Authors: Damien Echols
Looking back, the worst part wasn’t the poverty, the heat, the cold, or even the humiliation of living in such circumstances; it was the absolute and utter loneliness. For many years in that old house, I didn’t have a friend in the world to keep me company. It was far out in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by nothing but fields. No kids or neighbors to even speak to you. I was so lonely that I think even death was preferable. If not for my small battery powered radio, perhaps I would have died inside. Michael Jackson, Phil Collins, and the Fine Young Cannibals saved my life. If not for Huey Lewis and the News, existence would truly have been too bleak to continue.
Years later I read a book by Nick Cave called
And the Ass Saw the Angel
. It struck me because of how closely he comes to catching the feel of life out there.
None of the more well-known southern writers like Carson McCullers or Flan-nery O’Connor could do it. 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, too. The only places close enough to make it on foot 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 novels more times that Billy Graham read his Bible. He kept me company on many a long and maddening summer day. I still believe Stephen King’s literary talents are far too overlooked. Everyone’s too busy reading the story to notice the writing. Even if you took out all the monsters and creepy things, he’s still a damn good writer. What other horror novelist can you say that about?
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 Friends
. It was filled with tales (and woodcuts) of witches having orgies, standing in line to kiss the devil’s ass, eating children, and cursing people so that they went into convulsions. The book
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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 if they were originally published under 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 severed limb from limb in an effort to make them confess to flying on broom-sticks 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?
At any rate, 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 utmost diligence. I couldn’t seem to stop myself, and afterwards I prayed to God, begging his forgiveness. I had no idea that it was normal to have such urges; no one had ever explained such things to me. There was a non-stop war inside me—I wanted to be “good,” but couldn’t quite seem to manage it. My sexual appetite was insatiable, and I thought most people were morons. Yeah, I was on my way to the devil’s playground, alright. It all seems so ridiculous now, but back then it was the most deadly serious thing in the world.
Oddly enough, this same children’s book was where I first encountered the man known as 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 his life’s work over the years, and it’s incredible how little people really understand of him. His words have been miscon-strued, twisted, taken out of context, and misunderstood continuously. If you don’t know the key with which to decipher him, then you’ll never understand what you’re reading. Others don’t even want to understand, and would rather use
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his name or image to sway and scare the ignorant, just as the prosecutor did during my trial.
After many years of study and contemplation, I now believe the only hell that exists is having to live in that tin roof shack in the middle of nowhere.
XI
This new Chinese restaurant/church was a bit more civilized than the last one. At least there was no one rolling around on the floor or speaking in tongues. There was no magick oil or spontaneous healings. There was plenty of backbiting to make up for it, though. Never in my life had I encountered more people who found it impossible to mind their own business than I found in that church.
Someone was constantly whispering about someone else and then smiling to his or her face. Their entire lives revolved around this melodrama. Surrounded by such behavior, it was easy to see the type of characters who would stone someone to death in the old days. If put to a vote, they would cheerfully resurrect the practice.
The minister was a tiny, old, white-haired man who cried almost the entire time he preached. His wife could have easily passed for his sister, as they were the exact same size and shape, and there was even a resemblance in their facial features. They were the only people in the entire church who seemed to have any sanity left, and I believe it was their efforts alone that held the congregation together. Every so often they showed up at our house with a few garbage bags full of clothes. Their grandson was slightly older than me, so when he outgrew his clothes they passed them on to my family, for me and my sister. These were the only guests we could receive that didn’t make me feel humiliated by our living conditions. That old man strolled right in wearing a three-piece suit and seemed completely at home, sitting on the couch and sipping iced tea. He often told stories about how he grew up dirt poor, and I felt no shame in his presence. Ditto for his wife. She never frowned, always seemed to be enjoying herself, and attempted to practice the art of conversation with my mother.
I don’t believe Jack ever arrived anyplace on time, but especially not at church.
Our transportation was a ten-year-old pickup truck and the four of us would be crammed into it every Sunday morning to show up at least ten minutes late. It’s aggravating enough to be packed into the cab of a truck with not enough room to move, but on top of that you had to inhale the overpowering scent of cheap after-shave, juicy fruit gum, perfume, hairspray, and the exhaust that came through the hole in the floorboard. By the time we arrived I always had a headache and was in 28
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no mood to sit through two hours of bible thumping. Going to protestant churches became the bane of my existence.
The usual routine consisted of thirty minutes of singing, followed by an hour to an hour-and-a-half of preaching, and then twenty more minutes of singing to close the show while people waved their hands in the air, stared at the ceiling as if they were witnessing heaven, and shed copious amounts of tears. Every so often there was a surprise, like having a television set up. The lights were turned off, and a movie about the end of the world played. After it was over and everyone had the shit scared thoroughly out of them, there was a mad rush to the “altar” (a picnic bench). Everyone crowded together, huddled on their knees, and prayed that Jesus would take them home so they wouldn’t have to face the horrors of the end times.
