Foster's

Culverton House .5

1950

In between the Davis Construction debacle and the new family, the state turned over the selling of the Culverton House to an in town realty agency.

This was a wonderful idea for the state. It meant that they didn't have to worry about the house, and the town could deal with it as they saw fit.

They just couldn't tear it down.

The house was a historical landmark now. It was protected.

The people of Fort Talesas had thought that was stupid. They would have burned the house if they could. If they thought it would burn in the first place.

With the house successfully transferred over to Talesas Realty who was now in charge of the estate. They found that a lot of money had accumulated in that account, from all the families that had been ruined by the house. The state could wash their hands of that disastrous house, it was officially Talesas Realty's problem. And then many a realtor struggled to sell the Culverton House.

They had one good showing and then after that showings got harder and hard to run. The strange happenings, it seemed, were no longer contained to after the new families moved in.

The house, or whatever was in it, had learned that the showing was the beginning so it had started dissuading people right away.

Realtors hated going there, but they also wanted this house sold and out of their hands. So they scheduled viewing after viewing until finally, finally they found someone who didn't care about the house being haunted and being the sight of many murders.

The Walkers were from California. They had moved down south for a change in scenery after their jobs had been lost. They had moved in with the family they had down here and then when he heard about the house for sale they took almost all their lifesavings and put it into this new venture.

They were going to turn the Culverton House into Culverton hotel.

Alan Walker had been in construction for years, specifically in building houses. So he knew all about how the inner workings of a house and figured he could do the whole renovation himself, with the help of his wife. Doreen, who had, up until being made redundant, had been an interior decorator with a rather successful firm.

In the span of a year they got the house refitted. They got the electricity working, the plumbing on the city grid instead of it's own and all the rooms converted into hotel rooms, each with a bathroom a piece.

They took down walls and put up new ones. And then happily announced to the town that they had found no surprises or hidden bodies.

It looked like this would be the only family to survive more than a year.

Yes they had some strange happenings like the townsfolk had warned them about, but nothing that they couldn't handle. Nothing that scared them off.

Just a month before the year anniversary of them buying that place they were ready to open up the hotel. Culverton Hotel was officially open for business.

They figured they'd operate for the rest of the year, and in the summer they'd start tackling the rest of the place.

Tame that maze, put in a pool, take out the field and turn it into tennis courts, covert the old barn into a spa with a sauna. You know, hotel amenities to drive up the price of a night's stay.

They were going to turn Culverton Hotel into the jewel of the south.

But then, late one night, two months after they had officially opened, and one month after the year mark, they got a drifter.

The man was bone tired, he wanted a hot meal, a place to sleep and shower, and being the nice people they were they offered him one of their smaller less expensive rooms. They even took whatever cash he had to offer instead of making him pay full price.

All was well.

But in the morning the drifter was gone.

So were the Walkers.

No one had any idea where they had gone.

There was a massive search for them.

They found their car in the newly fitted garage. They found that their bank accounts hadn't been touched.

Their room was on the first floor and it didn't look like a struggle had happened in it. There was no blood in the bed. Though they did find bodily fluids of some kind. They found evidence of someone else being there that night, but they had no witnesses, no leads and no bodies.

The case went cold almost immediately.

It wouldn't be until 1983 when the drifter was caught and he admitted to what he had done. With his confession they ran his DNA against the DNA left in the bed and found a match.

He admitted that the Walkers were one of his first victims in a trail of many. A serial killer that usually preyed on people who would pick up hitch hikers, he didn't usually go into houses and just... murder people.

He liked leaving his bodies on the side of desolate roads.

They had been an experiment and after them he hadn't wanted to do it in a house again.

He would tell a sordid tale of how he "played" with Doreen Walker and made her husband watch. He would tell them that he arranged their bodies in their bed for someone else to find. He would tell them that they only reason he left early was because of the eyes that were watching from the walls and the voices that kept telling him to leave.

He'd say the bodies should have been in the room, it was where he left them so he had no idea where they would have gone.

But with no other evidence, a DNA match, and no one else confessing, they added the Walker to that serial killer's tallies.

And the house, once again was left standing, with more secrets hidden away in its shadows. The only one who truly knew where the Walkers had gone.