House (novel)
From Conservapedia
House is a 2006 horror novel co-authored by Frank E. Peretti and Ted Dekker. As the title implies, it takes place within a "haunted house", a term which the novel intends to give new meaning to.
Plot
Jack and Stephanie Singleton, a couple having marriage problems and dealing with the death of their child, Melissa, are on their way to a counselling session in rural Alabama when they are stopped by a police officer for speeding. The officer tells them that the highway ahead of them is under repair, and directs them down a forest road that he explains will take them to another highway. However, as they drive down the road they run over a spike strip, which flattens their tires and leaves them stranded. Fortunately, they are near a charming Victorian inn, which they proceed to stop at for the night.
There they find another two, Randy and Leslie, who are engaged. Randy explains that the same thing happened to their car as the Singletons' car. The four proceed to inspect the inn, and find the dining room with the table set for dinner. The owners, however, are not seen anywhere, until Stephanie opens the pantry, where she finds one of them, Betty. As they start placing the food on the table, Leslie discovers another one, Pete, who seems to be Betty's son, and Randy encounters the father, Stewart, while washing in the bathroom.
As the four eat, the owners start to act strangely, such as Betty nearly forcing ice into Stephanie's mouth and Pete desiring Leslie for his "wife". Soon, the food goes rotten and the lights go out, and as the two couples get trapped inside the house with the "inbreds" by a homocidal maniac named Barsidious White. White drops a can down the chimney with his "house rules" written on the side:
Rule 1: God came to my house and I killed him. Rule 2: I will kill anyone who comes to my house just like I killed God. Rule 3: Give me one dead body and I might let rule 2 slide. Rule 4: You have until dawn until the game ends.
They find out that White is actually behind several other murders, and now they must fight in order to keep the owners, who seem to be determined to meet White's demands, from killing them, eventually trapping them in the meat locker. The owners escape and follow them down into the basement, where the two couples begin encountering strange things, including mirrors which don't reflect them and shifting rooms. Worse still, they find that the house itself seems to be alive, and won't let them out of the basement. Then they encounter duplicates of themselves, that "bleed" black smoke. Jack discovers a young girl, Susan, in a sewer tunnel, who knows how to beat White at the game, therefore White is desperate to find her.
Eventually, they are found by Officer Lawdale, the one who directed the Singletons down the forest road in the first place. He reasons that the house may not let them out, but whatever power was controlling the house didn't notice him, so he was able to get in while it was preoccupied with the two couples. Therefore, he says, he can get out and help the rest of them out too.
But once they get upstairs, they find that the house has changed drastically, and is now made of an inpenetrable metal, thus trapping them inside. Furthermore, Jack finds out that "Officer Lawdale" was actually White all along. Soon, they are forced back into the basement, where Randy finally loses his mind and stabs Leslie to death. Then Jack and Stephanie are faced with countless duplicates of themselves that seem to be made of black smoke, and White appears to finish them off. However, as he shoots Susan takes the bullet, and then as she "dies" a light comes out of her which consumes the black smoke, duplicates, and White.
Later on that morning, the police arrive and inspect the house, finding it seemingly deserted as if nothing had happened there. Susan reappears and tells them that the house was posessed by demons, and White had invited them in. They then see Stewart, Pete and Betty in an upstairs window. Susan explains that the demons will not stay in the house, because it is now "too clean" for them, and they will move on.
Spoilers end here.