Once, quite against my will, I was even in a Christmas play. All the kids played the part of toys hearing the story of Christmas for the first time. I was a toy motorcycle rider, and one of my stepbrothers had dressed me in all his biker finery for the occasion. I looked disturbingly like Rob Halford, the singer from the band Judas Priest. Very few people can pull off that stereotypical biker look, and I am not one of them.
There was a constant stream of new preachers that passed through after plying their trade for a short while, because the congregation would vote them out. One night someone would call for a vote, and that would be that. It was usually the result of the preacher siding (or being perceived to side) with one or another faction of the congregation. If one group felt that he was showing more sympathy to one backbiting clique than another, he’d soon be sent packing. We waved goodbye to many preachers as they drove off into the sunset with a moving van full of furniture.
Meanwhile, back on the home front, our financial situation continued its steadily downward spiral, and the tension continued to build. We started trying to grow our own food, and it was hot, backbreaking labor. We had no irrigation systems, or even a hose and running water, so we had to haul water by the buck-etful to our garden. Everything was done manually. Some days you go up one row and down another with hoe in hand, busting up the dry, cracked ground.
Other days required you to spend hours hunched over, pulling weeds from between plants with bare hands. That task was especially hazardous, as you had to constantly be on the lookout for poisonous snakes, bumblebees, and wasps. If you let the monotony of the task lull your mind into a stupor you’d often receive a nasty surprise. After all the hard work, only about half the food was edible. The
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bugs and animals would have gotten some of it, and other areas couldn’t be saved from rot.
The only thing we didn’t have to do ourselves was crop-dusting. Our house was in the middle of the field the plane flew back and forth over, and it gave us a healthy dose of poison every time it passed overhead. If you didn’t run for cover when you heard him coming, you’d get dusted too. I have personally inhaled enough pesticides to put a small country out of action. My mom and Jack’s advice? “Don’t look up at the plane, and try not to breathe deeply until he gets a little ways passed.” I developed allergies so bad that my mother had to start giving me injections at home. She wielded that syringe in an entirely unpleasant manner.
You had to be certain you had all the food out of the garden by the end of summer, or there was a chance the fire would destroy it. Every year after the final harvest, farmers rode through the fields surrounding our house and set them ablaze with instruments that looked like flamethrowers. This was so that all the burned and leftover vegetation fertilized the ground for the next year’s crop. I don’t know what prevented the house from burning, because the flames came to a halt only a few feet away. If the wind changed direction you would nearly suffo-cate on thick, black smoke.
The one time that the house did nearly burn to the ground was because the wood-burning stove started a fire in the ceiling. The fire department had to come and spray the place down. Unfortunately, the trucks arrived in time to put it out.
As I watched, I desperately prayed that the entire shack would burn so I’d never have to see it again. It survived with little damage.
Jack was a roofer by trade, and he started taking small jobs on the side, repair-ing residential homes to bring in a little extra cash. I started going with him, learning the process. I was only about thirteen, so mostly what I did was clean up the area when he was finished, and he’d give me a few dollars.
Perhaps up until this point I’ve painted a completely unsympathetic portrait of Jack. He wasn’t an absolute monster any more than anyone else is. He was just a man, both good and bad. I believe he cared about both my sister and I, in his own way. He could be generous, and stopped to help every single person whose car was broken down on the side of the road. He always gave hitchhikers a ride, and was more tolerant of any form of self-expression I chose than any other parent would have been. I was free to dress however I pleased and listen to whatever music I liked. He had no problem with things like me wearing earrings, and I heard him tell my mother more than once, “He’s just trying to find himself.”
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My mother was also a more dynamic character than she may seem. She always made certain we had enough to eat (even though it was junk food), she always went to open house night at school to meet my teachers, and she made sure that we got Easter baskets with chocolate rabbits. She tried to take care of us when we were sick, although she had no idea what she was doing. Sometimes her idea of taking care was to sit next to the bed as I struggled with bronchitis, and keep watch while smoking generic cigarettes.
I’m now at a point in my life where I look back on both of them with mingled feeling of love, disgust, affection, resentment, and sometimes hatred. There’s too much betrayal to ever be completely forgiven. I am not like my mother who may argue with you one day and go back to life as usual the next. My grudge is always there, and my moods are not flippant. The best I can do is say that their good deeds may have softened the blow of the bad ones.
XII
Next to come were the joys of junior high school. Many significant events and rites of passage took place during the time I inhabited the halls of this repugnant example of our educational system. I had my first taste of beer, I had my first look at pornography, I took up skateboarding, and I met Jason Baldwin.
The beer and pornography were compliments of my stepbrother, who was actually a pretty decent guy despite having a drinking problem. He gave me the first of only two experiences I’ve ever had behind the wheel of a vehicle. He drove an old pickup truck with a jacked-up rear end and super wide back tires. One day as I sat in the passenger seat, listening to Alice Cooper on the radio, my brother tossed out the empty beer can he’d been holding between his legs, looked at me with bleary eyes, and asked, “Wanna drive?”