Incident at Damon's
© 1992 by Donald W. Gillette First published in Horror, Winter 1992
I wish that I could call it ordinary fear.  I wish I could call it unreasonable, irresponsible fear, but each time the thoughts come back to me, I begin to tremble.  I tremble down through my arms and legs and the trembling grasps both sides of my neck like the chill that hits you when you start to warm yourself by a fire on a cold February morning.  Oftentimes, my flesh crawls; the small goose bumps start on my thighs and race toward my gut, turning my stomach in unusually choreographed somersaults. The fear is very real. I can see her face as she related her story to me and the fear comes back. Some days, I can make it without thinking of her tale; other days (and they are coming with alarming frequency,) I dread the fall of darkness, for it was in darkness that she explained it to me. You see, I knew she was mad the first time I laid eyes on her. I realize that that is a peculiar thing to say about a person, but with her, it was evident.  I don't really know what it was about her; she looked normal--everything about her was normal (except her unbelievable beauty,) but there was that certain look about her that should have spoken the truth. Loud rock and roll music was filtering through the club and I could smell a strange mixture of bourbon and marijuana in the air without knowing exactly where it was coming from, but the whole time I kept looking at her.  I knew that I should stay away, but I couldn't help myself. Now that I have the time to think back on the incident, I believe it was her eyes that first captured me, drew me closer, kept me from leaving, and ultimately, led me to the edges of sanity. Her name was Shara. She told me her name after I had taken the seat next to her at the bar. Shara. Shara. Shara. Shara. Shara. Even now, ten years later, the sound of that name drives me to the brink of reality until I can almost feel myself tottering on the side of a deep canyon, ready to slip and fall head first into the unknown.  Ten years and I can recall it all as if it happened just an hour ago. I had left my fiancée' at her home in Waterbury and was driving back to Hartford on 1-84 when the desire for a scotch and soda became strong. Just outside of Naugatuck, I veered off the Interstate and through a stroke of luck, the second road I turned on led me past three nightclubs.  I don't know why I chose Damon's over Dante's or The Pit, but I can only suppose it was the fates laughing at me. I parked the car under one of the lights in Damon's spacious parking lot.      As I walked to the entrance, a peculiar feeling came over me.  For a moment, I forgot where I was. In the time it took me to gather my wits, I was inside the club, making my way through the lounge, past tables illuminated by single red candles. The candles were enclosed in cheap globes, criss-crossed with plastic mesh in an attempt to give them the characteristics of Italian wine bottles. I remember thinking that Italian wine bottles would have been bad enough. There were a few people in the club that night (Friday? Saturday?), but not enough so that it would appear crowded. As I rounded a corner, I stopped and watched the band for a moment. They were good; very loud and very good. I turned away to find a table and order my drink when I saw a girl sitting alone at the bar, a cigarette dangling from her right hand, her left hand holding a glass of beer, and her head turned slightly to the right, offering me a view of a near-classic profile. As I watched her, she turned farther to the right and I caught her eye. Shara. We began a conversation, but her words were somewhat jumbled, as if she were more accustomed to speaking another language; yet I could detect no trace of an accent.  As the evening progressed, we each drank a bit too much and I know I began to feel light-headed; not drunk but dizzy, as if I were coming down with the flu. We left the club and walked to my car.  I had promised Shara a ride home since she said she had arrived at the club by taxi. On the drive to her apartment, she talked about her life in the past few years. I asked where she was from and did not receive an answer; only ramblings of an attractive blonde stranger intent on explaining her past to the first person she met. On the way, she told me a very strange story. It was this: Shara's parents abandoned her as a very young child, so she lived the majority of her formative years in an orphanage in Queens.  When she reached the age of twelve (give or take,) she ran away from the orphanage and began to live on the streets, taking whatever she could find to keep herself alive. She became very adept at eluding the police, especially the juvenile force.  She ate whatever scraps she could beg or steal and slept in empty buildings, subway stations, or in trash containers. She wore thrown away or stolen clothing for the most part, or made do with clothes donated to the various charities in the city. Shara told me that she had become quite good at worming gifts of clothing and food from the Salvation Army by insisting that her mother was too sick that day to come down.  With the vast number of welfare organizations in the city, she would be long forgotten by the time she began to make her rounds again. When she was fifteen, a very wealthy man discovered her wandering through a building he had just purchased and asked her if she would come home with him and live as a member of his family.  