Shadows in Light
Chapter 21

I opened my eyes, and knew I was dreaming as I was stood in a room from my childhood. It was possibly the worst room I’ve ever been in. It was a large bare room with plain wooden floorboards, and empty walls that had cracks and plaster falling of it. The only furniture in the room was six bunk beds, each bunk with a storage trunk in front of it, and another against the wall.

I walked down the center of the room to look out of the window, as a car drove away up the long gravel driveway to the road. There was a little girl in the back window waving like mad as it left.

Great. A nightmare then.

“Maybe next time?” came a woman’s voice. I turned to see a vaguely woman figure stood there. I knew who she was, but I never remembered what she looked like anymore. I didn’t want to. She moved over to one of the beds and stripped it of sheets as I turned back to look out the window. I heard her leave, but I never looked.

“You never did move past this did you?”

I turned again to see myself sat on my trunk, looking at me. Except, it wasn’t me exactly, it was the me I’d seen in the mirrors. Black eyes and Shadow rolling around him.

The Demon Me then. Lovely. Now he was here too.

He gave me a smug little look, “I was always here.”

“Excuse me?”

“I was always here. Everywhere you were, I was. Just I was asleep. Not yet awakened I guess.”

“Great. Good for you.”

Somehow, he managed to give off the impression of rolling his eyes, even if I couldn’t see it.

“Grow up already.”

“There’s a sense of irony saying that while we’re in my childhood nightmare home. Why are you here? Why am I talking to you?”

“Because it’s time we talked properly. You’ve ignored me in the past, but now with all you’ve seen and experienced, we can talk properly.”

“Fun. Talk to the Evil Inside. Do you come with a t-shirt?”

“Always with the jokes. I’m as evil as you are.”

“I’ve got a Demon in me, and Angels are trying to kill me. Doesn’t that show the level of evil I’ve got inside? I died, and apparently dragged myself back here with a demon companion.”

The Demon me made a long-suffering noise, “I just said. I’ve ALWAYS been here. We were together from the very day of our birth. I’m not a companion, I’m part of you. Just couldn’t wake up till that first death.”

I tried to think of something to say to that one. But truthfully nothing came to me for the moment, I heard someone once say you can’t lie to yourself in your dreams.

He waved a hand around the room, “This place is always in your dreams. Why do you think that is?”

“Because it’s where I was unloved and unwanted again and again.” He cocked his head at me, so I clarified, “I lived here till I was almost seven years old, an abandoned child. I was here with so many children over the years, watching them all get adopted and taken away. Again, and again, I wasn’t picked. Guess I know why now.”

“You think I’m the cause of that? The Demon parts?”

“Why else?”

“Can’t comment on what I wasn’t awake for.”

“I watched all the children I grew up with get adopted, then the replacements. I was a couple of years older than everyone else by the end.”

“But you said you lived here till you were almost seven? You stopped at some point?”

I looked out the window again, the conversation changing bringing a smile to my lips. “Yeah. Mom and Dad adopted me at last and took me home with them.”

“Someone finally adopted you?”

“Well. Yes?”

“You sound like you love them very much.”

“Of course, I do. They are my parents, they might not have given birth to me, but they did adopt me, give me a home. It might not have been perfect, but it was mine.”

“There you go then, if I was stopping you being adopted, why were you finally adopted?”

I glowered at him. “Shut up.”

“Sorry, I’ll try not to use logic on you in future.” He got up and looked around the room. “This is where you’ve always lived your life, in this room. Alone. Part of you is always so focused on this idea that you were abandoned, and in doing so you’ve missed something?”

“What’s that then?”

He turned to look at me, “You were picked by a loving couple to be part of their family. They wanted you, they took you. They gave you clothes, food, a home. And most importantly, love.”

I blinked a little. “I... I might have missed that.”

“You think?”

“You don’t know what it’s like though. You apparently slept through it.”

“True, but I am still you, I can feel you suffer for it. And so, I suffer too. I’d rather we didn’t suffer it if we can help it”

“How do I know you’re speaking truth to me?”

“I am you, and you are one of those people who has never been able to lie to himself.”

I looked around the room, before moving to the window, Demon Me ending up next to me. There was a car coming down the driveway. It’s was my parent’s car.

I smiled.

“They were good parents to me, and I loved them so much. I knew they loved me.”

