The story of Captain Hook


From my shelf, I removed the notebook when a picture fell to the floor. It was a picture of my grandmother standing beside her house. I don't really know why I put that picture inside the Mead composition notebook. It was probably because I had nowhere else to put it, and being that I had it since grammar school, I had to put the damn thing somewhere! How I missed that house, I thought as I reflected back. Hanging out in there was like an escape for me as a child. Each room was hauntingly original in every facet of its primal structure, and yet aside from the attic which clearly highlights the main fabric of this tale, I feel a great urgency to mention the other rooms as well. Before you could enter the house, you would first have
to walk along the street while following a lengthy row of six foot hedges, which encompassed the property to an awaiting path. You would then enter in through a small archway and follow that path around to the side door, or you could always come in through the porch! As you walked into the house from the backyard, you could only go up or down a narrow staircase. Upstairs is where you would find the TV room, two bedrooms, the bath room, the foyer, and the sick room, where my grandfather on my father's side passed away from tuberculosis in the spring of 1970. This room was painted a cerulean blue in the late 1950's and remained that color until the house was demolished in September of 1979. After the death of my grandfather, my grandmother began putting my things in there, and from 73' to 79', it was called the blue room. In the left corner was my Radio Flyer wagon, I got when I was three, and on the right wall hung my Flexible Flyer sled, which was my father's when he was a young boy. I had my Johnny Lightning racing track, complete with cars along with my G.I. Joe's, Battling tops, etch-a-sketch, Silly Putty in an egg, Play Doh, crayons and a slinky. Least of all, one brand new unopened tube of
super elastic bubble plastic!

I had lots of toys and things I seldom played with, so everything in that room would be considered fairly new. Living life was easy and I had a glorious future ahead of me. I was learning as much as I could and absorbing everything. Not only about my schoolwork and classes, but the very aspect of women in general.

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It is best if I do not dwell near this river. Though it appears to be moving calmly and does look peaceful, it is filled with broken glass. Some may even attest that within the water, flowing past the walls of its embankment lies the answer to all of man's woes. In truth, that river is filled with skeletons. (A sight unseen) As sweet and refreshing as it may very well be, the water is infected with sorrow. Let's just say, it has turned into something far worse than blood. What was once a blessing had become a curse, and I, would find the heart of true madness.

The main room of the house was in the cellar, for that was the dining room. I could still see the gypsum board with its manila colored face paper adorning each wall. It was always so smooth and shiny, like shellac had been applied somewhere during its manufacture. All the various hues that came streaming in on sunlit wings coated the walls in its grace. Around midday, the sun would illuminate that room like no other, turning
a simple dining area into a Florida room, and at the end of the day come sundown, the sun would impart to it, an impressive orange stain. Only for a few minutes a day could that scene be witnessed. It would then rapidly lose its lustre before fading into a thin transparent film of eerie haze. Then disappear as it would, into the gloom of the evening twilight. One dark and windy day in the fall of 1970, my father comes back from New Jersey. He is carrying a box, and I was getting ready to go across the street to see my friend. "Take a look Kathy," he says to my mom as I walk into the living room. "I got 'em for my mother." (((Removing the lid))) Ohhhh, he's adorable! Wow, I said, as my eyes lit up! A baby Bulldog!!! "Come on, let's go and surprise grandma!" My grandmother loved him, and we named him Sam. That dog would watch our every move, and when he got excited, he would shake his ass like he was doing the Hucklebuck and scuffle around, snorting! He was a great dog, but after putting seven people in the hospital due to his over protective nature, he was totally confined to the basement where he would live out his days. Then, my grandmother found out from a very reliable source, that my father, wanting to save money bought an interbred dog! The year was 1978. "You son of a bitch," she screamed! "You bought me a sick dog!!! That's why he's crazy! That's why he tries to kill everybody who comes into this house! This. . . Trap!!! How could you?" He's eight years old, ma, I think his bitin' days are over. "They're not over! Not by a long shot! As long as he's still breathin' they're not over!" So what do ya want me to do? She gave him an angry stare. You know what, gimme the dog. Come on Sam!
"What are you doing?" I'm gonna solve a problem.

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Let's go! "Where are you taking him?" I'm takin' him to the backyard.
"For what reason?" Cause that's where I'm gonna shoot 'em. C'mon Sam! "You're gonna do no such thing! Get away from him, you're crazier than he is!!!" Every time my father left, my grandmother grew another grey hair. She then looked at Sam sitting on the floor. "This is all your fault!
Yeah, look at me! Your fault! BASTARD!!!"

