The Demon Inside: Connor's Story

Prologue

The darkness was so deep,

He could not remember his name.

The demon’s voice echoed back to him:

Remember our deal, boy.

Do not forget.

With heavy feet, he stumbled forward;

With pounding, aching heart he prepared himself;

With tormented mind, he willed himself not to think;

He fell into the arms of the beast.

The beast’s roars shook his body,

But not his soul;

Scars that should never have been given

Soon marked his flesh.

He would not scream:

He would not let the demon win.

It was over.

Blood. There was blood racing down his back.

He breathed and burning fire

Ignited his lungs.

Laughter.

It was laughing at him,

Mocking him,

Thriving on his pain,

Soaking up every ounce of shame that the boy felt.

Then it was silent.

In the boy’s own mind,

He thought he heard the word:

Monster.

Monster?

It was directed at him,

It had to be!

He had agreed to this ruining of his innocence,

And he had done it for them.

For his family.

The deal had been this:

In exchange for the continuous annihilation of his body,

His family would remain unharmed,

Safe and happy,

For all eternity.

The boy hung his head and let just one teardrop fall.

Chapter One

~Do You Not See the Light?~

It was a warm day outside for March. Connor leaned his head against his window, his feet burning hot on the shingles of his roof. He ignored them and looked blankly at the notebook in his hands. It was the color of the sky, but held none of its majesty: the cover was faded and the pages were dog-eared where Connor had folded them down to mark his favorite passages. The book, you see, had been his father’s. After his dad died, Connor had found the notebook stuffed uselessly into an old shoebox in his father’s attic. Connor had removed the cobwebs by blowing on the box. He had opened it cautiously and what he saw in there could only be called junk: an old yo-yo, a broken gaming system, a torn-up photo of his dad standing with Connor’s grandfather, and the notebook.

Connor had kept all of it.

But it was the notebook he treasured the most. For in it, Connor’s father had written poetry and diary entries. And while Connor had initially felt as if he was invading his father’s privacy for reading his father’s scrawling words, he had felt instantly drawn to the pages. It was as if his dad was still there.

Connor returned his focus to the poem he had just read. What was with this talk of demons and beasts? His father mentioned them quite a bit in his poems and Connor felt strongly that all of the demons and beasts and monsters that his father wrote about were really just one entity. Connor frowned and bent down the corner of the page, his tongue jutting out between his teeth.

“Connor, honey! Dinner!”

His mother knocked on his bedroom door. Panicking, Connor clutched the notebook to his chest and hurriedly opened his window, dropping back into his room just as his mother opened the door.

“Did you hear me?” she asked, her red hair caught in the sunlight that drifted through Connor’s window.

“Uh yeah, Mom.” Connor said, the notebook gripped tightly behind his back. “I’ll, uh, be down in a second.”

His mother cocked her head and bit her lip. She could always see through him and always knew when something was wrong, but this time she had enough tact not to ask. She shrugged and left the room, closing Connor’s door lightly behind her. Sighing, Connor opened a drawer in his desk and gently dropped his father’s notebook inside.

*

“What are you afraid of, boy?” The thing hissed from the shadows. It was all Shawn could do to bring himself to answer.

“You, obviously.”

The thing laughed at him, its voice hoarse with age and malice.

“We have a deal, boy.” It whispered, “I do not harm your family and I only mildly harm you. You have much to be thankful for.”

Shawn walked towards the voice, feeling himself pulled by some centrifugal force to the creature. He nervously ran a hand through his chestnut brown hair as he made his way once more towards the monster, his body tensing at the prospects of the abuse and torture he was about to face.

*

Lemon drop breath in my face,

The smell of shame and torment corrupts me,

And refuses to leave even when water attempts to free me.

These tears…was I truly the one meant for them?

Was this how my life was supposed to play out?

Was I really meant to be the victim?

Or am I really, truly—

The villain?

Connor frowned at the page in front of him, his brow furrowed. Something wasn’t right.

He bent his head back over the page, his eyes—the same vivid green as his father’s—scanning the page for some kind of answer. What was it that had haunted his father so doggedly? Who had been the one who had possessed the “lemon drop breath”?

Connor thought briefly about asking his mother, but he had the weirdest feeling that she wouldn’t know and that the notebook would just upset her. He needed someone to talk to and for one stupid moment, he thought of running down the stairs to his father’s room, waving the notebook back and forth like some crazed maniac, until his father explained himself. But then Connor remembered.

He was dead. There was no easy answer. All Connor could do was read and hoped the answer became apparent enough, but he somehow doubted it would. His father had always been hiding something from the family and everyone knew it—but he had hid it well enough that they knew not to ask.

Connor moved to his closet and began rummaging through it, throwing dirty clothes and smelly athletic shoes out of the way, until he finally found his father’s shoebox. It was dingy and dirty from all of those years in the attic, but Connor could still read his father’s name, Shawn, scrawled across the top of the lid in that now-familiar slant.

He opened the box, running his hand through the contents until his hand felt the corner of the photograph. Sticking his tongue between his teeth, Connor pulled out the remnants of the photo from underneath the battered gaming system.

His father must have been seventeen or eighteen when the picture had been taken. Connor had to bite back a laugh as he looked at his father’s scraggly goatee, but it was tears that came out as his eyes moved from his father’s chin to his happy, yet haunting, smile. It had been so long since he had seen it that he had almost forgotten how it looked, how the smile tugged to one side, not unlike a smirk, and caused the area around his eyes to crinkle with merriment. Connor wiped his eyes impatiently before quickly taking in the rest of his father’s appearance—rugged blue jeans and a grey t-shirt that barely hid the muscles of his chest underneath—and digging for the other half of the photo, the part that held his grandfather.

