The Amityville Horror Read Free Page A

the house and into the garage.
    Then George walked to the front door, fumbling in his pockets as he went, searching for the key to the door. Irritated, he returned to the truck and thoroughly searched it before admitting to his assistants that he didn't have it. The broker was the only one with the key, and she had taken it with her as she left the closing. George called her, and she went back to her office to fetch it.
    When the side door was finally open, the three children leaped from the van, made right for their respective toys and began a parade of unprofessional movers in and out of the house. Kathy designated the destination of each parcel.
    It took time to maneuver furniture up the fairly narrow stairwell leading to the second and third floors. And by the time Father Mancuso arrived to bless the house, it was well after one-thirty p.m.
    2 December 18 -Father Frank Mancuso is not only a cleric. In addition to properly attending to his priestly duties, he handles clients in family counseling for his diocese.
    That morning, Father Mancuso had woken up feeling uneasy. Something was bothering him. He couldn't put his finger on it, because he really didn't have any particular worries. In his own words, looking back, he can only explain it as a "bad feeling."
    All that morning, the priest moved around his apartment in the Long Island rectory in a daze. Today is Thursday, he thought to himself. I've got a lunch date in Lindenhurst, then I must go and bless the Lutzes' new home and be at my mother's for dinner.
    Father Mancuso had met George Lee Lutz two years earlier. Even though George was a Methodist, he had helped Kathy and George in the days before they were married. The three children were Kathy's from a previous marriage, and as a priest to Catholic children, Father Mancuso felt a personal need to look after their interests.
    The young couple had often asked the friendly cleric with the neatly-trimmed beard to come for lunch or dinner at their home in Deer Park. Somehow that anticipated meeting had never come off. Now, George had a very special reason to invite him anew: Would he come to Amityville to bless their new house? Father Mancuso said he'd be there on December 18. On the same day he agreed to come to George's house, he also made a date to lunch with four old friends in Lindenhurst, Long Island. His very first parish had been there. Now he was very well regarded in the diocese, with his own quarters at the rectory in Long Island. Understandably he was always busy and held to a hectic schedule, so he could not be blamed for trying to kill two birds with one stone, since Lindenhurst and Amityville were but a few miles apart.
    The cleric could not shake the "bad feeling" that persisted even through the pleasant luncheon with his four old acquaintances. However, he kept stalling his leaving for Amityville, pushing ahead the time to go. His friends asked him where he was off to.
    "To Amityville."
    "Where in Amityville?"
    "It's a young couple in their thirties, with three children. They live on ..." Father Mancuso referred to a slip of paper. "112 Ocean Avenue."
    "That's the DeFeo house," one of his friends said.
    "No. Their name is Lutz. George and Kathleen Lutz."
    "Don't you remember the DeFeos, Frank?" asked one of the men at the table. "Last year? The son killed his whole family. His father, mother, and four brothers and sisters. Terrible, terrible thing. It was a big story in all the papers."
    The priest tried to think back. He seldom read the news when lie picked up a paper, only looking for items of special interest. "No, I really don't seem to recall it."
    Of the four men at the table, three were priests and they somehow didn't like the idea. The consensus was that he shouldn't go.
    "I must. I promised them I'd come."
    As Father Mancuso drove the few miles to Amityville, he felt apprehensive. It wasn't the fact that he would be visiting the DeFeo house, he was sure, but something else....
    It was past