Damon

by Vanessa Hawkes

  As soon as I’d finished eating, I wandered into the living room. My eyes landed on the silver briefcase and the rest of my luggage. Not just my suitcase, but all my boxes and things. As if Damon didn’t expect to return. Ever.

  Letting him leave alone had been a mistake. I’d been too exhausted to think clearly. I needed to be with him.

  I needed him to breathe. I needed him to survive.

  Dr. Sanderson had told me that I suffered from dependent personality disorder, and maybe he was right, but this was much worse than needing familiar faces around to feel happy.

  I stepped out to the porch, hoping for a glimpse of his red car, or a patch of his golden brown hair behind a hedge. Everything looked like him: the trees, the sky, and the sun peaking up from the east. Even Chester, as he walked up to the porch, had Damon’s face.

  ***

  After a week, I had to go home. Bella and Chester seemed happy to have me staying with them, but I began to feel guilty imposing on their quiet life. I was with them night and day. I worked with them all day, helped Bella around the house, and then sat on their couch and watched television with them in the evening. My only escape was to visit my mother in the hospital.

  I was also beginning to feel suffocated. As if I could never fully relax or catch my breath.

  So I took the familiar roads back to my old house, feeling much stronger thanks to Bella’s home cooking, and plenty of rest.

  Damon had left the money with me, and I had enough to rent a place of my own, maybe the Pickett’s garage apartment. But I wanted to be where Damon could find me when he came home.

  Cynthia wasn’t glad to see me when I knocked on the front door. But I’d learned a trick from Damon – at the sight of cash she quickly changed her mind and decided I wasn’t so bad after all. Since Damon wasn’t with me. Looking down her nose, she agreed to let me have Gram’s old room. Mine and Damon’s room. She’d left it the way it was because of the red paint stains everywhere. I loved those red stains. They were Damon. They brought him close to me.

  The rest of the house was changed, though, and I had to swallow a hard lump of annoyance. This wasn’t my house anymore, not that it ever really had been. She had rearranged the living room furniture, the house smelled like cigarette smoke, and her junk was everywhere. Everywhere but in my room, and Mama’s.

  “How’s she doing?” Cynthia asked from the doorway when I went in to pack Mama a suitcase.

  “She’s awake. She still doesn’t know who I am or where she is.”

  I’d been to visit Mama twice in the past week. Cynthia hadn’t bothered. I barely managed to hide the burning feelings of anger beneath a cool façade.

  “But she’s gonna be okay?” she asked.

  “She’ll live.” No thanks to you. “They’re transferring her to the nursing home tomorrow. Doctor says she’ll get good care there. Though, she’ll never get any better. Her mind is gone.”

  “Where? Here at the nursing home?”

  “Yes.”

  “For how long?”

  “Forever, I guess. Until she dies.”

  She kept her eyes on me as I left the room to take the suitcase to my room. Then she followed.

  “Are you gonna go visit her this afternoon?”

  “No, I went in yesterday. I’ll go tomorrow morning and make sure she’s settled in.” Since I was all Mama had in the world.

  “Well, maybe I’ll go along,” she said.

  “Whatever. She doesn’t know the difference.”

  “Where’s Damon? Did he move back to wherever he came from?”

  Her question felt like a knife in my neck, but I didn’t even flinch. Thankfully, I had a story ready to go. “He went to take care of his dad for a week or two. He’s in between places and can’t take care of himself. I’ve got Mama, so I couldn’t go.”

  “And your job,” she said. “You’ve still got that, right?”

  “And my job.”

  “I heard you’ve been living with Uncle Chester and Aunt Bella, all by yourself.”

  “Don’t worry. We’ll find someplace new when he gets back.”

  “Uh-huh,” she said. “He left you, didn’t he?”

  I looked at my aunt and realized she was a vicious person, when she wanted to be. Vicious enough to try to murder her own sister, and mean enough to pour acid on my wounds.

  “I said he’ll be back.”

