Ordinary places sometimes cradle strange secrets in the hold. Russell McLauchlin's 1946 book Alfred Street is anything but an innocuous re-telling of the history of Alfred Street, as seen from the vantage point of the author during his boyhood at the turn of the twentieth century. It's musical and redolent of the primitive majesty of yesteryear but it would be stretching to say that it's a thriller in any sense of the word.
Yet, on page 87 starts a seemingly mundane tale of the endless litany of Mrs. Clarks who ran the washing loads for the families of Alfred Street, though of supposedly modest means were the author's parents. Recounting one such woman's tale and the scorn it brought from Mary Doyle, another member of the nanny and household staffs of the area, comes this recollection of a devil child being born in Detroit circa 1900:
"I remember well the sensible scorn which she heaped on one of the Mrs. Clarks who reported that there had been born in her neighborhood (Detroit circa 1900), a day or so before, a genuine devil, complete with horns and tail and cloven hood. This, according to Mrs. Clark, much embarrassed the presumed parents and family connection of the prodigy, and euthanasia was proposed by the more radical."
A genuine devil child complete with horns, tail and cloven hoof! Biblically not Satan in the least as Ezekiel tells us, for he comes "as an angel of light". But as a demon or a reincarnation of the fabled Nain Rouge? Who knows!
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