It wasn’t as well hidden as Shawn’s picture had been, but it was still just as ragged. His grandfather’s arms were lost in a blur of age, dust, and mildew, but his face still looked as sharp and menacing as the day the picture had been taken. Connor did not like the way his grandfather’s gray eyes followed him, how much blame they pinned onto him. Connor dropped the picture, half-disgusted and half-afraid. The picture landed on the carpet of his floor, his grandfather’s face rubbing against the ground.

It was the other side, the blank side, that faced Connor now. Someone had written on it, but it was not his father’s slanted scrawlings; it was much blockier than any writing Connor had ever seen. Curious, he reached down and picked up the picture.

I could have saved you, Shawn. I knew what he was doing to you.

“Grandpa?” Connor whispered, his voice trembling. He did not know much about why his father and grandfather had become estranged, but he felt he knew at least part of it now. Somebody had hurt his father in some way and instead of helping him, his grandfather had turned his back on the only son he had ever had.

Connor grabbed a bag and stuffed the notebook and the two halves of the picture into it. He may not be able to ask his father what happened, but he sure as hell could ask his grandfather. He glanced at the clock: 5:30pm. Cursing under his breath, Connor grabbed his car keys and rushed out the door, his mother and sisters’ curious faces plastered to the window as they watched him drive away.

As he drove through the city, Connor couldn’t help but continuously glance at the photograph he held clenched in his hand. Now that he had read the writing on the back, his grandfather did not frighten him as much. If anything, his eyes had turned from steel to useless scrap metal, pleading for some sort of redemption. If Connor had known then what his father’s secret was, he would’ve realized then that there is no redemption for the wicked.

His grandfather still lived in the same house his father grew up in, this huge mansion set against the gently rolling hills. As Connor approached it, fields of wheat waving merrily up at him, he felt an odd sense of unease. The stately mansion had fallen into disrepair; vines had nearly succeeded in swallowing the left side of the house whole. The driveway had separated from itself, the cobblestones broken and jutting up at all angles. And the fountain that had stood so majestically in the center of the drive had faltered; the mermaid who had graced the top was almost completely gone—only her fin remained. The only thing that remained of the upper portion of her body was the pipe that had been hidden inside of her, and even it was rusting with age and disuse.

Connor parked his car by the stairs of his father’s childhood home and jumped out, the photograph still clenched tightly in his hand. He was halfway up the stairs before he remembered the dog-eared notebook still sitting patiently in the passenger’s seat. He doubled back for it before entering the mansion for the first time in ten years.

The doors squeaked loudly and eerily, as if they belonged in a horror movie. Connor tried not to show how much the noise frightened him by strolling into the main hall like he owned the place.

“Grandpa?” he called, but he received no answer. Frowning slightly, he moved on, looking at the pictures of his ancestors that lined the faded walls. There was Auntie Margaret, sipping a glass of champagne, her eyebrows arched as if Connor had just asked an impertinent question. Shivering, he shifted his gaze. He had never liked Aunt Margaret much.

As he passed by them, he noticed the similarities in their features: they all had those steely gray eyes and perfectly filed teeth, though age had caused their teeth to turn from white to yellow. Serves them right, too, Connor thought vindictively, those pretentious old cods.

Connor stopped suddenly. He could’ve sworn that the eyes of Uncle Remington had moved to follow him. He whirled around, his father’s notebook raised like a weapon. He stared at the painting, but the eyes didn’t move. After a few moments, Connor muttered to himself to calm his wildly pounding heart and continued on, his pace much quicker now than it had been mere moments ago.

“Grandpa?” he yelled again, but this time he received an answer.

“I’m in the sitting room, Connor.”

His grandfather’s voice was still as poisonous as it had been when Connor was a child, but for once, he was glad to hear it; he had been beginning to wonder if he would not find his grandfather’s corpse in the derelict house.

Connor opened the door to the sitting room, surprised that he still remembered its location, even after ten years.

The living room was just as worn-down as the other facets of the house, though it still managed to retain some of its former glory. An old moose head towered over the fireplace that was now black from years of soot, though it had once been a distinguished cherry red; a bearskin rug was thrown in front of the warming flames and Connor could not help but notice that the eyes had been removed from the bear’s head. He gulped before turning his attention to the back of a large, throne-like chair that rested just behind the bear rug. The chair had been red at one time too, but had faded to a distant pink. Connor approached the chair, slowly. As he drew closer, his grandfather began to speak.

“I knew it would be you who would find me, Connor. Your mother and I never got along. It was always you I had the best connection with.”

Connor longed to tell the man that he was delusional, but he couldn’t find the words; as always happened, he lost his voice around his grandfather’s demanding presence. His grandfather continued, as if he was talking to himself more than to his grandson.

“You were always the inquisitive one, just like your father. I’m guessing you found his collection of things in the attic?”

Connor stopped, only mere inches from the chair. His heart pounded in his ears.

“How—How did you know about that?”

His grandfather laughed mildly. Connor could just make out his grandfather’s shadow painted on the bear-skin rug. The shadow waved nonchalantly, dismissing his question with a simple flourish of his hand.

“If I recall correctly, your father put a gaming system in that box. Piece of junk that thing was, but he insisted on keeping it. He said some of the parts were still good and that he could use them for other things. Tell me, have you put them to use?”

