The House of Mystery
Mr. Right
by starsky_hutch76
Chapter 1: Damon
The long nosed, bespectacled man flipped through the paper, stopping at the sight of a guest entering his home. “My apologies. I did not see you standing there. Welcome to the House of Mystery.” He rose to his feet and bowed. “I am your host, Cain.”
“As you arrived, I was just flipping through the personal ads,” he said, holding up the newspaper. So many lonely individuals. So many desperate to find that special someone. So very sad. It reminds me of a story I once heard, of a woman who, like these people, was trying to find that special someone. But like a song once said, she was looking for love in all the wrong places.”
***
Janet ran through the dark house, sensing with every step that he was getting closer. She could hear the horrible sound of his talons scraping across the hard wood floor as he lumbered after her. Her hot tears ran down her face and she felt her breathing becoming staggered. She desperately wanted to think herself out of this, but her fear was overwhelming her and she found it hard to think straight. She didn’t know her way around this old house and he did. Suddenly, she found herself trapped when the hallway came to a dead end.
She turned around, ready to run the opposite way and found herself face to face with the misshapen horror. “No! Please!” she sobbed, “Please let me go!” His hand shot forward and impaled her upon his long, talon-like claws. The pain was so great that she felt herself coming close to passing out. As she tried to scream, blood bubbled forth from her throat. The last thing she saw before she lost consciousness was his wide mouth filled with shark-like rows of teeth as he lifted her up with his claws to satiate his hunger.
Anna woke up screaming, in a cold sweat. She couldn’t remember when she’d last had such a horribly violent nightmare. What could have made her have such a dream? She hated horror movies. Any kind of violence was repugnant to her, so why would she dream something like this? She was still shaking from it.
She looked at the empty place in the bed next to her and wished there was somebody there to hold her and tell her everything was going to be all right. She was 30 years old and terrified of becoming an old maid. All her sisters were already married. So now whenever she went home to visit, her mother would pester her about finding a husband and giving her some grandchildren. It made her hate the holidays. Why couldn’t she realize how much talking that way hurt her? As if she was alone by choice!
Anna walked over to her dresser for a cigarette to calm her nerves. It was painfully obvious that she wasn’t going to be able to get back to sleep, so she decided to get ready for work even though she wasn’t going to have to be at the coffee shop for another three hours. She pulled off her flannel nightgown as she walked to the bathroom. She looked at herself in the mirror and thought to herself, I’m good looking enough. It wasn’t that she as ugly. She was no model, but she was attractive. Her married sisters weren’t any better looking than her.
As the warm water of the shower sprayed down on her, the image of the monster from her dream came back into her head and made her shiver. She wondered who the girl in her dream was. The girl wasn’t anyone she had ever met before and she wasn’t anyone she had ever seen on television, so she couldn’t place her face at all.
She went ahead and clocked in early to work after trying to kill as much time as she could. Being a waitress in a coffee shop wasn’t the best job in the world, but she liked the people she worked with. They could tell that something was bothering her.
“What’s the matter, sugar?” Emma asked her. Emma was an older lady who had worked there since the shop first opened fifteen years ago. “You look like you’ve been run through the mill.”
“Thanks. I had a bad dream last night, so I didn’t sleep to well.”
“I hate when that happens. When I would have bad dreams, I would wake my Harry up to talk about it,” Emma said, misty eyed. God rest his soul, he never got angry with me for waking him up for something silly like that.”
“At least you once had somebody,” Anna said sadly.
“Are you still on about that? Just because your little sister got married before you doesn’t mean you’re never going to get married. People get married later these days. You don’t need to be in any kind of a hurry to get to the altar.”
“I know. I’m just depressed. I can’t help how I feel. I can’t even stay with someone long enough to get close to him.”
“Well, here’s something that should cheer you up. Look who just sat down in my station,” Emma said mischievously. “Why don’t you take this one and I’ll work yours for a while.”
Anna’s jaw dropped when she saw whom Emma was talking about. He looked like a movie star. He certainly wasn’t the type she had ever expected to see in a place like the one she worked in. He looked far too classy. He was wearing an Armani suit with a turtleneck and he had on Italian shoes polished to a perfect shine. His thick blond hair was slicked back with mousse and his features were so perfectly chiseled he could almost be called pretty instead of handsome. It looked as if Michelangelo’s statue of David had put on a suit and decided to drop in for a cup of coffee.
Her knees felt as if they might give out on her. “I can’t do it,” she said hoarsely.
Don’t be ridiculous,” Emma said, pushing her out towards the dining area. “If you don’t go there, you’ll be kicking yourself later.”
