Remember the 3 huge boulders to stop you parking? Well this was a narrow country road and we had to park at the boulders and as close to them as possible to avoid the car taking up half the road. Well the car was exactly where we parked it but several feet further into the road. We were so close to the boulders when we parked that those of us that got out of the car on the boulder side had to hold the door and edge around it to stop it hitting the boulders. Now that same door was wide open with a few inches to spare between it and the boulders.

Maybe a case of "sailing stones"? That’d be funny to hear said with an irish accent.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailing_stone

Or maybe Sasquatch stopped to tie a shoe, resting a hand for balance against the car, pushing it away from the boulders in the mud. That dude is huge.

Either way, nice story telling.

it’s Oct now so here it is

no interest

It’s Halloween, late. I’ve been on the computer, sifting through the posts on Zodiackillersite.com. Startling me, the doorbell rings.
"What the hell?" I mutter. "Trick-or-treaters should be in bed by now!" I answer the door. On the porch, facing me, is someone costumed like Z at Lake Berryessa: Hood with white circle on the chest, bayonet in a scabbard, et cetera.
"Okay, wise guy," I snarl. "I know it’s Halloween, but this is ridiculous."
"I’ve been reading your posts, Dag." His voice is soft; his words, separate and precise. "It appears you’re on to an interesting POI."
"Look, friend," I tell him. "I’d love to discuss matters Zodiac with you, but I’m dog tired."
I start to shut the door. He plants a boot on the jamb; the door bounces wide open. In a single, swift motion he yanks his hood off. I gasp in astonishment.
"I’ll be damned!" I blurt. "I was right!"
The bayonet is out of its scabbard, in his hand. He plunges it into my stomach, twists. It’s getting dark–darker than the night.
"And now you’re dead" are the last words I’ll ever hear.
HAPPY HALLOWEEN, ZODIOTS!

It’s Halloween, late. I’ve been on the computer, sifting through the posts on Zodiackillersite.com. Startling me, the doorbell rings.
"What the hell?" I mutter. "Trick-or-treaters should be in bed by now!" I answer the door. On the porch, facing me, is someone costumed like Z at Lake Berryessa: Hood with white circle on the chest, bayonet in a scabbard, et cetera.
"Okay, wise guy," I snarl. "I know it’s Halloween, but this is ridiculous."
"I’ve been reading your posts, Dag." His voice is soft; his words, separate and precise. "It appears you’re on to an interesting POI."
"Look, friend," I tell him. "I’d love to discuss matters Zodiac with you, but I’m dog tired."
I start to shut the door. He plants a boot on the jamb; the door bounces wide open. In a single, swift motion he yanks his hood off. I gasp in astonishment.
"I’ll be damned!" I blurt. "I was right!"
The bayonet is out of its scabbard, in his hand. He plunges it into my stomach, twists. It’s getting dark–darker than the night.
"And now you’re dead" are the last words I’ll ever hear.
HAPPY HALLOWEEN, ZODIOTS!

I Love this post! I think we’ve all got freaked out a few times after reading too much Zodiac. I still have a saved weird recording saved on my home phone. And then about a year ago, there was the creepy guy, who looked Z like in my mind, sitting on the empty lot across the street. Even a few minutes ago, i hear the gate rattle, I went out back with a flash lite. Even my dog heard something and followed me out.
Well Dag, BOO and Merry Halloween!
Zam*

As I read (and re-read) my obituary, confusion set in.

-glurk

Here’s a ton of Ghost Stories they cover all fifty states and some countrys. http://theshadowlands.net/places/

<Warning: this is a very long story and I could not finish in time for Halloween, so it ends abruptly unfinished. If anybody is interested, I will try to complete it as soon as I can.>

There is a terrible and true story that I have been holding onto for many years. I have longed to tell it and share my burden with others, but I have not dared, because in the past the people who have become aware of these events were not be able to withhold their revulsion. Even today, I do not dare tell you everything–I certainly will not tell you the details of many of our crimes–or you would hunt me down, too. But the night of the walking spirits is approaching fast, and I am compelled to tell you what I can. If you remain civil with me, then perhaps I will tell you the very worst things at a later time. The story I am about to tell you is not a full confession, it is but the skeleton of a much larger tale of several horrific crimes tied to an unspeakably evil curse. It is the story of my family…

Our story began back in the old world. My people, as you know, were originally from Germany–from the dark heart of the Black Forest. There were evil things in those woods, and my great-great-grandfather (who my father always referred to as Opa) left there in 1879 in abject terror the night my great-great-aunt, his third baby, was born so horrendously deformed. Although her parents did not actually name her, my father always referred to her as Tante Ilsa.

Opa abruptly took his wife and the two older boys and fled Germany, leaving baby Ilsa with an old hunchback called Grihanna. It was she who rented the house that he owned less than a mile outside the village. It was she who offered to care for the child–but for a price

Grihanna was an outsider who came to the village when Opa was still in his mid-teens. Her first language was an old Nordic language, so she was hard to understand when she spoke German. The villagers didn’t let her live in town and called her a hag. Those same villagers would visit her to ask her to tell them their futures, which always seemed to come true in some bizarre unforeseeable way. Or when they wanted her to put a curse on their enemies. They would pay with anything they could. But even so, the old women ate meagerly and looked like a walking sack of bones.

She always paid grandfather what she could in rent, but the price of her cold ancient hut left her little for food and other necessities. But, with the deal she made that night, she would have all his property and enough for two years’ pension–fair compensation for sparing them the curse of the deformed baby child.

It was also she who had read Opa’s future six months earlier–a trade she had offered to help catch up on some of her late rent. It was the eve of Walpurgisnacht. She put her hand on his wrist and stared deeply into his eyes for such long, uncomfortable minutes. He said later that though she was a frail old woman, her bony fingers gripped his wrist like a clamp. When he managed to yank his arm free, she broke the silence and spoke to him, saying there was evil in his future and that a member of his family would carry the seed of deformity and perversion that would trail his family for several generations because of an act of selfishness and cowardice that he had not yet committed–but surely would. The only way he could avoid it, she said, was to take his family and flee immediately–as far away as possible.

After a moment, he got ahold of himself, then he laughed at her, replying that he was a good upstanding member of the church and that he had no fear of her filthy pagan pronouncements. He called her an old fraud and said he would not accept her babbling as payment.

Grihanna was there that late October night when Tante Ilsa was born. Opa had ordered her to come to work as a midwife so she could work off some of her debt for the rent that was still unpaid.

Grihanna knew everything about birthing, as she seemed to know a lot about many things. It was natural that she took over the household that October night. Even Opa deferred to her. After a long and arduous labor, Oma was exhausted and unable to push any longer, Grihanna sensed that the birth was in trouble, so she reached deep and seemed to pull the baby directly out of Oma’s womb. Oma screeched in exquisite agony, while the hag smiled an evil smile and clutched the baby close to her own gnarled bosom for a time. Then, when Oma began to calm back down, she slowly passed the child to Oma’s–my great-great Grandmother’s–now outstretched arms.

Oma took the baby and pulled her lovingly toward her own breast, but then suddenly recoiled in horror, yelling, "Nein! Mein Gott in Himmel!! Nehmen Sie das Ding weg von hier!!", which means roughly, "My God! Get that Thing away!!"

