Devils Within

by S. F. Henson

  All the color drains from his face as he takes in the closet, matching the weird scar on his chest. Before I can go after him again, he sinks to the floor, completely unaware of the glass beneath him.

  “So you know,” he whispers.

  I want to hit him again. Actually, I never wanted to stop. “All this time, you’ve been judging me. Making me feel small and dirty and evil. While you had that.” I point at his chest.

  He picks up the broken picture frame, his finger sweeping over Mom just like mine did.

  “I … I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry?” I jerk the picture away. “That’s all you’ve got? Sorry?”

  “Oh my God.”

  Both our heads jerk up. Bev stands in the doorway, hands over her mouth.

  “What the—” She moves for us and steps on the swastika flag. “Oh.”

  She looks from me to Traitor and back again. “Well, it had to come out eventually.” She pushes past me and takes Traitor’s arm. “I think it’s time to talk.”

  Traitor knocks glass and wood from his pants and nods.

  “Come on, Nate.” Bev guides Traitor to the stairs, one arm supporting him. Traitor looks strangely small beside her. He’s taller than she is, but right now he’s crumpled paper in her arms.

  Wait, she knows? She’s seen all this shit and is still with him? Why did she want to kill me then and not him? What the hell is going on?

  I follow them more out of curiosity than anything else. I finally have some answers, but all they gave me is more questions.

  Bev eases Traitor down into the social worker’s usual chair. She sits on the chair’s arm and points at the couch. “Sit.”

  I hold my ground.

  She cradles Traitor’s hand in hers. “First of all, Nate—I tried to stay out of it before and let Dell handle it—but you’re foolish for talking to a reporter.”

  “That’s already been established, thanks.”

  She holds up her free hand. “But, you’re not the only foolish one here. We all do reckless things. Some more reckless than others.” She gives me a pointed look. “None of us are perfect.”

  I rub my temples. The left side of my head is tacky with dried blood from the hanger. “I’m aware of that,” I growl. “But that doesn’t explain the trunk of hate up there.”

  “It does, though,” she says.

  “Why are you defending him? He’s no better than me. Worse probably.”

  “I didn’t kill her,” Traitor manages to say. His eyes glisten with tears.

  “Kill who?” I ask.

  “Mae.” His voice is thick with emotion. “I’ve done some terrible things, but I didn’t kill her. You did.”

  I’d be on him already if the damn coffee table wasn’t in my way. I drop the picture and start to climb over the table.

  Bev leaps up and spreads her arms wide, blocking Traitor. “Whoa. Hey, easy,” she says.

  “That’s right, let your girlfriend protect you.” I snarl. “What are you going to do, stay here all the time? Because I’m going to beat his ass for that.”

  “For what? The truth?” Traitor barks.

  “Because I killed one parent, you think I did in the other? That I go around murdering parents all the time?” I knock my shins against the coffee table. Bev scoots in front of me again. “Why would I kill the only person keeping me away from him? The one person who gave a single shit about me.”

  “She was dead the moment you were conceived.” Traitor picks up the broken fame. “We were going to leave. I had … Jefferson pushed me too far. If I stayed at The Fort, I knew I’d end up crossing a line that I couldn’t come back from. I’d convinced Mae to run. The abuse had gone on too long. She agreed to go, and then …”

  His finger rests on Mom’s stomach. On me.

  “She found out she was pregnant. She thought it would maybe change Jefferson, soften him. I tried to talk some sense into her, but she wouldn’t have it. I told her if I left, that was it. I’d have to cut ties completely or they’d find me. Nothing I said mattered. She loved him. In spite of everything, she loved him. So I ran without her and never looked back.”

  I sink to the couch. A million bricks have fallen on my chest. I can’t breathe and I don’t want to. He’s right. I killed her, just like I killed Kelsey. If it wasn’t for me, Mom would be here, living a new life alongside her brother.

