That night both Johnny and Sybil slept a peaceful, heavy sleep, devoid of dreams, or if they had any dreams, they did not remember them. When they arose the next morning, they looked at each other with new eyes and Sybil knew that she had received more than she had bargained for. The bitter memory of Paul had been purged from her, and her life looked a lot more promising than it had before. As for Johnny, he was clearly enchanted by his own discovery that he desired and longed for her.
“There is something else we must do, and do it quickly,” he said as he got dressed.
Before breakfast, they went out to the gravesite at the rear of the property and together they arranged it in such a way that it would be difficult for anyone to guess that there had been any digging on the spot. But before they covered up the opening Johnny descended into the excavation and took upon himself the responsibility of laying out the skeleton of the chief so that it could find eternal rest. There was nothing he could do about the missing skull. Instead, he placed an Indian talisman which he had brought with him in the place where the skull would have been. After they had covered the opening carefully, he put a small tablet into the ground, on which a protective seal, known to Indians as a symbol warding off all evil, had been placed.
“We are finished here, Sybil,” he said and went back to the house with her. Immediately she called the owners and advised them that she was leaving two days earlier than planned. When she had done so, Johnny embraced her, and she knew then his feelings for her were not part of the ritual.
“I am going back to the city now, and I would like to see you later this evening.” She nodded and went to the house to pack her things. She too would leave very shortly.
Later that evening Johnny came to her apartment and stayed with her throughout the night. But they were both distracted by the knowledge that they still had to take the opal to the Tibetan monastery.
The following Saturday they took off in Johnny’s bright red sports car for the monastery in New Jersey. Very little was said, but thoughts of love ran back and forth between them. It was afternoon when they arrived. Johnny had telephoned ahead and they were expected. The abbot seemed excited at the prospect of receiving so precious a gem. Immediately he led them to his private study and offered them seats. Sybil produced the little box with the opal in it and handed it over to the abbot. Despite his calm manner, for he had been trained not to show emotions too easily or readily, the abbot let out a little cry of astonishment.
“It is as I suspected,” he said and there was joy in his voice. “It is the sacred opal from Rva Sgreng! At last it is back with us. I cannot begin to tell you how thankful we are.”
“What are you going to do with it?” Sybil asked.
“I made some inquiries after your friend called me. We have received dispensation from the Dalai Lama to place the opal in our temple.”
“Will you not send it back to Tibet, where it came from?” Johnny enquired.
“Do you know what is happening in our homeland?” the abbot asked. “If we took the opal there, the Chinese would take it. The Dalai Lama feels we should be the custodians of the precious jewel for the time being, until our homeland is free. Then he will bring it back in a ceremonial procession and replace it where it came from.”
“Um many padmi hom,” Johnny said.
“Um many padmi hom,” the abbot replied.
Sybil looked at both men, wondering what they were saying. Johnny leaned over to her and said, “It’s a statement of faith, having to do with Buddha being the heart of the lotus. We have just sealed the bargain, so to speak, and the opal is no longer in your possession.”
“Does that mean that the—ah--special side effects of the opal will no longer affect me?”
“That is correct,” Johnny replied. “You are free, for you have returned the opal. Now you can live your own life as you choose.”
Sybil got up, ready to leave, but Johnny motioned her to stay seated for a moment longer.
“I believe you are celebrating the festival of Maitreya this afternoon,” he said to their host.
The abbot nodded. “Yes; it is the festival of the coming Buddha, and you are welcome to stay. It will start in approximately two hours.”
“I think that would be nice,” Johnny replied, very much to Sybil’s surprise, since she hadn’t been asked. Something in Johnny’s tone made her wonder what he was up to. Her mood was so festive and so relieved of all anxiety that she couldn’t care less what he had in mind. She was in love with a man she had known for only a few days!
The abbot rose as a sign that the audience was finished. “Is there anything else that I can do for you?” he asked politely.
Johnny rose and so did Sybil. “As a matter of fact, Your Eminence,” he replied, “there is.”
“Then please state it.” The abbot smiled. “I would be happy to do anything in my power.”
Johnny looked at Sybil with a compelling expression in his eyes.
“I believe it is traditional, since you are celebrating the festival of Maitreya, that any couple wishing to be married may do so at a moment’s notice.”
