The Haunting of Goodman House: Goodman House

By Mo Raven

What is worse than a serial killer? 

TWO serial killers, working together… when one of them is a malevolent spirit. 

Oliver Goodman is a rich and successful creator of bestselling computer games. When his wife dies, he builds a new house and moves in with his two adopted children. Modern, streamlined, tastefully decorated, Goodman House looks like the perfect place to bring up  two teenagers.

But Goodman House is not all it seems. And nor is Oliver Goodman. 

Oliver has chosen to build his new house on the burnt-out ruins of a farmhouse for several reasons. He likes the location: it's isolated enough to give him privacy. He likes its history, too… for it was the 'killing ground' of an infamous serial killer, John Jerome Jones. 

Oliver appreciates the symmetry of that, given his own "little hobby"… until JJ starts to make his presence known, not only to Oliver, but to his adopted daughter, Mallory. 

John Jerome Jones might have died in the fire, but his warped spirit lingers on. Mallory, terrified, begins to wonder about her own mother's death. 

Is Oliver really just a grieving husband and stepfather, or someone far more sinister?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Blue Gem Publishing
• Release date: Oct 28, 2018
• ISBN: 9781922772060

Book preview

Prologue

John Jerome Jones—or ‘that old bastard JJ" as most people knew him—bumped and rattled along the final overgrown stretch of road to his farmhouse and pulled up outside the front door. After the last forty-five minutes, adrenaline was still racing through his veins, and his hands trembled on the steering wheel. 

He allowed himself a moment to anticipate the pleasures to come after he finally got the girl out of his old van and down into the basement. 

As though she’d tapped into his thoughts, there was a series of thumps from behind him. He’d yanked the cable ties around her wrists and ankles tight enough to cut into her skin, but she was still struggling to free herself. She cursed him again in a voice now hoarse from screaming.

This one had fought like a wildcat all the way, leaving scratches on his face and hands. He touched his nose, still bleeding from where she’d punched him in the face. 

Before the night was done, she’d regret that. 

JJ slid out of the driver’s seat and ran up the rickety steps to unlock his front door. Most people who owned farms out this way didn’t bother locking up, but JJ always did. He couldn’t risk anyone snooping around his property when he wasn’t there. Moving quickly through the house, he opened two other doors: first the kitchen and then the door to the cellar. Finally, he clicked on the light that illuminated the old wooden steps. He could picture the girl now, tumbling down those steps, crying out with pain. 

JJ snickered. He liked to start things off the way he meant to go on. 

He hurried back through the kitchen, eager to begin—but all at once, things went to hell. 

Outside, he heard the sound of a car speeding towards the farmhouse, closely followed by a second. 

Shit! He dashed to the open door and squinted at the flashing lights from the cars that accelerated out of the access road and pulled up, one by one, behind and beside his van. 

Cops. How the hell? 

JJ swore, slammed the door and barred it before racing to the back door, which opened off the kitchen. If he could get to the cover of the tool shed, he could make a dash for Mackenzie’s dilapidated old shack, about twenty minutes away at a jog. Mackenzie had died more than a year ago, but his piece-of-shit motorbike still worked, and JJ had stashed some cash with it just in case. 

He cracked the back door and cursed viciously at the sound of pounding footsteps and wavering beams of light. The bastards had outmanoeuvred him.  

JJ dropped the crossbar across the back door and seized one of the two cans of gasoline resting by the wall. Working fast, he splashed the accelerant across the warped floorboards and the old wooden table and left a trail into the living room. The second was for the bedrooms. When the can was half empty, he lugged it to the top of the cellar steps and then went back for his rifle, ignoring the pounding on both front and back doors and the demands to give himself up. 

By now, they would have the girl. He was done for.

There wasn’t a chance in hell he was going to allow himself to be captured and thrown in prison. Let them come and get him. He’d take out as many as he could before torching the place and shooting himself. 

They were welcome to his charred bones. His—and those of his victims. 

With a bellow of rage and defiance, JJ descended into the cellar.

ONE

The House of a Good Man

Oliver Goodman closed the front door of his brand new, purpose-built home and took a moment to gaze around him, drinking in the smooth lines and generous proportions. The house was decorated in subtle shades of white, latte and sand, with a bright pop of watermelon or teal here in strategic locations. The palette pleased him and would have thrilled his late wife. Here and there, he’d added a feature in her memory, although it was unlikely she would have appreciated such a gesture from her killer.  

His gaze drifted to the elegant staircase soaring to the second story, and he nodded. Goodman House. It had a nice ring to it, and he liked the irony. The house of a good man. He permitted himself a light chuckle.

The place was too big for a man on his own, he had to admit, but when his adopted children came home in the school holidays, it would not seem nearly large enough, despite the fact that he’d created a suite of rooms for each of them to help keep them contained. 

At the thought of the children, his lips tightened. Fifteen-year-old Clint hero-worshipped his rich, successful adoptive father and wanted nothing more than to follow in his footsteps. In the world of computer gaming, that is, not his father’s other occupation. 

Clint’s sister Mallory, younger by one year, had not fallen under Oliver’s spell. It was mildly annoying, but he refused to let her clear dislike of him affect the faux kindliness with which he treated her. She’d come around, or she wouldn’t. 

As long as she didn’t stumble onto evidence of his little hobby, he really didn’t care. 

The two children provided a good cover. The world saw a devoted father looking after the welfare of his adopted children after the tragic loss of his wife. In the eyes of Claire’s friends, he could do no wrong.  

Oliver had been patient for twenty long months after their wedding before he made his move. He’d slipped easily into Claire’s social circle, winning over her friends and their husbands, and occasionally agreeing with them that it had been the luckiest day of his life when he met Claire. 

Luck? He begged to differ. Oliver had picked his target carefully. A career woman whose work took her away from home as much as she was there, CHECK. A divorce settlement that had her ex-husband, a power-hungry politician, agreeing to pay for his unwanted children’s private boarding school fees. (No kids at home to cramp Oliver’s style, CHECK.) And a woman who had almost died in her twenties from anaphylactic shock. (Credible and simple reason for planned death: CHECK.)

Oliver took his time and planned carefully, using a public computer to research bees and wasps and how best to use them against his wife. The years since her one and only attack had made Claire complacent, and she frequently forgot to carry an epi-pen with her. 

He pinpointed the day, smuggled in his bees, waited until she was happily running back and forth from the kitchen to the gazebo at the bottom of the garden, setting up for their guests, and then seized the opportune moment.