by Brian Rowe
I sat up and brought my feet to the ground. I rubbed the tips of my fingers against my forehead. “But Leese… if you couldn’t stop her with all your magical powers… how in the hell are the two of us going to stop her, when neither of us have any powers? She’s inherited your magic, and now we both have nothing. There’s no stopping her.”
“That’s not true!” Liesel shouted.
“It is true! We’re not gonna have a chance!” I took a few deep breaths and tried to compose myself. “Why is she doing this, anyway?”
“She’s mad about Mom.”
“She’s mad about your mom. So she’s gonna destroy the planet.”
“Something like that. She said this was something she’d been planning ever since I abandoned her over four years ago. You know what she told me up there on the mountain?”
“What?”
“She’s robbed the powers of five other witches who live in the western part of the United States, plus me. So now she has the powers of seven witches put together. Seven, I guess, was the magic number. That’s what she needed to make this happen.”
“Oh my God…” I swallowed long and hard, then darted my eyes at hers. “Leese, if we can’t stop it…”
“We will.”
“Things are gonna get crazy… really, really, really fast—”
“Oh my God, he’s walking!” somebody shouted on the grass from afar. “Honey, our son is walking!”
Liesel didn’t bother to address the commotion, but I looked over at the field, not overjoyed at the idea of this little boy walking for the first time, but overly depressed in knowing that the kid was going to grow up without a mother and father very soon here if we didn’t get this insurmountable problem solved fast and efficiently. Hell, if we couldn’t find and kill Hannah, this little two-year-old only had three months left to live. And then he’d be dead.
And then the world, as humankind knew it, would be obliterated. Forever.
Now my head and my stomach hurt. This was all just too much to take. I stood up and started walking down the sidewalk, not having any clue how to get to the Capitol. I just wanted to walk again, let the breeze flow through me, take in the sights and sounds of a brand new city, and try my best to forget the horrors Liesel and I were about to face.
DOM
“That Tim Allen, what a kook,” Dom said, watching his fourth episode of Home Improvement in a row. Chewing on a gooey, cinnamon waffle, he figured, since those kids were so little, that this was one of the earlier seasons of the show. “The only problem with this show are the damn commercials!”
Liesel’s eighty-four-year-old grandfather, now eighty-five, had woken up a little past four this morning. He had only moved in the past seven hours to make himself some tea and a waffle, and to sit down in his comfy yellow chair in what he liked to call the “story room.” His television set was a forty-two-inch Samsung bought three years ago, marking the only major appliance in his ancient apartment that he had purchased in the last decade. He loved it, and was happy Liesel had insisted on it. His old TV, which still worked even though it had been bought in 1986, had definitely needed an upgrade.
Dom scratched his butt and enjoyed the last bite of his waffle. He brushed the cinnamon specks off his white t-shirt and sat upright in his chair.
“Tim, the Tool Man Taylor,” he said with a chuckle, shaking his head, and waddling over to the kitchen to throw away his paper plate. “The guy gets me every time. Why they don’t make new episodes of this show is beyond me. Maybe I should write the company a letter. Or better yet. I’ll write Tim Allen a letter!”
He pulled a piece of paper out of a drawer and set a pen next to it. He sat down on his stool and tried to think of a way to start his letter. He sat there for five minutes, at least, trying to form in his muddled brain the perfect opening sentence.
Finally, he set his pen down and walked back toward his bedroom. “I’ll write the letter tomorrow. I have all the time in the world, after all!”
Dom hadn’t showered in two days, so he decided his next order up for business, before sitting back down on his favorite chair for another TV marathon—he decided he’d change over to old episodes of Full House, or maybe Saved by the Bell: The College Years—was to take a quick shower. He made his way back toward his bedroom, but stopped when he reached the door.
He took a few steps forward, turned to his right, and looked into his granddaughter Liesel’s bedroom, its door wide open. The place didn’t look like a bomb had gone off anymore, thank God. Liesel hadn’t been home for long before departing for her European honeymoon, but she had cleaned the place up so well it was as if a ten-member maid service had serviced the room. He did, though, see one pair of her underwear under her bed. He didn’t like that. He didn’t want to think of his granddaughter like that. Even though she wasn’t really his granddaughter. It was just something he had led himself into believing over these last four and a half years. He was an old geezer, but his mind, and his memory, hadn’t completely disintegrated yet.
“You look like you could use a friend,” a young girl had asked him across a pizza joint one evening.
And it was true. He did. When Dom’s wife Carolyn died six years ago, he became lost, like he had never been capable of taking care of himself before meeting his wife at the age of twenty back in Denison, Iowa. He had lost touch with his friends over the years. Carolyn was it for him. And when she passed away, he had nothing left. When Liesel strolled into his life and offered him comfort and friendship, in exchange for him telling everyone a lie, he didn’t have to think twice. It was simple—he had someone in his life again, and someone to care for him in return. It was a win-win.
Dom smiled and closed the door behind him. He just stood there in the hallway for a moment, realizing how much he missed his friend, his caretaker, his granddaughter, whoever she was. She was the best thing since Carolyn. She gave him a reason to live. And that was what mattered most.
