Disclaimer
This work is as close to being truthful as memories can recollect.
Interactions with others may be argued as perspectives are always in the eye of the witness.
For Martin H. Petry there are police records, which will place him in his whereabouts as stated.
Tracy has no such records, but friends will acknowledge her part, save the abuse. She told no one about those violations in detail until she met Martin.
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Prologue
Convoking Hell is an accounting of two pasts. Both Martin and Tracy came from the affluent area of Ridgefield, CT. The telling of each came from the totality of environmental stimuli. What each came to realize was one understanding; that understanding is that life for some is very different. Life for the majority is filled with hypocrisy, duplicity and denial. The institutions of this world are rife with such examples. All that is expected isn’t really the case. Taboo notions in society are hidden, not spoken to and regularly participated in as a turning away from reality.
If one thing is true, it is this: the wealthy are protected while they manipulate folks from lesser and different castes. This is not to say that all wealthy are without scruples. Many of the wealthy live insulated from the paths we have taken. Many of them are unaware of such intentions and conditions of this world’s reality.
There is a minority of the wealthy who are bent on protecting their little worlds at the expense of 1st Amendment rights guaranteed in our Constitution. As we are self-published authors, the example we hold as evidence are the works we offer at www.usamutt.com
Without agents no publisher will consider any unsolicited materials. Meaning without an agent’s presentation, which is 10% of the revenues from the work, the work will not be seen. No reviewer will examine the work for the quality of the writing and that leaves us pimping our own work.
In a time when economic conditions are upside down, and when those of us who depend on soundness of business are left to no means to work for lack of work, we hold those who manipulate their own realms of controlling media outlets for equal access of superior work offered as criminal. And because the same can afford legal representation to protect interests based on such mediocrity, we submit the only option left comes by Convoking Hell. Our claim is that through Convoking this Hell those who stomp on the genius of unknown creativity can no longer keep us down by and for protecting themselves.
In Depression such as we are in, humanity has gotten through it by expanding creativity of artists good and bad. We are artists of words. Those who have read Hard Justice Trilogy by Martin H. Petry wonder why he isn’t a best selling author.
Martin and Tracy were completely functional people working themselves through a world that made no sense. Now that the world makes no sense, due to the mediocrity of power, which feels cover work will keep the masses occupied, we challenge you to review the work. Let your best literary reviewers show us any author and editing team who has written best selling work in three genres. That is the challenge from Convoking Hell. Let any organization come to understand the tenants of www.usamutt.com and experience the growing interest of such an organization.
Show us any organization looking to offer enlightenment through empowering individuals to find their creative inner wisdom.
My guess is you won’t. And the reason is because none of you can.
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If you find this piece completely absurd and unbelievable, that is fine. If you find it controversial visit the page mentioned above, and investigate the work mentioned. If you can honestly say the writing within the Hard Justice Trilogy isn’t unusually good as it is written, then Convoking Hell won’t help you.
It is likely that nothing will help you, and that is a complete possibility.
Tracy and I were once just like you, but through some type of divine guidance we both survived to find each other and provide what we know to be some of the best fictional writing of this time. Tracy even has her own first novella out in print now as well. The Poetry isn’t bad either. It is better than not bad, it is like nothing like a poet scholar has ever read. Don’t take my word for it, read it yourself, and write better if you can….
MH. Petry
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Convoking Hell
And in the battle of Heaven God cast his Angel down to Hell… Lucifer became all that God knew as Evil, and Lucifer never forgot.
Lucifer’s ways would be spent thwarting God’s will. Like an addict needing a fix. He’d go to the ends of the world coaxing those not in the light.
Lucifer wanted those in the light. That was his payback. And, as man was given choice,
Lucifer knew he could be the end of times.
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In the 1960’s America became more than the promise of many. The culture became complex. Causes became known and previously held traditions became the ire of many. Drugs became a recreational habit as disposable incomes grew, and because of wealth people came to having more time for recreation. Sexuality took on new pervasiveness, as folks became aware of less parochialism. Women and minorities fought for more control, and the culture changed.
War was the diet for so many and the horrors of it were being seen for the first time in what they called real time back then. Anger ensued and rationality diminished.
Protests became the marching orders of some in the public, while others managed to stay as they were. Differences in choice became abundant discourse. Then the discourse became violent. Lines were drawn and sides were taken. Everybody had a right to speak their own opinion. Not everybody had the sense to hold his or her tongue.
The debt of our fathers and mothers had somehow become the entitlement of their offspring. Lucifer’s designs came to take shape as a matter of cultural convenience. The Freewill of God became Lucifer’s folly. Men chose to see man’s will before the creators.
Now in 2009 the argument is even louder, more vitriolic and much more contrived. Words that meant something for a nation are no longer of the same meaning.
