House by Ted Dekker and Frank Perretti

I do love a good scary story and I got one in House, by Ted Dekker and Frank Perretti. I haven't read any of Perretti's work before but I've read The Circle Trilogy by Dekker and it's awesomely awesome.

Anyway. In House, two very different couples find themselves stranded in the backwoods of the middle of nowhere. There's a very old house purporting to be a B & B, that they're basically led towards by the bad guy: Barsidious White (just as an aside _ is that not the best name for a freaky-deaky serial killer? Barsidiousssssss).

At first the four are just confused, a little creeped-out by the people inhabiting the house (a family of inbreds, or so we think at first), then outraged, then scared out of their tiny little minds as Things start happening.

As things start to get worse _ and stranger _ the true characters of the captors of the house emerge. At first it seems as though their situation is hopeless, as the house shifts around them and they battle with whether to meet White's (Barsidioussssss) demands:
1) God came to my house and I killed him. 2) I will kill anyone who comes to my house as I killed God. 3) Give me one dead body and I might let rule two slide.

However, things are just not that simple and they have to figure out how to fight the house, White and their own inner demons.

Dekker and Perretti are, I believe both Christian writers and there are religious elements woven tightly into the fabric of the story. I never felt preached to _ mostly just really spooked. But you know, tell me a good story, and I don't care what you do. And this is a good story. A really good story.

Read it with the lights on.