The Witness: A Slasher Horror Novel

by Zach Bohannon

  “Tie up his fuckin’ hands,” Don told James.

  From where I sat, I could see the blood dripping down to the ground, and I’m pretty sure that at least one of his teeth was on the floor a few feet away from him.

  One thing that had begun to blow me away was just how immune I was becoming to seeing these atrocities. Maybe it was because I was in shock. In the back of my mind, I kept telling myself that none of it could be real. This was the kind of stuff you saw in B-horror movies or on the national news. But, no. I was living a nightmare. It was very real, and in that moment, I wished that I could have swapped places with Rob, or Michael, or Allie. In a strange way, they’d seemed to have had it easy compared to having to witness these sick, inhumane acts, that the men had forced me to see over the time I’d been here.

  When James had finished binding Rob’s wrists to the posts on either side of him, he jumped back and yelled out.

  “What the fuck?”

  Rob was crying heavily, his whole body bouncing up and down. “I’m so sorry. It’s my nerves. I’m so sorry.”

  Rob had pissed on him.

  James was furious. He glared over at Don, who simply nodded. Then, James was smiling.

  “I’ll show you to fuckin’ piss on me.”

  James moved the knife toward Rob’s groin and the screaming signaled the panic had really set in.

  And though this story is full of truth and isn’t for the faint of heart, some things should just be left forever without detail.

  ***

  The two men had done a number on Rob.

  It was surprising to me how little he’d bled. Don and James had used two knives all over his feet, legs, and mid-section, but most of the wounds were barely bleeding, if at all. The skin was just split open, revealing the muscle and tissue beneath it.

  I’d wished over and over again that Don would be wrong about this method of torture.

  But, he wasn’t.

  As advertised, Rob was still wide awake. Fully conscious and feeling every single tickle of the men’s knives. By far, this was worse than the ice cream shop with Michael and the barber shop with Allie. Far, far worse. Allie had been mutilated, but nowhere near to the degree that Rob was being slowly torn apart now. How he hadn’t passed out after the fallout of the pissing incident, I’ll never know. I’ll go to my grave never knowing how someone could stay conscious through that.

  Either way, Don and James continued.

  They had done just about everything to his lower body that they could, outside of removing his limbs. The skin over his hamstrings had been completely flayed, to where I could see the muscles pulsate as Rob tensed.

  Every now and then, Don would look over to make sure that I was still watching. He had told me that if I closed my eyes or tried to look away, he would only prolong Rob’s torture. Furthermore, he said that he would begin to take me apart with the knife as well, threatening to cut off my eyelids first so that I had no choice but to watch.

  So that’s exactly what I did.

  I watched.

  Then, Rob mumbled something.

  “What was that?” Don said, kneeling down again in front of Rob.

  Rob spoke again in a muted, desperate tone.

  Don laughed and looked up at James.

  “He said ‘kill me’. You fuckin’ believe that? Wants to ruin our damn fun.”

  James waved Don to stand and come to him. He cupped his hand around Don’s ear and whispered something into it. Don began to nod and smile, presumably agreeing with whatever James was saying to him.

  Once the men were done talking, James walked over behind me. I heard the click of the wheels being unlocked beneath me, and the chair began to roll toward Rob.

  I shook my head violently as he began to steer me around to the front of Rob. Seeing what they had done to his back was hard enough, but I didn’t think I could handle seeing what they had done to the front of him.

  But as the chair came around, I was forced to look. Rob’s face was as red as a fully ripened tomato. Both from the blood on his skin and the blood rushing to his brain. His eyes were hardly open, and I’m not sure if he knew I was sitting in front of him. He never acknowledged me being there. The front side of his left leg had been completely flayed. From his right knee, they had removed the skin, tissue, and muscle, down to the bone where his patella was fully visible. Working further toward his head, the men had completely butchered his groin in an indescribable manner. His abdomen was showing and one of his nipples had been cut off.

  All this, and Rob was still awake and breathing.

  Don looked at me and smiled before kneeling down in front of Rob again.

  “You’re going to get your wish. We just had to get your friend over here first.”

  Again, I don’t think Rob knew I was there. His eyes were looking straight at me, but he never showed any sign that he could see me. Nor did he acknowledge it to Don.

  James threw Don a hand towel, who began to slowly wipe all the blood off of the blade. The further they’d worked up Rob’s body toward his head, the more blood they’d drawn. As the knife was cleaned, it began to give off a glare in the dim light.

  Then, Don simply looked back and smiled at me once more.

  “Time to die, son,” he said, still looking at me. Then he turned to Rob. “But first, we gotta make a souvenir for your friend here to take home.”

  Don took the knife and, starting at Rob’s chin, began to carve the skin off of his face.

  Bound to the chair, I shook as hard I could in trying to break loose from the nightmare.

  I listened to Rob scream for a merciful death only until I finally passed out.

  18

  When I finally woke, I was lying on my back in a pool of water. The room was pitch black, but I assumed that I had been put back into the cellar. The smell was undeniably the same. To this day, I can still remember what that cellar smelled like. A dank, musky odor, that was almost like a collection of dead fish were lying in there with me.

