Devils Within Read online

  Copyright © 2017 by S.F. Henson

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews and articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Sky Pony Press, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

  First Edition

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are from the author’s imagination, and used fictitiously.

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  Library of Congress Control Number: 2017950091

  Jacket image by iStock

  Jacket design by Sammy Yuen

  Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-5107-1456-4

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-1458-8

  Printed in the United States of America

  For my daddy, Andrew Frederick (1965-2009)

  and for Phillip, always

  This novel is inspired by true events.

  587

  If he catches me I’m dead.

  Literally dead. Like the trees I’m racing past. Like Mom. Like no longer part of this evil freaking world.

  So I run. I’m tempted to stop, to give up and let him kill me. Because when it comes down to it, death might be a relief, since it’s the only way I’ll ever be free.

  “Nathaniel!” His scream echoes through the dark woods, seeming to come from everywhere at once. It rattles my bones, chilling me to the core, shaking my instinct for self-preservation loose.

  I’m not ready to die yet. Not by his hand. Not while he’s still alive.

  I kick it into another gear. Spindly brush scratches my arms like sharp fingernails. My lungs burn with the cold. Snowflakes sting my cheeks. The snow falls so fast and thick, he’s nothing but a blur when I glance over my shoulder. Then I’m on the ground. Wet snow seeping through the knees of my jeans.

  My boot is tangled in a tree root. The red laces are streaks of blood against the snow.

  “Nathaniel!” he bellows again. Closer. Much closer.

  I struggle against the root, clawing at my laces. I have to get the boot off. Have to get free.

  I didn’t mean it earlier! I want to live! I want to live!

  My boot slides off. I scramble up the embankment, trying to ignore the freezing water creeping up my sock. A crushing weight tackles me from behind and I’m buried in the snow again. He’s on top of me. He rolls me onto my back, pinning my arms at my sides with his knees. His fist slams into my windburned cheek and bombs explode in my skull.

  His gun is in his hand. The butt sails through the air toward my temple.

  This is it. This is where I die.

  I squeeze my eyes shut.

  No.

  I can’t die like this. I have to do something. Stop him from—

  “Nate?”

  My eyes fly open. I raise my fists, ready to fight him off.

  Long brown hair grazes my shoulder, tickling my neck. “Nate, are you okay?”

  I blink a couple of times, forcing myself to focus. Ms. Erica, my social worker, leans over me, brows furrowed, eyes scrunched in concern.

  I’m not in the woods. My fingers curl around the navy button hanging from the string around my neck. I’m in the office of the West Kentucky Psychiatric Center.

  I repeat it over and over in my head.

  He’s not after me. Not anymore.

  Not ever again.

  “Do I need to get Dr. Sterling?” Ms. Erica asks.

  “I’m fine,” I say.

  “You sure?”

  I nod once.

  “Did you take your meds this morning?”

  Of course not. The little oblong pills make me feel fuzzy. Like my brain is lined with cotton that’s been teased apart. I haven’t decided which is better. Always fuzzy, or so sharp a crack or shout or blast of cold air rockets me back to that night in the woods.

  My free fingers trace 587 on the arm of the chair in an endless loop.

  “You have to take the meds if you’re ever going to have a normal life,” Ms. Erica says.

  I snort. “There aren’t enough drugs in the world for that to happen.”

  “Fine. A chance at a normal life.”

  I’m not certain what normal even looks like. It sure as hell isn’t anything I’ve ever known, and it’s not like the stuff they show on sitcoms at night in the common area. No one is that happy. Real problems aren’t comical. They’re deadly.

  Ms. Erica straightens out her short green skirt, then smooths a hand over it. “I’ll call Stanley and have him bring your meds.”

  “No!” I catch her slim wrist before she can leave. “I can’t be fuzzy today. I’ll take them when I’m out. Promise. Just … not today.”

  Her glance shifts to the window and her brows furrow. “All right.” She sighs. “But only for today. No breaks when you’re out.”

  “Deal.”

  She pats my hand and I realize I’m still clinging to her wrist. Life is going to be weird without her. Ms. Erica and I have worked together since the beginning. She was my first social worker, and I was her first client.

  What an introduction to social work. A demented fifteen-year-old with fresh blood on his hands.

  “Are you ready to go?” she asks.

  I can’t possibly be ready. I’ve been in the Psych Center since it happened. Except for the weeks in the Farmer jail and a month stint in juvie before my lawyer sprang me. A year and a half since I’ve been part of the outside world. Although, I guess I’ve never really been part of it.

  Not the one Ms. Erica knows anyway. I’ve only known two versions of the world and they both sucked.

  I don’t remember my first few years, other than flashes here and there. A wood-paneled room, Mom in a blue dress, his arm around her. Tufts of grass dotting a big backyard. A white dog with brown spots rolling in the dirt. Rusty red splotches streaked down the white porcelain sink in the tiny bathroom. Bruises on my arms. Angry welts on my legs.

