Damon (37 page)

“Right there. Staring at us. Can’t you see them? Vampires. Our family.”

I heard a distinct click and turned around to find Damon pointing the revolver at my head. I was staring straight into the barrel of the gun.

At first, I thought he was aiming at whoever he saw in the woods and I quickly stepped to the side. But he followed me with the gun, keeping it aimed at my head. Then, I thought he must be joking around, not that pointing a gun at someone is the least bit funny, and I tried to swat the barrel away from my face. But I saw the determination in his eyes and the way the revolver shook in his hand. He planned to shoot me.

I took a small step backward. “What are you doing?”

“We have to die to be reborn,” he said with a shaky voice. “It’s the only way. First you, then me. I don’t want you to be afraid anymore.”

Now fully realizing he planned to kill me, to shoot me in the head, absolute fear and panic hit me hard, making my knees vibrate. “Damon, wait,” I said past a dry throat. “You’re forgetting something. You’re forgetting. Your grandmother died and didn’t come back. So did my granddad. Your own father. They died and then they were just dead.”

He shook his head in unison with the gun. “They climbed out of their graves. They’re out there, waiting for us. This is the cure. I found the cure. Trust me.”

I loved him, but I didn’t trust him. I never had. His mind couldn’t be trusted. And I didn’t want to die like this. “Your mind is playing tricks, Damon.”

He continued to shake his head. “It won’t be bad,” he said. “We’ll just fall asleep and wake up in another place, together. I’ll be right there with you. It’s the only way. This is the cure!”

So, he’d finally figured it out. The hidden village was where the dead lived. My mind whirled for the right words to say, to stop him before he pulled the trigger.

Beyond his shoulder, I saw a tree with a giant gall bulging from the center of its trunk. “I’m pregnant, Damon,” I blurted. “We have to wait until it’s born before we can change or it will die. After it’s born, we can take the baby with us.”

It was a flat-out lie, but I figured there would never be a better excuse to lie. Damon lied to me at least once a day. I was owed.

He stared at me for a moment, then shook his head and looked off. He lowered the gun to his side. “You’re not pregnant. You’re lying.”

Damn. I’d forgotten he could read my mind sometimes. Especially when I was upset. Before I could think of what to say, he sent me a sly glance.

“But, why are you lying?” he said. “That’s the question.”

He tucked the gun into the back of his jeans and started walking again, leaving me behind.

I stared at that revolver and knew one day soon he’d use it on me, when I wasn’t looking.

I’d be dead before I even knew it.

I wasn’t quite ready for that.

I sat down on a large rock off the side of the trail to rest, weak from fright. Damon kept walking and I watched him moving farther away, putting space between us, breathing easier with each step he took.

I wanted to run back to the car, but Damon had the keys. So, I decided to wait right on that rock until he’d explored for the cave and returned for me. By then, I hoped he wouldn’t even remember trying to kill me.

The day we’d met, I’d been angry with him for messing up my yard and snooping through my things, but I’d never been angry like this. I’d never been this angry at anyone. Not even Teddy.

As I took in the beautiful scenery around me, I tried to bear in mind that Damon had had a traumatic childhood, and was mentally ill to boot. He was damaged, irreparably so. Damaged and sick. He couldn’t act the way a normal husband should, because he simply wasn’t normal. He never would be.

He was delusional.

I was a generally forgiving person. I’d forgiven my mother a thousand times, a dozen of those times for trying to kill me. But she’d never pointed a gun at my head. Somehow, that made a difference.

Maybe ten or fifteen minutes later, I saw Damon’s blue shirt as he walked back up the trail with his head down. When he reached me, he stood there with his hands in his pockets. His face was almost as red as the cave beast he wanted to find.

He reached behind him and withdrew the gun. I held my breath until he turned the gun upward and unloaded the bullets onto the ground. He showed me the empty cylinder, then tucked the gun back into his jeans.

He winced as if in pain. “I probably shouldn’t have done that,” he said. He nodded to his right. “I found the entrance to the cave. And that’s when I remembered what I was supposed to remember. So, it’s okay.”