The hag sprang forward and grabbed back the baby and drew her close to her once again. She looked at my grandfather and said, "My words always come true."

He stepped toward her, took just one look at the baby, then reeled back in horror. After a long moment of bewilderment, he grabbed up Oma, who, being still weak from giving birth had gone into a state of shock, and lifted her tiny body into his arms. He yelled to my great-great uncle Gerhardt, the eldest son, who was named after Opa–and for whom I am named–and told him to ready the carriage.

That was when he made the deal with Grihanna that I mentioned earlier. He was panicked as though he had seen Satan himself. Uncle Gerhardt later said he watched them through the window. He remembers seeing Grihanna speak to Opa, who was shaking and pale, she wrote something down, which he signed, then she signed. It must have been a contract. But, even from the window he could see that it was written in a strange language, with strange markings.

Uncle Gerhardt was to learn soon after that Opa had given up everything to Grihanna–all except a jar of money and what they could haul along on their two-horse carriage. That night, Opa and his family left the village, whipping the horses mercilessly. And left Germany soon after.

Though Oma was very weak as they rode, she begged my great-grandfather to whip the horses harder–to take them as far as way as fast as possible. First one horse died, then the other. Then Oma died.

The remaining members of the family made their way over the next weeks through France and then through England, finally stopping in Northern Ireland in Londonderry, where Opa had a cousin.

Although my name and my ancestors are German, and despite my very German name, those of you who know me well will realize that I am in most outward ways more Irish than German. Even today, when I speak, though I have lived almost all of my life in the New World, I still occasionally let slip the words and rhythms that mark me as being of Irish birth. Although German was spoken often enough by older members of the family and some cousins, it is a language I can only speak in a childlike way. It was the beautiful Irish lilt of Aunt Lenore that I remember the most from my childhood. Hers is the voice that most signifies family for me.The memory of her gorgeous voice reminds me where I belong. Still, though I have often wished I could, I have never been permitted to forget my original German roots.

…

After we arrived in Ireland, Opa’s cousin helped him find work as a chandler for the shipping companies. Opa was naturally industrious and worked his boys as hard as himself. He rose up quickly in his workplace because he was able to read and write, even in English, and he knew how to keep accounts. He was also a ruthless businessman, and this stood him in good stead with his employers.

Uncle Gerhardt was 19 when they arrived in Derry and his brother Jakob was 17. They both had little trouble with the language, as Opa was well educated for the time and had already taught them a bit of several languages. Gerhardt liked Ireland and especially liked the ladies there. Great-grandfather Jakob seemed to hate the place and was very strange around women. But when he was 17, he got a girl in a family way and married her. Then, after a few years of marital misery, and the same number of years of cruelty to his young wife–my great-grandmother, Leona–he left Derry without a word.

It was only learned much later that he had made his way to London where he spent a few years frequenting prostitutes, who he treated nastily, and quickly making his way up the social ladder through the back door by importing opium and running dens that catered to men of high position. It was claimed that he became a brutal and dishonest man. And that within two years he had many high ranking officials either in his debt or under his influence, presumably through blackmail or addiction to his narcotic merchandise. It was also said that by the end of 1889 he had been quietly arrested–there were whispers about some murders. It appears to have been a hushed affair: rather than being imprisoned, he was whisked out of the country and escorted back to his native Germany, where he was given a proper drubbing and was warned never to return to England.

My grandfather, Thomas–the child Jakob abandoned in Londonderry–told my father how Opa received a bizarre letter in early May of 1890 that had been sent from London, England. The handwriting was wild, but Opa believed it was from Jakob. He said he was very sure that Jakob would not have remained one minute in Germany, and Uncle Gerhardt agreed. They were convinced that Jakob had made his way back to London, whence came the letter.

The tone of the letter was quite odd. Deranged, perhaps. It was in a mix of German and English and appeared to have been written not just in two tongues, but in two hands as well. The letter–which surely came from Jakob–spoke of encountering "dass Hure-Höllenhund" ("that whore-hound of hell") and how she dogged him constantly and whispered terrible things to him. He said he tried many times to stop her. He thought he had killed her on more than one occasion, but she would not stay dead–even when he desecrated her remains. Then somehow, she had almost won. She almost forced him back, against his will, to the home of the witch, but he had escaped and returned to London to destroy her–before she destroyed him and their family. He said he was hunting her down and was closing in on his quarry, but he needed to warn Opa and Gerhardt about the curse–in case she came after them.

Below it was signed "Jako".

But there were more words written below, what seemed to be different handwriting, that seemed to speak of the fate of the last-born children:

"blee ss the barron wome, curst the yungst boren. I wel hab my jusdance.
EILSAEBORENEWTHNOTTHYPITI"

In the weeks after the letter’s arrival, Opa became increasingly irritable and nervous. He would probably have been in his early fifties by this time, and though he had been a vigorous man, his age was starting to show.

Uncle Gerhardt, by this time had met and fallen in love with the raven-haired beauty, Siobhan. Together they shared a flat with Opa, and as his health began to deteriorate, she looked after him. As he became less able to work, he began to spend more time drinking. This was probably a bad sign as he had been nearly a tee-totalling man most of his life up to this point.

In mid-November of that same year, Opa had received an unexpected visit from a mysterious gentleman who claimed to be some manner of consultant in the employ of a gentleman of "very high station" who was determined to remain nameless.

This consultant was seeking to confirm the identity of a certain corpse found dead in an alleyway. The salient facts of the case, he told Opa with merciless emotional detachment, were that the victim’s face was horrendously disfigured–melted, actually–by a highly caustic liquid thrown in his face; then, while he was blinded and in tormenting agony, his assailant took his weapon, a walking-stick blade, from him and stabbed him multiple times, then eviscerated him with a blade that most likely was taken from a black bag was found near the scene of the crime, containing yet more blades.

The man–the victim, I mean–had apparently spent a great deal of time in the company of prostitutes, had gone from riches to poverty in a short time, and–this consultant had somehow deduced–had been killed by somebody who had anticipated his arrival in that dark alley on that terrible night–somebody who had been hunting him, and was in turn being hunted by him. How the consultant knew all this, was never made clear to me, but the consultant gentleman claimed that this somebody–the killer–was almost certainly a woman, possibly a prostitute, or perhaps somebody who posed as one. Undoubtedly somebody of low station, unwelcome in society, but a formidable woman to have as an enemy.

Finally, the man recounted how he had followed clues to trace the corpse’s origins back as far as Londonderry and back to Opa’s neighborhood. He told Opa and Uncle Gerhardt that the dead man was almost certainly Opa’s younger son, Jakob.

Uncle Gerhardt, who was at Opa’s side for much of this discussion, reacted at first with incredulous indignation."Now see here!", he said, "What is your business with us? You come here with your fantastic stories, but they make no sense whatever. How can you say that this dead body–if there ever was such a one–was my brother Jakob? Who gives you the right to come here to upset my father with this nonsense?!"

The man stood there, completely calm and said in an irritatingly self-composed voice, "I have my methods. Tricks, some people call them, although I can assure you…well, no matter. Perhaps it would interest you more to know that there was a letter found in the dead man’s vest pocket. It appeared to have been recently written, but had yet not been put in an envelope. Though it lacked an address, perhaps they would recognize the writing as that of their son and brother.

