Detective John Size looked over Jesse through the one way glass. She was thin and had the scraggly look of someone who took too many drugs. He hated this place, from the unstable and unpredictable, to the clinical feel to it. With a nod from the doctor he entered the room, aware that his every word would be scrutinized. The scraping noise as he pulled the cheap government bought chair, made his skin crawl. Dropping the file on the table, he breathed heavily and sat down.

"You know I didn't do it, right?" Jesse spoke quietly.

"There is a difference between not doing something and it not being your fault."

"I know, but I didn't do it..." Jesse started

"It was the poltergeist, right?"

"Yes." She nodded. "Well sort of, I guess it could have been a different type of ghost. I'm not really an expert in this kind of stuff."

"I'm sure your not." John exhaled loudly. "This ghost of yours, the one that you say has been there since you moved in. The one that decided to take a machete to your four year old son."

Jesse who was nodding, twitched a little at the mention of her son, but John continued on.

"Did he molest him too?"

"I guess, I mean he could have... I don't..."

"You don't know?" John cut her off.

"I don't remember." She stammered. "I mean that's why I'm here right, the doctors, they try to help me remember."

"Your here, because you have been remanded for the murder of your son." John glanced at the mirror briefly but only his reflection came back at him, so he continued.

"Do you know what I think?"

"That I did it!" She spat venomously.

"Fiction is the truth inside the lie. Have you heard that before?" John baited her.

"No." Jesse crossed her bony arms and lent back. "You think I'm lying?"

"I think the ghost is a lie... But somewhere in that lie, is a fiction that holds the truth." The detective sat back letting it sink in.

"You think I did it!" She kept on angrily.

"I think, monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win." John gave her a moment to digest what he had given her.

"So your saying I did it, but it's because the ghost is in me?" He could see her mind working behind her eyes, scrambling to keep up with the new ideas he had planted.

"I don't think the ghost's in the house, I've been there and I didn't feel it. I still have all my limbs." He held out his arms remembering the pictures and feeling sick at the thought. "I think you are the haunted one. Something in your past made you this way... Something so terrible that you don't want the doctors here to know about it."

Jesse's eyes shifted back and forth looking as though the answers were etched somewhere in tiny writing on the desk in front of her. Tears welled in her eyes as she dredged up memories that she kept hidden deep inside. Memories she visited often, but rarely stopped long enough to come to grips with.

John took a small packet of jellybeans from his pocket, laying them on the table. Taking one in his mouth he sucked the color from it and broke Jesse's concentration in the process.

"Sorry...I'm a diabetic, I have low blood sugar." He apologized. "Being here really takes it out of me."

"I like it here." She stared at his jelly beans. "I get my methadone and people treat me... As though I'm just another person, not some piece of dog shit they stepped in."

"Would you like one?" He offered her the packet.

"Sure why not." She said taking a few and picking through the colors.

"Keep them." John said as she tried to return the excess, once she had the color she wanted.

"I remember you from the arrest." She spoke after a bit. "I remember you were kind to me...even though I could see the disgust in your eyes."

"You are a mother, and a mother who had just lost a child. Whether or not you killed him, it still affects you as a mother."

A tear rolled across Jesse's cheek followed by a flood more, as silently she wept for her dead child. John got up bidding her farewell, picked up his still unopened file before leaving her alone in the room.

Back in the viewing room the doctor, prosecutor and Jesse's lawyer all waited.

"How did I do?" John asked the doctor, handing back the file.

"Fine." He said with a smile. "I think now she will open up a bit more now. She has been so unwilling to talk and she sees us as the enemy. Now I think she will at least think about it somewhat."

"She really doesn't believe she killed her son does she?" The prosecutor asked.

"She knows she did it, she just can't understand why." The doctor explained. "Her problems stem from an abuse in her childhood. That compounded with drug issues and an unwanted child, caused her to invent the ghost story."

"So the best thing for her is to spend her sentence here?" Her lawyer asked but John was already taking his leave of the situation. He had seen enough for one day and the place really did give him the creeps. It made no difference to him why she did it or what she believed. She had sexually abused her four year old son and brutally chopped him up. Nothing could ever change that. Maybe they were right, and maybe it wasn't her fault. Maybe her ghost was real, passed from person to person through a chain of unspeakable deeds. The more John thought about it, the more sense it made. And now 'he' had the ghost of an innocent child, mercilessly hacked to death, to contend with.