by Brian Rowe
“Dr. Martin,” Shirley said, interrupting him, “I’m the only one of your employees who reported for work this morning. Everyone else called in sick.”
“Who did?”
“Everyone.”
Stephen stared at her, aghast. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“I don’t know what to do,” she said.
“I know what you can do.” He rarely intimidated poor Shirley anymore, but he got up in her face and bent down toward her. “You can get every one of those sons of bitches on the phone for me! I’m not going to put up with this shit!”
“But Dr. Martin!”
“Get Ned on the phone! He’s not sick! That man hasn’t been sick in fourteen years!”
“I tried him, twenty minutes ago. He’s not answering.”
“Then try again!”
“Dr. Martin, with all due respect, I think we need to close down. For the day at least.”
“I will not—”
“Or the week? You know, when all this dies down? When the world goes back to normal?”
“Jesus Christ, not you, too.” Stephen couldn’t look at her anymore. He always thought of her as attractive, as a younger, prettier version of his wife. But Shirley didn’t look young anymore. She looked as old as his wife.
“Dr. Martin. Please.”
“Call Ned.”
“I’m sorry, but no.”
“What did you say?”
“I’m going, Dr. Martin. I’m very sorry.”
“You can’t go,” he said. “You can’t just leave me here!”
She grabbed her purse and headed toward the back entryway. “Get out, Dr. Martin. While you still can.”
“No! Please! Don’t go!”
But the girl was gone, and Stephen was suddenly alone, in his big, crowded office, with nobody to help him. He could perform some consultations by himself, but that’d be it. There was nothing he could do now. He realized that what Shari and Shirley were both telling him was true: he might have to temporarily close down the practice until this annoying aging disease blew over.
“I can’t…” he said aloud, his forehead sweating, his heart pounding. “I can’t do this by myself.”
He turned his hands into fists, took a deep breath, and headed back out to the waiting area, where he could hear the voices becoming louder and louder. He opened the door and stepped into the room to see people jump up to their feet and rush toward him.
“Please help me!”
“I need work done to my face! It’s changing!”
“The bags under my eyes, please!”
“I look like my mother!”
“All the work you’ve done! It’s meaningless! I look old again! I look so very old, Dr. Martin!”
Stephen couldn’t catch his breath. The voices were all starting to echo inside his head, as if a form of schizophrenia was taking hold of him. He pushed two people back, and kicked a third person in the shins.
“Shut! Up!” Stephen shouted.
Everyone did. They all stood still, a clan of zombies, all looking scarily pale and frail, all staring at him like he was their God.
“Everyone, listen to me,” Stephen said. “I promise I will get you all looking your best. I will get you all looking the way you did before. Even better than you were before.”
“But when?” somebody asked from the back.
“Soon, very soon.”
“Why not now?” somebody else asked.
“I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but my staff has not shown up for work this morning. Which means that I’m going to have to shut down the practice for at least today. I hope you’ll understand.”
“But… but…”
“You can’t!”
“We need you!”
“You need to make us beautiful again!”
Stephen backed up against the door. He could see the hopeful looks on everyone’s faces changing into panic and rage. They all stared at him now not as their savior, but as their enemy.
“Please,” Stephen said, reaching for the doorknob. He could see at least twenty people marching toward him. “Please, everyone, leave your names and numbers with me, and I promise I will—”
Stephen reached for the doorknob, but by then, it was too late.
The first person threw a chair at his face, and it struck Stephen across the forehead. When somebody else threw her heavy purse at him, he missed the doorknob and fell straight to the floor.
Stephen looked up to see dozens of people racing toward him, and before he could scream, the patients starting grabbing at his scrubs, his shoes, his face. They just clawed at him, in anger, in spite, in overwhelming frustration that this award-winning plastic surgeon couldn’t help them look their best in a time of great need.
His scalp was the first to go, then his eyes, then his tongue. The patients clawed through his stomach and ripped out his intestines.
And that’s when all went quiet for Dr. Stephen Martin.
11.
“Did you call your family?”
“No,” I said, looking out at the darkness. “I don’t know what to say.”
We had stayed the night in the car, at a giant, mostly vacated beach about twenty minutes away from Santa Barbara. It was just past 5:30 A.M.
Liesel grabbed hold of my hand and gave me the phoniest of smiles. “We should get going. We’ll want to grab this guy before the sun comes up.”
“When will that be?”
“About an hour or so.”
“OK.”
“OK?”
I just nodded. “We gotta do what we gotta do, Leese. If kidnapping this guy and bringing him to Hannah will put an end to all this, then let’s do it.”
She let go of my hand and turned on the car ignition. “All right. Let’s go.”
It creeped me out a bit, driving down a long, very lonely highway, into Santa Barbara, darkness overwhelming the area. We didn’t pass a single car for ten minutes.
“Did you input the address on your phone?” Liesel asked.
“Yeah.” I glanced at my phone again. We were closer. “In three or four minutes we’ll be making a right turn on a street called Oxnard. We’re gonna stay on that for a few minutes, then make another right.”