He passed Opa a folded letter. The letter was written entirely in German and the opening greeting was addressed to "Vati", which is to say, "Dad". At a glance Opa was convinced it was indeed from Jakob. And the handwriting and the tone were clearly the same as the previous letter. Perhaps from the fact that it was written in one language instead of two, this letter seemed a bit less desparate, as if the writer had found some resolve. But even so, the subject matter seemed even more wildly insane.

The problem is that the letter disappeared when the consultant left, so Uncle Gerhardt’s description of it was sketchy, but he told my father that it contained some insane babblings about somebody named Ilsa and frightful things like "Vorsicht…ein Fluch auf den letzten geborenen Jungen-Kinder…", which means something like "Beware…a curse on your youngest born boy-children".

Near the end of the letter, written in German, "I know I have done many terrible things. Then I could not control myself. But tonight, I shall bring this awful game to an end."

It was written by a single hand and was signed, Jako.

What it all meant, was unclear, but it apparently meant a lot to the consultant, as the letter disappeared when he left, and along with it the earlier letter. Whatever his business was, he could just as well have been a first class thief, as nobody saw him take the letters. And, like any good thief, nobody from the Gluckman line ever saw or heard from him again.

Now, great grandmother Leona and her son, my grandfather, Thomas, who had been abandoned by the aforementioned Jakob, stayed with Uncle Gerhardt, who she and others called Jerry. As I mentioned earlier, Uncle "Jerry" had met a raven-haired beauty named Siobhan and lived with her as his wife. They could not marry, as she was a Catholic, but he loved her dearly and never considered her anything but his proper wife. She was a lovely woman and she took good care of Opa, as if he were her very own father while he deteriorated over the next few years.

After the visit from the consultant, Opa confided in Gerhardt that he was convinced that Jakob was the man who died in the alleyway, just as the gentleman had claimed. What’s worse, he said, is that, though neither of his sons had known it, the name of the baby, if it were to be a girl, was to be Ilsa. But, as she was so disfigured, he said, it was clear she had the mark of Satan upon her, so she was never given her christian name that night when they left her and their homeland behind.

Somehow, he was sure, this unnamed child must have survived through the workings of the hag Grehanna and has brought or put a curse upon our family. He said he was able to make sense of some of the crazier words and phrases in Jakob’s letter–some of the things that seemed so crazy–for they referred to wicked doings from older times–things that Gerhardt and Jakob had been too young to learn about. The words spoke of a curse upon all the youngest born boy children for several generations. They will each become cursed and do terrible things and will themselves suffer a horrible disfigurement and a terrible death.

Uncle Gerhardt and Aunt Siobhan never had children of their own.

Grandma Leona loved her son Thomas–my grandfather–dearly and the two of them were often together. One day, when he was 13 or 14 years old they were out for a stroll when they came upon what appeared to be a young woman begging on the street. She gave him a coin to drop in her open purse, and as he did ao, she pulled away the cloth covering her face and they both gasped.

Young Thomas stood there gaping in horror at the sight of the beggar woman while simultaneously his mother stumbled backwards and was knocked over by an oncoming horse carriage. She fell over and banged her head on a large rock by the roadside. That would prove to be an injury that she would never recover from. She would live for almost three more decades, but after that time her brain was permanently addled.

When Thomas became cognizant that his mother had fallen and hurt herself, he lashed out in a fit of rage at the young beggar woman and smashed her across her hellish face with his fist. Then ran to his mother who was lying bleeding in the street, only then beginning to realize the seriousness of her injuries. The owner of the carriage helped him to lift her into the carriage to take her home.

As they were lifting poor Leona, the young beggar woman walked closer and stared directly at grandpa Thomas and said, "For the penny in my purse, your act of kindness stays the curse. So, for a time, you’ll play the nurse, but in the end, you’ll know the worst."

Grandfather said he reached for the rock by his mother’s head to strike the crazy beggar lady, but worry for his mother stayed his hand. They lifted her into the carriage, then, when the horses began to trot away to take Leona home, grandpa Thomas looked back. He told us later he would never forget that hideous woman standing there, pointing and laughing at him all the while that the horse drawn carriage carried him and his poor mother into the distance.

When he told the story to Opa and Uncle Gerhardt–Uncle Gerry–they both agreed that this was Ilsa. She had come to complete the curse. Grandpa Thomas said it was nonsense and refused to believe it. Let her come before me again, he said, and I will find that rock again. Only this time, I will not be so full of self-control.

The next years of grandpa Thomas’ life were spent working and taking care of his mother, Leona. He was a saint to her, though at a great cost, as he did not get to know the company of another woman until she died almost thirty years later.

In the meanwhile, over the next few years, Opa had been growing worse. He drank more and became increasingly nervous and irritable–and suffering bouts of intense paranoia. He would go about muttering to himself and cursing at strange women. He got on famously with Siobhan, however. She took care of him and treated him with the patience of a saint.

When he was in his mid-sixties, his youthful vigor was pretty much at an end, though he was still physically strong. His mind was largely gone and he had wandered down a few times into the streets where he would be found swearing at young women in the streets. Siobhan found him each and took him back home.

In late October, after his 66th birthday, the same thing happened. He was swearing and waving his hands at some young woman who had been out looking for her cat when Siobhan found him. The young lady, far from being frightened had taken to taunting and making fun of him. When Siobhan came to get him, she said to the girl, "Leave him be, Deary, he’s no harm to you or anybody". The girl let out a smile and said, "I’m not afraid of the old bastard. I’ve got a curse that’ll fix him good!"

At that moment, Opa exploded. He pushed Siobhan out of the way to strike out at the girl, who by now had picked up her cat. As he came forward, she shrieked and threw the cat forward at him and it went into a rage, clawing his face mercilously. He screamed in pain. And, blinded, he stumbled over something–he didn’t know what and fell over hard. The girl grabbed up the cat and ran away. Opa was blind and in pain, but he realized he had fallen on somebody.

Strangers had come to his aid, and as he was able to gather his few remaining senses they told him that something terrible had happened. Then he reached down, realizing that he had Siobhan fallen on top of Siobhan, and she was unmoving. He then began to weep uncontrollably, saying "I have done such a terrible thing. I have done such a terrible thing…" Over and over again.

As it happened, Siobhan was fine, though a bit sore, and covered in muck. She was winded and lay still for a frightful time. After so many long minutes, she got up, to everybody’s relief, and helped Opa back home. His face was a shredded mess. It became infected and never cleared up. He lived only a few more weeks after that event. And was often heard to be muttering to himself, "I have done such a terrible thing."

My father, Henry, was born in the mid twenties. He was a twin. His brother, Jonathan, was only born three days later, being unwilling, it seems, to leave the womb. Great-grandmother Leona has passed away two years earlier at the end of spring. Grandpa Thomas had taken to a homely, but likeable spinster named Gabby, who did mending and cleaning for his mother and he over the last few years of Leona’s life. She was not a brilliant soul, by any means, but she was sweet tempered and did a woman’s work with no complaint. She was obviously fond of him, as he was of her.

The two boys were their only children, as she was desperately weak after such an unheard of labor. For a long time, it looked as though she might never get well again, but, with the passage of much time, she grew stronger again. But in the early days, when she fed her boys, baby Henry would get the milk while baby Jonathan just kept falling off the tit.

