit liar and can’t come up with a more realistic story.
You want to know what I think? I think maybe you did something to your
patients. Maybe you lost your temper and—" he made a slicing motion with
his thumb across his neck.
Squinting
against the harsh fluorescent light above them, Carter focused on the suspect’s
reaction. But all he saw was more of the same.
The suspect
propped his head up with his elbows on the table, rubbing his temples, eyes
closed. “I’ve told you what happened, I know its hard to believe, but—”
“Hard to
believe? I’d say this was all a waste of our time.” Warren stood but remained
behind the suspect. “There are six people missing—six, don’t you think their
families deserve closure? Just tell us where the bodies are and then we’ll let
you go see the wizard, get your own personal padded cell.”
The suspect
scoffed. “Missing? They aren’t missing—they were taken, but long before coming
to Amon Palace. Whatever happened to them happened in Iraq.”
Warren made a
face. “Again with this crazy bullshit.”
“Its not
bullshit—I’m telling you what happened, you simply don’t want to listen. The
suspect glanced behind him, speaking to Warren directly.
Warren waved him
off. “Fancy talk, Doc. But where does it leave us? I’ll tell you, I think you
just scored a free ride to the insane asylum. Three hots and a cot, you’ll be
living like a king while the parents of the people you killed suffer. All
because you’re too chicken shit to tell us what really happened.”
The suspect
looked into his palms and said, mostly to himself, “Insane? Maybe I am
insane—God, I wish I was.”
Carter cleared
his throat. “Okay, Doctor Peters, let’s take it slow. Let’s see if we got this
straight. What you’re telling us is that you put together this group from
patients you were treating at the VA hospital, right?
“Correct,”
Peters nodded. “An experiment in exposure therapy.”
“Jesus Christ,
don’t you think these vets have gone through enough without you playing around
with their heads?” Warren barked.
“I was trying to
help them!” Peters cried.
“Sure you
were—sounds like you were trying to help your own career, if you ask me,”
Warren quipped.
Carter held up a
hand, glancing up at Warren, gesturing for him to ease off.
Warren rolled
his eyes but said nothing else.
“Okay, Doctor.
So, you put together this group for a week at Amon Palace?” Carter asked.
Rubbing his
temples again, Peters said, “I’ve told you all of this already. Yes, I acquired
special permission from Mrs. Driscoll. She allowed me use of her estate to
conduct the week-long experiment.”
“Mrs. Driscoll?
As in Elizabeth Driscoll, daughter of John Driscoll?”
“Yes, and niece
of Sir Christopher Driscoll.”
Carter glanced
up at Warren.
Noticing the
exchanged expression, Peters asked, “Why?”
Carter shifted
in his seat and looked Peters straight in the face, bracing for the reaction
that would come. “Elizabeth Driscoll has been dead now for over thirty years.
The estate passed on to another member of the family who had never bothered to
do anything with it. Amon Palace has been abandoned since the 1980s.”
As if on cue,
Peters’s hand dropped to the table. His eyes shot wide. “What?” he whispered.
Carter nodded,
“Whoever you talked with—if anyone, it wasn’t Elizabeth Driscoll.”
“That can’t be possible,” Peters stammered.
“Let’s assume
for now that whoever it was you spoke with, you believed it to be Elizabeth
Driscoll,” Carter said, scribbling gibberish in his notebook, a trick he’d used
a dozen times with perps. They see him writing something down after getting the
rug swept under them and get nervous. And with jittery nerves come mistakes.
“Can’t be—I
spoke with her…” Peters went on, glancing at the notebook, whispering to
himself. He looked up suddenly, “What about the Andersons?”
Carter frowned.
“Who?”
“Marge and John
Anderson.”
“Are you saying
there were others?”
“There should
be—they were the caretakers hired by Miss Driscoll.”
Exhaling, Carter
said, “Amon Palace has no caretakers—at least none on record.” He flipped
through some of the folders on the table. “And there have been no bodies
recovered as of yet at the crime scene.”
Peters resumed
rubbing his temples. “They have to be there, she hired them to take care of the
estate. I spoke with both on more than one occasion. And I saw them both on the
night of the fire…they were in the house.”
Warren stepped
forward and slammed his fist on the table beside Peters, filling the room with
a loud pang as he shouted, “Don’t you understand what we’re saying? The woman
you supposedly talked with doesn’t exist and there were no caretakers! Which
means your story is total fucking bullshit!”
