by Stella Hart
The girl choked up as tears streamed down her face, and she tried to wrench herself out of Greg’s grip. “You can’t do this!”
“They always say that,” he replied calmly, pulling her over to the chains hanging from the ceiling. “But it’s not true, is it? I can do whatever the fuck I want.”
He attached her arms to the chains above her head and left her hanging there, sobbing and moaning. From somewhere offscreen, a hose and bucket slid into view, along with two large bottles of soap and antiseptic fluid.
Greg began to hose the girl down, cleaning the dirt and blood from her pale body. She writhed and struggled in her bonds, crying and screaming as goosebumps cropped up all over her skin. My uncle hummed an old tune and kept going until she was fresh and clean.
“You haven’t been very good to me, Sarah,” he said a few minutes later as he dried her off with a crisp white towel. “I warned you about that at the start, didn’t I?”
“What?” she choked out.
“I warned you,” he repeated. “I told you the ones who make things easy for me get a special treat when I’m done with them. Something to numb them and make things a little easier for them. But you… you’ve been bad.”
“What the fuck did you expect?” she shouted, thrashing around again. One leg kicked outward, narrowly missing Greg’s groin.
He let out a sigh. “That’s exactly what I meant,” he said softly. “This attitude of yours. You can’t help yourself, can you?”
He started humming again as he unhooked her from the chains and carried her over to the operating table. She screamed the whole way, struggling as hard as she could, but he was much stronger than her. He pulled up canvas straps with restraints from the side of the table, pinning her wrists and feet down, and then he pulled another one over her forehead.
“Stop!” she shrieked. “Please!”
Greg ignored her and moved over to the smaller table that held all the medical instruments.
He picked up a small glass bottle and a syringe and turned back around. “See this?” he said, dangling the stuff right in front of her face. “This is what you could’ve had to make your path a little easier. But you chose the other way. That’s your fault.”
“No!”
A broad grin spread across my uncle’s face. “Don’t worry, Sarah. I actually prefer it this way. You’ve been very bad, but you’ve also become one of my favorites.”
She stopped making sounds when he stuffed something in her mouth, but her eyes, bulging and terrified, seemed to be screaming and begging anyway.
Greg turned and looked at the camera. “Showtime,” he said, performing a mock bow.
He went back to the table, slipped on a pair of latex gloves, and picked up a large scalpel. The metal gleamed under the bright fluorescent lights as he held it up. Then, without any warning, he sliced into the girl’s chest and abdomen. Her body writhed in agony, as much as it could under the restraints, and blood spurted out onto the plastic-covered floor.
My guts twisted and lurched as I stared, unable to tear my eyes away from the screen. I watched, stock still, as Greg carefully filleted the girl like a fish, removing her organs one by one before placing each of them somewhere offscreen.
She died about five minutes into the process, after the third organ was removed. Greg sighed at the sight of her limp, bloodied body and shook his head. “I hoped you’d last longer,” he said, tapping her on the head with a blue-gloved finger.
After the final organ was removed from her abdominal cavity, Greg picked up a smaller scalpel and started cutting around the girl’s eyes. Bile rose in my throat, and I finally grabbed the remote and switched off the TV, unable to bear another second of the gory horror.
I sat back and stared into space. My skin was crawling as if a million insects had descended upon my body.
My uncle was the Blackthorne Butcher. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, but I had, and it was undeniable.
Grimacing, I closed my eyes and rubbed my forehead, trying to force the images of that poor girl’s suffering out of my mind. When I opened my eyes again, my gaze fell upon the boxes that contained all the tapes Greg had filmed. Icy sludge filled my veins at the sight.
Shockingly, the discovery that my uncle was the Blackthorne Butcher wasn’t the worst part of this.
The Butcher was known to have murdered thirteen people back in 2009… but there weren’t thirteen tapes in the boxes.
There were hundreds.
