The black clouds of the coming storm poured over the small town of Pine Haven on the cool, windy day of Joe Richards’s first visit to the Shady Oaks Prison for Men. The large, cathedral-shaped maximum security prison sat on the outskirts of the small southern community with its dark shadow looming over the old, barren tobacco field that had served for many years as its home.

 

The prison was new in comparison to the state’s other houses of incarceration, having been built in the late ‘80’s by the state of North Carolina. They chose the spot for its seclusion. The nearest structure was the warden’s residence that stood just over five miles from the outermost guard wall. The name itself had been a contradiction. Bordering the large plot of land on three of its four sides, a forest of some of the south’s largest pine trees covered the field with their long, gray shadows—trailing off before reaching the tall, concrete guard walls; a blessing to some, a curse to others.

 

George Carmichael, who had served as warden for the twelve years that the prison had been in use, felt that the absence of shade served a useful purpose. If they kept the shade from spilling over the walls on the hot, humid summer days that North Carolina seemed to supply in plenty, the inmates might think a little harder about what they had done to end up there during their free time in the yard. Even their privileges would become punishments. They would have to earn their shade.

 

The guards disagreed. Many had made a regular habit of bitching and moaning about the old man’s theories and philosophies of punishment as they sat out their watches on the hot, metal walkways that ran along the tops of the walls. After all, he didn’t have to go up there and bake for hours on end in the sweltering sun. They would bet that things would change if he did.

 

In the summer of hurricanes, the summer of ’99, when he whole state of North Carolina would shudder under the constant barrage of storm after storm, no one complained much—at least, not about the heat. It was the summer of Joseph Richards, author and psychologist extraordinaire. It was the summer when Grady Perlson would change his life forever.

 

The clouds gathered and convened above the small, country town as the winds churned to life—slowly at first, but growing stronger as the storm drew closer. Eventually, it would be blowing strong enough to rock the tall, fat pines under the long draw of its gusts. Joe watched the swaying trees in a distant haze while he sat in the waiting room outside of the warden’s office on the early afternoon of May 25.

 

He had been waiting for an hour in a hard, uncomfortable wooden chair and now stared with an impatient lack of interest at the loose pages of Grady Perlson’s file, which the warden had faxed him weeks before and now sat neatly in his lap. He had reread most of the first page of the report when his mind had started to wander. The memory of the day he had received it maintained a clear image in his mind. Once he had skimmed the report for the first time, his interest had been peaked. The arrest report was vague at best, but accounted for the murders of approximately one hundred individuals, which seemed to be someone’s best guess. Joe had decided that either the report’s author lacked the ability for detail or that pages had been omitted from the sent fax. His final assessment went towards the latter. He had worked a brief era within the walls of a prison and used that experience as the primary research for what would become his best-selling book. Experience taught him that most wardens had the capabilities to be vastly clever. Over time, the old pros could easily learn how to manipulate both the prison system that they belong to and most people that came into their facilities. As Joe saw it, veterans of prison work became more of fishermen than the directors that their nameplates regarded them to be. They would cast their lines for whatever they felt their prison deserved and would eventually reel someone in. If the incomplete file had been bait, Joe felt certain that the hook was set deep in his lip.

 

His attention drifted to the trees that rocked with the casual beat of the wind. They reminded him of the yard outside of his boyhood home in the way they loomed over all their surroundings like giant sentinels keeping a protective watch. Just as when he was young, Joe found them intimidating in their magnificence and their certainty to crush anything in their path should the wind force one over. Whether it was the prison wall or the roof of the house he had been raised in; significant damage would be done. Brushing a light sigh past his lips, Joe attempted and failed to force away any remnant of nostalgia that his memories conjured. The last thing that he cared to remember was his old home.

 

Joe had grown up in the small town of Bufris in Shadrow County, Georgia, which was thirty-five miles south of Atlanta. It had been the kind of town that half of the residents loved and the other half, who were predominantly under the age of thirty, hated. There weren’t many things to keep a young soul busy when school was out and there wasn’t any work to be done. Many of the residents blamed that fact for the enormous rise of drug use during the early eighties. Joe, however, had loved it there. He had never been one to follow a crowd. While his classmates boozed it up at the local bowling alley and movie theater, Joe had felt a greater contentment lying in the soft grass behind his parent’s house where he would stare at the stars for hours. Lying in the grass, he would smell the sweet scent of his mother’s flowers as it drifted through the summer night’s breeze and would dream of a better life ahead of him. He had always wanted a simple life—a white picket fence and a wife to share his life with. Later, as a college student, he would make an internal analysis that would attribute those simple desires as an antithesis to the complex life his psychologist father had provided. He did not want to become the success-driven slave that Robert Richards had been. When Joe was young it seemed that family had always place second to Robert’s ambition. His two sons, Joe and his older brother Bill, were victims of a life detached from their dad and Joe often wondered if their mother suffered the same after the boys had gone up to bed.

