This is Episode 5 of American Horror Story season 1.5 - Murder House Revisited. If you haven't already, you should probably read the previous episodes or you may be confused. Check my Profile to find them.
1984
The young couple met at a fetish convention in Hollywood. They both went by their middle names at the convention rather than their first names and for the same reason: To separate their 'normal' lives from their play personas. When they discovered that fact at the hotel bar, they immediately hit it off.
He was a dominant bottom; she was a shy dominatrix. They played well together. They started seeing each other regularly then they started seeing each other almost exclusively, play parties not included. A couple of years after first meeting they got married. That same year they moved into Murder House. It was "almost perfect", she said when they got settled.
When they were on the clock, visiting relatives or entertaining certain friends they were Stanley and Marie Argento. He was a financial executor who made good money. She was the owner of a clothing store. When they had out the leather and chains, he was Sam the submissive and she was Lady Nikki - and she was in charge.
The library was one of their favorite places to play. It had a lot of open space and the books acted a bit like soundproofing. They'd rigged the ceiling and the floor with O rings and the rug before the fireplace was comfortable and easy to clean. They liked to record and photograph their fetish play, for more fun and reminiscing later. They talked a lot about what they wanted from their playtime; it was part of what kept them so in love.
Living in Murder House was an inspiration to their bondage and discipline sessions; their photos in the house made all others look like child's play. After she bought a copy of the Marquis de Sade's 120 Days of Sodom, they moved to breath play: Asphyxiation during pleasure. It wasn't malicious: Nikki was a strict but loving mistress to her husband and gave him exactly the sort of torture his growing dark appetite craved. Sam especially got off on her putting a belt around his throat like a noose. She would restrict his airflow during sex until he was about to orgasm then she would release him. It was intense; he passed out during more than one play date.
When the police found their bodies it was obvious they had been engaged in a play session when they were murdered. It was difficult for forensics to determine which injuries were self-inflicted and which were the acts of the murderer. The video they were making was little help: It showed the couple as Nikki bound and gagged Sam. The footage showed her slipping a belt around his neck while he hung suspended by the wrists from an A-frame bar above. A shadowy blur passed in front of the camera, momentarily blocking view of the couple. Then the recording stopped. When it started next the couple were dead and mutilated. Inhumanly so.
No one could explain what happened. Whatever happened, the autopsy blamed the vicious claw marks on animal attack, though it didn't speculate on the type. The couple had no pets and there wasn't evidence of any kind found at the scene that might indicate what sort of creature could flay meat from human bones like that. The official causes of death were listed as: Willful homicide through blunt force trauma, asphyxiation and laceration/evisceration.
The Argentos only lived in the house for four months before it was on the market again.
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2010
"I don't know how you talked me into this," Chad said, hugging his middle as he looked around the entryway.
There was dust and dirt everywhere. Cobwebs in every corner. He'd forgotten since seeing it during the initial walk-through just how bad it was. Maybe he hadn't wanted to remember.
"It'll be great," said Patrick, coming in behind him. He slipped his arms around the shorter man and pulled him close. "Once we get it cleaned up and redecorated, it'll be gorgeous. We're going to make this place amazing. How can we fail with your mad designing skills?"
Chad smiled over a shoulder at him. "You sure know how to challenge a man."
"You know it, babe. Just wait till we christen the master chamber." He waggled his brows then gave Chad a quick kiss. He let go afterward and moved down the hall. "Come on. Let's go see if they got the new fridge hooked up."
Chad followed more slowly, hugging himself again as his smile wilted. He wanted to share Patrick's enthusiasm but the place just felt so... wrong. Like it might never be fixed up properly. He wasn't sure he was up to the challenge.
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1994
The days that immediately followed the Westfield High massacre were a chaotic blur. The school was closed off for a week while investigators collected evidence and removed bodies. Murder House was turned inside out for the same reason, during which time Constance and Adelaide stayed in a motel under a fake name, to avert the press and angry news-readers. Lawrence stayed in the hospital burn ward in critical condition.
Public hatred toward Constance grew as the days dragged by. People wanted to know why she hadn't known her son was capable of such a thing. Why hadn't she known he had multiple guns in the house? Why hadn't she seen warning signs? Why didn't do something to prevent it? Everyone wanted answers and she had none to give. She didn't understand it herself. The boy she raised wasn't someone who would - or could - do something like that.
