September 9th 2012, 9:10 pm, Interrogation Room B, Wapsi County Sheriff's Department
"We just watched three people die, Naomi, how do you think I'm holding up right now!"
Jed didn't intend for his retort to come off so sharply, but sitting in a stuffy, narrow police interrogation room straight out of some B grade 70's cop drama for four hours (two of them, doing nothing but waiting) had pared back his already frayed nerves to their roots.
Jed had fastidiously answered every question to the best of his memory, lest his conscience trouble him later when he mentally sifted the experience. It was an embarrassing, arduous experience to say the least. The dubious investigators had reduced Jed to a mumbling, repeating fool by the end as far as he was concerned. What was he supposed to tell them? The truth was fantastic enough, let alone coming out of the mouth of someone with a documented history of mental illness. Naomi was his only saving grace, finishing his sentences and corroborating his very unlikely story.
Now, waiting alone for the second time with his wife in the cramped and dimly lit cracker-jack-box of a room, the Critic rehearsed with him over and over again his previous answers and offered up an unceasing and unwanted rolling commentary.
Naomi rubbed her husband's back, without replying to his clipped tone in kind. She could always tell when his mental machinery was spinning rapidly and had learned from experience when it was best to distract him or just leave him to muse.
Her own thoughts were on Amanda and Jed Jr., lying asleep on the couch of their close friends. The Readers had graciously picked up the kids from preschool/daycare and continually occupied them, reassured them, and most importantly, fed them all evening in the wake of their parents' unexpected absence.
After a minute's silence, Jed's inner conversation took on verbal form.
"This whole week, I've thought I was obeying God ... some spiritual antennae I have, Naomi ... the guy's some sort of a warlock or something! You saw what he did!"
Naomi took a calming breath.
"Jed, you're obsessing," she replied gently. "You know that of us were trying to help Sage and I don't feel guilty. Honestly, I don't know what I saw in that parking lot, but don't for a minute start accusing yourself for 'aiding and abetting the enemy.' We don't know who or what Sage is."
The Matthews' had related their experience just as they remembered it: the backstory before Sage entered the I.C.U., his cryptic replies when asked about who he was and what he was doing in Hickory Grove, his personal interest in Jed and finally, their unfathomable ordeal in the Mercy Hospital parking lot. The sheriff deputies were most interested in what had unfolded there, of course. Similar stories, albeit from a farther vantage point, had been given by the few onlookers who had witnessed the confrontation from the hospital entryway. Most of them, to the best of Jed and Naomi's knowledge, had been questioned and subsequently released after giving the deputies on scene their contact information. But, there was no easy out for Jed and Naomi. Each witness had seen the couple somehow enmeshed in the reddish-hued chaos that had resulted in the disappearance of three unknown and now mysteriously absent people.
"They disappeared in a flash of red lightning?"
This is what the youngest of the two interrogators had kept repeating throughout their long and tedious conversation, his tone bordering on the edge of mockery. The only thing that saved them from being locked up instantly at the local mental ward, they assumed, was that the officers had apparently heard some of the same explanations given by other witnesses.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
In the end, after having them repeat their story, again, for what seemed to them to have been the tenth time, the two officers had stood and left the two to themselves.
"Of course we know what he is, Naomi" said Jed; quieter this time, but no less agitated. "When's the last time you saw a Bible-toting Fundamentalist spewing magic from his fingernails! He's some sort of sorcerer and I didn't even see it."
"Jed ..."
"The one whom he loves has the gift," chuckled Jed, his voice laced with irony as he slowly shook his head. "Apparently he wasn't talking about the gift of discernment."
Jed went silent again and bowed. Naomi knew he was praying, repenting, and pleading for forgiveness in his invariable, though puzzling, way for whatever supposed part he had unwittingly played in this evening's bizarre events. Frustration began to build inside Naomi, despite her outwardly placid demeanor.
Rabbit trail. With substantial mental discipline, Naomi pulled herself back from the pity party.
Ten minutes later, the older of the two officers opened the door, double checked their contact information one last time, then escorted them to the entrance of the Sheriff's office and gave them leave to go home.
After a brief argument in the parking lot about whether they would immediately go check on Sage (Jed's idea), or immediately go pick up the kids (Naomi's idea); a compromise was reached as Jed drove Naomi to the Readers, retrieved his sleeping children with thanks, dropped off his family members at home, then reversed course and headed back toward Hickory Grove's only hospital.
_______________________
He was practically unrecognizable. After convincing the sheriff's deputy who stood guard at the entrance to Sage's room in I.C.U. that he was his pastor, Jed was gruffly admitted entrance. But, in spite of seven years experience doing hospital calls, he remained totally unprepared to see the now bloated and blistered figure lying before him.
Removed from the scene of the crime (as Jed had now come to think of it) by the twenty-five yards that had separated the grass oasis from the parking garage, Jed had no vantage point to witness what the last barrage of the young woman's fire had done to Sage's unprotected body, in spite of victory that had ensued. A third-degree burn victim that had been pulled from an apartment fire couldn't have looked worse. Sage's face and hands were double their original size. Blackened and oozing blisters now pocked his haggard face and what had once been facial hair now hung limp like the blackened ends of twigs stamped out from a morning campfire.
Jed felt a wave of nausea wash over him, but took a deep breath to overcome it.
He was surprised to see Sage's puffy eyelids open and yellowed, glassed over orbs staring up into his face, with apparent recognition. In spite of his new misgivings about the old man, Jed was immediately overcome with confused emotion.
"Sage," he whispered.
Sage's blackened lips began to move, silently. Jed bent over the bedside to catch any hint of what the man was trying to say. Ragged breathing met his ear for long moments before Jed thought he discerned three vague and whispered words.
"I cannot help ..."
Sage's eyes fluttered shut as Jed pulled away from the bed; the stench of the old man's burned flesh finally registering to his nostrils. He looked up to the heart monitor as it coldly beat out its regular cadence on the blued, monochrome screen and knew that Sage was still with him.
?
He would love his enemies, thought Jed. Was Sage an enemy? If so, then why had Jed come back tonight? The Critic's insistence, to be sure; but wasn't the Critic even now playing "devil's advocate" and condemning him for giving any more support to a man who must obviously be in league with Satan? Jed hated the stalemate within. Half of his confused conscience knew that he owed no more allegiance to this strange, confusing man, while the other half felt constrained by "what would Jesus do?"
Yet, even in the light of all he had witnessed and the unrelenting rationalizations of the Critic inside of his skull; that same, unexplainable and subterranean sense of purpose remained.
As Jed mused back upon he and Sage's initial, disjointed, interview. The Critic was again right at his shoulder ...
He didn't have an answer. Wearily, with head bowed, Jed did the one thing he knew he was still allowed to do for Sage, be he friend or foe - he prayed.
.