Connor nodded, forgetting for a moment that his grandfather could not see him.

“Connor?”

“Yes, sir. I used some of the parts to repair some of my sister’s toys and used some of the chips to build a small computer for a science project a few years back.”

“Hmm,” Was all his grandfather said.

Connor was finally beside the chair and saw that the house had not been the only thing to lose its former dignity. His grandfather’s proud—if somewhat snobbish—stature had fallen and been replaced with a hunched back. His face was gaunt and thin, as if he had not been eating enough. There were bags under his eyes.

“I found a picture as well.” Connor said, hating himself for finding confidence in his grandfather’s wretched state. “It’s of you and him, outside this house. But I found something written on the back of it—”

But before he could continue, his grandfather had jolted out of his chair. Shoving his grandson out of the way, he ran towards the door, his face scared, his eyes wide.

“NO!” he shouted over his shoulder. “It cannot be! He told me he destroyed it, burned it in the fire before you were even thought of! YOU LIE!”

Connor ran after his grandfather, chasing him up a flight of creaking stairs, through a narrow hallway that was dotted with broken statues that reminded him of pictures he had seen of ancient Rome, and finally out onto a failing balcony.

Connor stopped in the doorway, his eyes wide. The balcony was not structurally sound, he knew, yet there was his grandfather out in the middle of it, steadily making his way to the railing.

To the railing.

Connor’s heart caught in his throat.

“Don’t you do it!” he yelled, as his grandfather precariously climbed on top of the railing and turned his back to Connor.

“I can’t go on like this.” His grandfather told him meekly. “I cannot live with what I have done.”

“You aren’t going to jump!” Connor said, determined. “I won’t let you!”

His grandfather merely smiled and for an instant, Connor saw his father’s slight smirk. So that was where he had gotten it from.

Connor leapt forward just as his grandfather took a step off of the balcony and fell. Connor managed to grab him around the waist through the bottom rungs of the railing, but could not pull him up: Connor may have been strong for a sixteen year old boy, but he was still not strong enough to pull his grandfather back to safety. Connor looked around the balcony wildly, trying to find something within reach that could give just enough leverage to save his grandfather.

“Let me go, Connor!” his grandfather yelled, his steely eyes wild and burning from the madness within.

“No!” Connor yelled back. “You are the only one who can help me make this right!”

A small glimmer of hope lit his grandfather’s eyes.

“Make it right?” he repeated in a small voice.

“Yes!” Connor said. “Look, I don’t know what happened, but my dad deserves the truth! Something happened and until I find out what it is, he will never rest! We couldn’t free him in life, Grandpa—but maybe we can free him in death.”

His grandfather mumbled something that Connor couldn’t hear.

“What?”

“Raped!” his grandfather screamed. Connor’s brain began to spin. “He was raped.”

“And you knew?” Connor asked, his voice growing quiet.

“Of course I knew.” Grandpa sobbed. “Did it to all of us, didn’t he? He took something of ours, or threatened to take it, if we didn’t keep our mouths shut. And then he would—”

“Then he would what?” Connor yelled, but he already had his answer.

Rape.

The word haunted Connor that night as he sat against his bed, spinning his father’s notebook between his hands. His mother and sisters were downstairs, fawning over Grandpa, and every now and then snippets of their conversation would float back up to him.

“Thank God, Connor decided to visit you—”

“If the neighbors hadn’t have seen and came to help, I would hate to think what might have—”

“Why did you try to jump, Grandpa?”

Why didn’t you do anything to save my father? Connor thought bitterly. Why did you leave him to his fate?

And then suddenly, bright and sudden as lightning, his grandfather’s voice echoed back to him—

“Did it to all of us, didn’t he?”

His whole father’s side of the family…raped. But Connor had a hard time believing it was the act of one man. The guy would have to be immortal to be able to do any of that, most of Connor’s relatives were old as dirt.

Connor stopped spinning his father’s notebook and leapt to his feet. He needed help and he needed help fast. If this was more than one person acting against his family, they could easily come and hurt his mother or his sisters or—

Or him.

Chapter Two

~Romeo’s Entanglement with Kryptonite~

“Come on, Cindy, you have to help me!” Connor pleaded.

Cindy looked at him and smiled indulgently. She raised her hand to pick some spare lint off of his shirt, and Connor felt himself trembling under her slight touch.

“You know what you should be focusing on?” Cindy asked lightheartedly, attempting to make eye contact with Connor, who could only blush and look at the rows of bookcases that they stood between.

“What’s that?” Connor asked, though he felt he already knew the answer.

“Finals, of course!” Cindy laughed.

“Finals can wait!” Connor said, rolling his eyes. “This is really important, Cind. You’ve gotta help me out here.”

“More important than finals?” Cindy placed a finger to her chin and tapped it repeatedly. “This wouldn’t involve a girl, would it?”

“What? No!” Connor said hurriedly. He wanted to tell her that the only girl he had ever liked was standing right in front of him, teasing him. You have no idea, Cind. He thought to himself, Every time I see your blonde hair and that blue hoodie that you always wear, it’s impossible for me not to smile.

“Hello? Earth to Connor!”

“Huh?”

Cindy laughed, pleased that she had startled Connor enough to force him to make eye contact. Connor felt himself staring into the deep blue pools of her eyes; clearing his throat, he turned away.

“Aren’t you going to answer my question?”

“What was it? I…I didn’t hear you.” Connor admitted, his ears burning red.

