This happened in 1932, when the state penitentiary was still at Cold Mountain. And the electric chair was there, too, of course.

In my time there, there wasn't a day to go by on the Mile without some sort of occurrence, big or small. Some will tell you that it was just the circumstances of having to put a man behind bars knowing full well that he'd spend the rest of his living days there. Me, well, I can't afford to do much else except to treat it like it's the natural order of things, like I wouldn't know what to do with myself if there wasn't some sort of disturbance to attend to. It was our job, after all.

Percy had spelled trouble on the Mile from the get-go, and today was no different. I could still hear his squeaky little voice echoing over the linoleum.

Dead man walkin'! We got a dead man walkin' here! Bringin' in a new prisoner!

He wasn't even through the first morning here and was already treating the place like some sort of quarter sideshow! I pulled him aside and set him straight on that little stunt as best I could, and we all watched him slink away like a wounded animal to the lavatory. As far as any of us were concerned, he could stay in there for the rest of the day.

But he didn't. It wasn't ten minutes before the most godawful racket we may have ever heard came rising up from the toilet. It sounded like a tornado had touched down right on Percy's lily white ass while he sat in there looking at his little picture book, and it wasn't long before the door slid open and there he came, crawling on his hands and knees with his pants around his ankles.

"F-F-Fiend!" he cried. "Madman! I-Intruder!"

We all stood there, Brutal and Harry and me, with our arms folded while Percy wiggled there in the floor. Brutal seemed to enjoy the spectacle more than any of us, and it wasn't long before he walked over to the kid and jerked him onto his feet by the collar.

"Have you lost your damned mind?" Brutal said, rather severe.

"Ossassaso!"

"What in the hell are you going on about, boy?" Harry asked.

But Percy just continued to gibber on like that for the next hour until we could finally sit him down and get him to drink some coffee.

"I don't know what his damned name was. Sounded like Osso-zazzo or somethin'. I think it was South American or some such foolishness. Don't matter, either! He beat the hell outta me!"

If there was any truth to what Percy was on about, it was that something ran him through the ringer. He was covered all over in scrapes and bruises from his little escapade in the toilet, and both eyes were considerably darkened and swollen.

We checked the lavatory, which was in substantial disarray from all of Percy's thrashing, but found no mysterious South American aggressor.

"You have lost your marbles, boy," Brutal said after returning from the toilet.

I almost hesitate to even tell you what we managed to piece together from Percy's fantastic little tale, but I suppose any good story is worth repeating. According to Percy, he strolled himself on over to the toilet, closed the door and had barely nestled his ass down on the seat before the whole room was engulfed in this strange white light. He couldn't see a damn thing and didn't know what else to do, so he just sat there, dumbfounded. For all he knew the good Lord had come to take him on home.

So this light vanishes, you see, and where before there had been nothing but the plain old bathroom floor there was now a man, stark naked, a fire blazing in his eyes like the pit of Hell itself.

"I am Ozozazo. I am from the future," this mystery man said. "I have come to kick your ass."

And so this Ozozazo character proceeded to grab poor little Percy by the nape of the neck and deliver a beating upon him like he'd never had before. He drove his knee into his guts, slammed his head into the concrete wall and just beat him senseless right there in the bathroom floor. Hell, according to Percy, this unknown assailant even dragged him across the floor and dunked his head into the toilet.

Helpless, broken and damn near drowned, Percy rolled himself into a heap while that eerie light filled the room once again, and suddenly the man was gone.

"It was the Devil himself! The Devil in human form!" Percy told us later as he sat at the table smelling of human feces and blood, his dark hair hanging over his eyes in a messy tangle.

We did our best to conceal our smiles. For all we knew, maybe it was.