"Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep"

(continued from last post)

One time we were saints - all of us! Well, practically all of us, except for me. I was the spawn of Charles Manson... (I didn't know what that meant, but that is what Mr. Steadman said when we came to his house and knocked on the door for Halloween). Though my Catholic mother had good intentions and tried to convince me that I was John the Baptist, I felt more like "Wolf Boy" dressed in the old fox stoles and holding a paper plate with a doll's head that had been covered in ketchup as my costume accessory.



 As you can see to the right - I didn't get it! I didn't know why I had to hold a plate with a head on it. She said it was because John was beheaded. I still didn't get it. (You can see the video of me telling that story here... The telling of Wolf Boy )

Since we had opened the portal to the demonic influences through our séances and by conjuring up the dead when we decided to mess around with the Ouija Board -everything had changed.

The darkness that crept out of the door to the dark underworld which we had opened was like a black, slow moving ooze. It was invisible to adults and to most people, but not to me. I could see it and smell the rotting stench whenever it began to take over someone's body and when it influenced their behavior.

I think it had a lot to do with the long hair.. and the burning of draft cards...and the marijuana plants... and the pits that the older boys had buried me in... and the electrocutions and the times they tried to kill Kurt and the time the house tried to eat him (last post).  I think that slimy, evil sludge had something to do with mom locking herself in her room every night and why Chewbacca felt it was important to squeeze the temples on my forehead and knock me out every day for a year. I think it had something to do with the older boy's meanness and rejection towards me.

Maybe that's the reason Ulrich felt he had to launch a big fat loogie down my throat - The Loogie that caused Mount Vesuvius . Maybe that was the reason I ran Urich under the can opener... Oops - Reverse Mohawk, or why I was almost murdered at the McElliot's pool "Here lay Markie D".  It was the Ooze...I tell you and maybe that is why I decided to cut my little sister's hair with the Snippy scissors...

And since the time we had cracked open the door  to the occult, the stinky ooze of evil spilled out of our house and into the neighborhood. If I had to guess, I would say that we didn't have the only portal to hell that had been opened... No...I think there are lots of them.







 

There are probably houses and families just like ours in every city that allowed the the gooey-black substance to flow like slow moving lava that burned everything in its path.

Seriously, think about it... maybe it explains Charles Manson... and the riots on college campuses in the anti-war protest... maybe it explains the Vietnam War... maybe it explains the assassinations... maybe it explains the "Fraternity House" fire on Harding Ave...Venice on Fire .


This is between me and you.... but I even think that the evil slim had been carried over to Saint Mark's School. Don't tell anyone - but I think Sister Godzilla had stepped in it (that would explain why she was so mean and tried to send me back a grade for yawning - of all things)! This would explain why I couldn't get Andrea to notice me.

I think Donny had carried some back with him to the Blaser's house and that Pat had gotten some of the invisible goo stuck on the bottom of his shoe and carried the stuff back to the Lennon house on the corner (if you could believe it). With the shrine to the Blessed Virgin Mary in their front window, I didn't think it was possible for the evil slim to enter their house, but Pat was beginning to look like one of the Dahlin boys.

IT WAS THE OOZE I TELL YOU.



It began slowly, but several of the Lennon boys were becoming hippies down there too... They were the Best Catholics in the entire world and it took hold there as well.  Yep, even there!

First one - then two...

...they had been infected...

...and my hole in the wall - my bed - (pictured to the left) was right in the center of it all. Maybe that's why I was a target of my older brother's inventive cruel-pranks and horrible tricks and also figured that the awful glop had gotten on me. I keep my rosary beads close and felt I had to pray to keep the monsters away that I saw moving around in the dark shadows at night and thought this was the only way I could slow the stuff down. AND quite possibly - the only way that I would live another day.

I heard wrestling noises in the attic and sinister footsteps that turned my stomach, something evil this way comes.

 "Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep."  Terrified, I slipped on my boxing gloves and tried not to close my eyes, for I had to fend off the devil and be ready for my brothers, The Wolf Pack, should they decided to attack tonight.  

The Dark Secret of the Ouija Board.

1969: The Ouija Board and Dark Portal of Harding Ave.

Last time I left off with - not only my pride bruised from the epic "love-fail" in the Saint Mark's schoolyard in front of all the girls, but also with a couple choice bruises on various body parts at the hands of a bully big brother and his gang of angry little men.  Now I am in my room talking to my dog and worried about what is going to happen after dark.  You see, not only do I try to avoid the flippant hippies downstairs who think I'm a throw toy and the schemes of the unfeeling Wolf Pack upstairs on the third floor, but spend nights frightened to death of something even more dark and sinister that began years ago.









My family was responsible for opening a portal to the dark underbelly of the demonic realm by dabbling in the dark arts by staging séances in our living room. I was young and remember the time the table lifted off of the floor and how one of my older brothers pee'd his pants - two cried because they were scared to death (teenagers crying - could have been the best day ever EXCEPT...

...Except the fact that at that very moment it was the precise instance that we unleashed something insidious that dwelt in the dark places of our house and we had lots of dark places.  Being young, I had a special sensitivity to the boogie man and monsters under the bed, Zombies, demons and things that go bump in the night.

Me? I saw it - they didn't! They were dull and clueless to what they had  unleashed into the house and into the neighborhood and probably worst yet - didn't care.

And here I sat in my room with my trusty dog - in the room nobody wanted. The reason I had a room to myself in a house with something like 532 people (that would be my brothers) crammed together in the limited number of bedrooms ... was because this room had a dark secret.

The hole that I slept in was discovered by the Ouija Board.  

                              THIS IS ALL TRUE!

Here is a picture of me (later in about '72  with a broken leg - and a hippy older brother clickhere Hotel Crazy and the Harding History of Broken Bones) and the loft bed in the background.   I liked the loft bed because it gave me an advantage over the Wolf Pack that had protection on three sides and offered high ground.

It made it easier for me to defend myself against night raids and suffocation but was the portal of the ghost that lived in the basement.

Since this it is just a couple days to Halloween I think I will tell you the story of that day with the Ouija Board that changed everything.            


 If you don't believe me ask my brothers!


What my house looked like...

What I thought it felt like....  

Next time the conclusion to the Ouija curse.