Dead Connections

Chapter 18 - Silenced

It didn’t take a genius to realise what that meant. Drew was going to die. I gasped, my hand fluttering up to my mouth. Ember jumped at the movement.

“What? What’s he written?” Ember asked urgently.

Before a word escaped my lips Unseen pushed himself up off the wall and shut his notebook. I jumped back and stood next to Ember, shivering with fright. Unseen smiled to himself, slotting his notebook in his back pocket and removing another item from a different pocket.

A knife.

“Oh,” Ember gasped, her face going paler than usual. I couldn’t breathe. A lump rose in my throat and my heart threatened to take off and come up my throat and out my mouth. My knees buckled and I had to hold onto Ember, who didn’t look so steady herself.

I watched in horror as Unseen gripped the knife tightly in his hand and sauntered into the room, facing Drew. Drew was sat in the corner; a hunched figure, broken and weak.

“Stand up,” Unseen barked, his features remaining calm.

“Huh?” Drew sniffed.

“Stand up,” Unseen repeated viciously. Drew got up, gently yet stiffly. I prayed that I was somehow alive and that I could run to save Drew, but there was nothing I could do. I was in a different dimension, and as much as I tried to tear down the barriers I just couldn’t do it. I was watching it like a spineless spectator.

Drew saw the knife and dashed backwards so his thin back was pressed firmly against the wall. He began to plead for his life, as most people would do. There was a lot of ‘please don’ts’, and ‘I’m sorry’, and ‘I’ll do anything’s but Unseen knew what he was doing. Drew saw it too, in Unseen’s eyes – His glare of determination.

“Turn around,” Unseen ordered Drew. Drew was crying properly now the tears streaming down his face mixing with the dried blood. He pleaded some more, and turned round so he was facing the wall. Unseen grabbed a clump of Drew’s hair with his fist and pulled it upwards. Drew let out a yelp of pain, and Unseen pulled Drew’s head backwards so that Drew was exposing his neck. Ember nudged me, horror in her eyes.

“You might want to look away,” Ember advised. But I couldn’t. I was drawn to it. I didn’t want to watch but something made me. Something made me stand there, feeling nautious and sick, like I was about to faint, or scream or cry, or all of them, but I was too scared to cry, and too upset to scream, so I just stood there, numb with fear. I watched.

The next 4 seconds changed my life.

The screams that rang out across the still, silent house were deafening, and Unseen slashed Drew’s neck three time’s with his knife. Blood sprayed everywhere. I stumbled backwards, terrified. Drew crumpled to the floor, motionless. That didn’t stop Unseen though. Unseen collapsed to the floor and slit Drew’s neck for the fourth time before actually stabbing the knife right through so that the end of the blade touched the floor beneath Drew.

I was going to puke. I would have if I hadn’t been completely frozen in shock. I was incapable of doing anything at that moment, apart from standing there in horror, watching this murder take place.

Ember was also watching, as baffled as I was. At times, she tried to look away but her curiosity pulled her back.

Most people believe that dying is one of the worst thing that you can experience. That is false. The worst thing that could happen to you is that you watch someone else die and you can’t do anything about it. I felt terrible. It was like the world had ended, and I was still just standing there, watching.

Unseen removed the knife from Drew’s neck, who now had a large pebble of dark red blood forming round him, and he wiped the blood off of the knife and onto the bottom of the jeans.