Peters flinched.
“Okay, Doctor,”
Carter prodded on, “you brought this group in for an experiment. And then what,
spooky encounters start happening—are you telling us that Amon Palace is
haunted?”
Warren scoffed.
He stood back now, leaning against the wall with his arms folded across his
barrel chest.
Smiling, Peters
said, “Go ahead and laugh, I understand. I didn’t believe either, not at first.
Haunted by some specter or specters or demonically possessed? That would be the
real question. Those familiar with parapsychology—of which I am not; I’m
paraphrasing here from what I’ve read—almost all cases with reports of
hauntings, psychic invasions, and the like, all bear a strong parallel to our
experiences within Amon Palace. Cold spots, slamming of doors or banging on
walls by some unknown; unseen force, retrocognition—and yet, according to
documents published by the Vatican, hauntings such as these sometimes serve as
the first manifestation of an entity ultimately bent on demonic possession.
According to said article, odors of human excrement or rotting eggs, sulfur can
be a characteristic clue of demonic infestation.”
More laughing
from Warren.
“As I said,
laugh if it makes you feel better. But what would you find more incredible,
that Amon Palace is; was indeed possessed, or at the very least haunted, or
that we all somehow shared the same hallucinations and grotesque
misinterpretations of fact?”
Carter leaned back
in his chair, pondering the possibility.
Warren jabbed
Peters with a finger. “If what you’re saying is even true—we only have your
statement to go off of. Convenient, wouldn’t you say, Doctor?”
Peters shook his
head, “Certainly not convenient for Samantha Green, Brad Myers, Marcus
Pangborn, Tiffany Burgess, or Dexter Reid.”
Warren wound up
as if he was about to punch Peters.
“Okay, okay,”
Carter offered his hands again, urging his partner to cool down. “You bring
your experimental exposure group to Amon Palace and everyone starts seeing
things—but didn’t you say you wanted them to see this weird stuff? Triggers,
you called them, right?”
“The idea—the
experiment,” Peters exhaled, glancing sideways at Warren, “was for them to
spend a week unplugged from the rest of the world. No phones. No TV. No
internet. Completely isolated in an unfamiliar and potentially stressful
environment that could possibly trigger certain responses. At the time, I did
not believe Amon Palace was truly haunted. Exposure therapy works by triggering
patients, forcing them to confront buried trauma. But this was supposed to be a
place where I could safely monitor their conditions. There have been cases
before, therapeutic exposure experiments that have gone awry. I’m sure you have
heard of the former Navy Seal whose post-service time was spent helping
veterans with PTSD. He would take them to gun ranges, a known trigger for many
soldiers returning from war. The idea is the same—to help patients with PTSD
face trauma in order to heal. On one occasion, he had taken a veteran out who
had been struggling significantly. The veteran snapped. And in the end, he shot
and killed his would-be therapist and his friend. He was sentenced to life in
prison without parole. A horrible tragedy with three ruined lives. At Amon
Palace I wanted my patients to be able to face the memory of their trauma
without the fear of hurting loved ones or themselves. As they began to react to
the suggested belief that Amon Palace was in fact haunted, I would guide them
toward projecting what they feared the most—their own unique traumas.”
“Jesus Christ,”
Warren quipped again.
Carter silenced
his partner with a hand. “So, the experiment was designed for them to react to
being locked up in a creepy mansion under the pretense that the house was
haunted, and it worked?”
Peters nodded,
tears brimming his eyes. “And I confess, I pushed them—more than I should
have.”
Carter leaned
forward, he could sense they were finally getting somewhere. “What do you mean,
pushed?”
Looking up,
tears now trickling down his face, he said, “Hypnosis.”
“Hypnotherapy?
You put them in a suggestive state when they were already under duress?”
“Under duress?
No—they volunteered!”
“Only because
you promised a cure—didn’t you?”
“And it would
have worked too…but they weren’t who I thought they were—they changed into
something horrible.”
Carter sneered,
tired of this interrogation, tired of the lies and wild fantasies. “And why
didn’t it work, Doctor? Did your little hypothesis backfire? Did you have
visions of your career burning so you decided to burn everything else? Did you
kill them?”
“NO!”
“THAN WHAT
HAPPENED?”
“THEY WERE
TAKEN!”