The argument of freedom of religion is a demand for intolerance of it. Dogmas of incredibly powerful religions are rife with scandal of the worst imaginable sins. The voices of the media in the world no longer report; they editorialize. Public Service is no longer a sacrifice, but rather a means to accumulate power and ill gotten wealth. The world is vibrant with hate in the birthplace of Christ. The religious factions of today rather let blood flow than honor the teachings of tolerance, and love.
A time draws close when the prophecy of many suggests the end of what we know now will pass. A great battle is coming, but it will not be for the gain of land, treasure or resource. It will be for the claiming of revelations.
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May 23rd, 1964
11:41 PM
Divine intervention delivered its intent. A male infant was born in Miami, Florida.
He would be the child of people with seas of love in their heart. This child knew love in a strict family devoted to living right and improving themselves. The choice to put the infant up for adoption came after a fierce contemplation of aborting the child. Only a grandmother’s love spared the child of never being. It wasn’t for the love of the mother, she was alone, and enduring the responsibility of what she considered a bad decision.
Her mother may have shamed or coerced her into carrying the infant to birth.
And so the will of God be done.
April 3rd, 1967
4:03 AM
Lucifer’s design smiled upon a female infant being born in Norwalk, Connecticut.
She was the second child of a terribly dysfunctional family. A home filled with an insidious negativity bent on choice, in which Lucifer was very pleased. This child was alone, surrounded by viciousness only known in absence of Love. Her family embraced heinous practices in the business of raising her.
These births happened during the upheaval of cultural shifts in America. One child blessed with all, and another indebted to the ways of the wicked. And so it begins…
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Convoking Hell
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The 1960’s came to America quickly. The honeymoon of being victorious in WWII had long since been vanquished by the cold war. Desperate fear from new technology, along with a questioning of authority, society had become cynical. Doubt was easily embraced as cultural demands came from all spectrums. Race, Gender, War Protests brought America to its most modern divisiveness.
Archetypes of power were enduring erosion, as the masses gathered. And they gathered from new expression. Music, literature, National Broadcasting, sports were all being married to the advent of an abundant modernity of a very motivated people.
MARTIN
Since I became aware of myself in childhood I have always known that I had some special purpose. The purpose was never revealed to me by anyone as none could possibly know what it might be. But both my mother and father always said I could do anything I put my mind too. When I was young, before puberty, I had a very high, shrieking voice. Needless to say, I got in my share of trouble with the school kids.
They used to make fun of the name Petry, enunciating it as Pee on a Tree. And, as I had the high voice, they used to call me Martha Pee on a Tree.
I recall the sentiments I felt towards others as they razzed me. Their nagging became intolerable as my frustration grew, because my voice got more irritating as my frustration level grew. To know you have a special purpose with two liabilities as above leaves you feeling very confused and in a state of contradiction.
During that time my family practiced Catholic Doctrine, and when my mother and father faced a rift in their marriage I went to our local priest to ask some questions about divorce. Father Charles Stubbs was our priest and his response to me left me knowing that being Catholic wasn’t anything I had an interest in continuing. Evidently spiritual advice to a young part of the flock took second to political duties of his charge. I knew what hypocrisy meant at a young age. So I dealt with my parents’ issues as best I could, it was scary as I
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remember. As I was the first child, I had no choice other than to endure the strict nature of my father’s mental dysfunction. I’m thinkin’ he is manic-depressive.
My mother took to a bottle and the circumstance became very difficult as well as dysfunctional. But we all did what we had to do to get through it. Today both my parents are still serving each the best way they can.
The point of this history is not a condemning of my parents; in fact I love them to this day. The point is to stroke a brush on canvas, which illustrates the difficulty of growing up in a home where both adults are mindful of raising children facing their own issues. Both my folks are human just as I am, and we all make bad choices. Somehow in this dysfunction they never really hurt us, or denied us what we needed to become adults. In hindsight many of the hardships we knew and learned as children made us stronger.
TRACY
I was born in Norwalk, Connecticut in the spring of 1967. I came into this world on 04/03 at 4:03 am.
Unlike many of the others I grew up with in Ridgefield, Connecticut, my family did not move around much. It was an IBM town where people came and went with a great frequency. I knew only one house growing up. It’s a house that I’ve revisited in nightmares through my years, and only recently learned how to drive by without entering a state of panic.
The house wasn’t ostentatious, but it was large. It rambled. And it grew as the years dragged on. Money was never an issue that I can recall. There was a swimming pool and there were rock gardens and several acres of land in the wooded neighborhood. The schools in town were some of the best in the country.
From the outside it was a dream life.
From the inside it was a nightmare.
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My father was not a big man, physically. He stood just under six feet in height, and was of average build. He had a stern face and his eyes rarely showed any kind of warmth. As a young man he was in the Navy. I know this because there was a picture of him somewhere in the house in his uniform, not because there was ever any discussion of his years in service. He wasn’t a demonstrative person. He did, however, have a way of radiating his displeasure, and his temper sometimes entered the room long before he did.