Too scared to refuse and too excited to concoct a story, Shara agreed. When she arrived at the man's home, she was immediately put in the charge of a maid and taken upstairs to an enormous bedroom with an adjoining bath.  The maid bathed her, dressed her in a huge undershirt, and put her to bed, insisting that she remain there until a doctor arrived to examine her. Shara remained in the bed, afraid both of what the doctor's visit could mean, and of disobeying the nurse's orders.  After what seemed like hours, there was a faint tapping at the door of the bedroom and a slight, balding man walked into the room. The man smelled of rubbing alcohol and was carrying a brown leather bag. He approached the bed and opened his bag, withdrawing several medical instruments and then proceeded to examine her thoroughly. When his examination was completed, the doctor left the room, first patting Shara on the head and telling her that she was extremely fortunate to have a benefactor like Mr. Cranston. Shara did not see Mr. Cranston for a week after this happening. The maid brought her meals to the bedroom and she was provided with a closet full of clothes, most of them skirts and blouses.  All the blouses were white. Shara said there must have been fifty of them, but of them all, her favorite was a sheer silk blouse with a delicate "S" embroidered over the left breast. She had everything she needed in the bedroom and was happier than she had ever been in her life. It was true that she had no one to talk to but the maid, but it was warm in the huge home while blizzards raged outside and the bed was soft and comfortable unlike the doorways and trash containers she had used as beds in the past. She had food to eat and a bath if she desired (which she did--three times a day.) For a week, life was glorious for Shara. Mr. Cranston knocked on her door on the eighth day of her stay in the mansion and he smiled at her gently when she answered the knock. Shara told me that she thought Mr. Cranston the most handsome man she had ever laid eyes on, but there was a strange tone in her voice as she talked about him. Mr. Cranston went to the bed and sat down on its freshly made linens. He patted a spot to his left, beckoning Shara to sit beside him. She went to him and sat down and Mr. Cranston asked her how her visit had been so far.  She expressed her gratitude for his interest and told him frankly, albeit bashfully, that everything was perfect. She asked Mr. Cranston if she could stay with him forever. He assured Shara that from that point on, as long as she wished, she could stay with him and share his home. The next day, Mr. Cranston began to take a greater interest in Shara and the relationship between the two grew rapidly. Shara began to fantasize that Mr. Cranston was her real father and that some horrible accident had separated them.  Her mind began to invent memories of his face above her crib when she was very young and she began to believe all of these memories. In attempting to bring her fantasies to life, she even asked Mr. Cranston if she might call him "Daddy," a proposition to which he reluctantly agreed as long as the title was used only in public and never at home. At home, Shara was to call him by his given name, Charles. On the second year of her new life, Shara began to take ballet lessons from the Guinneau Studio nearby her home. After a short time, she switched to modern dance and became quite competent at the art.  Each Wednesday evening, after dinner, Shara would entertain Mr. Cranston and his cook, Mrs. DeBordanave with a dance and she was always brought back for an encore amidst the adults' thundering cheers and applause. As Shara became more proficient, Mr. Cranston began having guests for dinner and they would be entertained afterwards by Shara's dance. I could tell from her conversation that her dancing had been a high point of her childhood and while listening to her, I imagined her flowing gracefully around the parlor, concentrating on her movements. I could almost hear the swish of her costume and I could almost see the slight dew of perspiration gather on her upper lip from the effort. I watched as her color deepened and her dance took on a controlled frenzy. Her relation of these events was uncanny. It seemed to take control of both of us while she told the tale. I cannot remember every being so engrossed in listening to the past of a total stranger. On the approximate occasion of her seventeen birthday, (celebrated on May 12, the day she had been found by Mr. Cranston) there was a dinner party given at the Cranston home in Shara's honor.  It was attended by several of Mr. Cranston's friends and business associates and two of Shara's friends from Saint Bridget's High School.  After the dinner had been served and the dishes had been cleared away, the guests retired to the parlor to watch Shara entertain them with dance. Shara told me that she was sure she had never danced better before and that she doubted she ever would dance that well again. She was costumed in a sheer, red gown cut to flow around her arms and legs as she moved, and her long, blonde hair was allowed to fall freely down her back and around her face. As she told me this, I let myself become a part of the dinner party and imagined the dance.  I remember becoming excited simply listening to her remembrance.	