The boys grew up and had good loving parents. The boys would run together, but where Henry had a gentle and happy disposition, Jonathan was smaller, temperamental and slightly cruel.

Thomas, meanwhile, as he got older, began to get odd–rather like Opa. When the boys were in there mid-teens, Jonathan used to follow his father to the docks. A few times,Thomas, while the boy was with him, started cursing about "that street tramp who ruined mother". There was just then a young woman on the street begging and he (Thomas) went up to her and spat at her and kicked at her, and called her Satan’s whore. A few years later, Jonathan confided in Henry that similar events had happened at least four times when he was present.

I was born after the second world war. Grandpa Thomas was frequently about, and was great fun to be around when he was in his merry ways. But when I was seven years old, at the end of October, he went out on a stroll and took me with him. That day, he spied a young beggar woman, warming her hands before a fire on the ground. He went toward her, pretending to offer her money–I believe he intended to strike her–and just then the woman spun around and threw hot embers from her fire into his face. I remember how hideous her face was, but I also remember feeling in that frozen insane instant a bit of kindness toward her. Even though I loved this man, I understood that he was bent on doing her harm.

Then, while he screamed and clutched at his face, she took out a knife and slit his throat in front of me. I still remember her words, "Your auntie will take care of you someday, too, sweetie." But then I could hear nothing else. I nearly died that day from the shock and horror. I have lived repeated nightmares of that moment all my life.

I do not remember much of anything that followed. The rest of my time in Derry was lived in a fugue. My parents made a choice to move to the Americas. Jonathan had gone across a year and a half before. I was eight when we arrrived in the United States of America.

The Second World War had been over for some time and America had come to life. There were jobs galore and an Irishman could do okay for himself. Our German name got us in trouble with a few still bitter folk who didn’t take kindly to "Krauts", as some of them called us. That was an indignity that we had never known in Ireland, but overall, life was good and we prospered. And with time, nobody paid attention to our German names.

A year and a few months after we arrived in New York, came the events that led to Uncle Jonathan’s disappearance and name change. He had just started a new job as a hotel clerk when he received a surprise visit by some government men who said they wanted to interview him. They had apparently mistaken him for a former German doctor, coincidentally named Gluckman, who had been part of some Nazi advanced research program.

They didn’t pay any mind to Uncle Jonathan’s very Irish accent while they impressed him and flew him against his will across the country to a military base somewhere in Nevada where he was immediately presented to some German speaking men in white lab jackets who had apparently acquired a great deal of authority working with the US military. These men mocked Uncle Jonathan’s spoken German, poor as it was, and told the men detaining him that he was certainly not Gluckman, the brilliant doctor, and their former colleague. He was to be dismissed.

I suppose it would have been a bad policy to let him go as this military base appeared to be rather secretive–perhaps top secret–and he probably was not supposed to have known of its existence. At any rate, Uncle Jonathan was then taken to what appeared to be a small hospital nearby, where he was brought to a private room and was told to get undressed.

When he asked what was going on, his escorts told him that since he had been taken so forcefully by mistake, the government had to set matters right by ensuring he was in good health when he was returned. He was advised to just go along with it and he would be treated just fine and sent back home with a little extra spending money.

It all seemed to make sense by the logic of the day, and anyway, he really wasn’t being given many choices, so he undressed, was examined, poked and prodded, then was brought some food and was told he could have all he wanted–right after he took a couple pills. He was very hungry and didn’t see the point of asking questions or seeming uncooperative, so he quickly swallowed the pills, raised his glass of water in toast to his guard companions, smiled, reached for his food, then everything went black.

Uncle Jonathan later told us that he had rhapsodic, swirling memories of men in lab coats looking at him, shoving things at him, then nurses sticking needles in him, getting frustrated as they tried to find a vein. Somebody kept playing phonograph records of men and women’s voices speaking to him repeatedly about some nonsense about freedom and democracy and the need to defend ourselves against Satan, and on and on and on. None of it made sense, and most of it just blurred together, and it seemed to repeat, day after day for eons, but he had no idea for how long it went on.

That is, until the time an attractive blonde nurse came in to give him another needle. She started out talking in a sweet voice, calling him, "Dearie" and "Sweety Pie" and such, then as she was searching for a vein, she seemed to get agitated and began to swear under her breath, just then she started shrieking at him, and as she turned back to face him, he could see that she had been transformed into something grotesque and hideous. Her face was half skeletal and putrid–and she was now sitting on his chest and felt like a ton of bricks.

He went instantly from his almost blissfully docile state to a state of abject terror and began thrashing and flailing until he was able to rip his wrists free of whatever had been restraining them, and began smashing this repugnant she-beast with his bare hands. He remembered smashing her–or it–repeatedly until it was covered in blood and had gone completely limp. Then, when two others–orderlies, perhaps–came running into the room, he picked up a small wooden chair and smashed one, then the other with it and ran out of the room.

In his panic, he was running back and forth in the corridor, trying not to make a noise that would bring others–if there were others. As he made a second pass in front of the room that he just escaped from, he noticed a sign by the door: 1L-SA. At this point, he became frightened into total sobriety.

He looked out a nearby window and spotted a car out front. Shortly after, found a small room with a change area where his and other clothes were hanging on wooden pegs over some benches. Next to his own clothes was a lab coat with the name of a Dr. Henkel on it. He put it on over his own clothes, then happened to notice what must have been Henkel’s wallet and car keys sitting on the wooden shelf just above the peg hanger, so he grabbed those, too. He walked rather unsteadily out into the open, then moved quickly across the yard to the car, expecting to be chased. He put the key in the ignition and it fit, so he knew he had a chance to escape.

He had driven cars a few times, and a small truck once, back in Derry, but here the steering wheel was on the wrong side. He stopped to try to think it through, but was having a hard time concentrating on anything but the urge to escape as fast as possible, so he started up the engine, then slowly backed out and drove in circles for a few minutes before he spied the main gate.

His initial plan, so far as he was capable of forming one, was to drive slowly up to the front gate, then charge through at the last second, but something changed his mind–maybe it was the rifles that the guards at the gate had at the ready. Instead, he slowed down, and when they motioned to him he rolled down his window, and asked him his name, he growled in his best German accent, "Henkel!", and they waved him through.

He drove for a couple hours or more, taking side roads when they presented themselves, fearing that he was being pursued. But his pursuers never came. He ditched the lab jacket and came to a stop at a Phillips 66 gas station near a town called Luning. He was got directions and a map and, finally knowing now where he was, he decided to head for southern California.

He was still nervous that somebody would be coming after him, and that the car might give him away. Somewhere near the border between Nevada and California, he came across a recently abandoned wreck of a car, and it occurred to him to swap the license plates. It was hard work, as all he could find for a screwdriver was a coin from his pocket. When he was done, his fingers felt miserable from the effort, but he suddenly had the thought that he was an Irishman with a new, albeit slightly used, car and he was heading for sunny California. In spite of his earlier ordeal–or perhaps because of it–he felt exhilerated.

In the unfinished manuscript that were his memoirs, written decades later, he admitted that smashing that creature and escaping captivity made him wake up and feel alive.