I will never forget the evening of May, 25th 1979. I was visiting my grandmother and helping her with several chores that needed to be done around the house, when finally it was time for the CBS evening news with Walter Cronkite. We watched in horror as he spoke mournfully of both the passengers and crew members of American Airlines flight 191. The worst disaster in U.S. history claiming 271 lives. Around ten O'clock I went downstairs to the basement and was preparing to take Sam out to do his business when I realized he would not budge. As I lifted his head, I realized he had passed away. If not for that terrible plane crash, I strongly doubt I would have been able to recall the exact day of his untimely demise.

Considering that my grandparent's house was built in 1923, almost everything inside it was original. Even the toilet bowl was a marvel to behold. Not one of those swishy bowls you see today, that uses a quart of water and barely flushes. You could flush a lamp down this contraption, and it'll be halfway to the Atlantic ocean before you could wipe your nose! Toward the back of the kitchen was a food pantry and above it, an old wooden decorative vent. On the vent was this antiquated cobweb. It was unlike any spider web I had ever seen before! Two inches thick and totally opaque, it was a fascinating thing to look at! Whenever I arrived at her doorstep, part of my visit would always entail looking up to see if it was still there. When I was five years old, I asked my grandmother, if she knew how long it's been up there. She then replied, "that thing? That's been up there longer than your father's been breathing," and so it began, my fascination with the past and with time. Gently, I blew from my lips a slow but steady current of air, which would find it seconds later. This shock wave sent trillions of atoms coursing through its insubstantial mass of ligaments, held together like a decaying piece of old tissue, dangling from its own invisible threads. "Let me dampen a rag and clean it," she said. No, I screamed out and she stopped!

Then it was up the winding staircase to the attic where I would watch first run episodes of Star Trek as they aired, in an atmosphere of total peace. Nothing disturbed the tranquil order of things here, for as time rolled on
in the outside world, it didn't move much in the house. Sitting on the sofa with my legs outstretched to the hassock, I watched television in living color and everything was wonderful! Sometimes I'd lift the lid on the
old footstool to find that Grandmother had left candy inside of it. No homework, nor house chores impeding would keep me from watching
Get Smart after school! Always talking on that amazing shoe phone!
Agent 99, do you read me? The mild buzzing of an electric Kit Cat klock kept me company. Her eyes ever watching my every move, with tail swaying and a smile. She seemed to enjoy it too! I could go anywhere
I wanted in here, and Grandmother let me do as I pleased.

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By the window and to the right was a trap door painted pink. Thirty
inches high and twenty four inches wide were its dimensions. With a
small flashlight that was always on hand, I would turn the wooden peg and
pull the door open. On my hands and knees, I'd crawl looking for treasure. Maybe they put something new up here I can rummage through! Though
I rarely found anything that wasn't already up there. An old Bamberger's box that hadn't been moved in years. Four tins of Horn & Hardart coffee that had an assortment of lead sinkers in each of them. An unopened can of O-Cedar Mop polish, etc. On the wall hung a curved sickle with a bright red handle. I remember asking my grandmother once why she hung it there and her reply was, "I hide it from your father, if he sees it, he's gonna take it, and then I'm shit outta luck."

In the adjacent room was the same type of hidden door painted the color
of bittersweet to match the walls as well. In that closet were twelve shoe boxes, some of which said Crowley's shoes for ladies and Church's English shoes for men, along with a few other boxes and biscuit tins.
All the way in the back was a mahogany box that to this day has me
mystified. There was no lock or latch but rather a very distinct type of
old fashioned lip seal. One day, I decided I had to look in this box, so I dragged it over to where the particles of lint and other foreign matter could be seen hanging gracefully in the sunny air of daylight, and proceeded to pull it open. What I found was an astonishing collection of old books in mint condition by a man named Edward Gorey. I can remember four titles in particular. The Doubtful Guest - The Curious Sofa - The Hapless Child, and my all time favorite, The Gashlycrumb Tinies! A child's book of the alphabet where every page turned is a black and white illustration of a different child in a precarious situation. "A" is for Alice, who fell down
the stairs, and so on! So captivated was I in its spell that I would read
it everyday after coming home from school, before finally doing the unthinkable. Yes, I took-the book-to school. I was in second grade at
the time, and my teacher was so shaken by it, that I was taken from that
class and put in a special room until my father arrived. All the boys liked
it and thought I was cool, while the girls thought it was a sick, twisted book. I can still hear my father lamenting about it in the car. "Ya know,
ya keep goin' like this, and we're gonna have a problem! I know you're
only seven years old, and I understand that you're still developing
mentally! I really do, but you should be able to know the difference,
at this stage of the game, between what's right and what's just completely
fucked up! I mean do you? Seriously."