The gun was empty, and that was good, but we were not okay. Far from it. “Do you have more bullets in your pocket?”

He raised his eyebrows, then turned out his pockets. Only a green lighter and his pocketknife fell out to the ground. He retrieved them.

“Okay,” I said. “What did you remember?”

His eyes softened, at last. “That you’re not crazy yet. But I am. I’m crazy. And if you say I shouldn’t kill us, then I shouldn’t. I have to remember to listen when you say my mind is playing tricks.”

I let out a hard breath, finally able to relax. And forgive him.

He reached out, hesitantly, and ran a soft hand over my head. I leaned toward him and he pulled me in for a warm hug. Tears sprang to my eyes and I clung to him, needing comfort more than I ever had. I’d been angry enough to leave him, but I couldn’t survive on my own.

I’d end up back at Cynthia’s, resuming my old life, until she drugged me half to death in a couple of years. Then, I’d end up sitting in a wheelchair like Mama had, staring into space.

I’d have rather watched a bullet enter my brain than end up like that.

“I’m sorry,” Damon whispered in my ear. “I meant to do it before you turned around. Before you knew. So you wouldn’t have to be scared. But I lost my nerve.”

I gave his hair a pull. “Don’t do it at all. Not until I tell you to.”

He nodded, but I needed more.

“Promise me.”

He nodded again, holding me tighter. “I promise,” he said. “But tell me to do it before I beat you to death. I couldn’t stand that.”

Probably because of the stress, I suddenly found this conversation perversely funny. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll tell you to kill me before you beat me to death.”

“Promise me,” he said, seriously. “I couldn’t stand that.”

I leaned against him and closed my burning eyes, really needing to go somewhere and rest for a while. “All right. I promise.”

***

We arrived at the entrance to the cave minutes later and stood there, just staring into the low-lying gap in the ground. I’m not sure what I’d expected, but something more than this. The entrance was about six feet wide and only about two feet tall. It looked like a big mouth, with its lips slightly parted in a sneer.

Vegetation grew all around the opening and several basketball-sized rocks blocked the path inside. They appeared to have been lined up in a row in an attempt to hide the entrance.

“How are we supposed to get in there?” I asked, hoping we might get to turn back and abandon this quest.

Damon jumped down to the lower depression in front of the cave and began rolling the rocks out of the way. When he finished, he straightened and rested his hands on his hips to catch his breath. “We crawl through.”

I took a step back. “You expect me to crawl in there?”

“It opens up after a few dozen yards.”

“A few
dozen
yards?”

I still didn’t know if he’d ever actually been here before, or if he knew what lay beyond. I didn’t want to go climbing into a hole in the ground blindly.

“Your grandmother did it,” he said.

“You’re daring me now?” But it did work, a little. If this really was the entrance to the cave Gram, Bella and Verna had explored, then they must have crawled on their bellies to get inside. I could barely imagine that, but I wasn’t about to be outdone physically by Bella and Verna. Even though they’d been young at the time. About my age.

“There’s a whole world down there,” he said, probably hoping to entice me. “A world you can’t believe.”

I decided to give it a try, but…. “You go first.”

Damon reached into the vegetation beside the cave and pulled out a large flashlight. “Ready?”

“How did you know that was there?”

“I left it here last time,” he said. He switched on the light and shined it around.

“So, you did find this place before?”

“Yeah. I came here and found the beast. I told you all that.”

He had. He’d told me that. He’d said he’d found the cave and the red beast had come up to him and touched him, then let him go free. “You also told me it wasn’t true.” He’d been talking about finding his father at his house in Nashville.

He showed me the flashlight, shining it right in my eyes for a second. “I couldn’t remember. But this proves it. It was real.”

Made sense to me - that he’d found the cave before. Not, necessarily, that he’d encountered the red furry beast that had terrorized a young group of treasure hunters fifty-five years ago.

I stood still blinking until the bright circle in my vision began to fade.

He dropped to his knees and began crawling forward, having to flatten himself to get through. Once his feet disappeared, and I was alone, his story about dozens of alien vampires watching us began to spook me. So, I followed, more concerned about being left alone outside than entering unknown darkness.

