You'll Thank Me for This

by Nina Siegal

  So for some reason Martijn had a whole lot of Pieter’s photo spreadsheets on his computer. She was starting to feel less and less surprised by the strangeness of this fact. But the more she clicked through the spreadsheets, the more she noticed that most of these files were fairly recent, from the period when he was in Syria, near the end of his life. Grace was less familiar with this work. During that time, Grace had been fairly well preoccupied with her own work at home, keeping life moving steadily ahead for Karin, who had been about eight or nine years old at the time, while also holding down her own nearly full-time job for an NGO.

  Maybe because Syria was the last place he worked before he’d been killed, it was the part of his career she kept at a bit of a distance. Since she had never been to the country herself, it also seemed more of an abstract war to her than what they’d experienced together in South Africa in the ’90s.

  But now she looked more closely at these files, reading the descriptors on the photos. “IMG 3459, Syria, 2013, Al-Mezzeh military hospital.” “IMG 3460, Syria, 2013, Al-Mezzeh military hospital, bodies,” “IMG 3461, Syria, 2013, Al-Mezzeh military hospital, torture victim.” The list went on like this for a while. These were the images he had taken in the hospital that the Syrian government had used as a torture center, Grace knew. He’d managed to get access through a forensic photographer who worked for the regime, but the activity had put them both at tremendous risk. After he’d shot only a couple of rolls, he had to flee the country, or he would have become a victim of the regime himself. Later, the forensic photographer made it out of Syria, smuggling his own images with him. But that was much later.

  Grace remembered how Pieter was when he came home from that trip to Syria in 2013. He had come in the door, looking as pale as a ghost, kissed and hugged her and Karin, and gone immediately into the guest bedroom, pulled down the blackout curtain, and slept for three days. She’d been afraid that he was gravely ill. He would only allow her to bring him soup and sit with him briefly. When she did, he would touch her face lovingly and then start to cry, begging that she let him just go back to sleep for a while. She did.

  It had been traumatic for her too. She didn’t know what he had seen or how it had affected him, and she was concerned that this time it would leave permanent, but invisible, scars. Even later, when he had recovered and he came out and became his easygoing self again, he didn’t share with Grace what had happened. She had understood his struggle to communicate—extremely unusual for Pieter: he just hadn’t wanted to put it into words.

  Only a few of the photographs he’d taken from that trip made it into the main media outlets, she remembered, and he had been dispirited when he was told the others were just too gruesome. The truth of what was happening needed to be told. But that was the irony about the media. The old maxim “If it bleeds it leads” didn’t apply if it got too bloody. There were rules at “family” news outlets about how much blood was suitable for publication, and these images, she came to understand, far exceeded those limits.

  The truth was, Pieter hadn’t even wanted to show Grace these images, even though she had developed a pretty strong stomach for horror over the years. He had said they really needed to be shared with the International Criminal Court in The Hague, so someone could take some action. They were maybe beyond the scope of what public outrage alone could accomplish. Through a good old friend she knew at the court, Jenny Lentiner, an American who worked for the Office of the Prosecutor, she’d managed to put Pieter in touch with the right authorities. Things had moved forward from there.

  But once again Grace sat in this office in an ergonomic chair in complete bewilderment. This was old news, Pieter’s old work, serious stuff, but yes, personal and private, and, eventually, classified material. What was it doing on Martijn’s computer? Why did Martijn have Pieter’s Excel sheets? What was he doing, or what had he done with them?

  There had been a knot in her stomach all day, and now it started to ache, to burn. She was hit by the terrible reality that she was married to a man she did not know. What role had Martijn played in Pieter’s life before he died, beyond working as his accountant? How long had they known each other, before Grace found out that he knew him at all? Even if Martijn had somehow been granted these images by Pieter, say for safekeeping—giving him the benefit of the doubt—why would Pieter have trusted Martijn, and not her, his wife, with that task?

  What was also strange was that the lists of the photographs had popped up, but the images themselves hadn’t. Maybe somehow they weren’t labeled under Pieter’s name? Maybe they were filed elsewhere? She tried clicking the photo app, to see what was there. Up jumped a whole slew of images she knew: pictures of Martijn’s boys growing up, images of his family with Lila, pictures of Grace and Martijn on trips to holiday destinations, images from their wedding, photos of all of them together—the new blended family of five.

  Okay, that was comforting. That was what should be on this computer, she thought. Somehow she had landed back at normal.

  Then she gave it a little more thought. That code name used in one of the Excel sheets. Oranje. That was it. Why not try that one instead?

  She typed it into the search engine: “Oranje.” And wham! Thousands of images started piling onto the screen like a deck of cards thrown down on a blackjack table.

  These, she knew instantly, were all the images Pieter had never wanted her to see: dead bodies, hundreds of them, strewn across cold concrete floors. Bodies wrapped in plastic, emaciated, stripped naked, and beaten. There were close-ups of individual bodies, with burns the shape of stove elements, strangulation lines on necks, gashes from whippings, limbs hacked and mutilated. The pictures were tossed at her by the computer, one after another, filling up the screen, photo file after photo file. Horror after horror after horror.

