The Spite House by Johnny Compton
To Sister Gayle, Mr. Comer, and Mrs. Doke, who taught me I was good enough to get better
CHAPTER 1
Eric
The Masson House of Degener, Texas, was like the corpse of an old monster, too strange and feared for most to approach it, much less attempt to bury it. After all, it might be feigning death or dormant.
In the primary photograph of the full-page ad, the house’s rectangular windows reflected the sun. Behind the house, the treetops looked close enough to brush the walls of the second floor when the wind blew. It was gaunt and gray, old and sickly. Four stories tall and narrow enough to be mistaken for an optical illusion, like the photographer was one step to the left or right away from revealing the other half or two-thirds of the house they had skillfully hidden.
Another picture showed the house overlooking a shallow valley and three buildings that, according to the description beneath the photo, once comprised an orphanage, and before that a family estate.
Eric Ross could not find much more about the house online. A wiki of “The Most Haunted Places in Texas” stated, “If the Masson House came to life one night and climbed down the hill to destroy that old orphanage, no one in Degener would be quite as shocked as you’d think.” Eric wondered whether he should share this part with his older daughter, Dess, or just show her the ad, keeping to himself the quick research he was doing in the motel’s “complimentary office”—a small, doorless closet with a sluggish computer. He valued Dess’s input—had she objected to them leaving home and pursuing a fugitive path, they might still be in Maryland—but he felt the need to steer her in a certain direction. Not manipulate or misinform her, but guide her, as a father should. In this case, that guidance would come by way of what he withheld.
The daily effort of finding a semblance of “real work” was exhausting him. Eight months of driving from one new place to another, from one new job to another, starting over again and again, it was unsustainable. There were only so many cash-payment construction, security, or dubious sales jobs to be found, and they all came with significant risk. More than once he’d been asked to do something of questionable legality. One of his supervisors had told him to dump trash in an unspoiled wooded area where no one needed a sign saying NO DUMPING ALLOWED to know that there was probably no dumping allowed. At one “security” job he discovered too late that he and his six coworkers had been hired to look intimidating while their boss negotiated with a prospective partner, who at one point threatened to call the cops, saying, “I don’t feel safe here.”
In other instances, the person who hired him took advantage of his situation and tried to stiff Eric when it came time to pay up. In both of those cases Eric had to make a decision—live with wasted efforts and a shorted budget, or do what would have made his grandfather Frederick smile and say, “That’s my boy’s boy.” Twice he chose to ignore the examples his father had set for him, to be the figurative bigger man and walk away, and instead mimicked what he’d once seen his grandfather do when he was a boy—take advantage of being the literal bigger man. Each time, he squared up and stepped closer to the men trying to cheat him, saying, “It’ll cost you a lot more not to pay me.” It always felt like the right thing to do, and filled him with a fire that burned out too fast. It also felt like a trick he couldn’t keep getting away with. He was a few inches shorter than his grandfather, at least fifty pounds lighter, and far less comfortable wielding a size advantage when he had it.
Frederick Emerson was six foot two and built like God considered making him a wall before making him a man. His hands were so large and heavy they seemed the sole reason his shoulders rounded slightly. As imposing as his frame was, his reputation is what really made people think twice about crossing him. People knew not to get on “Ol’ Fred’s” bad side. “He could just look at you the wrong way and buzzards would start following you,” Eric once heard his grandfather’s barber say of him, and everyone at the shop had laughed, including Ol’ Fred himself. It hadn’t quite sounded like a joke to Eric, though. He repeated it to his father later on, hoping to make him laugh, which would reassure him that it wasn’t serious, but his father just shook his head. “Bet your grandpa thought it was funny, huh?” he said. “You shouldn’t be hearing stuff like that.”
Eric didn’t have his grandfather’s reputation or imposing stature, but he had an unwavering obligation to his daughters, and a desperate desire to right his upturned life. That must have put something in his eyes—some of his grandfather’s spirit—because on the occasions he made a veiled threat in order to get paid, the men who owed him gave him what he’d earned. After the last time, about five months ago, he started budgeting to account for the possibility that he might be tricked or coerced into working for free. Just in case. It hadn’t happened again, which, to Eric, just meant that when it happened next, it would happen two or three times in a row.
The offer in the ad for the Masson House promised “high six figures at minimum upon completion of the assignment, with a much larger upside for the qualifying candidate.” Even if the true payout ended up being half that—a quarter of it—it was far better than anything he could get anywhere else. Enough money to set them up for at least a year, more if they stayed frugal. All for staying rent-free in a place that was—again, according to the ad—“the site of pronounced paranormal activity.”