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Ron Hudson was only ten when all of this happened, and this was why he was still Ron Hudson. He had not yet become Jabril Saleh, the adult Muslim that opposed a Satanic ring in Lafayette forty five miles from where he grew up. No, in the year this all happened, in 1986, he hadn’t seen Lafayette, nor did he know about witchcraft or devil-worship. He only knew that it was the last weekend before Halloween and it was a full moon when he stepped out of his house to meet up with his buddies Mario and Todd, or T for short. Ron liked to do his homework when he got home and have the rest of the weekend to play. This Friday evening would have been the same but he didn’t have homework that time. He had been playing in his backyard with his little brother, and then decided to meet up with the other guys right before nightfall.
The three of them and who ever joined them would play pranks at times on people in the neighborhood, but mainly harmless pranks. They’d normally spy some home with a kitchen light on around dinner time, and they’d creep close to the window and make noises that just didn’t sound right, like gorilla noises with a chest thumping or that of a parrot trying to talk. Since this was the weekend before Halloween, they would try making witch sounds or ghost noises if they could do so.
Ron met up with them on the main street of the subdivision, which ran just a house away from his own, but it was further into the neighborhood that he met them. The night time noises of the woods close by were beginning, which were at the far end of that street at the edge of the neighborhood, beyond which the interstate ran. In the cool and dry autumn night air, they could hear the distant but clear sound of cars on it along with the woods in between. Soon, the noises of the crickets would come from all of the trees in the subdivision, not just those of the wooded areas surrounding it and the islands of tees and bushes where houses had not yet been constructed. They wondered around the subdivision, joking around and looking for a good house to target from which there would also be a suitable escape route. There was one house they would not go to, though. It was close to the Jones’ residence, and even close to T’s house, but it wasn’t nearly as well-lit, and it had just recently been moved into. No one knew the resident, but the house itself was spooky, and in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, night time was spooky enough. A full moon didn’t help much, either. The house was set back from the street and surrounded by trees and vines and bushes that covered it most of it. The fence in the front of it afforded a small view of the front door next to which an upside-down cross was hung, though it had been there before the recent occupants. The boys did not even go in the direction of the house, they went to another part of the neighborhood altogether, more towards its center.
They spied there a house with
a light on. It was not coming from the kitchen or dining room itself, but from
the living room next to it. They could see in through the kitchen window and spy
the man of the house sitting on his couch and watching television. Like the
other resident, he had recently moved in and didn’t know the neighbors very
well, but unlike the other resident, he had been seen and wasn’t rumored to be a
devil worshipper. The three boys winked at each other did their thing. Mario
shook a branch to tap the glass lightly, T growled like an angry dog, and
then Ron howled like wolf, which made even his comrades stop and look at him.
His was an eerie melodic howl, carrying far above the roof tops and sure to be
heard by anyone who was outdoors. As it was, it was very loud to the other
two.
They then ran when they saw the man inside react, laughing to each other as they cut through his yard to the next block to Saratoga Avenue. There, they turned left and ran up to Bennington which was perpendicular to it and sat on the corner of Bennington and Potomac, in front of Judge Matthew’s house. They giggled to each other as Mario said to Ron, “That was loud and scary! You got all the neighborhood dogs barking, too! Better hope that wasn’t a mating call!” This made them laugh harder, and just a few seconds afterwards, they heard it.
It was another howl, like
Ron’s but not identical to it. It came from the direction of T’s house further
down Bennington, and it didn’t make the dogs bark. It made them stop. Not just
the dogs, but even the crickets and the night owls in the trees that hooted as
they hunted for mice. Everything got quiet, completely. The guys looked at each
other with wide eyes and all ran to the bushes on the side of Judge Matthews’
house. Ron said to the other guys, “Let’s get together again tomorrow after the
cartoons go off!”
“Yeah!” agreed Mario emphatically. They were close to his house, so he patted T on the back and took off running, looking around nervously. Once he was out of sight of them, he was in sight of his own house, so they felt no fear for him, only themselves. T couldn’t go home because he would only meet with the dog they had heard, and it was known that the few whites in the neighborhood would let their dogs loose only to bother the Blacks who were moving in. Any who had dogs that were unaggressive wouldn't even let them loose in the evenings. When the weather was nice like that night, they knew they’d be out jogging or the kids out playing, so they’d let their dogs out at night sometimes if they had an aggressive one, hoping it would bite or threaten someone. The boys had to go to Ron’s house instead, and so they crept out of the bushes and walked up their side of the sidewalk so they would not pass underneath any streetlights and be seen by the loose dog. A minute later, Ron looked back and saw it coming up Bennington. He then tapped T and indicated to him to look, too.