“What is more important than finals that you need my help with?”

“It’s my dad.” Connor muttered. He looked up in time to see Cindy’s entire bubbly mood shatter on the library floor.

“What about him, Connor?” she whispered.

“I found…I found this notebook of his.” Connor said, so quietly that Cindy had to lean in to hear him. Her blonde hair touched his shoulder and Connor felt himself trembling again.

“Do you want me to read it with you?” Cindy asked softly.

Nodding was the only answer Connor could give.

*

My brain is on fire,

My soul fodder to the flames that consume me,

We are the walking dead.

I have watched as their souls fled them,

Their eyes turned from a lively green to a deathly gray,

And the monster grows scared that my own have yet to change.

He works harder at his torture,

Bound and determined to break me,

But true love’s hand heals the wounds he inflicts.

Her eyes are pale blue diamonds beneath the setting sun,

Her hair fiery as the Angel’s Torch,

Her embrace as soothing as the ocean’s gentle gaze.

Because of her angel wings that shelter me,

He cannot take my soul,

And though he harms and threatens me,

He cannot stop my journey home.

*

“He was really hurt, wasn’t he?” Cindy asked quietly, her legs curled up beneath her, her head leaning in towards Connor’s shoulder.

They were sitting beneath an old but proud Weeping Willow besides the banks of the river. Crickets chirped sleepily around them. As day had turned into dusk, fireflies had come out of their hiding places, lazily circling the couple as they read. Cindy absentmindedly reached her hand out to catch one and her face lit up when one came to rest on her ring finger.

Connor didn’t want to ruin the beauty of the moment, so he didn’t answer her, choosing to stare up at the slowly appearing stars instead. He felt Cindy looking at him and knew he wouldn’t be able to avoid her gaze for long. Sighing inwardly, he turned to look at her.

They just sat that way for a while, as if they were trying to telepathically communicate some secret to the other. Finally, Cindy broke their stare and rested her head on Connor’s shoulder. A firefly lit up right in front of her nose and Connor couldn’t help but smile.

The frogs had begun croaking their evening tune before Cindy got the courage to break the silence.

“Do you know why he was hurting, Connor?” Cindy asked quietly. “Do you think he was being…beaten?”

She held her breath, worried that she had offended him somehow. Connor gently rested his head on hers for a moment before bringing it back up to look at the stars. He knew he had to tell her. He couldn’t go through this alone.

“He was raped.” Connor said slowly; Cindy gasped beside him, but did not say a word. “My grandpa told me that they all had been. I think he thinks that it was all by the same guy, but that doesn’t make any sense, he’d have to be a billion years old to touch everyone in my family—”

“Maybe your grandpa didn’t mean everyone in your family.” Cindy said quietly. “Maybe he meant the immediate family.”

“So just him, Grandma, my aunts and uncle, and Dad?” Connor said thoughtfully.

“Just?” Cindy repeated faintly. “That’s a lot of people, Connor. We’re dealing with a serial rapist here.”

They fell into an uncomfortable silence.

“I guess I’m just scared.” Connor admitted; his eyes began to water with emotion, but he held it back.

“What are you afraid of?” Cindy asked, nestled into the space between his neck and his shoulder. She looked up at him and saw the way his eyes were misting over.

“What if he comes for my sisters or my mother?” Connor muttered. “What would I do if I found that he was doing that to Sherrie or Megan or Mom? Would I just turn the other way, like Grandpa did? Would I just let it happen?”

“You wouldn’t.” Cindy said firmly. “You are a man of action, Connor. When your grandpa tried to commit suicide, you didn’t just sit there and watch it happen. You did something. It would be the same with your mom and sisters. You wouldn’t be able to just let it happen. You would save them.”

Connor looked up one last time at the stars, finally allowing the tears he had been holding in to fall. Cindy didn’t know he was crying until one of his tears splashed onto her nose. Blinking, she moved off of his shoulder and looked at him. His tears fell like rain down his cheeks. She gently brushed them away with her finger before wrapping both arms around him and rocking him while he silently grieved into her embrace.

*

“In our last section this year, we will be putting everything we have learned so far to good use. In this particular brand of algebra, we will be solving difficult but gratifying…”

Cindy glanced over at Connor, who was absentmindedly doodling on his notebook while their math teacher droned on about some sort of math that she actually wasn’t familiar with. She knew she should be listening and taking copious amounts of notes, but she was worried about Connor. He was using his dark brown hair to cover his face; she couldn’t even see the familiar glint of his hooped earring, which, she remembered with a smile, he had insisted on getting after he got into a heavy phase about pirates and sailors.

He was like a stranger to her.

She looked down at her own paper and found, to her surprise, a completely accurate array of notes describing Connor’s behavior and a list of things she could do to solve whatever problem he was facing. At the top of her list of solutions was one word, which she had run over with her pencil several times, making it bolder than anything else she had written:

Justice.

Cindy bit her lip. While justice would be nice, it would be incredibly difficult. She scanned the rest of her list, desperate to find something that would temporarily lift his mood.

And there it was, at the bottom of the list, written in letters so small that Cindy could barely read it. Kiss him.

Well, Cindy thought in resignation, that would cheer up anybody. But I think that is more what I want than what would actually help.

And without looking at it twice, Cindy crossed it off of her list.

“…bearing that in mind, could someone come up here and attempt to solve the problem? Remember, as long as you follow the method I showed you, you should be able to solve it effectively. No volunteers? Shocker. Let’s see here…what about you, Connor? Want to give it a shot?”

