The Witness
Donald McCarthy
I rock on the porch chair, listening to it creak. It’s old, purchased almost twenty years ago, just before I was born, when my parents bought this house. The chair would probably break if I weighed a normal amount for an eighteen-year-old man; however, I’m twenty pounds under, a stick of a person.
As I sit, the street turns still in anticipation of the weather. The insects quiet, the birds retreat. I enjoy this rare moment of silence in my increasingly chaotic life. Graduating high school turned out to be less of an accomplishment and more of an onslaught of decisions, each one feeling more life-altering than the last. I try to convince myself I’ll be on the porch forever, that I can stretch out this one minute and hide in it for years. There’d be no anxiety since there’d be nothing new, just a permanent, comforting stillness.
The fantasy ends when the wind smacks my face. The leaves on the trees turn upward, showing their greener undersides, and the gray clouds coalesce into mountains. Muffled thunder sounds in the distance, promising a memorable next hour. The rain trickles, then turns steady, then ferocious. My porch is deep enough that I’m mostly protected from the rain, although some drops manage to make it onto my lap. The scent overpowers, that fresh, wet smell.
The storm lulls me into a new state of calm. Even if I can no longer comfort myself with the thought of a forever moment, I’m humbled by the power of nature, a welcome reminder that my personal troubles don’t matter much in nature’s grand scheme.
Halfway through the storm, I notice a man at the edge of my driveway. I cannot distinguish his features as night has almost entirely fallen, but he’s tall, well built, and stands at an angle while looking at me. I have no idea who he is, but I know I don’t want him here. I want to scurry back into the house, yet I have the awful notion that if I move, he’ll move.
He stays in place, apparently unbothered by the rain, facing towards me. He’s no neighbor, no friend, no classmate from my graduating class. He’s no tourist, no wanderer, no lost soul. He’s something very new or something very old. The certainty in that feeling is as unsettling as the man’s presence. I don’t think he cares about the storm, perhaps doesn’t even notice it.
As the rain slows, he leaves. Or, if I’m honest, fades away, as if he could not quite manifest into this world.
Then again, my imagination has always been termed “overactive”. In bed that night, I turn it over in my mind. Maybe there was no man there. Or maybe he was a normal man. Or maybe it was my mind telling me of danger to come, that what will happen next is already written. Maybe in the chair, in that moment, a part of me already knew. Knew about the violence to come.
Knew about the end of the world.
I’m in the backseat of Zach’s beat up Toyota, slouched down, listening to Jeremy and Zach talk as we race down an empty road. 2pm on a Monday isn’t exactly rush hour.
“What do you think?” Jeremy asks. Aggression coats the question. Takes me a moment to realize the question is for me. I clear my throat, sit up a bit, try to run back the last thirty seconds so I can recall what he said. When I realize that’s not gonna work, I settle on, “What do you mean?”
“About who’s doing the murders?” he asks, turning to look at me. He has a shaved head and the nastiest yet brightest blue eyes. His jaw is an almost perfect square, and his nose is crooked from a break. Who on Earth had the bravery to punch him, I don’t know, but I’d love to shake their hand.
“I have no idea,” I say. “It’s freaky, though.” The murders, and there have been two of them, seem to have no obvious connection other than both victims dying of slit throats. One, a middle-aged woman, lived in our town, and the other, a guy only a couple years older than me, lived two towns over. Neither knew each other, and they died a week apart, the latter the night of the thunderstorm. But everyone, from the police to the newscasters to folks like us, assumed the murders are connected, though no one can quite say why.
An instinct? A premonition? Maybe both.
Jeremy turns back to face the street ahead, done with me. That’s fine. I’d rather be ignored. I stare out the window, the sky warm and blue, the sun strong, yet there’s no optimism in the air like last summer. Just an endless flat world.
“I bet they’re not related,” Zach says. He has the same dark hair that I do, but his is short unlike mine, which ends at my shoulders. “It’s just that nothing ever happens around here, so people are getting too excited.”
“They’re connected,” I say. Not sure why I speak, but I do. And I believe it.
“What makes you think so?” Zach asks. He keeps his tone light, maybe to prevent Jeremy from grilling me on my opinion.
“As soon as I heard about the second one on the news, I knew it was the same person. Just had this intense feeling.”
Jeremy whips back around. “What do you mean by a feeling?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, you said it. You meant something.”
“You don’t ever get feelings?”
“Not ones I can’t explain, no, that’d be idiotic.” Whatever anger resides in Jeremy wants to be let out, and I can tell he thinks I’m a good target for it. He keeps his gaze on me, and I turn to look out the window again. I can feel him still watching, however, and I want to put my hand up, block my face from his stare.
“Jer, how’s Amber?” Zach asks.