Anyway, Jonathan spent a few days drifting from one California town to the next until he made his way down to Los Angeles. In LA, his money was starting to run out. He ended up in an Irish neighborhood asking around for work and a place to stay.

After just a couple days of asking around, he found work in a night club as a barman. He had lied and said he knew how to make drinks. He was a decent liar and figured he could learn quickly how to mix drinks. He was doing a fine job of learning on the fly, but less than a week after he started, the owner of the bar, a Mr. Cohen showed up. He hadn’t been in the bar more than ten minutes when he got very annoyed with Uncle Jonathan for having no idea what his favorite drink was (a Virgin Mary would have been a better choice as he was a non-drinker) and started berating him, then finished by firing him on the spot, saying he had better get out before he personally throws him out.

It so happened that a couple of plain clothes cops showed up (no, they were not part of the famous gangster squad) at the bar at the moment Uncle Jonathan was about to walk away and began to ask Mr Cohen questions about a vicious beating that they were suggesting he might have personally put on a man a half hour earlier. Uncle Jonathan, after having just been so humiliatingly berated by Cohen, was still standing there when Cohen said he had an alibi. He said he had been doing an interview with this reporter for the last hour and a half–and, as he waved his thumb at Uncle Jonathan, he said, "Isn’t that right Jack-O?"

Uncle Jonathan instantly saw his opportunity to make good with the boss, and hopefully get his job back. He jumped forward towards the agent in charge with his hand sticking out to shake hands with the cop. He said, "The name’s Jack O’Hara, sir, pleased to meet you. Can’t believe me luck. I’d sure like to get an interview with yourself, sir." And when the obviously flattered cop agreed, Uncle Jonathan–I mean Uncle Jack, at this point–grabbed a pencil and paper that he had lying on the bar counter and began asking questions and taking notes while the cop and his partner talked on about their work and investigations.

He laid it on the reporter act pretty thick asking questions and seeming intensely interested in all the constable had to say. In the end, the cop got up, with an expansive step and a magnanimous smile, shook his hand and then walked over to apologize to Cohen for sounding accusatory–"Just a routine check, Sir. Have a good night." And he left.

Cohen came over to Uncle Jonathan–or Uncle Jack O’Hara, as he now called himself. (He had changed his name following the incident with the military as he did not want to risk receiving another visit from them.) Cohen said that, even though he was a shitty bartender, he had the talent to be a great reporter–and maybe a few other things.

Cohen took Uncle Jack under his wing for awhile. He insisted on having him write the article about the police officer. It was a very flattering piece that got printed in the leading LA newspaper with the help of some of Cohen’s friends, as Cohen had a connection with the family that owned the paper. The officer became a regular at that club and was always a perfect guest, never paying the slightest attention to the daily infractions of the law that brought in the revenues that mattered.

Cohen had Uncle Jack doing a number of things. One of the top on his list was writing freelance articles for a number of papers. They were usually articles that helped make Cohen look good. He helped changed the public’s perception of Cohen from Cohen-the-hoodlum to Cohen-the-gambler and Cohen-the-businessman.

He also involved Uncle Jack in some of his other operations. He spent a fair amount of time with the handsome Jack Whalen, whom he resembled greatly, accompanying him on a few "jobs"–the details of which, He said nothing. Cohen used to laugh and call them the Two Jacks sometimes, and sometimes the "twins". Others used to confuse the two of them, and many feared Uncle Jack because of the resemblance–mostly.

Uncle Jack wrote much later that he happened to be in the same room when Whalen was murdered later, in ’59. He often wondered if he was the real target.

Uncle Jack worked for Cohen in various capacities. He would spend time at casinos and clubs, but also at floral shops and some "legitimate" businesses that Mickey owned. He often worked as akind of auditor, but also would just stop by to look-in on operations, deliver instructions, make and receive special deliveries, etc. Often he worked as a fill-in boss for businesses that were in a transition state, such as when the previous boss had just been arrested, or had disappeared, as had happened a couple times. And frequently, he would take part in parlays with cops and municipal politicians. His status as an increasingly respected freelance journalist made him a good choice to meet with them and negotiate certain business arrangements.

As a consequence, he had experience in many areas of Cohen’s business, but he continued to write columns for various papers in the area, continuing to build on his credentials as a journalist. This gave him access to a number of important and prestigious people. He was known for writing intelligent, thought-provoking, but ultimately flattering pieces about his subjects–politicians, police, "businessmen", and even intellectuals and, his favorite, people in the entertainment industry. This helped him build alliances that would work in both his and Cohen’s advantage. Occasionally, he would write some exposé, excoriating some political enemy or business rival of Cohen, further cementing his relationship with the boss.

Cohen’s relationship with the owners of the newspaper chain led to Uncle Jack’s involvement with "Little Randy". Little Randy was some kind of a relation–possibly a nephew–of the owner of the newspaper chain. He wasn’t part of the main line of the family. He wasn’t an heir, or anything. But he had gone to his uncle and asked for a job with the paper. Seems he had ambitions to be a newspaper man, like the uncle he said he admired so much.

For some reason, the old man arranged with Cohen to have Uncle Jack "teach Little Randy the ropes" of the journalism industry. Initially, Uncle Jack thought it was rather flattering that the old man chose him to help mentor the boy. Later, he became convinced the old fellow was just trying to get rid of the monster, and was using Uncle Jack as his babysitter.

In his memoir papers, that were sent to my aunt after his death in 77, Uncle Jack was on the road much of the time, travelling up and down the length of California ostensibly looking for news stories to write, but "supplementing" his income by checking in on Cohen’s businesses. It was agreed he would pick up Little Randy in the Palm Springs area and take him along with him.

Little Randy was in his early twenties at the time. He was a husky fellow of 5′ 9" or 5" 10" with soft, roundish facial features and a slightly effeminate voice that he seemed to always be trying to make sound deeper and more manly. He had not gotten beyond the first year of a degree at the University of California–presumably because he had a lot of trouble with writing. For one thing, he couldn’t spell for beans, which made Uncle Jack question why he wanted to get into the newspaper business, and his writing tended to wander off topic very quickly–he didn’t seem to grasp the idea of a central theme.

But Uncle Jack was quickly to realize that the kid was brilliant in many respects, mostly teaching himself subjects that interested him, then bragging about what he knew. He seemed to be pretty badly banged up about the education system–Uncle Jack surmised that he had had a hard time in school, despite his intelligence–and was rather sullen and rueful towards authority in general. But Uncle Jack learned to like him, even though he was usually gruff with the kid. For one thing, the kid was extremely well read on a variety of subjects–including some very odd subjects–and had a brilliant sense of humor. And he had a knowledge of literature and popular culture that belonged to somebody several times his age.

They travelled together frequently. Uncle Jack had interviews and reporting assignments lined up that they would travel to together. In the evenings, they would stop at clubs and illegal casinos that were owned by, or did business with, Cohen.

Uncle Jack was living a good life by this time, and though he was careful not to flash his bankroll, it quickly became clear to Randy that Uncle Jack was being treated extremely well by a lot of questionable fellows. Uncle Jack tried to pass it off as just a consequence of the kind of reporting he did, but Randy was smart enough to know better. In fact, he seemed to envy Uncle Jack and couldn’t wait to meet Uncle Jack’s acquaintences and to spend time at the clubs and in the company of some known criminals.

