“If Damon Comes” (1978)

Charles L. Grant was a prolific writer who is basically new to me. I found this story in The Dark Descent, where editor David G. Hartwell may have slightly oversold it in his intro piece. The story is good, but muddled. Damon is the strange son of Frank and Susan, whose marriage has hit the skids. Frank is not the best husband or father. Damon is 8 and has seen him kissing another woman. He hit Susan at least once when they were fighting. Susan wins custody, yet Damon seems abnormally attached to Frank. He’s never far from Frank’s sight, even when Frank is at work. Susan almost seems to be jealous. She makes it part of her reason for moving away with Damon after the divorce to “the city.” That’s New York, as the story is part of Grant’s Oxrun series, set in the fictional town of Oxrun Station, Connecticut. Damon is even more distant with Susan after the move. However, in the end things appear not to be as they appear. That is, Damon is attached to Frank because he hates him, evidently for various failings—kissing the strange woman, not trying very hard to find a lost cat. What’s more, Damon appears to be some sort of supernatural being (note his name). He suddenly dies, but he is still after Frank. There’s a nice mood and lots of great effects in this story, but I’m really not sure it adds up in any satisfying way. Frank, late in the story, realizes “Damon didn’t love him: Not since the night on the corner in the fog [kissing the other woman]; not since the night he had not really tried to locate a cat with a milk white face.” But we saw Frank looking for the cat at the beginning of the story—not as hard as he might have, perhaps, but he did make an effort. Have you ever gone looking for a missing cat? And, yes, in a drunken moment, presumably with a failing marriage, he kissed a strange woman. These are lapses, surely, but do they really merit a death sentence? It seems all out of proportion. Yes, suddenly Damon is evil and irrational and terrifying, but also, what? It seems we are falling back on the unfeeling universe once again, which seems nearly as tired here as tittering madness, even in 1978. Or no? Grant remains an interesting figure to me—I want to read more of his stuff. Besides writing scads of novels and stories he also edited the legendary Shadows anthologies through the late ‘70s and ‘80s. “If Damon Comes” has its points. Give it a B+.

The Dark Descent, ed. David G. Hartwell
Story not available online.