Jeremy doesn’t answer at first. He wants me to feel his gaze. “She’s done,” he says after a while. “I dumped her.”
“Shit, really? You didn’t say.” Zach’s voice goes a little higher, almost as if he’s excited. Does he like Amber? Or do I have Zach all wrong?
“She hangs out with too many other men. Did it again last week, hung out with two other guys after work. Just friends, she says. Bullshit. She’s doing it to provoke me.” I risk a look. Jeremy has his left hand on the center console, grabbing it tight, and I can see the left side of his face as he stares at Zach. “It was the last straw. I’m not going to be with someone so disrespectful.” His eyes are wide, his nostrils flared, and he’s biting down on his bottom lip so hard that there should be blood.
I shrink back into my seat. The contempt in his tone suffocates me. It makes me not want to be a man, not want to be anything like him. I get this awful image of Jeremy pressing a red button again and again and again, ending the world a thousand times over and not caring because the rage is all that matters to him.
Zach accelerates. We’re on a trip to nowhere. Jeremy is still ranting about Amber. Didn’t she know how good she had it? Doesn’t she understand respect? Whole world is rotten, according to Jeremy. Whole damn world has it coming, in fact.
“If Jeremy sticks around, then you have to stop hanging out with Zach,” Sandra tells me. “Trust me.”
Talk of Jeremy unnerves me almost as much as the thought of that man returning. “Did Amber tell you he broke up with her?” I look at Sandra’s face, although only briefly, before looking back out at the parking lot. I didn’t want to stare, make it weird. She’s pretty. Warm brown eyes, light brown hair. I should be attracted to her, and it makes me uneasy that I’m not. There’s nothing wrong with her. What’s wrong with me?
“Good,” Sandra says with urgency. “She’s better off. I’ve heard it from so many girls during senior year, how he’s, well, I was going to say bad news but that makes me sound like I’m from the ’50s. He’s a monster, basically.”
I nod, although her instruction to distance myself from Zach seems impossible. He and I go way back; do I discard him because of Jeremy? Try to convince him to cut Jeremy out? I want to ask Sandra, but I don’t want to voice my suspicions about why Zach has Jeremy around. I trust Sandra, sure, but you never really know anyone, right? “Someone must’ve told him off once,” I say. “His nose was broken at one point and healed wrong.”
Sandra puts a hand on my headrest. She leans in closer. “His dad did it. Girl he dated in Freshman year told me. The dad slammed his own kid with an open palm. Cracked the nose bone easily. Then the dad tells Jeremy it wasn’t that bad, so it didn’t get looked at for a while. That’s why it healed weird. There’s almost something kinda sexy about that look, but unfortunately it’s Jeremy, and I like not walking around in fear of the guy next to me.”
“Jesus,” I mutter. I think of my own father, dead now due to what he inhaled while working for Tyrius Incorporated, a defense company. My mom tried to sue but to no avail. “So his dad was an asshole like him, huh?”
“He was some sort of end of days occultist, too. Surprised he wasn’t at Waco. He believed in real nutty shit. He killed himself eventually.”
“Almost makes me feel bad for Jeremy,” I mutter.
“Yeah, but you can feel all the pity in the world for a guy like him, and he’ll still beat the shit out of you anyway.”
I don’t know what to say to that. I try not to picture Jeremy, but I feel like he’s in the backseat, stabbing me with his gaze. Or perhaps behind the car, looking in through the rear window. My hand shakes at the idea, and Sandra notices, but she thinks it’s from something else.
“Do you want to kiss me? It doesn’t have to mean anything.”
She’s always been blunt, but this is the first time she’s asked about a kiss. Is she unsure? I am. I always thought when it comes to moments like this, we’re sure, that it’s the surest thing in the world. I don’t think I should say no to her, so we start to kiss, my lips around her top lip. I place my hand on her shoulder, and she puts hers on the back of my head. I keep kissing her, slowly, not feeling anything and also feeling everything.
I keep my eyes shut tight as we do it. If anyone is out there watching, I don’t want to know.
Now, I’m ready to go home, but I don’t want to say so, don’t want to offend her. I know I let her down. I think she might be hurt that I asked for nothing more, fine with ending our timid intimacy.
“I saw something weird the other day,” I tell her. I’m partially trying to fill the silence, and partially trying to put to rest the paranoia I’ve felt lately. Shouldn’t saying my thoughts aloud drain them of power? The grief therapist told me that. “During that thunderstorm last week, I thought I saw a person at the end of my driveway. But it was like he was only partly there.” I eye for the thousandth time the parking lot that hides in darkness. “Things have just felt so weird this summer. I wonder if there’s something wrong with my brain. They say it’s this age when people develop schizophrenia or other issues.”
