The Witness: A Slasher Horror Novel

by Zach Bohannon

  And Misty wasn’t finished.

  “I think your bangs need trimming,” she said.

  Allie perked up and shook her head furiously. “Please, no. Please, God, no.”

  Misty leaned in and grabbed ahold of Allie’s bangs. She was going to try again to pull the hair out instead of cut it out. She grabbed a smaller chunk of hair this time, and brought her right foot up and set it on Allie’s knee for leverage.

  Allie let out her loudest scream yet.

  Misty simultaneously pushed her foot into Allie’s knee while pulling the hair away from her scalp. And when it didn’t give way, she gave the hair a little bit of slack, and then pulled back as hard as she could. And when she did, Misty fell to the ground and almost hit her head on a wall, the force of the pull driving all her weight backwards. But she’d managed to finally pull out some of Allie’s hair by hand.

  Now, Allie was on the verge of passing out.

  As for me, I’d never felt so hopeless in my entire life. I had pulled on the restraints around my wrists so much by this point that the skin had broken and begun to bleed all over again. I was long past the point of feeling like I could even cry. Tears did run down my face, but it was mainly involuntary. The whole thing felt surreal. Like I would wake up at any given moment, lying in Blake’s arms on a Saturday morning in his bed. The smell of bacon and coffee floating through the air. But it wasn’t going to happen, as I was stuck in this fucking wheelchair. I’d already watched one of my friends get beaten, literally, to death, by a psychotic kid. Now, this crazy bitch was ripping out Allie’s hair with her bare hands.

  Again, Misty danced around the room, so proud of herself for what she had done. She picked up one of the patches of scalp that she had previously cut out, and ran over to me, letting Allie’s bangs swing in front of my face. Some of the blood trickled off of the interior of the scalp that she held in her other hand and fell onto my legs.

  I looked over and saw that Allie was slumped further over. She wasn’t moving. I thought that she’d completely gone into shock.

  When Misty noticed me looking over at Allie, she looked over at her and saw that she was nearly unconscious. She narrowed her eyes, and went over to Allie.

  “Hey,” she said. “Hey, wake the fuck up. You don’t fall asleep during a haircut.” Misty, apparently, still wasn’t finished.

  She slapped Allie across her ear, which made Allie move only a little bit.

  “Alright, then.”

  Misty threw down the knife, reached into the pocket of her apron again, and came out with the scissors. She looked back at me and smiled as she lowered the point of the scissors to the wound on the left side of Allie’s head.

  “Stop it,” I screamed. “Allie!”

  The point of the scissors touched the red, wet patch of missing scalp, and it was as if Allie had been poked with a fire poker with a tip heated to a thousand degrees.

  Allie’s head came up, and her eyes opened to their capacity.

  Mistry pounced on Allie’s knees again and grabbed her around the throat, pushing her head back and bringing their faces just inches apart.

  “Don’t you fucking pull that shit again.” She pointed the scissors towards me. “Or I swear to God, I will make you watch me butcher your fucking friend before I slit your God damned throat.”

  And then, Misty smiled like nothing had happened. She moved off of Allie’s lap and slowly walked behind her.

  “Please,” Allie said. Her voice was trembling through the tears and her lips quivered.

  Running her hands through what remained of Allie’s hair, Misty said, “It’s almost over, honey. I promise.” Her voice was so soft, its annoyance sent a chill through me.

  I watched her walk behind Allie, continuing to stroke her hair. Allie’s eyes were completely bloodshot. From where I sat, I couldn’t see one ounce of white in them. They only darkened through the middle, where I couldn’t tell if she still had any of the green left in them. All I saw was red.

  Misty’s strokes began to slow down. She looked me right in the eyes and said, “We just have to take some off the back.”

  Allie and I made eye contact. She didn’t even fight it. All she did was look at me and cry. She mouthed something to me, and I’m not really sure what it was that she said. My sense of thought and reason had abandoned me by that point. Allie stared at me for another moment, before her eyes were forced to look at the ceiling.

  Allie began to squirm in the chair, gripping the armrests as hard as she could, as Misty pulled down toward the ground as hard as she could, forcing Allie’s head awkwardly over the back of the chair. Her back arched like she was in an electric chair that was sending 2,000 volts of electricity through her body.

  When the hair wouldn’t separate from the head, Misty pulled harder. She went down to one knee and pulled down toward the floor.

  Allie’s neck sat horizontal on the top of the chair while she fought to get it back in line with the rest of her body. The crown of her head began to creep over the top of the chair and onto the other side. Her screams became more and more hoarse, before they faded out, turning into a ripping sound.

  The inside of Allie’s throat began to give way from the pressure. The sound I heard was her windpipe beginning to crush and tear apart. It was the most grotesque noise I’d ever heard.

  Allie’s hair pulled away from her skull, and Misty went all the way down to the ground. Her head hardly moved. I heard her gasp for air, her larynx crushed. She barely had any hair left. Her skull bled from multiple places, and her head lay limp over the chair.

  Misty stood over her and looked down into Allie’s swelling eyes. I heard the air fighting its way through Allie’s throat. She groaned and held on with her fingertips to her last moments of life.

