The Devil I Know: My Haunting Journey with Ronnie DeFeo and the True Story ofthe Amityville Murders (22 page)

We decided to pull ourselves together, starting with the simple ritual of dinner. Everyone recognized how sick I was and told me to go to bed, but I insisted that we needed to show our strength and our unity against the forces gathering within our own walls, the spirits of a murdered family and the devil who had orchestrated their downfall.

We ordered takeout. Will and Uncle Ray came in with Chinese, and I came up from my office and sat at the table. Will, Joanne, and Ray looked at me the way you look at someone who looks awful—you aren’t sure whether to say anything. They didn’t have to. It was in their expressions.

Jo had set the table with candles and our good china, which had become dusty since the last time we’d used it. I wiped the dishes and thought about how long it had indeed been. A twinge of something came over me: through the pain and poison, the feeling of simple
happiness that accompanies sitting down to a meal with those you care about most. I struggled to hang on to the sweet feeling this produced as we passed the containers back and forth and slid noodles, dumplings, and vegetables onto our plates.

I was jolted out of my state of easy joy when Jo knocked over one of the containers and jumped back from the table, screaming and pointing over my shoulder. Her finger was pointed at our large ballroom antique mirror. The mirror is from Paris and stands six by nine. The dining room table is jet-black with old-style New Orleans velvet chairs. I always felt the two items made for a dramatic contrast.

Will, Ray, and I sprung up, and in overlapping voices, we asked Jo what was wrong. Mutely, she kept pointing to the mirror, hand pressed against her mouth. I turned and saw what Jo was seeing. Looking out at us from inside the glass was Allison DeFeo, most of her face blown off.

Will and Ray, seeing Allison’s face also, stood rooted to the floor. We were a silent tableau, unable to speak, united in our shock, until slowly Ronnie’s younger sister and her shattered face began to fade. At the moment she finally disappeared, one of our seventy-pound wooden dining chairs flew across the room and smashed into the far wall, shattering. Jo ran out of the room crying.

Ray, Will, and I said nothing at first but started to clean up. Each of us was aware of the only thing that was important. We needed to stay strong, and we needed to stay together.
It destroys people and it destroys bonds, Jackie
, my mother would tell me.
It tries to get inside you, between
you and the people you love, but you can’t let it. You have to show you’re stronger.

Ray paused and looked up at me. “Jackie, I need to tell you something,” he said, breaking the silence. “I don’t know how much you remember about the hotel that day.”

Will, who could barely form a scowl if you offered him a hundred dollars, shot Ray a harsh look. “Shut up, Ray,” he said. Will doesn’t talk that way, to anybody. Ever. “She doesn’t need to know.”

“I’m sorry, Will,” Ray said, “but I can’t keep it in any longer. Jackie, I was at the Surf Hotel that day. Will called me to tell me you were heading there. I just wanted to be there to help. I saw everything.”

“What?”

“I ran in after you and saw it all from the hallway. When you ran out of the room, you went right by me. I tried to stop you. I yelled your name.”

I traveled back to that moment. Racing out of the room after seeing my mother lost for good. Sprinting past the man with the badge, weaving through the drifters, seeking nothing but to put distance between me and the devilish spirit that had claimed her.

But I had sensed a known figure, a familiar energy. I thought I’d heard a voice calling my name. I’d wanted only to reach the water and then to keep going. Will’s eyes had held me fast, maintaining my fragile grip in this realm. It had been Uncle Ray I’d sensed.

“
Ray
,” Will said. “She doesn’t need to go back. Leave it alone.”

“But I was affected, too!” Ray said. I’d never seen him
look scared of Will, mostly because Will was as gentle to Ray as he was to anyone else. But the look in Ray’s eyes now was one of fear. “I’m scared. I’m scared this thing is going to kill Jackie. I saw it. I saw it lift her mother off the bed. I saw it all.” He was getting worked up.

“Calm down,” Will said. “Just take it easy.”

Ray was crying now, and his voice was rising. “No! It changed my life, too. I’m nothing now. You all take care of me. My mind went to fucking hell. Don’t you tell me what to do.”

Will was tensing up. My husband is soft on the inside, but on the outside he’s a tightly packed statue of muscle, and every man has his breaking point. I quickly stepped between him and Ray. At the same time, Jo came running into the room.