As they travelled and got to know each other, they found a common interest in booze. They also started using drugs more and more frequently. In the day time they met with interesting people and wrote about them. Uncle Jack would try to help Randy refine his writing. The worst things about Randy’s writing, besides the atrocious spelling, was a tendency to either sound like he was writing modern poetry, a tendency to use words in very unconventional ways, and a tendency to wander off topic. He was brilliant, but he was not a natural writer. When he got frustrated with him, Uncle Jack used to tell Randy he should forget about journalism and become one of those beat poets. Maybe that had something to do with why Randy’s first published article, written with a fair bit of help by Uncle Jack, was an interview with Allen Ginsberg, who made a huge impression on Little Randy.

In the early evenings, they were taking care of Cohen’s business, which Randy was becoming very familiar with. He was sometimes a bit strange around women, and seemed to like when the business took him where there were call girls, although they didn’t always seem to enjoy his presence in return. Then, as the evenings would turn to night, the two of them would party and get smashed together.

That’s when Uncle Jack started having hallucinations or visions–or something. He started seeing the face of the woman–or thing–that had attacked him at the military hospital. Just glimpses, but it would scare the bejesus out of him.

Meanwhile, Randy was making himself unwelcome with some of his hosts. Nobody would touch him–they knew whose nephew he was–but more and more frequently, Uncle Jack was being told by his business "associates" that he shouldn’t bring "that little funny boy" to their clubs anymore–or it wouldn’t be Randy who ended up with a problem. Uncle Jack’s proximity to Cohen was a degree of protection, but it wouldn’t last forever. Problem was, Jack didn’t know exactly what it was about Randy that people were getting upset about.

Then, one cool evening in late October, Uncle Jack was pretty wasted. He had been drinking and sampling a few drugs–he said in his memoirs that he didn’t remember what he had taken–but he remembers having just stumbled out of a club in Santa Cruz, following Randy from a fair distance behind. Randy was walking as straight as an arrow–he never seemed to stagger or fall, no matter how stoned he got–while Uncle Jack was falling all over himself, and falling further and further behind.

He said just then he looked up and saw Randy was talking to a woman named Annie–a girlfriend of the owner of the club–then the two of them started walking together towards the water. Randy was holding her hand, but pulling her. Uncle Jack, even with his mind in the state it was in, realized this was a bad idea, and tried to follow after them to warn Randy not to mess with that girl, because it would be very bad news.

He followed them down to the beach, but he couldn’t remember finding them together. The last thing he remembered was seeing the girl about 6 or 7 feet away from behind, with her long dark hair being blown by the wind. Then, just as he staggered up to her, she turned around and he was shocked to realize she was Ilsa, laughing at him. Ilsa was the precise name Uncle Jack had used in his papers. He said he remembered screaming and thrashing, then everything went black.

He woke up on the beach just before daybreak, lying on his back, half-sitting against a sand-pile, shivering from the cold, partly in a puddle of water, with his hands folded over his chest like a mummy. He sat slowly up, then he looked up. And at that moment, he was horror-struck to see his own legs crossed over the legs of a young woman whose hands had been folded over her chest, just like his. What was so terrifying is that she was dead, her face had been mutilated and her belly slit.

He jumped up immediately and recoiled from the body as if it was plague-ridden. And he began to vomit. That’s when Randy appeared from behind him, seemingly from nowhere.

Randy was dressed in fresh clothes and looked quite relaxed and well rested. He looked at Uncle Jack and said, in a bewilderingly non-chalant coice, "I’ve been searching for you everywhere, Jack-O, and here all this time you’ve been sleeping with your little friend here. We had better go."

He seemed to think the whole thing was a joke, and his manner suggested that he found the corpse amusing–he even made exaggerated grimaces at her ghoulishly carved up face–as he led Uncle Jack away before anybody else happened on the body. Nobody would ever know about Uncle Jack’s involvement.

Uncle Jack had nightmares and daymares constantly after that time. He and Randy never spoke about that incident. They left together, and Little Randy helped him get out of there. He also helped him get cleaned up and dressed, and helped him wipe off the lipstick that was smeared on his face, like a reflection of the murdered woman’s hideously torutured smile. They left town together that same morning, before 7 am.

The day after, the murder was big news. Uncle Jack looked in the LA paper and saw a a front page article suggesting the murder was the work of a satanic cult that was in the area. There was no by-line, but he was sure he recognized the writing style. It was Randy’s–he thought it ironic that it was the first published article he had written entirely on his own, with no help from Uncle Jack.

After that, Uncle Jack didn’t want Randy’s company anymore, and their friendship of a year and a few months drifted to a silent and sullen end as Uncle Jack did everything he could to avoid Randy.

Uncle Jack continued to do freelance writing for awhile after that, and he continued working for Mr. Cohen, and also maintained his friendship with his lookalike, Jack Whalen, perhaps hoping that his friendship would afford a little extra protection, but he mostly stayed in the LA area after that.

He also continued with the drugs. He had stopped for a few months–he quit drinking altogether, but he started taking sleeping pills along with various other drugs and wasn’t able to stop for more than a year. Cohen was after him to get his life under control. He even had one of his bodyguards take Uncle Jack to some AA meetings. It helped with the booze, I suppose, but he was making excuses why he needed to keep using the drugs. And he was using them more than ever.

After awhile, Ilsa stopped showing up, so he thought the sleeping pills and other drugs he was taking were helping, as stupid as that might sound today, so many decades later.

But then, one night as he was driving home well after midnight–he had been very busy dealing with one of Cohen’s more "difficult" associates and so had remained sober and uncharacteristically drug-free that night–he suddenly saw a woman appear out of nowhere just a few feet in front of his car. He swerved around her, then, as he was going past her on the left, she turned and he saw her face. It was grotesque with a hideous grimace, laughing at him. He could not take his eyes off off her as he went past. He could hear her voice inside the car itself, even though the windows were rolled up tight. He heard her words, "Oooh, Laddy. Did you miss your dear auntie?!! Hah, ha, ha…"

He wrapped the car around a tree and must have laid there unconscious for several hours. When he came to he was in excrutiating pain, very dazed and barely able to see. He managed to climb out the driver side window, then fell onto the ground and passed out again.

He next woke up two days later in a hospital in Sherman Oaks. His face had been badly fractured and, over the days and weeks that followed, a plan was formulated that would require as many as eighteen facial reconstruction surgeries to try to make his face look somewhat normal again.

But an incident during an operation had caused infection to set in. That stemmed from a situation where he awoke between two phases of surgery and attacked and seriously injured a nurse who was helping with the operation. The doctor had gone out of the operating room briefly and she was alone with him and was cleaning his face for the next phase of the operation. He apparently thought she had transformed into Ilsa and became intensely violent, striking out at her. His attack was so vicious that, to save her own life, she ended up clawing at his face with her own hands and nails. Later, when he, in his extremely agitated state, wouldn’t allow any medical staff to come near him for days, his face became severely infected.

She, meanwhile, had been very badly injured herself when he flung her across the room and when she landed, she hit her head badly. Her injuries were so bad that she lost much of the use of the right side of her body and so was unable to work again, despite the efforts of the doctors of the hospital to help her in every way.

