CHAPTER 1 Darkness has many faces and it wears many types of clothes. Business suits, jeans, uniforms, or even medical scrubs. Darkness is never invited. No one ever sits down and deliberately sends a personal invitation to welcome it. Darkness always comes as an unwanted visitor and stays longer than it ever should. Darkness enters in many different ways. Sometimes it arrives quickly and leaves in seconds. Other times it lingers for a few hours or even a few days.

When the night approached the heart of a small child--me--it came in with a vengeance. The unwanted, uninvited visitor brought luggage that would remain not just for an evening or two, but for over a dozen years. The script was written by a depraved mind full of darkness. The entrance was no accident. It was crafted by a master manipulator and puppeteer. This drama wasn''t written for the masses, but for one single small child. Enter stage left. Darkness.

CHRISTMAS 1967 There wasn''t a day in my childhood that I can remember that I wasn''t abused. Living in the country about five miles from a couple of small southern Illinois towns seems to be a perfect place to be raised. A nice, clean, upper middle-class home with two cars in the garage looked from the outside as a storybook setting for a family. The yard was kept meticulously mowed. The backyard was fenced in and surrounded a much-envied swimming pool that many in the late sixties weren''t fortunate enough to have. The image was one of a family that was respected, well known, and well liked in the community. The countryside was covered with oil well pumps, derricks, and what we always called the "eternal flames" burning off the excess gases from the oil pumps at the side of each rig. When you stepped out of our house at night, you would notice the flames from these torches lighting up the skies as far as you could see.

There was also the oil smell in the air that we got accustomed to growing up. When friends would visit and ask what that smell was, we always had the same response time after time: "That''s money." Many members of my family worked in the oil industry from time to time since it was a major part of the economy back then when the "oil boom" was still active. As a matter of fact, my mom was crowned the Texaco Oil Company Queen when she was younger and proudly displayed the trophy in our home for years. I remember admiring it as a young child. She always made sure that we were dressed in the best and cleanest clothes and always had our hair combed. From the outside, everything looked perfect. I am still shocked that a child can experience over twelve years of daily abuse and it could be so well hidden within the walls of a very "normal" and average-looking home that no one ever recognized it.

While I say over twelve years of abuse, please let me clarify. I have no recollection of any memories prior to around four years of age, but once my memories become clear around the four-year mark, then the abuse continues to well past my sixteenth birthday. Since I have no memory of the first episode, just the beginning of the memories of it happening, part of the deep recesses of my soul fears that I was abused even during the first years of my life, too. But I may be wrong. My first vivid memory was Christmas 1967. How I remember this is because of my fascination with the infamous Christmas catalogs that my brothers and I would literally wear out by thumbing through and "dog-earring" all the pages containing items on our Christmas wish list. I remember the cover of the ''67 Sears catalog had a cartoon picture of Dennis the Menace, my favorite comic book character at the time. I carried that catalog around with me throughout the holiday season ignoring the Penney''s, Montgomery Ward''s, and even the Spiegel Christmas catalogs.

A few weeks before Christmas, Dad came into my room and shut the door. My bedroom was probably no different than that of any typical child. I shared the room with my brother who was five years older than me; our eldest brother was ten years older than me and he had his own room down the hallway. We had twin beds and a small dresser between the two beds. On the dresser was a small lamp, a clock, and a few children''s books. Very rarely was the door closed to our room, but when Dad entered in that day, he closed the door behind him. I was sitting in the middle of my bed and he sat on the edge. Dad asked me to show him what I wanted Santa to bring me for Christmas that year.

I remember hopping off the bed and grabbing the catalog off the dresser with excitement and quickly opening it up to the numerous worn pages that contained toys that I had in my mind. I could hardly contain my excitement to wake up and see a set of Lincoln Logs under the tree tagged with "For Greg" on the wrapping. ©2019 Gregory Williams. All rights reserved. Reprinted from Shattered by the Darkness: Putting the Pieces Back Together after Child Abuse . No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the written permission of the publisher. Publisher: Health Communications, Inc., 3201 SW 15th Street, Deerfield Beach, FL 33442.