 

Within Joe, a spark had ignited that gave him the purpose of surpassing his father. He wanted to prove that he could be successful and still pour out doting attention on whatever family he would have. Those were the days before his mother had passed away and his father began his heavy drinking. After Becky Richards died, his dad was useless to him. His concentration belonged to his clients and booze, but never to his sons. Joe developed a heavy contempt for the man, but refused to let it get in his way. He knew that there was something out there for him to accomplish. Some unseen hurdle waited in the long path ahead “to make him or break him” as his older brother Bill would often say. Once he jumped it, he would find himself on top of the world and no one would ever be able to forget him. When it was time to choose colleges, his father pulled strings somewhere within the university system for him to attend his Alma Mater which was a school rooted in medical and clinical studies. Reluctant to fulfill his father’s wishes, but understanding him to be the source for his educational funding Joe attended the University of North Carolina, deep in the heart of Chapel Hill. It was there that he met both of his true loves.

 

The first was psychology. His father had been a psychologist, but as it was in all situations regarding his father, following his footsteps was not an option. He could have never imagined becoming a therapist, but a course in Abnormal Psychology had peaked his interest and commanded his undivided attention. Disorders and the disorders of disorders, from anxiety attacks to schizophrenia; he knew that those were his calling in life. From there, he started on his path.

 

In his second year, he came into contact with the second of his true passions; a young business student by the name of Elaine Levery. She was beautiful in every way that Joe had envisioned his ideal woman to be. She was entrancing and full of life, with an astute and unstoppable mind to match her deep, beautiful blue eyes and soft, supple curves. The sculptor must have shattered his mold after creating her, because Joe had never seen a masterpiece since who could match her.

 

Their paths first crossed during Spring registration, after they bumped into each other as he was exiting the same door that she was trying to enter. There was a brief exchange of “Excuse me’s” and smiles. Before Joe realized his missed opportunity, he had walked halfway to his dorm without an introduction. Luckily, it wouldn’t be the last time he would see her.

 

As he arrived at his Astronomy class the following semester, he found her sitting at a small table in the back of the room with the only vacant seat beside her. Her eyes lit up in recognition as he claimed the empty chair. After the class was over, they found themselves in a small diner talking over coffee. The next thing Joe knew, two years had passed and graduation was peeking its head around the bend in his path. Elaine still had a year left, but Joe was planned to go to grad school and eventually pursue his PhD. He knew what he had to do without wasting time on thought. One month after graduation, the two of them were married.

 

A year later, Joe found himself working toward his masters while Elaine neared the final stretch of her pregnancy. Their eager anticipation for the birth of their son brought them to name him Bradley Peter before she went into the hospital. He was born in April and Joe had never felt such intense joy as when he held the newborn in his arms. He finally had the family he had dreamed of.

 

During the course of the next years, Elaine took care of the baby while Joe balanced his studies and work. She enjoyed her time off from the world of interior design to be with her child, though she grew restless with life in the South. Her parents offered as much help as they could with the financial aspects, but Joe enjoyed the struggle. “It’s a character builder,” he had often said. When Elaine was able to go back to work herself, Joe’s load lightened, but he held onto his job. Before he knew it, his son was nearing the age when he would enter school and Joe himself was finally finishing up.

 

Dr. Joseph Richards, with his wife and son, moved from North Carolina and headed north to Washington D.C. It was a proud win by Elaine’s determination that had come about by Joe’s intense desires to keep her happy. After arriving, he began his work as a prison psychologist and later started his own therapeutic practice. It wasn’t until after his father’s death that he started his book.

 

In its pages, Joe supported the archaic notion that some mental illnesses could be forms of demon possession. The actual topic of discussion was Dissociative Identity Disorder; multiple personalities to the layperson, and their relation to the medieval view of demonology, or demon possession. It all fit nicely into five hundred pages. The clinical world had been shocked.

 

“Dissociative disorders are impossible to study because they occur internally and are beyond observation. This is also the case with demonic possessions. Whether or not the patient is genuinely afflicted can only be known to that person and speculated by their observers. Do other ‘personalities’ exist? Do ‘demons’ exist? How can science attempt to prove either?” The idea that those possibilities even existed was introduced to Joe in passing by one of his first professors who had only wanted to be objective in his teaching. That notion awoke as a spark within him that evolved rapidly into an obsession that threatened to bring about his own madness. Years later he would write the manuscript.