“You’re not crazy,” she quickly assures me. Does she do so because she believes it or because she doesn’t want to fathom being in a car with a crazy guy in the middle of the night? “It does feel weird. Sometimes, I think it’s because the new millennium is around the corner.”
“And the other times?” I ask. I can hear the anxiety in my tone. I hate it.
“Sometimes it feels like… I don’t know.” She pauses, then adds, “My mom says it feels like there’s almost another world rubbing up against ours, right here in this town. Like something is trying to get in.”
“Why?”
“Because no one ever notices what goes on in towns like ours.” She quiets, then softly adds, “So no one will notice what’s coming until it’s too late.”
I look outside the car, out at the night. We seem so alone, but perhaps not alone enough.
I usually feel refreshed by spending some nights outside alone, where you can have an honest conversation with your inner self. Not tonight, though. I’m tired, my legs not so much aching as drained. I slow, catching my breath and glance across the street. Jeremy’s house is there. I knew it would be, I’ve always known he lived across from the park. I didn’t intend to come this way just to see it, but I also didn’t plan to avoid it, either.
The house sits but not silently. Its two top windows are dark and empty. Its double doors are shut, yet a sound emanates from them, one that I hear in my mind more than in my ears. This is a house of bad things, a house full of memories people have tried to banish, a house infected with despair, a house where screams have been much more common than laughs.
I wanted to be a normal house, Jeremy’s home says. I wanted to be like all the others. But do not come in here. If you do, I cannot let you out.
I resume my run; the house continues to speak, but I go faster and faster, its words merging into sad mutterings.
There’s an echo, a sense that the speaker on the other end is in a vast room.
“Hello?” I say again.
The speaker clears his throat. His voice sounds deep but raspy. “I saw you outside the other night.” He clears his throat again. The static on the line intensifies, and I can only make out a few other words. “…you missed… but I’ll see you… and you’ll see where I come from… do to this world.”
“What?” I whisper.
Total silence for a few seconds. Then, “I won’t repeat myself. Goodnight.”
I hold the phone, unsure what to do or what to say.
“Everything okay?” my mother calls from the living room.
I put the phone back in the cradle. I have to make a decision. I could tell her about the call, about Jeremy, about how everyone knows something, somewhere, is wrong. Or I can pretend the call never happened. I can write it off as a drunken prank by some moron whose words had no true meaning. I can take the phone call and place it in a box in the back of my mind with other thoughts and experiences I don’t know how to grapple with.
“Wrong number,” I shout back.
As Zach tells me this, his grip on his steering wheel tighter than I’ve ever seen it, I realize he loves Jeremy. How can he love someone like that? I don’t know. I can’t know. No one other than Zach can, and maybe not even Zach.
I don’t reply to him. We’re barreling down the highway, nearing our destination, and what’s coming next is inevitable. I know what Jeremy is. I know what he’s most likely been doing. It’s not about whether I’ll have to face something awful. No, that’s certain; even if I jumped out of this car, I’d somehow end up back within his vicinity.
Hell, I almost tell Zach to hurry up.
When we pull up and step out of the car, I learn Zach wasn’t wrong. Dead trees, with bark that’s grey, border the rectangular concrete sinkhole that was once the wastewater site. The concrete path around it is cracked, black and brown vines growing out of the schisms, as if they creep out of some other dark world. The soil appears as dead as the trees, and it crunches beneath our feet, sometimes shattering at the touch as we approach the site’s edge. I expected a smell of shit, but instead I smell ash; perhaps something burned here for a very long time, its miniscule remnants forever haunting the air. There’s no wastewater anymore, though. Apparently, this place is too cursed even for that.
The descent to the flat base of the site, which I estimate as only a little less than a football stadium’s, is sharp, and we have to hold our arms out to keep balance, watching out for vines and breaks in the concrete. On either side of the sump rest two large pipes, both with diameters at least double the average man’s height. There’s graffiti on the site’s walls, but it’s written in a language I don’t recognize. Jeremy waits at the center of the base; it looks like he’s talking, and quickly, but I can’t hear him.
I almost slip during the descent, but Zach grabs my wrist, ending my slide. “Thanks,” I say to him, and he gives me a smile that I suspect is as much to reassure himself as it is me.
We walk towards Jeremy, who makes no move to come to us. “Hey, man,” Zach says to Jeremy. “You were right about this place. Weirdest feeling.”
That’s a way to put it. I might have used the word apocalyptic. I glance behind me at the massive pipe, having the sense something stares out at me from that void. I have to fight from saying that I don’t like this place as I’m afraid of how Jeremy will respond.
I’m right to be.
Jeremy grabs Zach’s right shoulder and pulls him close. I can only just make out what Jeremy says to my friend: “I’m sorry. I did like you.”