The hate mail poured into the mailbox at their abandoned home. People left angry posters taped to the front gate. Constance had to disconnect the phone. The newspapers ran nasty headlines. She couldn't watch television due to the constant coverage. Survivors' names. Names of the dead. Sobbing, panicked children and mournful adults filled the broadcasts, run over and over until something new surfaced. They splashed up images of her sweet son with the words 'Monster' and 'Murderer' and 'Dead' emblazoned in red over them.
But the one thing that didn't surface was what everyone wanted to know: Why?
Why had a quiet, shy, smart kid like Tate suddenly turned cold-blooded killer? He seemed to have it all going for him: Gifted student. Good looking. On the track team. No history of acting out. A teacher's wet dream. It was the fact that the slaughter made no sense that had everyone captivated.
The police confiscated a lot of things from Tate's room but nothing they released showed his reasoning. There seemed to be no motive. All they had were composition books filled with bleak poetry, a few unaddressed love letters he never sent and some crude sketches of guns. The teenager left the world nothing to explain what he was thinking that day.
The public couldn't blame Larry thanks to his life-threatening injuries but some still tried. Any woman who brings a man into an existing family is asking for trouble, they said. But the man had nearly died at the hands of the same boy who shot up his school. So they blamed the mother. Tate was dead. There was no one left to blame but her.
In the weeks that followed, the other families buried their dead. Some of the funerals were so large, thousands of people attended. Some were televised. While the victims were buried with expensive funeral wreaths and sang to rest by 300-person volunteer choirs, Constance had to have her son cremated in secret.
They couldn't risk a headstone or a burial; those would surely be defaced and raided by haters and grim trophy collectors. While long lines of mourners waited their turn to say goodbye to the neatly-dressed corpses of the people who were killed, Constance's baby was shoved into a large oven while only she and her daughter wept.
The bereaved mother took his ashes to the beach, where she scattered them over the surf. She knew it was Tate's favorite place to be. It was the only semi-sweet moment she gleaned from his funeral. She couldn't stop crying for hours afterward.
The media was relentless, tracking her everywhere she went, trying to get a story out of her. Many offered to pay her. All of them accused her. She couldn't say anything kind about her son to them or that made her complicit. She wasn't allowed to miss him. Or grieve for him.
No one would ever know the sweet boy she'd loved the seventeen years before he died. No one would ever see all the good that had died with him. The world would only know the black-clad hate-filled murderer who had stalked the halls of Westfield High that sad spring day.
They sold the house. Constance couldn't live there with the news people and gore freaks hounding the place all the time. She couldn't bear to be in the room where Tate's blood had soaked into the floor. Lawrence didn't want to live there any longer. She couldn't stand to be with him either way. He repulsed her. She had to leave for a while. She had to take Addie away until interest died down and the lawsuits settled.
Telling Tate that she had to leave was one of the hardest things she had to do. He didn't understand what had happened. He didn't remember dying, or the shootings at the school. He didn't remember setting Lawrence on fire. And she didn't have it in her to baby-step him through the reality of it all. She could barely cope with the fallout from it herself.
So she told her son that Lawrence had been hurt in a fire and that she needed to find them a new place to live. Someplace that wouldn't include Larry. Tate had been so overjoyed that he didn't mind or really even listen to the rest of her excuses. He knew Lawrence was in the hospital and wouldn't be returning. That's all that mattered to him. She told her boy that he had to stay at the house, so there was someone there to keep an eye on everything. He believed her.
They'd been working through the reality of his situation ever since.
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Author's Note:
Welcome back! I'm sorry if that last episode hurt any brains out there. It's nice that you've returned for more punishment. We're almost halfway through the season, if you're curious.
Ghost House is the name of this episode. It's also the name of the first real horror novel I remember reading as a kid of about 10. It's by author Claire McNally. The story centers around a family of 5, with children ages 12, 8 and 5. It's the first book I've read where children were burned alive in their beds by a vengeful ghost. In fact, it's the only book I've read like that. Amazingly I still have that book. It's sitting on the shelf right above my desk.
The Argentos in the first segment come from the official AHS website, "You're Gonna Die In There", that was around when Season 1 was airing. The site gave some info about other people who'd lived in the house that didn't get face time in the show. I noticed that some of those un-featured owners had traits/issues that do surface in other charactersin the show. In Season 1 that Mrs. Harvey was the one behind guys like Ben messing with fire... I'm guessing the idea carried through with the un-featured characters too. We don't see them in the show but we see their influence in things like Chad's occasional obsession with disease even after he's dead (there was a lady who owned the house before him who had OCD with disease and uncleanliness).
Check my Profile for music to play. This episode goes up and down the emotional ladder. Please hold on tightly.