  Then, I came to the sudden realization of what I had done.

  Oh my God. I passed out. I didn’t finish watching.

  Don had warned me to watch, saying that if I didn’t, I would have hell to pay. I patted myself down, making sure that my body was in tact. All my limbs were still attached and I didn’t have any shooting pain going on anywhere.

  The room being dark had me worried, though. Before, they had left the overhead light on. I began to wonder if something was waiting for me in the darkness.

  Solitary confinement is a crazy thing. I understand now how prisoners left to their own thoughts go completely mad. I had only been left alone in that cellar for hours, not weeks, months, or years, and I was already starting to go a touch crazy. Especially with nothing to think about but everything I had witnessed over the time that I’d been there. To this day, I’m not sure how long I was there in that town. Like I said before, the idea of time had basically run away from me.

  I got on my hands and knees and felt around in front of me. All I could feel was the splashing water. So, I stood up and tried to figure out where in the room I was. It was nearly impossible to tell, but I held my arms out in front of me, grasping dead air and again swatting at mosquitoes.

  Knowing that there had previously been a light in the center of the room, I put my hands up in hopes of running into it. I felt vulnerable and exposed with my arms straight up in the air. It was as if, at any minute, someone would run at me with a knife drawn and jam it right between my ribs. And considering all I had been through, maybe that wouldn’t have been so bad.

  My hands brushed against the shop light and I felt around until I found the power switch. Before I flipped it, I shut my eyes in fear of what I might see when the room lit up.

  The switch clicked as I pushed it down, and I stood there with my eyes still closed, refusing to open them.

  When I realized that having my eyes closed was possibly more terrifying, because it left me with a blank slate to think about wha
t I’d seen done to my four friends, I opened them.

  In front of me, nothing.

  I looked around the rest of the room and, to my surprise, it was empty. Nothing in the cellar had changed.

  Then, I turned my attention to the door of the cellar and noticed something.

  It was cracked open.

  I gasped, almost laughing a bit, as I limped over to the stairs.

  Each step was a struggle. I could hardly feel my legs. Between the time spent in the chair—which had wrecked my hips and my lower back—and lying on the flooded, concrete floor of the cellar, my body had begun to scream at me with every move that I made.

  When I reached the top of the stairs, I began to push up on the door, and found that it was indeed open. I smiled. I was free.

  Then, I hesitated.

  This is too easy.

  Why would the door be open? It had to be some kind of trap. Were they trying to lure me out? My arms began to shake, and I contemplated what I should do.

  Should I open the door, taking my chances that they fucked up and left it open? Or should I sit in this cellar and wait for them to drag me back out so that I can watch Blake die?

  I took a deep breath, and pushed open the large, wooden door, revealing the crescent moon’s subtle light.

  ***

  As I climbed out of the cellar, it was eerily quiet in the town. For a moment, I remained still, crouched down and observing my surroundings. No one was around, and the lights appeared to be powered off in every one of the buildings. The tub with Blake in it was no longer sitting in the middle of the dirt road that centered the town. I had to find him, so I stood, and began my search for Blake.

  I stayed alongside the buildings, avoiding the open road in the middle of the town. As I passed each structure, I peeked inside, hoping to find Blake. My thought was that he would be inside one of them, waiting for them to bring me in to watch him die.

  After I’d looked inside of a general store, a diner, and a post office, with no sign of Blake in any of them, I came across a cafe. The sign above the door was old and rustic, and showed a drawing of a woman holding a steaming cup of coffee. It looked like it was from the 1950’s. I’d already noticed that a dim light appeared to be on inside. And when I peeked through the front window, I saw him.

  Blake was sitting in the middle of the room, still lying in the tub. I started to rush into the cafe, but hesitated.

  This is too easy.

  I wanted so badly to go into the coffee shop. His back was facing me, and I wanted to see his face, no matter how messed up it might have been. I wanted Blake to see me, and have comfort in the fact that I was there and that I was alive. But something just didn’t feel right. The door to the cellar had conveniently been left open, and now the building Blake had been placed in had a light on inside. On top of all that, I really didn’t know just how many people were in this town. Including Jackie, I had only seen seven people in the town thus far, but there were quite a few more buildings in the town that other people could be hiding in. The whole thing felt like a trap, and I couldn’t bring myself to run to his side, as badly as I’d wanted to.

  As I turned away from the window, I began to look around for something, anything, that I could use as a weapon. But Beau and Don had apparently done a good job of picking up after themselves, because there was nothing around. I couldn’t even find a rock big enough to pose any kind of a threat.

  I turned and looked inside again to see the back of Blake’s head, slumped over.

  And I decided I couldn’t hold back any longer.

  I reached out, grabbed the handle, and entered the coffee shop.

  19

  On the inside, the coffee shop was no longer a coffee shop. The place had been gutted. If there’d ever actually been tables, chairs, a counter, or any kind of furniture in the place, it had all been removed. The innards of the walls were exposed, with drywall hanging only in patches along the perimeter of the room. And the one light inside the room hung from the corner, emitting a low beam that shined onto the center of the space.

