The Devil We Raised - Aaron Roads

No one wanted us. At eleven and twelve years old, we arrive at Blackridge House within weeks of each other—a secluded foster home hidden behind rusted iron gates, run by caretakers who profit from forgotten children. We aren’t related by blood, but from the moment we meet, everyone insists we’re family. We refuse. Instead of comforting one another, we become rivals. We steal from each other, sabotage placements, manipulate social workers, and expose every weakness we could find. Every foster family that tries to separate us ends up quitting after mysterious “accidents.” The adults call them damaged. The other kids whisper that Blackridge House is haunted. The truth is much worse. Years later, after aging out of the system, we think we’re finally free—until a sealed file from our childhood disappears from state archives. Someone has been cleaning up Blackridge’s past... and eliminating everyone who knows what happened inside those walls. The only people left with no knowledge of the full truth are the two foster siblings who spent years trying to destroy each other. A corrupt judge freezes our inheritances and legally binds us as co-owners of Blackridge House after its original owners die under suspicious circumstances. We can’t sell it, abandon it, or claim the money unless we restore the estate together. Neither trusts the other. Neither can walk away. As we uncover hidden rooms, coded journals, and evidence that we may have been deliberately paired as children for an experiment in psychological conditioning, hatred slowly transforms into a dangerous dependence. We begin covering up crimes for one another—could it have been out of love or fear of exposing one means exposing both. The deeper we dig, the harder it becomes to tell where survival ended and obsession began.

Updated September 23, 2026