DEAD END - a Lovecraftian nightmare of the old neighborhood

  Earlier in the evening I had joked with another elderly resident- a hopeless smoker with lung cancer- about the DEAD END street sign " welcoming " us senior citizens to Randall Manor, a public housing complex by the now polluted lake in the Italian / Catholic neighborhood of Knightsville, Cranston. " Yes, it really is a DEAD END for most of us here, isn't it ?

WELCOME to Randall Manor

My old Baltimore Catechism got it right ?

 I was returning from the grave site in nearby Saint Ann's Cemetery of my dear woman companion D-a devout, " old fashioned " ( pre-Vatican II ) Polish Catholic who had recently died of liver cancer.   Her first floor apartment at Randall Manor -once ALIVE with green plants ,  a bird cage,  an aquarium, two precious pets, and precious, saintly D herself -  was now vacant .

 But I still had her key Now and then I would pass by the window and imagined hearing the ghostly barking of " our  girls " Dottie and Mindy . D cried often after having to give " our girls " up at the Providence Animal  Shelter. I wondered who left flowers on D's gravestone on her June 2 birthday. Her estranged brother ? The ex boxer Al -now disabled with arthritis - who had a real crush on her ?

          In Kennedy Plaza around twilight  the previous day I had encountered a toothless homeless " old " middle aged woman  I barely recognized as  Ronda  .  I remembered Ronda as a young rather pretty girl of 16. I would usually see her stopping by, on her way to school, the corner New York System for coffee and a donut .

 I said  a hesitant" Hi " to Ronda, but she just stared through me with dead blue gray eyes. My PAST in Washington Park had long receded into the " dead past ". Certain memories there  still haunt me -but with  a romantic, nostalgic sadness.

The last time I saw Ronda ?

         Troubled sleep since D died .  That night I awoke at 3:00 AM from a weird dream. In this dream I dreamer was living back - TIME and SPACE - in the old neighborhood, in  the family home in Washington Park.

  In the dream fog I was returning from my old-often sickening- night job as a morgue orderly at Roger Williams Hospital. I entered the  family home ( circa 1965 ) through the back yard door.

 And I immediately noticed a foul smelling flooding in the doorway..  Had I forgot to turn off a kitchen  faucet ? . I heard some creaking noises inside the house..  My once large loving family had vanished into a another dimension of time and space, but my youngest brother John - in the dream - was staying with me ( after some late- at- night red wine guzzling)  rather than drive all the way back to  his cottage in Galilee Village by the ocean..

             Just at the top of the stairway   I dreamer  get the shock of seeing three hideous home invaders with black travel bags opened in front of them. .   A  frightful  situation for the dreamer : to surprise these low life in the very act of house breaking.

" I am what you will be "

 "  Oh no, they're going to shoot me ! " ,   I dreamer  thought. In panic I  reached for my cell phone to call 911 but I could not find it any pocket.

 The odd thing was that  the kitchen was lit by holy candles, the kind seen in Catholic Churches glowing in red glass.

                THEY just stared at me and began to move in slow motion toward the door. They looked like those " living dead " zombies on a video documentary I watched a while back about the crystal meth epidemic.

 A new variety of the drug- made in Russia- would literally eat their flesh from the inside- giving them a shockingly gruesome and hellish look.
                                                                          [   “I never thought that dying would be this terrible.”]
                                                                                                               image : behold the living dead !      

The side effects of " Krokodil "

              Then the dream scene hit me : that one of the home invaders or " squatters " was  the now " old " Ronda , who was  actually 10 years younger than I . But I could smell - if you can smell in a dream - that cheap "  Perfume Erotica " scent Ronda often had about her some 45 years ago. It was now a blasphemous emission from those holy candles - under eerie red glass , the very  kind my pious ( superstitious ? ) Italian peasant  Grandma kept in her room at night.

             One day in the fall of 1977  " Chubby " , the coffee shop manager, told me that Ronda's  boy friend, Cal had been killed in a freak car accident.She was now a month pregnant and prostituting herself at much cheaper prices than the South Providence street hookers.

    Ronda was already a jaded alcoholic always with a bottle of Wild Irish Rose in her handbag . " Two dollars for a quickie ! "   Chubby  informed me-  chuckling maliciously, hinting at  personal debauchery with the young girl . He died of a " surprise " heart attack a few days later at age 39  while making early morning deliveries of fresh donuts.

 The last time I saw Ronda was at  Chubby's  wake. She came to claim his soul for Satan in Hell , some old " superstitious " Catholic - who heard the Old Neighborhood gossip ( Ronda had aborted her baby ) might think. Grandma told me a story about a local child molester whom " God turned  into a  Nigg "  : His blackened bloated body was found by the police in the woods near Pawtuxet Village in Cranston. They had to cremate the remains.

Grandma's tale of the dead  Nigg 

       I still keep a bottle of  " superstitious " Grandma's holy water on my writing desk. I now believe in vampires and the power of silver crosses. (When I don't believe in Lucretius and his materialist poem " The Nature of Things") .

           For days now Science has been exorcised from my dreams- a willful suppression of disbelief  ?

          Yes, let the dead speak IN MY DREAMS- of the COSMIC HORROR that beckons out there. And the truth of eternal damnation for all un-humble, proud , un-repentant souls.

          Pray for the good souls in Purgatory  : REQUIESCAT IN PACE. Be saved forever from the eternal torments of Hell, from the accursed company of the damned !

My family home was lit with holy candles

     

Satan will not claim this girl