Devils Within

by S. F. Henson

  It’s been two weeks.

  Thanksgiving came and went, but I couldn’t think of much to be thankful for. Every morning I wake up expecting to end the day in cuffs, and every night I’m haunted by nightmares. By Brandon’s bloody face. Christmas is around the corner. So is my birthday. I don’t care as much about spending those in jail as I do the anniversary of that night. I’ll lose it if I’m stuck in there then. Two weeks.

  And Brandon still hasn’t woken up.

  They’re all convinced I did it. They don’t want to hear anything else. They have the notes from the church blaming me, the blood, Brandon’s injuries, which are consistent with being clubbed with a bat, and my fingerprints on the only bat at the scene. And, of course, the way they found us.

  The police detained me that night, but I refused to speak. Not without a lawyer. They’ve brought me in twice since I lawyered up. Interviewing me. Grilling me. Trying to trip me up by switching facts. Having to repeat the gory details again and again and again hurts my soul. Having to make sure my lawyer is there each time hurts Dell’s bank account. Turns out the State only pays for an attorney if you’ve been formally charged.

  Which hasn’t happened. Yet. They don’t have enough evidence to charge me with anything, but they did give the whole “don’t leave town” speech. Hell, I don’t even leave the house. A cop car sits at the end of our driveway. Watching. Always watching.

  Then there’s the rumors. Things tend to spread quick in a small town. If only they spread correct.

  Of course, the incident with Maddie’s broken nose on the first day of school bubbled back up, and apparently the store owner who saw me with the flyers that day on Main Street called in a tip. Even my freaking social worker felt she had a “moral obligation” to tell police that I talked—joked—about a plot to burn down the town. That one really bit me in the ass.

  No one believes that Brandon and I were fighting racist skinheads. They think I’m a racist skinhead, and that I was working with others to commit all the hate crimes in Lewiston. Sad thing is, I can’t say I blame them.

  The 911 recording is too garbled because of Brandon’s pocket. The only clear words are Brandon pleading for help. Words that play on a loop in my mind, slicing me deeper and deeper each time.

  My lawyer insisted that the police send samples of the blood found at the scene for DNA testing, but there was so much there, in so many places. It will be at least four weeks to receive results, and the samples could be tainted. Even then, it doesn’t prove I was a victim. Only that other people were there. People who have probably fled the state by now.

  At least Dell and Bev believe me. They keep demanding that the police listen to me, but they also refused to hand over my arrest and hospitalization records, so they’re not exactly high on the cops’ trustworthy list.

  Doesn’t matter. The police applied for a warrant to access all my records, anyway. My lawyer is trying to stop it, but we all know he won’t win. And once the cops uncover my past, it’ll all be over. They already know enough, thanks to the Internet.

  Everything I was afraid of has happened. My past caught up to me, the town turned against me, and my best friend is in a coma he may never wake up from.

  Because of me.

  I’m scratching 718 into the soft wood of my desk with my fingernail when a knock rattles the door.

  “Nate?” Bev pokes her head in. “You have visitors.”

  I can’t think of a single person who would visit me. No one who knows me well enough. Not except …

  My lungs forget how to work. The iron in my blood hardens, pricking me from the inside.

  The Kingsleys.

  Do they have news about Brandon? Did he wake up? Would they really come here?

  “I … I think you should talk to them,” Bev says. “Dell doesn’t agree, but it can’t hurt.”

  I stand, surprised my legs can bear my weight. I’m already out the door when I realize I’m not wearing shoes. Splinters from the rough boards catch my socks, like the house is trying to hold me back. Or hurt me, itself.

  I like the feeling, though. Mom’s button disappeared in the fight. Gone forever. At least the scratchy boards ground me in the here and now.

  Bev catches my arm before we reach the stairs and I remember the first time I saw her on this landing. In some ways, we’ve come so far, but in others we’re still right back there.

  “It’s okay to be nervous,” she says. “Try to be open-minded, though. Okay?”

  I’m confused, but I mumble “okay” anyway. I’m grateful when she leads me downstairs. I don’t think I can make it on my own. The living room is empty. Why aren’t they inside? What’s going on?