Anna walked nervously towards the booth where the stranger was reading a copy of the Wall Street Journal. C-can I help you?”
He turned his head up slowly from his paper and his ice blue eyes met hers. His gaze drifted down to her name tag and he said, “A cup of coffee would be great, Anna.”
She went back to the kitchen for his coffee and Emma came up to her anxiously and said, “Well? What’s he like?”
Anna started fanning herself and said, “My God! He’s so hot! He even has an accent?”
“You’re kidding! What kind of accent?”
“I don’t know, but it was really sexy!” Anna said, grinning.
“Well, what are you waiting for? I saw the way he looked at you!” Emma said, guiding her back to the dining area. “Get back out there before this one gets away.”
Anna didn’t know what she was thinking. He was just a customer. Better looking than anyone who’d ever been in before, but still just a customer. He would probably never be back again. Cheesy little coffee shops like hers didn’t look like his style. He was probably just there on a whim.
“Here’s your coffee, sir. Anything else I can get for you?” she said, setting the coffee cup in front of him.
“Just the coffee will be fine,” he said, smiling at her. “But I could use some company. If it won’t get you in trouble with your boss, I would be honored if you were to join me at my table.”
“I … I can’t.” She looked back towards the kitchen at Emma, who was mouthing ‘Are you crazy? Sit down with him.’ Since Emma was the one in charge until the manager came in later, she had no excuse not to. “Well, OK. Just for a little while.”
“I couldn’t be happier,” he said as she sat down. He took her hand and said, “My name is Damon. Damon Alti. It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance. I hope I didn’t embarrass you by being so forward. I have to confess. I didn’t just come in here for coffee. I saw you pull into the parking lot and knew you were going to go in the back way. So I knew I had to come in here and meet you.”
Anna couldn’t believe her ears. He sounded too good to be true. From the way he talked, he was obviously educated, unlike the men she usually went out with. “You came in here just to meet me?”
“That’s right. I’m glad I did, too. You’re every bit as beautiful up close as you are from a distance. I have to run to the office now, but I never would have forgiven myself if I hadn’t come in to meet you. Look, I know you don’t know me and you have no reason to say yes, but I would really love it if you would have dinner with me tomorrow night.”
“Well, it just so happens that I’m free tomorrow.”
“That’s great.” He handed her a one of his business cards and a pen and got her to write her phone number and address on the back. “So, I’ll call you later on tonight and we can make plans for dinner.” They said good-bye and then she ran back to the kitchen to tell Emma the good news.
The next night, he took her to the most expensive restaurant she had ever been in her life. Seeing the way everyone else was dressed and the way they carried themselves, she felt cheap and inadequate- two words that described Damon Alti in no way, shape, or form. He seemed to be making every attempt to make her feel comfortable and get her to enjoy herself. This made him seem all the more charming in her eyes.
“So,” he said, refilling her wine glass, “tell me about yourself. What’s your family like?”
“Well, I have three sisters: two older and one younger.”
“All girls, huh. Did your father ever try and turn you into tomboys?”
“You know it. He had us all into athletics as soon as we were old enough to walk. As much as he tried, though, he couldn’t turn us into boys. We eventually found interests outside of his. I got interested in dance. It’s what I hope to do for a living some day. Being a waitress is just something I’m doing in the mean time.”
“I should have known you were a dancer,” he said with a twinkle in his eye. “Dancers have a natural grace. You can see in their every movement. They are like swans among a flock of geese.”
“Well, she said, eyeing him seductively as she took a sip of wine. “If that were the case, one could mistake you for a dancer.”
“I can’t say I was ever a dancer, but I was in gymnastics for a while. I tried out for the Olympic team but didn’t make the final cut.”
“I’m sorry,” Anna said, placing her hand on top of his.
“There’s no need to be sorry. My father wasn’t. He had been telling me for years that I was wasting my time trying to pursue a career in athletics. He wanted me to follow in his footsteps and become a businessman. So that’s what I did when gymnastics petered out.”
“You never did tell me what it is that you do.”
“Well, it’s been given the unflattering label of ‘liquidator’. I buy out large corporations and then break them down into smaller parts and sell them off.”
“I’ve heard of that,” she said. “It always seemed sort of cruel.”
“Hey, most of these companies would go under without my interference. With my help, at least I’m able to salvage what is left and make everyone a lot of money in the process. Everybody walks away with more than they had before.”
“I never thought of it like that,” she said.
“Remember, there are two sides to everything. We live in a time when a lot of people resent those in my line of work, but we serve a necessary function. In order for the good companies to survive, we have to be there to deal with the bad ones.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to insult what you do for a living. I really don’t know about things like that. All I know about the business world is what I hear from other people and what they say on television.”
