“Has he lawyered up yet?” Detective Mason Elliot asked as he looked over Chris Howe’s jacket. The young man had been in trouble before, usually the kind that would land someone in detox and have them released by morning. There were a couple of possession dings, one or two drunk and disorderlies, but nothing that ever even went to trial. So, when Detective Elliot saw the pictures of the three dead men, he gagged. Three men with bodies broken and mangled, deep gouges out of faces and stomachs, and so much blood that he recoiled and dropped the file folder. He never would have attached something like that to a kid like Chris.

“No, not yet.” Captain Josie Ford stood at the other side of the room, away from the two-way glass. Her arms were folded at her chest, and she never looked away from the young man on the other side of the glass “He hasn’t said anything since we got him in here.”

Detective Elliot picked up the file folder and its contents from the floor. “Are we sure we got the right guy? I mean, nothing in this kid’s history even remotely points to this.”

Ford shook her head. “You’re right. Hell, he was the one who called 9-1-1.” She turned to him and uncrossed her arms. “But the bodies were found near his vehicle, and he’s got the victims’ blood on his shirt and arms.” Ford turned her head back to Chris. “Whatever happened to those guys, he was there. He knows something. We tried to get him to make a statement but...” She sighed. "You're good at getting people to talk to you. Maybe you can get him to open up and say... something."

Elliot walked into the room and appraised Chris. The kid was junkie-skinny, with shoulders barely broad enough to hang his blood-soaked t-shirt on. The shiner on his eye and the bloody nose were the only signs of life in his otherwise sallow face. Black wasn’t supposed to crack, but Chris looked like he lived each of his 27 years at least three times.

“Chris Howe? I’m Mason Elliot.” He waited a moment after the introduction to see if Chris would move, but the kid remained focused on his hands, cuffed and chained to the desk. Mason took his seat at the other side of the table and opened the file. “I hear you’ve had a rough night.”

He placed three pictures from the crime scene, one by one, in front of Chris: left, center, right. He sat back and closed the file. Chris glanced up and moved his eyes left to right, lingering on each picture a moment. As he got to the third one, he flexed his wrists in his cuffs and shut his eyes.

Elliot set the file to his left side. He sat back in his seat and crossed his legs. “Can you tell me what happened tonight?”

Chris sniffled and coughed and fidgeted in his seat. He opened his mouth and took a breath. He opened his eyes and looked up at Elliot for a moment, then back down at his hands. “You’ll think I’m crazy,” he said softly.

Elliot uncrossed his legs and leaned forward, resting his arm on the table. “I’ve heard a lot of crazy things in this line of work. Try me.”

Chris turned his attention back to the pictures and wrung his hands. He took deep breaths through the mouth and closed his eyes.

Elliot nodded and grabbed the jacket. “Okay, Chris,” he said, relaxed and reassuring as he opened the file. “Here’s what we know. Surveillance cameras saw you enter the parking lot on 17th and 7th at 2:25 on Sunday morning. You were followed by these three men.” He placed mugshots of how these men used to look, matching them to pictures of their eviscerated corpses. “Jabar Small. Jason Lancaster. Antonio Ramirez. All known members of the street gang TBC, or the Triple Beam Collective. Witnesses can place you at a bar three blocks away with these men, an hour or two before. They say you had an altercation?”

“I was selling cocaine,” Chris said with a waver in his voice. “I was slinging hundred-dollar bumps at the club. Those guys tried to roll me for my stash.”

“What happened next?”

Chris drummed his middle finger on the table, and when he paused for a moment, his hand shook. He took quick and shallow breaths through pursed lips and looked up at the detective. “They followed me to my car,” he said shakily. “They asked me if I thought this was a game, and they pulled guns on me.” Chris shook his head and sniffled. “I told them to take it. I was high, and they had guns on me, man. I didn’t want no trouble. One of them cracked me across the jaw with the gun and knocked me down. I looked up and…” Chris took a few breaths through his mouth and shut his eyes. “Billy was there.”

Elliot glanced to his left, at the two-way mirror, then turned back to Chris. “There were no reports of anyone else on the scene. Who’s Billy?”

“Yeah, he’s good like that. You can’t see Billy unless he wants to be seen.” He looked up at Elliot with wide, bloodshot eyes. “Billy’s someone I used to know when I was a kid.” Deep sigh. “He’s bad news, man.”

“How do you mean? Can you describe him?”

Chris hissed through his teeth. “About my height, maybe six feet. Big, like 300 pounds. Black eyes, yellow skin. Hairy, sharp teeth, three-inch claws on his fingers.”

Elliot shifted in his seat. “I don’t follow. You mean he’s got weapons?”

