Chela continued to stare at the man from below, making no attempt to get him down.
Alfred made his way across the wide, open room, passing corpse after corpse to stand beside Chela who made no attempt to recognize his presence, though he suspected was fully aware of who had approached her. “I figured we wouldn’t see you again,” he said.
“I was looking for our Kelpie.”
“Any luck?”
Chela gestured to the man still struggling on the ceiling. Alfred began, “You’re telling me he climbed up there and strapped…”
“Would it be the strangest thing to happen today?”
“Kelpie? Who’s Kelpie?” the man asked as he continued his attempt to break free. He paused briefly then screamed in exasperation and flailed as much as his seat would allow, causing the chair to rattle alarmingly loose.
“If you’re not Kelpie, then who are you?” Chela asked.
The man was still again, seething but silent.
“It’s him,” Chela said, starting forward.
Alfred put his hand out, purposely not touching her but blocking her direction. “Hold on,” he said.
Chela redirected her attention in an instant, staring Alfred down like she was trying to make eye contact with a misbehaving dog. “Do that again and your notebook won’t be the only thing you’ve lost.” She brushed past, grabbed a floor-level corpse and wrenched it to the ground.
“What are you doing?” asked the man in the air.
Chela repeated the process of ripping the dead from their repose twice more so that she had three empty seats, leaving the bodies piled in the space between rows behind her. She began stacking the chairs. “I’m getting you down,” she said. “It’ll be easier to question you that way.”
“Weren’t we already questioning him?” Alfred asked, half to himself.