Damon

by Vanessa Hawkes

  His blue eyes darted around the room, passing me by without recognition. James Eddie spoke to him, telling him to put his hands up, to lie down on the floor. Damon opened his mouth and barred his fake jagged yellow teeth, hissing at the astonished audience. When he roared and charged forward, they started firing like a swarm of angry hornets, firing directly at my husband.

  My poor delirious husband.

  I screamed but the sound died in the hellfire of bullets as they squeezed their triggers, determined to stop the terrifying beast before them.

  Reacting like a flock of birds to a change in flight pattern, they shot him down.

  I turned and covered my ears, shielding my eyes, so I wouldn’t have to witness the gruesome scene. But even as the noise continued, endlessly, I could feel myself dying inside. Every reason I had for living was staggering and falling onto the floor, pools of red pouring from the equally red fur, staining Corky’s rug and hardwood floor.

  I turned and let my hands fall from my ears, no longer afraid because I knew what I had to do, and looked at him lying on the floor, exactly as I’d seen in my mind. His living blood ran from his body like a stream, reminding me of the creeping red paint seeping under the door the day the beast had been growling inside him.

  I’d been seeing a premonition that day, warning me of the inevitable. Reminding me that this was my destiny, and for all the pain and torment in my life, I’d been given a brief, but beautiful escape with a man who’d been mine alone to love. There would be no others.

  No one watched as I turned and walked up the stairs. I needed to get back up to that room where Damon and I had said our last farewell. Where I could lie on the bed and close my eyes and still see him with me, and feel his touch, his lips, and that final kiss.

  I didn’t want to see them take off the mask, and be forced to remember him that way. I wanted to remember him as he’d been in Corky’s bedroom, alive and real, with stormy blue eyes that could see only me.

  For those minutes as we sat cross-legged on the bed he hadn’t been seeing beasts, or the dark corridors of a cave, or the road ahead, waiting to be traveled. He had looked into my eyes and seen only me, his wife and lover. And for that time, I had lived enough.

  At the top of the stairs, I stopped for a moment as the room took a spin and I thought I might topple back down. The reality of what had happened was slowly becoming real. No matter what my mind insisted it had seen, my heart was slow to comprehend.

  Damon was gone. And I was alone, until I could meet him on the other side, wherever that might be.

  MAGGIE! I NEED YOU! his deep, familiar voice screamed inside my head.

  I stopped and turned around, holding onto the rail as I listened. Then with a gasp, I ran back down the stairs. He wasn’t dead. He was mortally injured, and dying, but he wasn’t dead! And he was calling for me. I had left him there alone on the floor to die with strangers poking at him.

  I stumbled down the last two steps, straining my ankle and only noticing how it slowed me down as I pushed through the gawkers, trying to get to my husband’s side. I had to tell him to wait for me on the other side, that I would be right behind him. I had to let him know that I would always be there with him.

  One of the deputies tried to stop me but I was so determined I squirmed and scratched from his grasp like a panicked cat and kept moving, dropping to my knees to slide the last few feet between two officers.

  They were all standing around him, talking about how crazy he was, and how sick he’d been, and how ridiculous he looked in the red costume.

  “Maggie, watch out!” someone yelled at me. I was walking on my knees through his blood, but what did that matter? I wanted to find something to keep the blood in, to save it, and have it by me when I took my final breath.

  “For god’s sake, get up,” James Eddie scolded me. He lifted me by the arms and at first I fought, until I saw the lifeless face lying there on the floor, protruding from the awful red costume. They had removed his mask.

  The face was old, and… unfamiliar. Not Damon. The face was pale and drawn with wrinkles around the eyes and mouth. The hair was gray and flat against his head.

  “Not Damon!” I turned and yelled in James Eddie’s face. “It’s not Damon!”

  He gave me a hard shake. “We can see that, Maggie,” he told me. “Settle down. We got word earlier Richard Jenkins had escaped from the state hospital. We knew then we had the wrong suspect.”