  A smug grin distorted her grotesque face. “It’s just you and me now, kiddo. I knew it would happen.”

  “Don’t call me kiddo. Chester calls me kiddo.”

  “I’m glad,” she continued. “He was dangerous. But I think you knew that.”

  He wasn’t dangerous. He was poisoned. Just like me. Poisoned by some kind of cave-dwelling vampire werewolf beast.

  A beast that might suddenly awake if Cynthia didn’t watch herself.

  She let her shoulders fall hard, then crossed her arms and leaned against the doorjamb. “You’ll be happy to hear I got a job.”

  Did she expect me to care? Did she expect me to ask where or congratulate her? I busied myself with a little cleaning. We’d left the room a mess in our hurried escape. I wanted the room to be clean, so I’d feel organized. I was willing to renew everything but the bed. I wasn’t going to wash Damon’s scent from the sheets, even if they turned green.

  “Oh, I see. So you hate me now,” she said. “I didn’t do it deliberately, Maggie. I called Dr. Sanderson and he said it would be all right. I just did what he told me to.”

  “Liar!” I spat, whirling away from the closet.

  “Call him and ask him!”

  I let out a slow breath and calmed myself. She was nothing, nobody, and didn’t deserve my energy. I was already tired. Exhausted and depressed. “Whatever,” I droned and walked over to the window to let in some fresh air.

  “All right, fine,” she said. “You live your life and I’ll live mine and we’ll stay out of each other’s way. I’d rather have it that way, anyway.”

  “Good.”

  I didn’t turn around until I was certain she was gone, then I shut, and locked, the door. This was my one special place and no one could touch me here. I didn’t have to let monsters stand in my doorway.

  ***

  The hour after sunset was the worst. The adjustment period between the bright activities of daytime and the eerie, endless hours of nighttime.

  I wanted to get out, go somewhere and do something, but I thought perhaps Damon had been watching and was waiting for me to move home. I knew he didn’t like being around Chester. He would wait for night before showing himself.

  He’d said a week, tops, and it had been over a week. I was going crazy waiting and watching and hoping. I’d tried again and again to reach him telepathically, but he never answered. The very idea we could communicate without speaking was almost as ridiculous as a vampire beast living in a cave in Kentucky, which I was also beginning to suspect was only a story.

  Not that I suspected Chester and Bella of lying. It seemed more likely I’d dreamed up the whole thing myself because I was going crazy like Mama. I might not even be living in Polar anymore. I might be in a hospital somewhere, making everything up in my mind.

  But I didn’t want to believe Damon had been a figment of my imagination.

  So I paced and waited, until I could talk myself into being angry with him for not keeping his word and returning within a week. For not calling or writing, or finding some way to contact me. Then I decided that if he really wanted to see me, he could find me.

  I had to live my life, what was left of it.

  Mama was gone, my house had been usurped, and my husband was MIA. I wanted something in return.

  Thoroughly indignant, I grabbed my purse and stepped out into the fresh night air, got in my car and drove in search of the distractions of people. Humans, I thought with a chuckle as another wave of disillusionment washed over me.

  I drove past Jaynie’s house but only the kitchen and porch lights were on, which m
eant she and Steve were out. After making one pass through town, I found Steve’s Ford with the orange Tennessee Volunteers sticker in the back window. They were eating at the game room, our only eating establishment that stayed open past eight. It was loud with high school kids, but they served homemade pizza and made a really decent strawberry pie. It was someplace to go.

  I could see Jaynie and Steve sitting by the window so I parked on the grass near the crowded dirt parking lot and took my time walking up, in case Damon had followed me. He’d been to the game room once to pick up a pizza, he knew where it was, and maybe he was inside right now, playing outdated video games or shooting pool.

  I sped up as an uncontrollable urge came over me. I could feel him, I could see him inside, alone, strolling around the pool table looking for the perfect shot, keeping an eye on the big Coca-Cola clock, waiting for just the right time to come see me.

  But, of course, he wasn’t inside. Damon would have gone mad puttering around a pool table when he could have been off chasing vampires.

