666 by Jay Anson

JetBlackDragonfly

8 hours ago

2 min read

Jay Anson wrote the bestseller The Amityville Horror, the 'true story' of the terrorized Lutz family, now admittedly debunked as fiction by everyone involved.

Keith and Jennifer arrive at their Hudson Valley home after a few days' holiday to find a two-story Victorian house on the lot next to theirs, a seemingly impossible event. Its street number is 666. Keith, a custom carpenter, explores the house—the hexagonal great room, the walls of stained glass images glowing with a malevolent light. He finds a rusty old coin, hot to the touch, perhaps from the eerie red light pouring through the windows, and gives the coin to Jennifer's close friend and antiques dealer David to research. It's from the reign of Nero, 64 A.D., and holding it causes a strange vibration, sending David into nightmarish flashbacks of torture and crucifixions, the bronze coin quenched in victims' blood. He is plagued with visions of giant insects, and the house itself rising from the bleeding earth on a foundation of human flesh. The house is struck repeatedly by thunder, and dead birds are found inside. Researching the house, they find it was relocated from Seattle—its old street number also 666, the site of a brutal double murder five years ago by a possessed killer.

Nevertheless... David decides to rent the house for the summer. Keith is hired to renovate and finds the structure was built with wooden pegs instead of nails, with a massive cast iron trident formed inside the walls, covered in Latin writing. David becomes obsessive about the house—and his desire for Jennifer, leading to a grand finale where the big man downstairs makes an appearance.

A house that moves and reappears to exert a frightening demonic influence on its victims, bringing them screaming to the very brink of Hell into the hands of the devil himself, might sound more exciting than it is. The writing and story were serviceable but never completely engaging. With a similar tone as Amityville, it felt like a series of events rather than drawing me into the terror. There is a side story of Keith's brother Paul, an Episcopal reverend dealing with local youth stealing objects from his church for satanic black masses that doesn't go anywhere. Enjoyable if you like the demonic, but not recommended.

1981 / Hardcover / 283 pages