My mother was a nervous woman. I guess that’s the word I’d use to describe her. From my earliest memories I can recall the “Lazy Susan” on the kitchen table being full of pill bottles instead of things like salt and pepper shakers. That was back in the day when a simple phone call to a doctor’s office could garner a prescription for what ailed ya. No exam required. She and my father married young, I think. I never heard any details, but the one wedding photo on the wall in the living room was of a fairly young looking bride. There were no pictures of the groom displayed anywhere but I think my father was a year younger than my mother, so if she was young, he was younger.
They had three children. I think. Again, there was little discussion of anything in the house, but I half recall overhearing a conversation of some sort when I was very young, and it was about a baby girl, born before my older brother, and she died shortly after birth. The name Diane or Diana comes to mind but that may well be the twistings of a youthful imagination. My brother came next, anyway, and he was the light and the hope of their world. No matter what, he could not seem to do anything wrong. I came along kind of late in their lives, eight years after the Wonder Boy was born. I got the impression that they were all set with him and hadn’t really wanted another child to add to the mix, however back then people like my parents, living in a town like the one we lived in just didn’t go out and have abortions. There were times in my life where I honestly wished that hadn’t been the case
My love of animals, dogs in particular started at a young age. I was probably no more than four or five when Lad came to us. He was a stray puppy we found wandering after a thunderstorm. He
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looked to be part collie and part shepherd. He had a sweet temper and a huge fluffy tail that never stilled. Angus, a Scottie mix came along about a year later. They were wonderful dogs and loving pets.
Dogs didn’t belong in the house; that was what my father believed. At least these two didn’t. Too messy, too much hair shedding potential, and dogs need to be outdoors, he said. And what he said was the law. So, a quarter of an acre of the property was fenced in and two doghouses were constructed, and that was where Lad and Angus spent their lives. Outside. Outside, in the summer, and in the winter when the snow and ice and freezing rain came.
When I was five my mother’s parents moved into the house. My father had an addition put onto the house, an in-law apartment of sorts for them. My grandfather was a retired electrician. He was a quiet man who rarely made a move without approval from my grandmother. My grandmother was a tyrant of a woman who ruled from the wheelchair her rheumatoid arthritis confined her to. Arthritic or not her hands could still wield a yardstick with brutal strength during her tirades.
In the fall of 1971 I started school. I attended Branchville Elementary School. Things were a little different back then, kids didn’t start out in daycare and pre-school when they were toddlers, so we all entered kindergarten a little less well…. socialized than the kids today do. Also, growing up in a pretty rural area with houses far apart we only knew our immediate neighbors. I entered school and met a few people I’d keep as friends throughout my lifetime; Mike and Susie come to mind right away.
I remember the day a counselor came to the classroom and spoke with our teacher… and then being summoned away from the classroom for a while. I was brought down the hall to another room with a couple of other kids and asked to read from a storybook. I read the story out loud to the counselor, feeling nervous and apprehensive, afraid of making a mistake with the pronunciation of some of the ‘harder’ words. From that day on, for the rest of the year I’d be taken out of the regular kindergarten class and brought down to the other room to read and work on other projects. No one explained to me at the time that the other kids in the regular class
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couldn’t read yet. I thought I was being taken out of the class because there was something wrong with me.
No one explained it to me, but that was to be the trend for most of my childhood.
At the age of five I had discovered a life-long love; words. The written word, specifically.
Tracy
1975
Going to my friends’ houses was always an experience. I’d see them walking around their homes, unafraid. They interacted with their parents without fear or confusion. Some of my friends had mothers who had jobs, outside of the home. They laughed together, talked, and even displayed affection towards one another. I saw my friend Susie hug her father and I felt sick for a moment, a knot forming in my stomach. But it was all right. He hugged her, kissed her cheek, she laughed and moved away, still smiling.
I didn’t understand. This wasn’t something that was done in our house. Physical touches were infrequent if not non-existent in front of other people, and terrifying in private.
I slept over at Susie’s house and everything was fine. It was quiet there at night. No one came into the room while we were sleeping, except to say goodnight and tell us that it was time to turn the lights out and go to bed. I caught a glimpse of the contents of Susie’s dresser while she was looking for her pajamas and I saw no short nighties, no skimpy harem girl type of outfits, and I saw no high heeled shoes in her closet.
I didn’t understand.
Going to school was also an experience. I was tired and didn’t always respond when the teacher called on me in class. I was tired and I couldn’t concentrate. I was thinking about other things. Always. I tried to look like I was paying attention because the teachers didn’t call on me as much if I at least looked like I was
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listening. I just wanted to get through the day, that’s all. The nights were hard. It was hard to sleep because even if no one came into my room I was still listening for the sounds, still waiting. I was still thinking about the next day and the day after that and how I could put on more clothes at night when I went to bed. I thought maybe if I put on enough clothes it will be too much of a hassle for him… but it never was.
