28 pages. The reason the site is called A New Gnosis is that while gnosis does not change because it cannot, its messaging can evolve. This is the first chapter of my second novel. It is formatted for a blog, with break lines to note where the second and third stories start. Enjoy. Cover, in heading of Chpt.1 page.
As The Raven Escapes: or Eyes Shut :: Starlight – David Flies.
David & Jenkins With Banter Absent A Rose, For Jordan.
Sal the narrator. Having tuned the removed practice of wrestling forward Jordan Abbly the writer. ( On for the task. ) Two years since Dad left and Jordan had grown to dislike what had been his one fond memory of father, though it was a regular in dreams:
Standing over an immense valley with fog piled to the ridge.
Jordan was in third grade and it was spring break. Dad and he were on their first and only father-son trip through the Cascades. He’s in an empty mountain top parking lot. Dad’s in the bathroom. Jordan stared silently over the edge of the lot. He was thinking fog made the valley look like an immense brewing rock cauldron. Like dry ice with water on it inside plastic cauldrons that made his classrooms’ haunted house spooky.
Jordan hears dad’s voice calling for him,
“Jordan, where are you? Come here.”
There was a tone in his voice Jordan hadn’t heard before and never heard again, an electric joy. He had heard happiness in Father’s voice before but this was different. It contained a happiness directed solely to Jordan in a sound, an echo inside Dad’s voice not hinting at worry or anger. He ran as his heart fluttered, ecstatic across the parking lot into a small group of trees outside the bathroom to where dad was standing.
As he approached, Jordan was pleased to hear the excitement in father’s voice still present as he said, pointing upward,
“Look at that.”
Jordan’s eyes follow dad’s yard higher to shoulder as he swings arm and lands his index finger ten feet up a tree’s trunk to its lowest branch, he sees seven dripping ‘sapsicles’. Each looked like an amber tear stretching five or six inches toward the ground from the bottom of the tree’s lowest branch, all frozen mid-fall one beside the other. From where they drooped, sunlight shot through each one, refracting sun into countless brilliant sparkles through every side, launching bright golden reflections in every direction.
Attuned to dad’s sentiment, listening in awe,
“I’ve never seen anything like that.”
Jordan’s elated and he fills with air,
“I haven’t either Dad.”
Turns his head to see dad’s face, feels the warmth exchanged in their shared smile.
Jordan’s dream abruptly drowns in his five thirty a.m. alarm, every time, after the smile. I (Sal) cannot control Jordan’s dream completely but I do exert direct influence, choosing this spot to end it for the nights his unconscious calls upon that memory through dreamspeak. I have to keep the boy on task – if you saw him today you’d know it all adds up.
When Dad left them Mom effectively left Jordan. She suddenly had to work to make house payments and pay bills, buy food and clothes, plus give Jordan lunch money. He felt mom’s sympathy when he left the house for school, says he could always feel her yearning to spend more time with him during those two minutes shared in chilled six-thirty a.m. air when it creeps in through the half opened front door, as Mom placed lunch money into Jordan’s hand she’d either say,
“You have a good day sweetie. I’ll see you at seven tonight,” or, “I’ll be home pretty late tonight Big Little Man. Probably won’t see you till tomorrow.”
There was a time when Jordan had grown into what Mom called her “little man.” As his dad became more and more estranged, and even before that, it was almost always just the two of them. Prior to the divorce they’d joke about how silly Daddy was while shopping for supplies and groceries together. Sometimes they’d spend whole afternoons at a park. Now the most time they spend together is weekend mornings, from about seven to eleven, when mom left for her other job Dad usually left his Boyman by sundown. She got home from her weekend well after Jordan’s bed-time both Saturday and Sunday. Since the day father left, ‘Ma’ had gone missing.
An abrupt promotion from Mom’s ‘Little Man’ to her ‘Big Man’.
He was always a loner in school, it was always more important fascinations occupying Jordan’s head than would-be friends. A comment made during a 5th grade parent-teacher conference sums,
“Jordan is probably the most intelligent student in the whole grade. He just doesn’t come up for air often enough.”
Jordan hadn’t qualified for an advanced education track geared toward especially gifted students because he missed a few points on the math portion of the entrance test. Given his introversion – which I diligently enforced – it is surprising that Jordan got a decent amount of attention from girls his age.
Every once in a while, he even developed crushes. Jordan could never manage to speak to them which worked well for how much I kept his head in books. Mostly choose your own adventure fantasy books until the summer after elementary school, when Mother finally let him read horror books. Anything with blood on the cover or murder in the title. It never became a morbid fixation; simple entertainment in the long stretches he spent alone (after his homework of course). Waiting for mom to get home.
Very little seemed special to Jordan. By seventh grade he was bored with life. Everything was sort of bland. Jordan ate breakfast at school and read in the library at lunch. He was perpetually kind to any of his peers that actually addressed him though most of those, only begged to copy his homework or cheat off tests. He wrote extra credit reports for his science class and did the attached ‘challenge problem’ for every pre-algebra assignment. Jordan didn’t show his intelligence off in class, just quietly maintained A’s in everything but P.E. and continued to read.
Couldn’t find anyone with whom he could share his unlabeled disinterest. All of them seemed excited, boy or girl crazy. Due to my influence, Jordan was set upon during much of his alone time and at all times he spent around peers, by a feeling, a strong assurance that he had already seen everything. A twelve-year-old already felt certain he was more than anyone else in the world.
That was my work and listing the details of building that sense within him is time-consuming.
One day while walking the same thin asphalt path between Ocean Street and a freshly planted field of kidney beans. For the first time, Jordan decided to not walk directly home. Instead, he turned left on Burgess, headed into town and spent the afternoon at Allen’s Bookstore. I made the decision for Jordan and he easily acquiesced. He knew nothing of my existence. That was the day I began, in earnest to prepare him for our work. Mom since he entered Jr High, started giving him more lunch money so he could afford to buy a snack during nutrition break at school but he never did. At the book store he finally spent those compiled extra dollars, just a few a day on a drink in the store’s cafe. He bought a smoothie and found a seat at an empty table where he got out his books to drudge through homework.
Finally, something he registered as significant happened as he was opening his Advanced Math book and caught a whiff of sweet grape scented perfume. Felt a presence standing behind him, beginning to lean over his shoulder. Jordan turned his head up to his right to see a girl’s brown hair dangling toward the ground and heard her teen voice.
She sounded like authority,
“Whoa there, is that your math book? You can’t just start doing problems from one of our books without buying it first.”
It was a female employee. Jordan turned and saw her name-tag, “Lisa”. She walked around the table and took a seat in the chair across from him. He was shocked, as far as he could see there was nothing he had been doing to attract the attention of a store clerk, and what a clerk she was. Lisa was sixteen. She had what were by Jordan’s standards, the biggest breasts he had ever seen on a girl. She was beautiful.
Her deeply tan skin and perfect amber brown eyes with gorgeous irises reflecting fluorescents added to the intimidation. As he struggled for words,
“Uhh, well, yeah,” he was suddenly overwhelmed with shyness, “I, I-”
“-You, you,” Lisa mocked him playfully,
“Don’t worry, you’re not in trouble. I was just being funny,”
Jordan mentally interjects while still hanging on Her every word, ‘smiling with grown girl lipstick.’