  Bev opens the front door and I suck in a breath.

  Two strangers stand on the porch. A tall black man with a shiny bald head pushes back his brown blazer to reveal an even shiner badge. Beside him stands an almost equally tall Latina woman. Her long black hair is slicked back in a high ponytail. She’s also in a blazer. A blue one.

  No Kingsleys.

  Dell stands between us, looking as happy as a cottonmouth that’s been stepped on.

  “Nate?” the woman asks.

  I nod.

  “I’m Agent Michelle Torres. This is Agent Andre Peters. We’re with the FBI. We’d like to ask you some questions.”

  My stomach lurches. I stumble back a step, certain I’m about to puke on Agent Torres’s cowboy boots. This is it. No screwing around now. I don’t stand a chance if the freaking FBI is after me.

  Dell’s nostrils flare. “I already told them you got nothing to say. And I called your attorney.”

  Agent Torres smiles without showing her teeth. “Nate, we’re not here about you. We’re here about The Fort. We have reason to believe you might have information that could help our investigation.”

  My head spins. Her words circle like a buzzard. Information. Investigation. Nate. That’s what she keeps calling me. Not Nathaniel. Nate.

  “Investigation?” For the first time in years I sound like a little kid.

  Agent Peters crosses his arms. “You were affiliated with the Nazi Socialist Party, correct?”

  “Don’t answer,” Dell spits.

  “We’re looking into allegations of domestic terrorism.” Agent Torres puts her hands on her hips. “We were told you had inside knowledge of The Fort’s operation.”

  “Who told you that?” Bev asks. Even she sounds guarded.

  The agents exchange a glance.

  “Your name has come up several times,” Agent Peters says.

  My heart thuds against my sternum. My palms sweat. What does a stroke feel like? Because I’m afraid I’m having one.

  Agent Torres adjusts her blazer. “Look, Nate. I’ll level with you. The incident a couple weeks ago piqued our interest in you, but if you agree to help us, we can make sure you’re taken care of.”

  Tires crunch on gravel. My attorney’s SUV eases down our drive.

  “We want to take them down.” Agent Torres holds out a card. “Think about it.”

  They start down the porch steps. Agent Peters turns back when he reaches the bottom. “You should do it, Nate. Not for us, or for you. Do it for the victims.”

  They get in their black sedan and crank the engine as my lawyer is cutting hers.

  “What do you think?” Bev asks.

  “I don’t know,” Dell says. “I hope they mean it, but can we trust them?”

  Agent Peters’s voice rings in my ears. Not for us, or for you. Do it for the victims.

  Brandon grins in my mind.

  Do it for the victims.

  I’d do anything to help Brandon, but Dell’s right. Neither of us have much faith in the cops. Is the FBI any different? You’d think they wouldn’t be as corrupt, but I just don’t know.

  The Feds are already planning to take down The Fort.

  So am I.

  But what if it’s a trick to arrest me along with The Fort? Trusting that damn reporter already got me burned
once. Is it worth the risk again?

  Dell and Bev show the attorney inside. Dell drops Agent Torres’s card on the counter and puts on a fresh pot of coffee to settle in for long discussions, but I’m too exhausted to think about it anymore tonight. I pocket the card and tell myself I’ll decide later.

  721

  “This is a terrible idea.” I gaze out the truck window at Main Street. New flyers flutter in the wind, but these aren’t anti-minority. They’re anti-me.

  PUT NATE BEHIND BARS

  RID LEWISTON OF HATEFUL NATE

  JUSTICE FOR BRANDON

  Each fluttering page slices into me. A million paper cuts, leaching blood from my heart, freezing my muscles, reminding me how I failed Brandon.

  “I can’t go out there.”

  Dell reaches over me and thrusts my door open. “You can, and you will. I won’t let you hide. You did nothing wrong.”

  “According to them I did.” I don’t add that I agree with them. Doing the right thing at the wrong time is as bad as not even trying. I want to hit something and break down crying at the same time.

  Dell scowls. “They ain’t your jury.”

  “Yet.”