I never handed in homework. And I got in trouble for it. I never had a good answer when the teacher called on me to find out why I didn’t turn in my assignments. I gave the first stupid excuse that came to mind every day. I don’t know why I didn’t just do the homework and avoid the whole thing the next day. But I never did. I’m not even sure sometimes where the time went between the time I got home after school and the time I got up for school in the morning.
That summer wasn’t so bad. We went to my great uncle’s farm up in New Hampshire. It seemed like it took us days to drive up there – when it couldn’t have been more than three or four hours - and I was in the backseat. My mother gave me one of her pills to help me to ‘stop fidgeting’ and to keep me from getting carsick. Nothing got a whack across the face like throwing up in the car. She did that sometimes, with the pills, like when I was ‘being a handful’ or if I fell and scraped my knee or something. It was Valium. Probably a small dosage, but enough to keep me zoned out for a few hours at least.
My great uncle had a really old farmhouse in Nottingham, and a big barn that he sold antiques out of. The house had been used as a tavern during the Revolutionary War and it was about the greatest place I’d ever been. My great uncle was a tall man, a giant, or at least it seemed that way to me. He had a big, booming voice, but it didn’t frighten me. There was no anger in it. He had the greatest laugh, and his blue eyes would just shine with good humor. His wife was a gentle woman who came from a wealthy background. She owned a clothing boutique at the Wentworth by the Sea hotel.
I heard someone walking around at night there, too, but it didn’t scare me there. My great aunt said, “I hope the ghost didn’t
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keep you awake last night,” when I told her that I heard someone in the hall.
The ghost.
I wasn’t sure what that really meant, so Uncle Sy explained it to me. He told me that when we die it’s only our bodies that die and everything that makes us special sticks around sometimes, only without a body. That sounded pretty cool. I asked him if it hurt being a ghost and he said he didn’t think so. I asked him if anyone could hurt a ghost and he said definitely not. I remember thinking it would be nice to be as safe as ghosts were.
. ..
.
MARTIN 1975 – 1978
I was attending East Ridge Junior High School at the 7th grade level, when the name-calling was the worst. One day before the end of the year, I was struggling with finishing reports that I hadn't completed.
My father, who was a teacher in another area school was called into my school from his work after a fight broke out in a math class.
My mother was already there, and this was by far the worst conduct situation I had ever found myself in. One kid was holding my arms back while another was ready to unload punches on me. I defended myself by kicking the waiting punch thrower in the head area, while Mrs. Schmidt the math teacher walked in late. When she saw the fight, I got blamed because I was the problem student. In a complete disbelief of her conclusion I launched a chair towards her, which got me sent to the vice principle’s office. Vice principle Simone as I remember, we called him “Frog”, was dictating and dispensing school discipline, and I wasn’t going to be able to return the following year. Moreover, the work I was required to do to pass onto the next year was in jeopardy, which might have me stay back. Such a thing wasn’t going to be tolerated by my folks, and hell to the end of the year began.
So, each day I went to school during that June, I was required to carry all of my books, in proper clothes rather than more loosely fitting garments made for early summer. And wouldn’t ya know it… another challenge at the end of one of the very last days, in blistering heat, from a peer. The buses were waiting for the students to load,
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when Michael Chamberlain decided he was gonna give me a hard time. I have half the feeling he was set up to do so by “Frog”, the aforementioned vice principle, he did happen to have a bird’s eye view of the whole incident. I forget the words Michael used in instigating me, but they had something to do with the particular day. He also had a friend with him, who was extremely large for his age, a goon if you’d like. I forget his name, but remember his face.
I never really made friends with Michael, but I sure would have liked to meet his sister Tracy, she was a cutie pie. Michael used to rally the kids to have what they called “pinball alley” in the hallways. This was a pushing of one trying to proceed down the hall from back to forth between a gauntlet of kids lining up against the lockers. I had been the victim of one or two of those. Sometimes the unseen punch was thrown and the victim usually hit the floor.
So, as Michael was summoning his ridicule, I developed a will for self defense he never forgot. In front of the eyes of the wanting “Frog” and others gathering for the departure schedule I tossed my books on the ground and grabbed Michael by his shirt. I spun holding him with all of my pent up frustration and threw him into the bus next to us about middle of the side. Michael hit the bus and in a cartoon like manner stuck to the bus for one of those extended moments. Then gravity had its way as he slid off the bus.