Later that evening, after all the guests had gone home, Mrs. DeBordanave took Shara upstairs and prepared her for bed but the excitement of the day was evidently too much and Shara found it impossible to sleep. Not wishing to remain in bed tossing and turning, she got up and left her room, intent on passing the time with an Agatha Christie novel. As she descended the staircase into the library on the south side of the house, she was surprised to hear male voices echoing up from below. She caught the scent of the pipe tobacco, which perfumed the house on every occasion of a visit from Mr. Hollister, a friend of Mr. Cranston, and was about to call down a greeting to Mr. Hollister when she heard her name mentioned in the conversation. Shara stopped midway on the staircase and turned her full attention to eavesdropping in an attempt to discover the topic of interest when she heard an unfamiliar voice speak in hushed tones. The voice did not have the clarity of Mr. Hollister's and it seemed to lack the breeding of Mr. Cranston, but it was authoritative as evidenced by the fact that both of the other men stopped speaking when the voice began. Shara was a bit surprised to hear the strange voice curse several times since language of that sort was not spoken in the Cranston home, but her surprise turned to pride when she detected a shift in the topic and heard Mr. Hollister mention her name again in conjunction with dance. Feeling that she was missing some compliments, Shara decided to make her presence known and accept whatever flattery was coming her way. She rose and proceeded down the stairs only to be announced by Mr. Cranston as she came into his line of sight.  Upon hearing Mr. Cranston's greeting to Shara, Mr. Hollister stood and smiled an acknowledgement as Shara entered the library, and as she looked around the library, she saw the source of the strange voice. In the far corner of the room, a poorly dressed, unshaven man of about fifty appeared to be trying to press himself into the brown leather of the chair, as if the material would engulf him and protect him from Shara's sight. She stood in front of the men for a moment waiting for conversation to begin and when none did, she excused herself and proceeded to the bookshelves, in search of the Agatha Christie, which was the object of her intrusion in the first place. As she looked over the titles, she waited for Mr. Hollister to compliment her in person on her dancing, but the words never came. In fact, not a 'word was spoken by any of the men.  Shara felt the poorly dressed man's eyes on her and she wished she had bothered to put a robe on over her short nightgown. She glanced over at the poorly dressed man as she stooped to check the lower bookshelf and she was shocked to see that he was rubbing his crotch lecherously while staring at her lower body. Somewhat flustered at this, Shara quickly rose and bid     Mr. Cranston and Mr. Hollister   goodnight.  They spoke their amenities but appeared to be ill at ease and Shara climbed     the stairs back to her room, holding POSTERN OF FATE in her right hand to block any view of her bottom from the poorly dressed man.      As the days went on, the poorly dressed man became more and more of a fixture in the Cranston house and Shara made certain she was never alone with him, either in the house itself or in any room of the house. The man's name was Jeremy Wentzel and Mr. Cranston made mention of the fact that Wentzel had, at one time, been employed by the Cranston’s as a gardener. It was clear that there was no gardening going on and although she asked several times, the purpose of Wentzel's current, almost constant presence in the house was not revealed to Shara until her eighteenth birthday. As had become custom in the Cranston home, a dinner party was given to celebrate Shara's "coming of age" and at the conclusion of dinner, the guests retired to the parlor in anticipation of another of Shara's modern dance interpretations. She did not disappoint the guests, but performed with a controlled abandonment which left an impression on all who witnessed the dance. After the guests had left for the evening, Mrs. DeBordanave called Shara aside and expressed wonderment at her seemingly revolutionary approach to the dance and suggested that Shara ask Mr. Cranston to sponsor a dance company. The troupe could operate under Shara's direction, said Mrs. DeBordanave, and Shara could choose the performances in which she wanted to appear. That night, Shara thought of nothing else. She decided that she would ask Mr. Cranston about funding such a project at breakfast the next day. When morning came, Shara was out of bed and preparing for the day before the rest of the household stirred. She chose a pleated, white skirt and an exact duplicate of another, somewhat smaller blouse she had been given when she came to live with Mr. Cranston--a white blouse with a delicate, embroidered "S" over the left breast. Shara paced her room for what seemed an eternity until she finally heard the call to breakfast. She bounded down the staircase and into the dining room, passing by Mr. Cranston and kissing him on the cheek, a display of affection used sparingly in the home. Mr. Cranston tried to keep things at a distance. During breakfast, Shara explained "her" idea and was told that a decision would be rendered after a short period of reflection. Despite numerous pleas for immediate action, Shara was unable to persuade Mr. Cranston to give an impulse answer to her request. Later in the day, Mrs. DeBordanave found Shara sitting in the greenhouse and told her that Mr. Cranston wished to see her in the library. She jumped to her feet, impulsively hugged the elderly cook, and hurried through the house, sure that in a matter of hours, she would be directing a dance troupe and performing before large, appreciative audiences. Shara