4
Alexis
It was dark when I woke up. Before I registered what had happened to me, I felt a throb in my arms and shins. I let out a feeble groan and tried to move, but I could barely move a muscle.
“What’s happening?” I muttered, weakly raising my head. By now, my eyes had adjusted to the darkness, so I could see enough to get an idea of what was going on around me.
When I finally realized why I couldn’t move, my chest constricted, sucking the air clean from my lungs. Someone had stripped me naked and tied me down to a raised bench.
“Shit!” I tried my best to move my arms and legs to break out of the bindings, but it was useless. I was trapped.
As the crushing reality set in, my heart raced and sweat beaded on my hairline. Where was I? How did I get here? Where the hell was Nate?
Dark, nightmarish memories finally began to filter back into my mind, filling me with bone-chilling terror. I knew what had happened now. Nate’s uncle Greg had stolen his car and taken me with him.
There was no telling how long I’d been in the back of that car, because I’d been completely out of it on the chemicals Greg forced me to inhale. I remembered trying to count the minutes in my disoriented daze, but I’d lost count somewhere after five. That must’ve been when I passed out.
I could be anywhere on the island by now. Hell, I might not even be on Avalon at all. For all I knew, Greg had a boat at one of the ports, and he’d sailed us over to the mainland while I was out cold.
The only thing I knew for sure was that there was no point screaming for help. Greg was obviously smart enough to take me to a place where I wouldn’t be heard. That narrowed things down a bit—I obviously wasn’t in a public area—but it wasn’t enough to be helpful.
Gritting my teeth, I raised my chin and moved my head around as best I could, trying to get a better idea of my location based on what I could see.
Beyond the bench I was strapped to, there was a wide wooden door. On my right was a window covered in what appeared to be cardboard. There was some light streaming through the visible glass on the very edges of the cardboard, and the faint purplish color of it told me that it was either very early in the morning or early in the evening.
Tilting my head to the other side, I peered down at the floor. It was concrete with oil stains and the odd crack here and there, including a large one in the shape of an X. Something about it seemed oddly familiar, but I couldn’t figure out why.
An old toolbox lay tipped on its side about two feet away from the crack. It was empty.
Dammit. There was nothing I could grab as a makeshift weapon, even if I managed to get one of my arms free.
I swallowed hard and closed my eyes. All I could do was lie here and take what was coming. No amount of wishing, praying, or begging would set me free. I should’ve accepted that about my life a long time ago.
Footsteps began to echo somewhere outside. Greg was back.
He opened the door and stepped inside. I heard him moving around in the darkness for a moment, fumbling with something. Then there was a clicking sound and a bar-shaped fluorescent lamp switched on, flooding the room with bright light. My eyes immediately began to water, and I closed them and tilted my head away from the lamp.
Greg grabbed my chin and pulled my head back around, forcing me to look up at him. He’d trimmed his wild hair and beard, making him look less like a caveman and more like a Lockwood.
“I’m glad you’re finally awake,” he said, leer
ing down at me. “You’ve been out most of the day. Probably exhausted from getting railed by my nephew for the last few weeks, huh?”
“What?” I mumbled.
“You were saying his name in your sleep and moaning like a bitch in heat.” Greg gripped my chin harder, digging his fingers in until I felt like my jaw would snap off. “I knew there was something going on between you two. Must be kinky as fuck, too. I saw that scar on your leg. Killer, huh?” He smirked and shook his head. “You two must be into some weird shit.”
I didn’t bother arguing. What was the point?
Greg dropped his hand from my face and stooped by the lamp. There was a large black bag next to it that I hadn’t noticed until now.
“Supplies,” Greg said, noticing the direction of my gaze. “I did some shopping while you were asleep. You know what’s great about supposedly being dead for ten years?”
“No,” I muttered, confused about the sudden segue.