  I turned and looked down at the face again. Richard Jenkins. Damon’s father.

  He must have grown up hearing Elliot’s stories about a red beast in the cave, about turning into a vampire, just as Damon had.

  He’d been my father-in-law.

  A murderer.

  That thought gave me a violent shiver and I backed away, frightened and repulsed and sick with pity and disgust. My knees were soaked with his blood and it was all I could do not to take my pants off there in the living room in front of everybody. I couldn’t stand having him on me.

  “Hey, Maggie. C’mere,” someone said. I looked up to see Barry Peterson’s brown eyes and brown hair. We’d grown up together and now he was a deputy. From the look of mercy in his eyes, I could see he was going to be gallant enough to help a hometown girl in distress, even though he’d once called me scum.

  I couldn’t stand having that man’s blood on me and I’d started pacing in a circle and whimpering, brushing at my legs. I might have been crying ‘Get it off,’ or I might have only thought it. I must have looked crazy, but there was no stopping that now.

  I was a child of a beast with red fur and claws. A child of a beast, the same as the dead man on the floor.

  Elliot’s ruined son had been one step ahead of Mama. Damon would be next, and then me. We were all being forced one by one down the stairway to hell.

  “Come get in my car,” Barry said. “I’ll take you home.”

  “Okay,” I said. That sounded good and reasonable. I had to get the horrid wet material away from my body.

  Thankfully, Mama was securely monitored where she couldn’t hurt anyone - not that she was a threat anymore. Damon and I would have to go far away from people and stay there forever. Together, where we’d be safe.

  I couldn’t be certain if my thoughts were clear and logical, or if I might have been missing something left to be done, or said.

  What did become startlingly clear was that I had to get home and change, and find Damon. My beautiful, sick husband was still alive and waiting for me.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Barry dropped me off at the house and I quickly showered, scrubbing my knees until they were almost as red as the stains of blood had been. The house was empty, and I guessed Cynthia had gone out to watch the exciting event with the rest of the onlookers. I was glad because I didn’t want to talk to her, or try to explain anything.

  After retrieving my bags from the back yard, I dressed in a pair of worn jeans and a winter sweater to combat the chill I couldn’t shake.

  I had to find Damon, but I didn’t know where to look. He’d apparently fled Corky’s house when the police arrived. He might have gone anywhere.

  I had to move, and keep moving, until…. Until I caught up with him, and we could run together.

  But it was impossible. I couldn’t run fast enough. I would never be able to keep up with him. I was like a kite he had picked up as he sped by. I was stuck to him but could do nothing but flap recklessly in the wind behind him.

  I thought maybe James Eddie knew where he was, had maybe arrested him before realizing Damon was innocent. I couldn’t think what else to do, and could easily imagine Damon sitting in the back of a police car with his hands cuffed behind his back.

  I jogged a few steps across the back lawn, and then had to slow to a fast walk. My throat was so dry I could barely swallow and my steps were landing hard on the grass. Corky’s house kept swaying.

  I focused hard and kept moving. DAMON! I yelled in my head. WHERE ARE YOU?

  NEXT
DOOR.

  I stopped walking and looked both ways. Next door? I turned and aimed for Mrs. Jarvis’s house. He wouldn’t be at Bob Roach’s house.

  Mrs. Jarvis was standing at her back door, staring at Corky’s house through the screen door.

  She waved when she saw me cutting across her back yard. She opened the door as I climbed the three concrete steps.

  “Come in here, hon,” she said, backing out of my way. “Little Davy’s in the kitchen. Poor thing. He’s had quite a trial this morning.”

  Despite my eagerness to see him, and make sure he was okay, still alive and well, I had to smile at that moniker. He wouldn’t appreciate being called little or Davy.

  Verna forced me to slow down long enough to give her a hug as I passed. She was dressed in pink knit slacks and a pink and white flowered blouse. She had the same outfit in blue, green and yellow. I checked her over to make sure she wasn’t frightened, or being held against her will. I honestly never knew what Damon might do in the pursuit of his obsessions. But she only smiled sadly at me and patted her short blond hair.

