The Forgetting Place (25 page)

“
YOU THERE!
” a man yells. “
GET DOWN ON YOUR KNEES RIGHT NOW!
” The voice sounds like Mr. McBee, but the pitch is off: high and full of terror. It doesn't occur to me that he is talking to me. I am lucky he doesn't have a gun or a bat because, in his panic, he might have killed me. Instead, I feel a hand on my shoulder and he is spinning me around to face him.

“
WHAT IN THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE?
” But I don't have to say anything, don't have to explain why I am standing here in his child's bedroom in the middle of the night. Because in the next instant he looks past me and notices what I have already seen for myself. The bed is empty.

“Where . . . ?” His eyes widen. A strand of saliva trembles on his lower lip. I look away from him, trying to think. If Uncle Jim has already taken Ronald from the house, he could've taken him anywhere. But the place that comes to mind first is my special place: the creek down in the woods where I go to be alone. I've taken Uncle Jim down there a time or two, wanting to share it with him. There is no particular reason he would go there now,
and yet I somehow
know
that he will. Because . . . because we have a lot in common, Uncle Jim and I. He said so himself.

“There's still time,” I say, more to myself than to Mr. McBee. I push past him and run down the hallway. He does not reach out to stop me.

My sprint through the woods is frantic.
Not too late, not too late
—and yet I fear that it is. The snap of twigs against my body. The feel of wet leaves on my feet. The dim beam of the flashlight plays tricks on my eyes. Every tree looks like a man carrying the weight of an unconscious boy slung across his shoulder. It doesn't matter. I am relying more on instinct than sight, the flashlight serving only as a beacon for the others to follow.

There is a break in the trees on either side of the creek. It is not a full moon tonight, but it is getting close, and although I can't see everything in the glow, I know this place well enough to fill in the shadows. I stand there, breathing hard, looking in both directions along the banks. There is no one.

The hope that I've been clinging to is gone. He isn't here. He's taken the boy somewhere else. And whether Ronald McBee is already dead or will be soon makes no difference now. There will be no finding him tonight, no chance of saving him. I turn, start to make my way up the embankment. That is when Uncle Jim appears from the trees, carrying the boy's limp body across his shoulder, just the way I imagined he would. The rain has tapered off, and I can see that he is smiling at me, happy to find me here. I've beaten him to the creek. With the weight of the boy in his arms, the woods less familiar to him than to me, it had taken him longer. Somewhere along the way, I must have passed him, his path swinging wider than mine, my own race through the woods covering up the sounds of his passage.

“I brought him down here to wash him off first,” he tells me, proud of himself for having thought of this. “He should be clean before we bury him.”

I look from his placid face to the body he is holding. There is no movement there. I cannot tell if the boy is still breathing.

“Is he dead, Jim?” I ask, leaving off the “Uncle” part this time. Because if Ronald is dead, then things are different between us. I am as much to blame as he is.

I can hear the others—Ronald's parents, maybe mine too—pushing their way through the woods a short distance above us. They are calling Ronald's name, calling out to both of us, but I don't answer. Everything that will guide the rest of my life is right here in front of me.

Uncle Jim glances briefly at the body resting on his shoulder. “Is he dead, Jim?” I ask again, and I expect him to answer,
Yes. He would've come for you. I
had
to protect you.
But instead he shakes his head slowly, solemnly, as if I should know better—after all we've been through—than to ask a question like that.

“No, Lise,” he says, and he reaches a hand out and touches my shoulder. “I thought we could do this together.”

T
he next time someone came to the door they did more than just look inside. I'd been doing push-ups, the weight of my lower body on my knees instead of the balls of my feet. I had counted out seventeen, my arms beginning to shake, but I was doing them properly—back straight, lowering my upper body slowly until my chest touched the floor, then back up again to a straight-arm position.