“Interesting.”

I glanced at him, “Why is it interesting?”

The Demon Me smiled. It matched my own. “You’re different from the other Demons we’ve met. John, Dave, Joseph, Malcolm. They don’t seem the type to be openly loving. They’re interested in self survive. And yet you clearly do. Is that a difference between us and them? Or are all Demons like them?”

I shrugged a little, watching out of the window as the car pulled up. “Who cares?”

The dream changed leaving me in my parents living room. Well, at this point it was just my mother’s living room. And my mother was sat there, frozen in time staring at me in utter horror. Her eyes were wide, and she was locked in a scream.

I shuddered and turned away, but the dream shifted, and she was back in front of me again.

“Why are we here?”

“It’s not her fault you know.” My Demon self was walking around her, at first looking at her, then looking around the room at all the pictures of me, my mother and father on the walls. Awards I got as a child on the shelves.

“She was so terrified of me.”

“Can you blame her? Her dead son whom she had buried was stood in front of her.” He moved around to look at her face. “She’s a Mortal. A human. She’s not got the capacity to account or accommodate for the sight in front of her.”

“I just wanted to go home.”

“I know. I tried to stop you, but you’re in charge. You came here and had to see this. Which I knew you would.”

“It’s not right, she lost dad and she lost me. She’s alone.”

The Demon me looked at me. His face seemed to show compassion as he did so, but at the same time a rigid unbreakable aspect to him as he spoke, “You’re not wrong, parents shouldn’t have to bury their children. But sometimes it happens. You can’t change that, and you can’t go back to her. You knew that when we left, that’s why you went across the country with train rides, hitch hiking, and walking. To bring us so far away in the end you couldn’t do it easily. And she’s not entirely alone, she has good friends, and they’ll still be with her. It’s the best you can do for now.”

I rubbed at my eyes tiredly, “I know. But I still want to know she’s well you know?”

The Demon Me nodded a little, moving over to run his eyes over my awards and what not. “She probably doesn’t remember this. You know, that right?”

“She wouldn’t?” I felt some relief at that.

“Barely anyone remembers us anymore. She wouldn’t remember this. It also helps she passed out, she would have thought she tripped over and had a nightmare or something.”

“Gordon remembers us. Vance does too.”

“There are exceptions to everything. Something for you to look into?”

“I miss her.”

“Blunt but honest.”

“Is that why we’re here?”

“This is the first incident we had together. You immediately hated your new life as a result of this, which wasn’t a great start for us, and set us back a long time. Over half a decade in fact.”

“Can you blame me?”

He moved next to me, looking at my mother for a long moment then shook his head. “No. I can’t.”

He moved in front of me, finally blocking the sight of my terrified mother. “But it’s not your fault. Nor mine. This part of you I mean.”

“You want me to forget about it?”

“No, I want you to move past it. Because you can’t change it, and you shouldn’t be trying to blame anyone either. Learn from this instead.”

“I’ll try.”

The Demon Me thought about that for a moment and gave a slight nod, “Best I can hope for I guess.”

The room changed to my home, exactly as it was when I left earlier today. I felt relief to stop seeing my mother’s face like that.

Demon Me took on a stern face, “Now, let’s talk about the fact you have completely isolated yourself for that same time period.”

“I’m constantly forgotten by everyone. What’s the point in socializing?”

“Because you want to, everyone does. No one wants to be utterly alone, they might want to be left in peace and quiet sometimes, but they still want to talk to people. In the last five years, Gordon is about the only person you’ve spent any time talking to, and even that wasn’t much.”

I might have growled at him in annoyance, “Again, everyone forgets me.”

“Sure, but that doesn’t stop you going somewhere for a few drinks, chatting with people. Having a bit of fun.”

I made a face, but he waved a hand at me “You want fun. In the last week you’ve had more fun than you’ve had since you arrived here.”

He wasn’t wrong there, but he was ignoring the minor incidents.

He stabbed a finger at me, “No I’m not ignoring the ‘minor incidents’. Getting stabbed. Fighting with an Angel. Running through the Underground. Those are events in your life, and your life has gotten more complex too, but perhaps it’s the price for the fun. Is the price worth it? And let’s not ignore that because of this price, you have saved the life of two girls. So that was a good thing?”