  “You need some breakfast, too,” she said, ushering me toward the kitchen.

  I sped up when I saw Damon finishing off a plate of food, slowing when I saw the dried blood on his face, and the black and purple bruise spreading from his swollen eye across his cheek.

  I wanted to dive at him, but restrained myself with Mrs. Jarvis in the room. I sat down beside him and tried to take everything in at once: the injuries, his beautiful face, his blue eyes… still alive and with me.

  I brushed his hair from his face. “What happened to you? Are you okay?”

  He pulled me into his arms, ignoring my questions, and held me with arms that felt weak around me. He leaned his weight against me, threatening to break my back. I turned and rested against the table for support.

  “He’s dead,” Damon whispered in my ear. “I can feel it.”

  “Yeah. I’m so sorry.”

  “It was Dad. I saw him… and tried to stop him….”

  I held him, trying to think of what to say. Trying to surmise where he’d been and what had happened. I couldn’t have left him alone at Corky’s for more than ten or fifteen minutes. But in those fifteen minutes, all hell had erupted. “It’s all right. It’s all over now.”

  “They caught him and I ran. I hated him so much… I ran.”

  “You did the right thing. He would have got you killed, too.”

  His body shivered violently against me. “I wanted them to catch him… and kill him. He was a freak, dressed up in a red suit. But I saw his eyes. I knew those eyes. I knew them.”

  “He needed to be caught. He was so dangerous and sick, Damon.”

  “I’ll end up just like that.” He let out a miserable moan. “Next year, I’ll be just like him.”

  “No, you won’t. We’ll figure something out.”

  He didn’t respond, but his muscles stiffened and he pushed himself back. The sight of him again gave me a second stab of alarm.

  “We have to get you to the doctor.”

  “No, it’s nothing,” he said, reaching up to hold my face. “You’re here.”

  “I’m here.”

  He kissed me with dry lips and rested his forehead against mine.

  “What happened to you?” I asked. “Why is your face all bruised?”

  Damon reached up to touch his bruised cheek as if he’d forgotten about it. “He hit me in the face with a fireplace poker. The cops came up and I left him there to be caught. I ran to find you and ended up here.”

  Verna arrived with a plate of food and a mug of coffee for me. “It looks worse than it is. I don’t think anything’s broken. I gave him a couple of acetaminophen for the pain.”

  He looked so awful I could barely believe that. “Are you sure?”

  “Honey, you know I was a nurse for thirty years. But you can take him down to the clinic if you don’t believe me. Anne Wainwright opens the doors at eight.” She lifted an icepack from the table. “Put that back on your eye.”

  I held the icepack to his eye and looked around for a clock.

  Verna checked her wristwatch. “Almost seven. You two can relax here for a while. Eat up. You need your energy. That was quite an ordeal this morning.”

  I didn’t think either really knew how much of an ordeal it had been. I didn’t want Damon to know I’d been at Corky’s, and had seen everything. I wanted all of that to disappear. He didn’t need my descriptions haunting him for the rest of his life. I would have to suffer that alone.

  Damon nodded at my plate and gave me a significant glance. So, I forced myself to eat. We’d be leaving soon, leaving this town forever, and we’d both need our energy to make the trip.

  When I’d eaten all I could without throwing up, Mrs. Jarvis made a slight moaning sound and leaned forward.

  “I promised Chester,” she said, closing her eyes for a moment and shaking her head, “but I think the time has come for you both to know something.”

  I sat back feeling more tired than I had before I’d eaten. “They told us. About the beast in the cave and all that. Having to run away and change your names.” I lowered my voice. “Killing a man accidentally.”

  She pursed her lips and closed her eyes for another long moment. “Yes, I know. Bella told me. This is something else.”

  She got up and left the table. Damon and I passed a glance but could only wait for her to return, which she did within a minute, holding a folded sheet of paper.