“No, he’s got claws. On his hands.” Chris met Elliot's eyes. “I know what it sounds like. Believe me, I do.”

“You’re describing an overweight gardener with a liver problem,” Elliot said with a chuckle. He met Chris’s eyes, and the kid stared at him blankly. Elliot cleared his throat and shook his head. “Let’s start over, Chris. Who is this ‘Billy?’ Does he have a last name? How do you know him?”

Chris rested his elbows on the table, and his head on his hands. “I was five. Six, maybe. I heard something scratching around in my bedroom. Under my bed. In the walls. I told my parents about it, and they checked around my room and told me everything was fine. It went on for a few nights, the scratching, but my parents never found anything.” Chris took a deep breath in, and when he let that breath go, he seemed smaller. “Three nights of this, and I decided to see for myself. I saw this… thing, about the size of a cat, right there under my bed. He said to me, ‘Don’t be scared. Can you help me? I’m lost. My name is Bil’yauth.’ He seemed freaked out, like he needed a friend, and I was too scared to tell him no.

“So, I ask if I can call him Billy.”

Elliot held a hand up in the air. “Wait, wait.” He leaned forward and raised an eyebrow. “You’re messing with me, right? Billy is the monster under your bed?”

“I know what it sounds like.”

“I don’t think you do.” Elliot got up from the table, shaking his head. “It sounds like you’re wasting my time,” he said as he walked out the door.

Ford was still in the observation room, sitting at the desk with a bottle of water in hand. She sipped it and stared at Chris through the glass. “What do you make of him?”

Elliot ran a hand over his head. “My first impression, the boy is nuts. But I don’t think he’s necessarily a killer, not those guys and not that way. I mean, look at him, he’s a buck-sixty after a big meal and a shower. I think he’s on the level when he says he watched these guys die.” He scratched his head and sighed. “We have no idea what drugs he’s on, though. He’s either hallucinating now or was hallucinating then. He's strung out on something, though.”

Ford shook her head. “I don’t know. It might be worth listening to. It’s not like we have anything else.”

Elliot groaned. “You’re gonna make me go back in there, aren’t you?”

Ford glanced over her shoulder and offered a smug grin. “Bring him some water, too.”

***

Bottled water in hand, Elliot walked over to Chris’s seat. He set the water on the table, unscrewed the cap, and slid a straw in. Chris cradled the bottle in his bound hands. He drank until he slurped air through the straw and set the empty bottle down with a satisfied sigh.

“You were saying?” Elliot said. “About Billy?”

“You think I’m crazy.”

“Yeah, I do. But what happened to those guys was crazy. So, if there’s anything in your story that might lead to some answers…” Elliot let out a defeated sigh. “God help me, I’m all ears.”

Chris nodded. “If it makes you feel any better, I think I’m crazy, too.”

Elliot closed his eyes to hide them rolling. “It doesn’t. But keep talking.”

“Yeah.” Chris took a deep breath. “I tried to tell my parents about Billy at first, but I was six. They didn’t believe me. I told them about this thing that had moved into my room, with yellow skin and blue fur, and these fucking claws. My dad came to check a couple of nights, but Billy blended into the shadows, like a ghost.” A think smile crinkled the corners of his mouth. “I let Billy live under my bed for a couple of years. It was fun at first, you know, like having a pet that talked back. We became friends, and friends look out for each other. I didn’t have a lot of friends, so it didn’t seem like a problem.”

“But it became a problem?”

Chris nodded. “So, I was nine years old, fourth grade. I got jumped by a couple of kids after school. Four of them. They kicked me in the head, broke my arm, and stole my video game. I had my arm in a cast and was at home for two weeks. I was too scared to go to school. Billy didn’t like that, not at all. He was protective and got twitchy when I’d get afraid of thunderstorms or scary movies. Like he’d growl, stand guard outside my window and shit. This sent him into overdrive.

“The day my cast came off, I got home from the doctor, and my video game was on my bed, right next to my pillow. I thought my parents got me a new one. I thanked my mom and told her I’d be more careful with it. She looked at me like I called her the wrong name. The next week, I’m back at school, and the things I heard…” Chris closed his eyes and shook his head. A sob emerged from his chest, and a tear carved a path through the dried blood on his face.

“What happened, Chris? What did you hear?”

“One of the kids who beat me lost an arm. They said it was a car accident. He never came back to school. Another kid had an eye gouged out, never came back either. The other two…” Chris paused; the words caught in his throat. He gagged, and Elliot thought the kid would puke.

“The other two?”