  I knew where he was. He was off in the mountains searching for Elliot’s cave, or the secret village. He would be back as soon as he ran out of clues. Only then would he find me interesting again.

  Jaynie shouted and waved to me and I dodged through a sudden pack of hyperactive girls to barely make it safely to the table. I sat down and found myself face-to-face with Teddy. Teddy.

  He hadn’t been sitting there before and the sight of him shocked me into a long, embarrassing five seconds of catatonia.

  “Hi,” he said.

  “Hi,” I said.

  He looked the same as always. I hadn’t seen him for awhile, but he still wore his brown hair a little shaggy, and still had on the ever-present green co-op cap. His eyes were blue, but not the deep, stormy-sky blue of Damon’s. Teddy’s blue eyes were ordinary blue. He was ordinary. He sat slouched in his chair with that cocky smirk on his face, thinking he still owned my heart.

  I’d once thought he was the most handsome guy in the world. Now, he was repulsively ugly. I’d been so blind….

  “I’m gonna kill you,” Jaynie told me, saving me from having to think of something to say.

  “What for?”

  “What for?” she mocked. “For getting married and not telling me! What d’ya think what for? I can’t believe you.”

  “Hey,” Teddy said. “Did y’all hear about the vampire?”

  “Shut up,” Jaynie told him. “You really married that guy?” she asked me.

  “I really did,” I told her. But I was more interested in what Teddy had to say. “What vampire?”

  Just as Teddy leaned forward to tell his story, Jaynie reached across the table. “Then let me see your ring.”

  Teddy sat back hard with annoyance, and I was equally annoyed. I shoved my hand toward her but refused to let go of Teddy and his news.

  “What vampire?” I insisted.

  Jaynie and Steve engaged themselves in conversation about my ring, and Damon, and their own eventual marriage, so Teddy leaned forward again and settled on me alone for an audience.

  “He’s been going around writing things on walls, about a vampire being here in town. And he broke into Jack’s butchers and stole the blood he uses to fire up his hogs. He fights ‘em now since they confiscated his cocks.”

  “I heard about that,” Steve said, rejoining the conversation. “About some maniac on the loose.”

  “That’s not all,” Teddy continued, more animated now that his audience had grown. “They found a girl in the parking lot out at the truck stop with two holes in her neck. She was white as a sheet.”

  Jaynie gasped. “Dead?”

  “Of course dead,” Teddy told her with a frown of superiority. “She didn’t have no blood left.”

  “That’s not true,” I told them all. “That’s a lie. Another stupid rumor.”

  Teddy slurped on his soft drink and gave me a threatening stare for contradicting him.

  Steve nudged me and I realized someone was calling my name. I looked over my shoulder and Bonnie Sue was staring at me from the counter.

  “Whatcha want, hon?”

  “Coffee,” I called back.

  “Something we got.”

  “Bring her a cherry vanilla Dr. Pepper,” Teddy ordered. He sent me a rather suggestive half-grin. “On me. You still like those, don’t ya?”

  “Yes,” I said. “But I’ll pay for it myself.”

  He shrugged, looking away. “No need to get huffy.”

  “I’m not huffy.”

  “Hey,” Jaynie interrupted. “I want to hear about the girl. When was this? Who was she?”

  Teddy leaned forward again. “She was passing through. They found her just about an hour ago. I was talking to James Eddie when he got the call….”

  I sat back, letting their conversation drown in with the background noise. This was terrible. God, how I hated gossip. Once talk of a vampire spread people would start pointing fingers at Damon, then me. James Eddie was a big-mouth bass. He’d been Cynthia’s boyfriend once, and maybe was again. He would mention Damon’s name eventually.

  Bonnie Sue delivered my drink and paused to listen to the conversation. Then she dragged a chair around and sat down. “I heard he was seen over near the school.” She nodded toward the window and we all turned to watch a highway patrol car roll by. An uncommon sight in town. “See,” she said. “They’re out looking for him. I’m taking the kids to Mama-n-Daddy’s tonight. I’m afraid to go home.”