  “I didn’t know she was dead until your trial,” Traitor says. “Then, a few months ago, Ms. Tufts showed me the court records from when Jefferson regained custody. The lies …” He grips the frame so hard I’m surprised he doesn’t bend the metal. I killed her. Not directly, sure, but … I killed both of them.

  I deserve jail. Worse. I deserve every shitty hand I’ve been dealt.

  Bev moves to the couch and, for a moment, I’m afraid she’s going to hug me. But she pats my shoulder, instead, and motions for Traitor. He drops his head in his hands. The frame clatters to the cold floor.

  “It wasn’t your fault, Nate,” he says. “I do know that. I’m just … angry.” He lifts his head. “You know that feeling, don’t you? Anger at your shitty life, your shitty choices? I’m angry at Mae for staying and you for existing and myself for not carrying her, kicking and screaming, away from that asshole.”

  “If you know that, that Mom’s choices weren’t my fault, then why? Why have you been such a dick? Ever since I came here. Before then.”

  He meets my eyes. “Because every time I look at you, I see Jefferson, and I see myself—the things I had to do at The Fort. I hated you for bringing my past to life.”

  “I can’t help the way I look,” I say. I wish I looked like Mom instead. I wish I could go back in time an undo everything. “I wish I’d never been born.”

  Traitor’s jaw goes slack. He scrubs a hand down his face. “I am a dick. Nate, being born, existing, that is not your fault. I’m sorry for holding all of this against you. For not letting myself actually see you. I came into this thinking Jefferson got to you, and that the self-defense angle was exactly that—an angle to keep you out of jail. Being around that shit, it does things to you. It’s hard to come back from it.”

  I wipe my face with the back of my hand. I’m leaking again. He actually gets it. He had to do terrible things, too. He ran and left someone he loved behind. I couldn’t have taken in someone from The Fort. I already have enough reminders of the horrors I’ve committed. Choosing to live with someone else with that same past every day would’ve been too much. “So why did you come for me at all? Why not leave me at the Psych Center or let the State figure out what to do with me?”

  Traitor picks up the picture. “Because I thought about how much Mae loved you. She loved you more than him, and more than me. She loved you enough to finally run.”

  665

  I removed the picture from what was left of the frame and folded it so I could only see Mom and Traitor. Dell. His name rolled around in my head all night while I sat in the chair by my window staring at the photo, tracing 665 in the curlicues built into the frame. Around dawn, I got up and dug Mom’s curtains out of the overflowing trash can that I haven’t dumped since my first day here. Fortunately, I’d only thrown away balls of paper and a couple empty drink cans, so they were only a little wrinkled.

  She did make them. Dell told me so last night. The curtains and the picture were the only things he took with him when he left. It turned out it hurt too much to see the curtains every day, so he hung them in the spare room where they could waft like her ghost at the other end of the house. And the only picture he’d been able to grab had him in it, so it went in the trunk with his neo-nazi stuff.

  He said he kept it all for two reasons: as a reminder of The Fort, so that he’d never forget what clothing himself with hate looked like, and in case he ever gave up and decided to go back for Mom. So he could blend in.

  I hang the curtains again just as the first morning rays slant through the window, filtering through the thin cotton. I close my eyes and try to remember M
om’s hands, try to picture them sewing these strips of fabric together. My brain is a TV with poor reception.

  I push the curtains back and prop the photograph on the sill so I can see Mom next to her work. Beyond the picture, a flash of red catches my eye.

  Bev’s truck is still in the yard. She’s never stayed over before. Is this going to become a regular thing now? Everything already feels shifted. An earthquake rocked us, tearing down the walls we’d all built around ourselves.

  It’s weird. All this time, I’ve been looking for someone to spill my guts to, and he’s been right here. We just had to give each other a chance. Dell and Bev and I talked for hours last night. Not just about The Fort, but about random things, too, like our favorite pizza toppings (Dell’s is barbecue chicken, Bev’s is banana peppers, and mine is cheese). And important things like words I shouldn’t say. That came up when I asked Bev where she was from. “Georgia,” she said.

