Damon (32 page)

I looked back over my shoulder, wishing I’d gone ahead and left. But now I was caught. Cynthia wouldn’t let go of my arm.

So, I went into the kitchen with her and started the coffee. She carried a bowl, a box of pancake mix, and milk over to the table and sat down – between me and the back door.

She took forever measuring and mixing the ingredients and the stirring, stirring, stirring…. I knew if she’d immediately call the sheriff if she suspected I knew Damon’s whereabouts.

When she finally got up to start a pan heating, I’d stood all I could stand. I rushed for freedom. “Be right back. I’ve gotta go to the bathroom.”

She looked at me, then the back door, as if she knew something. She tilted her head back and then I heard it, too. Sirens. “Oh dear lord,” she whispered as she rushed to the living room to look out the front windows.

I went with her but headed straight for the hallway and into the back room. A sense of urgency came over me so strong I could barely move in a straight line. I was afraid they’d found Damon when he’d gone to get his car. I didn’t know where he’d hidden it, but he might have been seen walking down a road. I was also afraid Damon’s obsessions might take over and he would forget about waiting for me. It seemed as if an hour had passed since we’d parted.

I had to hurry.

I climbed and fell through the window, landing on my hands and knees in the grass. Not wanting to waste energy, I crawled over to the bags and hauled them with me to my feet.

But I dropped them when I saw Corky’s house alive with lights. It seemed every light was on in the house, upstairs and downstairs. I was about to run, thinking Damon had turned them on, searching for more clues, but again I stopped.

In front of Corky’s house, red and blue flashing lights lit up the early morning sky.

The house was surrounded by cops.

My heart raced and my mind whirled. We’d wasted too much time and now it was too late.

Damon was caught.

I could see uniformed cops at the back of the house so I ran to the side, cutting through Verna Jarvis’s yard, and aimed for the front.

Already, onlookers were pulling up to park behind the numerous police vehicles. The sirens had stopped and despite the commotion building around Corky’s saltbox, the morning was eerily quiet.

I ran past the onlookers, neighbors and early risers who had followed the lights. If anyone spoke to me, I didn’t hear. No one was there to stop me from walking right in the front door.

In the foyer, a deputy turned and put his arm out, bringing me to a sudden halt. They were all gathered around in the living room.

I’d walked right into a showdown.

Every gun was drawn and before I could find Damon, I saw the red creature standing trapped in the room, Corky’s lighthouse chandelier shining down on him as the beast turned frantically looking for a way to escape.

I had to blink several times before my eyes would believe what they were seeing. A beast covered in cherry red fur, growling with jagged yellow teeth, glaring with red-rimmed eyes.

Just as Damon had described. Just as Chester and Bella had described. I realized until that moment, I hadn’t really believed the story.

But it was all true. It was there.

Alive and real standing in Corky’s living room.

Unearthly and vicious. Every police officer seemed to vibrate with fear though the guns aimed at the creature never wavered.

And then I saw something odd.

Something was wrong with the creature, with the fur that covered its body. I could see skin around the mouth, and around the eye sockets. And folds where the fur didn’t lie flat weren’t like skin folds.

It wasn’t a creature at all, but a man dressed in a filthy, matted red costume!

I searched the faces for Damon but didn’t find him.

And that was when the terrible realization struck. Damon had been speaking of himself, not his father. He hadn’t found the real beast in the cave, or in a house, or wherever. He’d been calling himself the beast. And they had caught him. He’d wanted us to have one last night together before they dragged him away to lock him up forever.

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.”