“No offense taken,” he smiled. “I don’t know anything about being a dancer, so I’m sure I have a lot of misconceptions about what it is you do. Now, I didn’t come here to talk about work. I came here to find out about you. I propose a toast,” he said, holding up his wine glass, “to the most beautiful girl in the room. And hopefully, my long and happy future with her.”
“That’s a funny thing to say on the first date,” she grinned.
“It might be very presumptuous of me, but when I see something I want I go after it with a great passion. In this case, what I want is you.”
On their second date, Damon invited Anna to his house for dinner. House was too mundane to describe it, though. It was a sprawling estate. The sort she had seen on shows like Dynasty and Dallas.
I have to warn you about my father, he said, opening the passenger door of his Porsche for her. “He’s something of a curmudgeon. I don’t know if he’ll be home tonight or not. I told him I was having company. But knowing him, he probably forgot or doesn’t care.”
Your grandfather lives with you?”
“He’s too old to take care of himself, so I had him move in with me. It’s a large house and I have plenty of room.”
It’s sweet that you want to take care of him yourself,” she said.
“It’s not like he’s any trouble. He still has all of his faculties and he’s sharp as a whip. He’s just old. Real old.”
When they got there, it turned out that Damon was right in predicting that his grandfather would be there. When they came in the front door, they were greeted with a sour expression.
“Hi,” Damon said, pretending to be pleasantly surprised. “I didn’t know you were going to be here. I thought you were going to have Bascomb drive you into town.”
His grandfather only grunted and turned to walk up the stairs, saying over his shoulder,” I’m going up to my room. You go ahead and do whatever it is you’re going to do. And clean up after yourself this time.”
“What did he mean by that?” Anna said, startled.
“Who knows? See what I told you about him? Don’t worry. His bark is much worse than his bite. When he gets to know you, he’ll be more sociable.”
The cook, who he said had left for the night, had left dinner warming in the oven for them. Anna found it odd that an estate like his wouldn’t have live in servants. He had her sit in the dining room while he brought it out. While she waited, she eyed her surroundings. How could a man like Damon, with such a kind and gentle disposition, live in such a place?
Once Damon sat down to dinner, her anxiety left her. This date went as well as their first. Damon was everything she had ever wanted in a man and much more. She couldn’t understand why he would be interested in her. Men like him weren’t normally drawn to women they saw waiting tables. If he had just wanted her for sex, he could have dumped her when she didn’t put out on the first date. He seemed to be truly interested in her and he proved himself a perfect gentleman through his treatment of her.
They began to see each other more and more frequently. She began to think of Damon as someone she could spend her life with. Any apprehensions she might have felt about entering a relationship with him had been completely forgotten. She trusted him completely and knew he would never want to see her hurt.
Chapter 2: The Prisoner
Her bubble was burst one day when she was out shopping with her sisters. They were coming out of a clothing outlet when she spotted Damon across the street outside a singles bar. He was opening his car door for a beautiful girl in a miniskirt.
“Isn’t that your Damon?” one of her sisters asked. “That guy sure looks like the picture you showed me.” Anna wanted to die from embarrassment.
After the initial shock and a great deal of crying, she stopped returning his phone calls. She didn’t want to see him or speak to him. He had failed to live up to the image she had come to believe in. Damon was no different than all the rest.
Finally, he came to her apartment to demand an explanation. She let him have it with both barrels and told him what she had seen and what a phony she thought he was. He didn’t even blink.
“I can explain what you saw,” he said.
“Sure you can,” she said haughtily. “I’m sure you have a great excuse. You could talk your way out of anything.”
“Have I ever led you to believe I was unfaithful before now?”
“No, not until I saw you with that tramp,” she said angrily.
“That ‘tramp’ used to be somebody very special,” Damon sighed. “She was the one I was with before I was with you. I had already broken it off with her, but she didn’t take it very well. She’s been acting like a maniac. Did you ever see the movie ‘Fatal Attraction’? It was a lot like that.”
“I don’t think I can believe you,” Anna sniffed. “I’ve heard this sort of thing before.”
“It’s true. She left threatening messages at work and when I’d leave the office, I would find that someone had let the air out of my tires. I was at my wits end. I had to see her again to try and reason with her and get her to stop. Even before I met you, I knew that I couldn’t keep going on the way we were. Her emotional blackmail was driving me crazy. It didn’t take a genius to realize that she was unstable. I had to get away from her. Our relationship was unhealthy. After I met you, I knew it for sure. You showed me how wonderful a relationship could be. How it should be. Once I met you, I knew just what it was that had been missing from my life.” His voice suddenly grew husky. “You can’t leave me now. I need you.”
