“I didn’t tell you how,” Shannon said. He kept his stare fixed on the pastel. “Winters skinned Joe alive. He made Susan watch.”

“Jesus.”

A hard grimace tightened the muscles along Shannon’s jaw. It was worse than what he had said. Charlie Winters had also made Susan beg him to kill Joe instead of herself, but Shannon couldn’t tell Eli or anyone else that part of it.

“He tied Susan up with wire and had her helpless. If I brought anyone with me, he would’ve killed her and then surrendered to the police. The only chance I had was crashing through a window and getting to him before he knew what was happening. I screwed up, though, and my foot caught on the window sill. Before I could get to my feet he hit me on the back of my head with something hard, I think a lamp. While I was on the floor, he broke my two fingers with a nutcracker. He worked on those broken fingers for almost an hour, trying to force me to cut Susan with a knife. At one point I said something that pissed him off and he twisted a little too hard with that nutcracker.”

“Jesus, Bill…”

Shannon kept his stare locked on the pastel. He waited until Eli’s voice trailed off before continuing. “I might’ve left my body then,” he said. “I don’t know, I could’ve hallucinated the whole thing. It seemed, though, as if I’d been shot up into a corner of the ceiling and then just sort of hovered there, watching everything below me with a kind of weird detachment-like it was nothing but a movie. It was like I was watching as Winters realized he was only holding onto my two torn-off fingers, then my body turning on him and using the knife he tried to make me hurt Susan with to cut off his goddamn ugly malformed head. Next thing it was as if I was sucked out of the air and back into my body.”

Shannon’s gaze shifted from the pastel to Eli. His friend’s face was ashen. “So what do you think,” Shannon asked. “Would King be able to do something with that story?”