M Sellars - Never Burn A Witch

He didn’t even look up as Ben and I entered the room and pressed the door shut behind us. Instead, he continued vacantly staring at the wall through sunken, clouded eyes as he rocked in his seat. His hands, braceleted at the wrists, were held splayed alongside his cheeks, one finger crooked and tugging at his lower lip. Slowly he would slide them downward, smearing a small trickle of drool as he did so. Finally, he would press his palms together and steeple his fingers beneath his chin for a brief moment and then repeat the entire mannerism from the beginning. Every now and then a soft whimper would emit through his nose.

After a moment of watching the old man, Ben glanced over at me and cocked an eyebrow then looked back and cleared his throat. “Whatcha watchin’ there, Pops?”

The bum absently continued his introverted ritual and answered with nothing more than another low, nasal whine.

My friend let out a tired sigh and reached up to massage the back of his neck. “Sir, I’m Detective Storm and this is Mister Gant. We’d like ta’ ask you some questions, if ya’ don’t mind.”

A mixture of emotions was tumbling throughout the small room, the majority of which were emanating from the old homeless man. My empathic senses easily detected an undertone of love and lust, stunned betrayal, pain, and confusion. As would be expected though, primarily I felt his fear of the situation.

“Sir,” Ben spoke again while waving his free hand in front of the man’s face, “can you hear me? Do you understand why you’re here?”

Slowly, the bum turned his head and rolled his clouded eyes up at the imposing figure that was Detective Benjamin Storm. He continued to rock in place, but after a moment, he left his hands resting on his cheeks and began working his jaw as if to speak. Finally, after a raspy false start, he allowed his cuffed hands to fall to the surface of the table and his face spread into a chastened frown.

“Tracy is mad at me,” the old man muttered. “I shoodn’t have touched Tracy. That was wrong.”

“Sir, do you understand your rights as they were told you by the other officers?”

“Yes, I unnerstan I was wrong. Is Tracy okay?”

“Yes, she’s fine.”

Thus far the old man had seemed relatively lucid, though obviously not entirely sober. Ben fell silent and held his gaze, gauging by instinct whether or not he should press forward with more questions.

The odor of cheap bourbon and sour breath trailed along with his words, mingling thickly with the other unpleasant redolence. I caught myself searching the ceiling for the non-existent exhaust fan and trying to will one to appear.

After a moment, he continued, “Sir, would you mind answerin’ a few questions for us?”

“The other lady wuz mean,” the old man mumbled. “She hit me. But she had pritty hair. What questions?”

“We’d like to ask you about somethin’ you had in your pocket. A Bible.”

“Ex-oh-duss.” He nodded vigorously and proceeded to misquote the highlighted passage. “Whiches shall not live.”

“That’s what was bookmarked,” Ben agreed then urged him on. “Can you remember where ya’ got the Bible?”

“It wuz on the table,” he answered.

“Can you tell me where this table was?”

“By the fire,” he returned matter-of-factly and shrugged. The old man continued to stare at Ben as if he fully expected the answer to make perfect sense to us. Before the obvious next question could be asked, his face slackened, and his eyes seemed to lose focus for a moment. Leaning forward, he began to search Ben’s face, “Is Tracy okay?”

“I already told ya’, Miz Watson is fine,” my friend returned impatiently. “Now can ya’ be a little more specific about where ya’ obtained this Bible.”

“Tracy, Tracy,” the old man grinned sheepishly and began singing, “Tracy, Tracy, I love Tracy. Tracy with the big, big tits!”

Ben shot another glance over at me, and it took no great skill to read the expression that had applied itself to his chiseled features. The old bum wasn’t exactly residing in the same plane of reality that we were. Whether or not this was entirely due to the alcohol in his system still remained to be seen.

“The mean lady with the pritty hair hit me,” the bum announced. “Didyu ‘rest her too?”

“Sir…” Ben started.

“She wuz mean.” He furrowed his brow and belched loudly. “Tracy is nice.” Again he began his off-keyed ditty, “Tracy, Tracy, I love Tracy…”

“Sir,” Ben cut him off with a disgusted sigh, “please concentrate on the question. Where did ya’ get the Bible we found in your pocket?”

My friend’s voice had taken on a sharp, biting tone that made the old man flinch and cower away. I could easily sense that his irritation with the state of affairs was rising and that his temper was well on its way to a minor flare at the very least. I knew this would serve no purpose other than driving the old man’s memory further out of our reach and decided to break my self-imposed silence.

“You said it was on a table next to the fire,” I volunteered in a soothing voice. “Can you tell us where the fire was?”

The bum cautiously shifted his gaze over to me and stared quizzically. “Fire?”

With my eyes fixed to his I spoke, keeping my timbre light and even, almost to the point of being a dull monotone, “Yes, you were telling us about the Bible you found on the table.”

“On the table,” he echoed my words, nodding slightly as he did so.

“Right.” I smiled and continued to soothe him with my voice. “You said the table was next to a fire. Can you tell me where the fire was?”

He, himself, having been on the receiving end of such an impromptu hypnosis by me, Ben quickly caught on to what I was trying to do. He immediately ceased pressing with his own questions and fell silent. He even went so far as to back away from the small table as if he thought he might somehow be in my way.

“The park,” the old man mumbled and blinked. “The fire wuz in the park.”

I could feel how hard he was concentrating on the question and in a way felt sorry for him. I knew it was just as hard for him to make sense of his disjointed remembrances as it was for me to cajole them to the surface. I wasn’t even sure my expenditure of energy was going to get us anywhere, for the old man may have seen nothing at all.

I could only hope that it wouldn’t be fruitless because the tightening that now crept along my scalp was a harbinger of the payment I would be doling out in the very near future.

“Good.” I nodded and then urged calmly, “Now can you remember anything else about the park? What did you see?”

Wide-eyed horror slowly crept into the bum’s face, forcing his befuddled expression aside, then finally overtaking and replacing it entirely.

An acrid burn washed over my skin as my hairs rose on end. Gelid fear tickled the pit of my stomach and threatened to force its way outward through every pore on my body. The barest glimpse of what the old man had seen that night hazily began to form as the experience was blurted into the ethereal space between us.

“Oh no!” he cried and began shaking his head. “No! She’s in the fire! No!”

An image visible to only the old man and I began to congeal and clarify, offering its testimony of the events that were played out. I stared hard into the vision searching for anything that would even remotely equal a clue.

Without warning, dull pain bludgeoned me with a rock hard fist directly between the eyes as the small snippet of that night was unceremoniously ripped from my grasp, even before I had had the opportunity to truly view it.

I turned suddenly at the sound of the interview room door flying open and was greeted by the image of a beleaguered young man wielding a briefcase and a file folder. He followed the swinging barrier hastily inward while glaring angrily in my direction. Ben shifted quickly to the side to avoid being creased by the heavy metal rectangle pivoting on its hinges.