Most of the original damage to Uncle Jack was to the left side of his face. After the incident, the hospital wanted him out, but was under an obligation to continue to provide care. It was decided to give him antibiotics to fix the infection, but that there would be no value in continuing with the surgery, as his face was now permanently destroyed on one side. When the bandages were finally removed, he still looked like handsome Jack Whelan from the right side–perhaps even more so–but on the left his face was horribly mangled. He looked rather like Two-Face, from the Batman comics, except with an grotesque and sinister permanent "smile" on the left side.

Once he was out of the hospital, he rented an apartment nearby as he was now morbidly afraid to drive. He was also seriously depressed, and kept to himself as much as possible, only doing occasional book work for Mr Cohen. He spent much of his time reading and writing, and after awhile he began to take his AA meetings more seriously.

He also started to go through some of the mail that he had received at the hospital. He had received a couple letters from friends and several more from well known people that he had interviewed and written about, including the Governor of California, Allen Ginsburg and from a well-known movie star’s daughter who had been acquitted of the murder of her abusive stepfather on the grounds of self defence.

A couple of Uncle Jack’s newspaper articles helped tell the real tale of the brutal man who was being portrayed as a victim by the prosecution. It’s not clear whether his writings had an impact on the court case, but they definitely had an impact in the court of public opinion, and she may have appreciated that fact. The harder challenge was to write a story about a man that he knew very well personally, as he had many dealings with him. They both worked for Mr Cohen and he had to be sure not to cast Cohen in a bad light. It was known that Uncle Jack and this abusive man had never been on good terms, so in some respects, nobody was surprised that Uncle Jack would have a few bad things to say about him after he was dead.

The unflattering article about his former "business associate" probably annoyed some of Cohen’s other business partners, and may have even upset Cohen himself, because Uncle Jack’s star seemed to be fading with Cohen, who still treated him kindly, but seemed to be keeping him at a distance.

Then things got worse when rumors somehow started circulating in his old business circles that he was somehow involved in the death of the girl on the beach in Santa Cruz.

Among the letters he had received was a post card. It didn’t say who sent it, but Uncle Jack wrote later that he knew immediately that it was from young Randy. The picture was a cartoon of a young boy lying on a beach sipping a martini, with the typed words, "Wishing you were here, you son of a beach!" And it was signed, "Your Little Pal".

The card made Uncle Jack suspicious that Randy may have told somebody about that night at the beach. Maybe he had let something slip by accident, or maybe he said something deliberately. He didn’t know what to make of the post card, but he took it that Randy was deliberately trying to rattle him. Perhaps he was angry that Uncle Jack had cut ties with him. It was such an enigmatic card that he didn’t know what to think.

While he wasn’t sure what was happening with Randy, he did get a tip off from a local (dirty) cop he knew that a few businessmen–including the owner of the Santa Cruz casino where he had been partying that October night–were very upset with him about something. The cop didn’t know the full story, but Uncle Jack understood what it meant and was getting very nervous. At the same time, he was worrying that his relationship with Mr. Cohen was starting to go sour. He wasn’t sure that he could count on Cohen to be his protector much longer.

He avoided as many of his old business acquaintances as he could, except his friendship with his "twin" Jack Whalen, whom he asked to meet when he had some time. Jack had intimated that they would always remain close and that Uncle Jack would always be welcome and have his protection, no matter what. So, when Whalen called him to suggest that they they meet for dinner at Rondelli’s and talk about the future, Uncle Jack agreed. That evening, he left his flat to go meet him.

It was in early December, and Uncle Jack arrived late after walking several blocks. He was weak and was feeling tired and winded, so it took him longer than he expected to go that distance. He was just walking in the door when he saw it happen. Whelan must have entered from outside just shortly ahead of him. He couldn’t have been there more than a minute, when man shot him and killed him, then ran out of the restaurant, almost knocking Uncle Jack over in the entrance.

When Uncle Jack realized that Cohen was in the restaurant at the same time, he turned his face away and walked back out. It might have been a miracle that nobody recognized him considering that the whole room had looked almost directly at him, but his face was partly covered with a scarf and their eyes would have been focused on the killer as he ran through the door to make his escape.

He often wondered in the years to come if Cohen’s presence might have been a warning that the hit could have been for him just as easily. He had let it slip earlier that day by phone that he would be going for pasta that evening. Given where his flat was located, Cohen didn’t need to be a genius to figure he would be going to eat at Rondelli’s.

After that incident, Uncle Jack decided to move back to New York State. He figured it was time to leave his criminal associations behind him. That was when we saw him for the first time in many years. It’s true his face was hideous and bizarre, and he had gained a lot of weight, but he was my father’s brother again–and my Uncle Jonathan once more.

Uncle Jonathan stayed with us for the next couple of years. He told bits of his story to us during that period, but he didn’t talk much about his more illegal activities and he avoided filling in any details about Cohen’s operations. The way he told it, Cohen was a hero with a few flaws. It was obvious that whatever happened, he continued to admire and respect his old boss.

By 1961, Cohen had been arrested and thrown in prison, where he was to remain for many years. Uncle Jonathan rarely went outside during this time, other than to his AA meetings, which he attended religiously. He met a woman named Sheila who had been a down-and-outer alcoholic like himself. She certainly wasn’t very pretty herself, but she must have been quite beautiful in better days. She was extremely clever and wickedly funny, and she seemed to love him, so we were glad for him. It was so hard for many people to even look at his face, and the fact that she just laughed lovingly about his continued weight gains, that we were grateful he had found her.

They got on quite famously, and when she said she wanted to return to the San Francisco Bay area where she had family that she wanted to reconcile with, he agreed to follow her. He would be travelling under his birth name for the first time in many years.

When they got there, they rented a house in a community a few miles north of the city. Her family lived about twenty miles away and from their reaction when she showed up it was clear that they were extremely suspicious of her motives for returning. She was anything but welcome. They had written her off decades earlier because of the demonic things she had done, and now that she was back, they made it clear that all their love for her was long gone.

She would go there each day, then come home crying, but each day she would start over by driving back to her mother’s place and offering to doing work, such as cleaning her yard. Her mother would scream at her and tell her she didn’t need her help, and that she would call the police, so Sheila would leave, return home, cry, then return the next day and knock on her mother’s door and offer to bring groceries. Then, when that got a bad response, she went home, cried some more, but then got up the next day and went back and found some other chores to offer her help with.

She kept it up for two and a half months before her mother even let her inside the house. Then gradually, inch by painful inch, she worked her way back into her mother’s heart. It took more than a year of persistent effort, but she succeeded in the end to reunite with her mother, then her siblings. Her father wasn’t in the picture, he had disappeared when Sheila was 6 years old. He had been a brutal man that nobody ever spoke about and nobody missed when he left.

Sheila’s deeds made a huge impression on Uncle Jonathan. She said that getting right with her family was the biggest item on her "Step Nine" list. Step Nine was an AA concept–to make amends to those we have wronged. The AA folk believe it is necessary to go about making a list of all the people they have hurt, then go about trying to right their wrongs and asking forgiveness. If they don’t do that, they believe, they won’t have what it takes to stay sober.

Anyway, Sheila had a list of wrongs that she needed to set right in order to hang on to her sobriety and she intended to do them all. Her list was so long, she said it would take a dozen lifetimes of good deeds to set them all right, but she was determined to keep at it as long as it took.