 

The book was titled "A Method to Their Madness” and peaked at number three on most bestseller lists, staying for quite a long time—much longer than Joe had ever expected. He was acknowledged as an expert and the general authority in the subject. Within months, he found himself hated, revered, then hated again, all by the same people who didn’t know what to make of it all. He had caused a rift among his fellow psychologists.

 

The letter followed in the dying winds of his fame, arriving on an early March morning as he sat in his office waiting for his next client. There had been no return address on the small white envelope that dropped from the stack of mail as his secretary entered his office. There was no address at all, for that matter—just his name written in capital letters on its front. Out of curiosity he had opened it, finding a piece of scrap paper with the words “PLEASE SAVE ME’ and the name Grady scrawled across the bottom in what seemed to be crayon.

 

Weird letters weren’t anything new to him after some of the stalker mail he had received after the book gained momentum, but something had seemed strange about that particular note. None of the others had appeared to be an authentic cry for help. None of them had reached him without any address written on the front. His wonder subsided when he received a call the following week from the warden of Shady Oaks Prison in Pine Haven, NC. The man asked him to come and evaluate one of the inmates who he felt might have been suffering from a severe Dissociative disorder.

 

“I’m sorry for the wait, Dr. Richards. The warden will see you shortly.”

 

Joe snapped forward in his chair. He hadn’t realized that he had been daydreaming for so long with his eyes fixed on the window before him. He turned to the receptionist sitting at the desk to the right of the warden’s office. She was a heavy woman, in her mid-forties. The thick curls of her hair sat in disarray, pulled into a loose bun on top of her head. She looked menacing and ill-tempered in her beige uniform, which bulged with the thick folds of her skin. She tapped her foot on the floor in an uneven rhythm as she flipped through a recent issue of Soap Opera Digest on her desk. Realizing that Joe was staring, she cut him a hard glance and tapped louder with her foot. He averted his eyes and turned the page of the report, pretending to read.

 

The wind continued its whining rage as the first drops of the storm spattered against the window, seconds before the dark gray clouds flashed and erupted in a heavy downpour. Joe glanced from the page to find that he could no longer see the trees at the edge of the field. He couldn’t see far past the window at all. Pulling his jacket and shirt sleeve away from his watch, he gave it a quick glance. ‘Almost One’, he thought to himself, letting a deep sigh brush past his lips. ‘Jesus, how much longer is this going to take?’

 

The thought was interrupted by a small click that sounded from the doorway of the warden’s office. Two men emerged from the opening door without offering anything more than a glance in Joe’s direction. The first was a thin man, who stood around Joe’s height and wore a tan suit. His small glasses perched on his large sloping nose and his hair showed a defined part along the right side of his head. The man nodded to Joe as he entered the waiting room and exited into the adjoining hallway. Joe’s eyes drifted towards the second man—a large figure standing in the doorway with his dark brown hand steadied on the knob. He was a thick man—not noticeably fat, but barrel chested and stocky. He sized Joe up with hard, serious eyes, then let a faint smirk carouse his upper lip.

 

“Dr. Joseph Richards,” he announced with a deep bellow that seemed to bounce from the walls and linger in the room like a clap of thunder. Joe stood from the chair and approached the warden—slow at first as the numbness of sleep pricked his right leg with tiny pins and needles. As he entered the office, Joe noticed the large framed certificate on the wall beside him with the words “George K. Carmichael” in large letters that declared him a doctor of psychology. Joe smiled as he ran his fingers along the frame. “So you’re a psychologist too?,” he asked and turned to face the warden who had taken his seat behind the large, mahogany desk. “How did you end up here?” The warden shook his head and motioned for Joe to sit.

 

“I’m retired now. I went to school with your father,” he smiled as he shuffled some files around his desk and moved one to the top of the pile, “I considered him to be one of my best friends.”

 

As Joe looked into the warden’s face, he saw something in his eyes. They didn’t match the brutishness of his body or the stern disposition with which he carried himself. What Joe saw pierced him like an arrow of respect commanded from its unseen bow. A deep glow of experience and a deeper line of wisdom dwelled within his dark, brown eyes. Joe found himself unable to manage more than a brief glance into them. The man had seen a lot in his years as warden and Joe knew that in an instant.

 

Joe nodded with his mouth drawn into a thin line across his face. He never enjoyed discussing his father and that included any good qualities that he might have had. He found the most professional option to be silence. He opposed allowing himself to be drawn into a free therapy session.

