Penn Wallace joins the Halloweenish Mystery Thrill Ride with a haunting story. If you know me and what I am afraid of then you will understand why this story frightens me. Oh and my father's name is Kenneth (no relation)
Kenneth and the Devil
By
Victoria Ayala Pantoja
As
told to Penn Wallace
My uncle Kenneth died when I was nine years old. He was a
paratrooper in World War II and Mama is convinced that his parachute jumps led
to the failure of his kidneys.
Mama told me the story of Kenneth
and the Devil when I was little. I asked her to re-tell it to me for a book, so
here is Mama speaking:
When I was little we lived on Pamona
Street in Costa Mesa on the hill that went down before it went up. In those days
Costa Mesa was known as “Goat Hill” for all the goats the Mexican families
raised. This was long before it became a bustling American community.
On the corner of Pamona and Seventeenth Street my father had a huge
corn field that was over fifty acres. He grew “field corn,” the kind used for
cattle feed.
In late summer the stalks grew high
with lots of ears of corn and leaves. Soon the corn would
We walked by the corn and tomato
fields every day. As we walked by the corn field we dared each other to go in.
“The devil lives there,” I told my siblings and we’d run home as fast as we
could.
“If you call three times, ‘Devil, come and get
me. Devil, come and get me. Devil, come and get me,’ he will come and take your
soul to Hell,” my mother warned us. The priests and old ladies always
threatened us with Hell to make us behave.
My brother, Kenneth, four years
younger than me, was “muy macho,” even at that age. He wasn’t afraid of
anything. One day that summer, as we passed the corn field he bragged about how
brave he was. “I’m not afraid of anything,” he said and pounded his chest with
his fists.
“Oh, yeah,” I said. “I bet you’re
afraid of the Devil.”
“Are you kidding? I’d stomp him into
the ground if I ever saw him.”
We passed the field where the
tallest corn grew. It was dark as night among the corn stalks. There were black
birds, the Devil’s messengers, flying over, eating the corn tassels and making
squawking noises. We knew that witches lived in there too, my mother told us so.
She taught us to cross ourselves as we went by.
“If you’re so brave," I told
Kenneth, "I dare you to go in there, to the middle of the field and call
the devil three times.” I knew that even Kenneth wouldn’t take that dare.
Kenneth stood up tall, threw his
chest out, pounded it with clenched fists and said “I’ll go.”
He straightened up as tall as he
could and marched into the corn field. The rest of us dropped to our knees and
started praying. The Padre Nuestros and Ave Marias intermingled with the rush
of corn stalks and the blackbirds’ calls.
Kenneth stomped off into the field.
At first he marched with purpose, but as he got further and further into the
corn, his steps became more tentative. He stopped to listen to the sounds, the
cawing of the birds, the movement of the wind through the corn. What was that?
Did he hear someone moving through the corn towards him?
But he was brave. True to his word,
he crept silently towards the middle of the field. Finally, he’d gone far
enough. The day turned to night inside the field. It became very still. The
birds fell silent and the wind stopped its endless rustling. Kenneth’s heart
stopped. Sweat broke out on his brow.
“Devil,” he whispered, “come and get
me. . .” Nothing happened. Heartened, he cried a little louder. “Devil, come
and get me.” Still nothing. No Devil, no black birds, no sound in the world.
“Devil,” he shouted at the top of his lungs, “come and get me.”
Behind him he heard a stirring. He
whirled and there he was. The Devil. His eyes like glowing coals; fire and
smoke flared from his nostrils. Red, brown and white feathers covered his body.
He had a fiery red cockscomb and a huge, round body. His beak opened and closed
and his head bobbed up and down. The Devil looked like a giant chicken.
“Bawaaak!” the Devil shouted at
Kenneth.
“Aiyeeee!” Kenneth yelled and stared
running.
It seemed like he had been in the corn a long time, but probably was
only there a few minutes. We heard a rush of leaves, Kenneth’s desperate cries.
We stood as the sounds came closer and closer. Kenneth, white as a sheet, his
hair standing up, running for his life, flew past us with the Devil chasing
him. As he passed us, we saw his beautiful green eyes, big as cow’s eyes. We
yelled at him to make the cross and pray but he just kept running, the devil
still behind him. When we saw the devil emerge from the corn field, wings
spread, fire blasting from its nostrils, we took off after Kenneth. At home, my mother immediately started
praying those special prayers she knew. She sent someone to get Doña Louisa,
the curandera.
They put Kenneth to bed, where he lay babbling and shivering.
“He has susto,” Doña Louisa said. Susto means that you have had a
fright. “Go gather some eucalyptus leaves.”
Doña Louisa and my mother worked together for days, saying prayers,
performing ancient rituals, to rid Kenneth of the susto. They stripped him
naked and rubbed his body with oils. They made the sign of the cross under his
bed and on his blankets to protect him from evil spirits. Finally, after
several days, Kenneth began to speak again. He began to eat and he got out of bed.
It took weeks before he started playing with the other boys again.
We all gave him a lot of room, because we knew that he had seen the Devil. He
was never the same. He was no longer the brash braggart that wasn’t afraid of
anything. But he had met the Devil and lived to talk of it.
Penn Wallace is the author of several books. His latest are 2 mystery series.
The Ted Higuera Series
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