Fifty-Four
Rick is walking home from the grocery store with a bag in hand, looking for his keys to his apartment.
As he finally gets into his apartment he is startled by Mike.
"Hello, Rick." Mike says.
"Jesus!" Rick says dropping his groceries.
He turns towards Mike as Mike lights a cigarette sitting in Rick's on chair in his living room.
"Mike?"
Rick laughs.
"You scared me half to death." He says.
Both him and Mike laugh.
Mike then changes his mood quickly as he's not happy with Rick or him showing up to his house while Nel was there alone.
"It's unnerving to have someone, just show up in your house, isn't it?" Mike asks.
"How'd you get in here?" Rick asks.
"It's amazing what twenty bucks will buy you in this neighborhood."
"Uh-huh."
"You came back to my house, Rick. You bothered my wife."
"It was an open house. I'm an interested buyer."
Mike ashes his cigarette on Rick's carpet.
"And what are you gonna buy it with? The thousand dollars you've been trying to extort from me? You're not buying anything." Mike says.
"You don't know everything about me." Rick spats.
"I know you're a liar, Rick. You never went to prison for murdering your family. I checked out your story. You were in a burn ward for two years. Then you were institutionalized. You lied about everything." Mike fires back exposing Rick for who he is.
Rick stands there in silence and sighs as he knows he's been caught.
"They're not lies. They did die in that house." Rick says.
He sits down across from Mike on the coffee table becoming eye level with him.
"But you didn't kill them. Just like you didn't kill Isabel." Mike says.
Rick gives Mike the side eye.
He saw Rick kill Isabel, but he thinks it was all a lie, it was all an act to get back at him.
"It's all been lies."
"You know that not everything has been a lie. You know that house has power."
Mike shakes his head and runs his figures over his head in frustration.
Rick smiles at him because he knows deep down Mike knows it's all true and he just won't admit it.
Rick walks back towards the kitchen to put his groceries away and leave Mike with his thoughts about everything.
About the house.
"Nescafe?" Rick asks showing Mike the coffee creamer.
Rick smiles at him and then puts it back on the counter.
"It's true I tried to scare you out of the house, but I was only doing it for you own good." Rick explains.
"Right. The house is evil, and now you want to buy it." Mike says.
"That's goddamn right! I need that house! I need it! That is the only place I have any hope to ever be happy again." Rick says.
Mike gives him a confused look.
"Happy with who?"
"With her!"
**
Rick sits at his dining room joined by his wife Taylor.
She gets up and starts to clean up the table, when Rick takes her hand and looks into her eyes sympathetically.
"The girls are finally sleeping it sounds like." She says.
"Sit down, Taylor. We need to talk." Rick says.
Taylor nods and sits down in the chair across from Rick.
Rick sighs.
"There's really only one way to say this. I've fallen in love with somebody else. I didn't mean for this to happen." Rick explains.
Taylor sits there and listens to Rick fighting back all her anger and tears.
"Do I know her?"
"Connie, from next door."
They both sit in silence as Taylor closes her eyes and takes a deep breath before she punches Rick in the face.
She doesn't want to, but she's so damn mad at her husband right now.
Rick looks away from Taylor as he knows what he has done is wrong and doesn't want to see the disappointment on his wife's face.
"She's very beautiful." Taylor says.
Rick nods.
"I suppose if I were a man, I would love her too." She continues.
Rick still looks away as he doesn't want to look Taylor's way.
"Are you going to leave us?"
"Actually, I think that you should take the girls and go back to Ohio and move in with your mother. And I will provide for you always."
Taylor's eyes start to water up as he heart shatters with every word Rick says.
"You're going to move her into my house?"
"It was her house before." Rick spats.
Taylor lets her tears fall down her face as Rick raises his voice at her.
"I can't live without her."
She then gets up from the table and starts to bring all the dishes into the kitchen for the night.
Later that night, Rick smells something burning upstairs and starts to freak out.
"Taylor?"
He runs upstairs and sees smoke coming out from under his daughter's bedroom door.
"Taylor?"
As Rick goes to open the door her is burned by the doorknob.
He begins pounding on the door begging his wife to let him in so he can save them, but she ignores Rick and keeps the door locked.
"Open this door!"
"Are the girls in there with you?"
"Taylor?"
"Taylor!"
Finally, Rick kicks the door open and is met by huge flames and his entire family engulfed in the fire.
"Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God!"
**
Rick still sits across from Mike as he just told Mike his story about how his wife and daughters died in the house.
"Connie? All this for Connie?" Mike asks.
"She's the most exciting woman I've ever met. I need that house, Mike." Rick says.
Mike looks at him and sighs.
"We have a buyer, a real buyer with real money. And he's gonna pull the whole god damn thing down. And after everything that's happened, that can only be good." Mike explains.
"No! No."
Mike gets up to leave, when Rick stops him and points his finger in his face.
"No! You can't let him do that." Rick says with clenched teeth.
"I can, and I will. And as soon as I leave here, I'm gonna report you to the police and file a restraining order." Mike says.
