A History of Fear

by Luke Dumas

THE DEVIL FOUND me at the dodgy end of Leith Walk, having lured me by use of guile and the pretense of employment, the thing I needed more than anything.

The destruction, the terror: I held it in the palm of my hands. And I liked it.

Then he asked the question that would haunt me to this very day. “Tell me: What do you know about the Devil?”

The rest of the week I’d eviscerate myself and devise a better, more compelling sin, one that illustrated both my integrity and my eloquence. A confession to make my father proud. Not that I ever succeeded.

MY SON, KEEP THY FATHER’S COMMAND AND FORSAKE NOT YOUR MOTHER’S TEACHING. BIND THEM ALWAYS UPON THINE HEART, AND TIE THEM ABOUT THY NECK. —PROVERBS 6:20-21

Was that why my father never wanted to talk to me? Was I the last person in this house to learn the truth of what I was?

Suicide crossed my mind often. I just wanted the pain to end. But of course it wouldn’t—not with death.

They’re scared of what they might be tempted to do, given the choice.”

Each time my father withheld his approval, another crack appeared in the stonework, bringing me one step closer to crumbling.

A hundred PhDs wouldn’t make my father love me.

I wasn’t exactly sad, not in the way expected of a person who’s just lost a parent. It was hard to miss someone who had never been present in the first place, who had offered so little of himself as to be almost incorporeal. And yet I felt as if my life were over.

The pursuit of my father’s love was the only thing I had ever lived for, the only purpose I’d ever attached to my miserable life. With him gone, and his affection lost forever, I couldn’t see what justification I had to carry on.

It’s too late for me—but there’s time for you still.

The Adversary could only make those transgress who had it in their hearts to do so; his job was merely to unleash the evil within.

All these years I had been waiting for the Devil to come back for me. Perhaps, that night on Leith Walk, he had.

I guess I had always taken it for granted that my parents’ indifference was a reflection of me—my awkwardness, my fractious nature, the shameful parts of me we never acknowledged. I wasn’t convinced I deserved more love than they had showed me, but it was a welcome thought nevertheless.

The dreams were so happy that the mere act of waking pulverized me with sadness. Then I would carry that sad feeling around with me all day, and lay down to sleep the following night hoping to be visited by the same dream again.

In the unchangingness of fear and longing, D.B. said, that was where God and the Devil lived.

Indeed, the Devil is alive, in you—and in me. You would do well never again to forget it.