Caroline Eriksson - The Missing

“You are…,” I venture hoarsely. “You said…”

Recognition. Everything depends on recognition. In spite of my dazed condition, I realize that I somehow have to get her to remember me. To see me, not just as the woman with whom her husband has committed adultery, but as a former client. Someone she had a professional relationship with, even a certain responsibility for. If I can just make her realize who I am, she won’t be able to hurt me. Or the child inside me. I take a breath, tense my vocal cords, and find my voice.

“Psychologist. You’re a psychologist.”

Her face remains impassive. She doesn’t even blink.

“Don’t you remember me? I was—”

“Shut up and drink.”

And suddenly I understand that she already knows. She recognizes me, knows full well who I am. But it doesn’t matter. It’s just an unlucky coincidence and has no bearing on her plans.

I slump, feel one side of my body slide a bit toward the floor. I want nothing more than to erase from my memory everything Alex ever said and did, everything that was us. And I want to do it this minute. I have no patience to wait. I want to rip him from my skin like a stubborn Band-Aid, not caring whether it’s painful or whether the adhesive takes a piece of me with it. A piece of me… I swallow hard. What he left inside my body—if it’s allowed to grow and live—is what truly has the power to remind me of him for all eternity. And yet. Slowly, very slowly, I move my head from left to right. No, I won’t do it.

Hard fingers grab my chin and force my lips open. Before I understand what’s happening, the liquid in the glass starts pouring down my throat. I can’t breathe and have to swallow in order to get air. My eyes fill with tears, from pain and panic. My thoughts are whirling. The life growing inside me—I can’t let her harm it. I fling my head so hard my chin strikes the edge of the glass and knocks it out of her hand. Then everything happens all at once.

My maneuver sends the pain shooting through my shoulder again, metallic and hard. What’s left in the glass runs down my chest, soaking through my T-shirt. The alcohol stings as it spreads across my skin. At the same time, a hand slams against my cheek with a resounding slap, making my already-abused head feel like it’s going to explode.

“Okay,” she says. “Then we’ll have to do it the other way.”

Again she grabs me and more or less throws me onto my back on the floor. My torso lands with a smack. Blazing spears of pain pierce my head and shoulder. My vision splinters into scores of shimmering prisms, then slowly darkens around the edges. Somehow I have to stay conscious. I can’t faint. That’s all I’m thinking about.

I sense that she’s moving away from me, heading for the front door. And suddenly, another thought occurs to me. The ax. If she finds the ax, it’s all over. I whimper. Somehow I need to get up and defend myself, fight for my life. But I can’t bring myself to move. Can’t even roll onto my side. So let’s get it over with, I think.

She slams the front door behind her. I don’t hear a key turn in the lock, but it doesn’t matter. I’ll never get up off this floor. Darkness is creeping in. I look up at the ceiling again and pass out.

Stomping footsteps. Someone muttering about gasoline. “I’m sure there was a can out in the shed.” Then I hear Mama’s voice. Surprised and wary at first, then worried and upset. Then it stops, abruptly, midsentence. Minutes pass. Again I lose track of time. Then my eyelids flutter open, and I glimpse a familiar outline. She’s sitting some distance away from me, very still. Mama! You found me, you came! That’s what I want to shout, but my voice refuses to obey. Somehow, I manage to move enough to draw my mother’s attention. She gasps, leans forward. Her whole being emanates concern.

“Greta,” she says. “I’m here now. Are you okay?”

Is she tied up too? Is that why she doesn’t rush to my side? My lips form words, but nothing comes out.

“Please,” my mother begs, turning her head. “Let me go to my daughter and see how she is.”

“So she’s your daughter?”

The voice drips with scorn. I wrench my gaze in the direction my mother is looking and see her. She’s leaning against the wall, no more than a couple of feet from the chair where my mother is sitting. Long blond hair falls over her face in profile. A blue, flowered summer dress and a light cardigan. Ordinary, commonplace. She’d look like any other woman if not for the long black object in her hand. As soon as I realize what it is, my spirits, which had leaped at my mother’s presence, sink again. She found the ax. The one I bought to defend myself. Now it’s easy to see why Mama doesn’t dare move without permission.

“Let me go to her.”

The psychologist feverishly runs her hand through her hair. When her fingers get caught in a tangle, she yanks hard several times until she pulls free. Her movements are erratic, and she seems confused, uncertain. Not at all like when it was just the two of us.

“Why should I?”

When she came to the cabin, I was alone, as she’d expected. Mama’s arrival must have caught her by surprise.

“Do you have children?” Mama asks without the slightest quaver in her voice. “If you do, I know you understand.”

Silence for a moment. The psychologist seems to be deliberating with herself. Finally, she waves the ax in front of Mama’s face.

“Okay, but remember—I’ve got this. If you try anything, I won’t hesitate to use it.”

The next second, Mama is kneeling at my side.

“Sweetheart. What have you gotten yourself into?”

Gently, she takes my face in her hands, moving her cool fingers over my cheeks and down to my throat. She can’t help grimacing, and I think to myself that she must see it. The mark from Alex’s tie. How should I answer her question? Then I remember the branches that scratched at my face in the woods, and the cut above my eyebrow, and the oar that slammed into the side of my head and shoulder. I think about the liquor that spilled over my chest, about the tenderness on my scalp, and my bound hands and feet. A three-day-old bruise is probably the least disturbing thing about my appearance right now. Mama leans close, as if to kiss my cheek. Instead, I hear her whisper in my ear.

“I didn’t know she was here. She attacked me, took my purse and my phone, the minute I…”

Quick footsteps approach. Mama is yanked up. As she’s led away, I hear her pleading, “From one mother to another. All those bruises and cuts… My daughter really needs me right now. And she has a high fever. She’s burning up. At least let me give her some water.”

The talk of water makes me painfully aware of my parched throat. My head feels like it’s on fire. I need to get something to drink soon. I really do. But the psychologist’s patience has apparently run out, along with her uncertainty about taking action. Brusquely, she shoves my mother back into the chair where she was sitting before.

“I don’t have to do anything,” she says coldly. “The only thing I need to do is finish this.”

She leans over Mama to do something, but I can’t tell what it is.

“You don’t need to tie me up,” Mama says quietly. “Even if I did manage to untie Greta, she’s in no shape to go anywhere. And I’m not going to try to escape. I’m not leaving this cabin without my daughter.”

The psychologist pauses for a moment. I can see from her back that she’s hesitating. Then she shrugs and stops what she was doing.

“You shouldn’t have come here,” she mutters. “I don’t intend to leave any witnesses.”

Finish this. Witnesses. A shiver ripples through my body. Alarmed, I try to move. I feel the rope biting into my wrists.