Jeremy must have done this before because the motion is so smooth. With his free hand, he removes a switchblade from his pocket, opens it, and slices Zach’s throat, turning him, the blade plunging deep enough that a waterfall of blood comes out immediately, pouring everywhere except on Jeremy. I can smell my friend’s blood, a sickly scent.
He lets Zach fall as I turn and run, but Jeremy is already moving towards me. He comes fast, leaping, and shoves me to the harsh concrete, the skin ripping off my knees. That’s nothing to what comes next. His knife goes into my right calf muscle, and he pulls down, shredding it. I open my mouth to scream, but the pain is so overwhelming that nothing comes out. He climbs off me and I try to stand, but my torn leg immediately gives out, and now I do scream.
I expect another stab, but none comes. Jeremy breathes hard, looming over me. He grips his knife tight, and I can tell how very badly he wants to stab me again. Probably many, many times. “Don’t try to move or I’ll slice your other leg,” he says. “I can continue to hurt you, understand? In ways you’ve never thought of.”
The sun shines down, hot and cruel. My leg is agony, the torn muscle pulsing, but I try to place the pain in a distant place inside my mind so I can concentrate on surviving. “What do you want?” I ask, although I don’t expect some profound answer. I just can’t stay silent, can’t lay here and do nothing.
“Every summoning needs its sacrifice,” he says. He leans down, drawing something in blood with his stained knife. “And every revelation needs its witness.” He stands. “When my father killed himself, I looked away at the last second. When I killed those other two, there was no one there to see me. Now, it’ll be different.”
“A summoning?” I ask, unsure I’ve heard him right. There’s a pulsing in my ears, maybe my blood pressure. My skin hurts, too: the sun seems angrier, its warmth harsh against me.
Jeremy smiles, but there’s a tinge of sadness around the edges of his mouth. “Someone who hates the world like I do. Someone who understands that people are vile. Someone who can do something about it.” His smile, though, it falters. He’s been waiting to do this, I think, but only now does he realize what he’s truly done.
He raises his arm, as if pointing at the sewer entrance, blood dripping from his knife. “Here he comes. I’ll finally see him.”
I crane my neck to look. The entrance to the sewer has a haze, as if reality squirms, unsure how to form itself. The pulsing grows louder, the harsh sun crueler, and my leg… my leg doesn’t even feel like it’s part of me anymore.
A squishing sound makes me turn back, and I see Jeremy is cutting off Zach’s face. He holds the skin up as if inspecting it and then places it against his own, the blood sticking it in place. He approaches me again, blood dripping off his mask.
Jeremy stretches out his arms, still holding his knife in his right hand. And as my head throbs it seems that above him the sun is now black, the sky a dull purple. He stays in that pose, like a dancer frozen, with the otherworldly horizon behind him.
It might be that we stayed there together for a lifetime. So much can be contained in a moment; I learned that during the thunderstorm.
I blink again, and the sky is back to blue, the sun back to an angry yellow. Normalcy. Awful, vile normalcy. I try to pull myself across the concrete. I keep the leg’s pain in the back of my mind, although it fights back hard, desperately trying to overwhelm me.
“You look so funny,” Jeremy says. Is his voice different? It sounds different. Like it comes from a place far away. “Look at you squirm, little worm.”
I want to curse at him; I want to beg for his mercy. I do neither, concentrating on, yes, squirming away from him.
“I’ll come back for you, right?” he says. He strides forward, pins me with a foot on my chest. “One day. You’ll wait. And wait. It’ll be the end of the world, but slow. For you. For everyone. An apocalypse you won’t admit is happening, until one day you look around and all is ruin.”
He bends down and grabs me, his hands wet with blood, and smashes my head into the concrete. There’s darkness, an echo, too, and maybe a light in the distance, a violet one. Something calls. I want to go to it, but, instead, I wake and see the sun. Jeremy is gone; he’s discarded me like dirt. And why not? What am I, or any of us, in the wake of the man who believes he brings the end of the world?
Eventually someone finds me, because of the abandoned cars. I tell them not to pick me up, that it doesn’t matter anymore, that life is going to be spent waiting for the end. They think I’m babbling and save me anyway.
I stand where Zach died. Poor, foolish Zach. I talk to him, or what I remember of him, some nights before I sleep. And Jeremy? Did he die here, too, let that entity he believed was coming actually take him over? Or did he become the man he truly was, and this stupid horror was simply him giving himself permission? I don’t know which possibility is worse.
There’s no markings on the ground, no dried blood, nothing to indicate the violence that went on here. All minor things wash away. Even my leg is mostly healed, outside a grotesque scar.
No matter what, he’s still out there somewhere. That’s the big one. That’s what matters. I know he’s still walking around, maybe with Zach’s face over his own.
You feel it, too, right? You know you’re living, that we’re all living, during the very slow end of the world.
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