The Understorey

I could tell in his reaction that I didn’t look good. I couldn’t respond, only squint my eyes in terror.



“God! Elliott! Why didn’t you wait for me boy?” He asked, his eyes becoming moist. His hands searched the air above my body. Searching for something he could do for me. Everything about Danny’s eyes made me realize that Jesse had probably beaten me within an inch of my life and if felt that way too. I managed a grunt but that was the best I could do.



“Can you move?” He asked and I furrowed my eyebrows in response.



I’ll be right back,” he said, removing his coat and throwing it over my chest.



The heat from his body stayed with the jacket and I wished I could tell him how much I had needed that. He ran to his cruiser and I heard him scream into the radio for an ambulance. So, it’s gonna’ be one of those days? I hoped that I just looked worse than I really felt. That’s usually how these things play out. I’d gone to the emergency room before after a hard hit. It almost always looked worse than it actually was. Danny ran back to my side while we waited for the ambulance.



“We know it’s Jesse,” he said, probably trying to distract me from the pain I was feeling.



I squinted my eyes in response, as if to ask him how. I added my face to the things I was able to move and realized that I was starting to regain the use of the end of my extremities.



“When your mom called me bawling that you weren’t there I rushed to the Jacobs’ home and saw a bloody brick loosed from their home on Jules’ floor. I checked the recording to see if I could get some sort of clue as to where they were taking you.



“I’ll tell you this, watching you struggle with him ripped my insides to shreds. I panicked that I’d never be able to find you. I called Jules. She’s on her way home Elliott.”



I wished he hadn’t done that. I didn’t want her to worry. I would have preferred she not find out anything until after the worse was over.



“She told me to check the school,” he continued. “I wondered how she knew you would be here but I’m glad she suggested it. It was the last place I would have thought to check. You surely would have frozen solid by the time I’d thought to check here.” He shook his head at the idea before continuing on,“You managed to pull off part of his mask and I saw that stupid tattoo he had gotten weeks ago on his neck.” He leaned closer to my face with a grin, “I bet you he’d never thought in a million years that that was how we’d catch him. He definitely knew you had cameras in the room.



“I’m also betting he knew you were going to be waiting in there to catch him.”



So that was what Taylor was checking on. She wasn’t looking for Jules. Jesse must have seen the camera and had her check the house for the main feed. I’m such an idiot, I thought.



“He took your cameras, and your laptop, thinking that he’d gotten rid of any evidence. I don’t think he realized you were feeding it to my computer offsite as well. What a fool. It was very smart thinking on your part. It was enough to get a warrant son. This morning Sam tried to arrest Jesse but,” he hesitated. I could tell he didn’t want to continue but I knew what he was about to say anyway. “He can’t be found, but don’t worry! Sam will get him!



“And Elliott? I’m sorry I didn’t believe you before.”



He continued talking, jabbering on and on in nervousness, trying to make me feel better but all I wanted was to hear that Jules was okay. I at least knew that Jesse hadn’t gotten to her but I needed so much more. I needed to hear that she was as perfect as the day she had to flee Bramwell. No, that she was better. I knew where Jesse was going. Jules would know it too. He was going to his parents’ cabin in Blackwater Falls. I knew him all too well. That’s where he went after he did anything that could land him in jail. It’s where he hid until the dust from the trouble he always caused settled.



The ambulance finally came around. The paramedics tried to ask me questions. They told me to blink once for yes, twice for no and I tried to answer as best I could but it was truly difficult when their questions seemed to lead in the wrong direction.



I wanted to scream out, let them know what he had done. I was desperate for one of them to inspect my neck for a puncture wound but lost hope when they placed the neck brace around my throat. This had an unexpected effect and I started choking on the air with each breath, trying to scream from the pain. They removed the brace and used a much smaller one, one that wouldn’t touch my broken jaw but would at least offer some sort of support in case my neck was broken.



On the count of three, they slid me onto a backboard, then easily lifted me onto a gurney, not a small feat for a two hundred pound plus victim. I laid flat and as they rolled me past the school I noticed that Jesse had spray painted and vandalized the school, no doubt, in an attempt to frame me for the job.



I had a distinct feeling that my fingerprints would be on all the paint cans. On the wall it read, ‘Jesse Thomas is a psycho’ and ‘Jesse Thomas is going to die’. He had mutilated all the plant life in his wake and broken several windows as well. One of the medics removed something from my arm and glanced at his fellow paramedic. He held up a ribbon of rubber.



For the longest time I sat in the ambulance wondering where I’d seen something like that before. It was what the nurse at my doctor’s office would use when taking blood, when she needed to find a vein.  But why? I screamed in my head. For what reason? He injected whatever it was that did this to me in my neck? What if he gave me something else? I thought. What was he doing? He was too smart to make so many mistakes. Then, I heard the medics.



“Son, can you tell me what drugs you took?”