I remember Tom Begert was taking his seat on the same bus that Michael suddenly had a rude awareness of while he lay on the sidewalk. Tom was completely surprised and spoke of the incident as though I were the new bad kid on the block, even though I was completing my last days at East Ridge Junior High, Michael’s friend was in a state of shock and the friends of Michael did their best to block my passage to the bus responsible for my trip home. The books I carried weren’t so bad of a load then as I swung them through my steps to the bus awaiting me. The last days of the year were spent in avoiding assaults led by the very cute sister Tracy for bringing violence to her brother Michael, he never forgot that day, and I don’t think his weekend was all that fun, his head was black and blue the following Monday, I think we had two more days of attending school. And before that summer began I was up at Silver Spring Country Club caddying golf bags all summer long. My father said if his taxes weren’t going to pay for my education I surely would be.
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This was my introduction to serious trouble in my rebellious and frustrated nature. Authority demanding me to act in a certain manner of behavior was always, and remains a magnet for my derision. You will come to know my troubles with authority as this story progresses.
That summer I came to know early on what hard labor meant. Each day I’d ride my bike up the hills to Silver Spring Country Club and wait to get a loop. A loop is a round of 18 holes with caddy muling golfer’s bags. I waited all day long for a solid week to get a loop at the caddy ball pen. Rick Smith was the caddy manager there and he had his pets for golfers looking for exercise. I was the newbie and wasn’t picked until Rick had a need of a caddy for a single bag after all others left. I was glad to get the opportunity, and performed as best I could. The next day I was picked but not until 9AM. After that Rick got me into double bagging as my experience increased. I became one of his favorite caddies, as I was there every day. He came to depend on me to pick balls on the driving range after one of his guys totaled a golf club doing the job. That summer in my 13th year I was literally working 14-hour days. On Friday’s I did two double bag loops, and a 9-hole twilight carry, then picked balls. Those were the best paydays.
My father demanded that each day I give my earnings to my mother so that the funds would go to pay for St Luke’s Private School in New Canaan, Connecticut.
These were the days when my endurance and stamina were forged. The pain I owned carrying the trophy bags of nitwit S.S.C.C. Members was endless. These folks for the most part were wannabe golfers with an appetite to show off their possession of clubs made for the pros. I still laugh at the Caddy Shack movie with Rodney Dangerfield’s bag. Many were like his with the unused clubs and all the accessories. Some of the golfers were quite good, and they tipped a good caddy well. They weren’t the majority.
I met an assortment of people working that job, that is a whole other story, but one comes to mind. Rick had sent me out with two golfers. One of the fellas I knew as a decent shot, I didn’t mind working for him at all, he tipped as decent as he shot. The other guy
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was named Paul Boehm. This was one of those guys who should have stayed in the bar and talked his game rather than shot it. We get through the first nine and they are friendly enough in a competitive sort of way. The whole game was likely business more than competition of friends. They went into the clubhouse for lunch and drinks. When they returned it was evident that Paul drank more than he ate. His tendency to talk shit grew as he fell behind in the score. Since we started the back nine first the first nine was the game after lunch. Paul’s arrogance grew at the start of the first hole. His swing was reckless as the booze took its effect. He had me running all over the fairway and as he realized his game was coming to an embarrassing result, I became his focus of justifying his performance. By the end of the 4th hole, (farthest out from the clubhouse) he made a bet on a ridiculous putt. The bet was taken in the spirit of business and I tended the flag.
I’m not sure what the amount of the bet was but at the time it was substantial. As you can imagine I was doing my best to honor the golfer’s focus, and this idiot blows his putt. I pull the flag even though there was no need, and Paul, realizing what happened blames me for flinching. Within a second of his blame he throws his favorite brand new putter at me for screwing him up. I dodge the spinning decapitation missile as it goes well beyond my stance. Too bad the idiot couldn’t putt like that. Tempers flare and once again I decide to defend myself. I get up in his face mentioning the likelihood of serious injury for his lack of control and he gets mouthy. Now ya have to remember, I am no small kid.
I got arms that tote 150 pounds 4-6 miles on a loop of walking, which takes four hours to complete, and which I do twice a day. Paul realizes my anger and backs down, like a little girl, so I pick his bag up and launch it off the backside of the green. Brand new bag and clubs. I walk over to the other guy and ask him what he wants me to do, carry his bag in or leave it where it sits. In his kindness he said leaving it would be fine. I walk to see Rick Smith knowing this may be it, end of caddying. He looks at me with surprise and I tell him the story.
Rick fumed! He didn’t say a thing but his face was telegraphing disbelieve and fury. I waited for the decision to be made at the caddy bullpen. It didn’t take long. Rick was fit to be tied, he said don’t come back for a week. I was there the next morning and he enjoyed giving me the, “Who are you treatment?” I’m thinking the other golfer gave Rick the straight dope, but being the Caddy God
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Rick needed to make a statement to caddies and idiot golfers. He wasn’t tolerating that shit from anyone, even in self-defense. In all honesty, I can’t blame the guy for being that way, like recently I took up self-defense, and owned the discipline of doing so. But it was the best vacation I ever had. I still picked up balls on the driving range, as at that time nobody who could care was around. Needless to say my parents were confused about the diminished money earning. But they never knew the reason for the shortage. It was explained away by some stupid excuse.
