Interview

October 20, 1 p.m. Year of the Curtain+5
Los Angeles, California 

Marissa never thought she’d work this hard to get into a prison, although some of the things she had done to get a story over the years could have potentially landed her there unwillingly. She probably wouldn’t be here now if not for the efforts of Jessica Cimmaron, one of Moreno’s many attorneys. When she’d called the woman to inquire about an interview, she thought Cimmaron would bubble over in excitement.

“Nobody has been interested in hearing Dixon’s side since this whole thing began,” she said. “Let me speak to the judge, I’m going to make this happen.”

And she did, in fact, make it happen. It took months, and a lot of argument to lay the claim that Monster Muck was, in fact, a legitimate news source, but eventually she’d won permission to have Marissa speak to Dixon Moreno in prison. She insisted on being present, of course, but Marissa had no problem with that. Cimmaron was waiting for her when she arrived at the steps to the prison – a woman in her late 50s who still insisted on dressing like she was in her early 30s. She had on a red dress that was a size too small, red lips that were a size too big, and blonde hair that was puffed out like a country music singer. Her skin was deep tan and stretched across her face like a balloon, and her eyes hung in their sockets like a pair of black marbles, spinning around, looking for her. Marissa was a Los Angeles native – there was nothing unusual about this to her.

“Ms. Cimmaron? I’m Marissa Carson.”

“Oh, Jessica, please. Jessie to my friends.”

“Nice to meet you, Jessie.” She didn’t consider the woman a friend, but nobody ever said that without intending you to use the term. If nothing else, Jessica Cimmaron was good for giving her access to the most famous murderer since Jeffrey Dahmer, and that interview could be just the thing to make Monster Muck a media juggernaut. Dixon Moreno would be her Monica Lewinsky.

The two women checked in at the front desk, and the warden and a pair of guards were summoned to escort them to the visitation room. The warden, a thin, gray-haired man with a pencil mustache, glowered at Cimmaron as though he was used to putting up with her nonsense. “Remember, Ms. Cimmaron, whatever happens in there is your responsibility. My men will be outside, but if your client decides to get violent there’s no guarantee we can be there in time to stop him.”

“My client won’t be violent, sir. All the violence is gone from him, right here and right now.”

“Yes, of course it is.”

Marissa and Cimmaron were seated on one side of a table in the visitation room. Once they were there, a door on the other side of the room was opened and Dixon Moreno was escorted in, flanked on either side by a guard. The chains rattled and thudded against his orange-clad jumpsuit, which draped on his miniscule frame. Marissa had seen pictures of Dixon when he was arrested – he looked like he’d lost seventy pounds since then. His face was different as well. His eyes were always dark, but now they were sunken and hollow, and although he’d stopped shaving, she could tell from the shape of his long, scruffy beard that the cheeks beneath weren’t very full either. He looked like a wild man, plucked from years of living on his own in some wilderness, returned to a civilization that wouldn’t have him. Was this was possession did to a person? It was as if when the demon escaped his body it had collapsed in on itself like a dying hot air balloon.

The guards had Dixon sit in the plastic seat across from the women, then left before anyone said a word. Once they were alone, Marissa caught a chill. For the first time ever, she realized, she wasn’t quite sure how to begin a conversation. Jessica stepped up and kicked it off for her.

“Dixon, this is Marissa Carson from Monster Muck. I told you she would be coming to speak to you, do you remember?” He nodded, not raising his eyes to meet theirs. “She wants to ask you a few questions about what happened. You told me you would answer her questions, didn’t you?” He nodded again. “Wonderful.” She turned to Marissa and smiled with a sweetness that seemed wholly inappropriate somehow. “Go right ahead.”

“Yeah. Um, thanks. Dixon, I’m just going to get right into it. You’ve told police that six years ago you became the victim of demonic possession, and that those demons escaped a little more than five years ago, after you’d killed 17 people while under the influence of the spirits in your soul. Is that correct?”

He nodded again, but this time he also raised his head a little. His eyes met with Marissa’s, and she saw a depth to them that wasn’t there before. It was like looking down into a well – something long and black and round that led to a horrible landing too far away to discern. If this guy really had played host to demons, Marissa thought, he looked like some of them were still hanging around.

“Can you tell me, Dixon, how you came to be under the possession of the demons.”

He sat there for some time, quiet, without moving, and Jessica smacked her lips as if she was about to speak. Before she began, though, he finally spoke for himself.

“I found something,” he said. His voice was higher than she would have thought, and had a whistle to it, like wind blowing through reeds.

“What did you find?”

“A box.”

Now this was getting interesting.

“What kind of box, Dixon?”

He looked at her again, this time with an incredulous look, as though she had asked an incredibly stupid question.

“A Pandora Box, Miss Carson.”

She nodded, understanding where he was going with this but unsure how much of it made any sense. She’d been studying the monsters for a year now, and she hadn’t actually run across anything as old as Greek mythology. Of course, not too long ago she hadn’t run across any zombies either, so perhaps it wasn’t a good idea to discount Dixon’s ideas.

For the next hour, she asked him question after question. He asked them all, although he was particularly cryptic about most of them, and once the interview was finished she felt like she had several places worth looking, but no definite answers. She thanked Dixon for his time, but by now he had retreated back into his shell, unwilling to give a simple farewell. Jessica Cimmaron tried to give her enough for them both.

“You could be the turning point for Dixon, Marissa,” she said. “If we can get people on his side–”

“Ms. Cimmaron, you know that I can’t promise any sort of results, right? I can’t even promise what I’m going to write. I’ve got a lot of research to do before I even start writing.”

“I understand. Just be fair, Marissa. That’s all I ask.”

Marissa walked across the parking lot to her car, but she had already retrieved her Bluetooth headset from her purse before she even took out her keys. As soon as it was in her ear, she pushed the button on the side to activate the voice command.

“Call Max Quinn,” she said. The phone in her purse obediently began dialing, and after a few rings, she heard Max’s voice in her ear.

“Hey, baby. How did it go?”

“Interesting,” she said. “Tell Brie she’s going to have to start Googling Pandora. We’ve got something to go on now.”

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