She’s speaking, he’s watching those Lips,
“Not like you’d be sitting here with all your school stuff out, obviously doing your homework out of a math book from Allen’s.”
“Ohh, right.” Jordan chuckled quietly, unable to hide his embarrassment. He looked down at the table as he spoke,
“I just thought I’d do my homework here if that’s alright.”
“Weren’t you listening? I said you’re not in trouble. I’m on my break and I’ve never seen you here before so I decided to sit down and introduce myself. You looked lonely, and who doesn’t need a reason to put off doing homework, right?”
Jordan closed his math book and tried his best to pretend that doing his homework hadn’t been the single most important thing on his mind.
“Right.” Shaking his head like he’s old for his grade which he is.
“I hate homework…”
Jordan paused, pretending he read her nametag for the first time as he said,
“…Lisa”
His brain raced for something to say. Lisa was a goddess and keeping her company required more than his blank face. She spoke before he came up with anything.
“This isn’t my name tag, well it is, but the last girl’s name’s still on it, my name is Amber. I’ve been working here for two months now and they still haven’t given me my own name tag. Can you believe that?”
“Yeah, that’s weird.”
He was calming down,
“My name is Jordan.”
“I have to say. That’s a pretty mature decision to make for – what grade are you in?” Amber looked at his math book again,
“Eighth?”
“No, I’m in seventh.”
“Well, that’s even more mature. Most of the people that study here are in college. Or at least high school.”
Amber, having picked a Lisa nametag since the manger’s policy serving college boys made it each employee’s option, knowing most workers would choose the cover.
Lisa looks at her watch and seems genuinely disappointed as she says,
“OOhh, my break’s up.”
Pushing her arms up to bent elbows, oh well signing, the sexiest Jordan has ever seen as she finishes,
“I must get back to service. Will you be here tomorrow?”
She definitely said SERVICE.
Jordan hadn’t thought out as far as tomorrow ahead of time. He was settling into how it felt speaking comfortably with a girl less older than his Mom was when she had him in highschool.
He managed an immediate answer, asking uneasily:
“Yup. So, see you tomorrow?”
“You’re sooo funny! Of course. I work here don’t I?”
She’s only asking since she works there dude and you are NOT A THREAT. Kept hidden in my land’s sardonical sneer. When Jordan left Allen’s he felt more alive than he ever remembered. A fraction of this new appreciation could be credited to the grown-up sensation of independently deciding to take a detour to the bookstore. Which wasn’t actually his decision, it was largely due to Amber. A high school female divinity had taken time to notice him. He walked home with a bounce in his step his brain finally occupied by something other than the trivial predicaments the come with being twelve years old.
I saw an opportunity to use the older girl’s attention to direct Jordan into our project. That night and the next school day were the longest, most bland hours Jordan had ever experienced. Everything he did, including the walk between school and the bookstore was useless.
Compared to Amber’s bright Jordan’s world was dim.
When he next saw her, I had to be ready.
——
Loud knocks on his door startled David awake. He makes it practice to dwell in his dreams, to dedicate so much of his conscious awareness there, that on waking he feels like he could still be dreaming. While on Earth, maintaining this sort of dream-state apprehension at all times makes leaving an ever-present opportunity. Keeping David on task.
A man speaks loudly in what he can tell is the dude’s bass voice through the door,
“Mr. Wottem, are you in there? I need to have a word with you.”
David opens his eyes and speaks as he sits up in bed,
“I’ll be there in a second.”
Grabbing his bottoms and a t shirt on his way to the door about five steps away, he hops one leg then the other into loose fitting cotton draw string pants and with his head, and one arm through his t-shirt he opens the door.
The force of legal inquiry begins,
“I’m a missing persons’ Detective with the Chicago PD.”
David had felt the medium built man in his late forties, in the hall and his loud banging for presence from him but he didn’t care for a name. Leaning toward the open frame the Inspector retrieves his credentials from his coat and flips them open as he raises them to this sole tenant’s face. David says,
“Inspector Jenkins, right. Do you want any tea? I’m just about to start the water.”
Jenkins knows the placard showing his face and name couldn’t have been visible to this strange alone man. Since the moment the detective had started in with the obvious, the only man at home here, on this floor, had turned to walk toward the stove. Dude means tough, coming from Dude Ranch which David knows is:
Decide, Underwrite & Distribute for (and make an) Economy; those men were tough and Dude speaks with his badge,
“No thank you.”
“Are you sure? It’s gunpowder, little green tea leaves rolled into pellets for now.”
“Mr. Wottem, may I call you David?”
David: “Do you think they make guns for these tiny chaotic mess of pellets? It would be fun, yes?”
Knowing he got the Inspector noticing it. Out the side of his left eye David sees the turbid man’s face change.
Jenkins: “Did someone tell you I was coming?”
David had drawn upon a different sort of sense. One he owes to a tendency he developed to keep part of his awareness in between the form he assumes when travelling and his physical body. That sense had him assured the knock on the door belonged to someone looking for information.
Other details formed inwardly, these are the facts of David’s existence and explaining the process in detail is cumbersome. He hardly separates from anything he naturally does that would be considered ‘extrasensory’ enough to explain how it happens and that, more than anything else, is why David tends to avoid idle conversation,
“Well, Detective, you’re here. I know that. I knew it when you knocked on the door.”
“Mr. Wottem.”
David: “Are you going to come in?” From about eight feet away, in the studio’s kitchenette, filling the tea kettle.
He turns to place it on his small square stove and continues,
“I assume you’d like to have the conversation in here? The place is cramped but it suits my needs.” The Inspector,
“I would prefer we speak in private.”
“Private? Ha! That’s a good one. It’s only us here.”
Detective Jenkins’ turns his eyes to the window on the left of this guy’s left wall, saying,
“That’s what I’m here to talk to you about.”
Jenkins watches as the thin but medium built black man, in a flash adjusts the tone of his voice. David had begun speaking as if he was projecting sound to here from Dark World but out of these two now at the door only David had just been there – until the newest interruption turned prospect Transiter, knocked on the door. So he’d work to exclusively respond by interrupting Dude since this Inspector here only actually heard him say, we’re here.
Therefore, David continues:
“I was saying we’re here in Baltimore but you’re Chicago.”
Jenkins repeats, modulating his voice to Badge,
“And I said that’s what I’m here to talk to you about.”
David relaxes, having realized what this Inspector was going to say. He knows the rest of what he’s here for by now yet David is silently tending to morning facts for Transiters. Polyphenols, green tea, waiting to interject but listening,
“There’s no evidence of any crime but we’re a task force formed around relatives reported missing across Maryland, Illinois, Arizona, possibly Washington state but definitely D.C has gotten involved.” Seizing the pause, David,
“Then Baltimore’s jurisdiction brought Chicago’s detective. Can we assume you’ll threaten to take me down to my local precinct’s district?”
Jenkins clutches onto the end of the reply,
“It’s interesting. I’m a detective David and I volunteered we can’t prove any crimes but if this keeps up, your local precinct. Regardless of district will suffice.”