Later that year, Rick ended up buying me a dinner, which was unheard of… some kind of Burger Supreme Plate. The golf pro paid attention as he’d never seen it before, and I ate the damn thing in Rick’s office sitting at his desk. He never explained the generosity with any articulation and he didn’t have to. I was around to save his ass when all his other pets were gone, more than once.
TRACY 1977
For my tenth birthday the only thing I wanted was to go to see Ed and Lorraine Warren give their lecture at Ridgefield High School. They’re ghost hunters, and they lived in Connecticut. They went all over the world talking about the ghosts they’d seen. I saw a flyer for it in the grocery store when I went with my grandfather.
The flyer said no one under twelve years old admitted, but I looked older than ten. I was already the tallest kid in my class and my body was developing quickly. It wouldn’t be another year before I’d need a bra. So, my parents got tickets for me for my birthday and off we went without much more question to it.
I didn’t sleep for three weeks.
The Warrens were fascinating. They started ghost hunting together when they first got married, when they were really pretty young. Lorraine is a clairvoyant, and she can talk to dead people. Ed was a demonologist and he dealt with inhuman spirits, which is something that I’d just learned about that night. There are human spirits, which are just dead people, and inhuman spirits which were never alive as people. They’re demons. I wasn’t sure what demons
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were, really, because I’d never been to church and didn’t know too much about God or angels. I understood that angels were the pretty things on top of Christmas trees, and in Christmas carols, but that was about all I knew. I knew that some of my friends went to something after school called “religion class’, but I wasn’t sure what that was, or who this ‘Jesus’ person was they mentioned, but it all sounded like a great big waste of time to me, anyway. If God was some great all powerful being controlling everything and creating everything then he obviously had no awareness of me or what I was going through, so I had no use for him, either.
Demons were pretty interesting, though. Apparently they could get into houses by invitation and then terrorize people, and even get into their minds and into their bodies and make them do things. That thought scared me, but it also fascinated me. Maybe my father was possessed. That thought crossed my mind a time or two after that lecture, as I lay in bed, sleepless and waiting.
The Warrens had a guest with them for their lecture that year. His name was George Lutz, and he was the man The Amityville Horror was written about. I’d read the book, and I had him autograph my paperback at the end of the night. I got to speak with Lorraine for a few minutes on our way out, and got her autograph, too. She said something to me about my ‘aura’, and that it was very strong, and that I had a special gift. I didn’t understand what she meant then. I wouldn’t understand for a long time.
I started reading everything I could on the paranormal, and on demonology. I did book reports on books like, “The Demonologist” for school instead of the books the other kids were reading like, “My Friend the Fireman.” The teachers all certainly thought I had a morbid fascination with something unhealthy but they were probably thrilled at that point that I was doing an assignment. Any assignment.
I was sure, then, that I was destined for something out of the ordinary.
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MARTIN
Two years later, with a 2nd year scholarship of $1,500 towards tuition at St. Luke’s, I had paid my penance and returned to Ridgefield High School as a freshman. My voice changed and so had my physical build. Nobody called me Martha Pee on a Tree anymore. I was also eye candy to many of the older girls, as I was told.
During that time we had already started the Elbow Grease Heavy House Cleaning Company. My father, sick of the politics that education was becoming went to self-employment. My brother and myself were his slaves. We were at his beckon call to go earn. This would be around late 70’s early 80’s. We started with a 70’s Chrysler Station Wagon in a house cleaning business for which I drew the logo that was used for the duration of the business. If my father hadn’t been such a control freak he would have heeded my thinking, and we may have been millionaires selling franchises. During this time we made $25 per hour per man doing all the things nobody wanted to do and wouldn’t be caught dead doing. Cleaning toilets and windows. At the end of my time with Elbow Grease Heavy Housecleaning we had four company vehicles and an addition to the house from which we ran the business.
TRACY 1978
My bedroom was next to the master bedroom. On the back of the door to the master bedroom was a rack where my father hung his belts. It seemed like he had a great many belts – all leather. Some were black, some were brown, and they all looked pretty much the same. Belts served a few purposes. Sometimes they were for keeping pants up. Sometimes they were for ‘making a point’. Sometimes just the threat of ‘getting the belt’ was enough to change the direction of a situation. Sometimes the threat of the belt was skipped in favor of actually bringing it out and using it. Generally speaking no matter what the situation was, the first strike of the belt across a bare back was enough to drive ‘the point’ home. Of course
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if my father was mad enough to bring the belt out in the first place, one strike was rarely enough.
However, the whipping wasn’t the worst thing associated with the belts.
The worst sound in the world was the sound of the belts slapping gently against the door to the master bedroom, swinging with the motion of the door being opened and closed… in the middle of the night. Lightly sleeping I could hear the door to the master bedroom next door opening, and the belts swinging and tapping, the buckles jangling slightly.