  The first clear memory I have—the first actual moment—is so tainted with fear I can’t be sure I recall it accurately. I was five. Mom and I were on the run and had stopped at a grocery store for bread. Her hand tightened around mine and the loaf slipped to the floor with a soft thump and a crinkle of plastic. A big, bald man in a green jacket stood in front of us. A tattoo etched into his neck in hard, angry lines. I’d seen that mark before, back at The Fort, but I didn’t know what it was. I do now. All too well.

  Mom hurried down the aisle and around the corner, looking back every few steps. As soon as we reached the sliding glass doors, she scooped me up and broke into a run. Her nails dug into my skin and I cried out, which only made her squeeze harder.

  We raced down the street to the motel, to our room at the back. The one with the busted lock. Mom shoved me in the closet. Someone pounded on the outside door and a hot trickle worked down my leg. A sour smell followed, but I didn’t move. I stayed crouched in the hot, stuffy closet for I don’t know how long. Hours probably. Just like every other time it happened. Every time she’d see someone with that tattoo or one of the white and black patches on their jackets. The ones that said, “Skinhead—weiss & stolz.”

  That was my world for four years. Flitting from town to town, not telling anyone o
ur real names. Then she died—not from one of them, but in a random gas station robbery. Wrong place, wrong time. She died, and my worlds smashed together like lumps of old Play-Doh, all cracked and crumbly and ugly.

  The judge sent me back to The Fort. To him.

  To daily mantras and Indoctrinations. Combat boots in my ribs and fists in my face until the day it happened.

  The Psych Center is the only safety I’ve ever known. What I really want is to stay here and be different forever—not to leave with some stranger.

  Ms. Erica sits on the hard plastic chair beside me, grounding me in the present as much as my button.

  “You can do this, Nate. You have this under control. As long as you take the meds.”

  That’s the problem. If I were insane, it would be easy. They’d keep me here. Safe. Unable to hurt anyone else. I should’ve pretended to be worse than I am.

  “What if it happens again?” I whisper, running my button along its string. “What if I snap?”

  I got off on self-defense once. Mentally unstable, my lawyer said. Once they release me, once I’m declared officially sane, that’s it. I lose myself and it’s jail.

  “You’ll be fine,” Ms. Erica says.

  “I still don’t see why I can’t stay.”

  She covers my hand with hers. “The judge required nine months. That’s up today. Dr. Sterling says you’re cleared, so it’s time to move into the next phase of treatment. Besides, you don’t want to spend your life cooped up in this place, do you?”

  I give her my most pleading look.

  She smiles. “You’ll have a brand-new social worker to torment now.”

  “I don’t want a new social worker. I want you.”

  Ms. Erica knows me—who I am down deep inside—and she doesn’t judge me for it. Only three people in my life have truly cared about me: Mom, Kelsey—my only friend at The Fort—and Ms. Erica. And all three have been torn away from me.

  “Trust me, Nate, if I could stay on with you, I would. But I can’t follow you across the country.”

  “It’s only two states.”

  “You know it doesn’t work like that. I’m sure you and your new caseworker will get along fine. Give her a chance, okay? Don’t forget how far you’ve come. Keep moving forward.”

  I stifle the scoff working up my throat. I’m a snake eating its tail. Every time I try to move “forward,” I end up worse than when I started.

  “You won’t be alone again,” she says, as though she already knows the comeback ready on my tongue. “You’ll have your uncle.”

  Right. The uncle I didn’t know existed until a few weeks ago. I have vague memories of Mom making tear-filled phone calls from those motel rooms, pleading for an answer, then slamming the receivers in their cradles, crying “the stinking traitor was no help to anyone.” She never talked about a brother—never talked about anyone—but that must’ve been who she meant. I know she wouldn’t have been calling The Fort.

  And now I know there was someone out there, an uncle who could’ve helped us. One who never came forward. Not when she died. Not when he told the judge Mom had kidnapped me. Not when the judge sent me back to The Fort.

  Not until my social worker tracked him down and somehow convinced him to take me in.

  Ms. Erica tucks her hair behind one ear. “Are you sure you don’t want to tell your unc—”

  “I’m sure.” I’m not about to let her blab the details of my life to some man I’ve never met. If he cared enough to want to know about me, he would’ve picked up the phone years ago. Dr. Sterling and Ms. Erica are the only ones who know the things I’ve done. And I didn’t actually tell them. I wrote it down during our sessions. It’s all too horrible to say out loud.

  “Okay,” Ms. Erica says. “Your choice. But I hope you’ll change your mind.”

  The heavy wooden office door creaks open. A short, slim man pokes his head in and glances around. His eyes slide past me like butter on hot toast and settle on Ms. Erica.

  They’re Mom’s eyes. Dark and deep set. He has her nose, too. Thin and narrow. Same high cheekbones. All I have of Mom is the navy button around my neck from her one good shirt, and the images in my mind. Blurry memories, wearing at the edges like battered photographs.

  This man throws them back in sharp contrast. This man who abandoned us.

  How dare he look like her?

  A darkness crawls through my veins that I’ve been trying to figure out how to destroy since I arrived here. Before then, really. It’s always there. A low heat in my gut that has to be smothered before it morphs into a full-on geyser.

