Read Online Life After Death: The Shocking True Story of a Innocent Man on Death Row by Damien Echols - Free Book Online
Authors: Damien Echols
Tags: General, True Crime
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nowhere, surrounded by nothing but fields. No kids or neighbors to even speak to you. I was so lonely that I thought even death was preferable. If not for my small battery-powered radio, perhaps I would have died inside.
Years later, I read a book by Nick Cave called
And
the Ass Saw the Angel
. It struck me because of how close he comes to catching the feel of life in that lonely shack. None of the more well-known southern writers like Carson McCullers or Flannery O’Connor have done it for me. It’s like they may have witnessed life, but never lived it. Nick Cave comes damn close, though. More so than anyone else.
Books helped me to survive out there. The only places close enough to walk to were the courthouse and the library. I had no interest in reading anything but horror at this age, so I read the few tattered paperbacks housed there numerous times. I read Stephen King and Dean Koontz novels more times than Billy Graham read his Bible. They kept me company on many a long and maddening summer day.
Later I discovered the ultimate horror—the Inquisition. The first time I stumbled across this atrocity was in a book by some demented adult that was titled something like
The Children’s Book of Devils and Fiends
. It was filled with tales (and woodcuts) of witches having orgies, standing in line to kiss the devil’s arse, eating children, and cursing people so that they went into convulsions. The book didn’t explain that all these things were nothing more than the fevered dreams and insane concoctions of religious zealots that the educated world now knows them to be. It put them forth as being true, much as they were originally published during the Inquisition itself. Then there was the additional horror of people being tortured and burned at the stake simply because someone accused them of being witches. It explained how they were strangled, burned, cut, drowned, and dismembered in an effort to make them confess to flying on broomsticks to attend secret meetings.
It’s not possible to overstate the impact all this had on my young mind. I would lie in bed at night scared to move, while my imagination conjured up horrific images. I had already had scenes of hell and damnation drilled into my head by Jack and his wonderful church-folk friends, and these new discoveries did nothing to ease my terror. If I would have known then that in just a few short years I would be subjected to the same kind of witch hunt, that I would have some of the same accusations made against me, and that the same merciless zealots would imprison me and sentence me to death, then my heart probably would have burst of fright right on the spot. Who would have thought you could see the future by reading a book about the past?
I was miserable and under tremendous pressure, believing I would burn in hell for all eternity because I couldn’t stop myself from thinking bad things about people—not to mention the fact that I was entering puberty and knew with absolute certainty that my uncontrollable lust was earning me a one-way trip to the Lake of Fire. I had recently discovered masturbation and applied myself to the act with the utmost diligence. I couldn’t seem to stop myself, and afterward would pray to God, begging his forgiveness. I had no idea that it was normal to have such urges, for no one ever explained such things to me.
There was a nonstop war going on inside me—I wanted to be “good,” but couldn’t quite seem to manage it. My sexual appetite was insatiable, and as a typical adolescent, I thought most people were morons. I was on my way to the devil’s playground, all right. It all seems so ridiculous now, but back then it was the most deadly serious thing in the world.
Oddly enough, that same children’s book was where I first encountered Aleister Crowley. Now I know it was all propaganda, but at that young age I was amazed that someone could be so brazenly hedonistic and “sinful.” I’ve read much about this man and
Years later, I read a book by Nick Cave called
And
the Ass Saw the Angel
. It struck me because of how close he comes to catching the feel of life in that lonely shack. None of the more well-known southern writers like Carson McCullers or Flannery O’Connor have done it for me. It’s like they may have witnessed life, but never lived it. Nick Cave comes damn close, though. More so than anyone else.
Books helped me to survive out there. The only places close enough to walk to were the courthouse and the library. I had no interest in reading anything but horror at this age, so I read the few tattered paperbacks housed there numerous times. I read Stephen King and Dean Koontz novels more times than Billy Graham read his Bible. They kept me company on many a long and maddening summer day.
Later I discovered the ultimate horror—the Inquisition. The first time I stumbled across this atrocity was in a book by some demented adult that was titled something like
The Children’s Book of Devils and Fiends
. It was filled with tales (and woodcuts) of witches having orgies, standing in line to kiss the devil’s arse, eating children, and cursing people so that they went into convulsions. The book didn’t explain that all these things were nothing more than the fevered dreams and insane concoctions of religious zealots that the educated world now knows them to be. It put them forth as being true, much as they were originally published during the Inquisition itself. Then there was the additional horror of people being tortured and burned at the stake simply because someone accused them of being witches. It explained how they were strangled, burned, cut, drowned, and dismembered in an effort to make them confess to flying on broomsticks to attend secret meetings.
It’s not possible to overstate the impact all this had on my young mind. I would lie in bed at night scared to move, while my imagination conjured up horrific images. I had already had scenes of hell and damnation drilled into my head by Jack and his wonderful church-folk friends, and these new discoveries did nothing to ease my terror. If I would have known then that in just a few short years I would be subjected to the same kind of witch hunt, that I would have some of the same accusations made against me, and that the same merciless zealots would imprison me and sentence me to death, then my heart probably would have burst of fright right on the spot. Who would have thought you could see the future by reading a book about the past?
I was miserable and under tremendous pressure, believing I would burn in hell for all eternity because I couldn’t stop myself from thinking bad things about people—not to mention the fact that I was entering puberty and knew with absolute certainty that my uncontrollable lust was earning me a one-way trip to the Lake of Fire. I had recently discovered masturbation and applied myself to the act with the utmost diligence. I couldn’t seem to stop myself, and afterward would pray to God, begging his forgiveness. I had no idea that it was normal to have such urges, for no one ever explained such things to me.
There was a nonstop war going on inside me—I wanted to be “good,” but couldn’t quite seem to manage it. My sexual appetite was insatiable, and as a typical adolescent, I thought most people were morons. I was on my way to the devil’s playground, all right. It all seems so ridiculous now, but back then it was the most deadly serious thing in the world.
Oddly enough, that same children’s book was where I first encountered Aleister Crowley. Now I know it was all propaganda, but at that young age I was amazed that someone could be so brazenly hedonistic and “sinful.” I’ve read much about this man and
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