She kept at it, but, sadly, she didn’t have much time to do it. About nine months later her health started to deteriorate and she was diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver. Three months after that, she was dead. Uncle Jonathan was devastated, but he had prepared a list of his own. He knew that if he was to going to survive without Sheila, he would have to start righting his own wrongs. And his list was very, very long. There are details that I have not written here. Blood that was spilled, and many people who were hurt, in very many ways.

Since most of the people that he had done wrong to were scattered over the west coast, he began to travel to his old haunts. Many were gone, and he found he was spending a lot of time just trying to find people. He also had to be careful, as there were a few of his old associates who would kill him, or have him killed, without waiting to hear what he had to say. The ninth step didn’t require him to die.

In a few cases, he was able to help a few individuals who had fallen on hard times by dishing out an apology and a little dough to dig them out of their latest jackpot. He still had a good part of his money, but he realized that he could not go back to LA without putting his life at risk.

He did make a point of going to visit Mickey Cohen in prison a few times, and he took one occasion to work up the courage to apologize for staying close to Jack Whelan when he was trying to muscle in on Cohen’s territory. Cohen accepted his apology very graciously but told him that he shouldn’t worry about making apologies to mobsters. "We are soldiers", he said, "we sign on for whatever happens to us. You need to take care of the poor sad sacks of shit whose lives get screwed up because they crossed paths with devils like us."

So, Uncle Jonathan went back home and rewrote his 9th Step amendment list. It would take too long to discuss the full list, but one of the people on his list–ninth position, actually–was Little Randy, who he felt he owed amends to because, even though he was viscerally repelled at the thought of seeing him again, he had in fact introduced him to a life of booze, drugs and crime, then rejected his company after that horrific event at Santa Cruz.

The person fifth from the top of his list was a woman whose name he didn’t know. It was the nurse from the hospital in Sherman Oaks that he had attacked. She was a victim of his psychosis and, even though he didn’t know her fate, he was pretty sure he had done her a lot of damage. He was also quite sure she had lost her career.

The name of the person a position three on his list was that of a young girl who had been a collateral victim of a business matter that Uncle Jack had been involved in. This one burned sorely in his conscience. More on her story a bit later.

(As for the other names on the list, some of those relate to even more terrible stories than what I am telling you here today, but their stories I will have to tell you some other time, because they involve my own shame–and crimes.)

Anyway, for a few months, Uncle Jonathan tried to find Little Randy and several of the other people on his list. He wasn’t at the address he once lived at in Palm Springs, so Uncle Jonathan started visiting some of the casinos and bars north of LA that he felt he could safely visit. He didn’t want to drink anymore, so he made sure to visit the local AA meetings every night. He would just stop in at the clubs and talk briefly to anybody who might remember Randy or the others. He would show whoever he was talking to his little list and ask if they could tell him where any of them were, especially Randy. When they asked why, he was usually vague as he didn’t think they would understand or appreciate his new AA ways. These were drinking establishments, after all.

You need to bear in mind just how horrific Uncle Jonathan looked. (I should say Uncle Jack, since he had now reverted once again to the name people knew him as during his gangland days). Some folk understood that he was just disfigured, but others were truly repulsed by him–and frightened of him because of his looks. It was the fearful people who helped twist his message.

During this time, Uncle Jack also quietly went back to Sherman Oaks, but avoided his old establishments there–he was very uncertain which way the wind was blowing for him, whether his old acquaintances might have a nasty surprise in store for him. He only returned because he wanted to find out what had become of that nurse. The one he had injured so badly. He wasn’t sure at first how to locate her.

He tried the straightforward approach of walking into the hospital to visit her old ward and asking about her. He was told quite coldly that they could not and would not provide any information about former medical staff members, and especially not to somebody who had been physically agressive towards them. He tried to explain that he had been drugged at the time and was having a psychotic episode at the time it happened, and that he was just trying to set things right. Unfortunately, his attempts to explain only made matters worse. He was told he would have to leave, or they would call a security team to escort him out. Stupidly, he tried to argue some more–to explain–and it ended in a humiliating scuffle in which he was made to leave with a warning never to return, unless he wanted to deal with the police–which he really didn’t.

He had a few other individuals from the LA area that he wanted to make amends with. These were people who were mostly not associated with the gangster business. People he had mistreated in some ways, through dishonesty, or neglect, or, in a few cases outright meanness. I may not have portrayed him as such, but it was true that Uncle Jack, by his own admission, had in the past demonstrated a more than occasional nasty streak.

So, he decided to stay over in the LA area for a few days, avoiding his old business associates as much as possibke, in order to try to make amends for a number of old wrongs. He rented a post office box and found a decent room near his old apartment to sublet for a couple months while he focused on his task. While there, he attended every AA meeting he could. It was during one of these AA meetings that he was asked to be a speaker, which meant he would share his own story with his fellow alcoholics. (This was something they do to inspire one another to stay sober.)

After he told his story–a significantly modified version of his story, that is, as he did not want to openly discuss his associations with the mob–he was approached by a middle aged man at the coffee station who told him that remembered an article in a newspaper up north awhile back about a former young nurse who had been badly beaten by an insane patient and ended up disabled and unable to continue working. Her husband had died in a car accident a year or so afterward and she was left to raise two children on her own. The article was a human interest piece about how she had moved back with her aging father in Vallejo, and, now that he had passed away, was bravely struggling to run a family business he had left her.

Uncle Jack decided he would try to find that article as soon as he had the chance. It made him realize that he should also be making use of his newspaper connections to look for Randy, so he contacted a couple of his old acquaintances at the Los Angeles paper to ask if they knew anything of Randy’s whereabouts. One mentioned that Randy had submitted a couple crime reports–the most recent was a murder story about a couple who were killed by an unknown assailant and found tied and bound next to a burning shack–but that was several months back. He hadn’t been doing a lot of writing since then, at least not for the LA paper.

While he was there, he decided on a whim to take out an ad in the classifieds saying, "Jack O’Hara seeking Little Randy H to cross off amends list for 9th step. If you have info, contact box 13266". He didn’t get around to reading his ad for 3 days, but when he finally did, he realized it had been garbled. Instead it read, "Jack O seeking to cross Randy H off little list for 9th. If you have info, contact Box 13266". He called the paper to complain, but it was too late in the day to change it so it would be two days before the changes would be made.

Two days later, he took a stroll to check the mail and found a post card in his box. It was a cartoon of a bloodhound wearing a deerstalker hat and looking through a magnifying glass. On the outside, it said, "Looking for somebody?" And on the inside it said, "Somebody’s looking for you!" Then, in familiar handwriting was written, "I heard I am on your little list. Sorry I am so hard to find, but don’t be too conserned because I can find you anytime."

When he got back to his rented room, the door was unlocked. He was quite sure he had locked it.

The more Uncle Jack thought about the card, the more it puzzled him. He was sure it was from Little Randy, but it seemed like a strange joke, even for Randy. More likely he was miffed that Uncle Jack had cut ties with him so abruptly. Either way, Uncle Randy wanted to make amends, not to play games. He shrugged and decided that since Randy knew how to find him, he could show himself if and when he is good and ready.