Chapter Twenty
On the third day of the fifth week, Matt was no longer showing up for meals.
Dining was still in one centralized location, and the five still interacted with one another on a regular basis throughout the day in order to use the bathroom, or share kitchen facilities.
Everyone initially assumed that he had segregated himself in the workshop, and was attempting to function as a more separate entity to the rest of the group.
After a few days, Al became noticeably worried and when they went to the workshop to make inquiries, they found it empty and looked as though it had been that way for some time.
The four immediately formed a search party, scouring the remainder of the camp.
Rob continued to comb the workshop, John, circled the lake, Al took the woods closest to the workshop, and Harry took the woods closest to the dormitory.
The search went on in this manner for a number of hours, each of the four hearing Matt's name echoing, unanswered, throughout the boundaries of the camp. Then as twilight approached, Al came upon Matt's remains in the woods to the north of the camp, half way between the workshop, and the dormitories, in the section where none of the prisoners had yet gone into in search of either forage or firewood.
The smell was what first caught Al's attention.
When Al arrived on the scene, he fell to his knees and vomited. The nausea did not abate quickly, and he had to stumble out of the woods, and into the clearing to continue vomiting in the meadow.
Harry, who had been patrolling the other side of the woods, came over to meet Al, to see what was the matter. Al could not even respond, and only pointed a shaky finger into the wood toward where he had found Matt's body.
Harry set his face in grim determination, and walked into the wood.
Matt's body had been dismembered. Each piece lay strung up to a tree with wire, a needle threaded through each excised portion of Matt's anatomy.
Harry surveyed the depravity, and shook his head in despair. In all of the time that Harry had spent in the service of war, he had never experienced anything so grotesque. The smell was terrible and the carrion were already decomposing the remnants of Matt's body.
Harry turned away, leaving the torso of Matt strung up, as it was, on the branch of an oak tree. Behind the macabre ornaments of Matt's flesh was an inscription, carved into the trunk of the tree.
“If thine eye offend thee, cut it out.”