  That’s when I hurt people.

  Truth is, sometimes you have to hurt people to survive. Look weak, and you might as well be dead. You’ll sure wish you were.

  I wasn’t always this way. Or maybe I was and the beatings drew it out. This dark beast dwelling under my skin. And the more I let it out, the harder it became to keep it caged. The beast prowls in my blood—his blood—restless, waiting for a reason to show itself.

  Like now.

  I see myself getting up. Running at the man. Slamming his head into the thick door. I hear the sound it makes. A squelchy thunk, as if I’d hit a watermelon with a mallet.

  Instead, I close my eyes, breathe deep, and picture a clear night sky. Focus on a point far away. A single dot of light. A needle prick in black paper. I usually picture it getting closer and closer until it becomes a planet, until it swallows me and the darkness and there’s nothing but light.

  Sometimes it doesn’t work, though. Sometimes the dark is too great. It nibbles at the edge of the pool of light, refusing to allow it any closer. Sometimes I’m afraid the darkness will swallow me instead.

  “Mr. Clemons,” Ms. Erica says. “I’m Erica Tufts. Follow me. There’s some final paperwork to fill out.”

  I don’t open my eyes. My fingers find one another and weave together. Not touching anything that might ground me.

  I search for the light, begging it to come closer, the way a kid might charm a kitten out of a tree.

  Eventually, the curtain parts, a sliver of light pokes through, way off in the distance. My breaths deepen. My body relaxes. The shimmer glides closer. Closer.

  Closer.

  “Nate?”

  Ms. Erica slides in front of me, replacing the light. Her hands are clasped the same way as mine. Does she ever have to find the light? I don’t think so. I think her life is all light, with pieces of darkness like me slinking along the border.

  “We’re all set,” she says. “Do you have your things?”

  I pick up the rectangular tote bag with West Kentucky Psychiatric Center printed on both sides.

  She smiles wide. It looks genuine, but sometimes I can’t tell. “Your new social worker will check on you next week. If you need anything before then, don’t hesitate to give me a call.” She hands me a bright white business card.

  I drop it in the bag with the stuff I’m taking with me. The only things I own in the world. Three moleskin notebooks—spiral-bound isn’t allowed because the metal could be used as a weapon—four pencils, a deck of playing cards, a toothbrush, a tube of toothpaste, and a comb.

  First time I can remember owning a comb. First time I’ve needed one.

  It was easier to fit in at The Fort if you went full skinhead. I’ve got two cowlicks and hair like a hard-bristled brush, so I didn’t mind getting rid of it. Not at first. Not until I figured out what it meant.

  The Fort does that to you. It didn’t seem like such a horrible place in the beginning. It was easy to shelve all the things Mom had told me. The people seemed nice. They welcomed me. I was their bruder. Brother.

  They use occasional German words to make themselves feel connected to the shit they believe. Words like weiss and stolz—white and proud. Words I saw on the backs of green flight jackets once it started getting cold.

  If the Indoctrinations weren’t enough to make me stop swallowing the crap they tried to shove down my throat, those words wo
uld’ve sealed it. Every time I saw them, I was that little kid hiding in the closet all over again.

  I’m that kid now. The Psych Center is my closet and the rest of the world is the big bald man with the swastika tattoo.

  My uncle stands beside the tall, wood-paneled reception desk, staring at his hands, at the lines of dirt under his slightly too long fingernails. Calling him “uncle” feels weird. He’s a stranger. A traitor.

  Ms. Erica says something I can’t hear and gives him a business card, too. “Okay, you two. Call me if you need anything,” she repeats.

  We don’t budge.

  “Don’t you need to change or something?” my uncle—jackass, traitor—asks, addressing me for the first time.

  I glance down at my bright yellow scrubs and tan slippers. “This is all I have.”

  The cops took the clothes from that night for evidence. Not that I want them back. They’re covered with his blood. And if I never wear another pair of black combat boots it’ll be too soon.

  “Great,” he says. “I’ve gotta buy you clothes, too.”

  Ms. Erica plasters a big smile on her face. “That should be fun. Something you can do together.”

  I don’t think the Traitor finds the idea any more fun than I do. Ms. Erica holds the door open for us. I stand and follow Traitor into the wide hall.

  “Remember to keep your head down when you go out there,” Ms. Erica says. “Don’t acknowledge them. Stanley will lead you around to the back lot.” She lowers her voice, as if she doesn’t want Traitor to hear. “This is a great chance for you, Nate. Start over fresh.”

  Start over. What does that even mean?

  Ms. Erica doesn’t follow us. I watch her until we reach the front doors, then she disappears inside the office. Maybe she’s having as hard of a time with this as I am.

  Four orderlies wait by the entrance. Stanley, who is as close to a friend as I have in here besides Ms. Erica, hands me a white doctor’s coat. “Cover your face, son. So they can’t get no pictures.”

  I muster a smile, even though I’m shaking a little. Then I cover my head like I did during my trial. Traitor pushes open one of the double doors and watery sunlight washes over the floor.