Born Evil

  BORN EVIL

  JULIA DEREK

  ADRENALINE BOOKS

  Copyright © 2018 by Julia Derek

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover design by The Cover Collection

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  For the person in my life who I hope will come to his senses soon.

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  Also by Julia Derek

  1

  Macy, the cat, was already dead by the time I could tell what was going on inside the living room. Shane had already managed to kill the poor animal. My first instinct had been to run inside the country house and make my twelve-year-old son stop stabbing Macy when I spotted them through the windows. But when I realized that the cat was partially decapitated, I stayed put on the lawn outside; it was too late. No matter what I did, sweet Macy would never purr again.

  Every single one of her nine lives had been spent.

  Shane himself was so fixated on what he had done, the mess he had created before him on the pale wooden floor, that he didn’t notice me standing right outside the living-room windows and gazing inside. Only a few yards separated us, yet it felt like I was looking into a separate universe, light years away. At least for part of me. The other part wasn’t as shocked.

  Deep inside I had always feared something like this would happen eventually.

  I don’t know how long I remained outside in the darkness, staring at all the blood around the furry body on the living-room floor. It looked black and thick like oil against the blond floorboards. It could have been for just a second or it could have been for several. All I know is that, at some point, I bent over and threw up on the lawn. Or tried to throw up, as much didn’t come out of me. Mostly, I heaved quietly. It had been hours since I’d eaten anything but that apple on my way over to Beth’s.

  Once I finished retching, I forced myself back up into an upright position. The scene in the living room right before me had changed. Instead of stabbing a bread knife over and over into the poor cat, my son was now on his knees, busy cleaning up the mess on the floor. He had brought a bucket of water, a spray bottle of Clorox All Purpose Cleaner, and a fresh roll of paper towels. It dawned on me that I should be grateful dusk had fallen nearly half an hour ago. It was so dark outside that it was extremely unlikely Shane had discovered he’d had an audience for his heinous deed. Even if he turned his head and glanced out at the small lawn, he wasn’t bound to see me standing in the middle of it. Even so, I moved away from that spot and leaned my back against the brown wooden wall of my parents’ one-story country house. I needed some time to pull myself together, figure out what to do.

  Calm down, Jennifer, I ordered myself. You freaking out about this won’t do anyone any good. Now you know for sure. Deal with it. He’s still your son. Remember, it can be fixed. The developments reversed. You’ll just have to try harder. Besides, it’s all your fault it’s happening anyway.

  I closed my eyes and wiped my mouth dry with the back of my hand, then licked my lips. I swallowed hard in a futile attempt to get rid of the bitter taste of bile, but it only made it worse. I took a few deep breaths to settle down and reminded myself that at least my son, bad or not, was alive, unlike Beth’s niece; she’d recently fallen to her death from a cliff. Beth was still in pieces about it, almost as much as her sister, the girl’s mother, which was why I had gone over to her house tonight. Tonight had been the four-month anniversary of Alice’s death, so she could use the company. Shane had wanted to keep playing video games, so I’d left him at home. He was old and mature enough to be alone for the evening. He could always call me and I was only a couple of miles away. It would be easier to console Beth without him around anyway.

  You’ll fix this, Jennifer, I kept telling myself. You fix everything. You’ll find a way to make him normal again. You have to. It’s your fault he’s this way. You should have protected him better. He doesn’t deserve spending his life in an institution.

  I needed to get away for a while so Shane could take care of what he had done. Hide all the traces. I instinctively knew that he was going to want to hide it one way or another, and for that to happen, I needed to give him time. I needed to give him several minutes, a couple of hours even. He wasn’t expecting me home until much later anyway. Barging into the house now would screw with his plan. His reckless, reckless plan.

  Recklessness. Another trademark of the psychopathic mind.

  I opened my eyes and suddenly noticed the faint sound of music in the air. In the immense stillness of the countryside where even the bush-crickets were quiet at the moment, it was almost jarring. Had it been there all along? I couldn’t be sure. Where did it come from? From my current vantage point, I could tell that the TV was on in the living room. I couldn’t see much, only that the screen was bright and what looked like people were dancing around on it. The music must come from the TV then.

  Feeling like a zombie, I walked over to where I’d parked my car, a red Honda Civic, about eight yards away. I couldn’t stay here. Halfway to the car, I froze; it had struck me that Shane must have heard me drive onto the gravel-covered driveway. He usually did. Fear shot through me, wrapping itself around my throat like a snake, which made it hard to breathe. Had he wanted me to witness him stabbing Macy to death? Oh God, he must have… Why else had he kept stabbing the cat in front of me? My heart punched against my ribs like an infuriated wild bird trapped in a small cage. Wait. I was overreacting. He probably hadn’t heard me. The TV was on in the living room, and he’d clearly jacked up the volume the way he always did when I wasn’t around to tell him to keep it down. If I concentrated hard, I could still hear the music. Yes, the loud sound must have drowned out the engine’s soft roaring. The stifling panic slowly uncurled itself from around my windpipe and I relaxed my shoulders.