He turned to his left and looked up at a framed picture of him and Liesel hugging each other at Uncle Tony’s.
“Oh, Liesel…” he said, resting his hands against the wall. “Get back soon. I sure miss you.”
He stepped back toward his bedroom, and his bathroom, trying to ignore a subtle headache coming on, not to mention, a temporary cramp in his hands.
Dom thought long and hard about what color towel to use when he reached the cabinet nearest the bathroom door. He had towels in all colors, including purple, turquoise, and a dark, bloody red. He picked the light green one, stepped into the bathroom, and turned on the bright overhead light.
He didn’t really mind his small living space—he actually preferred the tiny apartment versus the two-story house he had lived in for over twenty years—but he did admit from time to time he wasn’t a huge fan of the miniscule bathroom. While the bedrooms in this apartment were medium-sized, his bathroom was barely big enough to fit a shower and a toilet, let alone himself. Liesel’s bathroom wasn’t any bigger across the way, but still, he would’ve preferred to find an apartment with bathrooms big enough to move around comfortably in. But he was too old now. He didn’t want to move to another apartment. And certainly, as he told Liesel now and again, he was never going to spend a second in one of those senior living homes.
He dropped his shirt, then his pants, then his tighty whitey underpants. He glanced at his face in the mirror and slapped his cheeks.
“You’re lookin’ younger every day, my friend,” he said to himself. “Don’t you ever forget that.”
Dom turned on the shower, stuck his arm out, and waited ten seconds for the water to turn warm. He looked down and noticed his hands aching again. He shook his head and stepped into the shower.
He only made it halfway in. His right foot nicked the edge of the shower door, and before he could reach out to stop himself, Dom slipped forward and slammed his forehead against the shower wall.
The pain was so fierce that he started to cry. He tried to stand back up, but he couldn’t
move. The water started splashing against his face and neck, and he looked up to see a giant blood stain pressed against the wall.
He turned away from the stain, up toward the ceiling, up toward the bright light. He could see the silhouette of his beloved Carolyn smiling down at him. He took a few more deep breaths, then closed his eyes and let the warm water rush over him.
2.
“Oh my God, Cam, have you heard about this? Come take a look at this!”
I was still only half awake when I noticed my little sister shoving her hands against my tender ribs. I kicked her away, playfully, and leaned over to rest my head against Liesel’s. But she was nowhere to be found in the bed.
I sat up, reluctantly. “What is it? What time is it?”
“Cam, you’ve gotta see this news report! They’ve played it a few times this morning. It’s pretty crazy. Come on. Liesel and I are watching it.”
It took me two seconds to remember everything that had gone down in the last thirty-six hours. And when the seconds were up, my heart leapt past my throat, all the way up through my brain and out the top of my head.
News report? What? No! They can’t be picking up on what’s happening already, can they? It’s only been one day!
I jumped out of bed and ran into the adjacent room, where my sister was sprawled out on her unmade bed, and Liesel was sitting, solemn and quiet, in a chair. Kimber turned up the volume on the television.
The female reporter was blonde and gorgeous. It didn’t look like Hannah’s big, mighty spell had hit this particular woman yet. “It’s a strange, bizarre phenomenon that seems to be hitting cities all over the world. That’s right, I will state again. Babies are starting to age at a rapid rate. There were reports as early as yesterday morning, but now there are at least five hundred cases, all around the world, of one-year-old babies growing rapidly, already looking as if they are as old as three or four. And this morning we’ve had preliminary reports of older children, as old as eight and nine, looking like, they too, are a year or two older than they should be. We will be sticking with this story for the remainder of the day and will be updating you as more details come in…”
“Kimber, can you please turn this off?” I asked.
“Are you insane? No way!”
My sister brought her hands up to her chin, mesmerized, as if she was taking in an escapist summer blockbuster. I hadn’t noticed it at all yesterday, but I could sure tell this morning. Kimber, fourteen on Friday night, was now sixteen years old. She didn’t know, of course. Thankfully her breasts hadn’t doubled in size or anything. I could just tell in her face that there was a little more maturity.
“Leese…” I said, turning my attention to my wife.
She sighed and bit down on her bottom lip. “Cam… we have to get back.”
“What time’s our flight?”
“In four hours.”
“Good.” I darted my eyes toward the bathroom. “Where’s Mom and Dad?”
“They went for a jog,” Liesel said. “They should be back any minute.”
“A jog?” I shouted. “There’s no time for a jog!”
Kimber didn’t seem to notice the tension in the room. She just shouted, “Shhh!” and kept her focus on the TV program.
I turned back to the TV, where the same reporter was now talking to a doctor.
“We’re looking into many theories,” the doctor said. “Because this is happening both in and outside the United States, any kind of bacterial strain in food has been ruled out.”
“Yes,” the reporter said. “We just got a report that there are young children growing at a rapid rate as far away as Russia and Australia. What do you think is the most likely factor contributing to this worldwide phenomenon?”
