The interrogator paused outside the door, looking down the hall at something or someone, and then he walked into the room, carrying a thick stack of red folders that were interlarded with loose pieces of white paper. He set them on the long table, aligning them carefully with its edge before walking around the end of it and sinking into the leather chair on the other side. Then he opened the folder on top of the stack and examined the pages inside.

“That’s—” Samuel said. “I can’t believe that’s all for me.”

The interrogator didn’t react. He slid a page from one side of the folder to the other and kept reading.

In his wooden chair, set five feet from the table, solitary in the middle of the concrete floor, Samuel was too far away to read the pages, particularly not when he could only see them from upside-down. He couldn’t determine whether they were covered with print or handwriting, even. He assumed there were photographs or diagrams, but he couldn’t tell.

Evidence.

The interrogator snapped the folder shut. He dealt the stack of folders into a semicircle and piled the loose pages within it, just beneath his sternum. After straightening the pages, he rested his folded hands on them.

“So,” he said. “Why is it, do you think, that you’ve caught our attention?”

Samuel opened his mouth and closed it again. The interrogator waited, unblinking.

“Well, I guess that’s something I couldn’t really know,” Samuel said. “I mean, shouldn’t you be telling me whatever that is?” He cleared his throat and shifted slightly in his chair, pressing the muscle beneath his right shoulder blade, which had seized up at some point while he had been sitting there, against its wooden back.

The interrogator smiled. His lips shifted back to empty slackness so suddenly that Samuel wondered if they had moved at all.

“It is true, of course, that we are the ones to know,” the interrogator said. “But the standard is for you to show that you are aware of your own transgression or transgressions. If you have committed any.”

“Okay, listen, the truth is, the truth here is, I don’t know why you’ve brought me in. I don’t. Really! Look, I do everything I’m supposed to do: pay my tithes; eat the grain on Wednesdays; bow when I see the badge or cowl on anyone. I don’t mix myself up in anything…untoward or whatever. I stay away from anything shady. If someone seems even slightly risky. So I just don’t see how you could want anything from me. I mean, there’s nothing about me. Nothing. Right?”

The interrogator uncapped a black pen, lifted a corner of the top sheet of paper, made a note on the sheet below, lowered the corner, and recapped the pen. “When you say you avoid risky people, that of course means you have some knowledge of them. Correct? In order to determine that there is some risk about them and decide to avoid them, you must have some proximity to them. You must come into contact with them, even. Encounter them.”

“I wouldn’t—wouldn’t say contact,” Samuel stammered. “I just decide, right away, whether I should be around someone. If there’s anything that bothers me, I just stay away.”

“Rather than reporting the thing that bothers you, you remain silent and avoid the perpetrator.”

“Okay. I’m not making myself clear. There are no perpetrators. It’s just me, getting a feeling sometimes, that I should just keep myself to myself, okay?”

Again there was the faint flash of smile. “You must not get to know many people, I would guess, if you’re generally so suspicious.” The interrogator leaned slightly over the table. “Unless, of course, you believe you are a sensitive. Do you? Do you consider yourself able to discern the thoughts of people without their knowledge?”

“What?” Samuel started to rise, but he dropped back into the chair. He glanced around the room. The two doors remained closed. “No, I don’t believe anything like that! It’s just, I’m careful. I’m a cautious person, is all.”

“Cautious,” the interrogator said.

“It’s like I said: I do everything right! Like my hair, look at it. I just got it cut, yesterday, right on the two-week mark, just like the covenant says. I do everything.”

The interrogator shook his head a fraction and went through the process of making another note. Then he asked, “What can you tell me about the Wandering Men?”

Samuel twisted, looking at the empty space between his chair and the wall, and turned back to the interrogator. He looked to the right of the man’s gray, still head.

“About who?” he asked.

The interrogator fixed his eyes on Samuel’s. “Mr. Tower, everybody has heard of the Wandering Men, I’d wager, even if they’ve had no direct knowledge of them.”