When he had spoken, Sybil heard her heart beat faster. Had she heard right?
“Yes,” the abbot replied. “Do you want to be married?”
“Yes, we do,” Johnny said matter-of-factly. Again he looked at Sybil, waiting for her answer.
To her amazement and surprise Sybil heard herself say, “Yes, we do!”
“Well then,” the abbot said cheerfully, moving toward the door of his study, “come with me so that we can register you properly. After all, we are in the United States and we must do things legally.”
Two hours later Sybil and Johnny were joined in matrimony in the Buddhist manner, or rather in the Tibetan-Lamaist manner, which is somewhat more colorful than traditional Buddhism. Somehow Johnny had got hold of a ring which he placed on Sybil’s finger during the ceremony. The abbot in turn gave them a signed photograph of His Holiness Tenzin Gyatso, the fourteenth Dalai Lama. In the evening, they left the monastery, and returned to the city. The following week Sybil gave up her apartment and moved in with Johnny.
In the middle of her happiness, she found time to wonder about the house at 112 Ocean Avenue, Amityville, Long Island. By now the owners should have moved back in. Out of curiosity, Sybil telephoned them about a week later. Was everything all right? she asked. She pretended to be concerned only with the kitchenware and the other possessions which the owners had left in the house.
“Everything is perfectly fine,” the voice of the owner resounded on the telephone. “You’ve been a very good tenant. I have only one question. You seemed to be planting something in the rear of the garden. What happened?”
“Well,” Sybil replied after a moment’s hesitation to gather her thoughts. “We tried but nothing would take there. I think the soil is not conducive to planting anything. If I were you, I would just leave it alone--yes, indeed, I would just leave it alone.
“If you say so,” the owner replied cheer- fully, and hung up.
That night Sybil had an unusual and colorful dream. She seemed to awaken because a voice was trying to penetrate her conscious mind, yet she knew she was still asleep. Her eyes were closed but, with her inner eye, she discerned the tall figure of an Indian, dressed in full regalia of a chief. A voice, seemingly coming from far away and trailing off indistinctly in the end, penetrated her consciousness.
“I am Rolling Thunder, my child. I have come to say good-bye.”
As Sybil watched, the Chief was joined by a white man in strange clothes. His outfit minded her of some costume films she had seen. Clearly, he was some sort of seaman and yet his clothing seemed more elegant than that of an ordinary sailor. His face was peaceful and glowing, and he looked at the Indian with affection.
The white man looked down at her with a smile. When he spoke, it was with a clipped British accent. “I am Don Pedro and I came to tell you that you need not worry any longer. All is well. I am at peace. I have found my Merryn.”
At this moment the picture faded and the figures of the two men gradually disappeared from her inner eye. She woke up with a jolt. Johnny was fast asleep next to her and she did not wish to wake him. What a strange dream, she thought--or was it a dream at all? With that, she went back to sleep.
The next morning Sybil woke early, filled with a restlessness for which she had no immediate explanation. Johnny was still fast asleep and she made sure he would not be awakened when she slipped from the room. It could not have been more than seven a.m., and all was very quiet. In the distance the muted noises of the city waking up to a working day barely intruded into her consciousness.
And then she realized what was so different about this morning: the atmosphere had changed; the restlessness was in herself, and she felt a need to get on with her life as soon as possible, and to get on with it somewhere else.
So the years went by, and Amityville, Long Island was just another growing community, filled with nice, average people going about their business. In the summer, the population would be enlarged by tourists or those who came from the city to spend a weekend. All in all, Amityville had long lost its sinister connotations, and people had ceased to connect the town’s name with horror films.
It was now ten years after Sybil and Johnny had gotten married and in those ten years they hadn’t been back to the house once. Was it because they felt that they had left the past behind, or was it because of some secret fear that in returning they might reawaken something not fully laid to rest? In any event, neither expressed a desire to revisit the place where so many traumatic events had taken place. Johnny decided to publish in fictional form what he had been able to accomplish in the house, but he carefully avoided pinpointing the location, not so much because he wanted to protect the citizens of Amityville, but because it might in some way affect the magical operation which he had so successfully concluded.
As for Sybil, she couldn’t have been happier. Her life with Johnny was absolutely delightful and harmonious.