Carter shook his
head, the feeling of defeat sinking in and the weariness of this prolonged
interrogation taking a toll. “Taken? Where, Doctor—and by whom?”
Author Info
Thomas S. Flowers is an Operation Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom Army veteran who loves scary movies, BBQ, and coffee. Ever since reading Remarque’s "All Quiet on the Western Front" and Stephen King’s "Salem’s Lot" he has inspired to write deeply disturbing things that relate to war and horror, from the paranormal to his gory zombie infested PLANET of the DEAD series, to even his recent dabbling of vampiric flirtation in The Last Hellfighter readers can expect to find complex characters, rich historical settings, and mind-altering horror. Thomas is also the senior editor at Machine Mean, a horror movie and book review site that hosts contributors in the horror and science fiction genre.
PLANET of the DEAD and The Last
Hellfighter are best-sellers on Amazon's Top 100 lists for Apocalyptic Fiction
and African American Horror.
Guest blog post: Amityville II in Review.
By: Thomas S. Flowers
It goes without saying, there are a lot of paranormal and supernatural themed movies out there, from ghosts to poltergeist and devils and demons, and even a few that skirt the edge of science fiction and the cosmos. Among these Amityville II: The Possession comes across as the perfect blend between paranormal hauntings and supernatural possessions. Plus, it’s stars Burt "Paulie" Young. So, sit back and hang on as we explore one of the most twisted and deviously fun movies 1982 ever spawned.
"Soon after the Montelli family buys a house in the Long Island suburb of Amityville, unsettling events begin to occur. Mysterious demons seem to infest the house, preying on abusive father Anthony (Burt Young) and ferociously religious mother Dolores (Rutanya Alda), who calls on family priest Father Adamsky (James Olson) for an exorcism. Teenage Sonny (Jack Magner) is drawn furthest into madness, abusing his younger sister, Patricia (Diane Franklin), and eventually exploding in a horrific fury" Google Synopsis.
One of many interesting things about Amityville II is, despite what the above synopsis implies, I do not think the "house" changed much of who the family was before they moved in. Case in point, the relationship between Anthony (played fantastically seedy by Burt Young) and his son Sonny (played by Jack Magner, who looks a lot like Alfie Allen, right!). As Anthony scolds his son for not following the rest of the family on their drive to the house, we quickly realize this is not the sunny happy family from the first Amityville movie. He demands respect and threatens when it is not given. And Sonny, the "first born," as his mother calls him, is at that tender age between rebellion and obedience. And truth of the matter, the only thing keeping him obedient is fear.
As the family begins to unpack, we get a strong "haunted house" type vibe. Even the movers are looking up at the tall windows and shuddering. The mother (played by Rutanya Alda) has a few early on paranormal experiences. The sink gushes what appears to be blood. Then again in the basement after one of the movers discovers a "hidden room" not included in the blueprints of the house, a disembodied spirit hovers near her, taunting her. And all the windows are nailed shut...how odd. Why would someone do that? Strange. Oh, at this point I feel like I should mention that despite the Amityville II title, this movie makes no mention of the Lutz family or the 1974 DeFeo mass murders. The implication, I think, is that the Montellie family moved into 112 Ocean Avenue after the Lutz abandoned the house and it went up for resell.
On the first night all hell breaks loose. There is no build up to create any sort of tension, yet tension is keenly felt as we watch this already dysfunctional family come apart. Anthony and his wife are already on edge about something (sexual frustration, I think) and then "someone" starts knocking on the door. While pops in running around with a shotgun, the spirit graffitis the younger kids' room. Naturally, Anthony thinks they drew all over the wall. He puts down the shotgun to take off his leather belt and goes after the kids in a rampage. Mom gets slapped down for trying to protect them. She goes all crazy eyes and claws him. The oldest daughter, Patricia (played by Diane Franklin, more or less the peacemaker of the family) walks down and tries to defend her mother by pleading with Anthony to stop. Mass hysteria. Cats and dogs. You get the picture. Finally, Sonny joins in the mix, picks up the shotgun, and presses it behind his dad's ear. With the presence of the gun, the brakes get put on really quick and everyone backs off retreating to their own corners of the house.