Connor’s head shot up from his doodles. Cindy watched as he looked at the problem, his eyes glazing over within seconds.

“I…I don’t think I can, Mrs. Sarkozy.”

“Oh come on, Connor.” Mrs. Sarkozy said, flashing him a winning smile. “You don’t know until you try.”

Connor sighed and clambered out of his seat, but stopped halfway to the white board. His face had gone from a healthy pink to a ghostly white.

“I…I can’t!” Connor managed. He ran out of the room, leaving a bewildered Sarkozy and scandalized classmates behind.

He shot down the hallway as fast as he could, but he knew that wasn’t going to be fast enough. His grandfather had flashed before his eyes, his face wild, hanging from the balcony, so willing to end it all…

Connor fell to his knees in the middle of the hallway, his hands gripping his head tightly. The few stragglers who had snuck out of class or were currently in possession of hall passes just walked around him, uncaring and unknowing of the things flashing through his mind.

“Don’t you do it!” Connor yelled. “Don’t jump!”

His grandfather only looked back at him and waved, before stepping off of the balcony.

But this time, Connor didn’t jump and catch him. For some reason, he was rooted to the spot, worried hands gripping his shoulders tightly, trying to pull him into a foreign embrace—

“Grandpa!” Connor yelled, attempting to pull away from the hands, punching and kicking whoever it was that owned them.

“Connor, stop!” Cindy cried. “It’s not real! You’re hurting me, Connor!”

It was Cindy’s voice that brought him back. He didn’t recognize the hallway he was in, was scared of the strange but oddly familiar voices that surrounded him. The only one he remembered was Cindy. He turned back to look at her and then lost it, sobbing like a little bitch in front of an entire hallway full of people.

In his fervor to break free from her grasp, he had accidentally broken her nose. Blood was trailing down her face and dripping onto the carpet. She paid no attention to it though, instead choosing to pull Connor into a tight embrace.

“I’m so sorry.” Connor sobbed into her chest. “I’m so sorry.”

*

“So it’s sort of like a suspension, but it really isn’t.” Connor tried to explain to his mother as his grandfather dressed the wounds he had given to Cindy.

“So, they said you couldn’t come to school for a week to try to get your feelings of trauma under control?” His mother huffed, about to rant against the school system; but she caught Connor’s eye and her face softened.

“Just go on up to your room and rest, sweetie.” She said, cupping Connor’s face in her hand. “I’ll send Cindy up once we get her all cleaned up.”

“Don’t.” Connor said sullenly. “I’ll just hurt her again.”

“Connor, don’t be silly, you were going through a traumatic experience, that doesn’t count—”

“Look at her!” Connor yelled; his mother jumped, startled at his tone. “I broke her fucking nose, Mom! Look at her and tell me it doesn’t count, that she’s not still hurt—”

“—Honey, there’s no denying the girl’s hurt, but it’s not your f—”

“Don’t sit here and tell me it’s not my fault! I was the one who hurt her, I was the one who broke her, I’m the reason she’s in pain right now! It IS my fault!”

“Connor, just try to calm down—”

“I’ve spent years and years of my life, promising myself that I would never do anything to hurt her! And what do I do? I BREAK HER MOTHERFUCKING NOSE!”

“Connor, watch your language! If you can’t calm down, then go up to your room! I can’t deal with this right now!”

Connor opened his mouth to argue more, to scream, and shout, and swear like there was no tomorrow—but nothing but dry, raking sobs came out. He danced around his mother and ran up the stairs, slamming the door behind him. He collapsed onto his bed, gripping the sheets tightly as he allowed himself to cry.

Wuss. He thought scathingly. Motherfucking piece of shit coward. You’re crying like a little spoiled bitch, man the fuck up!

But he couldn’t. He had hurt Cindy, accidental or not. As much as it pained him to admit it to himself, he couldn’t see her or be near her anymore. What if he had another episode and he hit her again? He couldn’t bear the thought.

His mind flashed to the other night, when Cindy was resting her head on his shoulder, a gentle breeze cooling them as they watched the fireflies dance around them. He smiled slightly. There. Now the crying had stopped. All he had to do was think about that night and he would be just fine. He sniffed and looked up in time to see Cindy entering his room hesitantly, her eyes roving over the walls. For a second, her gaze lingered on his poster of Metallica, and a smile lit up her face.

“I thought I told Mom not to let you up here.” Connor growled, instantly hating himself for the tone he was taking with her.

“I don’t care what you or your mom says; I fully plan on talking to you.” Cindy said firmly. She moved to Connor’s bed and sat by his side. Connor hid his face in the sheets.

They were silent for a few moments before Cindy broke the silence.

“Mortimer.”

“What?” Connor lifted his face out of his sheets and looked at her.

“That’s where your grandpa said it happened. Mortimer Castle. I thought we could go check it out. It’s not like you have to worry about finals now, anyways. You’ve been officially excused from them.”

“Mortimer Castle,” Connor repeated, sitting up in his bed. “That sounds really familiar.”

He struggled to get up off of his bed; Cindy got to her feet and pushed him back down. Connor’s heart went berserk as her face hovered inches above his own, her hand firm but soft on his stomach.

“I’ll Google it.” She said, smiling. “You need to get your rest.”

Connor’s breath caught as he stared up at her. There was something heavy under his back, but he ignored it as he moved his hand to cover hers. He felt her hand freeze beneath his.