“I just don’t know. I’ve been hurt before and given a guy a second chance and I’ve regretted it. How do I know you’ll be different?”
“Don’t think with your head. Think with your heart,” he said, taking her hands. “You know what we have is good because you can feel it! We love each other. I promise you, she is out of our lives for good. Neither of us will ever hear from her again.”
She decided to give him another chance and hoped that she wouldn’t come to regret it. He was worth that much. If there was any chance that he might really be what he seemed to be, she had to take it.
Things quickly went back to normal. It seemed like he was doing everything possible to restore her confidence in him. If his behavior was any indication, he was really sincere. She had no choice but to forgive him.
One evening, after a night on the town, they decided to drop by his house for a drink. They went into his kitchen to have a glass of wine. Anna noticed blood had been spilled on the counter. Damon’s eyes grew wide and he grabbed a dish rag and wiped it up. “I hate it when my father cooks in here. I’ve warned him that at his age, he shouldn’t be eating red meat.”
“I thought you said he was your grandfather,” Anna said.
“He is, but he practically raised me, so I sometimes refer to him as my father.” This sounded crazy to her, but she couldn’t think of any reason for him to lie about something like that so she quickly put it out of her mind.
A few weeks later, Anna discovered that her period was late. She went to the drug store and bought a home pregnancy test to confirm whether or not her suspicions were true. She cried for an hour after she tested positive.
She had dreamed about what it would be like to be married to Damon, but she didn’t want something like this to happen to force him to propose. Being rich, she thought that women had probably tried this sort of thing before to force him into marriage. If he was ever going to propose, she wanted it to be for the right reasons. Abortion was out of the question, though. The last thing she wanted to do was kill their child.
Anna felt he had a right to know about this and she didn’t think it was something that should be handled over the phone. Even phoning him ahead of time didn’t seem like the thing to do. HE would be able to tell something was wrong by the sound of her voice. Instead, she decided to drive out to his estate, planning to tell him in person and hoping that he wouldn’t think she was trying to trap him into marrying her.
When she got there, the front door was unlocked, so she walked in. As usual, no servants were to be seen anywhere and it was still very dark and ominous. Anna called out his name, but he didn’t seem to hear her. She walked down the long hallway and heard voices coming from the kitchen. He seemed to be in a very heated argument.
“I’m tired of covering for you!” his grandfather yelled.
“Cover for me? I’ve never put you in a position where you have had to cover for me. I’m capable of covering my own tracks.”
“Well, I’m sick of you bringing your victims here. There was blood all over the place last night. Do your business somewhere else. Not in my house.”
“Your house?” Damon said indignantly. “You wouldn’t even be living here if it weren’t for me. You would still be a dirt poor immigrant living in a shanty town, eating out of garbage cans.”
“I summoned you!” the old man screamed hoarsely. “I can send you back to hell. Don’t forget who’s in charge here!”
“You may pull the strings now, Belo, but I just have to wait for you to kick off and then this world is mine. I’ve waited for 5 years and I could wait for another 50 if I had to. I don’t think I will have to, though. You look as if you could go at any moment.” He leaned forward and hissed into the old man’s face, “I can smell your body rotting.”
“Don’t you dare talk to me like that! I’m in charge here! You’ll do as I say!”
“Belo, Belo, Belo. You stupid old fart. You stopped being in charge a long time ago. Having to wear this form is bad enough. You can’t force me to adopt all your habits. If I feel the need to hunt, I will. Once you’re dead, you’re mine. So if I were you, I’d watch my step. You don’t want to piss me off.”
Belo eyed him with newfound fear. His previous defiance deflated, making him look weak and defenseless.
“That’s better,” Damon said, flashing an evil smile. He suddenly looked around warily and sniffed the air, like an animal picking up a scent. “Anna…”
Anna ran down the hall nearly in hysterics. What she had heard seemed insane. She wondered if she wasn’t going mad and hadn’t imagined the whole scene. “Leave her alone!” she heard the old man scream. “I’ll not have another innocent girl killed in my home!”
“Stay out of this, old man!” Damon yelled back.
As she reached for the door knob of the front door, all the locks slammed shut by themselves and no amount of force could budge them. She looked behind her and saw his shadow preceding him as he walked slowly down the hallway towards her. It began to twist and mutate into the horrific thing from her nightmare of weeks passed. His legs jutted backwards, becoming something like the hind legs of a goat. As he grew in mass, his back grew bent and humped. His arms grew longer and took on a disproportionate amount of muscle. She saw a long scorpion’s tail grow down from his shadow’s back.
