Smoking Break

Extract from interview with lead suspect, Mr E. Beckers.

"Please, if you could just think back for a moment. I know it's painful for you, but tell me, do you have any idea where she would have gone?"

"Yes... I think so. Her parents wouldn't allow her to smoke, said it'd rot her lungs... So whenever we wanted to slip away, we'd always go down to that public toilet block near Pennywise Forest. We always went together, and I only didn't go tonight because my phone was dead and she couldn't reach me..."

"Do you know of anyone else who knows her smoking habits, someone perhaps who might have a grudge of some kind against her?"

"No, absolutely not... I... wait. There was this one time, we were only little... We were playing in a sandbox near the Pennywise estate and we saw this really tall man in a suit standing just outside the playground. He vanished when we started to look at him, but we knew it wasn't our imagination 'cause we'd both seen it."

"You think perhaps it's this man? That he's involved somehow?"

"Honestly, I've always thought it was a trick of the light, but... I've looked at her diary before. She talks about him a lot. She reckons he's been following her, that she was glad I was always around to keep her company. I never saw him again after that day when we were little... so I never really took her diary seriously."

"At the moment, it's the best lead we have. Can you tell us anything about-"

"No, I can't - and believe me, you'd be wasting your time anyway. Even after all this, I'm not going to entertain the notion that what I saw was real. You weren't there, so you don't know... He was tall - inhumanly tall. And not tall like Andre the Giant, he was like a beanpole, so high and so thin... and the tiny glance we got at his face was... it was empty. Like, it was a face Before anything got added - no eyes, no mouth, not even a scruff of hair."

"Mr. Beckers, I-"

"And God, his arms... they were like bloody tentacles - the fingers slip inside his sleeves and they just grow and grow, they snake around and just don't stop! No! He's not real, HE'S NOT REAL!"

"Damnit, someone get the cuffs, he's losing the plot."

"HE'S NOT REAL! IT'S NOT TRUE! DAMNIT CINDY, WHY'D YOU GO OFF ALONE?! YOU KNEW HE WAS OUT THERE!"

"Get him outta here."

"LET ME GO, IF YOU PUT ME IN A CELL ALONE HE'LL COME FOR ME TOO - NO, DON'T TAKE ME AWAY, DON'T OH GO-"

Tape Ends.