Wyland asked Jonathan to wait a few minutes and then come into his office. He seemed more than happy to comfort his mom out in the waiting room. He also seemed suspicious that Wyland would put him through the ringer, probably rightly so, based on what Sofia looked like when she came out.
Wyland went through his notes again as they waited. Recorded statements from 15 witnesses to the curse, and none of them matched. Sofia's recitation of the curse matched exactly what she had said earlier in her written testimony. The police report matched her story of the altercation. But the boy wasn't part of any of the written testimony. His name was mentioned as having been there, but not as an eyewitness. Wyland hadn't considered talking to him before today.
He shuffled his papers, and went through each witnesses' statement of the curse:
"By the fires of Hades, I condemn your soul to hell fire. May you never feel the warmth of Christ's love." This was the curse, as heard from an obviously devout christian.
"From the cold void, may you never find peace. May your legacy rot to dust, and may those you love forget your name." An atheist, perhaps?
"I hope you rot in prison like the filth you are. I wish all the evils that men do, they do upon you, for all the remaining days of your miserable, little life." A pragmatic curse, but also one of the coldest and meanest versions of the curse, in Wyland's opinion.
One was in Spanish. Heard, as it were, by a Mexican expatriate named Miguel and translated thus: "All of your family will dis-own you. Your ancestors will not know you, and you will live in no home, not in this life, or afterwards." Wyland suspected the translation left holes in the true meaning. Oddly, however, he insisted that he heard the curse in his native tongue.
One just read: "Fuck you. Fuck you in the ass with a cactus." This from a teenaged boy, obviously with little existential dread. To a kid like that, what could be worse than getting fucked in the ass with a cactus?
And so on they went, each seeming to be a reflection of the fears of the listener, rather than the actual curse, as described from the sparse information of the London affair and the ridiculously obscure medieval texts he'd found. Wyland's hope was fading, he began to fear that maybe this was just a random unfortunate coincidence. Or at the very least, it could not be shown in court to have been the cause of Dick's gruesome demise. But Jonathan might still be the key here. Wyland tapped on the glass and waved Jonathan into his office.
Jonathan entered with trepidation, unsure, it seemed, of why he was even there. Wyland attempted a comforting smile and softly told Jonathan, "come in and have a seat." Jonathan looked at him as though a snake had just smiled and talked to him.
Wyland continued "I don't need as complete a testimonial from you as from your mother. It was... a difficult thing for her to recite again. However, you haven't been interviewed for this, have you?"
"No. I wasn't in the room."
"But you did hear it, and your mother says you were out of sorts for the next few days. Presumably, as a result of this."
Jonathan's gaze tightened, his young face showing where the lines of pain and age would slowly appear. "I'm fine. It was nothing."
Wyland again attempted a comforting smile, though again it seemed to have no effect on the boy. "Where were you then?"
"At the party? I was outside, playing with... a girl. We were having a water fight. Um, balloons and a squirt gun. It was a hot day."
"A girl? Who? Blaise's daughter was the only girl around your age there, yes?" As Wyland said this, he felt a little like a proud father, prodding his son about girls.
"Yes." Jonathan said sheepishly, as though he were Wyland's son and didn't want him to know what girls he was hanging out with.
"Have you seen her since?"
"No." His eyes left Wyland's gaze, and Wyland could tell he was lying. Wyland cracked a light smile, and shrugged it off. "It's not important. What's important is, I need to know what you heard Blaise say."
"I heard Blaise yelling, but didn't think anything about it. It was a party, and Blaise is a noisy guy. But then, I heard gunshots and screaming coming from the house. I ran inside, and then it got cold, like opening the freezer on a hot day, a blast of bitter cold air. Like..." He stared at the wall for a moment... "Like Minnesota winter cold. The coldest thing I've ever felt. There's not even any air conditioning in that house. I was in the landing, the, uh, like, mud room, and I got scared and froze up."
Wyland's left eyebrow pitched up when he heard that. "A deep, biting sensation of cold" was a description he had heard before. As soon as he felt the look of surprise on his own face, he tried to regain his stern but friendly lawyer face. "And then?"
"And then I heard Blaise say something. It was strange, like someone growling through a rag. It was a scary sound. Like a wild animal or something."
Wyland stopped him by putting up his hand, palm facing the table, to emphasize his words. "It's very important that you tell me exactly what you heard next. Exactly."
Jonathan just looked at him blankly. "I... I don't know. It was mostly in a foreign language."
The hair on the back of Wyland's neck stood up, and a chill ran down his spine.
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