This youthful discovery marked for me the beginnings of a lifelong obsession, and I uncovered truths which proved there was more to the Genesis account than dangerous angelic liaisons.
And in plunging myself into the depths of mankind’s folklore, I found similar “sons of God” embedded within the tales and legends of cultures both familiar and ancient. In them I beheld their offspring, the very ghouls and giants and fairies of whose stories I had so passionately longed to hear.
They were everywhere, and they had been with us all along. In many different ways, doing many inconceivable deeds, in many forms.
As we take pride in the comforts of modern technology and civilized intellect, they are there to humble us with the reminder that there still exists within our culture the power of primitive folklore.
They do exist, inhabiting that point where human imagination meets that strange movement of shadow in the corners of our eyes.
I am a believer. And this, in my opinion the most rational explanation of my belief, was the course in which things were supposed to have happened. I expected everything to amount to something else, and now nothing appears to make any sense. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way.
But it happened for me on the evening of January second, 1995, when I awoke into nightmarish chaos; when that movement of shadow chose to step into full view and return my gaze as I turned to behold it.
Follow me now, and stay close.
I’ve something further I’d like to show you....
PROLOGUE
The Wraith-child
---1968---
The driver of the ice cream truck hadn’t expected much money changing hands, particularly with his hands, today. It was supposed to be a slow day, and kids were supposed to be in school, but this was his only income and a good drive down Poverty Lane beat listening to his woman bitch about him staying at home scratching his crotch watching a full-figured female genie materialize out of a bottle to rescue her master from yet another weekly sitcom situation gone wrong below the rabbit ears of a black and white television set.
It seemed these days that Popsicle pushing was the hip thing to do, all of his relatives were doing it, and the area around the Los Angeles International Airport was infested with new trucks. They had begun their invasion as suddenly as though they had parachuted from the descending air traffic like fallen angels, forcing the truck further southeast and into a decaying portion of the city of Hawthorne. The truck slowed into virginal territory, splashing remnants of the late morning rain onto a litter-ridden curb. The ghetto children leaked onto the sidewalks like snails in a rainwashed exodus that livened to the truck’s serenade, its loudspeaker painted like a cherry atop a metal carriage of rust coated with chipped white and faded stickers.
As it crept along, rounding a corner, it met the fanfare of children’s cries with an abrupt halt so as to avoid serious injuries to the oncoming brigade. Two bicycles, then a training-wheeled third, burst from the depths of an alley behind the corner’s towering brick building.
“Sons of bitches!” its driver bellowed after them, and the children continued ignorantly with a destination in mind that had nothing to do with tasty treats, peddling their ways to the street’s opposite side and over the puddles of a driveway. An onslaught of other children, short of a two dozen count, various ages, hands waving and stretched upwards above their heads bills and coins to flag down the attentions of the ice cream man, surrounded the truck from every direction until the driver vacated his seat and opened a side window to greet them with a freshly lit cigarette hanging from his lips. The truck soon commenced its laggard crawl, all said and done, its cherry
And in plunging myself into the depths of mankind’s folklore, I found similar “sons of God” embedded within the tales and legends of cultures both familiar and ancient. In them I beheld their offspring, the very ghouls and giants and fairies of whose stories I had so passionately longed to hear.
They were everywhere, and they had been with us all along. In many different ways, doing many inconceivable deeds, in many forms.
As we take pride in the comforts of modern technology and civilized intellect, they are there to humble us with the reminder that there still exists within our culture the power of primitive folklore.
They do exist, inhabiting that point where human imagination meets that strange movement of shadow in the corners of our eyes.
I am a believer. And this, in my opinion the most rational explanation of my belief, was the course in which things were supposed to have happened. I expected everything to amount to something else, and now nothing appears to make any sense. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way.
But it happened for me on the evening of January second, 1995, when I awoke into nightmarish chaos; when that movement of shadow chose to step into full view and return my gaze as I turned to behold it.
Follow me now, and stay close.
I’ve something further I’d like to show you....
PROLOGUE
The Wraith-child
---1968---
The driver of the ice cream truck hadn’t expected much money changing hands, particularly with his hands, today. It was supposed to be a slow day, and kids were supposed to be in school, but this was his only income and a good drive down Poverty Lane beat listening to his woman bitch about him staying at home scratching his crotch watching a full-figured female genie materialize out of a bottle to rescue her master from yet another weekly sitcom situation gone wrong below the rabbit ears of a black and white television set.
It seemed these days that Popsicle pushing was the hip thing to do, all of his relatives were doing it, and the area around the Los Angeles International Airport was infested with new trucks. They had begun their invasion as suddenly as though they had parachuted from the descending air traffic like fallen angels, forcing the truck further southeast and into a decaying portion of the city of Hawthorne. The truck slowed into virginal territory, splashing remnants of the late morning rain onto a litter-ridden curb. The ghetto children leaked onto the sidewalks like snails in a rainwashed exodus that livened to the truck’s serenade, its loudspeaker painted like a cherry atop a metal carriage of rust coated with chipped white and faded stickers.
As it crept along, rounding a corner, it met the fanfare of children’s cries with an abrupt halt so as to avoid serious injuries to the oncoming brigade. Two bicycles, then a training-wheeled third, burst from the depths of an alley behind the corner’s towering brick building.
“Sons of bitches!” its driver bellowed after them, and the children continued ignorantly with a destination in mind that had nothing to do with tasty treats, peddling their ways to the street’s opposite side and over the puddles of a driveway. An onslaught of other children, short of a two dozen count, various ages, hands waving and stretched upwards above their heads bills and coins to flag down the attentions of the ice cream man, surrounded the truck from every direction until the driver vacated his seat and opened a side window to greet them with a freshly lit cigarette hanging from his lips. The truck soon commenced its laggard crawl, all said and done, its cherry
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