I could hear the door closing, sticking sometimes in the humid summer air.
And then a few footsteps in the hall. And then my door opening.
And closing.
A few more footsteps.
I’d squeeze my eyes tightly shut and keep perfectly still. I’d try to will myself to even stop breathing. But it didn’t matter. No matter how still I stayed, no matter how many layers of clothing I’d put on before going to bed…. it never stopped the hands
Or the sound of the breathing. Or the smell of him.
MARTIN
From 1978 to 1982 I attended Ridgefield High School. I lettered in Lacrosse. And began the first steps towards becoming an educated man as a graduate in 1982.
The times were fun and reckless, even foolhardy. I had girlfriends in abundance and once I got my license to drive… we were young menaces to the community in general. The gang we had was made up of an unlikely grouping of kids. I was the only athlete, the others involved writers, actors, singers and dancers. A very strange group all moving forward to getting the hell out of Ridgefield, while we made general fools of ourselves consuming alcohol, smoking pot and getting as much youthful ass grabbing and wood polishing anyone could imagine.
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In between the sports I found myself applying my skills as a budding carpenter in building sets for the theatre group in school. I even did some acting. I couldn’t sing to save my life, but I recall dancing as a waiter in a production of Hello Dolly. I acted under electronic folks hanging lights and running the spotlights on a technical script for the shows. When the directors were running rehearsals I had a special friend who used to give me hand jobs up in the darkened corners of the spotlight perches. I choose to leave her name unmentioned, as doing so would be like kissing and telling. She was one of many girls that I’d date on the same day. I love these fond memories of High School Days. I’ll bet she never thought that she’d be strokin’ off an unexpected writer casting her anonymously as a hands on kind of girl.
The recollection leaves me wondering how any of us remembered the lines we had or the blocking we did to make the show fly. I usually had the beer in a cooler in my van that we’d all sneak out to when the director was working with an individual on conveying character directions.
One truly funny and horrifying story of those days I’d like to convey begins when I was a kid taking catechism classes. I argued with the teacher Mr. John MacDonald. He was a large man solidly and firmly bound to his faith as a Catholic. Anyway, this argument was about logic not making sense in the dogma of the church. The more I questioned the lesson the angrier he got until he finally threw me out of class, never to come back.
That was the one of those days that never really became finished until his daughter Kyle hosted a cast party at their home for one of the shows we produced. During that time, Kyle and her family had a French Exchange Student in their home. She wasn’t living there just staying over for a couple of nights. Regardless, if I remember the details the thing was that we both had a huge desire for each. I mean a wanting desire only youth knows and can appreciate. I asked Kyle during the party on that winter eve, about some privacy. She obliged by saying the door off the finished basement was a utility area. I took Shannez into that room and put her on a couch, we were just having at it with each when some idiot from the party needed an extension cord that Big John, Kyle’s father was grabbing. The same John who threw me out of his catechism class.
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So, he opens the door and sees both of us there on that couch. And let me tell ya he got an eyeful. Shannez had no pants on with an opened blouse, and I was getting ready to hit a homerun. Poor kid was mortified, and I was zipping my pants up and grabbin’ my jacket.
Big John was lookin’ like he wanted to crucify my ass. I made some moves and like the song Gimme Three Steps by Lynrd Skynrd, I was running on out the door. If he had a gun I think he might have shot me. The dynamic that was being revealed about the same time was one that made our Petry Boys’ name something parents began to fear. My brother Don, who is a year younger than me was out having some beers with his buddies in cars his buddies were driving. Those nitwits left beer bottles under the seat and right around the same time that I was running for cover, other parents were discovering beer bottles rolling out from under the seat during an abrupt deceleration of their cars.
As the story goes those Petry Boys were bad news. All the while they were giving us $25 an hour to do what they didn’t want to do.
Around the fall of the school year the theatre club put on a production of Rhimers of Eldritch. This was the first time I met Tracy LeCates. She is now my partner and editor in this ground floor business of My Mutt Publications and My mutt Productions. She tells me that during a particularly rough patch in my zany ways, she defended me from the campaign of several girls I was very friendly with in their efforts to besmirch my Bad Boy and Scoundrel Status. Five girls all came to know I was grabbing ass with all around the same time. Man, were those girls pissed! I became a legendary pig and she spent time crossing my name off the bathroom stall walls. Needless to say my dating was cancelled in high school. I don’t know why she took a shine to me, we never dated, but I guess she held that candle until recently. Even past a time when she had heard I was dead. She had a part in the production but for one reason or another I never paid her any attention.
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TRACY
1979 - 1980
No one ever looked forward to going to the dentist. I had a particular problem with those visits.
My dentist had an office close to the junior high school I attended. I used to walk there after school for my appointments with a blank check from my parents, and then often I would walk home, although the house was several miles from the center of town. The dentist my parents sent me to seemed like a nice enough guy to begin with when I was a small child. He had a flat-top haircut and wore a white smock. He had thick-rimmed glasses and always smiled.