“No one looks at you twice. They might think there’s a passing similarity between you and the person they once knew—or knew of—but that’s it. Eyes glaze over and they tune you right out. You’re just another random stranger to them.” He paused and cocked his head. “You’d think it’d be the opposite, right? Like they’d look at you as if they’d just seen a ghost. But no. Like I said, no one looked at me twice.”
“Does that mean we’re still on the island?” I asked. Surely he wouldn’t have been worried about getting recognized by anyone if we were anywhere else.
Greg let out a dark chuckle. “Don’t get any ideas, sweetheart. No one is gonna find you here. Remember, it’s a big fucking island.”
“It’s not that big. Not compared to the mainland,” I replied, narrowing my eyes. “Nate will find me.”
He scoffed. “I’d be surprised if Nate could even find his own feet after what I did to him earlier. You saw how hard I hit him, right?”
“He’ll find me,” I repeated, clenching my teeth.
“No, he won’t.” Greg’s lips curved up in a nasty smile. “I wasn’t just trying to scare you last night when I told you that no one will find you. You’re in a place that no one would ever think to look.”
I swallowed thickly and changed the subject, hoping he’d inadvertently reveal something useful. “Why are you doing this?”
“Well, I’d love to say that I need to get rid of you because you know too much, but that’s simply not true.” He briefly paused and frowned. “Not the whole truth, anyway.”
“What is it then?”
His twisted smile returned. “The truth is that I’ve missed this too fucking much. You can’t even imagine how badly I’ve needed it. How many times I’ve dreamed of living this exact moment again.” He grabbed something from the bag on the floor—a pair of pliers—and stood up again, looming right over me. “That exact look in your eyes right now. The fear,” he went on, touching the cold, sharp tip of the pliers to one of my nipples. “That’s what I’ve missed the most.”
“So you’ve done this before,” I said in a low voice.
He laughed again. “Of course I have,” he said. “Christ, I forgot how fucking stupid kids in their twenties are.”
I didn’t bother to correct him about my age. Nineteen was close enough, and arguing about something so petty would probably earn me some sort of horrible punishment with the pliers.
He crouched back down and resumed his digging in the bag, pulling out knives, scalpels, ropes, rolled-up plastic sheeting, and duct tape. My blood ran cold at the sight of it all.
“What exactly are you going to do to me?” I asked, voice coming out in a shaky murmur. Until now, I’d tried my best to stay calm, but I’d lost the ability to do so as soon as the blades came out.
“What do you think I’m going to do, sweetheart?” Greg said, cocking his head slightly to one side. “Have you really not figured out who I am yet?”
Confusion roiled in my guts. “You’re Nate’s uncle.”
Greg leaned closer to me and lowered his voice. “Who else do you think I am?”
The sudden realization felt like a jolt of electricity up my spine. “You’re him,” I whispered. “The Butcher.”
“That’s right.” He smirked and stroked a hand over my bare abdomen. “Took you long enough to realize, considering how obsessed you are with the case. Nate told me all about it.”
My throat closed as terror overwhelmed me. “You… you ruined my life,” I managed to choke out. “You ruined my family. And all those people you killed... you destroyed their families too.”
Greg let out a theatrical yawn and raised a palm to his mouth. “Save it, sweetheart. I don’t give a fuck.”
“How could you?” I said, refusing to stop now that my voice had returned. “How could you go out and kill thirteen people in one night?”
I didn’t actually want to hear his repulsive reasoning for his crimes, but I figured the longer I kept him talking, the longer I would avoid pain. It might even be long enough for Nate to recover from his head injury and find me.
My insides suddenly twisted at the thought. Why on earth did I think Nate would come and find me? How could I possibly have hope for that after everything he’d done to me?
Sure, he’d probably want to find his uncle to figure out why he’d been locked up in that bunker for ten years, but there was no reason he’d want to find me, let alone help me. He’d wanted me dead for ages, so he’d probably be grateful if his uncle did the dirty work and knocked me off once and for all.
That can’t be true, a tiny voice in the back of my head whispered to me.
