"You don't have to," she said. "You don't have to tell me anything. But I wish you would."
He was silent for a long moment, staring at the road ahead, the sweeping tango of cars.
"I want to, Tricia," he finally said, his voice heavy. "You're the only person I've ever wanted to tell. I think maybe you could understand. I think maybe you could … "
His voice trailed off. She reached forward, covered one of his tight, battered knuckles with her hand, just gently enough to let him know she was there, that she would try, if only he would try.
"It was a long time ago," he said, and he closed his eyes.
23
When he closed his eyes, he could remember it. Every damn detail.
He was eight – maybe nine. His exact age escaped him. Mostly because in that moment, that very first moment, the second he'd heard the scream, he'd stopped being Damon Volanis. He became someone else. Someone that would live inside his body for the rest of his life. And that person was ageless. That person had been where humans weren't supposed to go, and had come back only to find they weren't human anymore. They were something else.
He was coming home from the movies. He went to the movies a lot as a kid, usually alone. Cristov had too much energy to sit down for two hours at a time, and Kennick was always with his father, learning the ways of the rom baro. So Damon went by himself.
He remembered the movie, even if he didn't remember his age. He had to sneak in, since it was rated R. It was Thinner. Based on the Stephen King story. He hadn't been too impressed. He'd snuck into Fargo earlier that year, and nothing in the next two years would ever measure up to that. The most interesting thing about Thinner, to Damon, was that it was about his people. Gypsies. And they weren't portrayed in the nicest of lights. It was more sympathetic than a lot of other portrayals, but it still wasn't exactly kind.
It got tiring, seeing his culture used by Americans as a plot device, a gruesome deus ex machina. He remembered thinking, as he walked down the street, crisping fallen leaves under his sneakers, that someday he'd grow up and make a movie, too. He'd show gypsies as they really were. Beautiful and funny and full of love.
His thoughts about love and beauty were cut short as he passed the parking lot behind Turren Street. He couldn't have told you what businesses stood in front of that parking lot. All he knew was that he was walking home from the movie theater, the same route he always took home. And someone was screaming.
Out of instinct alone, he ducked. A chain-link face separated the edge of the parking lot from a ravine, muddy and polluted. He slid slightly as he moved, grabbed the links to keep himself from tumbling downwards into the rot. Whether shadows hid him or the man was too distracted, Damon didn't know. But his eyes widened as he watched the lady slump, her scream cut short.
He realized, after his brain had caught up to itself, that it wasn't a man at all. He was older than Damon by a handful of years, but he was still just a boy. And the boy sniffed as he watched the lady's body creep down the side of the car, all her limbs like spaghetti. The boy looked around, then caught the women by the underarms, dragging her up again. He pulled open the car door and threw the body inside.
He killed her, Damon thought, wide-eyed. He's a murderer. I have to go – run – tell – he'll see me.
He looked to his right. The edge of the ravine sloped sharply down, and Damon knew that it was a good mile before the ravine opened onto the next street; it was dead-end blocks all the way down. He looked to his left. He could run across the street but;
he'll see me, and he'll kill me.
I can outrun him, he thought. He won't see me in time and …
He looked forward. She wasn't dead. He could see, just barely, the way her head pressed against the passenger side door. It was pressed to the side, and he watched her eye roll in its socket, her mouth opening and closing in soundless protest. The boy – the attacker – was just a shadowy hulk, moving and moving against the lady's body.
She's alive, he thought. I've got to get help …
He rose; leaves crackled beneath his shifting weight. The hulking shadow rose in one sharp movement, and for a horrible moment Damon saw his face through the windshield.
Did he see me? Did he see me?
The lady's face disappeared from the window as her body was yanked underneath the shadow. A cry filled the air, high and wailing. Her hand slapped against the passenger side window as the shadow began to move above her; jerking, confusing, horrible movements. Damon didn't know what the boy was doing to the lady. All he knew was that it was bad – bad in ways that Damon would carry with him all his life. He fought the urge to throw up. He had to do something.
A male grunt filled the air as Damon began to creep along the chain-link fence towards the street. His eyes never left the car. The hand was pounding on the passenger side, weak but persistent. She wasn't dead. He had time. He had time to …
When his feet hit pavement, he began to run. And a voice stopped him.
"Kid," the voice said, booming from behind. Damon turned, almost against his will.
Keep running, stupid, keep running, keep running! He willed his legs to move but they didn't. The boy stared at him from the opposite side of the car; the lady's hand had stilled against the window, her fingers curled slightly, as though she was grabbing at air.
"I know you," the boy said, and suddenly he was in front of Damon, a blink of an eye and he was right there, his zipper undone and – blood. On his knuckles. "You're one of those gypsy fucks. You go telling anyone about this, you ever tell anyone about this, you and your fuckin' people are all dead, you hear? You tell anyone and I swear to god it'll be your fuckin' brother or your fuckin' father in jail for this shit. You hear me?"
Damon squeaked. The boy rushed him, grabbed him by the neck of his shirt, lifted him until Damon's toes were the only thing touching the ground. The boy smelled like sweat and rage and blood and fear and something else. He had blue eyes. He had black hair. A crooked nose, with a bump in it. Damon never forgot that face.
"No one but no one is going to take some shitty little gypsy boy's word over mine, you hear?"
The boy shook Damon.
"Do you fucking understand? You point the finger at me, you little shit, and you'll be visiting your fucking family through prison bars. And I'll come after everyone else you love. You hear me, you little shit? DO YOU HEAR ME?"
"Yes," Damon wailed, his hands doing futile battle with the boy's fist around the collar of his shirt, wanting to be gone, wanting to be away from that stench, that awful smell, those horrible eyes, the boy's spit landing on Damon's cheeks, the whole horrid moment when the lady was hurting, when someone needed help, and all he did … all he could do …
was cry.
Damon ran, not even realizing that the boy had released him. He was a long way from where the gypsies called home. He couldn't run the whole way.
But he could cry the whole way.
And he did.
And that was the last time Damon Volanis cried a single tear.
Men would beat him far worse than that kid yanking him upward by the collar of his shirt. Women would scream their anger at him, louder than the lady in that car. He would run harder and faster than he had that afternoon, the crisp October air stinging his lungs. His grandmother would die. His father would die. His uncle would die. He would betrayed by someone in his own kumpania. He would watch his brothers find love while his heart festered and boiled, alone in its shell of ribs. He would fight men, beat them until they gasped. He would kill a man. But he would never cry again.
24
Tricia gazed at Damon's profile. His eyes were steady on the road before them, his hands not too tight on the steering wheel. He'd told the story like he was reciting a college essay, all the emotion subdued by carefully chosen words. But he didn't need to tell the story with dramatics for Tricia to understand how deeply the incident had affected him; how something had changed in him that day, and that something was somehow connected to this trip.
"You were so young," she said. "What could you have done?"
"I could have gone forward," he said. "I could have gone to the police."
Yes, you could have, Tricia thought. But at what cost? And what eight-year-old boy knows the right thing to do in a situation like that?
"Did you ever see him again?" she asked, not wanting to move too quickly into the darker stuff.
"I did," Damon said, nodding slightly. "A few times. On the street. He lived near our trailer park. He never really seemed to see me, though. And we didn't stick around long after that, anyway. When something bad happens in a city where you have gypsies, it doesn't take much for gossip to get real sour real quick."