He changed.
Sometimes I think it might have been a mid-life crisis. His wife apparently left him for one reason or another and he started fooling around with one of his dental assistants. Gone was the flat-top and the smock. It was still the 1970s and he was finally getting down with the groove. He exchanged his smock for wild print shirts that he wore open practically to his navel, and his chest was almost completely obscured by the long gold chains and medallions he wore. His hair went from a short crop to a long shaggy look. That was about the time that he started telling me that I had an inordinate amount of cavities and scheduled appointment after endless appointment for me to come in for work. His dental assistant was never present when he was working on me. I was about twelve at the time and didn’t know what ‘normal’ was in any area of life. I didn’t know that other kids didn’t come out of their dental checkups with twenty cavities needing to be filled and six more appointments scheduled. I didn’t know that other kids didn’t require nitrous oxide to have cavities filled… but even then I was pretty sure that the way he was touching me wasn’t part of the standard procedure.
I told my parents that I didn’t like going to this dentist but they insisted that he was less expensive than the others in town, he was convenient and I was going to have to keep going back. I wasn’t sure how to verbalize my discomfort to them, since some of the same things were going on in my own home. So, I kept quiet. I went back to that dentist for the next few years. And for the next few years the cavities, the fillings, and the groping continued. I learned to just shut it all out. All of it.
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I had some sort of breakdown towards the end of the school year. I’m not even really sure what happened, but I do know that it landed me in a shrink’s office. And medicated. This time it wasn’t just my mother prescribing the sedatives.
There were a few counseling sessions and for a brief moment I almost allowed myself the hope that someone was actually going to know what was going on and help me. That hope was extinguished when I realized that the shrink was an acquaintance of my father’s and that my father would be sitting in on all the sessions. I kept my mouth shut. I made up some kind of bullshit story about stresses from school and adolescent something or other and I was written off as a typical kid having some adjustment issues and no further sessions were scheduled. I put a smile on my face and said that everything was fine and on I went. Again.
Tracy 1981
It was a big year for me. In the fall of ’81 I entered Ridgefield High School. I was horribly shy by that point, and painfully self-conscious. While it appeared that over the summer a lot of the other girls had started to catch up to me in a physically ‘developed’ way I was still ahead of the curve in many ways, no pun intended. I did everything I could not to call attention to myself; wearing oversized shirts, keeping quiet, sitting in the back of the bus, in the back of the class, staying out of the way as much as possible. I was smoking cigarettes by then and would spend my lunch break and every other free moment outside in the smoking courtyard, no matter what the weather.
The nocturnal visitations to my bedroom had ceased, however the level of physical abuse otherwise had escalated. The only emotion that was acceptable to express in the house was anger by then. I recall hearing expressions often uttered such as, “I’ll give you something to cry about,” and “locks are on the doors to keep people out, not in.” There was never any gauge to measure the moods or warning signs as to when the slaps or grabs would come.
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Although I was never hit in the face I often bore the markings elsewhere on my body. When it came time to change for gym class I always found an excuse to change in the privacy of a bathroom stall instead of in the locker room, and taking showers there was out of the question. I’d injured my left knee in junior high school, so I used that to get excused from gym class all together for most of my stay at RHS.
The cessation of the nocturnal visitations was not the only change in the house. My brother had moved out. He packed a bunch of bags and boxes into his old Ford pickup truck one day and said he was leaving. His plan was to just get on the highway and drive until he felt like stopping. He drove, as it turned out, all the way to North Carolina before a bug flew in the window, hit him in the eye and he took that as a sign. He stopped there. And stayed for a few years.
My mother’s mental state had taken a turn. She was never one for travel, but she began to take that to an extreme. She no longer even left the house to go to the grocery store. She’d go out into the yard, but that was about it. She’d also gotten herself a dog. A small dog. It was a long-haired Chihuahua crossed with toy poodle. That dog was not banished to the yard as my four-legged friend Lad had been. Lad had gotten heartworm and was put down the year before I entered high school. No, the new, small dog was in the house. In fact, the new dog slept in the master bedroom… in a baby crib. The new dog had little outfits that my mother dressed it up in, and she carried the dog as if it were a baby most of the time. She also took to disappearing into her bedroom for days at a time, citing “a sick headache” as the cause.
The one truly bright spot in my life was the theater. In my younger years I’d been involved with a group in town called Spotlight Theatre, run by an older couple named Al and Lil Matthews. They took acting seriously, demanding understand of the characters, dialogue and blocking. They ran lines with us, gave us a chance to sing and dance and try new things, and Al always insisted that we “command the stage”. On the stage I knew I could find a safe place to hide – by being someone else. I loved the stage and I was good at playing roles. I’d had lots of practice already at acting like everything was okay.