David notes that this Inspector, smart at IQ one-forty-five, this Dude in particular gesticulates. Well. While he speaks and smokes menthols. David laughs internally ‘a white that smokes black’ and the thought took him while Jenkins motions his arms. Smoke stained fingers reaching across almost a full second’s worth of time, all Irish mixed white digits flailing at the end of his arms toward David and around; the only thing not technically pointed at during what David would call the prospect’s flash was the door and the window. David thought the portend a shame but he’ll await the flash’s report.
This badge is not likely a candidate for lessons but this Inspector had purpose, so David would try even though Dude blabbered at some point yes, ‘yes he can’.
So David surrendered the floor, his apartment is at the end of the hall through the open door, blocked by legal inquiry where concrete meets a long red ceramic tile floor. David knew it before he arrived back whine he came back to Earth maybe 30 years ago, to own it; he wanted that floor. What his feet hit didn’t matter – it wasn’t but theirs yet that floor. He had arrived in the nearest park as close to the nearest concrete as his accomplished transiting skill would allow with his debit card, walked to the bank on his way there, left the bank with a cashier’s check for twenty thousand in hand.
David had already studied the man who rents out the top floor, where he apparently makes personal arrangements because he owns the place. David told the 60 yr old portly Indian gentleman, that were he to accept the cashier’s check in return for allowing David to update the place just enough to live in, he was interested in the unused janitor’s closet with a window at the end of the top floor of his building, promising to sweeten the offer, it was for three times the same amount for every ten years of unofficial ownership, accepting that they’d haggle, due to him knowing his real estate. But the deep brown honorable man, is doing the right thing, at least on the top floor and it’s all David needs.
He pays eighty-five thousand every three years to live in a closet with a window he built, in exchange for place where he can count on being left alone, apart from that red floor. The agreement was it meant David would be ignored, which he masterfully used in the negotiation. By the Inspector’s estimation David’s place had been a fairly large supply closet leftover from when the building was a luxury hotel and during renovations, the owner converted it into a small studio.
A toilet and stand-up shower were about four steps from the gas stove. These are precisely the types of conditions you’d find a suspect living in and David may has well have read out his responses thus far from a script titled I’m guilty.
“I’d offer you a chair,” he pours some loose-leaf tea into a French press and places a cup beside it,
“But I just haven’t needed one in years.”
“So you never sit down?” David responds,
“Is that what you climbed 8 floors to ask me? Is this a courtesy check for appropriate seating?”
Jenkins hadn’t even stepped in yet. In fact his body stepped back a bit but he projected his will to enter and inspect toward the window and bed. David figures any traveler, if they want can see trapped personal fields and using time differentials only known to transiters, any one of his pupils can read a trapped man’s will in motion beforehand. David quickly speaks a brief accusation to tease an identifier, or an orientation out.
Using a trick: “You’ve already inspected the place, Detective come in.”
And David saw it before the Dude had asked. Typical to this development an Inspector will say, what the Inspe-
“Do you mind if I smoke in your place, Mr. Wottem.”
The detective needs to smoke as cigarettes drag on the temporal portents of action, drawing these foreign stretching ghosts inward to the containment, or tied people field. Now’s when Jenkins steps into the space left, into his place between the door and his bed against the back. He moves half out of David’s view, obscured to the side of a slightly S curving wall, ending toward the right of the door frame to make a rounded column that looks oddly like a pillar of indefinite proportion from the end of the hall.
Where he wishes they’d get already. The wall allows David’s to the left sight, of the Dude’s building fiasco. The wall built and the cement floor sealed by whom David graciously paid. Inspector here enters and David raises his hands over his head. Stretching his arms fingers interlocked, leaning to the right then left.
Never even looking at Dude’s production just beyond his sight as he started his wake-up stretches, David registers fluctuations in his guest’s being. It’s the reason he nudged the detective on with the biting joke. These oddly dropped hiccups in the normal flow of casual dynamics yield contortions in the spaces between your person and what most never know. David proceeds to bend leftward to the wall with the door until both his palms are flat on his kitchenette’s floor, and as he stands up he raises his arms toward the ten feet ceiling again. He stretching on the fore of both feet, turns halfway to the door’s wall and says, knowing the he’s caught the Inspector’s right field of vision. The display reminds the detective of yoga; David seems to be regulating his breath to match the motions. He announces,
“Do you mind waiting to do this until after I’m,” The tea kettle starts whistling. David step-turns, returning the balls of his heels of his feet to the floor to plant facing the stove-top, and pours the water into his 2 cup French press ,
“I just woke up, you know – morning rituals. I only have a few more. Maybe we can start the interrogation after I pour the tea?”
Jenkins saw out the corner of his right eye the motions of David’s stretches in the little kitchen. His flight back here arrived at 4:30 am, two hours before his sit down with a Baltimore detective, 8 am and he’s ready to blurt out obscenities. He thinks, at least he and a few detective with his favorite station cop, Juniper ate breakfast at the diner between here and there. He thinks ‘Godammit, did he just say interrogation?’ He’s been on the force fifteen years and despite it all he’s fighting off the urge to reach for his cuffs.
Jenkins thinks let this moron keep talking. When a guy starts the digging you don’t stop him and say: Oh here, let me get that to six feet. He inhales to controls his thoughts and blows smoke with,
“Do you mind giving me some preliminary information while you stretch?”
“Sure, I only have a couple more left.”
David for the first time looks Jenkins in the eyes as he returns to his former position. Their eyes meet for such a short amount of time. It hardly even counted as eye contact as he stepped and turned to shut the stove off to start cold water and tea leaves steeping. He knows his prey but Jenkins registered the connection and David caught it.
“You are David Wottem, and this apartment belongs to you?” He responds as he resumes the bending motions, announcing downward,
“I am.”
As he rises back up, then raised on his feet extending his hands to the ceiling he continues, “It does.”
“I’m here following up on a missing person call.”
David, without pausing without nodding says,
“Right. Missing Person’s detective. That makes sense.”
“Did you know Rose Marland?”
“Rose? Sure, I told her how to leave.”
David step-turns to his kitchen area.
“Are you sure you don’t want any? It’s gunpowder green.”
“I said no thank you David. What do you mean, you showed her how to leave? Do you know where she went?”
“She had some issues with her past. Some things about her family. She wanted to leave all that behind.”
“And you say you “Showed her how?”
“She is a grown woman. If she wants to leave her past-life behind, who am I to stop her? However, wanting and being able are two distinct things, right? So I showed her how to go.” David sustains contact with Jenkins’ green-brown eyes as he adds,
“Rose was a compelling case. She could hardly move you know. First time for everything.”
Jenkins found the phrasing odd but David was right, it’s not common for law to get involved in a thirty-eight year old woman in advanced stages of Lupis reported missing by her parents, who really only filed a report. That one from Washington state but Jenkins was called in from Chicago, for his knowledge of the disappearances because some wealthy elderly couple outside Marin, California. Who had a hand in spawning one Senator Peirtoff, hadn’t heard from their non-emergency daughter for longer than they are accustomed.
The detective had arrived at the real reason for his visit, and he ponders how to introduce it. As he does, his eyes scan the room. One three foot long, 4-foot high window without curtains lets in enough light to illuminate David’s place, facing the eight fifteen rising sun.