  Faces went pale around the table. Now that they had seen evidence of increased police enforcement, they believed every word they’d heard. I was so thankful Damon was up in the mountains, away from the lynch mob that would be forming by morning.

  At least, I hoped he was still out of town. But I began to worry he’d become distracted and forgot his mission, that maybe he’d returned to town but was trapped in a reality that warned him to stay away from me, for my own safety. Or, that he had lost all sense of reality and was wandering around blindly searching for blood.

  I needed him to send word so I could join him. I missed him, but I was also scared. I was a hometown girl, sure, but I also walked on the edge of the gutter in this town, and had betrayed them all by bringing the ‘vampire’ into their backyard. If they couldn’t have Damon, they would come after me.

  When we were leaving, Teddy followed me to my car. I’d had to park far off on the grass and couldn’t object when he nodded forward and mumbled,

  “My truck’s over there. I ain’t following ya.”

  “I didn’t think you were.”

  He moved up beside me. “Did you really get married?”

  I nodded pleasantly. “A few weeks ago.”

  “So where is he then?”

  “His dad’s in the hospital. He had to go home.”

  “How come we all just found out about it?”

  “I don’t know. Gossip mill is turning slow?” Because Bella and Chester would never gossip about me. Cynthia and James Eddie were the ones wagging tongues and they ran in different circles than my friends. It took time for the news to trickle down.

  He reached my car first and kicked the front tire. “You still driving this hunk-a-junk, Magic?”

  “Don’t call me that. Theodore Francis. And you can see that I am.”

  He turned to lean against the car. “You headed home?”

  “Yep.”

  When I reached for the handle, he put his hand on the car door, and smiled at me. “You look hot. Come ride around with me for a little bit.”

  “No.” I gave him a dirty look. “I don’t do that anymore. I’m an adult now.”

  “An adult,” he said with a chuckle. He leaned against my door and crossed his arms, trying to charm me with an appraising smile and onceover. “Sure you wanna go home with a maniac on the loose? Let’s go reminisce.”

  I couldn’t believe him. Now that I was married, he wanted me back? No, his games seemed so clear now. He only wanted to prove he could
still have me, if he wanted me, even if I was married. It had nothing to do with me personally. Was everyone I knew evil? He knew how volatile my emotions were, he knew I’d slit my wrists once - he just didn’t care.

  “Get out of my way,” I told him.

  He tilted his head and raised one eyebrow, giving me a fake little pout, trying to remind me that we were old friends, and what was the harm in a little chitchat?

  I had known him forever so I softened my tone. “I’m tired. Mama’s sick at the hospital and I’ve gotta get up early in the morning.”

  “So you’re at the house all alone?” he asked.

  I couldn’t believe him. “Get out of my way.” I shoved him aside and opened my door.

  He chuckled and held the door open when I tried to close it. “I might just come by for a visit. Ya never know…. We always were hot in bed.”

  “We never did it in a bed.” Mostly in his filthy old truck.

  I jerked and he let go of the door. It slammed shut, rocking the car, which made him laugh. I made a show of locking my door then forced myself not to peel out on the dirt and gravel.

  To think I had scars on my wrists with his name on them. Unbelievable.

  When I got on the street, he followed me in his dented white truck, playing with me, flashing his lights. When I turned off at the road to my house he kept going, but gave me a honk of farewell. The honk also meant that I could wait anxiously for him to show up at the house, which he might or might not do, depending on what kind of action he could find in the next hour or two.

  I was glad for once that Cynthia was at the house. She would chase him off if he beat on the door too long. But then, I remembered with a smile, he thought I was still in my old bedroom. He might tap on Cynthia’s window while she was asleep and scare the living daylights out of both of them.

  If there was any justice in the universe, that very thing would happen.

  My chuckles of vengeance died when I pulled up in front of the house. Damon’s car wasn’t there, and he wasn’t inside waiting on me. I just knew.