Liesel shook her head. “Hopefully he’s at the top of the mountain, with the most gorgeous mansion and the most stunning view of anyone in town. It’s going to make it super easy to kidnap this guy if he’s living in luxury.”
“Easy, Leese? Nothing about this is going to be easy.”
Barely five seconds had passed when she said, “Damn it.”
“What?”
“Look.”
I looked out to see a small hint of the Monday morning sun appearing on the horizon.
“Crap,” I said. “Do we need to wait another day?”
“We don’t have time,” Liesel said. “We’re so close.”
“You’re right. People are aging a whole year every hour now.”
“Plus he could still be asleep,” Liesel added. “We need to try.”
We passed through an intersection. I looked again at my phone. “OK. It’s the next right.”
“Signal or no signal?”
I pointed. “Look, it’s up there. Turn at the green light.”
The drive to Dr. Rice’s impressive Spanish villa, which rested at the top of a peak that looked out over the Pacific Ocean, was treacherous, to say the least. We went up, down, up, down, sideways, backways, then up again. We missed two turns, then had to backtrack. By the time we reached the top of the mountain, the sun was starting to show its bright orange face, and Liesel and I were sweating profusely from forehead to armpits.
“OK,” I said. “This is it. 4321.”
Liesel just stared at the home for a moment. It was at the back of a dead-end road and looked big enough to house a family of fifty. I couldn’t tell if she was ruminating on a plan of attack, or simply admiring the decadent mansion.
I waited for her to give me
instructions. But before she said a word, Liesel stepped outside and opened the back door.
Umm, you don’t want to talk about this before we break in?
“Leese?”
“What?”
“What’s the plan?”
“Cam.” She cleared out everything in the back, to make room for the inevitable body. “We’re improvising.”
I softly closed my door and followed Liesel along the left side of the doctor’s home, which led us to a backyard that was spacious enough for a nine-hole golf course. He had a swimming pool, two Jacuzzis, various sculptures, plus a garden that stretched all the way toward the sparkling ocean.
But we weren’t admiring the view for long. We turned around to see not one but three lights turned on inside the house.
“Oh no,” Liesel whispered. “He’s awake.”
“How do you know it’s him?”
“He’s divorced. No kids. It’s just him.”
“He lives in this palace alone? Seems extreme.”
“But makes it easier for us,” she said. “Come on. Let’s find a way in.”
“I can’t believe we’re doing this.”
“Me neither. But we don’t have a choice.”
I nodded. I stepped out in front of my wife and headed for the door on the right.
“You don’t think we need a weapon, do you?” Liesel asked. “I have my paintball guns. Or I could try to find a knife in his kitchen or something.”
I continued leading the way. “Leese, you’ve been playing the man in this relationship for days. I need to do something to reclaim my masculinity.”
She chuckled and started walking by my side. “Now’s not the time for you to flex your muscles, Cam.”
“Are you crazy? I lost my muscles when I de-aged from eighteen to one. I’ve got nothing but baby fat.”
“But you have supernatural powers now. That’s something.”
I took a deep breath and stopped before a side door. “It sure is. And here’s the real test.”
“Please don’t disappoint me.”
“I’ll try not to.” I pushed on the door, but it wouldn’t budge. “If I can get in, that is.”
“It’s not opening?”
“No.”
Liesel took a few steps to her right, then pointed her finger up at the house, as if she were counting all the stars in the sky.
“There,” she said.
“What?”
“There’s an open window on the second floor.”
I turned around to see the sun rising even higher. It was still pretty dark out, but in the next twenty minutes, we’d be exposed to all of Santa Barbara.
“OK,” I said. “I see that, too. Problem is… how the hell do we get up there?”
Liesel pointed over my left shoulder. “That tree.”
“That what?”
I shook my head in disbelief. I really didn’t want to have to climb any trees to get to this allegedly fraudulent doctor. But I knew there was no other way.
I didn’t even look at Liesel or make a snide remark. I just made my way over to the large tree, which looked a hundred years old with its impressive height and character.
“Just climb up and jump to the ledge.”
“Oh, OK, no problem,” I said sarcastically.
I hadn’t climbed a tree since the second grade, but I decided to make a valiant effort. I reached up high and managed to lift myself up to the lowest branch. And as I climbed higher and higher, I realized how lucky I was to not be rapidly aging; it would have made this dastardly task much harder.
I could be seventy by now. Or three. Thank God I’m still me. The nineteen-year-old me!
“Hurry,” Liesel said, her head smacking against my butt from below as she followed me up the tree.
“I’m going as fast as I can. Be quiet. What if he hears you?”
“He won’t hear us.”
“We’re chatting away and climbing his backyard tree!”
“So?”
“So. Be quiet!”
“Shut up!”
“Shhhhhhh.”
I reached the seventh branch up, brushed a bird away, then prepared for launch.
I turned back, only once, to see Liesel following close behind and waving me on, like this little leap to the edge of the balcony wasn’t something potentially fatal.
Come on, Cam. You can’t be afraid of death now.
