The basement interrogation room was small and cold. My
clothes were still damp from the plunge I’d taken into the Alabama River, and
the police had handcuffed me below a vent that blew chilled air straight down on
my head. One ancient bar of fluorescent lights flickered down on the Styrofoam cup
of coffee between my dirty fingers.
Each time the lights flickered, I saw the outlines of three onlookers
in the adjacent room. They watched me from behind one-way glass. Did these
police officials know I could see their shapes? Did they care?
During the past several hours of interviews, I’d told the
police mostly the truth about what happened out in the Claiborne Sinks, except
for the stuff they wouldn’t believe. I knew the minute I started talking about top-hatted
boogeymen, spectral lanterns and giant hounds with green eyes, they’d put me in
restraints and ship me off to the mental hospital across town. They’d say it
was for observation, but the papers tomorrow would convict me of murder.
Rather than tell the whole truth, I told detectives that I’d
been in the Sinks looking for the missing professor, Albert Gruner. I wanted
that $10,000 reward offered by his rich wife, but I’d only managed to get lost.
Sgt. Friemann found me, but we’d both gotten lost on the hike back to the main
road.
I told them that we’d walked around in circles for the rest
of the day before we stumbled back into the clearing where we’d started. I was exhausted,
and Friemann left me there, figuring he could cover more ground alone. I told
the police that was the last I’d seen of their missing officer.
I told them that hunger and thirst got me moving again. After
I left the clearing, I walked what seemed like forever through the thick woods,
getting scratched and bloody. Eventually, in the dark, I’d stumbled off the
high bluff into the river, where I’d been found by the Claiborne River Patrol.
Suddenly and without warning, the thick metal door of the
interrogation room squawked open and in stepped Detective Chunn, carrying a red
folder in one meaty fist. He bordered on morbid obesity and breathed heavily as
he trudged to the metal folding chair on the opposite side of the table. The flimsy
chair groaned as he settled into place.
Chunn had been in and out of the interrogation room all
night, and he’d asked me the same questions over and over. I stuck to my story
and looked forward to going home to a hot shower. A couple of beers, a soft bed
and hours of sleep would follow.
“You want to change anything in your statement?” he asked.
He eyed me closely, probing my face for the slightest reaction.
“No, sir,” I said. “Not me.”
He pushed the red folder across the table, flipped it open
and handed me a pen. “I typed your statement,” he said. “Read it, make sure
it’s what you want to say, then you can go.”
The detective watched as I read the three-page statement. I
saw nothing I wanted to change, so I signed it and closed the folder. The
detective then lurched out of his chair, produced a key and unlocked my cuffs.
I stood, rubbed my wrists and moved to the door. Chunn
pulled it open but grabbed me by the arm before I could step into the hall. He
was so close that I could smell his mephitic breath. I noted the antique fraternal
ring on one of his sausage-like fingers.
“Just so you don’t leave here with the wrong idea in your
headguts, we think you’re lying about what happened in the Sinks,” he said, his
voice a whisper. “Make no mistake, we’ll be keeping an eye on you, McMorn.
You will slip up.”
Outside the police
station, the predawn air had never felt so good. In the distance, I could hear
a street sweeper as it crawled along somewhere in the direction of River Street.
I began to walk toward home and a smile crossed my lips. Even though a little
banged up, I’d managed to survive another supernatural adventure and had lived
to tell the tale.
(All rights reserved. This
story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are
products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance
to actual events or locales or persons living or dead is entirely
coincidental.)
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