I slide between the gates without breaking the seal. I start up the driveway, but it curves off to some kind of carriage house up a hill, which once upon a time probably served as a stable for the horses and possibly the servants’ quarters. So I take the stone path that will eventually lead me to the front door.
In the center of the wide expanse of grass, just before it slopes dramatically upward, there is a small stone fountain, with a monument jutting up that bears a crest and an inscription. I lean over the fountain to take a closer look. The small tablet of stone features a bird in the center, with a hooked beak and a long tail feather, encircled by little symbols, each of which appears to be the letter X, but which upon closer inspection is a series of crisscrossing daggers.
And then, ka-boom.
It hits me, the rush, the pressure in my chest, the stranglehold to my throat, I can’t breathe, I can’t see, I’m weightless. Help me, somebody please help me—
I stagger backward, almost losing my balance, and suck in a deep, delicious breath of air.
“Wow,” I say into the warm breeze. Easy, girl. Take it easy. I wipe greasy sweat from my forehead and inhale and exhale a few more times to slow my pulse.
Beneath the monument’s crest, carved into the stone in a thick Gothic font, are these words:
Okay, that’s pretty creepy. I take a photo of the monument with my smartphone. Now front and center before the house, I take my first good look.
The mansion peering down at me from atop the hill is a Gothic structure of faded multicolored limestone. It has a Victorian look to it, with multiple rooflines, all of them steeply pitched, fancy turrets, chimneys grouped at each end. There are elaborate medieval-style accents on the facade. Every peak is topped with an ornament that ends in a sharp point, like spears aimed at the gods. The windows are long and narrow, clover-shaped, with stained glass. The house is like one gigantic, imperious frown.
I’ve heard some things about this house, read some things, even passed by it many times, but seeing it up close like this sends a chill through me.
It is part cathedral and part castle. It is a scowling, menacing, imposing structure, both regal and haunting, almost romantic in its gloom.
All it’s missing is a drawbridge and a moat filled with crocodiles.
This is 7 Ocean Drive. This is what they call the Murder House.
This isn’t your case, I remind myself. This isn’t your problem.
This could cost you your badge, girl.
I start up the hill toward the front door.
I’M TRANSPORTED BACK hundreds of years, to a time when you rode by horseback or carriage, when you lived by candlelight and torches, when you burned witches and treated infections with leeches.
When I close the front door of the house at 7 Ocean Drive, the sound echoes up to the impossibly high, rounded ceiling, decorated with an ornate fresco of winged angels and naked women and bearded men in flowing robes, all of them appearing to reach toward something, or maybe toward one another.
The second anteroom is as chilling and dated as the first, with patterned tile floors and more of the arched, Old Testament ceilings, antique furniture, gold-framed portraits on the walls of men dressed in ruffled shirts and long coats, wigs of wavy white hair and sharply angled hats—formalwear, circa 1700.
The guy who built this place, the patriarch of the family, a guy named Winston Dahlquist, apparently didn’t have a sense of humor.
My heels echo on the hardwood floor as I enter the open-air foyer, rising up three stories to the roof. Every step I take elicits a reaction from this house, fleeting coughs and groans.
“Hello,” I say, like a child might, the sound returning to me faintly.
The stairs up to the second floor are winding and predictably creaky. The house continues to call out from parts unseen, aches and hiccups and wheezes, a centuries-old creature drawing long, labored breaths.
When I reach the landing, it seizes me again, stealing the air from my lungs, pressing against my chest, blinding me. No, please! Please, please, stop—
—high-pitched childlike squeals, uncontrollable laughter—
Please don’t, please don’t do this to me.
I grasp the banister so I don’t fall back down the stairs. I open my eyes and raise my face, panting for air, until my heartbeat finally decelerates.
“Get a grip, Murphy.” I pass through ornate double doors to the second-floor hallway, where the smell greets me immediately, the coppery odor of spilled blood, the overpowering, putrid scent of decay. I walk along a thick red carpet, the walls papered with red and gold, as I approach the bedroom where Zach Stern and Melanie Phillips took their last breaths.