The Summer We Lost Alice (8 page)

"I see," she says. "Please come in. I'll ask you not to disturb the patients who are sleeping. May I fix you some tea?" The sheriff accepts the offer. Wallace and Pete go off to look around. I don't think their heart is in it. I wish they had let me go with them.

The rest of us go to the dining room. Mrs. Nichols asks a woman in a nurse's uniform to bring tea for the sheriff and milk and cookies for me.

The sheriff and Mrs. Nichols drink tea and talk a little bit, but there doesn't seem to be much to say that doesn't involve Alice or the other missing kids. I can see they don't want to talk about that around me. Nobody does.

Mrs. Nichols calls me "you poor boy" and says that this must be very upsetting.

"You'd think so," the sheriff says. He looks at me hard, like there's something wrong with me for not breaking down in tears. He doesn't know what I'm feeling inside. I think he doesn't like me, that it's all my fault, which it is when it comes to Alice.

After a few minutes, Wallace and Pete come back. Wallace tells Mrs. Nichols that it seems like a very nice place to grow old in. Wallace says maybe he'll come here himself, when the time comes, and let her take care of him. Mrs. Nichols says she doesn't plan to be here that long. She's retiring to Florida and letting her daughter take over, at least long enough to close the place down properly.

I don't think the FBI conducted much of a search. I don't think they looked at anything, really. I think maybe the whole trip was just to show me what an idiot I am for believing in witches. I feel mad and I want to cry.

As the FBI car is leaving, Mrs. Nichols smiles at me. Her smile makes a shiver run up my spine.

"IT'S TIME, Mama," Uncle Billy says. "It's time he went home."

My mother and father are coming to
Meddersville to pick me up and take me back to Wichita. They're coming tomorrow. They should arrive around lunch time. They've made up, apparently. Whatever Dad did, he's been forgiven for it. I think maybe Alice's disappearance had something to do with that. Maybe it doesn't seem so horrible, by comparison.

Aunt Flo doesn't want me to go.

"He's all we have," she says. "He's the only one who saw what happened to Alice. He's the only one who can help us find her."

"He's told all he can. He's told it a hundred times, to Sam, to the FBI. There's no need to keep him here. He's been through enough. It's time he went home."

"It's like we're giving up," Aunt Flo says. "It's like we're all giving up."

"Nobody's giving up."

"They've quit searching. They aren't doing anything."

"They've been all over those woods. She isn't there."

"Then where is she, Bill? I can't stand not knowing where she is! She's my baby girl and I don't even know where she is!"

Aunt Flo collapses into Uncle Billy's arms and cries. Uncle Billy holds her tight and says words that don't mean anything. He sees me watching and gives me a tiny, tight-lipped smile.

Tomorrow I'm going home.

I don't want to go home anymore. It's all I've wanted since I got here, and now I want to stay. I'm a crazy kid. I never want what I have, I always want something else. I want to stay because I want to be here when Alice comes back, and because they aren't going to find her where they're looking.

Mrs. Nichols kidnapped her and took her to the nursing home. I know she's there. I know, too, that the sheriff and the FBI searched and said Alice wasn't there, but maybe they didn't look hard enough. Maybe there's a secret room they didn't even look for. Maybe there's a bookcase that swings open and all the kidnapped kids are on the other side. They didn't even use police dogs. Police dogs would've found her. They could have given the dogs an old shirt of Alice's out of the laundry basket and they'd have tracked her down even if she was hidden inside a secret room.

They used dogs in the woods. They tracked her into the woods farther than I could follow that night. They reached a point and the dogs went crazy and circled around and bumped into one another with their noses to the ground, and that's where the trail ended.

"It's like she sprouted wings and flew away," one of the men said. "It's the damnedest thing."

The sheriff ordered them home. He could've told them to search the nursing home but he didn't.

I don't have a police dog, but I have Boo.

This is my last night in
Meddersville.

I'm going back to the nursing home, and I'm taking Boo with me
. We're going to find Alice.

* * *

I find a map of "Meddersville and Vicinity" in a drawer and sneak it upstairs.

I have a good idea how to get there, but I'm not good at things like that. Boo took a way I could never duplicate, the dog route. I could put him on the leash and try that again, but I don't want to get pulled every which way and maybe lose him and end up lost myself.

I set the map on the bed and turn it the right way. I find Aunt Flo and Uncle Billy's street, and I find the nursing home. It's marked on the map along with the graveyard. I figure out how to get there following streets and not cutting through yards and making all of Boo's twists and turns. It's a little bit longer to go this way, but it makes sense. I can memorize where to turn and which way to go. I commit the route to memory. I repeat it in my head while I sit with Boo in the backyard and stroke his fur.

Aunt Flo is already in bed when Uncle Billy turns in.
Catherine, too. I've been lying in bed with Boo and waiting for the house to go to sleep. I hear Uncle Billy turn off the TV and go to the bathroom and then I hear his bedroom door shut. I lie awake and wait. I wait for an hour or more, until there's nobody awake but me, not even Boo. I nudge him and throw back the covers. I pull on my jeans and my shirt and we sneak downstairs.

I open the back door as quietly as I can. The hinges squeak
. They sound loud enough to wake the dead. Boo scratches at the screen door, which is latched, wondering why I don't open it. I'm waiting to hear if Uncle Billy or Aunt Flo or Catherine wakes up and comes to the kitchen to see what's going on. Nobody comes, so I unlatch the door. Boo rushes out, barking. It's no good trying to shush him. Our best bet is to get away from the house as fast as we can.

I run to the back fence
. Boo jumps it while I'm climbing over. We run off into the dark. I look back at the house and no lights come on. We've made it.