  And there he was.

  Blake sat in the same tub I’d seen him in earlier, now placed in the middle of this building. The room smelled like a lethal combination of feces, vomit, blood, sweat, and dirt.

  I couldn’t bring myself to run over to him. Now that I was in the same room as he was, I was terrified of seeing his face. It had been a much easier thought when I was outside, away from the grotesque fumes that filled the confined air. But now, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to see Blake. Not like this.

  I slowly crept across the wooden floor, taking my time getting to him. His shoulders gently rose and fell, confirming that he was, indeed, alive. And I could hear him sucking in air with a slight groan, as if he was just barely able to breathe at all. The thought of him sitting in his own waste and breathing in the toxic air made me gag and want to throw up.

  As I came around the side of him, I closed my eyes and slowly pushed all the air out of my lungs. Please don’t be as bad as I imagine.

  But, it was. Worse, actually.

  Blake’s face was completely chewed up and blistered. His skin was as dark as the crimson blood that oozed out of hundreds of pores all over his body. The injuries on his face appeared to be the result of a combination of insect bites and the beaming sun melting his skin all day. It was the end of summer after all, in the humid and scorching Mississippi Delta. The thought of sitting in a cast iron tub in the open, moist air on a hundred degree day sent a burn onto my own skin.

  As I continued to scan over his body, I noticed that it was just covered with more of the same. Blake’s once fare and firm tone was now a roadmap of scars. The flesh on his chest had been torn away, and the lines of his abs which had usually been well-defined were now hidden behind an array of swollen bites and cuts. And even though it was nowhere near the atrocity of what I had seen done to Rob, Blake’s penis had also been battered in honey, causing the insects to tear it up as well. I couldn’t bare to look at it any longer, so I moved my eyes back up to his face.

  His eyes were closed. I’m not sure if it was by choice. They were so swollen that I figured he might not be able to open them, even if he’d wanted to.

  Finally, I’d taken in enough of Blake’s horrific experience, and I decided to see if I could wake him.

  “Blake,” I whispered, which received no response.

  I reached out to shake him, and stopped myself just inches away from his dry, torched shoulder.

  Speaking louder, I recited his name again. And again.

  After a few more tries, he finally began to stir. As he woke, he moved slightly in the tub, and I could hear the slick sound of his defecation sliding under him. It was too much, and I turned away and threw up all over the floor.

  Then, he began to produce audible noises. I couldn’t make out what he was trying to say, but he was attempting to speak, regardless.

  “Baby, can you hear me?”

  He continued to mumble.

  “Blake, sweetie. Can you hear me?”

  His pupils faintly appeared through cracks made between his swollen lids. I saw a tremble in his cracked lips.

  “Beck?” he mumbled. It was difficult to make out, but I knew that’s what he said.

  “I’m here, baby.” Again, I started to reach for him, but stopped myself so that I wouldn’t hurt him by touching his torched skin.

  “Beck.”

  “We’re gonna get you out of here. Okay?”

  He was groaning like he had little strength, but his arms began to move more fluently.

  “Do you think you can stand up if I help you?”

  Again, he groaned.

  “We have to try, Blake. We can’t stay here. Someone could come into this place any minute.”

  Finally, he acknowledged my plea with a slight nod.

  I moved around to his side, and he lifted his arm around me. When I placed mine around him, he grimaced and yelled out as I made contact with his skin.


  “Blake, you have to be quiet. I know it hurts, sweetie, but they’ll come after us.” I was shuddering, but understood that this might be our only shot of getting out of here.

  Again, I placed my arm around him. This time, he didn’t call out. He only grimaced again, biting down hard on his chapped lower lip.

  When he stood, his legs nearly slipped out from under him, sliding in his own fecal matter. I caught him, but inadvertently slapped him on the back in the process, which caused him to yell out again. But we were lucky. No one was coming. Not yet at least.

  He made it to his feet and carefully stepped out of the tub. His legs trembled, likely asleep in the same state mine had been when I’d been forced to sit in the wheelchair for hours without standing. But somehow, he stayed on his feet.

  With me propping him up, we slowly headed for the door.

  ***

  The warm summer air hit my skin as I walked outside with Blake leaned up against me. It still strangely appeared that no one was around, and again I began to feel uncomfortable.

  Blake still had patches of honey on his skin, and his backside was still caked with feces from the small of his back all the way down behind his knees. And with the blood staining his skin, mosquitoes began to swarm him. I think it bothered me more than it did him. It was like he’d become immune to being eaten alive by insects, from his past two days of being forced to sit under the scorching sun while they fed off of him. While I waved my hand through the air frantically, trying to shoo them away, Blake moved his hand about gently, swatting them as best he could off his skin with the little energy that he had.

  “We’re gonna get out of here, Blake.”

  He didn’t respond. His head was slumped over and the mosquitoes continued to chew on his skin.

  For the first time since I had been in the town, I was able to get a good look at the place. And when I first began to scan the area, I noticed one thing that I hadn’t picked up on before.

  Just beyond the back of the buildings across the dirt road, hundreds of trees revealed the tops of their heads above the roofs of the structures.