My fingers tapped out a nervous beat against the top of the cheap plastic table. The matching chair had long since made my backside numb, and I wondered just how long they'd left me sitting there in that interrogation room. It had been long enough that I'd actually emptied the Styrofoam cup of bitter black coffee I'd been allowed, despite its almost soupy appearance and acrid taste. That had been a mistake thought, not only had it left an unpleasant after taste in my mouth, and a fur on my tongue, I now really needed to use the toilet. I'd also started to get the impression that they'd forgotten about me.

It had felt a surprisingly long and unpleasant trip from the prison to the nearest police station, cooped up in the back of a police car. I had seen the sceptical looks on the police officers faces as the man accused me of bringing the monster into their midst. To best honest I'm not sure they believed the monster story at all – who would? - but the few accounts from the surviving witnesses all told the same story, so they had little more to go on.

The man's accusation had left me the sudden key witness, slash potential suspect, to question. So, once the paramedics were satisfied I wasn't hurt, and that the blood I was covered in wasn't my own, I'd been carted off to the station for questioning. I wasn't under arrest, they'd made that clear at least, but I'd been dumped into that interrogation room shortly after arriving and hadn't seen another soul since. It felt like I'd been sat there for days with nothing but my own thoughts for company – the way my mind was working in that moment, this was far from a good thing – in reality it had probably been near an hour, or a little more. I'd have checked the time if I hadn't lost my watch.

The dull ache in my bladder at least gave me something to occupy my mind instead of letting it run away with itself, though if I was sat there for too much longer this wouldn't continue to be such a good thing. If I wasn't under arrest, that mean I was free to leave should I choose to, right? It was obvious that they were in no real hurry to talk to me, if I just slipped away how long would it be before anyone noticed? They'd have a hell of a time finding me with only my name to go one, after all, it wasn't even my real name. Downside, I figured there was unlikely to be anywhere in that place that I could just slip away without someone seeing me, and if I ran for it they'd all know I had something to hide. Maybe I could at least just go and find the toilets.

I'd barely even stood up when the door opened and in strolled an unfamiliar looking officer. He carried a file of papers in his arms with a plastic bag stacked on top, which he slapped down on the table as he slumped into the seat opposite mine.

“Sorry to have kept you waiting Miss...Smith?” He phrased it as a question even though I knew he had my name written down on that first sheet of paper in front of him. I really should have thought up a more convincing alias – there might have been millions of people with the surname Smith, but it was also always the go to for someone when they gave a fake name. He also didn't sound the least bit apologetic, despite his words.

“That's okay,” I replied without much sincerity in my own voice, “though if this is going to take very long I'm going to have to visit the ladies room.” I managed to hold my tongue on a lot of what I really wanted to say, after all I was still supposed to be playing the innocent traumatised survivor in all of this, so I hoped my words would come across as anxious rather than as the petulant frustration it really was.

“No, it shouldn't take too long But I can have you escorted to the ladies before we begin if you wish?”

His voice sounded somewhat familiar as he spoke, perhaps he had been the same officer I had encountered at the crime scene; it was hard to tell when not dressed in his riot gear, but it made sense that it would be.

“Escorted? What...why do I need an escort? Have I been arrested without knowing it or something, because y'know no one's read me my rights or anything.” My words were panicked, I couldn't help it but I wasn't so sure whether it was a good thing or not. Was it in keeping with my survivor façade, or did it indicate that I had something to hide?

“No. No you're not under arrest. But this incident at the prison is....troubling, to put it lightly. Our accounts from the other witnesses are few and far between, yet all of them indicate that you seem to hold some key information about what happened. It would be unfortunate if you were to disappear on us. Having you escorted is really in all of our best interests.”

I nodded, but sat back down. I wasn't that desperate, besides the quicker we got this interview over the quicker I could get out of there and figure out what the hell to do with my life. Actually, maybe being stuck in there would be the better choice, if it didn't leave me a complete sitting duck for the demons it might actually be preferable.

“Lets do this first then, it's more important anyway.” I folded my hands on top of the table and tried to calm my facial features, though I'm fairly sure my nervousness shone through. They couldn't pin all those deaths on me, I knew that, but I did know something more than the others did, and they seemed to know it too. Besides, if they started asking more questions about me, my background, started digging into my personal details then I would be in trouble. My life left no paper trail, no records, I essentially didn't exist. For my job – when I still had one – this worked out perfectly, but in the eyes of the human law it was a problem.

“Fair enough.” He shrugged and flipped over the first page of his folder and uncapped a pen that had been tucked into the binding. “We'll start from the beginning then. What was your purpose for being at the prison today?”

