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John Raide · (01-29-2014)

If you cannot trust your eyes as you look at the world, what good are they?

I can give you something better.

Will Cebulski splashed some warm water on his face and then looked at himself in the mirror over the sink. His skin was already pale, but the lighting in the bathroom really flushed him out. He leaned over the sink and stared into his eyes, and seemed to notice every blackhead and incoming pimple on his face.

There was a spot of red-ish brown on his tie, and he reached down and dabbed his pinky finger on the spot. He stuck the pinky into his mouth and smacked his tongue a few times — barbecue sauce. Son of a bitch.

With a sigh he picked his glasses up off the sink, gave himself another look in the mirror and stepped back out into the hall, with his notebook under his arm. A gate buzzed open as he approached it, and Will passed on into a larger anteroom where a uniformed guard sat at a table to his right. Will showed the guard his ID and after a moment, another guard stepped out from the cage behind the guard at the desk.

The guard made no attempt at small talk as he lead Will down a long corridor. They stopped at a door on the left. The guard paused for moment, hand stiff against the doorknob as he finally glanced at Will.

“Fifteen minutes is fifteen minutes, ‘kay boss?”

“Yeah, no problem,” Will replied.

He was ushered inside the room and the door clicked behind him. Another uniform stood in the far corner of the room, staring off stoically, not acknowledging that anyone had entered.

A row of orange chairs sat in front of wooden tables, each sectioned off to provide privacy. Will was alone except for a woman who sat down at the far end of the row. She looked up at him, then immediately diverted her eyes elsewhere.

He took a seat third closest from the door and set his notebook down on the space in front of him, and let his bag drop down near his feet. A dull buzz on the other side of the room rang in his ears, and a guard were escorting a man in a white t-shirt and scrubs into the seat across from him.

The man kept his head down, eyes on his wrists as the guards stepped back behind him. His hair was disheveled like he had bed head once and then just gave up any attempt to keep it under control. A beard was desperate to grow on his face.

He finally looked up, and Will saw a life gone by in his green eyes.

The man frowned.

“Who the fuck are you?”

“I’m Will Cebulski. I work for the Seattle Times. I was hoping for a few minutes of your --”

The man started to push away from the table.

“Wait, just wait. Please. I want to talk to you.”

“I have nothing to say to you.”

“Ten minutes. That’s it. I just want to talk to you, Mr. Raide.”

John Raide ran a hand through his hair and Will heard him give a raspy sigh.

“Five minutes. I’m listening.”

“Thank you.” Will said. “I’m working on an article. I have been for sometime now. You are — you are a very interesting figure, Mr. Raide. I have just become so fascinated trying to put this puzzle together and —”

“I’m going to stop you right there.”

Will paused. He hadn’t even gotten his notebook open yet.

“Why?”

“Why? Listen to yourself. I don’t know how old you are, sir, or even whatever the hell you said your name was. And I don’t care to know. But let me make something clear to you, there can be no good that will come from digging into something that happened six years ago. You understand me? No good. It’s in the past. I need to move on, and I can’t until you self-indulging pricks stop kicking all the dirt up again. I’m going to say this once. Leave it alone. Leave me alone.”

John went to push away from again, but Will shot his hands up and tried to wave him off. “I just want to understand what happened is all.”

“Nothing to understand. What’s done is done.”

“Then explain it to me at least, Mr. Raide.”

John looked away for a moment, then forced his bloodshot eyes back at Will.

“Explain what? And stop calling me Mr. Raide. That’s my father. Call me John.”

“Explain how you, John Raide, a respected Seattle police officer, leave the force, go off the grid for two years and then resurface as a -- consultant was it? Now taking personal interests in missing people. Then there's a huge chunk of time I'm missing, but somehow you wind up here by submitting yourself voluntarily. I’m just asking you to fill in the blanks. That’s all.”

John did a quick scrub of his face with his hands. “You wouldn’t understand even if I told you. So just leave me be.”

“Make me understand then. Look, I just want to tell your story. At the very least put your side of things out there.”

Will reached down near the floor into his shoulder bag and pulled out a brass fastened stack of paper about as heavy as a heap of magazines. He passed it over to John. “Tell me about this. You wrote this manuscript right?” He pulled it back and looked at it, “Human Ghosts, by John Raide”

“Where did you get that?”

“Tracking this bad boy down was a sonuvabitch let me tell you. Let’s just say I pulled a lot of favors to get my hands on this.”

“You shouldn’t have read that.”

“This manuscript, John. This is why I’m here. There are things in here I think not only make a good story, but could help. Did you come here to hide or what was it?"

“You don't know what you're snooping around in.”

He pressed his hands together and placed them under his nose as if he was saying a prayer. The woman down at the end of the row was starting to get hysterical about something.

“This was a symbol, like a maze that you had sketched into the manuscript. What does it mean?”

He could see John making another motion to leave the table.

“Least tell me why you took this case on. What was it about it?”

John exhaled heavily, “You gotta make money somehow right? It was a Jane Doe case as they're called. Figured it'd go nowhere. They usually do to be honest.”

Will shifted forward in his seat and started to write some notes down.

“Okay, let’s come back to that. That brings me to my next question, who is Hannah Raynebarn? You mention her several times in the text, but never anything coherent.”

He glanced up at John who had a look on his face like he had swallowed a hot coal and was trying to choke it down.

“We’re done here.”

“What? No, hold on. John — who is she? Who is Hannah Raynebarn?”

“I said we’re done.”

“What does she have to do with all this?”

“We’re done!"

Will rose from his seat, out of the corner of his eye he could see the guard in the corner making a motion to come toward him.

“John, please," he flipped open the manuscript and opened to a page. "You drew this maze, what is this? Why is Hannah trapped in the maze and she can't get out?"

"Look, kid, why you going down this path? I wasn't in the right frame of mind when I wrote half of that stuff. I'm telling you that nothing good comes from it."

Will reached down into his bag and pulled out a faded purple notebook and opened to the second page where a maze had been drawn by pen.

"What is that?"

"My sister had drawn this several times in a notebook ... no one has seen her now for two months. Will you help me?"

"My advice, go to the police they --"

"Already did. No one is as close to this as you. I'll beg if you want me to. Will you help me?"

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