A Boy's Guide to Outer Space by Peter Selgin

Author:Peter Selgin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Regal House Publishing
Published: 2024-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

I lead a double life: on one hand, a more-or-less typical high school student, on the other: the secret friend of an escaped fugitive German POW.

Meanwhile in Hattertown High the seeds of insurrection were being sown. Though in other parts of the nation the student protest movement that would define mid-60s America wouldn’t start in earnest for a few more years, somehow Hattertown got ahead of the game.

It all started the night of October 31, 1963, Halloween, when Dwight Riddell bashed his skull open on a tombstone at Backwards Hill.

Backwards Hill was the site of an abandoned Episcopal church off a one-lane road that rolled through the hilly outskirts of town. According to a local lore if you parked at the bottom of Backwards Hill facing the church (headlights on, transmission in neutral, foot off the brake), your car would roll slowly uphill all the way to the church’s front steps. When it did, if immediately afterward you jumped out of the car, ran to the front door of the church, knocked three times, and pressed your ear to the door, you’d hear werewolf howls coming from inside, supposedly.

Though at thirteen I was too young to drive and knew no one who had personally undergone this experience, the rumors were so rife we never questioned them; anyway, until one of us had a learner’s permit, we couldn’t disprove them. Meanwhile we settled for riding our bikes to Backwards Hill and challenging the devil to a footrace.

The race worked this way: you had to run up the hill, knock three times on the church door, climb over the graveyard fence, run to the farthest tombstone, touch it, then run and climb back over the fence again. If after climbing back over the fence you felt the wind blowing past you, you knew you’d won, the wind being the devil catching up with you. But if the wind blew past you while you were still running you’d lost the race.

While those who won their races with the devil could look forward to years of good fortune, losers could anticipate nothing but misery.

Of what might befall you if you lost your race with the devil Ernie Applebaum was our supreme example. Back in ’61, at a Halloween party three nights after Ernie lost his race, he and two friends of his were putting their fire-breathing skills on display. They took turns squirting butane from a cigarette lighter into their mouths, then, with the still-flaming lighter in front of them, exhaled sharply, producing twin fireballs. They had done so successfully twice on the rear porch of the house and were doing it a third time when Ernie coughed, sucking the flame into his lungs. At first, he didn’t seem at all phased. He’d gone inside to party more when suddenly he fell writhing to the floor. By the time the ambulance arrived Ernie Applebaum was dead.

It made the front page of the Hattertown Gazette.

The consequences of Dwight Riddell’s losing his race with the devil were far less severe.

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