  “Not ever.” He punches the button on my seat belt and it goes slack across my chest. “We’re gonna prove your story. Now get your ass in that drugstore and buy some medicine for your face.”

  My face and hands are festering wounds that have drilled into my soul. I probably should’ve gone to the hospital the night of the attack, but I was too tired. I’ve just been taking care of the cuts by myself, and I’ve run through every bandage and cream in the cabin.

  Dell shoves me out of the truck. “Get the stuff on the list and meet me at Bud’s Hardware. The quicker we knock this out, the quicker we can get home.” He leans over the console. “Keep your head high. You hear me?”

  I manage a nod. The street is mostly empty this time of morning, too early for even the media vultures who have been chewing on the carcass of all my old stories. I keep expecting to run into my new nemesis, Shaw Holt, but I guess she got what she was after and moved on. Lucky her. I wish it were that easy for me.

  The few people who are out this early glare as I pass them. I drop my eyes to my shoes and duck into Lewiston Value Drug. Bev’s handwriting is tiny and cramped. I grab everything I can decipher and carry my armload of antibiotic creams and gauze to the counter.

  Brandon grins up at me. I startle and almost drop a box of bandages. A giant picture of his face is taped to the counter beneath a jar with DONATE HERE! HELP THE KINGSLEYS COVER BRANDON’S HOSPITAL FEES taped to it.

  Brandon may never smile like that again. With the Santa Claus crinkles and piano key teeth. And it’s because of me.

  I’ll make this right, I swear.

  An old woman shuffles in front of me and adds a bottle of fiber powder to her pile of prescriptions by the register. “That should do it,” she says.

  The clerk scans the bottle and starts bagging the woman’s items. “That’ll be twenty-four nineteen.”

  The old woman counts out cash. She drops her change in Brandon’s jar and makes a tut-tut noise. “That poor boy,” she says, nodding at the jar. “Shame it happened to one of the good black kids and not one of those thugs. You know how they are.” She inches closer to the clerk. “I hear it was a racist who did it. That Clemons boy. I saw him once, and I’ll tell you what, he looks like the kind of person who’d do this. I just hope they put him away for a long time. We can’t be havin’ that ’round here.”

  She has to be freaking kidding. Even I know that was racist. If Brandon wore baggy jeans and let his hair grow, would she think he was a “thug,” too? It doesn’t matter who the victim was or what they might’ve done in the past. No one deserves that. I bite down on the inside of my cheeks to keep from exploding. Judging me while not realizing the racist shit pouring out of her own mouth. Or maybe she thinks degrees of racism are okay. As long as she only turns the knob one or two clicks, and doesn’t bump it up all the way.

  The woman takes her bags and hobbles by. I raise the crap in my arms to block my face. When she’s gone past, I drop everything on the counter and study a magazine so the clerk won’t recognize me.

  My eyes keep going to Brandon’s picture, though. To his warm, open face, which makes me want to believe everything will be all right, even when I know it won’t. Not until he’s awake and laughing and smiling that sunshine smile again. Maybe not even then.

  “Sir? Sir? It’s twenty-six eighty. Sir!”

  My head snaps up. Big mistake. The clerk’s eyes go wide. I snatch up my bags, throw thirty bucks at her, and hightail it out of there. She can keep the change. Or put it in the donation jar.

  I run all the way to the hardware store, afraid to look up, afraid to see more shocked, angry gazes aimed at me. I narrowly avoid smacking into Dell as he’s coming out of the store. I expect him to yell at me to watch where I’m going.

  He hardly even notices me, instead storming to his truck and flinging open the toolbox across the back of the bed. “Bunch of assholes.”

  I trail behind him. “What happened?”

  “They didn’t want to sell to me. Me. After all the business I’ve given them. Hell, I patched Bud’s damn roof after that hailstorm last summer and only took store credit. That was before I ‘harbored a criminal.’”

  I should be pissed, ready to fight, but the beast got swept away with the storm that night. Now I’m costing Dell his connections to his town. “I’m sorry.”

  He waves me off. “They can eat a bag of dicks for all I care.” He shoves the bags in the toolbox and slams it shut. “Let’s get this last stop over with.”

