TOMB OF HORROR #3

It'd be a rainy Thursday in DC right now, and maybe Everett Ross would be bundled up in his apartment with a cup of coffee and a cubs game on TV. Instead he was in a small municipal police station out of the way in Michigan, several degrees below freezing outside and not much warmer in the interrogation room.

The cubs game was on two rooms over, Everett tapped his fingers on a cup of lukewarm, stale coffee. He was waiting on the other side of card table from the 1970's that squeaked anytime he set his coffee down, one of those ones where the top was a giant sticker that looked like wood.

"What's it been? Forty-five minutes and that guy hasn't said a word to Ross." Officer Gallows was impressively built, but he was just a local cop to Detroit. The room he was in had seen CIA spooks, DHS tight asses and even those low-rent mafia looking guys from S.H.I.E.L.D.

Officer Gallows, a local cop to the Detroit area, stood on the other side of the glass window separating the interrogation rooms two halves. He was additionally flanked by three or four more officers from local communities. A few FBI agents came and went out of the room too.

Everyone held their lips tight and just watched. At some point, Everett Ross swept the hair from his face and cleared his throat. "Alright. I thought I'd put the ball in your court, but let's get this started."

"Fuck you." Eric Brooks said, baring pointed canines that at Ross.

"Did you sharpen those yourself?" Ross responded.

"Fuck you." - Ross cut in and squirmed in his seat. "Now look, if this is going to go anywhere, you give me something to work with."

Ross shuffled the paperwork on the table. "Let's recap. Fifteen years ago, two cops in Detroit find a missing mans wallet in a pair of jeans covered in ash." Ross looked up from his paperwork at Brooks, offering a plea of "Sound familiar?"

Ross tried to muscle in and see if humor got him anywhere. "Officers thought it was some kind of prank. It was right around the time christian radio was saying the world was going to end."

Next, Ross moved on to humor. "Officers at the time thought it was some kind of prank. You know, it happened around the time that christian radio in Detroit was saying the world was going to end soon."

Eric Brooks didn't say anything. Ross felt increasingly out of his depth. He was trying to get anywhere here, and Brooks just sat across from him and stared at the mirror.

"Alright, fine. Let's start somewhere else. What are you? Some kind of extremist religious fanatic? A domestic terrorist? What do you want us to put down."

"I kill people."

"Nobody is saying you don't."

Ross was the type of white-collar DC cop who didn't consider himself racist because he met The Black Panther once. He didn't know what to do when they took the cowl off of the guy they brought in and he was black underneath. Ross shifted in his chair a lot, passing it off as an uncomfortable chair.

There was something about Eric Brooks that just made his skin crawl though. He'd still never looked Ross in the eye the whole time they were in the room together.

"Look, Mr Brooks. Eric. I can't help you, and I'll tell you that now. You've been jumping off of rooftops for the last fifteen years vaporizing people. I want to know how, and maybe we'll make sure you can have another hearing in twenty years."

"You don't want me to tell you how."

"Why wouldn't I-"

"It'd fuck up your whole world. You'd be waking up and looking over your shoulder every time you went down to the corner for a box of donuts in the morning."

Brooks smiled that toothy smile. "You sharpen those yourself?" Brooks didn't even give him the satisfaction of a simple "fuck you."

"Fine." Ross took a deep breath. "So six days after the first body-" Ross stressed the word body in a way that seemed he didn't take the case seriously.

"-the same scene, except its six piles of clothes, half-loaded guns and spent ammunition/"

Brooks smiles again. "You remember something?" "They weren't expecting me."

"People thought you were Gary Gilbert come back to life. Changed from petty crime to vaporizing people."

The name didn't even register with Brooks if it was supposed to. Ross was trying to play ball with a fence. A fence that could fall forward at any time and crush him.

"I wanna know how you've managed to be doing this for so long and leave only a handful of bodies along the way. What's the secret, brooks? Are you a mutant?"

"Khonshu."

"Gesundheit." Ross said.

"Khonshu saved me when I died. Brought me back from the dead. Gave me the thirst, but gave me his strength too. Do you wanna know what happens at night?"

"...What happens at night?" The lights in the interrogation room flicker. Outside, the sun drifts below the horizon and puts the world to sleep. Brooks bears his fangs in the dark.

"They're gonna come through every wall in this place to get me. You wanted me to tell you, how about you get a front row seat."

There's a gunshot somewhere just on the other side of the glass. Ross panics and jumps, but Brooks is already out of his handcuffs. Shreds them like they were made out of paper mache.

"Gallows!" Ross yells, pounding on the glass. The door is locked. A body breaks through the glass. Fills the room with the sound of a linebacker hitting a cold concrete floor right after. He scrambles to the other side of the room.

Ross looks for a gun that isn't on his hip. Always liked to leave it outside during interrogations to make someone comfortable. Up against the wall, he can finally tear his eyes from the pool of blood forming beneath Officer Gallows.

Somehow Brooks got the white cape they pulled off of him when they arrested him. A silver knife in his hand, too.

"Moon's up. Time for me to go to work."