I took a deep, scared breath, then ran at top speeds toward the edge of the branch. I leaped into the air, trying to keep myself from screaming, and surprised even myself when I made it over the ledge and landed safely and softly on the second floor patio. I smiled and looked up, just in time to see Liesel, her jaw dropped, come crashing toward me. I had no time to move, and no time to brace myself for impact. Liesel landed right on top of me, her forehead smacking mine, and her right knee striking my crotch.
“Ohhhhhhhhh Jesussssssss…”
She didn’t seem sympathetic. She just jumped up to her feet and ran over to the open sliding door.
I knew by her expression that we had found her target, because she lit up, and motioned for me to come toward her.
Just a minute, Leese. In a little pain here.
I stood up, slowly, and waddled across the patio to the edge of the door. To my total shock, Liesel had already made her way inside.
I caught her glancing at me from a bedroom. She mouthed something, but I didn’t understand her. She waved me in, and I entered.
“Wh—” I started, but Liesel shook her head, and brought her index finger to her lips, making sure I would keep quiet.
And then she pointed to her right, through another doorway. I looked forward, hearing a TV blaring, and what sounded like a large fan blasting air across a room.
Liesel took my hand, and we walked, calmly and stealthily, into another room.
The tornado-like noises turned out not to be coming from a fan, but from an elliptical machine, in the far corner of the room. A fifty-something man, with thick brown hair, a short stature, and a grossly sweaty back, was working out his legs, his body rocking back and forth, more like he was swaying to music than to the motions of the exercise machine.
I would’ve felt more disconcerted to be standing in the same room as this stranger, but thankfully he seemed preoccupied with the early morning news, one of those programs that had four talking heads screaming inanities at each other, two lines of scrolling text flashing by at the bottom of the screen.
“Do it now,” Liesel mouthed.
I nodded and took a step forward, getting into position. I hadn’t used this bizarre power outside of the cavern, so I had no idea if I was going to be able to perform up to Liesel’s high standards. I bent my knees a bit, faced my right palm toward the back of the guy’s head, and started to close my eyes and think about all the happy times with Kimber.
But before I could close them all the way, Liesel tugged me back into the adjacent bedroom, my eyes opening just in time to catch a glimpse of the man turning off the TV, jumping away from his machine of sweat and grease, and grabbing for his cell phone.
“This is Gus,” he said on the phone.
I didn’t dare try to look at him again. It was possible he was turned right toward us. Liesel and I stayed down close to the carpet. I prayed he wouldn’t enter this bedroom.
“Carly, please, I’m not due into work for another week,” the man continued, talking much louder than he needed to. “Yes, I know. I’m aware we’re having a situation right now, but I’m not about to cut my once-a-year vacation short because of my patients complaining about…” He stopped, took a few deep breaths. “All right, fine. All of my patients. I’m aware we have a problem. But Carla, I made my vacation plans for this week sooner than you were born, do you understand me? I need to—”
And then he stopped. It got really quiet, so much so that I panicked, thinking he might have heard one of us, or saw our shadow. I wiped the sweat off my forehead and looked at Liesel, worryingly. I could tell
she was thinking the same thing.
I was happy, a long ten seconds later, to hear him say a few more words into the phone. “You know what? Fine. I don’t need a vacation. How about we skip holidays? Weekends? How about I work seven goddamn days a week? Would that make you happy? Huh? This is bullshit!”
He threw his phone to the floor and started walking toward the bedroom.
Oh shit oh shit oh shit.
Now it was my turn to grab Liesel and pull her across the room. I looked for a closet. Nothing. He was three seconds away. Two seconds.
I pulled Liesel to the side of the bed, grabbed two of the pillows, and dropped them on top of our bodies, as if we were making a little fort together.
All went silent, as the sounds of this man’s footsteps entered the bedroom. I just stared at the carpet, knowing there was no way in Hell that Liesel and I were going to get away from this guy. We looked so obvious, blatantly hiding under some large pillows in the corner of the room.
Shockingly, though, he didn’t un-mask us (or un-pillow us, really). I listened to him take his shoes off, and then I saw his sweaty white t-shirt land on the carpet just a foot away from my face.
When the shower turned on a second later, Liesel and I breathed a sigh of relief. We waited, for a minute or two, before escaping from under the pillows. I still thought we were going to look up to see the doctor standing over us, a silencer in each of his hands. But he wasn’t. He was in the shower, all right. Liesel and I heard him start singing.
“Is he singing what I think he’s singing?” I whispered.
“You better believe it,” she said.
The song was obvious from the start. “What are those, again? Oh yeah… haha… feet…” The voice of this Gus Rice fellow echoed through the bathroom into the adjacent bedroom, where Liesel and I sat on the bed and listened to the man sing the unabridged version of “Part of Your World,” from The Little Mermaid.
“This man killed your mother?” I asked. “He’s singing Disney songs.”
“Shut up,” Liesel said, angrily. She stood up from the bed and headed toward the bathroom doorway. “This is the perfect time, Cam. He’s vulnerable. Naked and vulnerable.”
“Naked being the scary word there,” I said, crossing my arms. “I’m not going to attack a man in the nude.”