One of the problems was that it was hard to keep track of how much time had passed. There were no external windows to mark day and night, no clocks, no objective way of separating one hour from four or fourteen. Shortly after I'd awoken for the first time, they'd turned on the lights in the room and left them on, probably to keep a better eye on me. The ceiling was higher than I'd originally imagined—fifteen feet, perhaps—and there was a video camera perched in one of the corners where the ceiling met the wall. It looked down on me with unblinking, inanimate indifference.

They slipped food and water into the room once while I was sleeping, and I was still kicking myself for not being awake when it happened. Not that there was much chance of me using the
opportunity to escape, but I wanted to observe them. If there was a weakness, something I could exploit, then I might be able to use it to my advantage. I hadn't eaten what they'd brought—a small apple and a sandwich that was nothing more than two slices of cheese on bread—but the water I'd gulped down so quickly I almost barfed it back up a moment later. I fought my stomach on that one, managed to hold it down after all. The body can go without food for a long time, but lack of fluids will incapacitate you faster than almost anything else. Any chance I had of breaking out of here was dependent on me staying hydrated.

There was no particular strategic reason I didn't eat. I wasn't worried about poisoning. They could've poisoned my water almost as easily as poisoning my food. And I knew that not eating might weaken me. The water I saw as an absolute necessity. The food—for the space of at least the next few days—was not vital to my survival, so I chose to refuse it as an act of rebellion, although I seriously doubted that they cared.

Still, I kept the apple—tucked it away beneath the waistband of the loose clothing they'd provided. The outfit was something like hospital scrubs, only the material was much flimsier—almost paper thin. The pants had an elastic waistband, which I used to hold the apple in place. Even then, it had a tendency to slip out as I moved about the room, the apple cascading down my pant leg, landing near my bare foot on the soft floor. I'd stoop, retrieve it, return it to my waistband. I'd think about the watchful eye of the camera above me, wonder whether all this was being observed or recorded.

I was just lowering myself into push-up number eighteen when I saw movement in my peripheral vision and the door
swung open. I scrambled away, crab-walked backward into the far corner.

Two large men stepped into the room, and I could see a third standing in the doorway behind them. All three were darkly complected and appeared to be of Middle Eastern descent. The largest of them—the one who spoke—had a thick accent and coal-black eyes that burned into me as I sat there with my back pressed against the wall.

“You are feeling better, no?”

I didn't answer, pressed myself tighter against the wall.

“You will take these,” he said, and opened the palm of his hand to reveal several small pills.

“I don't think so,” I told him.

He seemed to be expecting a response like this and stepped aside so the third man could enter the room. He was carrying a large syringe with a hypodermic needle attached.

“You will take these pills,” the one in charge said, “or you will receive an injection. It makes no difference to me.”

I looked from the syringe to the capsules resting in his open hand, then back at the syringe again. They watched me with blank faces.

“I would recommend,” I advised them with an air of careful consideration, “that you take both the pills
and
the injection”—I took a moment here to make eye contact with all three of them—“and shove them up your—”

They came for me then, all three at once. I kicked out with the heel of my bare foot and caught one of them in the knee. He gave a grunt and I heard something pop. My left hand reached back and yanked the apple loose from beneath my waistband. One of
them had grabbed hold of my right arm, was trying to turn me over and force me into a prone position. With the apple cupped in my left hand, I brought it across my body as hard as I could, felt the satisfying crunch as it smashed into the man's right temple. He rolled to one side, holding a hand to the side of his head. The third man had to step over his fallen partners to get to me. He stumbled and fell awkwardly, cursing as he struck the floor. My feet were under me now, and I bolted past them toward the door.
Gonna make it!
I thought before the one whose knee I'd snapped reached out and snagged me by the ankle. I wasn't expecting it, went down hard and landed on my stomach, the air momentarily forced from my lungs. With my free foot, I kicked out at him, caught him in the nose this time. He howled, let go of my ankle, and I crawled the rest of the way to the door, covering the remaining few feet in less than a second. If I could get through the door and slam it behind me, they would be trapped inside. They were scrambling now, having come to the same realization—all four of us focused on gaining control of the door.