  The scissors came out of Misty’s apron pocket. It hardly fazed me. Not sure if her neck had snapped and if she was even still breathing, I wanted the psycho to put my friend out of her misery.

  And she did, bringing the scissors down into Allie’s jugular as her head turned to me. Blood sprayed out of the hole in Allie’s throat like a busted water pipe in the dead of winter, and I saw her red eyes glaze over as Misty left the room, her laugh echoing through the building.

  12

  I don’t think I actually remember hearing the door open behind me. The only sound in the room was the hiss of Allie’s blood draining from her neck like a spout. I would have rather had a drill driven into my ear than listen to it any longer. It was unbearable.

  The click of the wheelchair’s wheels unlocking got my attention. I felt a slight movement and could smell the familiar disgusting stench that could only come from Beau.

  More heavy footsteps followed into the room and I waited to see Don.

  But he wasn’t there.

  James, the other man I’d seen when I was dragged into this Hell, stood in front of me instead.

  “It’s time,” he said.

  I just stared at him. I couldn’t muster up the energy to give him any kind of response. Behind me, I felt the heavy breathing on my neck, which confirmed it was Beau manning the wheelchair. James nodded toward the door and the chair turned around, and within just a few moments, I found myself outside again.

  ***

  Rob or Blake?

  Which one would they take me to next?

  I had the feeling that Don knew Blake was my boyfriend. If that was the case, there’d be no way that they’d make me watch him die before I’d have to watch what they did to Rob. Then again, I really didn’t know what was going to happen. The whole night had been a blur. An illusion. But I had to think that, if they knew Blake was special, they’d force me to watch him die last, and that it would probably be more horrifying than what they’d done to the others.

  But they didn’t roll me into one of the other buildings.

  Between two buildings across the road, the chair came to a stop in front of a wooden door that sat in the ground. James was in front of us, pulling the double wooden doors to
the cellar open.

  I felt Beau lock the wheels, and he came around the chair and stood in front of me. He reached down for me and I squirmed, not sure what he would do. I thought that he was finally going to get his disgusting hands on me. He’d been eyeing me all night, and as grotesque as he was, I’m not sure if it still wouldn’t have been the worst thing to happen to me that night.

  But he didn’t touch me. Not like that.

  Beau grabbed the leather straps around my wrists and began to unbuckle them. As they released, I hardly felt them leave my skin. My arms were completely numb, and a few moments passed before I could move them. I stared at my fingers, wiggling those as best I could, trying to restore feeling back into them. Then, I was able to rotate my wrists, this followed by the ability to bend my arms at the elbow. The feeling kept coming back until I was able to move my arm all the way up at the shoulder, gently rotating the ball and socket joint as it creaked.

  Beau reached down and began to undo the straps around my legs. If my arms had been numb, my legs were dead. I couldn’t feel them at all. When the straps were off, I tried to move them, but it was no use.

  Then, Beau began signaling me with his hand.

  “Get up.”

  I looked up at him, my eyes welled, and gently shook my head.

  “I-I-I can’t feel my legs,” I stuttered.

  He didn’t give a shit if I could feel them or not. Beau reached down and grabbed my arms, pulling me up out of the chair. As soon as my legs stiffened, I fell to the ground. I felt the pins shoot all the way up through my forearm as the heels of my palms hit the ground. Above me, I heard Beau grunt and reach down to grab me.

  “Stop, please,” I pleaded.

  The large man picked me up, threw me over his shoulder like a hunted doe, and took me down into the cellar before us.

  ***

  As Beau’s foot left the bottom step that led down into the cellar, I heard the splash of water on the ground. The sound matched the dank smell of a room that was rotting out from an overabundance of moisture. He sat me down on the ground against a wall, and my ass was instantly soaked from the flooding on the floor.

  “Wait,” I said, as Beau headed back up the stairs.

  He never turned around.

  “Please, don’t leave me down here!”

  The doors to the cellar shut, and I was left alone.

  “Help,” I yelled out, repeating it a few times over before realizing, again, that it was no use. No one was going to hear me. And if someone did, it would only be one of the deranged excuses for human beings that roamed this place. So I gave up, that simply, and decided to analyze the cellar I was trapped in.

  A shop lamp that hung in the center of the room above my head was the only thing providing illumination to the tired space. I turned slightly and reached over my left shoulder to feel the wall I sat against. It was made of brick, and I could feel water lodged in the cracks between the blocks. From what I could tell in the darkness, the room was empty. The floor was made of solid concrete, though it was covered with over an inch of dirty water. Beau had brushed the light on the way out of the cellar, causing it to swing slightly back and forth. Mosquitoes flew in and out of the light, and I fought them off with my tired hands.

  As I drew my attention back from the room to whatever thoughts were in my mind, I heard something.

  It came from my left, and was a rustling sound of sorts.

  I curled up tight, allowing the mosquitoes to fly around me, afraid of what might lurk in the room. I wanted to think that it was only a mouse or a rat, but I just wasn’t sure. My body was still trying to wake up from having been strapped in that damn wheelchair, and I could still hardly move.

  The rustling got louder.

  “Hello?”