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Needless to say, the box was removed from the attic that week, and I never saw it again. Neither would Grandmother ever see that red handled sickle of hers again either. The following year, my Aunt Gloria came down from California as she always did during the summer. Well anyway, grandma boots, as we all called her was up there looking for it, for whatever reason she had in mind, when out of the blue we heard, "That son-of-a-bitch!!! He took my sickle, I knew it! He oughta drop dead!!!" My aunt and I were laughing so hard we couldn't stop! Oh ma, she said calmly as if speaking to me, you curse like a longshoreman.

The reason why everyone called my grandmother "Grandma Boots" was due to an incident involving me as an infant. My mother had taken me over there when I was only four months old, supposedly. Anyway, my mother told me that all the aunts and uncles were congregated together for my grandmother's official birthday party. My grandmother was born on leap year. So anyway, on this particular Saturday at the height of the festivities, just when everyone was making a big fuss over me, my mother said I astounded them all! I pointed to my grandmother, who had just finished boasting about a new pair of boots that she had bought for herself, and said defiantly, "Gaama Boots!" According to my mother the whole house went crazy! It must have sounded really good to me, because that was all
I said for the remainder of the entire year! From that moment on, no one ever called her Mildred again, but rather, Grandma Boots. Eventually, the phrase evolved, thanks to my cousin Roberta, who at some point in the early seventies changed it to grandma bootsie.

Upon entry to the adjacent room was a full sized bed with a fancy wooden headboard. My father's bed while growing up in the house, and a very odd walk-in closet. My father called it the suffocation room. One day when I was three or four years old, I inquired by asking him what was behind those doors. "Listen," he said, "because I'm only gonna say it once! Under no circumstance whatsoever are you to even think of going
into this room, do you understand?" But why? "Because it's very, very dangerous! Do I make myself perfectly clear? Not only are there some very sharp tools in there. There's also mice in there, not to mention the exposed wiring and half a dry rotted floor, so unless ya wanna fall
through the floor and land on your grandmother's dining room table,
I suggest you stay outta there." Not knowing what to say I just nodded my head in agreement. "I'm just making sure that we understand each other," he said, and that was the end of it.

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           "Sleeping in the attic"

Once when I was five years old, my mother locked my father out of the house, and we were forced to stay at my grandmother's house. It was quite convenient at the time, for it was only one house down and on the same side of the street. To make a long story short, we had to sleep in
the attic, and I as a child had to go to the bathroom quite often. Anyway,
the story had already been told to me about Captain Hook and the suffocation room, so there was no way he could reverse it. If you could consider, that the bathroom was on the second level under this bedroom, and my father could only fall asleep in complete darkness, then you would understand my dilemma.

At around four O'clock in the morning, I woke up and had to pee.
Being that I was afraid of the dark, I started to shake my father and
told him he had to go downstairs with me. That I couldn't go down
there alone. What he did next was amazing! Child psychology at its
best. He then proceeded to remove the magnificent solid gold Christ
head pendant from around his neck and put it around mine. "Now," he said, "you're protected from devils, hobgoblins, monsters under the bed and most of all Captain Hook in the closet, now go." What about you,
I said, sounding most concerned? "Don't worry about me, I'll be fine." What if Captain Hook comes out? "If Captain Hook comes out, I'll kick him in his balls and throw him through the window! Now for the second time, go." What if something gets me anyway? "Aww, Jee-zus Cah---rist! That, would be a human impossibility! Do you understand what impossible means? It means, that it can't under any circumstance
happen, now for the third time, go!" As I stepped down from the bed
into that pitch black darkness, I was without fear. Then, with total
confidence, I descended the old winding staircase. One that
squeaked and gave an occasional snapping sound.

Finally, I reached the bottom where I did my business and returned in total obscurity! As I climbed back into bed, I felt the chimera's scurry around the room, and could almost see one cleaving unto the bedpost. Who's in charge now, I thought to myself with a wry smile? "Hand it over," my father said to me. I looked at him in astonishment, before asking if I could give the medallion back in the morning. "If you think for one minute that you're gonna be foolin' around while I'm sleepin' ya got another thing comin,' now give it up!" As I gently removed the pendant from around my neck and handed it back to my father, the monsters under the bed slowly returned. Not to mention Captain Hook, who could now be heard gritting his teeth ever so vengefully from the closet!