So much for this not taking very long.

“I was there to visit a friend.”

“His name was?” He held his pen poised over the sheet of paper to write down my answer, even though I was fairly sure he would already have that answer from the records on the prison's computer. I also noted his use of the past tense in his questioning, had that been intentional? Were all of the prisoners that had been in that room dead?

It would be hard to tell from the state of the bodies that the demon had mangled exactly who was who; extensive DNA testing would be required to tell them all apart, but records would show which prisoners had gone to visitation at that time, and which, if any were not there to return to their cells. Jesse, I knew, wouldn't end up on either of those lists. He had survived, but he was nowhere to be found and that would be hard to explain. Thankfully it would take some time before the DNA evidence ruled that he was not among the dead, yet another reason to get as far away from that place as possible.

“Jesse. Jesse Hudson, that was his name.” I tagged onto the past tense as well, it was probably best if we both held onto the assumption that he was dead, keep up pretences. Besides, for all I knew he very well might be.

“Ah yes, I remember him. Held on remand after confessing to two counts of murder. Not that they've turned up much evidence on his case, in support or in defence of his confession, not a single body to be spoken of. Although, I suppose that doesn't really matter so much now.”

His flippancy bothered me. Was he trying to provoke a reaction out of me, or was he genuinely completely cold and unfeeling?

“Is there any need to be quite so heartless?” I couldn't help the words that fell from my lips. Jesse might not have died in the carnage, but I had most certainly lost him. Despite everything I was supposed to not feel for these humans I found myself involved with, I had started to consider Jesse as a friend, losing him like that hurt, a feeling I was not entirely comfortable with.

“I'm sorry, I didn't realise you cared so much.”

Definitely pigheaded and cruel. I couldn't understand why he was baiting me, not in this way. Perhaps he had just concluded that Jesse was guilty the moment that he had confessed and had signed him off as a murderer, unworthy of anyone's affection. It was an unfortunate attitude to have in his position; at least he wasn't a solicitor.

“He was my friend, of course I cared.”

“Even after everything he'd done? His confession was fairly harrowing, or did you not believe he was telling the truth?”

“Yes, even then. Look, I don't even really know what his so-called confession was all about, that's why I came to see him, to talk and find out what was going on. But I never managed to get the chance, and now...they're all dead, aren't they?”

“Yes, it certainly appears that way. The few of you who got out of there had all been visiting someone.” He's managed to make his tone somewhat more sombre, though I still wasn't sure I believed its sincerity.

“Shit,” I cursed softly with a shake of my head. “What the hell was that thing?”

“That was exactly what I was going to ask you.” He replied, a strange smile curving his lips that made me even more nervous.

“Me? But how would I know what it was? The whole situation was insane. I'm still praying it was some awful nightmare I'm about to wake up from.”

“No, it certainly was very real. As crazy as all of these witness statements make the whole thing sound, given the state of the place I can hardly deny what they've said. So why don't you tell me, Heather, help me out, what really happened in there?”

He put a strange emphasis on my name as he said it, as if testing it out, seeing how well it worked like he didn't quite believe it was really mine. And there was something in the way he stared me down, the glint in his eyes, the curve of a smile even in such a serious, devastating situation. Something about him was just...off.

“I-I don't know.” I ran my fingers through my fading brown hair in dismay, trying frantically to pick out a story from my raging thoughts that might actually sound plausible. “It was all so crazy. We got into the visiting room, sat down, Jesse came in. We started to talk and then...I don't know it's all such a blur. That thing was just suddenly there, I don't even know where it came from but there was blood everywhere, and people screaming. It killed so many, and seemed to enjoy what it was doing. I just had to try and get out of there.”

“That would be where these came in, I presume.” He slid the plastic bag he's carried in with him across the table towards me. It contained the large bundle of keys I had handed over. I'd figured turning them it would be for the best, how else could I explain how I'd gotten out of that room? They looked dirty and brown in coloured, covered in congealed and dried blood, how slick they had been in my hands when I'd struggled with the locks it was a wonder I'd managed to open the doors at all.

“Yes. It had killed one of the guards close to where I'd been sitting. So I waited until the thing turned its back and I took the guys keys.” I made a face, something between a cringe and a grimace. “It was the most vile thing I've ever done. I robbed a corpse. And all the blood, it was everywhere, all over me. But I knew my best chance of getting out of that room alive was if I found those keys and could unlock the door.”