“Oh no, you don’t.” Cindy hissed playfully, moving her hand out from under his. “You haven’t even bought me dinner yet. And until then, you are absolutely not allowed to hold my hand.”

“Well, a guy can try.” He muttered; he let loose a reluctant smirk when Cindy laughed and moved towards his computer.

“Let’s see where you’ve heard of Mortimer Castle before.” Cindy mumbled as she began typing. Connor watched from his bed as his computer screen lit up with a list of possible results. His back began to tingle with pain and he sat up to see his father’s notebook beneath him. He tossed it beside him and resumed watching Cindy.

“Here we go!” Cindy said triumphantly. “Mortimer Castle is now abandoned, but in its heyday it was a thriving amusement park!” She turned around to look at Connor, her eyes shining.

“We could sneak in tonight,” she said excitedly. “I bet we could find some clues as to who did this to your family. We could have all the evidence we need by tomorrow morning.”

Connor grinned. Maybe he could free his father after all.

*

Shawn ran as fast as he could, tears streaming down his face. He had thought it was over, that that monster was never going to touch him again.

He had been wrong.

The monster had disappeared for a number of years and in those years, Shawn had gotten married to Sheila and they had started a family together. Shawn darted around a corner as his tormentor pursued him, catching up steadily. For crying out loud, they had just had Megan! And Sherrie was only two years old, and Connor had celebrated his sixth birthday just the other day…They were so happy. Why couldn’t the demon let him keep it that way?

Shawn yelled in surprise when the claw of the beast wrapped itself around his arm. He tried to scream, to call out for help, but found he could not; he had not been fast enough.

His last thought was of Connor, and how his face had lit up, ecstatic, when he had unwrapped the play tool set his father had bought him.

“This is so cool!” Connor had shrieked with delight, holding the toolbox up as high as he could while his mother snapped a picture, “now I can fix the car with you, Dad!”

I’m so sorry, Shawn thought bitterly, his throat slit. He hit the ground and watched in disbelief as his killer walked away, serene.

Chapter Three

~Mortimer Castle~

Sherrie, Megan, and the rest of Connor’s family were fast asleep as Connor quietly packed a bag for his trip to a broken down amusement park.

He put everything in that bag that he could think of: flashlights, batteries, first aid kit, water bottle, Ziploc bags, walkie-talkies…and a change of black clothes. Not for himself, but for Cindy, who would undoubtedly dress to the nines even though what they were about to do was highly illegal. Sighing inwardly, he cautiously made his way down the stairs and out into the night.

Cindy was waiting for him by the railroad tracks that stood directly in front of the amusement park. A wave of relief washed over him at the sight of her; he would never admit it, but he never would have been brave enough to do this alone.

To his great surprise, she was dressed all in black and had not worried about fashion, although she had painted black lines under her eyes.

“Hey we’re breaking into a place anyway, why not go the whole nine yards?” she said defensively. Connor just rolled his eyes.

“Let’s get this over with.” Connor muttered, and the two carefully scaled the fence surrounding the amusement park. It took them twenty minutes to get over that first obstacle, mostly because Cindy got all the way to the top before looking down and getting scared. She refused to move from the top of the fence, and Connor had to climb back up, persuade her to climb onto his back, and then climb back down with Cindy gripping his neck so hard that he was gasping for breath. He glared at her when they reached the bottom. She giggled, patted his cheek, and then moved past him, her eyes scanning the ground for anything that would remotely resemble a clue.

“We should look in the buildings.” Cindy said after a while. “Let’s pray to God we don’t have to go into the House of Mirrors.”

“Don’t be scared.” Connor said soothingly. “I’ll tell you what, let’s check there first. We’ll go together, alright? Nothing spooky, just you and me. Okay?”

Cindy grabbed Connor’s arm and nodded.

They made their way silently towards the funhouse, which was completely rounded and painted grandly in violent shades of red, blue, and gold. Cindy squeezed Connor’s arm when they entered. Connor put his hand over hers and squeezed her back.

There were mirrors of all kinds in there; short ones, tall ones, fat ones, and obscenely skinny ones. There were some that bulged in the middle and others that resembled daintily made perfume bottles. Cindy refused to look at them, choosing instead to bury her head in Connor’s side.

“It’s going to be okay, Cind.” Connor said, patting her head. “It’s going to be okay.”

Cindy whimpered in reply.

Connor looked around, his own gaze staring back at him. He shivered from the cold and turned to look at one of the mirrors that were directly in front of him.

His grandfather stared back.

Connor yelled out in surprise; startled, Cindy moved behind him. At first, he thought Cindy was going to use him as a shield, but then he felt her back press against him. He glanced back at her and saw that she was pointing a gun at all the mirrors in turn. A gun. Dammit. He knew he had forgotten something.

“Why are you so afraid of me, Connor?” his grandfather hissed.

“Connor? What did you see?” Cindy asked him, her muscles tense against his.

“It’s not real.” Connor muttered, as his grandfather’s reflection disappeared and was replaced with a vision of the balcony.

“Connor? What is going on?”

His grandfather ran out onto the balcony; without thinking, Connor ran towards him, determined to save him again, to make sure he didn’t jump.

“Connor! You’re having an episode! You need to stop!” Cindy yelled, but her voice did not break the spell that Connor’s own mind had cast on him. She tried to run after him, but soon lost him in the maze of mirrors.

“CONNOR!” she screamed.

There was no answer.

