I want to tell all of you a story. Once, in the early ‘fifties, when I was a very small child, I was visiting some distant relatives in rural South Texas, down in the oak woods on the darkest part of the river that flows through the black trees which grow there. My relatives, Aunt Beatrice and Uncle Joe, lived in an old, unpainted house that was virtually falling down. It was like something out of a frightening novel—if you are British, think of Conan-Doyle's hound out on the moors. If you are American, think of Faulkner and the Snopes Family in Yoknapatawpha County. We all ate a picnic lunch out on the lawn, and just afer the sun had gone down and it was good dark, and a full moon had risen above the dark trees, I heard the most awful wailing and scratching and grunting, seemingly emanating from a storeroom with a locked door and no windows. I slipped away from the adults and walked over to the locked room and observed that there was a slot down on the lower part of the unpainted wooden door, and to my horror, I saw a face--Dear God, I will never forget that face—a man’s face—a face out of a nightmare--staring at me through the slot under the door, a face that was barking and howling, snarling at me and grinding it’s teeth. Two huge malformed hands with nails like gigantic talons and covered with hair were trying to reach out and grab me from under the door.
Well, as you can imagine, I screamed--and I screamed again. And still screaming, I ran as fast as I could to my family and yelled “What is that? Who is it in the locked room? What is happening.” I was sobbing—shrieking--completely out of control.
My great uncle Joe took me gently aside and said—“Son, you are old enough to know now. That is Cousin John—he is your cousin. He was born during the War, when I had been away from home for over three years, fighting in France and Germany. I don't know what happened...and I don't want to know. When your Aunt Beatrice tries to confide in me, I cover my ears and tell her to close her mouth. In any case, I have forgiven her. Your cousin John was born plumb crazy. When he came out of his momma, he tried to bite the midwife who delivered him. He has never spoken--and as a child, it was only when he heard the grey wolves out in the brush, howling, that he made his first sound. He howled back at them," (my uncle was a Catholic and here he crossed himself three times.) "and if we let him run free, he runs over to the family cemetery and tries to dig up the graves. Twice, he has caught and eaten one of the cats. One day, we had a bitch that was in heat...but no, you are too young for me to tell you what happened... So anyway, we have kept him in that locked room ever since he was born, and we give him his food in a tin pan under the door."
Well, this stayed with me for years—how often would I awaken in darkness, perspiring and thinking of the the person--no--the thing--that was my cousin John, down in the woods, hopefully still locked there in his wooden prison—snarling and snapping—maybe whimmpering in his sleep, legs jerking as he dreamed he was chasing a rabbit. God alone knew what he was doing—and thinking. Then one day I got a letter from my Uncle which read:
“Dear Russ,
I remember when you were a child, the impression Old John made on you.--how terrified you were that night in the yard. So I just wanted to let you know what happened recently. We were cleaning up some old truck parts out in the barnyard and had the parts soaking in gasoline in a tin pan. Unknown to his mother and me, John chewed off the lock on his room, broke the door down and ran over to wher those parts were soaking. Now, you need to understand that this tin pan was just like the ones we used to give him when it was time for his feeding. Anyway, he loped over on all fours, barking and howling, and before we could stop him, he drank up all the gasoline. He stopped for a moment, then let out a howl that sounded like it would draw the Devil out of Hell itsell, and he began to run around the yard, gasping and screaming, and foaming at the mouth. And then he collapsed on the ground. Naturally, we rushed him to the doctor, who spent some time pumping on his chest. I asked the doctor, 'Is he dead?'. 'Oh, no,' the doctor replied, 'he just ran out of gas.'"
Uncle Joe"