It was about that time that the house came on the market again. The current owners had lived there for eight years. They were no longer young and they wanted to move to the West Coast, partially because of the climate and partially because the husband, who was an air space technologist, thought he would find better employment there.
So the house was put up for sale once again. The real estate agent who handled it, Rooker and Purloin, one of the top firms in the area, quickly found another buyer in the person of Reginald Doar.
Mr. Doar was twenty-nine years old, unmarried, and the son of Richard Doar, county executive and a well-known politician in the area. Young Doar had always dreamed of owning the house where so much had transpired. For to him the Amityville horror and curse belonged to local history, and as a history buff the thrill of owning the actual house where all this had happened was well worth the price he had to pay. Besides, as a successful attorney, he could well afford it.
But Mr. Doar was also a movie buff, specializing in horror films from past years. He decided to build a studio at the far end of the property where he could view the films he owned and enjoy them with his friends. The contractor promised him construction of such a studio within a matter of two months. The following week, work started on the studio. Using a medium-sized bulldozer, the construction crew began to clear the land at the rear of the property. As they did so, the shovel cut through the grave of the great Indian Chief, Rolling Thunder. When the shovel cut through the skeleton and broke it into smithereens, none of the men were surprised. In their line of work, they were always making similar discoveries. To them, the skeleton was merely a lot of old bones, of no particular significance. They threw them on a heap of refuse, to be carted away the next day.
None of this, of course, was known to Mr. Doar. The following night, after the bones had been disposed of, he was awakened in the middle of the night by an unnatural wind. At first he thought that Long Island was having an earthquake or a hurricane, but when he stuck his head out the window he saw that everything was quiet; in fact, deadly quiet. He went back to bed, trying to go to sleep.
But the wind became stronger, and everything in the house began to rattle. Frightened, young Doar sat up in bed and stared into the darkness of his room, where he saw a flickering light approach him. As he looked on in horror, the light turned into a luminous figure, outlined in two-dimensional fashion but still clearly discernible as a man. The man was an Indian, taller than most, and his eyes were burning fiercely. Then Doar heard a voice that seemed to come from far away.
“You have broken a bond,” the voice said, “and now you must pay the price.”
With that, the wind and the howling became stronger. Unable to understand any of this, the young man quickly ran to the door and out into the garden, where there was no wind all. While he was trying to figure out what to do next and to find a rational explanation for what he had seen, a huge flame burst out inside the house. Within moments the entire building was engulfed. As Doar stood by helplessly, unable to move, his home became a roaring inferno. By the time the fire department arrived, there was practically nothing left.
A month later the property was up for sale again, only this time there was no house on it. It was merely a piece of land with the burnt-out remnants of what was once a house and a few charred tree stumps.
But nobody came forward to buy it. So, for all I know, it may still be available, in case you are interested.
People in Amityville have long since become accustomed to The Place, but they also tend to avoid it, especially at night. It isn’t so much out of fear or preoccupation with events which, after all, lie so far in the past that few remember them personally; it is due to a keen sense of self-preservation. If you live in Amityville, you just mind your business and let that piece of land be.
There isn’t a real estate man within miles who would handle the sale of the ground. The town owns it, as of now, but all efforts to unload it have failed. To build on it is out of the question. A feeble attempt by one of the young town councilmen to “stop this nonsense and superstition” and make good use of a valuable piece of property got only one vote in council: his.
Lately, nobody has even bothered to consider the matter. The land remains there, and even those eager and nervous souls who proposed putting a high fence around it got nowhere with the town council. But the town did not want some enterprising journalist to dig up the old stories and have flocks of unwanted tourists swarming over the place, so they ordered a barbed-wire fence to be put around it to keep people out. After all, it was town property now, and they had a right to do it.
The people who live on both sides and across from the land pretend it isn’t even there. And there really isn’t any need to walk onto the land: there is nothing to pick up, nothing to clean. Even the many dogs of Amityville, much as they love a place where they can run freely, never so much as come near the piece of ground. Little Joe Polinaro, the son of the barkeep at the Blue Onion, tried to take his mutt, Buddy by name, to do his business on that lot last February. The dog wouldn’t go in and when Joe picked him up and carried him over the barbed-wire fence, the animal shot out of there like a cannonball. It hasn’t been seen since.