Light beamed through in a shaft spreading across the ceiling. A six-drawer dresser behind the swung open door; four-point five-foot refrigerator is next to the stove and about fifteen feet from where Mr. Wottem is, against the door’s wall is the toilet, shower ends the tiny place’s kitchen at the one counter square fake reaching to a stand-alone kitchen sink, the place’s only other counter rectangle fake unties the stove to the wall. Sink seems to have some cutting board topped cabinet that hides the trashcan between it and the wall.
Jenkins makes his way around the long twin bed, passed the dividing wall, fully out of David’s eyeline. The liberties of inquiry. As he looks out to the street below, shielding his eyes from the sun, he says,
“Of course, Ms. Marland lived alone and if she wanted to leave that’s her business. Do you mind telling me where she went?” David replies,
“How about you tell me about your high-school winter formal?”
“Excuse me, Mr. Wottem? What does that have to do with anything?”
David heard a quiver in his voice as Jenkins spoke – it was a promising guess, a slight unconscious modulation, marking his next target. He asserts,
“You did attend your junior-year winter formal, didn’t you?” Jenkins blinks his eyes a few times in rapid succession as he turns away from the window:
“Mr. Wottem, I am here to ask you a few questions. Not to have a conversation.”
“Okay then.”
David backs off by tone, continuing,
“I suppose me talking to you about a high school dance is too personal.”
“No, David. It’s not what we’re discussing. Do you know where Ms. Marland went?”
David hits every syllable to offer clarity,
“I have no idea where she is now. But I know where she went. Inspector, if it’s not too personal do you mind discussing that dance back then? A quid pro quo would seem to inline.”
The interaction was veering away from Jenkins, in a play for control, he asks,
“Do you want to continue this conversation at the station?”
“I’d like to start the conversation about your winter dance.”
David watches attentively as Jenkins walks the few steps back to his original place in the little room, as he does the shadows of three birds play on the wall across the ceiling in a broad square of morning light from a still rising sun through the window to the top of the room. A yard or so from where the wall opposite the window meets the ceiling. He announces,
“I bet those were crows.”
“What”
“I like watching birds from that window. Those shadows just now. Ah, you probably didn’t notice them – I bet those were crows.”
Jenkins focuses the mental image of this guy. A slender, medium built black man, standing – lurking – in his little window.
“David, just answer my questions. I’m not here for chit chat.”
“Neither am I.” David pauses to look at the color of the detective’s face. White people change their own shades and Jenkins’ cheeks are slightly flushed. The Inspector’s brow under his full head of greying brown hair furrowed then his forehead flattened. He thinned out his lips, pressing them more tightly shut, awaiting David’s next words.
“I can’t see why where she went matters at all. She’s an adult.”
“Back to that. Okay then, what about across the hall from her, the Harrisons? A married couple – Mr. Harrison was 68 and his wife was 65, do you know where they are?”
“The Harrsions. That was quite a while ago. They were the warmest kind of folks, you know? They shared the type of longstanding relationship that made you feel happy to be around them. Like as a visitor, you were party to their love, in the little phrases they repeated, the looks they exchanged and how they talked about each other. I wonder what they’re up to,”
“So, you never saw them leave? You can’t say where they are?”
The Inspector silently relaxed, believing things were starting to even out. But David was still a suspect in his book. It wasn’t because of skin color. Jenkins reads people and something about David was misspelled.
“No, I don’t know where they are now… but I can tell you where they went.”
“What does that mean David? You sure are speaking riddles here. I’m not trying to take up your time. If anything, Mr. Wottem it’s like you’re purposely wasting mine.”
“For the record, I still want to address that high school dance. But to finish up on this topic, everyone that leaves here ends up in the same place the first time they go. After that, it’s anyone’s guess where they are. They may have come back a few times. It’s just none of my business. At least I do not keep tabs.”
With that Jenkins decided to simply lay it all out. So far as he could tell he’s either being toyed with by someone that just doesn’t get out much; a person stalling because he wants conversation or – and this option was growing more appealing – Jenkins is dealing with a person out of balance.
“Mr. Wottem. First, a couple of weeks ago Ms. Marland was reported missing. Then the Harrisons’ daughter called us because she hadn’t seen her Mom and Dad in a while. When she used her key to get into their place they were gone. They hadn’t packed; they didn’t tell anyone they were leaving.”
“That’ll happen. People tend to get caught up in the process.”
“-Right. What process? You’re making this real difficult. Please explain yourself David, I feel like we could be at this all day.”
The inspector knew not to ask permission. He had picked up on David’s sentence breaks but that’s difficult because it matches law enforcer’s tone. Then the suspect speaks,
“It might take all day, maybe longer. Just to start. Really, the best way to explain is to have our conversation about your junior-year winter formal.”
Jenkins barely has time to grab his notepad before David adds:
“Those birds were most definitely crows. By the direction this is headed, I’m sure they’re staying nearby.”
As the detective opens his notes, flipping them to elastic ribboned page position, he grabs his pen from his breast pocket then slips the black ribbon off using the top of his pen, sliding it against the paper firmly enough to free his tiny pages, pen going upside down to get the little black band passed the pad’s bottom edge, again, with the top end of his pen – David notes Dude’s acuity and his movements are exaggerated.
Still controlled, he’s definitely retaining composure required for this interaction but to David’s eye Jenkins’ is approaching the edge. It’s not advisable to push a member of the police force too far past the point where you can tell something you said has them flustered. And this is David’s life. He does everything he can to stay put until he discovers the next candidate for travel. It’s too early to be certain but David enjoys trying with expediency on the next person he meets becoming his next travel partner. Notwithstanding that with this Inspector, it’s upon arriving.
As if transiting adheres something to his place immediately after return, and David likes sweeping up his next pupil inward yet into his arrival flow. He knows why it works better after reentry from Dark World, he was thinking then he got the flash-back:
Young Samuel’s Winter Formal, soft orangish yellow light glow out the windows into night from high up on his team-gymnasium’s East facing wall. Night covering the name, the Spartans, idiot mascot suit with a giant foam helmet and it was enough because he got into the car.
“I’m not talking about birds. I’m not talking about my childhood. What I want to know how it is Mr. Wottem that our department has received reports filed for, or found evidence suggesting that every person on this floor except you has up and vanished. All this floor’s mailboxes downstairs. All seven of them, are stuffed full of mail with notices left for pickup. Certainly you can see why I’m here.”
“They were all good people. Eventually I figured out – well, we figured out together, how they could each go. It just takes some talking, some working things out is all. Getting people to open up to the idea can be tricky. But that’s because it’s always something personal you know? In fact, it’s the personal thing. Like your dance. At the winter formal. Detective.”
The detective closed his pad and as he sighed his head involuntarily shook, registering a level of frustration that to him didn’t match this early in the morning.
“Mr. Wottem. Are you telling me you carried out some sort of counseling sessions with these people.” Saying it without question, taking charge.
David in a minute nod, jutted his head upward a bit quickly then the motion disappeared, he smiled:
“Counseling isn’t the right word. I shared a few brief words with them. Direct, right to the point, then they. Each of them. And everyone I’ve ever helped leave, does the work to get through what they have to so I can take them.”
As David finishes his statement he turns to look at the detective. Jenkins sees light from the window reflect a glimmer across his eyes, eye contact again, so as the moment’s victor the Inspector enters his jab:
“So you took all the tenants. With whom you shared this building’s entire top floor, somewhere. You took them each separately?”