It was not running or trotting at the time, so it may not have seen them. But it wasn’t normal-looking at all. It was abnormally large, mainly it was tall with long legs, but the legs appeared thicker than any dog’s even though it had a long coat of fur. This was visible to Ron even at a distance because it was under a streetlight, and it then stood up and looked towards its left! Not only did it stand up, but Ron saw clearly how it had shoulders, and its front legs didn’t hang out in front of it like a dog’s normally would. It was comfortable standing on its back legs and looking! Then it got back on all fours and continued up Bennington. Ron and T were amazed into silence and scared into being still lest their movement betray them, but it was still coming in their direction. They began to move slowly in concert, but when they passed by the Clark family’s driveway, the motion light came on! Ron and T stopped again, eyes wide and looked at each other and then back towards the abnormal dog. It had seen them and was taking off for them just as they looked at it.
Ron and T ran for their lives,
Ron leading the way to cross the street and cut between two houses to get to
Valley Forge. When they came to a front yard on Valley Forge, there was an
evergreen tree in it he knew to expect. It was just what they needed, a tree
with low branches that didn’t shed its leaves in the fall. They clambered up the
tree quickly like little monkeys, energized by the cool air and the terror. A
little ways up, they stopped as they heard a growling and a panting noise
getting closer, and they then saw it run underneath them and into the middle of
the street, sniffing around and confused. Again, they saw it stand up
and look around, and again they saw the shoulders on it. Maybe T didn’t
notice, but Ron knew that canines he had seen before stand up weren’t so
balanced, nor did they have shoulders. But both noticed it scratch its own head
while on its back legs!
When a car came down the road, the headlights scared the abnormal wolf, but it didn’t run, it just jumped behind the trash can of the family across the street from where the boys were hiding, and let the car pass it. What saved them was that a neighbor’s dog happened to come running the opposite direction, and the boys’ pursuer then got in the middle of the street again and challenged it. After a little tussle, the pursuer tossed the other dog with its forlegs and then chased it down Valley Forge and between two houses again.
T and Ron quickly climbed down the tree again and ran the few feet to the next block which was the main street through their neighborhood, well-lit and well-traveled, then they ran the next block-and-a-half to Ron’s house. Ron’s father knew that something was amiss when they came running in, panting. Ron told him it was merely that a big dog had jumped a fence and chased them. He didn’t believe it was that at all, though. Mr. Hudson later drove T home, and on the way back, Ron asked him, “Dad, I know dogs don’t have shoulders, but do wolves have them?” That’s when he believed it. Not that it was just a dog, but that it was something to do with a dog, or wolf, that had scared his son.
Ron never
told his dad about it standing up or using its front legs to toss another dog,
or that its legs were abnormally thick. But he and the other guys the next day
agreed to never do the pranks again after dark, only in the day time, and they
didn’t go trick-or-treating that Halloween. T and Ron told Mario what he had
missed, but he only said, “No, I didn’t miss it. It missed me! I saw it from my
rooftop deck later that night! I knew it was the same one, because he stood up
and scratched his back for a second. Next thing I know, it was gone!” T thought
that maybe it was just like in the movies, someone who couldn’t help himself and
had just been bitten by a werewolf and become one before.
But that Halloween, two kids
got sick and it was determined that one had been poisoned and the other
drugged, from which they both recovered. But the drugged child had nightmares
for years of demon-dogs.
Only many years later, after
Ron became Jabril Saleh, did he learn that this phenomena was reported around
the world. T and Mario both couldn’t remember it by then, but Jabril did, and
when he investigated what could have caused it, he found that in all cases, they
were believed to be people who had to break serious taboos to get that kind of
power. Only as a grown man did he learn that there was nothing innocent
about it. So it was that even years before he found religion, he gave up
celebrating Halloween, and then found out why he stopped later.
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