  “No, I mean where are you really from?”

  “Georgia,” she said again. “And FYI, that question is racist as hell.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  She sighed. “Because it assumes I’m not American because of the way I look. My parents moved here from China, though, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  By the time I went to bed, my head spun with all the new information.

  I touch Mom’s picture, then pull on clean clothes and pad downstairs, skipping the squeaky steps. I’m craving the feel and smell of the woods. It’s too stuffy inside to think. I need fresh air.

  “Oh, you’re up.” Bev stands in front of the screen door. She sips from a steaming coffee mug. “There’s a fresh pot if you want some.”

  I’m not much of a coffee drinker, but it does smell good and I didn’t sleep all night. I pour myself a cup and stand bedside Bev.

  “He was a mess when I met him, you know.” She says it so low I’m not certain I heard her right. “That’s why I was so against you living here. I was afraid you’d trigger him. He never told me what finally made him break. There’s not much about those days he’s willing to talk about. The shame just about killed him.”

  “I’m intimately aware,” I whisper.

  Bev cocks her head toward me. “I know.”

  We sip quietly, watching birds flit to and from the porch feeder. The coffee is as bitter as the past few months have been, but I’m already more alert. I choke down another swallow. The breeze kicks up through the screen and I shiver.

  Bev wraps both hands around her mug. “He did tell me how they ended up there.”

  Now she really has my attention.

  “Their good-for-nothing parents beat them constantly. Dell said they’d sometimes miss whole weeks of school because they couldn’t walk. The other kids bullied them for their tattered clothes and bruised skin. Their teachers wrote them off as dumb and lazy. So one day, they left for school and never came back—hitched on the back of a hay truck.”

  My God, they weren’t that different from Thomas Mayes. Other than the whole evil part—pretty certain he’s still only a few steps shy of Satan. My poor mother, though. She never really stood a chance.

  “They hitched all the way from West Virginia to West Kentucky. Dell said they were constantly worried their parents were right behind them. Turns out, they never cared enough. Dell looked them up later and found out they both died of drug overdoses in that same tiny town. Anyway, they met up with some guys from The Fort who took them in and offered them protection.”

  “Biggest mistake of my life.” Dell’s voice makes us both jump.

  I slosh coffee on the floor, then mop it up with my sock before either of them notice.

  Dell takes Bev’s coffee cup and gulps down the rest. “I never should’ve judged you, Nate. I’m not any better. Hell, I wish I’d had the strength to off my old man when I was a kid.”

  “No, you don’t,” I say quickly.

  Dell’s mouth flattens into a thin line.

  I slump against the wall and swallow the golf ball in my throat. My ever-rebelling mouth struggles to form the words. “Living with yourself is hard … after. Going through every single day of your life knowing you’re capable of … of murder. Knowing you really are the monster everyone thinks. It—”

  “You’re not a murderer,” he says. “You’re not. You hear me? You’re not.”

  “But I—”

  “If he was here right now. Would you shoot him?” Dell asks. “If he was unarmed, standing over there, would you do it?”

  Would I? Would I kill him all over again? Or would I let him live and face the punishment he deserved?

  “No. I’d want him to rot in jail. For the horrors he committed to haunt him every day of his life until they slowly drove him insane.”

  “Then you’re not a murderer.” Dell sounds like he did last night when he was crying. “I’m so sorry, Nate. I’m sorry it took so long for me to see that.”

  I look at him. He is crying. So is Bev.

  So am I.

  The tension rolls out of my body. I sag onto the couch, sobbing so hard my whole body shakes. I cry out all the anger and frustration and sadness and guilt—a torrent of it rains down around me and washes away through the spaces in the floorboards.

  I’ve never cried like this. Not alone, and certainly not with people. Years of tears roll out. By the time I’m finished, I’m surprised my skin doesn’t look like a raisin. I expect to feel hollow, like I did after writing the letter, scooped out and raw, but I’m strangely full. Less like a snake shedding old skin and more like a bird that’s molted, its old feathers replaced by bright, new ones.