I crawled and crawled over gravely dirt, following the glow of the flashlight way up ahead. Finally, as Damon had claimed, the cave opened up and we were able to stand. He shined the light around. We were in a narrow tunnel. He took my hand and we began to walk.

About twenty steps in, Damon turned off the flashlight. He pulled the lighter from his pocket and used it to illuminate a small circle around us. He let go of my hand and walked over to the wall were he found a stick propped against the rock.

“My torch,” he said. “I soaked it in oil, so it should be good.”

“Shouldn’t we use the flashlight instead?” I asked, rubbing my arms against the chill. The cave had turned cool and damp. We hadn’t thought to bring jackets.

Damon tossed the flashlight aside. “Naw, this is better.”

More dramatic, he meant. It took him several tries to spark the canvas. But when he did, the tunnel opened before us.

He took my hand and we walked. “This way.”

There was only one way. He moved on, but I pulled away and grabbed the flashlight, wanting to keep it with us just in case something happened to the torch. “Do you know where you’re going?”

“This way.” He was distracted, so I didn’t talk as we walked through the endless tunnel. The sounds of our muddy, gritty footsteps echoed off the walls, as did our ragged breathing. We sloped downward endlessly until at last we came to an open chamber with smaller passages to the left and right.

“I think I went right last time,” Damon said without slowing.

Beyond a low archway, which could have been a decorative arch in a house, we entered a different type of tunnel. Not just a cave, a cavern. With stalactites, stalagmites, and various other formations I didn’t know the names of. We maneuvered our way forward sometimes over a smooth, lumpy floor, and other times climbing over and around rocks of all sizes. The air was thicker, and water dripped continuously from somewhere.

The passageway was wide at first, then began to narrow and shrink, seeming to constantly tilt downward. We had to drop to our knees in places to maneuver through tight spaces. The farther we went the colder it got and my sinuses began to burn.

“Do you know where we are?” I asked him as I stood up, brushing off my shirt and the knees of my muddy jeans.

He looked at the torch, which was burning lower, and nodded. “I’ve got my lighter and we’ll burn clothes if we have to.”

“I have the flashlight,” I told him, as creeping tingles of fear worked up my spine. I wanted to leave, immediately. I didn’t want to get lost in this place, and was beginning to feel the pressure of claustrophobia squeezing my chest.

We came to another open chamber, this one too big for the torchlight to reach all sides. Our voices echoed as if we were in a cathedral.

“This is it,” Damon said. “I think.”

I shined the flashlight around. “This is what?”

“Where I saw him. He went into a passage.”

The red beast? I tugged on his arm. “Let’s go back.”

He pulled away. “Stay here,” he said. “I’ll walk it and check for passages.”

I grabbed his arm as my light caught something odd. “Look up there.”

Damon looked at me instead. “What?”

At first, I thought it was another odd cave formation. “Look. There on that ledge. Is that a foot?”

A series of ledges and rocks led up to a higher ledge. I began to climb first since Damon seemed reluctant to veer from his mission. When I reached the top and saw the body sitting there, I gasped and dropped the flashlight, quickly back-stepping. I almost fell over the ledge but Damon caught me.

I grabbed the flashlight then stepped back again. Damon stepped closer and lowered the torch to inspect the body. It was a man and he was completely naked, just sitting there, staring ahead.

He was dead.

We’d discovered a dead body.

But that wasn’t the disturbing part. I swallowed hard and lifted my flashlight again, to shine on the man’s face.

He was not in great shape. In fact, he was grotesque. His skin was pasty and gaunt, his features slack, but even still, his face was recognizable. He’d been in his late twenties with golden brown hair curling against his shoulders. His eerie eyes were an unusual shade of grayish-blue, staring right at me.

The beam from my flashlight began to dance. The dead man sitting there naked and decomposing had Damon’s face.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

I looked to make sure Damon was still there with me, standing and alive. “Is that you?”

“No, I don’t think so,” he said.

I turned my light on Damon. “He looks like you. He looks just like you. Except, you know, dead and disgusting.”