*

“You can’t catch me, Connor!” his grandfather laughed and ran into another mirror, disappearing and leaving Connor alone, surrounded by a circle of mirrors. He blinked. The spell was broken. He hadn’t hurt anybody! Elated, Connor turned to tell Cindy the news.

But she wasn’t there.

“Cindy?” Connor said quietly, his voice quivering. There was no answer.

“I’m afraid Cindy won’t be joining us for this little jaunt, my dear boy.” A new voice, deep with malice, said.

Connor whirled around, but there was nobody there. He looked at the mirrors, looked away again for the source of the voice, and then did a double-take. His reflection was missing from the mirrors.

“I didn’t have an episode.” Connor said in horror. “You video-taped my grandfather and played them on the mirrors!”

“Well, yes and no.” The voice said. “I did record your grandfather. He was more than willing to do it too, in exchange for your life. I told him I was going to kill you if he didn’t.”

Connor’s blood turned to ice. He cursed himself for not thinking to bring a gun. He had absolutely nothing to defend himself with.

“And as for the recording being played ‘on the mirrors’, I’m afraid you’re wrong.” The voice continued. “Those aren’t mirrors, my dear boy, but television screens.”

“How come Cindy didn’t hear them?” Connor asked, his jaw clenched.

“A rather interesting invention of mine is the reason behind that.” The voice chuckled. Connor spun around, but again there was nothing behind him.

“You see, I developed a serum that would disable the eardrums for two hours. While your little lady friend was perched on the fence, I used a dart gun to inject it into her. Luckily, it fell out almost immediately after contact, so your friend thought she had just scraped herself against the top of the fence. Also, it doesn’t set in immediately, which allowed enough time to pass to make you assume that she could hear you and everything around you, and that if she didn’t, it was because you were having an episode. Ingenious, really.”

“So, it’s just you, then.” Connor said, giving up on finding the voice and instead retracing his steps back to Cindy.

“Just me that molested your grandfather, that bitch of a wife of his, your father, and two of your aunts? Yes, that was me. I told your grandfather that there was going to be hell to pay if he didn’t repay his debts to me. And he didn’t try to rectify the situation. I suggest you blame your problems on him.”

“What debts? Why did he owe you?”

The voice sighed in faux exhaustion.

“I hate to talk of such boring matters, Connor. I would much rather talk about why it is you that I decided to make my next pet, and not your little sisters or your mother.”

Connor opened his mouth to speak, but stopped when a screeching sound reached his ears. Suddenly scared, he turned around to see one of the screens lifting up towards the ceiling. Behind the screen stood the demon that had so haunted his father’s poems and journal entries.

“Are you afraid, boy?” the demon hissed, its glowing yellow eyes regarding him with an emotion that made Connor uncomfortably aware of how tight-fitting his black hoodie was. He shrunk away from the eyes, horror rising in his throat as the monster extended one red, scaly hand and reached for him.

“Y-yes.” Connor said, instantly regretting admitting it. The demon laughed and walked right up to him. Connor stood, frozen, as the monster circled around him, its scaly fingers gently tracing the bones of his collar, his face, and the small of his back.

“Your father always told me he was scared of me too.” It sneered. “And yet, I never touched his soul. I watched your grandfather, aunts, and grandmother turn from green-eyed hippies to gray-eyed people who needed material wealth to cope with the horrors I had inflicted upon them. But your father never strayed. I won in the end of course; killing your father was the easiest thing I’ve ever done.”

Rage filled Connor, but common sense told him not to attack the beast. It might pounce on him sooner if he did, reacting to his resistance.

“Why me, then?” Connor asked angrily. “Why are you coming after me?”

“Because, my dear boy, you have finally reached the age where you have something that you cannot afford to lose.”

“If you touch my family, I will rip you to pieces.” Connor snarled.

The demon shook his head and laughed.

“You’ve already lost family; it’s all too obvious that you would learn to live without them. But there is one person that you would never want to see get hurt.”

*

Cindy made her way steadily through the maze, her ears ringing in the silence. She thought, at one point, that she had seen a glimpse of Connor’s reflection, but when she looked again, it wasn’t there. She was about to cry with frustration. Where could that boy be?

She tried to call for him, but her voice wasn’t working. She was just too terrified to speak, she reasoned.

“You promise you won’t hurt her?” a small voice sounded. Cindy whirled towards it and saw the heel of Connor’s shoe. Her ears ringing intensely, she hid behind a wall of mirrors and chanced a look around them.

Connor was standing in the middle of a circle of mirrors, his hands tugging at his hoodie zipper as he attempted to pull it off. But it kept getting stuck on a spare thread and Connor’s fingers were trembling too much to do it on his own.

“Puny human.” A voice said, and Cindy had to bite back a gasp as the demon stepped into her range of vision. She quickly moved out of sight, her grip on the gun tightening. An actual demon! This was not what Cindy had expected. Her senses rejected what she was seeing. She took a deep breath and peeked around the corner again.

The demon had succeeded in unzipping Connor’s hoodie and was now stripping it off of him, leaving Connor in a powder blue T-shirt with the word FREEDOM spelled across it in white, fanciful letters. Connor gripped his arms as goosebumps spread across their surface. He shivered from more than the cold.

The demon moved behind Connor and caressed his neck with his right hand, while his left arm encircled Connor’s waist. Connor stood there like a limp ragdoll.

Come on, Connor, fight! Cindy thought desperately. Why are you just letting him do this?

And then, the answer became clear as Cindy’s gaze inadvertently moved to the screens. She had to clap a hand over her mouth to keep herself from gasping out loud.