  Dell bends down and looks me in the eye. His face is red and blotchy, but he doesn’t seem ashamed. “I’m gonna tell it to you straight. You have his temper. You have his looks. You’ll never escape the pieces of him that are in you, but you can overcome them.”

  It isn’t new information—I’ve always known of the devils within my blood—but hearing Dell say it aloud cuts me deep.

  “Is Jefferson the only one you killed?” he asks.

  I nod.

  “Did you ever come close?”

  I nod again. He watches me, expecting me to say more. Doesn’t he know the words are stuck inside? I chew on my bottom lip. He does know. He’s been there, at The Fort.

  The words wiggle like a loose tooth. “A few months before … before I killed him. He got pissed at me for leaving the fridge door open and beat me with a fire poker.”

  Something hot touches my hands. I look down and see a fresh cup of coffee. I didn’t even notice Bev take the old one. I sip and the hot liquid warms my body, melting the glue holding the words in place.

  I never set out to hurt anyone. I always intended to hang back, to only do what was necessary to keep him satisfied. But sometimes the heat of the moment catches you in an updraft.

  Sometimes, you’re punching and punching and punching and you realize the person isn’t awake anymore.

  “I went to town to get away from him. I was so angry, so hurt, and there was nothing I could do about it. Nothing would ever make him stop. He was stronger and had more people on his side. So, I took it all out on this guy at the bar. I don’t even remember what started it …”

  One minute I was sitting on a bar stool, and the next a limp body was flopped over a trash can in the alley and my aching hands were sprayed with blood. I can’t bear to see Dell and Bev’s expressions, so I stare at the black coffee, rotating the mug, inhaling the steam.

  The image of that guy stuck with me like my brain was one of those glue traps for catching mice. For months, every time I closed my eyes I saw the poor asshole who decided to cross me that night, an endless cycle of fractured pictures: the guy’s face smashed in, blood pooling in puddles so deep red they were almost black, his head groggily trying to lift and clunking clumsily back onto the trash can.

  Those images only got unstuck once they were replaced by even worse ones. Memories of blood and bone stuck to barren trees and splashed a
cross fresh snow.

  “He looked like a motorcycle wreck victim,” I say. “I was only fourteen. If I could do that to a grown man, then …” Now I look up. They don’t seem as horrified as I’d expected. “I don’t know what would’ve happened if I’d stayed much longer.”

  Dell sits on the coffee table in front of me. “But you didn’t. You got out. You know what that means?”

  Only that I wasn’t there long enough to go full-homicidal and require the body farm for myself.

  “It means that while you got some of him in you, you got more of her. Jefferson wouldn’t have stopped. Do you know how old he was when he killed for the first time?”

  I shake my head.

  “Barely thirteen. He beat a black kid with a tire iron. And he meant to do it. He told me before we went out that he was gonna earn his red laces and he was gonna do it up right. You stopped, Nate. He didn’t. You planned to leave, he became The Fort’s leader. You feel remorse, he felt nothing. You’re not him, and you’re not gonna be him. Not as long as I have anything to do with it.”

  He stands and gazes out the screen door. “Now, what are we going to do about The Fort being here?”

  “They want me,” I say. “They won’t stop until they get me.” The beast prowls in its flesh-and-bone cage, just thinking about The Fort being in Lewiston. “I have to leave.”

  “No,” Dell says. “I’m not running.”

  “I’m not asking you to. I thought you were kicking me out, anyway.”

  “You know damn well I’m not,” he says. “I’m your guardian. Where you go, I go.”

  “You know what they’ll do to this town.” I deepen my voice slightly. “Violence is meted out against the anti-Whites and antiracists who speak against the White message.”

  Dell shudders. “Don’t do that again. You sound too much like Jefferson.”

  I cringe. “My point stands. They’ll destroy this town and everyone in it who doesn’t get on board with them. Just to get to me.”