He walks past Rick and towards the door, but turns back around and looks at him sternly, throwing his cigarette on the ground in front of Rick.
"Game over."
**
"On a foggy Sunday night, June 12th, 1994, two people were viciously murdered in front of this luxurious Brentwood condo. The victims? Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman. The accused murderer? Nicole's ex husband, Orenthal Jamales Simpson, 'O.J.' to the world. Although he was acquitted after a lengthy trial, O.J. will forever remain suspect." The Murder House Tour guide Jonathan says.
Josh and Nel listen to the stories and information behind each of the famous Murder Houses around the Los Angeles area.
"I'm so glad you brought me on this tour, Nel. It's given me hope."
"How?"
"No matter how gruesome or horrible the murder, you can always find somebody out there who'll buy the house."
Nel rolls her eyes and puts her sunglasses back on and continues to listen to Jonathan.
"Next stop on our tour of departed souls...'Murder House'. And ladies and gentlemen, we have a celebrity here on the bus today, the current owner of the Murder House." He says catching Nel off guard.
Nel gives everyone a fake smile and a weak laugh as they all look at her and Josh.
"You left us rather suddenly on your last visit." Jonathan says.
"Well, I thought the story was so great, I wanted to come hear the rest of it." Nel says.
Josh looks at Nel and chuckles.
She gives him the side eye and turns her attention back towards Jonathan.
"Let's jump right in. Built by Doctor Kevin and Stephanie Olusola, they lived there with their son Tyler. That is, until the baby was kidnapped and found dismembered."
**Flashback to 1922**
Stephanie sits at the dining room table angrily polishing her silver forks and spoons until she can see herself in them.
"If Mother could see me now, polishing my own silver." She says to herself.
Just then, Kevin comes into the dining room from his lab in the basement completely out of it.
"Kevin, look at me."
He looks at his wife shaking uncontrollably with this weird look in his eyes.
"Oh, I was I were a widow. I certainly look the part." She says to herself looking at Kevin.
"I bought this dress from my mother's funeral. Who ever thought I'd be wearing it again...to bury my son." Stephanie says.
Kevin takes off one of his gloves and smiles at Stephanie.
"That's not true." Kevin says.
"Because of you and what you did, we'll have to forgo an open casket." Stephanie says.
"Stephanie, I'm trying to tell you something." Kevin says.
Stephanie looks up to Kevin with tear stained cheeks and her silver in hand.
"There will be no funeral. The baby is upstairs and waiting for you in the nursery." Kevin explains.
Stephanie just stares at Kevin with tears filling her eyes as she can't believe he did it.
Kevin brought their baby boy back to life!
It's a miracle she's thinking...until she goes upstairs to the nursery.
Stephanie walks down the long hallway to the door at the end of it slowly and opens it.
As she walks closer to the crib, her tears begin to come back.
"Tyler?"
Tyler sits outside his crib hissing at his mother startling her.
Stephanie is appalled by the site and runs out of the room to confront her husband about what he has done to their baby boy.
"I was wrong about you, Kevin. You are a genius." Stephanie says.
Kevin smiles and looks at his wife fondly.
"How long I've waited to hear you say that. All I wanted was to prove myself." Kevin says.
"How on earth did you do it?"
"I used the beating heart from one of our girls."
Kevin laughs and Stephanie laughs along with him at the evil thing he has done.
"Amazing."
Kevin's face drops when he realizes Stephanie doesn't have the baby with her.
"Stephanie, where's the baby?"
"I thought he was hungry. I tried to nurse him, but it wasn't milk he was craving."
Kevin then looks at the bloody claw marks on Stephanie's chest and starts to panic.
"We're damned, Kevin, because of what we did to those girls. Those poor, innocent girls and their babies." Stephanie cries.
Kevin shakes his head in disbelief as he now knows what he's done is insane and horrible.
"That thing upstairs...It's not human. I tried to kill it."
"No."
"I tried. I stabbed it with a letter opener, but it clung to life, Kevin."
"No. I finally succeeded at something!"
Stephanie laughs and shakes her head drying the tears from her eyes.
"We'll alert the media at once. Hold a press conference." Stephanie says.
"You would do that? For me?" Kevin asks in disbelief.
"Of course. I'm proud of you, Kevin."
Stephanie opens up her arms to her husband for a hug.
He comes crawling on his hands and knees and wraps his arms around her waist as he cries into her stomach.
She just stands there running her fingers through his hair as he cries.
"You are a man, after all."
Stephanie then pulls a gun out from behind her back and shoots Kevin in the side of the head with it.
Moments later, she turns the gun on herself vowing to die with her husband.
**End of flashback**
"Legend has it that the ghost of Stephanie Olusola still haunts these very halls, as does her beloved, if mutilated, toddler. The Olusola murder-suicide was only the first of many to occur behind these bloody walls." Jonathan says.
Josh turns to Nel and takes his sunglasses off.
"Let's not put that in the listing."
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