“That doesn’t make it any more palatable,” I asserted.
“No, it doesn’t,” he agreed. “But what’re ya’ gonna do? Some of ‘em like it that way. I seem to recall you tellin’ me once that I couldn’t protect the whole world. That applies to you too, ya’know.”
“I know, I know,” I acknowledged.
“Anyhow,” Ben continued filling me in, “I dunno how long they had this guy in the shower, but they managed ta’ get the stink off ‘im for the most part… And he got ta’ sleep in a warm bed last night, even if it was lockup… He’s had a decent meal for a change…Got ‘im some fresh clothes from one of the local shelters…Oh yeah, and the TV station Watson works for sent along a brand new coat for ‘im. Cheapest publicity they’ll ever get.”
“Maybe so, but at least he’s got a decent coat now.”
“Yeah, there is that,” he acknowledged.
We had pushed through the heavy door and had made our way down the familiar hallway while Ben rattled off the latest information on the old man. We now came to a halt in front of an interview room, and my friend paused with his hand on the doorknob.
“So I figure I’ll let you do the talkin’,” he told me. “Kinda do the hocus-pocus thing and see what ya’ can find out, ya know?”
“I’ll give it a try but I can’t make you any guarantees. It doesn’t always work like that.”
“I know.” He nodded as he twisted the knob and pushed the door open. “But I got faith in ya’.”
The old man was sitting at the small table that occupied the center of the room, and true to what my friend had said he was almost unrecognizable as the foul-smelling bum we had visited the day before. The untold layers of grime that had once painted him were now distant additions to the waters of the metropolitan sewer system, and his foul perfume had been replaced by the sharp tang of antiseptic soap. While by no means a perfect fit, he was clad in fresh clothing far less threadbare than his original attire.
His face was sporting a lurid grin that displayed several missing teeth, and he repetitiously fingered an eight-by-ten glossy that was gripped in his weathered hand. His intent gaze never left the crisp lines of the autographed photo even while Ben exchanged a few words with the uniformed officer who had been waiting inside the door. After sending the guard on a break, my friend pressed the barrier shut and silently leaned against the wall next to it with his notebook at the ready.
I glanced at Ben, and he simply jerked his head toward the man at the table while looking at me expectantly. I was feeling more than just a little pressure, and it wasn’t helping my overall ability to ground and center. No matter what he had said out in the hall, it was plainly obvious that Ben didn’t truly understand the realities I had explained. He was expecting me to perform a feat of hypnosis on command and provide him with the answers he wanted, simple as that.
I suppose that in a way it was my own fault. I had worked so hard during the previous case to overcome his intense skepticism that I had now pushed him to the opposite end of the spectrum. Combined with his being present to witness the bizarre events that had attached themselves to me during this investigation, I should have expected something like this. I only hoped that I wasn’t about to let him down, but I already had a very nasty feeling that a rather large disappointment was peering angrily over the horizon in my general direction.
“Good morning,” I finally said to the old man as I ventured farther into the room.
He continued to grin, occasionally smacking his lips as he emitted guttural grunts and chirping noises. His stare never left the photograph, and his fingers lovingly caressed the crisp greys that formed Tracy Watson’s image, lingering with each pass on the shadows that outlined her ample chest.
“They tell me your name is Bob,” I volunteered. “Mine is Rowan.”
No response.
I stepped closer to the table and listened. Between the chirps and gurgles, he seemed to be muttering something under his breath. I strained to understand the muted words and found only an endless loop of “Tracy, Tracy, I love Tracy.”
After a short wait I pulled out the chair opposite the man. “Mind if I sit down, Bob?”
Still no response.
Just the almost musical repetition of his undying love for Tracy Watson.
I went ahead and took a seat. The old guy was so enraptured by his visit from the television meteorologist that nothing else existed for him in this space and time. The reinforcement of his fixation wasn’t going to make my task any easier.
Reaching across the small table, I passed my hand back and forth through his tightly focused stare. “Bob, are you listening to me?”
His gaze never wavered. No motion or sound from him gave any indication that he was even aware of anyone else’s presence in the small room. It became immediately obvious that approaching him purely on the physical plane was going to be useless.
I pressed myself for a moment to find the balance I would need in order to even begin making an attempt at what Ben wanted me to do. If I was going to avoid a repeat of yesterday’s pounding headache, or even achieve a small modicum of success in this task, I was going to have to anchor myself in one place for a change. Drifting haphazardly about and allowing random ethereal events to play themselves out through me wouldn’t do us any good in this case. I was still entertaining doubts that any of the ones I had been tortured by so far had done us any good to begin with.
I closed my eyes and took a deep, cleansing breath, steadily in through my nose then slowly out through my mouth. As I exhaled fully I began systematically relaxing my body, starting at my toes and working my way up. I was engaging myself in the simplest of methods to attune to one’s surroundings. An exercise pulled straight from WitchCraft 101.
Grounding and centering was the most basic of all things a Witch would do. The process in and of itself quickly became second nature to anyone who studied The Craft for any period of time. While the process remained the same, after awhile it became nothing if not automatic. To have to take the time to actually concentrate on grounding was a rarity brought on by unusual circumstance. The fact that I was now sitting in a quiet room with no real distraction, but still had to consciously force myself to follow these simplistic steps, made me feel like a clumsy neophyte.
What had been almost instinctively happening for my entire adult life, and in less than sixty seconds, was now taking intense thought and more than five minutes. I knew I was off-center, but this was much worse than I had originally thought. This latest realization didn’t help me at all.
When I finally opened my eyes, the old man was still fingering the photo and was giving no indication whatsoever that he even knew we were in the room with him. Over my left shoulder I could feel impatient expectance swirling around Ben in a slowly expanding eddy.
My ethereal connection to an earth ground was complete but tenuous. There was no doubt in my mind that it wasn’t going to last.
Focusing my gaze on the unresponsive man, I opened my otherworldly senses and summoned a calm, soothing energy to fill my voice. “Bob,” I began in a near monotone, “I’d like to talk to you for a little while, if that’s okay?”
Slipping in under the plane of everything physically tangible, my words centered themselves on the old man and drove inward with the singular task of gaining his attention. As they struck their intended mark, he furrowed his brow slightly and ceased his barely intelligible noisemaking.
With his stare seemingly interrupted by something unseen by anyone but him, he slowly lifted his eyes to meet mine and blinked groggily toward focus. The grin had melted from his face momentarily to become an expressionless sag but now returned in a wide swath as he tilted the eight-by-ten in my direction.
“Tracy” was all he said.
“I know, Bob. She’s very pretty,” I said with a nod, keeping my voice even. “But I was wondering if we could talk about something else for a moment. What do you think?”
“Tracy came to see me,” he muttered. “She luvz me.”
“I’m sure she does,” I agreed. “But I really need to talk to you about something else, Bob. Do you think we could do that?”
“An ah luv her.” He started nodding.
“Bob, I’m serious.” Without thinking I projected urgent anger into the flow of energy as I spoke. “I really need to talk to you about something else for a minute.”