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                       "The suffocation room"

Only once did I ever go in there, and that was with my father, where I stood aghast. As I recall, it was a hot summer day in July, 1969. As my father opened the first set of doors, all that was visible to the naked eye was a ladies' coat closet. Sliding back a row of coats, the sweet smell of mothballs and cedar dominated the air. A second door could now be seen. Pulling a slide bolt from above and turning a handle would open this door, where warm air could now be felt trying to escape. Behind this door was the strangest door I had ever seen. It was about three inches thick, and solid for it was made of old maple! There was an image carved on the door of a demon head, kind of like the one you would expect to see on a Victorian throne chair! It was a one of a kind, custom made door, crafted in the late 1850's for my great, great-grandfather by R.J. Horner & Co. This image was also surrounded by a double roped border. As the door was pulled open an updraft was created, and we got an eyeful of dust and fine insulation particles. It felt like we had just stepped into a musty wooden sauna. I was six years old at the time as we crept in slowly. "We have to be very quiet," said my father in a low frightened voice, "cause the last thing you wanna do is wake up Captain Hook." Dad was cool back then, and he talked like one of the Bowery boys! Mom was attracted to him because he was somewhat of a rebel and nothing ever really bothered him much. Nowadays, he is the epitome of ill-will. There is only so much blame, we can put forth on the human condition, before we have to start analyzing our own hearts.

The story of Captain Hook in the words of my father. . .

He's got a patch over one eye that a big black spider lives in,
and his face is so deformed with long cuts and terrible scars that his
nose is only half there. Most of his hair is gone and his scalp is riddled with infections! There are patches of oozing flesh where his ears used to be and his bottom lip is completely gone. Torn off in a pirate fight! He'd love nothing more than to eat little children in the closet. Eat 'em alive while they scream, and he's pullin' out their guts! First he rips your eyes out and then your tongue! Then after that he eats your face! Ahhhhhhhh!!!

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Dad told the story, as if he were narrating a sideshow in Coney Island. Way before everything became candy coated. His face all contorted
in tale made it great to see and hear! You gotta tell Steve that story dad! Steve was my friend who lived next door to us in the same duplex, and
he was four. "You're the only one who knows the story of Captain Hook and besides, little Stevie tells his mother that story, and they'll be
lookin' to put me in jail."

Slowly, we proceed to enter in past the third door, and I could feel my heart beating out of my chest. He grabbed my arm as he shined the flashlight towards the end of the closet. Slumped over in a chair was none other than the notorious, Captain Hook! His skull was torn open, and he actually looked worse than my father had described!!! The worst thing
my delicate young mind could ever see or witness without cracking! He clutched my wrist and then pulled me in front of him! Face to face was I now with the most frightening creature I had ever seen before in my life!
I was paralyzed with numbing terror as I stood trembling in the failing light. Far beyond anything my fragile little mind could ever possibly imagine or manufacture on its own, and right now this monster was eye to eye with me! Staring me down from less than six feet away! He twitched. . . I just saw him twitch!!! Suddenly, and without warning this thing springs up
to its feet, and my heart exploded!!! I thrashed like a rodeo bronco and
left my father for dead as I bolted from that closet taking no prisoners! Running toward those vermicular stairs and falling down most of them,
I swiftly opened the narrow door that led to this sinister place and slammed it shut behind me, keeping my back, ever so tightly pressed against it! Just in case, after it finished eating my father, it should happen to come look for me! All at once, a ghastly bellow is heard from behind that door along with heavy pounding! I then released an ear piercing scream!!! I was white from fear as my grandmother consoled me. As my father slowly came peering out from behind the old attic door, he said in
a grimacing tone, "Whatsamatter, don'tcha wanna meet Captain Hook!" You know Richard, said my grandmother, in a state of total duress, you're really stupid! Look at him!!! Can't you see he's terrified? After giving my father a piece of her mind for doing what he did, she made him carry down the dummy to show me that it wasn't real. "Ya see, he said, I pull
the fishing line that's attached to his neck and Captain Hook jumps up
like he's alive!" We gotta do that to Steve, I bolstered with enthusiasm! Can we dad? Can we? "Yeah-heah," said my father while laughing most heartily. . . "And then we'll have to move."

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Inkpop reviews for chapter 10

Evie J - I really enjoyed that! I had to finish reading it because I couldn't stop. It was very interesting and different. I like it a lot! I'm definitely going to check out your other chapters.