“Stop it!” she yelled. “Just stop! We have to stay together. Don’t you see that? This is exactly what it wants.”

“Sorry—you’re right, Jo,” Ray said. “I’m sorry, Will. Jackie, I had to say something. I know Will wanted us to keep this a secret, but I can’t keep it inside. I feel like I’m going to explode. This is getting out of hand, your involvement in all of it. I’m scared what it’s going to do.”

The devil can get to you directly or indirectly. It can snake its way inside you in a vulnerable moment and change the course of your life forever, as it had done to Ronnie DeFeo. Or it can draw you in and destroy your mind bit by bit. Ray had been there at the Surf Hotel. He had seen my mother descend through that eternal hole, just as I had. And he’d never been the same. His only
solace had been the pets. Through them, he could escape to a simpler and more innocent existence. That’s why he had so strongly linked his spirit to theirs. He wanted as little connection as possible to the world in which he’d seen a human soul forever stolen.

“Ray,” I said. “Ray, it’s okay. I’m so sorry for what happened and for what you saw. You were only there to help me. And look what it cost you. But your life isn’t a waste, Ray. Far from it. You’re a part of this family. As important a part as any of us. Always. Don’t worry about me. I’ll beat this.
We’ll
beat this.” I hugged Ray, and the last of the frightening tension that had been climbing moments before slipped away.

Ray looked at Will. “What do you say?”

But Will wasn’t listening. He had turned toward the mirror again and caught sight of his own image, which I now saw, along with the others. The whites of his eyes weren’t there. There was only black. My pillar of strength suddenly ran out of the room and locked himself in the basement, sobbing.

“I said, ‘Look,
if we’re gonna do this, we’re gonna do this,’ ” Ronnie told me. “She went back in her room, I didn’t know why at first. Then she came back in wearing a pair of gloves, brown or black, and my gun, a Python, pistol, a .357 Magnum, which fired .38 specials. Stainless steel handles. Some people call ’em combat handles, hard black leather. Took the recall away from the gun, there was no recall from that gun, not for me, anyway. She had
two hands on it. She knew how to fire it because I’d shown her how in the basement. I had a steel trap down there where I fired all the guns—rifles, everything, big steel trap, paper targets, silhouettes.”

“Then what happened, Ronnie?”

“Next thing I know, it’s five minutes to one. We went downstairs, in his room. She had gloves on, but I didn’t pay her no mind. She didn’t say nothing. She must have seen too many movies, that’s what I’m saying to myself. I said, ‘Wait a minute, close all the kids’ doors, we don’t need them waking up.’ When she comes back, I said, ‘You sure you wanna do this? I’m not a killer; I never killed nobody.’ She says, ‘What are you, scared?’ I said, ‘Listen, I’m not scared. You wanna do this?’ She says, ‘Yeah.’ She got gloves on, but I only seen one glove, one hand. She had the pistol under her nightgown. A good minute went by, we were standing in the bedroom, looking at the both of them. All that was there was the votive candle under the statue. Just a little light, but enough. My mother and father’s room wasn’t that big, but the bed was real long. We were looking in the mirror at ourselves. I looked at her, shaking my head.”

“What were you thinking about?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t thinking straight, maybe. I started thinking about all the crap he’d pulled, that son of a bitch. There was already a round in the barrel. All I had to do was pull the hammer back. Pulled the hammer back, and I said, ‘Here goes.’ That’s what I said, ‘Here goes nothing.’ He didn’t move, nobody moved. ‘You fat fuck,’ I said. He heard that. He lifted his head up, but he
was facing the other way when he was sleeping, so he’s looking in the other direction and he sees me and Dawn in the mirror. He says, ‘I’ll kill you, you son of a bitch.’ I said, ‘That’s what you think.’ Now Dawn’s yelling, ‘Get him, get him!’ I’ll never forget that. I fired the gun. One round goes off. He’s getting up now. I said, ‘This is for all the shit you done to me, you fat fuck.’ ”

Jo had gone
to a movie with a friend, and Will was working at the bar. I was sitting in my bedroom armchair, exhausted and ill but trying to read a book and pretend that life was normal, even if briefly. But it was hard to ignore the pain in my throat, the throb above my eyes, and the waves of dizziness that kept coming like an unremitting storm. When I sat, it felt as though I was falling through the floor. When I stood, it felt as though the room was shifting and twirling. The thermostat read sixty-two, but I’d have thought an electric blanket was attached to my back.