“The internal door to the visitation room was found locked, albeit torn off of its hinges, when our squad arrived. You locked the door behind you?” He wore a frown as he asked the question, and probably rightly so, I hadn't thought that move through too well. By locking the door again, I thought I'd been slowing the demon down a little, all I'd really done was doom pretty much everyone still inside. Though if the Whisperer had torn the door off its hinges, why had they even bothered to look at the lock?

“Yes, I guess I did. I dunno why, it was an impulse maybe. I didn't want that thing to follow me, so I locked the door again once I got out. I suppose I should have figured it would just tear the door off anyway, the way it was tearing those people apart.”

“But you locked the other people in too. Didn't you feel guilty leaving them all in there with that thing?”

There he goes, questioning my morals. What did that have to do with the facts about what had happened? “Yes, I felt bad I suppose, but I wasn't really thinking about them all that much. Look I know it's entirely selfish, but I was thinking about how to save my own life, not about everyone else's, I'm no hero.”

“You didn't even try to save your friend?”

Something flickered behind his eyes that set me on edge, what else did he know? “I couldn't find him,” I said quietly, hoping the despair I tried to pump into my tone would mask the lie.

“I see.” He shuffled the papers needlessly in front of him and cleared his throat before he carried on. “So the thing, it tore the door off to get out of the room then? Not to get in?” I nodded by way of reply, glad to be back to the 'facts' and the sequence of events. “So how did it get into the room?”

“I don't know,” I said, realising just how many times that phrase had come out of my mouth during this interview, I kept waiting for him to quip that I didn't know a lot, but he never did. “It just seemed to appear. One minute there was nothing, just people talking, and then it was there and it started killing.”

“I see, it just appeared? Some of the statements we've received have claimed that this 'thing' that no one can manage to give a name to emerged from inside the body of a man. A man who happened to be accompanying you on your visit. Is this true?” He raised an eyebrow at me, pen poised to write my response down on the paper now that we were finally getting to the information he'd really been searching for.

“What? Appeared out of him? No that...that's just insane. How could that even happen?”

“Well, I don't know. But to be honest it's no more insane than the rest of these stories have proven to be. So what really happened, in your opinion?”

“Frank was the first one it killed.”

“Frank? This was the man you were with.”

I nodded. “Yes, he agreed to come with me because I don't drive and needed a lift to actually get here. He was doing me a favour and look where it got him. He was the first victim. It, that monster thing, appeared right beside him and just tore him to shreds without even a thought.”

“Appeared beside him, how?”

“I don't know.” There it was yet again. “It was just suddenly there and Frank was in shreds on the floor. I don't know how it got there.” That was the biggest of the lies I'd had to tell, and I hoped he was buying it. Really he had no reason not to, the whole situation would feel like insanity to any human, yet the truth would seem even crazier. My vague explanations and feigning ignorance should pretty much match the other witness statements they'd already gathered.

“Really? No idea at all? So what were you doing when this happened?”

I could tell that he didn't believe me, so that made me wonder what more information he had to go on. What had someone said about me that had him asking the same question over and over? Or was there another reason he kept asking, leading me to this point? A sudden cold, sick feeling of dread washed over me as I looked intently at the officer and saw the eager glint in his eyes. I was just being paranoid, surely. But how did that saying go, 'just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're not after you'. In my case, I knew for sure they were.

“I-I was by the table we'd chosen.” I swallowed hard to stop my stuttering. Stay calm Rayne, you're probably just imagining things. Keep cool and you'll be out of there in no time. “Jesse and I had been talking and...then it just appeared.”

He stared at me in disbelief, not buying a word of what I said. Though I was growing ever more certain this was not because I wasn't being convincing enough with my story.

“So you were still seated at your table?”

There' that's what he had been getting at. One of them had told him something, or he just knew what had happened somehow. I found I didn't know how to answer him. If I lied would he call me out with some 'evidence' from another witness, if I told the truth, what reason would I give him for my standing several feet away from the table?

I sighed. “No, I was standing a little way back from my seat. Jesse was angry that I'd brought Frank with me, they don't exactly get on with one another, or didn't I suppose I mean, and I was annoyed with him that he was more concerned with talking about that than talking to me about what was going on with him. We had words, I stood up and threatened to leave, that's when everything went crazy.”

“You're sure that's what you said? You threatened to leave? Because I have some accounts from others nearby who claim you said something a lot more...troubling.”

He paused and looked me in the eyes, and I swear blind I saw the shadow of blackness flicker through those muddy brown orbs of his as a grin stretched his face wide enough to bear teeth.

“Why don't you tell me exactly what it was you really said.”