David throws snooty but authoritarian back, accentuating the same word,
“The elevator was working then. What with people whom at some point required a lot of medical care.”
Jenkins for a second feels like he’s on another planet. He didn’t notice his half a step back onto his right heel first, then even the left back a bit less. He was caught, so he says,
“You’re telling me that since you took over this floor the elevator has not worked.
“The Harrsions and I left at the same time, all the others lived alone. With each of them it was just us two – but yeah I took them separately.”
“I’m getting the feeling you didn’t drive them anywhere.” David laughs, Inspector bounces:
“Is something funny. Mr. Wottem?”
“When it comes to leaving everything is. You’ll get it, I know you will.”
David nods reassuringly, as if Jenkins needs encouragement.
“If we can just get to that night in the parking lot beside the gymnasium at your school dance – you and your date in your parents’ car – you remember Detective.”
“I’ve been plenty patient David.”
“So have I.” With that the room for calm and still for a duration lasting until the two of these fine, strapping men are at the end of his hall to the walk down stairs. He figures that Juniper may hold promise, as he’s been successfully teaching anyone trapped with a first name that is a plant since he first discovered little boy, tangential to some bonkers crazy kid. He smiles again to add weight to Dude, only trying to remember the kid’s name. Shane, he thinks it was… and if David wanted, he could use that stillness Jenkins just started helping to make, to go back in time. By now he’s made the closet his, even back to the fifties – but it’d only be to the period that led him to whom is verified to be Shane.
Time, life, space and matter. Arranged as it will be on any built solar system, with the Chicago PD detective, collecting at:
“I mean, it looks like you’re leaving me no option but to place you under arrest.”
“Arrest? I’m just a guy trying to help you out here Inspector. What is arresting me going to accomplish?”
At this point the Detective was certain relocating David to the station was going to be necessary. Doing so without arresting him would make it easier; suspects tend to stay talkative if handcuffs never come out.
“How about you take a ride with me down to the station where we can continue this conversation.”
David walks over to his tea, just under 5 minute steep though he prefers four point five. He plunges the French press and says,
“Finally.” And, looking to the cup for his arranged to the morning concoction,
“I usually need both cups, do you mind?”
“Are you going to take a ride with me? If you are, sure, just hurry up.”
David pours one cup and swallows it in two gulps. He pours his second, takes a drink, Jenkins asks,
“Do you have your ID.”
David chuckles as he licks his lips, savoring his drink,
“I don’t have much use for one. I mean. If you can catch him the landlord can vouch for me.”
“The police usually need more proof than a landlord’s word.”
The entire air of David’s end of the conversation seems too friendly. It’s almost like he’s not registering he is in the presence of law enforcement. Jenkins starts plotting a way to take advantage. But this guy,
“Ah, Steve, he’s a good one. I trust him.”
David drinks the last of his tea upon stating the name of who he and the detective will first pass on their way in having read the name tag. He puts his cup down, looks down the length of his body.
Jenkins’ offers,
“Do you want to change?”
David crosses his arms and sounds genuinely exhausted as he answers,
“No.” Taken aback, and,
“Last I heard there isn’t a dress code for the victims at the cop shop.” Micro-jutting his forehead downward, he half a head’s height above the Inspector, adding,
“Right?” Knowing Dude’s lost, so he before he clenches to dominate again:
“Detective Jenkins, please advise. Are only the attendees of the cop shop the sole people held to a dress code?”
He half laughs, watching his face as if he actually expects Samuel Jenkins to smile. David crosses his arms and says exasperated and surprised,
“All this because you won’t talk about your high school winter formal. How’s about we get into it on the way? Deal?”
“Probably not David.”
——
Mom gave 14-year-old Rose half a day’s notice.
As she walked in the door home from school the woman announced,
“Gregory is coming to work on his thesis. He won’t have time to visit. He’s working on a project that requires him to compile and utilize lots of research. He said he’ll need a quiet space to work.”
Rose never heard the words. Ever since boys mattered she blushed herself up in front of her mirror, practicing, positioning her lips, mentally seducing her only by name removed uncle Greg Madril, long quiet periods under secret smiles were spent during spring breaks, she picturing him free from college until she relished the sound of his name under her breath.
Sunning in a summer dress next early afternoon on a towel atop her expansive grass side front lawn Rose waited to see her father’s car returning from the airport round the bend of their idyllic driveway. Idyllic being mom’s word for their tunneled in shade by stacked canopies of mature California Live Oak trees rising then gradually falling to rise again before sweeping in a near quarter mile curve that ends in the estate’s east turn around and garages yet strangely enough their home’s north front room, afforded a street view distanced a quarter acre away where at night looking down over grass dotted sparsely with Elm trees, the narrow road was lit by lamps shining through fog hanging on iron poles with candelabra bulbs shone in 15 foot stretches of cobbled black rock and wet wide grey cement rectangles, they can see it between Elm tops or their sole front facing Weeping Willow canopy closer to bottom of the yard’s slope, down at street level to the Marland’s.
Where ocean mist filled air in clouds formed to dampen the community’s light.
Early home from school Rose, sunbathing amid the spice of pollen filled bottle-brush bushes with a chorus of bees buzzing blossom to blossom, Rose longed for Greg. He hadn’t seen her in a full year and by now her head entertained childishly implausible fantasies. She knew it, but borderline lurid scenarios filled her brain and they had a savory addicting taste. She attended her thoughts and mental images of her 23 year old uncle as a solitary private indulgence.
Rose reveled picturing the time she and Greg were going to spend alone together. Her Mom and Dad were leaving early the next morning and were going to be gone until late Sunday night. Rose was staying home Friday. There would be formalities like dinner with everyone tonight but the moment that Rose eagerly awaited was tomorrow morning. Saturday, the first time Greg sees her, or rather. She sees him.
The house was silent at nine-thirty a.m when the pot of coffee she made had finished brewing. Pouring herself a cup, she heard the creak of the west guest bedroom door open. Rose quickly scurried back to behind the glass-topped mahogany breakfast table. Greg stepped into the kitchen with a full, deep yawn. She watched him, eyes wide and expectant. She was trying not to look too anxious as he entered her kitchen and took a seat across from her. He had sweatpants on and no shirt, his dark blonde hair was half a mess and she could tell he slept on his left side. Morning sun was burning through the bay window behind her and Rose is smiling warmly at Greg’s incessant squinting, trying to be ready for whatever he would say with his arm bent to hold his hand in front of his eyes. She gushes inside, thinking he looks ‘manly yet vulnerable’.
Her magazines say it’s the perfect combination.
Rose didn’t really know since she hadn’t even kissed a boy much less touched a man. She delved into her own head, mourning that she was the only person she knew her age still wondering what kissing a boy was like. Abruptly her reverie is ended, by Greg’s raspy morning voice,
“Do you guys have creamer?”
He speaks as he clears his throat into the side of his fist. Rose responds brightly,
“Top shelf on the fridge door…”
Greg pulls out the chair to Rose’s right and asks,
“How long have you been having coffee breakfasts?”
“I usually eat something for breakfast with my coffee.”
