Giles Jernigan responds fairly normally to these questions! It's been so hot lately, you could fry an egg on the sidewalk. He's been teaching his son to read. Reading is fundamental, and all that. Opens a lot of doors. Got to make sure the boy can learn whatever he wants. Anyway. Didn't manage to make it to the game but he heard Anderson played some great baseball.

"He sure did. So, what brings you here today?"

"The Chief figures I oughta get my head looked at after what happened on the fifth. Did you hear about that at all?"

"I heard bits and pieces, but I'd like you to explain it to me in your own words."

"Well, there was this cult--it's always fucking cults--pardon my language, doc."

Dismissive hand-wave. "I've heard it all before."

"Right, so there was this fucking cult, and I don't care what people do in their own basements, but they were putting together a ritual. One of the bad ones, a real city-buster. I've read the witness accounts from Detroit, I know there's no room for error when it comes to rituals. And we damn near made an error. Looked in three wrong warehouses before we found the right one, and when we got there they were almost finished.

There was a sort of hole, or maybe I'd call it a rip, in the air in the middle of the room, and something was coming through. And I could tell it was only part of something bigger. Not just physically bigger. Definitely that, but also--we were like ants to it."

Vane nods seriously. "I'm glad whatever that was didn't get to do anything around here. How did you feel, when you saw it?"

"Like it was inevitably going to get through. Like that was the only thing that could happen. Like that was the natural thing to happen. Even though it was the most unnatural goddamn thing I've seen in my life. You know the cultists don't think of what they do as summoning? They're not making the things come here, just sort of, ants lining up in an interesting pattern on the floor and getting noticed."

"Where did you learn that?"

"I haven't been reading their books. I know it's against department policy. Even if having the first clue about their goals or their tactics would be a big help sometimes. But you hear things, when you're following leads. Between you and me, doc, sometimes I think the brass have forgotten what it's like to be a regular cop. Just you and your wits against all the city's bastards."

Doctor Vane makes a note in illegible shorthand. "I appreciate hearing that perspective. Can you tell me what happened next, after you saw the entity?"

"Davies shot the guy in the middle of the diagram, and I shot the guy with the book, and the rift closed up. It wasn't hard to arrest the rest of them, after that. They just stood around looking disappointed that we'd saved their fool asses while we cuffed 'em."

"When you say you shot one of the cultists, do you know if they survived?"

"No, I killed him."

"And how do you feel about that?"

"I'm not fucked up about it, if that's what you mean. It's part of the job. You've got to be careful with cultists. Some of them can do things that shouldn't be possible. I read about a guy in Milwaukee who made someone's head fall right off just by looking at him. Besides, the damned idiots were trying to get themselves killed anyway. So I see the guy's face in my dreams, so what, the city's still here and it's here because I was fast enough on the trigger."

Notetaking notetaking. "Say more about your dreams?"

"What, we're doing dream interpretation now? I thought that went the way of phrenology."

"Dreams are how the brain processes things into long-term memory. Talking about them can help me understand what you took away from the experience."

"Alright, alright. I've dreamed about it a few times since it happened. Four, maybe five times? I don't remember all my dreams."

Doctor Vane just smiles and nods and leaves a silence for Officer Jernigan to fill.

"It's all normal dream stuff. The rip in space, but it's in my old high school or the lake I go to to fish or whatever. The guy I shot not going down. The entity coming out of the rip while I stand there and Davies' head falls off and I can't find my gun. One time I was one of the cultists, trying to explain myself to my wife and Jack."

"Can you tell me what emotions you feel in these dreams?"

"Fear, I guess. I always wake up before the thing gets through the rift. They're not just straight nightmares, though. Sometimes I almost want to see what it would look like, if all of it came through. But it's just a dream, and nothing my imagination could come up with would be anything like the real thing, so it doesn't matter."

"So that's what happens in your dreams. What about when you're awake? Do the memories bother you at unexpected moments?"

"Not really."

"Have you been back to the warehouse since, or interacted with any of the arrestees?"

"The forensics boys went over the place, but I wasn't there for that. I questioned some of the cultists. Tried to get them to rat on each other, which they did, and find out if they knew of any other dens of nutters, which they didn't."

"Was that stressful?"

"Nah."

"Have you continued working with Davies since the incident?"

"Of course. He's a good guy and a good cop."

"Has that been uncomfortable for you at all? Not because of anything about him, necessarily, but from being reminded of the incident?"

"Nah."

Notetaking notetaking consultation of a different page. 

"I'd like to talk about something different, for a moment. Why do you think the cultists cared about the entity so much?"

"Like I said, it's big. Important. Real. No matter what we do or say, it's our there and it's going to keep being out there. It matters. I'm not explaining this right. I tried to write a song about it but I can't write songs. I can understand wanting to get a good look at it. What I can't understand is why they wanted it to eat them."

"I take it you don't want it to eat you, then. That's good."

"Of course I don't want it to eat me! Unlike them, I'm not an idiot. And I've got a family to provide for. Alright, it'd be a more interesting way to go than getting knifed by some subhuman methhead behind a dumpster, but I'd much rather die in my bed at a hundred and seven."

Sympathetic nodding. 

"Have you written anything down about your experience? Keeping a journal, that sort of thing?"

"Not a journal, no, but I've been writing a sort of manual. For newer officers, you know. What cultists do, how they think, how to hunt them down. I think it'll help. I've been on the force for ten years, you know, and I've learned a lot. I know more about cultists than just about any other cop in this town."

"That sounds like a very useful document. I'd love to see it."

"Sure. I've got it on my phone, I'll send it to you. . . . Hang on, it's over the attachment limit . . . there, I sent you a link."

"Thank you. I'll take a look at it after we're done here. Is there anything else you'd like to talk about?"

"Nah. So tell me, doctor: do I seem crazy to you?"

"I don't think you're crazy. I think you had a very unusual, very stressful experience, and you're working hard to deal with it in the ways that make sense to you. It's too soon to say what role this experience will play in the story of your life, but I believe it's always possible to learn and grow from what happens to us in the long run.

That said, I'm going to recommend you be given three weeks of paid medical leave, and I want you to spend them doing things that give you a sense of peace and normality. Spend time with your family. Go to a baseball game. Go fishing. Anything that gets you outside in the sunshine enjoying yourself. And absolutely no work, including on that manual."