“The Parelli twins. Dropped from a two-story window. They didn’t come back for almost three months. Their parents get locked up for gross negligence. I didn’t think anything about any of it. You know, schoolyard legends. This kid heard from that kid’s mother that they babysitter said something stupid about what happened. But when the Parelli boys did come back, they’re scared of me. Fucking terrified. They stay well clear of me. One of them starts spreading the word I got the devil working for me.

“I get home after I hear them say that, and I ask Billy if he had anything to do with the car accident, the window, any of it. He gets really quiet and says, ‘I got your back, Chris.’ He went and…” Chris took a deep breath, and a tear escaped his eye. “I mean, they were just kids.”

Elliot felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. This story had to be made up. It made no sense. But he watched Chris’s face as he talked through the memory. The pain, the fear, was real. The kid believed it and sold every word.

Chris put his palms flat against the table and pulled the photos closer. “Billy was my friend,” he said, as he looked them over. “I was scared for him, I thought they would put him in jail, or worse. I don’t know, I was just a kid.” Chris flipped the photos over and put them face-down on the table. “So, I tell him that he’s gotta go, he’s gotta run. As he hops out my window, he stops and looks back at me. ‘I’m always gonna look out for you, Chris. You’re my best friend.’” Chris took a deep sigh. “You know, this is the first time I’ve told that story without getting shot up with anti-psychotics. The therapists told me I was paranoid-schizophrenic.” He chuckled. “I stopped believing it, myself.”

Elliot shifted uneasily in his seat and let out a breath. “Chris, I need you to focus. The parking lot. What happened at the parking lot?”

“Right.” Chris cleared his throat. “I left the bar like you said. I know I might have been intoxicated, but I live close, I was okay to drive. Those guys rolled up on me, trying to rob me. I get hit with the gun, and…” Chris closed his eyes and took a few short, shallow breaths. “As soon as that dude clicks the safety off, I see these claws go through his chest from behind, and he’s lifted off the ground. It’s Billy. He drops that guy and jumps on the next guy’s back and bites his throat. The third guy tries to shoot him, but Billy stands up and rushes the guy, turns his head completely around. I haven’t seen Billy in 20 years, almost. He grew up, man, he got bigger.

“He looks at me, growling, and I ask him what the fuck he’s doing there. He said to me, ‘I told you, I would always look out for you.’ Then he told me I needed to leave, so I booked it out of there. I called the cops from the ground floor of the parking lot, and by the time I got home, they were there to arrest me. I’m betting he was long gone by the time you got to my car.”

Elliot appraised the kid again. The broken nose, the bloodstained shirt, the bruises. He took a deep breath and said, “I believe.”

Chris exhaled a deep sigh and leaned forward onto the table. His posture elevated and straightened as if a giant rock just rolled off his back. “Thank you, Detective,” he said as he sat up. Tears streamed out of his un-swollen eye, and a wide grin seemed to take years off his face.

“I believe that you’re sick,” Elliot continued. “I believe that something happened tonight. But I also believe that your doctors are right.”

Chris’s head cocked to the side. “What do you mean?” His smile faded as quickly as it arrived. “Wait, you don’t think that I…”

“I believe that you were in trouble, and your brain made you see things to help you deal with how you got out of there. I believe that you defended yourself as best as you could.”

Chris shook his head and looked down at the table. “Sweet Jesus,” he said under his breath.

“Have you gotten off your meds, Chris? Or is whatever you were high on maybe interacting with it somehow?”

“You’re an idiot, detective.” Chris cradled his head in his hands as best as he could. “ Haven't you been listening to me? I told you, Billy looks out for me. I hadn’t seen him in 20 years, and he found me in a random parking lot tonight. He’s probably been looking out for me my entire life. You gotta believe me. Billy’s still out there, and he’s coming for me. I think he knows I’m in trouble.”

“That will help your insanity plea,” Elliot said. “But do you really think a jury is going to buy this 'my monster did it' nonsense? You going away for a long time if this goes to trial.”

A loud thump hit the wall on the outside of the interrogation room and both men jumped in their seats. Elliot heard gunfire in short pops. The intercom came on, staticky and garbled. “…Elliot, we… under attack… what… that thing…?”

Detective Elliot got to his feet and opened the door.

The figure in the darkness held Captain Ford in the air by one hand. Elliot watched as it ran her through with its other. He stared for a moment, frozen in place, as Captain Ford slid off the creature’s claws. And as he finally drew his weapon and leveled it at the thing he saw, it turned its head locked eyes with him, black eyes that reflected the light from the two-way mirror.

Elliot fired two rounds as he backed up into the interrogation room. The bullets did not slow the thing’s advance.

“I told you,” Chris said ruefully as the thing let out a growl. “He’s always looking out for me.”