Over the scraping sound of his talons on the floor, she heard him say in a voice that became increasingly deep and voluminous, “Anna, I think we need to talk. I haven’t been completely honest with you and I think it’s time for me to come clean.”
“Oh God,” she sobbed, running from window to window trying in vain to get outside, “Help me. Please, God, help me.”
Anna ran down the foyer and into another long hallway. Every door and window she came across that would lead outside was locked. She tried throwing a chair through a window, but it just bounced off. She tried to break the window with her fist, but it was as if the window were made of stone rather than glass.
Her legs were beginning to feel heavy and she was out of breath. The house seemed to go on forever. She ran upstairs, hoping that there was a ledge somewhere that she could go to and scream for help.
“Come on, Anna,” she heard his voice blast through the house. “Don’t be like this. I just want to talk to you. To hold you. To love you. To… to… to rip you to bloody shreds and suck the marrow from your bones!!!!”
Anna could hear the scraping of his talons growing closer. She ran into the first doorway she came to look for a phone. It was a large den decorated with Indian tapestries. She picked up a phone to call the police and she heard a voice on the other end say, “naughty, naughty. Trying to bring an outside party into a lovers’ quarrel.”
She heard a loud rumbling sound and turned around to see him trying to force his massive frame through the normal sized doorway. He was even more horrible in person than he had appeared in her dream. His horrific face wad the compound eyes of an insect, an empty cavern where his nose should have been, and a misshapen, expansive mouth with rows of jagged teeth that jutted out in different directions. His head had two sets of horns: the smaller ones coming from his forehead and the much larger two sticking out from either set of his head as a bull’s would. His deep purple skin had a sheen to it, as if coated with slime. “Come give your lover man a big kiss!” he boomed, his snake like tongue flicking out between his saw like teeth.
“Stay away from me!” she screamed.
“Is that any way to talk to the man you love? Don’t push me away, Anna. Couples need to spend quality time together.”
“Please don’t hurt me,” she cried.
“Hurt you? He said, moving towards her. “Why would I want to do that? You’re everything to me,” he laughed.
“Then let me go.”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that. It’s eight O’clock and I haven’t had a bite to eat. I feel like having a friend for dinner. I’m so hungry I could eat a whore.”
She picked up a lamp and threw it at him, but before striking him, it stopped in midair and flew off to the side. She picked up other objects to try and hit him with, but they all did the same thing.
“This is starting to look like an abusive relationship. I’m hurt. Truly hurt,” he said, moving in for the kill.
Anna realized she had let him back her into a corner. Nothing could save her now. He was going to kill her just like he had killed the girl in her dream. She dropped to the ground screaming, burying her head in her knees and covering her head with her hands.
Suddenly, she heard a noise and saw Belo jumping from the top of a table with agility that defied his many years. He was holding a silver sword with both hands by the hilt as if it was a knife and he stabbed Damon through the back. The blade came out the other side through his stomach and he stared down at it in disbelief. “You stupid old fool! You ruined everything!” He brought his massive hand back to send the old man flying into the wall on the other side of the room.
Fire began to spew forth from the wound and then his mouth. He gave a horrible guttural scream that reminded Anna of nails being dragged across a chalk board. He exploded in a massive burst of light and then nothing was left but the smell of brimstone in the air.
Anna was gasping for breath from the shock of what had just occurred. Her head swam dizzily as she tried to rise to her feet. She suddenly remembered the old man who had saved her and she ran across the room to where he lay crumpled on the floor. “Are you OK?” she asked, cradling his head in her lap.
“Of course not, you stupid girl,” Belo coughed. “”I’m seventy five years old. How can I possibly be all right after being tossed around like that?”
“Why did you save me?” she asked.
“I had summoned him expecting him to give me everything I ever wanted. I got wealth, but no power. I was his prisoner. My life became a living hell. It was worse than being poor. At least when I was poor and I had no control; there was nothing sinister about it. After I summoned him, my life became a cesspool. Pure silver is capable of hurting things such as him. I had this sword made and had a priest bless it years ago, hoping that one day I would have the courage to use it.”
“His eyes grew wide and a pained look came onto his face. “Oh God, it hurts. I made such a mess of things I could have had a family. Things could have been different. I could have been happy.” His eyes began to flutter and he moaned, “I just pray to God that you aren’t carrying his child. I’d hate to think I died in vain.” Then with one last groan, his eyes shut for the final time and he grew limp in her arms.
Anna let his head drop to the ground and she held her hands to her stomach. What sort of blasphemy could be growing inside her? She imagined that she could feel it forming slowly in her womb. Tears rolled down her face as the old man’s last words echoed over and over in her head, shredding the last veil of sanity the evening had left her.