I heard Ray’s door close downstairs and then his footsteps making their way up. I was glad for the company, since I’d tried to read the same paragraph several times without success.

“Hey, Ray,” I said before seeing him. “Nice to see another face up here.” My armchair is on the side of an oversized armoire with mirrored doors. I looked around the room and didn’t see him, then caught sight of him in one of the mirrored doors, standing halfway in and halfway out of my bedroom doorway.

Both my ongoing delirium and the utter strangeness of the image made it hard for me to process what I was seeing. Only when Uncle Ray, dressed in an army jacket, raised the shotgun at me did I snap to reality. In such cases you always imagine you will react instantly and heroically, but when actually confronted with so bizarre a moment, it’s hard to do anything but wonder what in God’s name is going on. I was neither instant nor heroic. Instead, after a stunned second, I simply screamed, “
No!
”

Ray ran over to me, asking what was wrong. I shoved him out of the way and scrambled for my phone, repeating the words, “I saw it, I saw it,” or something of the sort. I’d seen it all in the mirrors. The army jacket, his face, the shotgun. But none of it was there, of course. It was just Ray.

“Jackie,” he said, “what are you talking about? I would never hurt you. Jackie, you’re scaring me. I was coming in to tell you I needed to go for a walk. Look at me, Jackie. There’s no gun. I’m not holding a gun. It’s a watchband. It broke, and I was fixing it. You’re imagining things.”

I looked up and saw that he was telling the truth. He was holding the broken metal band from the wristwatch he wore every day.

“Why are you wearing an army jacket in this heat?” I asked him, still unsure. He just looked at me strangely.

“Jackie,” he said, “you need to rest. You aren’t well, and you’re seeing things. I’m going to go for a walk. Do you need anything?”

I just stared at him, still more frightened than reassured. He smiled and then left the house.

I called Adam immediately and told him that if I were to die that night, it would be Uncle Ray who did it. I saw him wearing an old army jacket, I said, and holding a shotgun, which he’d pointed at me.

“Calm down, Jackie,” Adam said. “You’re talking faster than normal. Are you sure you saw what you think you saw? Are you alone now? Where is Ray? What did he say after you think he pointed a gun at you? I’ll send a car to keep an eye on things. In the meantime, you just need to stay cool.” I didn’t know whether Adam was more shocked or upset. Fear in my voice was something new to him.

I called Joanne and told her to meet me at a late-night coffee shop instead of heading home. We then waited until 3:30
A.M.
, when Will would be closing up the bar, and called him to meet us so we could return to the house together.

We conferred with the driver of the car Adam had indeed sent, then went back in the house, Will first. Ray was seated in the same armchair I’d been in earlier. He was staring at the wall, looking vacant.

After looking him over to make sure he was holding no weapon, I sat down in the chair across from him. “Ray, I forgive you. We’re here for you. We’re all here, together. Talk to us.”

Ray began to cry. “Jackie, I’m sorry. You’ve had such a hard life. If I could take it all away, I would. You’ve always taken care of me. You gave me the biggest gift a person can give: you made me feel part of something. A family.”

“Of course we’re a family, Ray. And you’re a part of it.”

He looked up. “I’ve never been the same since that day. I can’t hold a job. I’m always depressed. I have real bad thoughts sometimes, Jackie. I hear voices. I hadn’t heard them for a while, though, until earlier. I’m ashamed of what happened.”

“What do you mean? I thought you said I imagined it.”

“I thought I’d heard you telling Will it was time for me to go. Then I heard someone, a man’s voice, say,
You’re going to let her throw you out; you’ll just be a bag man on the street; you have nothing. Kill her.
”

“Ray.”

“Kill her tonight, when everyone is out.”

“Ray, it’s okay. We’re strong. We’re united.”

It wasn’t helping. He was spiraling again. “I felt the weirdest rage come over me out of nowhere. I went and looked around the garage for a weapon. But then a picture fell from the wall, and when it hit the ground, it kind of brought me back. It was a picture of you as a small kid. I fell to the ground yelling, ‘I can’t do it.’ And something started to kick me. I couldn’t see it, but something, kicking me over and over and yelling at me to do it. I’m sorry, Jackie. I’m so sorry.”