Whatever "spirit" is haunting the house, it isn't too thrilled that Sonny didn't pull the trigger splattering the wall with Anthony's brains. So, it takes matters into its own hands and while the family is away possessing Sonny. [PS: the family is away so that Anthony can apologize to Father Adam for being a big bag of dicks when the Father came to "cleanse" the house. I'm not Catholic, so I can only assume that's something Catholics do, they bless their new homes? Or something?] Another case in point, the Montellie family is already so dysfunctional enough that the evil spirit doesn't even need to threaten the priest. Kinda sad actually. But if Paulie was my dad, I'd probably be dysfunctional too.
Where was I? Oh yes.
Incest.
What? Yes, you read correctly. Amityville II: The Possession has incest. When you go back and watch the movie again, knowing what will happen, you kinda see weird little moments between them. Moments that didn't seem weird to me the first go around but are now ruined by the knowledge that Sonny and Patricia boink. Thankfully the scene is not prolonged nor gratuitous. We basically get Sonny playing an eeky game called "modeling," where he asks Pat to sit on the bed and model for him. She does, playfully mind you. And then he asks her to take off her nightgown. "What?" she asks. He wants to see if she is "truly the most beautiful model." And so, she complies...cause, you know...why not. Gross. He stares at her topless. Gross. And when she attempts to put her nightgown back on, he stops her and...well, you know. Gross.
Patricia is confused, for obvious just boned my brother reasons. She attempts to confess to the family priest, Father Adam. Its actually a very sad and creepy confession that needs to be seen to appreciate. But then, at Sonny's birthday party she sneaks up to Sonny's bedroom (who is also hiding out) and tells him she isn't sorry for what happened between them. See what I mean, confused. Playing up the duality between attraction and repulsion (having the urge to do something that you know is wrong).
Sonny on the other hand is going through some sort of demonic metamorphosis. Not only has his demeanor changed but his body is beginning to deform too, as if the demonic entity inside him is growing. He refuses to see anyone and harshly dismisses an already shattered Patricia. During the party, mommy dearest discovers that her two eldest children have been...consummating (gross) and decides its time for Father Adam to return and purify the house. Father Adam agrees and goes around sprinkling holy water and such around the house. In an interesting scene, the mother asks the priest to "please bless my bed," which to me seems an odd place to require holy sacrament, the priest even looks a little mystified by it. Throughout the first half of the movie, there's an implication that mom and dad have not been...you know. I'm not sure what it has to do with the plot of the movie. Maybe I need to re-watch a few more times.
Anyways, as Father Adam blesses the martial bed, the house attacks him with horrid hallucinations of blood. He concludes that the house is possessed and requests for an exorcism from the Chancellor (never actually given a name). Requests such as these take time. Father Adam agrees to join a friend and fellow priest Father Tom on a camping trip. And while away, the demonic presence takes control over Sonny and forces him to murder his family, even Patricia who is the last to go. It’s a crazy moment in the film and Sonny is completely deadpan throughout, which makes it even more chilling. Back in the cabin in the woods, Father Adam wakes from a nightmare, a precognition of the crime. He hurries back to Amityville too late and discovers the entire Montellie family slain, all except for Sonny who claims he doesn't remember what happened.
Things kinda play out and eventually Father Adam discovers that it wasn't just the house that was haunted/possessed, but that there was a demonic spirit that has now possessed Sonny. The courts of course do not deal in parapsychology, so they lock Sonny in a high security ward where the demon slowly kills him. The priest wants to perform an exorcism, with or without the Church's approval, in order to save Sonny. But he's having a hard go at it. Eventually, all things lead back to the house on 112 Ocean Avenue for a very epic showdown between Father Adam and the demonic manifestation inside the meat puppet that is Sonny Montellie.
It may be surprising, especially if you've seen Amityville II, but this is my favorite of the Amityville series. Yes, even better than 1979's original masterpiece The Amityville Horror. I'm not really sure why. Part of it was the insanity that was the plot. The practical effects are also fantastic. And the casting was perfect, even Burt Young seemed natural as the mean-spirited bag of dicks father, go figure huh? Innocence lost. Haunted house. Demonic possession. This movie was like The Amityville Horror wrapped inside The Exorcist. A must watch fun ride that doesn't take itself too seriously.
You can follow Thomas and get
yourself a FREE eBook copy of FEAST by joining his newsletter. Sign up by
vising his website at www.ThomasSFlowers.com
Newsletter: https://bit.ly/2onPLYV
Blog: https://machinemean.org/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ThomasSFlowers
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ThomasSFlowers/
Hosted by
Presented by
