Geek and the Gang.

There were, all told, about eight of us. Two Peters, two Pauls, a Dan, a PA (the sole girl), a Steve and myself. In high school, we were all insufferable geeks, and as a result, we sort of drifted toward each other. They were all very bright kids, and each had their own specialty, their own field of interest?science, languages, technology, philosophy, history?and radically different tastes in music, movies, books, politics, most everything. It led to some fairly lively debates. Yet despite all the differences, we began to spend a lot of time together outside of school.

Mostly what we did was play those damnable role-playing games. I was never a big fan of those things myself (always felt a little foolish), but more than anything else, playing those games gave us an excuse to get together for a few hours, playing only intermittently as we told stories, ate snacks, listened to records, talked about school, debated.

Sometimes we dispensed with the games entirely and watched movies instead, or made prank calls, or just drove around.

Most of the time when a game was on the docket, we went over to Steve's house. Less often, they'd all come over to mine. If we were going to watch a movie, we usually ended up at one of the Pauls' homes. This was in the very early days of VCRs (Betamax was still an option), and Paul was the only one amongst us who had one. He was usually the first to get his hands on the latest technologies. Along with the VCR, he was also the first among us with a home computer and a CD player.

I don't remember if we watched a movie that night or not, but I do know we were over at his place. It might've been a birthday.

I should explain a little bit about Paul. Paul was a weirdie. A slight but stocky kid, he had neatly trimmed reddish brown hair and a small nose that came nearly to a point. He was a nervous young man with (in retrospect) clear manic-depressive tendencies. No different from the rest of us in that way, I guess. As far as field of interest was concerned, Paul was fascinated by politics. Not in running for office so much as in the mechanics of politics. He was gearing up to be a behind-the-scenes operator, probably on the state level. Although he presented himself as a liberal and a Reagan-hater, I wasn't completely convinced. He struck me as someone who would adopt whatever views were most profitable to him at the time.

Paul also had a nasty cruel streak that no one ever much called him on. I always had the sense there was terrible violence just beneath the surface.

Although I don't remember ever meeting his parents at any time over all those years (I might have seen his father from a distance once), I was under the impression that they were much older than most. Their house was one of those big, rambling places you found in older parts of Green Bay. It smelled of age and the beginnings of decay. The wallpaper was yellowing, the carpet was well-trod; in general it was ill-lit and full of deep shadows. I always had a difficult time navigating in there, which may be why I was never allowed much past the front room?except to go to the den, which was right off the front room. That's where the television was.

I was always a little nervous over there, which may have helped feed what happened that night.

We were all sitting around the table in the front room when Paul excused himself, saying he had something to show us. He ran upstairs and returned a few minutes later. He placed whatever he was carrying down in the middle of the table.

It was a replica of the African fetish doll (the one with the huge, piranha-like teeth and the spear) that appears in the final segment of Trilogy of Terror?the made-for-tv movie starring Karen Black that aired in 1975 and deeply traumatized an entire generation of America's youth. We'd certainly all seen it when it was first shown some five, six years earlier, so he didn't need to explain what we were looking at.

(For those who have not seen it, an evil African doll comes to life and chases Karen Black around her apartment with a knife for 20 minutes while making the most godawful sound).

Paul's wasn't a perfect replica. It was made out of plastic, not wood, for one thing. It was shorter, too, and the legs were fused together. But it still had the teeth, it still had the spear clutched in its fist, and still had the gold chain around its waist. As the legend (and the movie) had it, if the chain were removed, the spirit inside the doll would be unleashed, and the doll (named "He Who Kills"), well, he'd start making that noise again.

I don't know if I was just a bit uneasy to begin with about being in that house. Admittedly, I was a bit psychologically unstable in those days, prone to depression, paranoia, obsessive and self-destructive behavior. For whatever the reason, that fucking doll really started to get to me. It was almost as if I believed the damn story. The more I looked at that doll, the more I really did begin to believe it.