  Grace, stunned and whiplashed, pushed herself back from the computer as if it, on its own, were trying to attack her. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply, feeling her heart gallop. This was too much. This was not what she had been seeking.

  Once her heart had slowed, after the onslaught had faded a bit and she could tell herself that it was “just pictures,” she opened her eyes again.

  She remembered what Pieter had told her after he’d finally emerged from their darkened guest room after three days of fitful rest. He’d reached out to her and put his hand lightly on her forearm. “They were torturing them all,” he had said. “To death.”

  Chapter 13

  Ghoul Camp

  “I’m sorry!” Karin cried out. “I’m really sorry. I don’t want anything from you. I didn’t mean to come here. I’ll go away. If you let me be, I’ll go away. Please don’t hurt me!”

  She began to tremble so much that it was crazy. She had no idea what was happening to her. Her hands were all wet, and now her teeth began to chatter, like, really hard. The flashlight wasn’t anywhere anymore. It was gone in the dirt. She felt around to find it. Shit, shit, shit.

  She pulled her knees to her chest and ducked her head, trying to curl up into a tiny ball, like a pill bug. Maybe if she just hid inside her giant rain poncho it would go away.

  The bushes around her were making noise again, and there were more of them. The footsteps in the leaves were moving slowly, gently, toward her again. They weren’t going to leave her alone.

  One of them hovered over her, making her think of a bat. She could hear its breathing, which was not healthy, more like a wheeze. She didn’t dare look up and into its face again. She tried not to move a muscle, but her body continued to shake, and she couldn’t stop it. “Please, please,” she whimpered quietly, to herself. “Please, please, please.”

  A minute later, another one came and stood over her. They were coming out of the woods. They started to surround her. Their feet were moving in the sodden leaves, crunching and sloshing. Could they be animals? Maybe wild boars? Other night creatures? They weren’t animals, and they seemed bigger, wider, more frightening than humans.

  “It’s a ki
d,” she heard one of them say, and thought, At least that sounded like a human voice.

  “What’s she doing here?” said the voice she had already heard. Raspy, deep.

  She felt someone kick her leg with a heavy boot. She whimpered, “Please don’t hurt me. Please don’t hurt me. I am just a kid. I’m only twelve…I’m here on a dropping.”

  “A dropping?” She heard laughter—four or maybe five people. They were humans. Just really weird humans. “Like with Scouts?” They continued to laugh.

  Karin thought maybe they would leave her alone now, but she felt another kick, this time hard, against her thigh. “Get up,” a voice ordered. This time it was a woman’s voice. “I said, get up,” the woman repeated, before she had even had a chance to move.

  “Okay, okay,” said Karin, trying to move her legs but finding them stiff. She unfolded her hands, which she had been using to clutch her hood over her head, and reached out to find the ground so that she could push herself up.

  Did she have anything she could use to fight them off if they tried to hurt her? Anything sharp? Or long? Or even bright? Losing the flashlight on her key chain meant she’d lost her keys too. Her mom would be mad.

  “I’m getting up,” she said as she pushed herself up to standing. She felt tiny in their company, all these big bats. “I dropped my keys,” she said, knowing that it sounded kind of pathetic. “I dropped my keys in the leaves and I can’t find them.”

  Nobody answered her. She let them see her face, hoping that if they saw she was only a kid they might take some pity on her. Then she could see them a little better. They weren’t bats. They were all just wearing big, wide rain ponchos, which covered their whole bodies. All the same. But when she looked closer she realized they weren’t rain ponchos, they were just big black garbage bags with holes cut in them for their arms and heads.

  “What are you doing out here by yourself?” one of them asked. It wasn’t like he wanted to help her to safety. It sounded like he was accusing her of doing something wrong.

  “I…I…g-g-got separated from my…my Scout group,” Karin stammered through a tight jaw.

  “That was stupid. It’s pretty dangerous out here.”

  “I just lost my group, like, a few minutes ago. I’m sure they’re right up there, right ahead of me. I’ll bet they’re waiting for me. I’d better get with them or they’ll start to worry.”

  The one who’d been talking most recently reached out and grabbed her roughly by the arm. “No,” she said. “You’ll come with us.” Oh no, they weren’t nice. They were going to hurt her.

  All of a sudden they were all talking, and one of them was trying to pull her rain poncho off, and another one was trying to get her backpack out of her hands. Another one said, “Give me that,” and basically ripped it away from her. “My backpack…” Karin said weakly while one of them held it and another one zipped it open. “It’s just my camping equipment,” she said.

  While some of them went through her bag, a couple of the others walked a little bit away and she could hear them arguing about whether to leave her or take her with them.

  Karin blurted out, “If you let me go, I promise not to tell anyone anything! I swear I’ll just go my own way and I won’t say a word. You can have everything in my backpack. I’ll just go.”

  “Come on,” said the one who took hold of her arm, jerking her forward. She wasn’t expecting it, and she slipped on the wet leaves, almost falling. “I’m not taking any chances.”