  This is the one I’m dreading most. Ghost-memories haunt the entire Lewiston High School campus: Brandon running off the reporter in the entryway, waiting for me in the parking lot, the hallway, the lunchroom, the gym. He’s everywhere. And not just in my mind

  Shrines to Brandon are spread all over the school grounds. Candles and pictures and teddy bears holding freaking basketballs. Everyone’s acting like he’s dead.

  Guilt sucker punches me as we pull up to the red awning, almost doubling me over. If Brandon doesn’t wake up soon, he might as well be.

  Dead.

  Another notch on my gruesome belt.

  The principal and counselor wait for us on the sidewalk. This could be the last time I ever enter this building. I’m just as pissed off and scared as I was the first time. My feet are stuck to a treadmill. No matter how far I think I’m going, I’m always stuck in the same place. Dell parks and hops out first.

  “Mr. Clemons,” the principal says with all the warmth of a snowball encased in ice and dropped in liquid nitrogen. “Collect Nate’s belongings and leave the premises as quickly as possible.”

  I climb out of the truck and start up the walk. The principal holds up her hand. “You,” she sneers, “are not allowed here. Your uncle will retrieve your things.”

  “But—”

  She recoils like I’m about to attack her. “One more step, and I’m calling the authorities and having you removed.”

  My body wants to wilt, but I stay rod stiff. I will not let this woman break me. Especially not in front of all the faces peeking out of classroom windows. I lean against the truck and cross my arms. “My locker combination is thirty-one, seventeen, four.”

  Ice slithers through my veins. The first conversation I had with Brandon was reciting those numbers. I can almost hear him laughing; his voice practically shouts in my head.

  Atta boy, son. Knew you’d come around. Knew you’d hurt that n—

  I pinch the sensitive skin under my upper arms until my eyes water. Without my button, pain is all I have.

  Dell grits his teeth. “I’m gonna need help carrying everything.”

  The principal shrugs. “I’m sure you’ll figure it out.” She turns on her heel and marches inside without giving me another glance.

  The counselor sighs. “I had such high hopes f
or you, Nate. Such hopes.” He turns his back on me, too, and I’m left alone outside. I don’t even get a goodbye. No final turn of the lock that started my friendship with Brandon, no last glance at the basketball court where I found more friends. Nothing.

  The front doors open and I resist the urge to jog to Dell—the principal would probably freak out if I made a sudden move. Only, it isn’t Dell storming out. It’s Fletch.

  “You son of a bitch,” he yells. He tears off his jacket and flings it to the ground, then runs at me. “How could you?”

  At first, I’m too stunned to move, then instinct kicks in. I cover my face just in time. Fletch’s fists thump against my arms.

  “I don’t want to fight you, Fletch.” I’d kill him. The boy can’t punch for shit.

  “Why’d you do it?” he screams. “Why?” He pummels me with his weak hits. I stand there and take it.

  Then Rainey and Ellis and Mateo are there, pulling Fletch off. “It’s not worth it, man,” Rainey says. “Let the courts handle it. He’s not worth it.”

  The irony of that statement coming out of Rainey’s mouth after the shit I heard him say in the gym almost makes me laugh. Then I lower my arms and see the whole crowd that has formed in a semicircle around the truck and any thought of laughter disappears.

  “Why?” Fletch is still screaming. “Just tell me why. Why Brandon? What did he ever do to you?” He’s crying now, thrashing against the guys, but it’s half-hearted.

  “All right, break it up!” the principal shouts. “Back to class. All of you!”

  Rainey and Ellis wrap their arms around Fletch and help him inside. The others flow back inside behind them like geese in a flying V. Two stragglers arc close to me on their way into the building: Maddie and Caitlyn. Maddie sniffles. Her face is red and splotchy.

  Caitlyn fixes her death-ray stare on me. “I knew we shouldn’t have trusted you. I hope you burn in Hell.”

  I slump against the truck, unable to pretend I’m okay. There’s officially nothing for me here anymore. No school, no friends, no future, no Brandon.