  “Elliot gave me this,” she said, handing me the paper and sitting again. “He spent fifty years searching, and finally found something.”

  I unfolded the paper but only saw a few lines of handwriting before Damon took the paper.

  “What is it?” I asked Verna.

  “It’s a place,” she said. “We all talked about it and decided it was a mistake. But, now I’m not so sure. Honestly, I think Chester just doesn’t want you to leave. He thinks of you as his granddaughter.” She reached across the table to pat my hand. “As we all do. You were the good one, Magpie. Special to us all.”

  I smiled at her. She hadn’t called me that in ages.

  “This is it!” Damon yelled.

  I took the paper from him. On it was a hand-drawn map and written directions. I turned back to Verna. “Chester already gave us directions to the cave.”

  She looked down at her lap and then held out something. A small plastic bag with something red inside. I took it and looked it over. A clump of red fur. Bright, candy apple red fur.

  “I got that,” Verna said. “That day in the cave. I never knew I had it in me, and Bella and your Gram would have told you the same thing. When that thing came after us, we fought, all of us, like wildcats. I got a handful of this fur. I ripped it right out of its body. I never knew I had it in me to fight until that day. I wanted to kill that thing. Luckily, Elliot took care of it with his pickax. But I kept that. As proof of what we’d seen and what happened. It’s the only real proof we have. Name an animal that has fur like that. Not orange like a cat or fox but true red like that. I can’t. Don’t open the bag, but you can see follicles still there. I never knew what to do with it. Who to show it to.”

  Damon looked at the fur, but was more interested in the written directions. “What’s here?” he asked. He nodded vigorously. “It’s the place, isn’t it? The hidden village. Where they all live.”

  “So your granddad claimed. He said he spied on them with binoculars but was afraid to go up. He said he saw one turn from a red beast to a man right before his eyes. Just as happened that day down in the cave. He says he found a village. Whether it’s true or not, I can’t say. Chester says no. He says Elliot drove himself crazy searching. He was desperate to save his son.” She looked at me, her eyes misting. “And your poor mama. Chester says he imagined it and I’m sure he’ll be right vexed at me for telling you about it. But I don’t want to see the police over at your house, sugar, shooting you both full of holes.”

>   She reached for the bag of red fur. “Like it or not, you both have this thing’s blood in you. It bit Harold… your Grampa Harvey, and Davy’s Grandma Beverly. That’s when I got that handful of fur, when it got Beverly down and was clamped onto her neck like a pit bull. I just started grabbing at it and ripping out hair. When it was dead, I thought to keep some of it. For evidence.”

  She smiled at Damon. “We called her Carol Ann back then. Her mama’s name was Beverly. Did you know that? That’s why she chose that name.”

  Damon glanced at her but his eyes were glazed and I could see he was already on the road, traveling to this hidden village to find our people. Beast humans who could transform in the blink of an eye, and who probably craved blood. Possible vampires.

  Mrs. Jarvis shook her head when she realized Damon had no interest in his own family history. I knew as far as he was concerned, these red vampire beasts were his family. And mine.

  And they lived in a village together. Where we belonged.

  Elliot must have told Damon about the village sometime before he’d died. Only, he’d failed to give Damon directions.

  “They’re everywhere,” Damon said, staring off at sights we couldn’t imagine. “They walk among us. They turn to human form and walk right past us.” He jumped and looked down at his left arm as if something had touched him. “They look us in the eye and smile because we don’t know their secret.”

  “Is that something your granddad told you?” I asked him.

  He turned to me suddenly, suppressing a grin. “It was tall,” he told me, “as tall as me, and covered in red fur, red as Santa’s suit. And it had eyes just like ours. Silver and powerful. It was dark way down in the cave, but I had a flashlight. He came out of the shadows on all fours and then stood up and walked. He had a human face, except for the fur and these sharp, jagged teeth. I just stood there, too amazed to move, Maggie, and he looked at me with this curious expression. He tried to communicate with me telepathically, but I couldn’t understand most of it. I couldn’t respond.”