The screens showed her resting on Connor’s shoulder beneath the willow tree, smiling as a firefly glowed on her fingertip. Connor was glancing down at her and she could make out a slight smile on his face.

His father allowed it to happen to him to protect his family, Cindy thought with a rather morbid sense of awe, and now Connor is going to allow it to happen to protect…me.

She scrutinized the demon in front of her as she silently cocked her gun. She was not going to let Connor go through with this. She just had to figure out a weak spot on the disgusting creature and then she would shoot it dead.

Her eyes moved quickly over its back and followed its rather odd spine until she saw the zipper and then switched her gaze to its shoulders, before she realized exactly what it was that she saw.

A zipper.

Cindy silently cursed. Of course it wasn’t a real demon, how could she have been so stupid? At least she knew the thing was human. And, she thought as a wicked smile grew on her face, she knew where humans’ weak spots were. All she had to do was wait for the man/demon/beast thing to move away from Connor and then she could take her shot.

The demon lifted Connor’s face up to meet his, the back of Connor’s head resting uncomfortably against its collarbones. Connor winced at the brightness of its eyes and forced his head away. When the demon went to grab him again, Connor pushed his arm away and stomped on the beast’s foot. The thing howled with pain as Connor moved away from it, his eyes wide.

Cindy seized her chance.

With a deafening blast, the bullet shot out of the gun and buried itself in the back of the demon’s neck, severing its spinal cord. The man in the costume fell, dead before he hit the ground. Connor yelled out in surprise before turning to see Cindy, both of her hands on the gun, the barrel smoking from its most recent kill.

“Cindy?” Connor whispered. A pool of blood was beginning to soak the floor.

Cindy turned to meet his gaze, a sense of relief washing through her.

“Oh fuck, I’m sorry.” Connor said suddenly. “I forgot you can’t hear me.”

“What are you talking about, Connor?” Cindy asked, puzzled. “I can hear you just fine.”

“But the demon—he said—”

“Why is it,” Cindy began, moving towards Connor with a slight smile playing on her lips, “that guys like you always trust the bad guy? You do know they are capable of lying, don’t you?”

Connor lowered his gaze and blushed before turning towards the dead body.

“I really didn’t think that demons actually existed.” He said quietly.

“They don’t.” Cindy said, raising an eyebrow. “There’s a zipper on this guy’s back. It was a costume.”

Slowly, she made her way to the costume and with shaking hands, unzipped it.

*

“He’s part of the family too!” Shawn yelled, as Remington sat in front of the fireplace, his eyes glazed over with tears and pain. Connor’s grandfather scoffed.

“That is my brother’s bastard child, not mine.” He jeered. “I’ll have nothing to do with it.”

*

“Uncle Remington?” Connor asked in disbelief, as he looked into the man’s gray but dead eyes.

“There’s no way.” Cindy muttered, her hand over her chest. “What kind of man would do this to his own family?”

*

“Don’t listen to him, Remington.” Shawn said, his hand patting Remington’s shoulder. “You will always be a part of my family. Maybe not his,”—he shot a disparaging look back at his father—“but definitely part of mine.”

“Thanks, Shawn.” Remington muttered. With one last glance, Shawn left his cousin to his own thoughts.

Five years later, Remington stood in front of Connor’s grandfather by that same fireplace.

“I’m eighteen now, you can’t keep my inheritance from me!” Remington yelled. “That money was my father’s, he willed it to me! You can’t just take it away!”

“You are a bastard child,” Connor’s grandfather sneered. “I do not care what the law may say, you do not deserve the money he left you!”

*

“He said my grandfather owed him some sort of debt,” Connor said with wide eyes. “He said that that’s why he did it.”

“We have to call the police.” Cindy said, taking Connor’s hand. “We have to tell them what happened.”

*

There was a demon costume in his father’s old things. Curious, Remington reached for it. What interested him the most were the glowing eyes. Smiling slightly, Remington remembered how his father would greet trick-or-treaters every Halloween in that costume. When they ran away screaming, he would laugh, close the door, and split the candy between himself and Remington.

Before he knew what he was doing, Remington had climbed into the outfit and zipped himself in. He was surprised at how well he could breathe inside it, even with the odd device that sat in front of his mouth that altered his voice whenever he spoke into it. It fit him like a second skin. And in that moment, the fate of everyone in his family was sealed. Remington had come up with a plan for revenge.

*

They buried Remington far away from the rest of Connor’s family, in a cemetery that had been filled with thieves and tyrants. Connor didn’t attend the funeral, but his mother did. She said that she wanted to make sure that motherfucker stayed in the ground after what he had done to her husband and had almost done to her son.

Cindy had some necessary court dates of course, but no jury in their right minds would ever have found her guilty. She was declared innocent of first-degree murder and was called a national hero—as was Connor, which was a surprise to him. He had thought of himself as the victim or as much of the monster as his uncle had been.

But whenever he tried to explain that notion to Cindy, she would laugh and kiss him.

“You know,” she would tell him. “You’re so delusional, that it’s kind of cute.”

Connor would spend the rest of his life wondering what would have happened to him if Cindy hadn’t have been there to cover him. He would also spend the rest of his life wondering how demented a man would have to be, to decide to rape his own family simply because he didn’t get his inheritance. It didn’t make any sense to anyone, nor did Connor wish it did; because to understand that line of logic meant that some sort of similar thought process existed between him and his uncle and Connor never wanted to be anything like that man.

Fin