My breath faltered as I realized that pitiful little voice could be right. I knew a silent battle had raged inside Nate every time he came to see me in the bunker over the last week and a half. He hated my guts, but he wanted me anyway. He simply couldn’t resist the lust that ran between us like an electric current.
Maybe that would be enough to make him want to save me.
Greg peered down at me with raised brows. “You think I killed thirteen people?” he said.
My stomach lurched. “What do you mean?”
He snorted with amusement. “I killed a hell of a lot more than those kids at Blackthorne. They were just the ones I wanted to be found,” he said. “I was sick of my talents never being appreciated by anyone, so I strung them up and let the whole world see.”
I stared up at him, heart hammering. “How many were there?”
He lifted one shoulder in a nonchalant shrug, as if I’d simply asked him to recall what he had for breakfast a few days ago. “I don’t know. I can’t remember.”
“How can you not remember?” I asked, voice quaking.
“Because there were so many,” he replied, rolling his eyes upward. “Are you done asking stupid questions now?”
The shocking insight into the true extent of his crimes left me mute. For him to have forgotten the exact number of victims, he must have killed hundreds. Maybe even thousands.
Greg smiled thinly at my stunned silence. He picked up a small knife from his pile and ran the very tip of it down my right leg, making goosebumps break out over the bare skin. Then he deftly sliced open the ropes there, allowing me to move the leg around again. He repeated the action on the other side, freeing my left leg as well.
“Don’t worry, sweetheart,” he said, glancing up at my petrified face. “You aren’t going to die anytime soon.”
“Why?” I managed to choke out.
“Isn’t it obvious? I want to play with you first,” he said. He smiled and let out a soft, dreamy sigh, like he was remembering something pleasant. “Sometimes I had to keep the others locked up for days or weeks before I could slice them up. That was actually one of the best parts—seeing and hearing how scared they were, with no idea what was coming. Just like you right now.”
He brought the knife up to my throat, eyes gleaming with disdain. “I especially enjoyed playing with the women. Do you know why?”
“Because you could forc
e them to fuck you,” I said in a hollow voice.
He smirked. “No, that’s not it. Some of the young men I took were quite attractive, so I could’ve had them too, if that’s what I wanted,” he said. He leaned closer and dragged the tip of the knife down my chest. Beads of blood appeared in its wake. “Sexuality is a spectrum, you know. It doesn’t matter who someone is, where they come from, or what they have between their legs. If I want to fuck them, I’m going to fuck them. But I didn’t want that from any of the people I killed.”
“Then why did you prefer the women more?” I asked. “Because they were weaker? Easier to hurt?”
Greg shook his head, upper lip curling with disgust. “No. I preferred them because they were so fucking pathetic. It was actually funny,” he said. “Most of them thought they could seduce me into letting them go. But I made sure to show them just how much their pussies were worth. You know how much that was, sweetheart?”
“No.”
“Nothing.” He lifted his hand and smacked it down on my bare pussy, making me scream as pain ricocheted through me. “They were as worthless as the skin and bones around them.”
He hit me between the legs again, even harder this time, and I sobbed as hot tears rolled down my face. I thought I’d be comforted by the knowledge that this man wasn’t going to force me into doing anything sexual with him, but I wasn’t, because I knew he was still going to hurt me as much as humanly possible.
“My favorite was a girl named Corinne,” Greg said, briefly closing his eyes as if he were watching the memories playing on a screen inside his head. “I remember everything about her. So beautiful but so stupid. She tried to act like she actually enjoyed everything I did to her. As if that would get me on her side and change my mind about what I wanted from her.”
“What did you want from her?” I asked through gritted teeth.
“You’ll see,” he replied. “As long as you don’t die too quickly when it gets to that stage. Some of the others did. It was so disappointing.”
He left my side and went back over to the bag on the floor. When he returned, he was holding up some sort of vegetable. It was thick and pale yellow.