burst through the doors of the library and literally ran to a position in front of the desk where Mr. Cranston sat toying with a pencil. Without looking up at her, Mr. Cranston cleared his throat, stammered for a moment, and then began to speak in a broken voice. He told Shara that he had given her request serious consideration, but that it was impossible for him to comply with her wishes. Shara felt as if she were going to collapse as she heard a high-pitched chuckle emanate from directly behind her. She whirled around and barely managed to suppress a scream of shock and horror when she saw the source of the sound. Reclining on an antique leather couch, stark naked and masturbating furiously, was Jeremy Wentzel. Shara found herself unable to turn away and she watched in disgust as the first wave of orgasm passed through Wentzel's body. Her stomach began to roll as Wentzel began ejaculating and she vomited onto the floor directly in front of the couch.  Wentzel cackled loudly as Mr. Cranston rushed from behind the desk, knocked over a banker's lamp and grabbed Shara by the arm, pulling her from the room. Before she had a chance to react, Shara found herself being shoved into the corridor outside of the library and saw the library door slammed in her face. She slumped against a wall and listened to the angry voice of Jeremy Wentzel berate Mr. Cranston. Frightened, she ran to her room. As Shara sat in her room, tears poured down her face; tears from the denial of Mr. Cranston to support her and tears from the disgusting memory of Jeremy Wentzel staring at her and masturbating like a half-mad demon from hell.  Finally, the tears subsided and Shara began to get angry. She resolved to rid the household of Jeremy Wentzel and his influence over Mr. Cranston. Shara left her room and went directly down the staircase to the library.  On the west wall of the library, Mr. Cranston hung like a played-out marionette. He had been impaled to the wall by long, sharp pieces of glass and his trousers had been pulled down to his ankles. The skin of his right leg had been stripped off and the bright red muscle of his thigh pulsed and sputtered like something unholy.  On his left leg, a pentagram had been cut deeply into the thigh.      Shara stood rooted to the spot and looked up into Mr. Cranston's face. He smiled at her as she screamed and ran from the room. As Shara hurried through the house, she regained the presence of mind to telephone an ambulance.  In the game room, she jerked the receiver off the hook and hesitated as her finger approached the phone buttons. Confused and frightened, the only thing Shara could remember to do was to call the operator. She pushed "0" and waited for an answer. When the operator answered the call, Shara managed to give the necessary information to get an ambulance and the police to the house. The operator reassured her and then hung up. Shara turned and ran back to the study to try and help Mr. Cranston before the ambulance arrived. When she re-entered the study, there was no evidence of anything out of the ordinary.  Mr. Cranston was not impaled against the wall, there was no blood on the floor, and there was no trace of foul play at all. Shara slumped onto the floor and was awakened several minutes later by a middle-aged ambulance attendant who looked amazingly like Ted Kennedy.  As Shara lay on the floor of the library she began to try to explain, but her hysterical condition made anything she tried to say unintelligible. She was crying hard and pulling the attendant's arms and when he told her to wait for the police, she slapped him squarely in the mouth. The next thing Shara remembered, she awoke in her bed. In the twilight between sleep and wakefulness, she felt something warm between her legs and put her hand under the covers to investigate. When she opened her eyes and looked at her hand, it was covered with blood. She screamed and rose up in bed only to discover Jeremy Wentzel lying beside her. From a corner of the room, where he was kneeling before a statue of a goat, Mr. Cranston turned and smiled at Shara. "Now we have you," he said. Shara ran from the house. She hesitated at this point, and would not continue with her story despite my subtle urgings. I wanted to ask her how Mr. Cranston could have been impaled on a wall and yet healed sufficiently in the next few hours to kneel on the floor and speak, but I didn't. You see, I thought she was lying - making the majority of the story up as she went. I was sure that it had some basis in truth; but I was also sure that the events she related to me could not have happened in our society without someone being punished.      Nevertheless, when we reached her apartment, I accepted her invitation and followed her inside for a nightcap. After I had been there for a few minutes, Shara began to get playful and we grew more comfortable in each other's company. I drew her close to me on the couch and kissed her and before I knew what had happened, we were making love in her bed. I have never experienced a night of lovemaking like that night.  Shara's body fit mine perfectly and we seemed to melt together. Afterwards, we fell asleep in each other's arms. When I awoke in the morning, I reached for Shara and when I touched her breast, my hand met frigid cold. I jerked away from her and sat up in bed. From a corner of the room where he was kneeling in front of a statue of a goat, a bloody semblance of a man turned his head toward me and smiled. Shara sat up beside me. "Now we have you," she said. And I ran from the house. XXX