  With little to lose, I decided to see if I could find out what the sound was.

  Slowly and carefully, I worked to stand up. My joints popped like the smacking of wet lips, and I felt just how weak my knees were as I tried to get upright. Somehow, I managed it.

  When I got to my feet, I reached up to see if I could touch the ceiling, again waving at the insects in the air. The concrete roof was just low enough to where my fingertips could brush its cold, wet surface. The other side of the room was encased in darkness, and I made my way over there, creeping toward the sound, the dirty water splashing gently under my feet. The rustling had continued, fading into my ears every few seconds, and as I moved closer to it, I began to pick up what sounded almost like a slight breeze. But with the room so dark, I couldn’t see anything.

  I decided to take a few steps back and point the shop light toward the dark side of the room. Before reaching up for the light, I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.

  Hanging at the end of the light was a cord, attached to a handle, that suspended the light to the ceiling. I gripped the handle, slowly pointing the light to the opposite side of the room.

  The corner lit up.

  And two matching pale eyes looked back to me through the beam of light.

  13

  Through the light, it was hard to tell just how old she was. As soon as we made eye contact, she looked back down. The initial sight of her had startled me, and I’d let go of the lamp, which now swung in the center of the room, shooting light in every direction. I grabbed ahold of the light again and shined it back toward her, and saw her looking down at the ground.

  The girl had blonde hair which looked like it hadn’t been brushed or washed in weeks. It was thin and wavy, like low gauge, loosely wound string or yarn. Like the hair of an elderly woman lying in wait for the cancer to eat her. She wore a tattered dress and had a dirty blanket draped over her. She wore no shoes, and as she sat cross-legged, I could see that the soles of her feet were stained solid black, even with the accumulation of water on the ground. Her hands were in a similar state, and the palms and backs of them had patches of black that appeared tattooed to her pale skin. And her body was thin and gangly, like she hadn’t eaten in days or even weeks, dining on only nourishment left in her gut from any previous meals.

  Back then, while I was in college, I had a fascination with World War II; particularly, I loved studying the European theater. The way that a deranged man had been able to brainwash an entire nation fascinated me. And now, as I looked at this girl in front of me, I thought of all the photographs I’d seen of Holocaust victims. How they were essentially walking skeletons, and how much she mirrored the people in those black and white images.

  I let go of the light and allowed it to dangle in the middle of the room. Slowly, I began to make my way to the girl. With each step I took, the water splashed and startled her. I knew because I could hear her gasp each time I took a step.

  “I’m not going to hurt you.”

  She began to tremble; I heard it. The girl didn’t trust me. Perhaps she was just too far gone at that point to believe that anyone in the world could be good anymore. I’m not really sure. All I know is that she had no interest in me going near her.

  Mistakenly, I reached down to her and, immediately, she slapped at my hand.

  “Okay, okay. I’m sorry,” I said. “What’s your name?”

  No response.

  I sat down next to her, unable to see her face with the corner she sat in unlit. But I could still hear her tremble, though it was less intense now.

  “Tell me your name, sweetie.”

  It was silent, but because of that I could hear that she had calmed some.

  “Ja—“ she started to say, then stopped.

  “Go ahead.”

  “Ja-Jackie.”

  “Hi, Jackie. My name is Becky.”

  She didn’t respond, so I continued.

  “How long have you been down here, Jackie?”

  Again, the silence hung in the air. I couldn’t see her face, but it was as if I could hear her thinking. Like she was starting to trust me, but still wasn’t sure.

  “Never,” Jackie finally replied.

  “Never?”

&nb
sp; I was confused. What kind of answer was that to my question?

  Then, I heard the water beneath us slightly wave, and Jackie’s face appeared in the light. Her eyes were so bloodshot, and her sunken cheeks were covered with scratches. She could hardly speak through her dried lips.

  “You’ll never leave this place.”

  14

  Jackie leaned back out of the light, allowing me to let the words she’d said sink in.

  You’ll never leave this place.

  I wanted so badly to ask her again how long she had been down here, but her retreat into the darkness told me she had no interest in speaking to me anymore. And before I was able to try to talk to her again, I heard rattling from the cellar door.

  Quickly, I went back to the place in the room where Beau had left me. I sat with my back against the brick wall, just peeking over toward Jackie every few moments.

  The cellar door finally swung open, and I saw the overweight creep Beau coming down the stairs.

  When he reached the bottom of the steps and his boots splashed the water on the floor, he looked over at me and winked. I left zero emotion on my face. I thought he was going to come to me, but instead, he reached up and grabbed the shop light, pointing it toward Jackie.

  She squirmed when the light hit her. From the side of his face, I saw Beau’s mouth move to a crooked smile as he dropped the light and began to walk toward her.

  It was like out of a movie. The swinging light created the type of scene you might see in a horror film or at a night club. Her body appeared and re-appeared rapidly as the light shot through the air in every direction. I watched as he reached down, picked her up, and threw her sickly body over his shoulder. She was trying to scream, but sounded as if a lack of hydration had taken its toll on her. The howls had this raspy dryness that sent a pain through my throat just from hearing them.

  Soon, she was up the stairs and out of the room.