The power of fright compels you

As a child, my overactive imagination led me to believe that every horror movie made in the seventies somehow resembled my parent's house.  Looking into the backyard out of our kitchen window at night (it always had to be after dark), I saw the gentle rustle of the red and gold leaves of autumn as sinister precursors to zombies or hockey-masked madmen lumbering from the woods all set to chase me.  The awkward upbeat synthesizer heard during the movie Halloween strummed my ears as the leaves blew.  Coming back from my cousin's house across the field seemed like the longest and scariest fifty yards ever.  My mother would turn on the side porch lights and dining room lamp for me. Like a lonely pilgrim, I would sojourn through the trees following that single porch light as if it were an all-seeing unblinking eye of a cyclops and the illuminated floor-to-ceiling windows of the dining room was like the maw of Satan ready to suck me down to Tarturus.  108 Ocean Avenue---The house portrayed in The Amityville Horror---had nothing on my house. For many years, well into mid-adolescence, I just knew I was going to be possessed by a demon. For, you see, the interior of that infamous Georgetown townhouse where two priests fought the devil over a little girl's soul looked identical to our upstairs. To get to my room you had to run up a curved flight of stairs, take a hard right and down a hallway. I envisioned my bed bobbing and thumping while I writhed in fear and pain; my mother rushing to my aide only to have the door slam in her face leaving a huge crack streaking down the middle.

Halloween has always been a special time for me, maybe because I was so frightened of it.  Through years of attending church I was taught to fiercely avoid the dark side (or maybe I just have a stunning propensity to believe in just about any evil). Now, unlike my mother who was terrified of slasher movies---her rationale was that a maniac could actually stab you or impale you whereas the supernatural was kind of silly---I was completely transfixed by the otherworldly.  Bumps in the night heard after my parents were sound asleep kept me awake even as late in life as....oh what the hell, I'll admit it---last week.  I think I was attracted to the mere theatricality of evil.  Satan knew how to put on a real show (at least in the movies and on TV).  Knives and axes were so banal; crucifixes and talismans were my thing.  I believed in augurs and omens. Voices in the dark, demon seeds, daughters of Satan and Burnt Offerings. Oh how I wanted telekinetic powers.

Yet, on the other hand, I should have been a preacher instead. When I was five-years-old I insisted that being a minster was my calling. I wasn't so much interested in the administrative pastoring of running a church, but more of the fire and brimstone church-as-performance-art.  I would pull up a folding chair and have my parents dress in their Sunday best and have them sit on the living room sofa and shout at the top of my lungs. I remember my mother wearing her emerald green maxi-dress and her white T-Bar heels sitting beside my father in his suit and tie-clip. I would wag my finger and threaten all the depths of hell on them if they did not repent.  I was very concerned with saving souls in those days.  Growing up Baptist, when you were baptized the minister would make you hold your nose and submerge your entire body. We had a metal tub that sat in our backyard that had over a few days of autumn rain had filled with water. Well, I decided one day to save the soul of our sinful cat. My mother watched in horror as she washed dishes me taking our cat in my arms. Raising him high above my head I would shout, "In the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit, I baptize you!"  SPLASH!  I pounded the cat down into the water. I don't know who my mother thought she was saving, me or the cat, but by the time she pried the terrified creature from my grip I was scratched and bloodied. Nonetheless, I was satisfied our little tabby was now going to heaven upon its death.

But like most who are called to preach, I too was not without flaw.  My sin to confess was based in selfishness.  My mother had set out a tray of goodies for the trick-or-treaters on the cool fall night in 1970; a night that held such promise for the children of the neighborhood who had been dreaming of candy and cookie booty since the beginning of the school year. I had persuaded my mother to let me give out the candies. So we sat in the front room eagerly anticipating the first ghoul or Snoopy.  Now, I don't remember this event, but it has been told to me many times:  The doorbell rang and she said I jumped up and ran down the hallway. She heard me open the front door, then the children's lithe voices, a hissing sound and then the door slam loudly shut. She thought nothing of it until the next set of tricksters appeared. The doorbell chimed. I again jumped up, ran down the hallway. She heard me open the front door then children's lithe voices, a hissing sound, and then the door slam loudly shut.  After a few more instances of this behavior my mother decided to investigate. She said to my father that the next time kids come to the door she would shadow me to see what was going on.

DING DONG.

I jumped up and ran down the hallway. She stealthily followed me and pressed her body up against the door jamb leading into the foyer. There, she observed me running from the kitchen with a can of bug spray. I rushed the door, threw it open and when the children screamed Trick-or-Treat! I sprayed them generously before slamming the door in their faces.  I then ran back to the kitchen to hide my child-repellent for the next group and returned and pocketed their allotment of candy. What can I say?  As an only child, I never liked to share, neither candy nor the spotlight.  Maybe that explains the cause of my nighttime fear.  Or maybe one of those kids put a curse on me. It was the south and haints and roots were boutiful. That's malarky, of course. I'm older now and way more intelligent. There's no such thing as demons.

THUMP! THUMP!

What was that? Did...did you hear that? ...Mother?