“See that new dirt by the hole? All scratched up? Whatever it is, it’s still using it.”
“But I can’t see it!” Dennis cried out, and punched both his legs.
Ralph didn’t seem surprised. He merely glanced at the boy’s legs.
“You know what we need?” Ralph asked. “A trap.”
He saw the alarm on Dennis’s face.
“Not a trap to hurt it, whatever it is. But a trap where we can see it,” the custodian said. “Got any ideas?”
Dennis thought about it. He hated his brain. He didn’t like any of the classes at Brightwood and often refused to do his classwork. The teachers thought he was stupid.
The custodian waited patiently. He began to whistle softly.
“Shut up!” Dennis growled. “I can’t think.”
Ralph looked amused.
“A camera,” the boy finally said, then looked mad at himself. It was safer to be mad at yourself than to let others be mad at you.
But Ralph thought it was a great idea.
“That’s the ticket!” he said. “We’ll figure this out.”
“I looked at your file.”
Ralph offered this the next time he and Dennis were together, standing outside by the bush while the custodian fiddled with an old video camera, looking confused.
The sun was in Dennis’s face. He looked up, troubled.
“I was wondering why you were here.”
Don’t ask, Dennis wanted to say. The past was a monster ready to jump from the bushes. The past was all kinds of monsters, including the unnamed ones.
The custodian turned the camera over, as if this would make it work. “Damn thing,” he muttered. “Lady at the shop said it would work.”
Dennis didn’t answer.
“I got it in a junk shop in a town called Seaside. You ever been out of here, since you came?”
Dennis shook his head.
“That’s what I thought. Your file says you came here when you were four. Do you know how old you are now?”
Dennis nodded sagely. He was six.
“We’re going to figure this out,” Ralph said, noodling with the camera. “There! Wait, maybe not. Hmm. It’s supposed to have a setting where you can set it to videotape, but I don’t see how the batteries are going to last that long,” he said, still tinkering.
Dennis crouched down, looking at the hole under the bush. He was calling it the forever hole in his mind now. He was starting to think. Itwas like his brain was waking up and stretching. It was like the sensation of pins and needles when your hand fell asleep from punching the walls in one of those padded rooms.
Ralph looked down at the crescent-shaped scars on the boy’s arms.Bites himself, said his file. His first year at the center, all Dennis would say was that he was not a doll.The staff had pretended to be puzzled about this, which the custodian thought was ridiculous. Dennis had been passed from home to home like a piece of hopeful furniture that didn’t work out. Who wouldn’t wonder if they were real if that had happened to them?
“Ralph?” Dennis tentatively asked.
“Yeah?”
“What did my file say?”