She smiles as Greg seats himself, his right eye squinted nearly all the way closed,
“I’m not hungry this morning. But I might be post this day-maker.”
Her eyes glanced from her cup to the right corner of Greg’s mouth basking in morning sunlight, his lips were big and dry, Rose watched his tongue quickly slide across so they moistened. Those lips faintly glimmering as he spoke. Greg turns his head downward and to the left, his elbow on the glass on the hard deep wood table.
Raising his left hand to shield his face from the sun he says,
“They sure are bright mornings in this house.” He giggles a few times in his fully grown voice. Rose couldn’t make the smile leave her face and, laughing a bit, she says,
“Yeah, I got the only bearable seat in the room.”
Greg, still recoiled in the same posture responds playfully.
“Then move your chair over all ready.”
Four chairs at the breakfast table, one on each side despite its elongated rectangular shape. Rose, seated at one of its long sides placed her hands at the edges of the seat of her chair and nodded:
“Okay Greg.”
Raising to her feet just enough to lift the chair from the sealed polished marble tile Rose scoots her chair and herself to the right. Greg stands and lifts his chair with his right arm, moving it around the corner of the table, placing it next to her. Rose watched her Uncle Gregs’ right torso muscles flex, starting with his abdomen flashing into a six-pack, then his pectorals tensed and the length of his arms solidified his muscles as he re-positioned his chair. As he was seating himself beside her Rose’s eyes found his.
She said, quizzically and in her cute, baby-girl teasing tone:
“My Dad never thought to do that Greg.”
“Your Dad never thought to do what?”
Seated this close she could hardly keep herself contained enough to remember that he was her ‘Uncle.’ Dressed only in grey sweats, bare feet, with his tan broad chest, and his perfect deep blue eyes still staring into her, awaiting her response.
“Daddy usually closes the shutters,” she smiles as bright as the sun shining from behind them, “he never thought to move to my side of the table.”
“So this is your side, is it?” Greg looked out over the house’s expansive kitchen, “But doesn’t it look better all shiny and loud like this? I think it helps wake me up.”
“Yeah,” Rose scans the room looking out on it discerningly, pursing her lips to remain cute while she did, nodding “I suppose it does.”
The two of them were warming in the open shutters and she began to smell a hint of sweat mixed with man’s deodorant, she turned to look at ‘Greg’ –not at all like she was looking at a relative,
“What’s college like?” As she stared at him she felt her eyes ‘receiving’ his strong jaw line and pouty lips, she thinks ‘-first time I’m alone with a man, and he’s a relative. Dammit.’
“Really wasn’t anything special to me,” he gulps some of his coffee, “I mean it’s almost over and soon I’ll really be able to get going.”
As Greg spoke Rose watched his eyes which had left her gaze when he took a drink and she saw them drop to focus on her lips as she began to speak,
“But what about the parties, all my friends and I hear about are the alcohol and drugs.”
By the time she had stopped speaking Rose saw Greg’s eyes lower still, dropping from her lips, down to past her chin… ‘Oh my God,’ she thought, ‘he’s looking at my chest!’
Smiling wild at him, meeting his eyes as they raised she says into his blue striped light grey burnt irises,
“And I hear the classes are hard and all.”
“Yeah, I mean, you could say the work is hard but everyone has always been a couple of years older than me in school. For about the last two years I haven’t been in lectures, or really around classmates….. I talk a lot with a couple of professors.” Greg dashes a coy look across his face and nods toward her,
“Hey, how’s high school?”
“OOOHhh all right,” she says in a dredging tone, rolling her eyes, “I’m in a private school I’ve gone to all my life.”
“Wow, that’s gotta bite. -Same boys around all the time,”
“Yes,” Rose sighs resolutely, “it’s pathetic.” She puts her elbow on the table and tilts her head to rest her temple upon the butt of her right palm and look at him, pouting. The most flirtatious she had ever been with anyone. She allowed her eyes to start ravenously consuming him, found it was actually quite natural, but only for a brief instant then she snapped out of it, saying,
“So instead of going to classes you just talk to teachers?”
“I do a lot of research in the labs for my thesis,” Greg looks at the clock on the wall across the kitchen, “I should get started on it soon.”
“What exactly are you working on?” Rose straightened, put her hands around her cup, hoping he didn’t notice the blatant plea for conversation, but she knew he felt her wanting him.
“The adrenal glands, do you know where they are?” Greg looks at her, his hairline beginning to bead sweat, and continues not giving her a chance to answer,
“They’re like, right on top of the kidneys,”
“Hey,” he smiles, “what science are you in?”
Rose bites her bottom lip softly as she turns to him, “I’m going to be in Biology, we’re gonna dissect a fetal pig sometime this year. I think I want to become a doctor.”
“Oh yeah,” Greg responds playfully. “In that case, what do you know about the Adrenals?”
She smiles giddy, teasing, “I know they’re on top of the kidneys.”
“Rigght.” Greg says, exaggerating his nod, “Have you ever been alone in the house, and gotten startled awake by a noise in your sleep? Like, something falls or thunder from a storm outside?” He continues despite the confused look on her face,
“The noise makes you sit up in bed. You listen for it again, and this time it sounds louder, like maybe it’s coming from downstairs but you know you’re alone in the house.”
Rose looks openly perplexed,
“Yeah, so it sounds like maybe there’s someone in the house…”
“You know how at first your stomach might turn into a pit as you wonder, ‘Oh no, what’s that.’ Then you hear it again, it sounds louder and you start to sweat, your heart begins to race. You start to think of ways for you to get out of the house without going downstairs; or about making a mad dash for the front door, but you’re paralyzed, every little creak in the house grabs your attention, freaking you out more.”
“Or I think of getting to my Dad’s gun case and kickin’ some ass.”
Greg looks intrigued as she leaves her seat to walk to the coffee pot and fill a second cup. He mind whirls as she walks, ‘I wonder if he looked at my legs.’ She wouldn’t dare turn to look at him but she was wearing a double extra-large shirt that hung to about the middle of her thighs with short boxers completely hidden underneath.
“Sure, or you start to plan out how to kick some ass but, your heart’s still beating like mad and all your senses have you on ‘High alert.’ –That’s your Adrenals talking, just one of their effects: The fight or flight response.”
“So…” Rose begins stirring her coffee on her way back to the table knowing this time that there was no doubt about it: Greg’s eyes were fixed on her legs, “my brain isn’t what’s doing that? I mean, aren’t I thinking like all the time?”
“If something didn’t click in your brain, your Adrenals would’ve never kicked in, but they are made up of two parts: one, the Adrenal cortex is switched on by an electric neurotransmitter traveling from your brain through your nervous system and the other: the Adrenal medulla is activated by hormones released into the blood stream by the anterior pituitary under command of the hypothalamus which is triggered by the brain.”
“Yeah, well, I’m gonna need a bit more science to start speaking that language.” Rose looks at him exasperated, “What else do they do?”
“They handle a lot of the extremes of experience; like being really cold or when you’re afraid for your life, even in cases of extreme pleasure, like orgasms. My point is, because extremes of physical response can and do arise from any emotional or physical stimulus strong enough, our Adrenals probably play much more into producing emotions across the board than people currently think they do. I’d tell you how, but I wouldn’t want to confuse you.”