  That meant he wouldn’t hear when I drove off either, I told myself and hurried over to the car. I snuck into the driver’s seat and tried to stick the key into the ignition. I fumbled and nearly dropped the keys, but at long last I managed to get the correct one inside the slot. Tossing a tentative glance at the dark country house several yards behind me, I turned the key and the engine came alive, rumbling steadily. Carefully, I pulled out of the uneven driveway and onto the dirt road and took off
. Thankfully, I could still make out the edges of every object around me, so I left the car lights unlit. I didn’t dare turn them on until I was further down the road where Shane wouldn’t be able to see me.

  Soon, even the house’s silhouette was no longer visible in the rearview mirror, so I switched on the lights. Pressing down the gas pedal, I picked up the pace now that I could see well. I knew I wouldn’t return for a while.

  I wouldn’t return until I had figured out how to deal with the fact that my son had finally turned into the psychopath I had feared him becoming for so long.

  2

  I can see the old Shane whenever I want to. All I need to do is close my eyes and focus a bit. It’s not hard at all. Old Shane is really very young Shane, because the sweet little boy I see in my mind’s eye is only three years old. It’s a three-year-old with a tousled head of blond hair so light it’s almost white, and round, red cheeks that everyone wants to pinch. There are freckles around the little nose and a front tooth has grown in slightly crooked, a fact displayed proudly each time he smiles. The teal-colored eyes are surrounded by long, dark lashes and gaze at you with that serious curiosity only children can pull off.

  Shane was adorable at that age, like a little angel.

  By age six, his hair had darkened and the crooked baby tooth was gone, an adult one about to take its place.

  It was in his sixth year that the unthinkable was revealed to me and his father, Peter. The unthinkable that we, being his parents, should have prevented from ever happening. As his mother, I felt especially responsible. I should have protected him from the abuse. I should have known, deep down in my gut, that having Peter’s big brother Tony babysit our child was a bad, bad idea. The guy wasn’t as squeaky clean and normal as he pretended to be. Anyone could see that. Besides, weren’t mothers supposed to have this sixth sense when it came to their children that helped shield them from all that’s evil in the world?

  Well, if that was so, I wasn’t one of those mothers. Which was particularly strange as I was definitely one of those people who were good at reading others. At least I was now. I suppose back then, several years earlier when I was in my twenties and less confident, I simply didn’t trust my talent enough. Sadly, there were still times that I didn’t.

  I suppose the fact that I myself was sexually abused when I was a little girl has something to do with it. By my seven-year-older brother, Nick. I haven’t told anyone about that, not even my own parents. What’s the point? It won’t change anything and my brother is dead now anyway. He got what he deserved in a bar brawl. Puny Nick was beaten to death by another, much bigger guy for behaving badly toward his girlfriend. The couple got away and no one has seen them since that fateful night. Yes, my mother and father don’t need to know the truth about Nick. It would only upset them.

  Neither Peter nor I realized that his sick brother had systematically abused our only child for over a year in the worst possible way. The harm had already been done when we found out. Shane had been put through unspeakable trauma at the hands of his uncle. I would discover later on that this trauma had likely unleashed the psychopathic tendencies Shane was born with. According to the mental health professionals I spoke with, little could be done to reverse those tendencies once they had been let out. Naturally, I never told these people why I had wanted to know about the mechanics of the mind. The day Peter and I were told of our child’s abnormal brain and genetic alleles, mere days after his third birthday, we’d promised each other that we would keep it a secret to the world. We had stumbled upon his psychopathically inclined brain after having it checked for damages after a minor concussion, using PET scanning.

  After all, the doctor had assured us that, as long as we kept showering Shane with love like we’d been doing since the day he was born, he would be fine. We had nothing to worry about. Shane also needed structure and good role models to develop into a functioning individual. Scientific studies had proven over and over that nurture was stronger than nature in cases like these.

  So, to squelch his mind’s criminal inclinations from the get-go, we loved our little boy more than ever and went out of our way to provide a stable environment. It seemed to work because he was generally high-spirited, fun and friendly, not to mention bright. An enviable child. I stayed home taking care of him, while Peter worked full-time as the in-house accountant for a hospital. Once a week we had date night, and that was when Tony babysat Shane.