  Once that one had made up her mind, it seemed like the discussion was over. They were taking her, and no one was going to argue about it anymore. They marched her deeper into the forest, away from where she needed to go, she knew. Karin could tell as much by the smells around her: the deep scent of wet soil and earthworms and drenched bark, like her dad had taught her. She wished she hadn’t dropped her mini flashlight. It was a small thing, but she really needed that.

  The one by her left arm was holding her tight, and the one by her right arm seemed to be giving her some slack and walking a little behind. She could hear the swoosh-swoosh of all their garbage-bag rain ponchos as they walked. Why would anyone wear garbage bags when you could buy a whole rain suit at HEMA for ten euros? Were they just homeless people or what?

  “You shouldn’t be out here alone,” the one on the right said, like he was trying to protect her.

  “That’s really okay,” she said. “I’ve been in this forest, like, a million times with my father before I was even ten years old. I know how to find my way by the stars. I can light a fire without matches.”

  It was a pretty dense part of the woods. They were not on a bike trail or even a real walking trail, just a very narrow dirt path that someone had made recently. These people, obviously.

  “You’re twelve and you know how to start a fire without matches?” said the one on her right. “I’d like to see that.”

  “Why don’t you just shut up and stop talking nonsense,” the one on the left said.

  Karin smelled something really rank all of a sudden. It kind of hit her smack in the face. Something she had never really smelled before—it was acidic and sharp in her nose. She automatically stopped and almost retched right there in the woods.

  “Come on,” said the one on her right, jerking her arm with force to make her keep up.

  “I’m coming,” said Karin. She couldn’t understand why no one else seemed to be smelling what she smelled. “Is this where we’re going?”

  Karin figured it was too late now. They had her. She might as well look. It was a really creepy place. There were these big metal canisters dumped all over the ground, and lots of empty plastic bottles and buckets. But also a crazy number of empty beer bottles all around. Were they drunks, like the sad, red-faced guys who hung out by the corner near her school?

  There was some kind of beat-up old caravan covered by a large dark-green tarp that hung from the branches of a twisted tree. This was their place, their, uh, compound? Could they be, like, in some kind of cult? As they got closer, she could see there was also a dark-blue tent.

  She tried to keep breathing normally as they dragged her forward. But it was really gross, like putting your face into kitty litter but without the fake flowers or whatever it is they use to make kitty litter smell “fresh.” Just cat pee, and really strong. How long would they force her to stay here and what would they do to her?

  Just as they reached the camp, the garbage-bag-poncho people all started talking at once. Karin could make out only bits and pieces of the conversations they were having in more than one language. One voice was louder and clearer than all the rest. “What do you expect we can do with her?” she heard her saying. “You think we’ll ransom her? Jesus. She doesn’t look like she comes from money.”

  They didn’t seem normal—well, obviously—but their bodies all seemed to be crooked, or limping, or just kind of bent, and the little she could make out about their forms under the garbage-bag ponchos made her realize that all of them were really skinny. Maybe they were ghouls, or actual zombies—living dead. Vampires?

  The one with the loudest voice started cursing. “What the fuck are we going to do, then? You guys are all such fucking idiots! Sometimes I can’t even believe it.” Suddenly, that one was standing in front of her and pulling back the hood of her poncho, to look more closely at her face.

  In spite of herself, Karin looked up, and the sight was freaky. This ghoul’s face was like one of those time-lapse apps where you take a picture of a kid and see what they’re going to look like when they’re really old. But it still kind of looks like the young person, except their skin is all loose and flappy.

  Even though she didn’t mean to, Karin stepped back, and the ghoul moved closer, leaning over her. Her breath was totally gross, like rotting fish. “You’re afraid, aren’t you?” she said, and then laughed.

  Karin, who totally didn’t get the joke, decided to do what her mom always told her to do: “If you can’t figure out the right move, j
ust be honest.” Nodding her head, slowly, she said, “Yes. You’re…you’re all scaring me. I’m, like, a little kid,” she added. “I’m supposed to be on a camping trip. I really don’t want to be here.”

  The leader laughed again. She had all these missing teeth, which made her look really old, like some kind of cartoon hag. “Of course you’re scared,” she said to Karin. “We must be fucking frightening.” She looked around at the rest of the group, in a semicircle behind her, and they all started laughing.

  “Listen,” the hag said, “we aren’t going to fuck with you because that would be fucking insane and we are not going to be fucking insane, right? We’re a bunch of screwed-up assholes, and we’ve done a lot of bad shit. We’ve ruined our own lives, yeah, but we’re not that fucked up. We’re not messed-up humans. We’re not going to fuck with a kid.”

  Karin couldn’t even begin to count the number of swear words she’d just been allowed to hear. If her mom was here, she’d go bonkers. At home, if Karin used a single curse word she had to apologize and replace “shit” with “shoot.” She just gaped.

  “She can build a fire without matches,” the guy at her right said, totally randomly. “I’d like to see that.”

  “Duh, that is so seriously stupid,” said the hag. “You want to blow up the entire forest?”

  The guy looked hangdog. “I don’t mean right here. Over there, on the other side of the stream, maybe? I mean, if we’re going to be out here in the woods, it would be kind of cool to have a campfire.”