I repeat the directions to myself. I've been over the map a million times. I left the map on my bed, and I drew a circle around the nursing home. If I don't come back, they'll know where to come looking for me.

I run down the sidewalk. Boo runs alongside of me, smelling things. He circles me like a moon. I make all the turns, checking the street signs with a flashlight to make sure I stay on course.

Pretty soon we reach the lake and the road that runs around it. I could take the shortcut that Boo took but I don't dare. Boo vanishes into the woods and reappears, running, snuffing, doing his doggy business, but he never wanders far from me. I don't need a leash. Boo isn't going anywhere I don't go, even if he does make his own side trips to smell this and that. He doesn't have anything to carry off to his secret place.

There's wind in the trees. The rustling of the leaves to my right and my left terrifies me. That's another reason to stick to the road. Whatever grabbed Alice, it came from the trees. I look up. Straight over my head I see stars and clouds. The moon makes the clouds glow. A few tree branches overhang the road, but not many. I'm safer here, under the moon and the stars, than under the trees.

Boo bursts out of the undergrowth beside me, scaring me half to death. He prances up to me and gives me a sniff
. I pat his shoulders, then he's off again, to the other side of the road, into the brush.

I recognize where we are. We're on the road where Sammy's car was parked. This is where Catherine caught me and Alice. Boo runs across the road. I call to him as I walk along the road. Pretty soon he comes bounding out of the woods and takes off ahead of me, but still
following the road. Now and then he stops and looks back to see if I'm there.

We circle the lake and hit the country. We walk along the highway. There's no traffic, none at all. There's no one to find us and stop us, but if I see headlights along the road I'm ready to jump in a ditch and lie down and wait for the car to pass. I don't figure they'll pay any attention to Boo, another stray dog out on the highway at night. But there are no lights. There's no reason for anybody but me and Boo to be out on this road at this time of night.

I see the nursing home. Boo and I run up the gravel path that leads to it. You can't see the graveyard from here, but I know it's there, behind the house full of old people presided over by the witch. The moon lights our way. It seems like feeble protection against the darkness that threatens to engulf us. Clouds are gathering. Soon even the moon will disappear.

I run up to the nursing home and press my back against the wall. Boo bounces around me. He barks
. I tell him to shush. He doesn't have any idea what we're doing here, but I know that, once I get him inside, he'll find Alice. He'll snuff around and catch her scent and he'll go right to her. All we have to do is get inside.

The windows are too high off the ground for me to reach easily. I could climb up if I had to, if the window was open. I walk around the nursing home looking for an open window, but I'm halfway around
and all of the windows are shut. I don't know if they're locked or not, but I figure they are. First I'll try to find an open one that I know I can get in. If I don't find one, I'll get something to stand on and try one of the closed windows.

I reach the back side that faces the graveyard
. I see the doors to the storm cellar. That would be a good way in, if the cellar doors aren't locked. I go
pssst
at Boo and he runs up. We run over to the cellar doors.

I stand beside the doors and my heart sinks. There's a big padlock on the doors that I couldn't bust in a million years. I pull at the bottom of one of the doors, thinking maybe that the door is rotten and the latch will pull out, but the latch and the padlock hold firm. I look at the hinges and think maybe I could work them loose if I could find a screwdriver or something. This is my best way in, if I can only figure it out.

Boo's gotten bored and run off into the graveyard to smell things. I hope he doesn't dig up any dead bodies. The moon's been swallowed by the clouds and it's dark out here. I can't see him but sometimes I hear him snorting and digging.

I find a stick and use it to try to pry the hinges loose. The stick breaks and the hinges don't budge at all. It was a stupid idea. I need something stronger if I'm going to get those doors open. Maybe
I can find a board and wedge it between the doors and pry them apart. It all seems so hopeless and stupid and I want to give up, but I won't.

I turn around to look for something I can use on the doors and I jump halfway out of my skin. An old man is looking at me. He's walked right up behind me while I was concentrating on the cellar doors and he never said a word. He's wearing a hospital gown
. He's barefooted. There's a dim look on his face and his mouth hangs open. He looks lost.

"This isn't my house," he says.

I hear Mrs. Nichols's voice calling out from inside the house.

"Martin!" Mrs. Nichols says. "Martin!"

I look at the old man. He hears Mrs. Nichols calling his name but he doesn't yell back. He stares at me as if I'm supposed to help him.

Mrs. Ni
chols calls out "Martin!" again. A light comes on inside the back door. Then the light over the back door comes on and the door opens. Mrs. Nichols stands in the doorway and calls again for Martin. I kill the flashlight.

The old man looks up. His head
wavers. I don't think he's right in the head, and that makes me remember—

"Martin Dale?" I say.

"I want to go home," he says. His eyes plead with me to do something, but what can I do?

Mrs. Nichols calls out "Martin!" again. She steps out of the door and into the light. She tries to peer into the darkness.

I run around to hide behind the cellar doors. I scrunch myself between the doors and the side of the house and clutch the flashlight to my chest. My heart is pounding. I hope Boo stays out in the graveyard. If he comes back now, Mrs. Nichols will find us and kill us and we'll never be able to rescue Alice.

Mrs. Nichols'
s footsteps approach. She says, "Martin, there you are! What are you doing outside?"

"I want to go home," the old man says.

"This is your home now, Martin," Mrs. Nichols says. I hear her leading him off and dare to peek out from my hiding place. Mrs. Nichols calls out another name. A nurse appears in the doorway.

"Mr.
Haversham escaped," Mrs. Nichols says.
Martin Haversham, not Martin Dale.
"Who left the door open?"

"I told you that door don't close right," the nurse says. There's an edge in her voice. "Nothing in this old place closes right. It's a wonder all the fogies don't just up and wander away."