I shot through the opening, was outside of the room, swinging the door closed on its hinges. The space between the door and the frame narrowed to a single sliver before at least two of them went slamming into the door from the inside, throwing it wide open again and sending me flying backward into the hallway. I landed on my ass, felt my teeth click shut as the jolt of the impact shot up my spine. They spilled out of the room, all three of them, and I could see that I'd rattled them—the biggest one most of all. He lurched toward me, breathing hard. Before I could get to my feet, he reached down, took hold of an ankle in each hand, and yanked them out from under me. My head swung backward, cracked against the tile.

He was pulling me back into the room, my body sliding along the smooth flooring of the hallway. I tried to kick out again, working my legs like I was pedaling a bicycle, but he was stronger and my movements were useless. The top part of my garment had torn, and it rode up my back as he pulled me along, the tile of the hallway transitioning into the soft rubber flooring of my cell. I fought harder, knowing I'd never get another chance at escape like this one. The man whose temple I'd struck with the apple got down on one knee and grabbed both of my arms. He and the leader held me down while the third man retrieved the syringe. He walked over, uncapped the needle, then leaned forward and plunged it right through my pant leg into my thigh. Liquid warmth spread quickly through the muscle.

They held me there for a while, until the room was spinning so fast that I no longer had the ability to struggle. Then they let go of my limbs, and I rolled over onto my side, clinging to the floor for fear that, if I didn't, I would slide off into the abyss.

“Next time you take the pills,” the one who had done all the talking said to me. They were leaving. All I could see of them now was their shoes.

“Next time you bring more men,” I managed, and then closed my eyes as the darkness rose to meet me.

A
FTER THE INCIDENT
with Ronald McBee, they'd come to take away Uncle Jim, as I'd known they would. Mr. McBee left it to my father to call the police, but it was one of those if-you-don't-I-will situations. My father was more than happy to place a call to his colleagues. He'd wanted to do it since Uncle Jim had first come to stay with us. I think he actually relished the opportunity. He had been right and my mother had been wrong—
just one in
a long line of such occasions,
he pointed out as we watched the officers escort Uncle Jim into the back of a squad car and drive away, the siren silent but the light bar flashing. My parents stood in the entryway of our house as the cops loaded him in, but I'd refused to come inside, standing in our front yard beneath the oak where the two of us used to sit. The rain had tapered to all but nothing. Mr. McBee had watched from his driveway, but the rest of his family had gone inside and the house was once again dark. He never glanced over at me, never said a word to me beyond the brief, panicked exchange we'd had when he'd discovered me standing in Ronald's room that night. I knew that he blamed me too for what had happened. And although his son was safe and I'd played a critical role in saving him, I had no doubt that he would never trust me again.

I stood there in the last of the dwindling mist and watched Uncle Jim go, the only one in my life who'd ever taken the time to understand me. I raised a hand as he paused outside the cruiser. His own hands were cuffed behind him, and he had no way of returning the gesture. But he did give me a nod and a thin smile before lowering himself inside, and I saw him watching me through the glass as the officers climbed into the front and the car shift was dropped into gear. The driver turned the front wheels to the left and the patrol car followed suit, the tires squeaking softly on the wet pavement. I watched until they rounded the corner, until even the flashing remnants of the blue-and-red strobe had disappeared from view. After a time, my right arm began to ache and I realized that it was still raised in a half wave. I forced myself to put it down.

“Come inside, honey,” my mother called to me from our front door, so I did. She walked me to my room, helped me out of my
wet clothes and into my pajamas, ran a towel through my hair. She got down on her knees to tuck me in as I slid beneath the sheets, and for once she seemed completely present.

“Where will they take him?” I asked as she planted a kiss on my forehead.

“To a hospital,” she said, “someplace where he can be safe.” She stood and walked across the room to my door, flipped off the light. I could just make out the shape of her outline in the doorway. “He belongs in a place that can keep him safe. He deserves that, Lise. Don't you think?”

“I miss him, Mom,” I whispered, not wanting to be brave or grown-up any longer. “I miss him already.”