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Authors: Stephen Carpenter
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So while other gangly thirteen year-olds were listening to music or playing video games or dating or doing homework, he read his Bible—read it deeply, constantly. He still loved the day care stories, especially David and Goliath, but lately he had become fascinated with the New Testament, particularly the book of Acts, in which Paul had his conversion on the road to Damascus.
It was the blinding light that first caught his attention; the blinding, brilliant light which struck down Paul—Saul, as he was called before his conversion. The blinding light—like the light which burst from the door when the Witch attacked him. After the Witch attacks he would lie on the closet floor, beaten, sometimes bleeding, and he could see nothing until his eyes adjusted once again to the dark closet, and the porcelain face of the Angel would slowly form, hovering above him, nothing else visible; alone, head and hands, head and hands, serene, compassionate, loving, listening, touching...
Then came the day of his own conversion. And the transubstantiation of the Witch.
The blinding light that led to his own conversion was the direct summer sun that exploded into the dark closet when the Witch threw open the door. He had been in a special new place with the Angel, a place based on a picture he saw on a gift card at Ralph’s. The picture was a crude, tiny reproduction of a Corot pastoral, featuring a lone woman seated near a shallow slough in which three cows meandered under a thumbnail moon. He pictured himself at the water’s edge, in the arms of his Angel, and then the light struck him blind and the Witch found him there, naked, tumescence in his moving hand, gazing at the Angel.
He turned away from the light and the assault he knew was coming, but all he heard were vulgar words and then—horribly—the sound of shattering porcelain, and he knew right away what the Witch had done.
He knew, even before he turned and saw the shards of pure white porcelain, head and hands, now shattered on the floor near him, and the Witch began to kick him with the sharp heels of her knee-high boots.
The next thing he heard was a shriek—not from the Witch, but from his own throat. A strange new sound; part deep and guttural, part a small boy’s scream, as he lunged from the closet and toppled her and sat atop her and beat her with his fists until she lay motionless.
And yet he beat her still.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I startle awake with the unmistakable sense that there has been a loud noise in my bedroom. I lie still in the dark for a moment. I can’t remember the sound, but I have the inexplicable conviction that it was loud and very close. I lie listening to the soft tick of the clock on my nightstand. A faint wind rises, brushing the branches of a pine against my bedroom window.
I get up and head down the hall. I leave the lights off, remembering Lt. Foley, a retired NYPD detective who once told me in his thick Bronx snarl,the humid scent of scotch on his breath, “ The last thing you wanna do is turn the lights on if there’s an intruder. You know your place—they don’t. The dark gives you an advantage.”
I think a raccoon on the roof is more likely than an intruder, but nevertheless I go to my office and grab The Dangerous Summer from the top shelf of the bookcase by the door. I pull the book cover off the small wooden box I built in my woodshed. Inside the small pine box is the stainless steel Smith & Wesson .45 with the rubber grip that I keep there. I bought the gun after encountering a bear one night while I was taking out the trash. The guy at the gun shop suggested a shotgun but I want nothing to do with shotguns. So I bought the .45, which my cop pals tell me will kill pretty much anything if used with the proper ammunition, decent aim, and a persistent lack of empathy. I have hollow-cavity rounds, my aim is decent, and if it’s between me and the bear, the bear’s going down.
I grab the gun and head back down the
So while other gangly thirteen year-olds were listening to music or playing video games or dating or doing homework, he read his Bible—read it deeply, constantly. He still loved the day care stories, especially David and Goliath, but lately he had become fascinated with the New Testament, particularly the book of Acts, in which Paul had his conversion on the road to Damascus.
It was the blinding light that first caught his attention; the blinding, brilliant light which struck down Paul—Saul, as he was called before his conversion. The blinding light—like the light which burst from the door when the Witch attacked him. After the Witch attacks he would lie on the closet floor, beaten, sometimes bleeding, and he could see nothing until his eyes adjusted once again to the dark closet, and the porcelain face of the Angel would slowly form, hovering above him, nothing else visible; alone, head and hands, head and hands, serene, compassionate, loving, listening, touching...
Then came the day of his own conversion. And the transubstantiation of the Witch.
The blinding light that led to his own conversion was the direct summer sun that exploded into the dark closet when the Witch threw open the door. He had been in a special new place with the Angel, a place based on a picture he saw on a gift card at Ralph’s. The picture was a crude, tiny reproduction of a Corot pastoral, featuring a lone woman seated near a shallow slough in which three cows meandered under a thumbnail moon. He pictured himself at the water’s edge, in the arms of his Angel, and then the light struck him blind and the Witch found him there, naked, tumescence in his moving hand, gazing at the Angel.
He turned away from the light and the assault he knew was coming, but all he heard were vulgar words and then—horribly—the sound of shattering porcelain, and he knew right away what the Witch had done.
He knew, even before he turned and saw the shards of pure white porcelain, head and hands, now shattered on the floor near him, and the Witch began to kick him with the sharp heels of her knee-high boots.
The next thing he heard was a shriek—not from the Witch, but from his own throat. A strange new sound; part deep and guttural, part a small boy’s scream, as he lunged from the closet and toppled her and sat atop her and beat her with his fists until she lay motionless.
And yet he beat her still.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I startle awake with the unmistakable sense that there has been a loud noise in my bedroom. I lie still in the dark for a moment. I can’t remember the sound, but I have the inexplicable conviction that it was loud and very close. I lie listening to the soft tick of the clock on my nightstand. A faint wind rises, brushing the branches of a pine against my bedroom window.
I get up and head down the hall. I leave the lights off, remembering Lt. Foley, a retired NYPD detective who once told me in his thick Bronx snarl,the humid scent of scotch on his breath, “ The last thing you wanna do is turn the lights on if there’s an intruder. You know your place—they don’t. The dark gives you an advantage.”
I think a raccoon on the roof is more likely than an intruder, but nevertheless I go to my office and grab The Dangerous Summer from the top shelf of the bookcase by the door. I pull the book cover off the small wooden box I built in my woodshed. Inside the small pine box is the stainless steel Smith & Wesson .45 with the rubber grip that I keep there. I bought the gun after encountering a bear one night while I was taking out the trash. The guy at the gun shop suggested a shotgun but I want nothing to do with shotguns. So I bought the .45, which my cop pals tell me will kill pretty much anything if used with the proper ammunition, decent aim, and a persistent lack of empathy. I have hollow-cavity rounds, my aim is decent, and if it’s between me and the bear, the bear’s going down.
I grab the gun and head back down the
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