As Greg rose from his seat, telling her he had better get to work, she said hurried,
“Orgasms, huh? And where are they, Dr. Madril?” Rose could definitely not discuss orgasms with him and call him ‘Uncle.’
Instead of walking around the open side of the table out into the kitchen, Greg scooted his chair in and took a few side steps between the back of Rose’s chair and the window, and said,
“Just call me Greg.”
His shadow cast over her, her head tilted as she watched him move out from behind her. He said,
“Let’s see” as he speaks he places one of his hands on each side of her back just below her shoulder blades. Rose feels his fingertips press firmly, indenting her skin through her shirt. As they slide down to just below the middle of her back on each side, he clasps his palms against her, applying gentle pressure,
“They’re right about there.” As he removed his hands he turned them so that she felt his long fingers wrap around her sides, squeezing:
“Now I have to get to work. We can talk later if you want or, if you wanted to go out, I wouldn’t tell.”
Rose’s face was glowing as she watched him walk a few steps to the counter and turn to rinse his cup in the sink. He looked at her as he shut off the water,
“Oh, all my friends have dates.”
Flinging his hands to shake his water off his fingers into the sink, he says,
“Then it looks like it’ll be just you and I tonight,” he smiles close-lipped, “See you later.”
“Don’t work too hard Dr.”
Rose was suddenly elated with disbelief, Greg Madril was hot, and it looked like he wanted her. ‘Maahan’ she thought. ‘I can’t wait for tonight.’ Her head flooded with possible scenarios, her smiles widened even further, ‘what if I make him a snack later and he says… or if I offer him a drink and…’
Rose Marland had fallen headlong into her first crush.
——
Nutcase kidnappers or murderers, or whatever the hell was going on here, all pretend to wield a pressure that builds as an investigation gets underway. To Jenkins most detectives derive an enjoyment from the deliberation. As if the suspect has themselves convinced, they are weighing down law enforcement. Allowing the hand of justice to squeeze in as the fingers wrap around, to get to criminals as their own cover story unravels but his guy seemed to be another type of creature.
David Wottem was jovial and despite his insistence to steer the conversation, he seemed completely open. He maintained, even searched out eye contact; all non-verbal cues were welcoming, and the level of his voice was confident, ready to be heard. Jenkins’ train of thought was interrupted by David patting down his pajama-pant pockets.
“What, are you looking for your keys?”
The detective follows David’s motions as he makes his way into the top floor hall of Dude’s building.
“Can’t think of why I’d need them. You said I’m only person on this floor?”
As the pair left Jenkins became preoccupied with a strange suspicion that all the back-and-forth David was so interested in staying in front of was managed to get them out of the cramped quarters of his apartment. He plotted their path to the car, mentally graphing out his position relative to David’s at each stage of their progress. He started at a three quarter angle in front as David shut the door, and he adjusted his placement relative to David as they moved, before they got to the stairwell he positioned himself half a step to the side before opening the door. Jenkins could see him in the farthest reaches of his right periphery with a slight turn of his head and as long as he kept directing comments toward him, David would have no reason to suspect the monitor.
If Jenkins’ thought the strategy was unnoticed. It was dispelled by David in his lowest normal tone of voice,
“So. Suspect. I guess that comes with the territory.”
“Yep, you have to admit”
Damn! Jenkins thought. He managed to utter a quick “nevermind” to cover his tracks. Of course, the prone detective could be overacting. David is the weirdest suspect he’s run into in years, either way he’s just following instinct and protocol. But if possible he wants to keep an open rapport. The two were fit enough to make their way down the stairs at a healthy pace and no words were exchanged until they hit the second-floor landing. When David spoke:
“I’m not going anywhere. You owe me a conversation.”
Jenkins was careful to not respond too quickly. As they descended the last flight and arrived at the ground floor he responds,
“You did say you were looking forward to talking in the car.”
“Sure did. For now, could you do me a favor?”
David exhaled all his air audibly and the detective noticed the slight breeze it triggered pass over his shoulder, David half a head taller than the inspector. That gets to Jenkins and on this David isn’t the only one.
“What’s that, Mr. Wottem?”
The detective could tell by David’s tone that he was smiling,
“Just think about the night of your winter formal. Focus on that time you spent in the car with your date.”
Jenkins rebelled against the suggestion as much as he could. No further words were spoken from then, as they left the building, until they were two blocks down the road. There was no struggle. Nothing at all eventful happened except for a sudden, sustained silence. David was busy filling his body with his consciousness. There’s no way to prove it and he has no reason to care. But when he focuses on feeling his feet and hands from the level of their interior flesh and without involving his brain in the task, he believes he is sending his consciousness there, away from his strange matter body head.
He was patterning his breath again and his exhales had calmed to the point that Jenkins could no longer hear them.
David watched the buildings pass and felt a tickle in his chest as a proposition about time occurred to him. All these peoples’ lives dictated by schedules set according to time, which is based on the position of a star as seen from a planet. He started wondering how soon he can leave again and decided to get on with figuring out if his next departure would be with his driver. He turned his eyes to the back of the detective’s head, exhaled audibly through his mouth and nose at the same time and saw a cocoon of air, roughly the shape of Jenkins, covering his upper body.
He knew it encapsulated him but David learned long ago to not attend these perceptions, handling these periods of altered vision in that way just causes them to end. He waits, his gaze fixes. Holding the sight until he sees a tiny clear object launch out of the detective’s head. It was only separate from the space in the car’s interior by its apparent parameters. A nearly invisible round object about two inches across with growing and shrinking protrusions had left the detective’s head at a rate that David considered escape velocity.
Those things always leave at high speed.
“Did you feel that?”
“Feel what?”
“-Nevermind. You are an odd sort Detective. We’ll start from a different angle.”
David knew the detective’s response made it unlikely he was the next person he’ll teach to go. But he’ll keep at it, he does love a challenge. The detective had just about completely dismissed the memory of his junior-year formal – what of it he recalled despite his steadfast refusal to follow what amounted to a suspect’s demand. Samuel Jenkins was thinking, ‘two more blocks and one more light to get through’. He had even started appreciating the silence at the moment David begun,
“Detective, what was your date’s name?”
“The name of the girl I took to a dance I can’t even remember going to?”
The persistent ignorance, willful in this case, of newly found prospects never fails to amaze. David sighs with purposed exaggeration,
“We can do this without her name. But you will have to come to terms with the idea. Just a notion. That I know something about you that you haven’t told me yet.”
Jenkins catches the comment like a long fly ball. He loves the Orioles despite being from Chicago but to the detective’s reply,
“Funny, that’s usually how I feel. I’m starting to feel it now.”
In the rearview mirror he checks the passenger side of the backseat for David’s reaction. Without missing a beat. He anticipated the stance, responds,
“Well then, let’s just start with those three crows circling my floor.”
“So now you’re certain those bird shadows were crows?”
Jenkins clearly remembered that part. It was the exact announcement that to his recollection marked David a suspect. An abrupt change of subject to some innocuous detail was always telling. This example was so far off topic it had to be dismissed out of hand but he figure Mr. Wottem senses the ploy. Jenkins had planned it. Interpreting by seasoned instinct David’s need to dramatically throw his inspector off his lead.
“I checked. Like I said, I thought they were going to stay near. They did circle past my window several times.”