“I’d like to tell you that it’s just a coincidence,” the doctor continued, “but that would be possible if we just had a few dozen cases like this around the world. Because the volume of these cases being reported is so high, though, we have to look at environmental factors. Is something in the air? Has something entered our atmosphere that is disturbing our way of life? There’s a lot to take in at the moment, but we’re going to need a few more days to really see just what’s happening to our children.”
“Do you have any kids, doctor?”
“I have five kids. The youngest is three, and I can already see that he’s not only shot up a few inches, but that his hair has grown longer and that he’s gained some weight, too.”
“All right, thank you for your time, Doctor—”
Before the reporter could finish her sentence, I grabbed the remote control from Kimber’s bed and turned off the TV.
“Hey!” Kimber shouted. “I was watching that!”
“We’ve gotta get going,” I said. “Kimber, you need to get in the shower. We have a long flight ahead of us.”
“We don’t have to leave for another hour, Cam,” Kimber said and turned the TV back on. It was the same talking blonde head.
“Whatever, fine,” I said and rushed out of the room, across the hall, all the way into my bathroom. I closed the door and locked it. I needed some alone time.
Don’t freak out, I thought. Let’s get back to Reno. And then we can figure all this out. Don’t freak out, Cam. Not until tonight. Not until I’m back home.
I turned on the shower a minute later, so that Kimber and Liesel didn’t think I was just standing in the bathroom talking to myself. I took off my clothes, jumped into the shower, almost tripping in the process, and grabbed for the soap.
But I didn’t wash for a few minutes. I just stood there, letting the scolding hot water hit the top of my head.
I crossed my arms.
And I started to pray.
---
Our plane took off forty-five minutes late; no surprise there. The biggest surprise was that our plane took off at all. After all the breaking news about the strange rapid aging cases, I figured by mid afternoon that all air traffic in the world would be stopped until someone could determine what was causing the life-altering problem.
“A witch!” I wanted to shout. “There’s a witch! Her mom died so she’s pissed! And she wants to destroy the world!”
“Cam?”
I turned to my left to see Liesel staring at me with intense focus, as if she had been doing so for the past five minutes.
“What?”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“About what?”
She sighed and gave me a knowing look. “You know what. About what we’re gonna do when we get back later today.”
I immediately darted my head around to make sure nobody, including the rest of my family, could hear us. My parents and Kimber were seated two rows back, far enough away. There was an old woman sitting next to Liesel, but she had headphones on, and appeared to be engrossed in an episode of 30 Rock that was playing on the big screen.
“Let’s… please… be quiet about it,” I said.
“OK, here’s the thing,” Liesel whispered. “I don’t really know where Hannah is. But I do have a place we can start—”
I sighed and literally felt an ulcer start forming in my stomach. “She could be anywhere, Leese. Anywhere.”
“I know.”
“We have no time. By the end of today, people are going to start going insane, do you understand?”
“Of course I do.”
“It’s not just a matter of if we can find your sister, which seems unlikely. Within days there’s going to be no way of traveling, no way of getting anywhere. We’re gonna be the only two people not aging, and people, very shortly, are going to find out about us.”
“Not for a while, Cam. And as long as we leave Reno, nobody will ever suspect that we—”
“How old are we, Leese?” I asked, leaning into her, double checking over her shoulder to make sure the old woman with the funny glasses wasn’t listening to us. She definitely wasn’t; she was sound asleep.
“Nineteen.”
“Nineteen. So in… what…
seventeen days, the youngest person on the planet is going to be our age. After that? We’re gonna be the two youngest people in the world.”
“You’re right,” she said. “We have three weeks to stop her. But I promise you, this is all gonna blow over by then.”
“But what if it doesn’t? If we can’t solve this aging problem soon, we’re gonna have to go into hiding. And then how are we gonna be able to find and stop your sister? I mean… what the hell are we—”
Without warning, Liesel kissed me. And not just a little bit. She stuck her tongue in my mouth and just started going to town. I kissed her back—what sane guy wouldn’t—but I pulled away quickly.
“What… what was that for?”
“A guy across the way was staring at us,” she said. “Don’t look behind you.”
I did anyway. I didn’t recognize the guy.
“Let’s talk about this when we get home,” I whispered to Liesel. “There’s too many people around.”
“I agree. But Cam… you have to know…”
“What?”
“We’re not gonna be staying in Reno for long. As soon as we land—”
“I know,” I said.
She nodded. “OK.”
I stared forward for a moment, not knowing if I should go to sleep, make more conversation, or just start bawling in front of all the passengers.
Instead, I took Liesel’s hand in mine and stared forward at the TV screen, which had just turned from 30 Rock to a black screen.
“Thanks for your patience everyone,” a female voice said over the speakers. “We will now begin your in-flight movie, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Thank you very much, and enjoy the show.”
Liesel started laughing first, then I joined in. She had to slam her hand over her mouth to keep from making too much noise.
She nodded and smiled at me, wiping a few tears from her eyes. “That’ll be good entertainment,” she said with another chuckle. “A guy who ages backward.”
I got more comfortable in my seat and leaned my head toward Liesel’s. I was enjoying this rare moment of laughter, one that probably wasn’t going to rear its head again for a long, long time. “Been there, done that,” I said.