  Given all the time I was around my son, I will never forgive myself for failing to put two and two together, never realizing exactly why he began acting out and becoming more boisterous. At the time, when Shane had turned five, Peter and I assumed he was going through a phase; even Shane’s pediatrician thought so. I had begun to write on a screenplay while Shane was in kindergarten, so I also saw less of him than before. I had always dreamed of becoming an actress, flirted with it as a career even, but then I got pregnant and had to give up those dreams. The bug never got out of me, though, and I loved play-acting whenever I got the chance. I was a big fan of method acting, which I was introduced to while taking classes at the Lee Strasberg Film & Theatre Institute. Method acting is when you become the character you play, emotionally as well as physically. Once, when Shane was four, I stayed in character for days while play-acting at home. When I realized just how much it confused my son and husband, I stopped and started writing instead, pretending to be different characters in my head only. Soon I began writing screenplays. It was a good substitute for the acting, a way for me to feel like I was still part of the glamorous world of Hollywood movies. Maybe one day I would sell a screenplay. I secretly hoped so.

  My project, a story about a transsexual boy growing up in a conservative home, absorbed me more than it should have, and I spent lots of time playing the different parts in my head. Like before, I fully immersed myself in the roles, becoming the person. Being in the head of each part helped me write better, more honestly. I thought I had reached the perfect middle ground making myself a happy, responsible stay-at-home mom, but clearly I hadn’t. I simply didn’t pay as much attention to my son’s well-being as I should have. I deeply regret having gone after screenwriting with such vigor. Naturally, the screenplay went into the trash after I found out what Shane had been through. Never again would I do something so stupid, so frivolous when it took focus away from my child. Every day I beat myself up about my selfish acts, dreaming about a way to turn back time, undo what I had done.

  Maybe if I had paid more attention, I would have caught on to what was happening to my son and been able to reverse the effects. The terrible effects that would eventually reveal themselves.

  As soon as we found out about Shane’s psychopathic inclinations, we decided not to have another child. We didn’t want to risk giving birth to another with the same genes. Somewhere down our family lines, these genes lingered, and we were determined to stop giving them life. It was enough that Shane had gotten them, and judging from his behavior, arguably, so had Tony.

  Instead of trying for another kid, we looked into adoption.

  Adopting a child was not as easy as we had thought, though. By the time Shane had turned six, we had yet to get another child in our house. We were much closer, but when we finally got the news that we would get a small daughter from Russia, another family tragedy happened.

  One so huge I have nightmares about it most days and am forced to take anti-anxiety pills to be able to fall sleep in the first place.

  Shortly after we learned that Peter’s brother had sexually abused our son—in a letter he had written after taking his own life by hanging himself—my husband died in an accident. Well, this is what everyone else in the world thought it was—an accident. Really, it was Shane’s fault that Peter died and I’m not sure it was actually an accident. Shane was the one who’d pulled the trigger on the handgun Peter kept in a safe box.

  To this day, I’m still wondering how Shane managed to get the safe box open, because I refuse to believe Peter had been so careless
he forgot to lock it.

  Just like I had caught my son coldly stabbing our cat to death, I had witnessed when he executed his own father by aiming a gun to his head. The Saturday it happened I had been about to enter the bedroom where Peter was taking a nap in the middle of the day. I didn’t understand what Shane was doing when he walked up to Peter lying on the bed and pointed the gun; it was too bright in the room from all the sunshine bursting through the big windows. By the time I realized he held my husband’s gun in his small hands, it was too late. Shane had already pulled the trigger.

  As if in a foggy nightmare, I ran up to him. The gun had fallen out of his hands and lay next to his small feet. He remained in place five feet away from his father, calmly regarding his deed. He had hit Peter in the forehead, bright red blood seeping out from the round wound. Judging from my husband’s reaction, his body jerking, then collapsing on the bed, I instinctively knew he was dead.

  But that hadn’t been the worst part. The worst part had been the smile that spread over my son’s lips and the words that came out of his mouth as I reached him.

  “I told Daddy to let me have the ice cream when I wanted it,” he stated in a flat voice. “If only he had listened, I wouldn’t have had to punish him.”

  Right before lunch earlier that day, Peter had ordered Shane to put back the chocolate ice cream he had gotten from the fridge. “You know you’re not supposed to eat ice cream before a meal, Shane. If you’re a good boy and finish your vegetables, you can have some ice cream for dessert. Okay?”

  Peter had ruffled Shane’s thick mop of hair and only gotten a pout in return.

  Numb with pain, I had let go of Shane and thrown myself over Peter, shaking him in a vain attempt to bring him back to life. Tears streaming down my face, I begged him to look at me and talk to me, tell me he was still with me. But nothing like that happened and eventually I was forced to stop and instead call the emergency services.