When I asked Paul if he could kindly remove it, as it was making me a bit nervous, a small, tight smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

I should also explain here that part of my role within this group was as a verbal target, a whipping boy. Insults, jibes, nasty quips?they were regularly directed at me, by everyone. Jokes about my clothes, my looks, my attitude, the size of my skull, my clumsiness, my eyes.

It was all in good humor, so I rarely took it personally. If I wasn't in the mood, I'd let them know and it was cool. One of the best things about being the whipping post back then is that it prepared me for later in life, and taught me how to turn things around on myself before anyone else had the chance.

That night, though, things didn't work out quite that way. By asking Paul to remove the doll, I'd made myself vulnerable. He knew what my weakness was and decided to open it up a little.

Over the next hour or two, Paul began to torment me with that doll?placing it where he knew I would find it, tossing it at me, sneaking up behind me, thrusting it in my face and screaming. The others soon joined in, screaming and laughing at me. It was like a nightmare. A silly one, maybe, but a nightmare nevertheless. Soon what had started as mere unease, just a mild touch of anxiety, began to grow into a real paranoid horror.

I knew it was a doll. I knew it was made of plastic and its legs were fused together?but when he removed that chain from around its waist and tossed it at me, well, I'd had enough.

It was nuts. Movies didn't affect me this way?especially not horror movies. Something like Deliverance, maybe, something where the horror is very human?but not a devil-doll movie. Not even one with a Richard Matheson script.

The moment he tossed the chain to me, something snapped. All the light and all the darkness were sucked into me. It felt as if I were being yanked away from everything, dragged through space, even though my body was staying put in that chair.

My eyes stopped focusing on anything. I stopped speaking. I couldn't move. I could still hear what was going on around me, still hear all those voices, but could no longer respond to it. It sounded like it was all happening in the next room, and responding would take too much energy. I was going catatonic.

When people began to realize what was going on, they quieted down. All except Paul, who kept up the assault.

Finally, after I hadn't moved a muscle in about 20 minutes, someone decided it was about time to get me home. I remember hearing that, and being very relieved.

Steve walked me out to the car, and loaded me into the front seat. Several others loaded into the back. I stared out the window, saying nothing, feeling less. I had no idea what was happening, or how I was going to get out of it. I knew I was tired, there's no denying that. But there were no drugs, there was no booze, nothing else involved. Something had just cracked. There was that fucking doll, and I was fucking sick and tired of being shrieked at.

On the way back to my place, I heard one of the Peters in the back seat (the tall, pale, effeminate one) whisper to the other Peter (the shorter, hairier, more athletic one), "Is he faking?"

"I don't know," the other Peter answered.

Thing is, I wasn't sure myself. I wasn't sure of much of anything. It all still felt like a nightmare: one of those nightmares where you find yourself frozen, unable to run or scream or react in any way to what's happening right in front of you. But maybe it was just an act. My body and my brain's way of saying, "I'm tired of all this and I want to go home." Or maybe it was a portent of things to come. I guess I'd find out the following morning when I woke up.

I remember a similar sensation a few years later, waking up in an ICU in Minneapolis after an overdose. I was strapped to the bed, screaming in German. At the time I thought, "Well, that's it?I'm insane." Then realized that by being able to think such a thing, I clearly wasn't insane.

We pulled into the driveway of my parents' house. The smaller of the two Peters helped me out of the car and walked me to the front door.

"Are you all right?" he asked. I looked at him, but said nothing. He returned to the car as I slowly fumbled with the keys. Once inside, I could feel myself beginning to relax again. I climbed the stairs and went to bed.

The next morning I was doing fine, my memories of the previous night hazy. I remembered vaguely what happened, but the details were scarce. None of the others brought it up when I saw them next.

Two years later on my birthday, Paul presented me with a brightly wrapped box. I peeled off the paper and lifted the top, only to find, not surprisingly, He Who Kills waiting inside, the chain securely in place around the waist.

I laughed at the time and made a joke of some sort before replacing the lid and setting the box aside.

Hours later, after everyone had gone away, I carried the box up to my room, and placed it in the back corner on the top shelf in my closet where, so far as I'm aware, He Who Kills still sleeps today.