“That’s it!” Samuel barked. “That’s just it! I’ve heard the things, you know, that everybody’s heard, but I’ve never met one or anything. I don’t really even know what a Wandering Man is. How could I?”

“Mm.” The interrogator searched through the half-ring of red folders and pulled one to himself. He opened it and studied the single sheet of yellow paper within. “What about your friend, Mr. Glynn?”

“Mr. Glynn?”

“Norman Glynn.”

“What, Norman—you’re saying he has something to do with this?”

“Has Norman Glynn ever spoken to you about the doings of the Wandering Men?”

Samuel touched his chin and looked at the ceiling. “Nothing specific, no,” he finally said. “I mean, they’re a kind of myth, right? So if he ever said anything about them, why, it would be the same as if he said it was just about time for the souls to rise on All Saints’ Day or for the brownies to clean the kitchen. For the mountain to sink into the valley. Something like that. It would just be a saying, right, not anything real?”

The interrogator closed the folder. “What about this shape-shifting business?” he asked. “All the stories about turning into animals and gathering at midnight? Battling witches so that the community may thrive? All that?”

“What about it?”

“Well, what do you think? Do you believe any of it?”

“Of course not! Of course I don’t believe it! People who believe that—well, they must be experiencing some sort of delusion, or a hallucination, or a dream. They’ve lost track of something. The real world. They need help.”

“Help.” The interrogator watched Samuel, and then he gathered the folders and papers back into one stack. He interlaced his fingers and placed his hands on top of the stack. He stared at them. Seconds passed. Samuel forced himself to breathe evenly, to remain rooted, slack in his chair.

“And what about the healing?” the interrogator asked.

“Healing?” Samuel coughed.

“Yes. Healing. Do you believe the Wandering Men can cure the sick, the infirm, the confounded?”

“No—well, no. I’ve never thought about it, I guess, because—”

“Do you believe they can cast evil spirits from the possessed?”

“No, like I said. I haven’t thought about whether they can do that, about what they can do at all, because I don’t think about them in the first place, because I don’t believe in the Wandering Men, except as a kind of fairy tale, a modern fairy tale, if that, even.”

“So you’re saying, you’ve never approached the Wandering Men, you’ve never sought their aid in remedying any sort of illness, such as an emotional one, perhaps? You’ve never asked them to make you forget anything?”

“No, certainly I haven’t, since they’re not real!” He laughed, twice. “Of course,” he giggled, “if I had asked them to make me forget something, how would I remember it? Right?”

“Right.” The interrogator rose, gathered his materials, and walked around the table. “All right, Mr. Tower, you’re free to go—though, of course, we would like you to make yourself available if we need to confirm any other matters with you.”

“Sure,” Samuel said, rising. “Of course. Do I just follow you out, the way I came in?”

“No, you go out that door.” The interrogator pointed. “There will be a few final points of processing, paperwork and so on. But, otherwise, you’re done.”

“Okay. Okay.”

The interrogator went into the hallway. He used his hip to close the heavy wooden door. It thudded into the jamb and the lock clicked sharply, like something breaking in place.

Avoiding the table, Samuel shuffled to the other door, a gray, metal plate, slightly paler than the bricks surrounding it. He hesitated, but then he hauled the door open and stepped through.

He stood in a long, dim hallway. The door clanked shut behind him. At the other end of the hallway was another gray door. The walls of the hallway were smooth, unbroken by any other openings. Samuel turned and tried to twist the knob of the door that had just closed behind him, but it wouldn’t move. He took a few steps down the hallway, but then he stopped. He stood, frozen, looking back and forth, between the two closed doors.

Kenneth Gulotta writes fiction and poetry. A technical writer by trade, he spends his days solving puzzles that involve communication, design, and coding. He was born and raised in south Louisiana, but he has also lived in Austin TX, Washington DC, and Baltimore MD. He now lives in New Orleans with his wife and stepson. He has an M.A. in creative writing from the University of Texas at Austin and a Ph.D. in English from Tulane University. He can be found at www.kennethgulotta.com.