“Well yes, but we’re kind of side stepping the angel after me part. Because I’m a demon.”

“No”

“I ... What? What do you mean no?”

“No. If he were after you because you were a demon, he’d have tagged after you ages ago. He only came after you recently. So, what changed recently?”

I paused to consider that. All of this started when...

Demon Me clicked his fingers pointing at me, “Yes. When Sally or Alice showed up”

“So, they were after her?”

“That doesn’t make sense either not entirely anyways. I mean they were after her obviously, but then she was in that Underground for a while. As that guy who got the wall dropped on his head went with a flash of wings, it makes sense the Angels got her already.”

“So, they’re after something else. How does that involve me? She left.”

Again, the Demon Me shrugged, “I’m just telling you what you already know here, pointing out what you’ve missed or aren’t thinking about. I don’t know everything, but I do know some other things”

“What?”

“Since she came into your life, your life has gotten better. You’ve gotten out, and gotten to know people, and gotten friends. As I said, you’ve spent years here without interacting with anyone.”

“Well, I’d have met Bianca without her.”

“Possibly yes, but you don’t know that for sure. Don’t ignore the little effects people have in your life.”

I frowned a little thinking about that. He was arguing in favor of karma now.

“That’s one word for it, I guess. Anyways I also know she was taken by people who kidnapped some girls just because they were out partying with her. If what we’ve heard and guessing is right, there is a chance they’re killing people too. Even if you decide that she didn’t have that great an effect, she still doesn’t deserve that does she?”

“That’s what the Demon part of me is going to say?”

“I’m not evil! I’m you, you jackass. You’ve jumped on this ‘I’m evil’ thing because of the ‘Demon’ thing. You’ve kept focusing the stuff you’ve read over the years. And for being abandoned as a child. You want something to blame for that. You knew what you were from the first moment you saw yourself in that mirror at Bianca’s, you just never wanted to admit it. If you were evil, why did you save those girls? Why did you save that guy from the club in jail?”

“It was the right thing to do?”

“Exactly you moron. And when Alice first showed up, you remember that feeling don’t you?”

I looked back to the door and saw a faint memory of the Light fluttering under the edges.

“Yeah, that Light was... I’m trying to think of better words than creepy and horrifying.”

“We can say that Light was from Angels, right?”

“I can agree with that yes”

“If Angels are so good, why was that Light so scary, even Alice/Sally seemed to be scared by it. Even if Demons are evil, it’s not the feeling you should get from them. Not one Angel you’ve seen has given you a good feeling. The woman in the morgue. Eli. Whoever this was. And these are things you saw and felt.”

I groaned “Dammit. I’d forgotten about the woman.”

“Exactly. She was scary to look at.”

“Could it be everything written is that wrong though?”

“History is shaped by the victors. Anyone with half a brain knows that. All they’ve managed to do is shape mythology for mortals to lean things in their favor.”

I looked at my Demon face, wondering it all. Could it be so obvious? History has been horribly shaped by people over the centuries to make events seem better than they were, or worse in some cases.

“It boils down to you asking yourself one question about yourself, and answering it honestly: Is Ryan Evil?”

“That’s not my name”

“Yes, it is, it’s the name your picked for yourself. It’s who you are to everyone who knows you now. It’s you. I ask again, is Ryan Evil?”

I sat down on my dream couch. I didn’t want to jump this question, it was important. If I believed that the Demon was part of me, and always was part of me, then I was always Demon. If I was always Demon, I was always evil. Unless I accepted that myself, and thus Demons, weren’t inherently evil.

The Demon Me stood in front of me, looking down at me, “What does Ryan want to do? What’s he been working at?”

I looked up at him “Saving Alice”

He said softly to me, “There you go, saving people isn’t an evil act Ryan.”

I did want to do it, she seemed like a nice girl, even if she lied to me about her name. I guess I could understand why in the end. I might have lied to me too.

“I am not evil.”

My Demon Me looked to the sky in relief, “Good. We’re there. Took you long enough.”

“Oh, shut up. It’s a lot to take in.”

“Not wrong there. Our time is up then. Go out and do what you can to save her. I personally believe you can do it, same as you do, funny that really. But just go over everything. We’ve missed something somewhere.”

It took me a moment, then I realized that again he was right “Yes. We have.”

My Demon Me offered me his hand to help me up, and I took it.