He studied my confused expression.



“The syringe?” He asked. “What was in the syringe at the scene?”



Syringe? I thought. I knew it.



“Nothing,” I managed to just barely slur out. “Kill,” I mumbled.



“What?” He asked, furrowing his eyebrows and pitching his ear toward my lips.



“Jesse....tried.....kill.......me,” I finally muddled. I took a deep breath and said the only thing I could possibly say, “Pain.”



He nodded. It was so painful to speak and with every word, every roll of the tongue I fought back the bile rising in my throat. I had never been in so much pain and could barely voice it. I passed out so many times I lost count and every time I woke I wished I would black out again.



I woke, this time with no pain. I heard machines beeping, liquid dripping and the shallow breathing of my family. I pried my eyelids open and looked around. Jules wasn’t there. I knew if she wasn’t there I couldn’t have been out for that long. I lifted my arms and found that although they felt like jelly I could indeed lift them and that relieved some of my anxiety. I tried to speak but couldn’t. My jaw was wired shut.



“Elliott?” My mom said softly, eyes red from hours of crying. “Elliott, you’ve had to have surgery on your jaw son. It went well but your jaw had to be wired shut. If you want to communicate with us you’ll need to write down what you want to say, okay?”



I squinted my eyes and nodded in agreement. She brought over a pen and pad. I couldn’t hold them so she put the pen in my hand and held the pad steady for me while I wrote.



Jules?



She hesitated, clearing her throat, and looked over to my father. My dad came up and squeezed my hand.



“She was here yesterday son,” Yesterday?! I could tell he was leaving something out.



I pointed to Julia’s name and waited.



“Well, now Elliott, I don’t know if I...........well, I’m just not sure how to tell you this but after she left the hospital yesterday I saw her to her car and told her to go straight to her house where her mom and dad were waiting because we still haven’t caught Jesse yet.”



He paused for a long time, long enough for me to feel the tears slide down my temples. He didn’t need to say it, I knew. She never made it home, right dad? Just say it! She never made it home! I screamed ‘no’ through wired teeth. I didn’t give him a chance to continue. I began ripping out anything attached to me and tried to sit up. I could hear Maddy’s muffled sobs as she buried herself into my grandmother’s stomach.



My Uncle Danny helped my dad restrain me against the hospital bed. If I hadn’t had been so weak from the drugs I know I could have broken through them, nothing would have stopped me from getting to Jules but I could barely hold a pen let alone fight off two grown men.



They waited until I calmed down. All I could see were watery faces staring down on me in pity. I scrambled for the pen and paper and tried to write down everything I wanted to know. My mom helped me once more.



How long?



“Julia was here from the second she got into town until I had to order her several times to go home and get some sleep and something to eat. She repeatedly refused me but I eventually convinced her that you wouldn’t be up for hours......”



I underlined the words ‘how long’ and waited impatiently. I wasn’t interested in the back story.



“Eight hours,” Danny said.



Eight hours. Eight hours away from her being safe in my sight or enduring whatever hideous plan Jesse had for her. Only eight. I felt like vomiting but knew that wouldn’t have been an option with my jaw wired shut and shut my eyes for a moment instead to catch my breath.



Why aren’t you looking for her?



“We’ve searched everywhere Elliott. She’s not here son. We found her car running on Main with the door open. We think she’s alive because there was evidence of a struggle and it looks like he took her away in his car Elliott. He’s taken her somewhere. We’ve notified all the necessary authorities and they are all doing everything they can,” Danny said, before pausing. He leaned in and focused on my eyes, “Is there any place you can possibly think that he would have taken her? Anything you could give us would be helpful Elliott.”



I nodded and wrote, Blackwater Falls.



Someone must have called for a nurse then. I didn’t complain until I saw the syringe in her hand. I began to protest but it was no use. I couldn’t stop her and my dad and Uncle Danny had me by the arms.



As I drifted off to sleep, I thought of nothing but Jules. All I could ever want in the entire world was being threatened and I was handicapped by the very thing Jesse tried to kill me with. I fell asleep angry hoping the rage would burn the drugs faster so I could wake and tear out of the hospital with a vengeance.



I dreamt of Jules from the second my eyes closed to the second I woke. She inundated my thoughts and I woke to blood boiling when I realized where she was. I opened my eyes and checked around the almost quiet room.



I immediately grabbed my chest, just below my left collarbone. It was an instant excruciating misery and throbbed terribly. I frantically pulled the hospital gown from my body but found nothing there. Impulsively, I rubbed the area trying to remove the torment.



I had no idea the time but it looked late, only my dad was in the room with me. It was definitely late in the night because my dad was snoring steadily and I barely heard a peep outside my room. I heard a nurse tell someone to get some sleep before she closed their door and I waited for her footsteps to dim before I began removing anything that would have kept me tied to that insipid bed.