Hell House by Richard Matheson

de Sade's 120 Days of Sodom . He began to import monstrosities from all over the world to mingle with his guests—
    hunchbacks, dwarfs, hermaphrodites, grotesques of every sort."
    Florence closed her eyes and bowed her head, pressing tightly clasped hands against her forehead.
    "About that time," continued Fischer, "everything began to go. There were no servants to maintain the house; they were indistinguishable from the guests by then. Laundry service failed, and everyone was forced to wash their own clothes—which they refused to do, of course. There being no cooks, everyone had to prepare their own meals with whatever was at hand—
    which was less and less, because the pickups of food and liquor had dwindled so much, with no acting servants.
    "An influenza epidemic hit the house in 1927. Believing the reports of several of his doctor guests that the Matawaskie Valley fog was injurious to health, Belasco had the windows sealed. About that time, the main generator, no longer being maintained, started functioning erratically, and everyone was forced to use candles most of the time. The furnace went out in the winter of 1928, and no one bothered to relight it. The house became as cold as a refrigerator. Pneumonia killed off thirteen guests.
    "None of the others cared. By then they were so far gone that all they were concerned with was their 'daily diet of debaucheries,' as Belasco put it. They were at the bottom by 1928, delving into mutilation, murder, necrophilia, cannibalism."
    The three sat motionless and silent, Florence with her head inclined, Barrett and Edith staring at Fischer as he kept on speaking, quietly, virtually without expression, as though he were recounting something very ordinary.
    "In June of 1929, Belasco held a version of the Roman circus in his theater," he said. "The highlight was the eating of a virgin by a starving leopard. In July of the same year, a group of drug-addicted doctors started to experiment on animals and humans, testing pain thresholds, exchanging organs, creating monstrosities.
    "By then everyone but Belasco was at an animal level, rarely bathing, wearing torn, soiled clothes, eating and drinking anything they could get their hands on, killing each other for food or water, liquor, drugs, sex, blood, even for the taste of human flesh, which many of them had acquired by then.

16
    "And, every day, Belasco walked among them, cold, withdrawn, unmoved. Belasco, a latter-day Satan observing his rabble. Always dressed in black. A giant, terrifying figure, looking at the hell incarnate he'd created."
    "How did it end?" asked Barrett.
    "If it had ended, would we be here?"
    " It will end now ," Florence said.
    Barrett persisted. "What happened to Belasco?"
    "No one knows," said Fischer. "When relatives of some of his guests had the house broken into in November of 1929, everyone inside was dead—twenty-seven of them.
    "Belasco was not among them."
    8:46 P.M.
    Florence came walking back across the great hall. For the past ten minutes, she'd been sitting in a corner, "preparing herself,"
    she'd told them. Now she was ready. "As ready as one can be in this kind of climate. Excessive dampness is always a handicap." She smiled. "Shall we take our places?"
    The four sat at the huge round table, Fischer across from Florence, Barrett several chairs away from her, Edith next to him.
    "It's occurred to me," Florence said as she settled herself, "that the evil in this house is so intensely concentrated that it might be a constant lure to earthbound spirits everywhere. In other words, the house might be acting like a giant magnet for degraded souls. This could explain its complicated texture."
    What is one supposed to say to that? Barrett thought. He glanced at Edith, forced to repress a smile at her expression as she gazed at Florence. "You're certain this equipment isn't going to bother you?" he said.
    "Not at all. As a matter of fact, it might not be amiss for you to switch on your tape recorder when