“Okay how do you know they were the same birds David? There are plenty of crows here. Also, and I’m really interested to hear your answer to this one: What made you so sure they’d stick around?”
“Alright, I’ll answer the second first.”
Jenkins doesn’t bother to hide his sarcasm,
“Terrific. Here we go, let’s have it.”
“The overall tone of your voice and the nature of your visit dictated the birds were crows so checking the window was a formality. I only realized that afterward though. People in general, me included, always keep some part of their minds stuck on stubborn setting. You know all about that Detective.”
Jenkins’ only thought was that he needed coffee. It was certainly burnt by now since Juniper starts the pots at 6 and after that you’re on your own to make more. But he really needed to something to shake himself into dealing with this guy. He recalls that David when he asked if he could smoke, motioned to half a broken bowl piece, on the ground. As the detective picked it up David said something Jenkins did not hear.
He really needed that cig. And he really needed to ash his smoke.
As David re-asked his first question Samuel silently petitioned for David’s next words to be the last he heard before he had him in questioning,
“That they were exactly the same crows doesn’t matter at all. It was three birds and those birds were crows. Those are the pertinent facts.”
David crosses his arms and remains silent as Jenkins makes his way around the car to let out his detainee. Who continues talking immediately upon the door opening,
“I can talk about this feature of our morning for quite a while and I know you’re not interested. To tell the truth it doesn’t matter in the long run. But if we can’t talk about your winter formal you’re likely to hear a lot about crows.”
“Thanks for the warning, Mr. Wottem.”
Sitting at the narrow steel paneled table with wooden legs in the questioning room, as David began suspecting the detective’s car he made a new discovery or correlation. It would be premature to claim it was anything more. His seat is facing a clinical moss green door, white painted cinder block walls, to his left a false mirror. Closing his eyes he recalls himself to about twenty minutes prior, in the backseat, watching that clear round body eject from Jenkins’ head. Eyes still shut; he focuses on the image and mentally relocates to the last time he shifted into what he calls “otherworld”.
Black mists swirl in the air above dark ground, a dark orange blackened sun and those black gooey blobs floating, bouncing off him while he’s there. That ball he saw leave the Detective’s head could very well be what those blobs from otherworld look like once they “push through” into Earth’s reality. If that’s happening all those black shifting bubble like balls of goo lodge themselves in their place, hovering in position where they embed into a person’s physical body through the gap between there and here.
Otherworld had long been a mystery to David. He doesn’t enjoy the place. He can speak to people in Earth’s reality from there and he has every reason to plan on one day incorporating that ability into his work, but he had never really thought about its other features.
The door opens. As Detective Jenkins enters, walking toward the chair opposite David, he says,
“David Wottem you are being recorded. Do you have anything to tell me about where all those people are?” he takes his seat.
“Have you heard of the heliosphere?” David is sure to make eye contact.
“Mr. Wottem, this is a questioning. You’re in a police station and I’m trying to get to the bottom of several missing persons’ reports that, by your own admission, involve you. What you’re not making clear to me though is exactly how you’re involved.”
“I was very clear with you Detective. I showed them all how to leave. I took them their first time. If you need more details we’re going to have to get into what the Sun’s heliosphere is, unless you already know. Do you?”
David un-focuses his eyes and turns his head toward the false mirror to frame Jenkins’ in his periphery. It’s a technique that aids he uses to discern aspects of the world that go unnoticed. He begins scanning the detective’s body. In the car, all he had to do was adjust his vision to see that little ball thingy leave. Maybe they go when they’re seen. Not that they were- Jenkin’s voice cuts into his train of thought,
“I don’t remember that much from my Astronomy class David. But I’m certain not one damn thing from that class is going to explain how eight people have disappeared leaving only you.” He notices the odd position of David’s head. “What’s going on over there?” He says, looking to his right.
“Oh nothing,” he responds, without turning to face him, continuing, “You won’t discuss your winter formal. You won’t discuss the heliosphere.” He turns back to set his eyes on Jenkins, “What about crows? Do you want to talk about crows?”
“-Seems to me like you’re ready to talk about anything so long as it has nothing to do with this questioning David.”
“Not anything. Come on now, those are three distinct things. And they can all be used to help you out officer.” David almost grins, but remembers his surroundings. After all, this is a police station questioning room. He holds his mouth shut, lips flat, neutral. Awaiting Jenkins’ response in the defensive,
“I’m a Detective Mr. Wottem.”
“There’s a difference? Would an officer want to talk about the heliosphere? Let’s get him in here.” David turns is head to resume his scanning activity in altered vision, the surface of that soft, thick atmosphere of air surrounding the detective’s body is pulsating in spots, like something, maybe another of those balls from otherworld is about to break free.
“How about we start with Patricia Lomer, apparently she been missing for about two months.”
“She was nice. I’ve learned that most people, if they can learn how to leave, are nice. People that aren’t can’t.”
“Define “nice” for me David.” Maybe how this guy relates himself to these people, the detective thinks, could get him something useful.
“I’m not saying mean people can’t leave, but it takes a resilience to get over those barriers that I just don’t bother cultivating. I know you’re nice Detective, I can see it. “
Just as he finishes the comment David, still watching Jenkins out the corner of his eyes sees a smaller ball launch from the invisible atmosphere surrounding the detective’s body. Its surface was also shifting, extending then retracing protrusions from its center mass. He jolts a bit at the sight, shakes his head quickly and turns to engage the detective intently,
“There, did you feel that? -Right there from your right shoulder?” his head nudges toward the place where the ball left.
“I am not getting anywhere. You are just dead set against cooperating.”
For the time being he was going to have to forgo this little experiment. David has never been able to bring into focus a view of otherworld seen from Earth for long periods and that was probably going to be necessary if he was ever going to prove his hypothesis. He sighs,
“Look, I’m trying to. You’re just not giving me anything Detective.” David’s eyes drop a bit, taking inventory, “But I’ll keep pushing through. Your high school winter formal, in your Dads’ sedan, you and your date went out there and got into the back seat, to take advantage of the less encumbered space and I understand. It’s hard for things to get hot and heavy between two bucket seats across a center console.”
“Focus David”
“Oh, I’m focused. I’m just asking you to consider what I’m saying. You and your date- what was her name? Julie I think. You started kissing,” Jenkins cuts him off,
“Patricia Lomer; Rose Marland; Jim and Betty Harrison, Jared Davis; Stewart Dudstrum and John Boven. Where are they David?” –It’s an old and reliable tact to use when dealing with a case involving several victims and Jenkins hopes it’ll wear down David’s veneer.
“The heliosphere of the sun extends out well passed Pluto, and it spins around attached to the star, coiling up into smooth elegant waves like the fabric of a dress a dancer is wearing as she spins.”
“Everyone on your floor has gone missing David. No one has seen or heard from any of them in weeks, in some cases years. You told me straight, you said, “I taught them how to leave.”
“Was her name Julie, Inspector?”
“I’m a detective David. I let it slide before because I thought we were having a friendly conversation. But I’m asking a series of questions, direct questions that need direct answers and you’re all over the place with the sun and my date from junior year and birds, I mean,”
“So, Guillia then? That was her name. Good. Now we’re getting somewhere.”