 

“Let’s get down to business then,” George continued after realizing that Joe would not respond to the comment. “This is the rest of Grady’s file. Some information was omitted from the reports I sent because of, well, the delicate nature of his case.”

 

Joe took the file in his hands and lay it across his lap, wanting to open it but deciding to leave it alone for the time being. He wanted to press further into what the case’s delicate nature might have been, but held his tongue with the patient knowledge that the time to discuss it would eventually come.

 

“First, let me apologize for making you wait so long in that God-awful waiting room. It’s sore to the eyes, I know. But there were some pressing matters I needed to discuss with the assistant warden. I hope you will forgive me.”

 

“Not a problem. I was actually preoccupied by the developments outside,” Joe remarked and flashed a quick smile.

 

“It looks like it’s going to be a bad one, doesn’t it?”

 

“I can’t say that I’ve ever seen anything like it,” Joe shook his head.

 

George nodded and parted his lips to form a warm smile. “Let’s talk about Grady, shall we Joe?”

 

Joe nodded and opened his mouth to speak, but was met with the upraised palm of the large man, beckoning him to wait.

 

“Let me start,” George answered Joe’s puzzled expression, “there are things that I need to say before you start hitting me with all those questions that must be running through that head of yours.”

 

Joe nodded again with a slightly amused smile and shifted in his chair.

 

“I watch after Grady. I’ve done so since he first came here. You see, he didn’t talk much. Hell, he was nearly catatonic when they brought him to me.”

 

George’s hands rose and fell with the tones of his voice in what Joe saw to be approaching wild gestures. The emotional ties that the warden felt to the case were obvious in his dramatic display. “I took special care to make sure the guards treated him well and placed him in a solitary cell to save him from the general population. He didn’t belong here, or so I thought. I could never imagine him hurting any sort of creature, but he did. Even though he seemed to be one of the kindest and gentlest souls to have walked this earth since Jesus himself, I had to believe that he did those terrible things they said he did because it's my job. That was before I ran into the other one.”

 

Joe’s eyes drew into thin slits, but only for a moment as he shifted in his seat. “The other one,” he repeated while waiting for George to continue.

 

George cleared his throat and went on. “The other presenting personality is extremely aggressive. He’d just as soon snap your neck in two than offer a decent word. He likes to sing. Frankly, it chills my bones to be in the same building as him, but when he starts that singing, I’m sure my heart just stops. He’s named himself Jess.”

 

“Do you know where the name came from?,” Joe interrupted.

 

“Don’t know. Don’t care,” George shrugged. “You can call a snake a puppy, but it doesn’t change what it is. In any case, I would steer clear of triggering that one if I were you.”

 

Joe nodded at George’s warning, somewhat dismissive of the warden’s short speech. Swallowing quickly, he asked his first question. “I’ve seen arrest reports before, but not any that were as vague and nondescript as Grady’s. Can you tell me anything about what happened?”

 

“Some kind of military assignment gone wrong. They found a whole village in Africa smoldering in its own ashes with its entire population and the Army company sent to protect it massacred. They found Grady twenty miles away, covered in blood and carrying the severed head of his commanding officer under his arm. They gave him a life sentence for every dead body. He won’t be leaving here anytime soon.”

 

“He never said anything about it?,” Joe doubted the answer would be a positive one, but felt it necessary to ask.

 

“Only once. When they found him, he confessed to killing the commanding officer,” George flipped through his own set of papers that had been stacked neatly in front of him, “a captain with the name of Jonas Crane. I’m sure they wouldn’t have believed him if he denied the whole thing, especially with the head in his hands and all. They said the body it had been attached to had nearly fifty cuts along the arms and torso, deep ones, all made by Grady’s knife.”

 

“He confessed to it?”

 

George nodded. “With tears in his eyes. It was the last time he spoke of it.”

 

“Why no death penalty?,” Joe’s eyes squinted as he asked the question.

 

“Why would they want to kill him when they could study him to find out why he’s a monster? Why aren’t any of the worst killers out there sentenced to death?”

 

Joe let a soft grunt issue from his throat. He found it impossible to avoid being lumped into the category of “them”. His research for the book had brought him into the presence of many killers who should have been executed over and over again for their crimes, but were kept alive by the government for the purpose of observation and behavioral studies. “I want to meet him now,” was Joe’s only response to the Shady Oaks warden.

 

“No more questions?,” George smiled.

 

“Not right now, but I’m sure I’ll have some later,” Joe nodded with a slight hesitation that followed in his voice.

 

“Then let’s get to it. I’ll give you a quick tour of the prison and then let you see your patient,” George stood and walked to the door. Joe followed him into the waiting room, paused to nod a quick smile to the receptionist, and exited to the hallway.