Chapter 64 Damon
Damon
‘Stop it!’ shrieks someone from behind me. ‘Get off him!’
I’m slow to react and I turn, just as I’m about to be struck again.
I can’t move fast enough to avoid it and it slams into my head for a second time.
The impact of what sounds like metal against my skull is so forceful, my vision blurs.
I lose my balance and tumble off my dad.
Then I’m hit once more, this time on the shoulder with a thwack so hard, I fear it might’ve fractured my collarbone.
I try to roll away but come up against a wall.
My vision flickers on and off like a light switch, leaving me with barely enough clarity to register an arm being raised and the weapon about to fall on me again. I can’t make out what it is.
‘No, Mum!’ comes Dad’s voice.
I brace myself for a fresh blow, but it doesn’t come.
Only now, as I refocus, do I realise my attacker is an elderly woman. She supports herself with a walking frame in one hand, and in the other, she brandishes a metal coal shovel.
Then I realise what Dad’s called her: Mum. My grandmother is the one who has ambushed me. The woman I share a past with, but have no memory of.
She glares at me, her face ablaze with wrath. ‘Stay away from him,’ she hisses at me, ‘or I’ll kill you.’
Now Dad and I look at each other. His face is bloodied and raw with open wounds. I return to myself, the person I was before tonight, appalled that I lost control and did this to him.
‘He’s served his time,’ my grandmother continues. ‘Now leave him alone. Fucking vigilantes.’
Dad clambers to his feet and I refuse the hand he offers. I push myself up off the floor, then balance against the wall as the pain makes the room swim. An almost unbearable flash of heat causes my knuckles to pulse.
‘Go,’ says Dad. ‘Now, Damon.’
This time, I don’t protest.
‘What did you call him?’ my grandmother says.
‘Go!’ Dad says to me again, with more urgency.
‘Is that . . . him?’ the old woman asks, turning to me.
Neither of us answers as she regards me, searching for signs of familiarity.
She doesn’t have to look too hard: facially, I am a carbon copy of my father.
Her fearlessness is replaced by disbelief, and I think she’s about to open her heart and her arms to the grandson she hasn’t seen in so many years.
Instead, she pivots effortlessly to who she was a moment ago.
Her face is a picture of rage. As I move past her towards the door, she manages to turn and smack me one last time across the middle of my back with the shovel.
It pushes me into another wall and comes close to knocking me back to my knees. I recover from my stumble just in time.
‘Get out, you little cunt!’ she yells.
‘Mum, stop,’ Dad shouts and steps between us, snatching the weapon from her hand and throwing it across the room.
Then he takes me firmly by my injured shoulder, and frog-marches me back along the corridor and towards the front door.
He opens it and I spin around to face him.
He spits a mouthful of blood over the doorstep and on to the pavement.
A string of red saliva drips into his beard, then he locks his eyes on mine.
They are cold and hard and full of fury.
I am seeing the real him. And it floods me with fear to see myself reflected in his glare.
‘That was your only shot,’ he warns. ‘If you ever come back again, what I did to all those kids will be nothing compared to what I’ll do to you.’ He slams the door closed between us, but bellows through it: ‘Now stay the fuck away!’