It was like seeing through the eyes of childhood again. I first saw him on the news, hidden behind that mask but unmistakably looking exactly as he had when he disappeared. My Uncle Vill, alive and well after all these years...!
A lot of things had changed in the meantime. For one, of course, I’d grown up! Back in 2020 I had been all of five, barely old enough to understand what was happening, how much my life had changed in an instant. When you’re five life is fluid enough already. Uncle Vill had been a part of my life for as long as I could remember. The day he vanished was the first time I was forced to confront those changes, but then it was also, as I later realized, when the pandemic ended.
And yes, I grew up. It was a matter of decades, after all, a long time to even consider the concept of waiting, but that’s exactly what I was doing, all that time. Waiting for him to return. My parents didn’t really bother explaining any of it. When you’re young it’s easier for things to disappear, even people, and you don’t really think much of it, and the people around you, even the ones you trust the most, will take full advantage of that.
Uncle Vill had been everything to me. He was in my life long enough for me to know that, to remember, well past any tangible reminder, any real memory of him actually in my life. He was a genial companion. That much I knew, like a big brother, except of course he was much older than even a big brother in a very large family would have been. Anyway, he was someone special.
Then he showed up on the news. The first time it was a short segment on the local news. Someone had struck him with their car in the middle of the night. I guess however he returned it was sudden and random, and in the middle of the street, so he got run over. In the hospital he had refused to remove his mask. Before anyone had any idea who he was, that was his most obvious distinguishing factor, what the news had no choice but to use as his image while pleading for the public to identify him.
And I knew, instantly. I was working at the sheriff’s department, and so right away, I insisted on taking up the investigation. I interviewed the driver, who had nothing useful to say except that there had been a book at the scene, on the side of the road, as if it had been dislodged from Uncle Vill’s hands upon impact, but that no report of it had been logged, and I certainly hadn’t heard of it.
When I showed up at his hospital room, I introduced myself as Officer Teppo, and then when I couldn’t stand it, because he didn’t recognize me, I said, “Sally. Your niece.” And when he still didn’t recognize me I knew his memory must have been affected by whatever had happened to him.
As my visits continued over the next several days, it became clear he couldn’t recall anything from the date of his disappearance more than twenty years earlier to the day he reappeared, in a city he had never been to, his only link being my presence there, which I took as indication enough that I was the right person to be working on his peculiar case, beyond the obvious.
He didn’t know anything about the book, either, least of all where it might have ended up after the collision. And he still refused to remove his mask. Every time I left his room I wanted to cry.
The more his story spread the more I knew he would warrant federal interest. The night I was contacted, I had just received a package in the mail, in which I found the missing book. It was a journal, written by Uncle Vill, in which he seems to take credit for ending the pandemic. The agents who spoke to me already knew its contents, and assumed that he knew even more. They also believed he would tell me anything.
In all the visits I’d made, however, he never once betrayed the barest glimpse of recognition, not because I was older, but because of his memory issues. Even if he read the journal now, it wouldn’t make the slightest impact on him. It would be like reading the work of a stranger. The agents didn’t care about this line of reasoning.
That’s why I snuck him out of the hospital, why I burned the journal, why I convinced him that it would be better if he went into hiding and forgot all about me. I set him up with some contacts, gave him a new identity, and did the same for myself.
Years later, I came across him again, and he was still wearing the mask. I don’t know why. Habit, I guess. His memory had returned. “Hey, Sally Baby.”
He said he couldn’t tell me much more than what I already knew, and that everything I had guessed was probably true, too. And the last thing he said to me was how much he appreciated what I had done for him.
I said it was nothing, merely repaying an old debt. And that was that. I never saw him again.
