by Brian Rowe
“The animals are still safe, that’s for damn sure.” Wesley unlocked the front door and greeted his two dogs and two cats, who all looked famished. “I’ll get you guys the keys, then I really need to feed my pets.”
Liesel and I followed Wesley into his kitchen. We stopped and waited as he headed toward the garage.
I took a few steps forward and looked at his impressive back yard. While the grass had turned brown, the trees still appeared marvelously green. I almost turned away, when I saw the two freshly dug graves on the left side of the lawn.
Oh my God, he buried his parents?
I started to think about where the bodies of my parents were, and if there was anything I could do to give them a proper burial, given that I might survive today’s events. It still didn’t ring true to me that they were gone; I hoped that maybe they had faked their deaths and were living it up somewhere outside of Reno, ready for me to save the world, excited to come back when the timing was appropriate. It seemed a scary thought, living in a world where my parents weren’t around. I was too young to lose them. I was going to be lost without them.
Before I could think on this matter any further, Wesley appeared again, the keys to his nifty Lexus GX in his hands, another frown on his face, suggesting he didn’t want us to leave.
“Here,” he said, handing the keys to me. Liesel snatched them away.
“OK,” Liesel said. “Cam, I’m gonna pull the car out of the garage and move all our stuff over.” She turned to Wesley, who looked more physically agile now that he had been at the stroke of eleven. “While I’m doing that, Wes, can you tend to Cam’s leg? Just clean it up and put a bandage on it?”
“Sure thing,” he said.
“All right.” Liesel kissed me on the cheek, then started making her way to the garage.
“Here, follow me,” Wesley said, heading down the staircase toward his bedroom and studio.
I made my way down the long, two-part staircase, to find his bedroom to the left, his bathroom in the center, and his small office space to the right, a little room he liked to call his studio. As Wesley headed to his bathroom to grab bandages, I stepped inside the studio to see his HD camera mounted on a tripod and aimed against a giant green screen that lay against the back wall. I couldn’t believe I was thinking this, but I missed seeing that camera.
“Here, follow me into the bedroom,” he said.
The room was a mess, but thankfully his bed was made, so I was able to sit down on the corner of it and let Wesley lean down and clean the dried blood off my right leg. It seemed hypocritical for the aging Wesley to take care of my mere little flesh wound, especially considering that in two hours Wesley would likely be dead, and Liesel and I would still be standing, still with our lives to lead in an uncertain future.
“OK,” he said, bringing the large bandage to the wound. “Looks like the bullet just grazed you, thank God.” He wrapped the bandage around the leg and secured it with a big piece of duct tape. He got back on his feet and smiled. “Good as new.”
“Thanks, man,” I said, standing up, limping forward, but not in as much pain as before.
“So you and Liesel are gonna go find Hannah? Somehow reverse the spell?”
“That’s the plan,” I said. “Wes, I’m gonna try to stop this… before you get any older… before you suffer any more pain…”
He just nodded, turning away from me. “I know you’ll do your best, Cam.”
“Wes.” I pulled him close to me and gave him a big hug. I knew, after ten seconds had passed by, that I never wanted to let him go. When I pulled away, he had big, fatty tears in his eyes.
Then I placed the handgun in his right pocket.
He looked down, confused. “What’s that?”
“Take it,” I said.
“No… no, you might need it. To kill Hannah.”
“We have other weapons that will do the job. You’re the one who needs this.”
“Me? Why?”
I told him what was going to happen when the clock struck noon, about how the pain he’d been feeling lately would start ravishing his body non-stop. I didn’t want him to suffer any longer than he needed to.
“Wes, at noon, you’re going to start feeling nothing but pain. If we haven’t beaten Hannah by then, I want you to do me a favor, OK?”
He didn’t say anything. He just stared at me, a knowing look on his face.
“I want you to end your suffering, before it gets unbearable, you understand me?”
He nodded. “OK, Cameron. I will.”
And then, unexpectedly, Wesley smiled. I took a step back. “What is it?”
“You’re gonna make a great dad, you know.”
“What? How did you—”
“I could see Liesel holding her stomach before. She’s pregnant, isn’t she?”
Now wasn’t the time to discuss this. I needed to get upstairs. I needed to get to Liesel.
“Yes… yes, she is.”
Wesley nodded and sat in his office chair. “I’m really sorry, Cam. I wish I could’ve told your story. This definitely would’ve been the most important one. You as a father.”
I stared at him for a moment. An idea came to me. And I knew I had to act on it.
“Wes, I might not survive this… what happens here today… I might never…” I trailed off. I didn’t want to complete the sentence. I didn’t want to even think it.
“I know,” Wesley said. “But you will. If this were my movie… you’d be the hero. And heroes always make it to the end.”
I put my arm out and pulled Wesley back up to his feet.
“Wesley…”
“Yeah?”
“Before I go, can I have you do something for me?”
“Of course, Cam. Anything.”
I smiled, knowing Liesel would be upset at my tardiness, but also knowing this was one last thing I had to have Wesley do for me.
WESLEY
The young filmmaker waved as his beauty of a Lexus disappeared over the hill, and he stepped inside his quiet home.
He finally made the food he had promised his dogs and cats, giving them each enough wet and dry food to last a week, maybe even two. He talked to his pets for a few minutes, before kissing them all on the foreheads and making his way outside to the backyard.
Wesley had tried not to break down emotionally these last few days, even when he saw his father succumb to the quickest cancer on Earth early last week, or when he saw his mom fall from a ladder and break her neck midway through Sunday. Even when a young and petite but extravagantly strong black girl named Yolanda kidnapped him on Monday night, as he continued to age not just a year every day, but a year every hour, Wesley Craven tried to see the bright side of life.
He felt lucky he had found a passion that had ruled his life from the moment he was pulled from his mother’s womb nineteen years ago—watching movies and making movies. While he embraced the dark side of life in all of his movies, he liked to look at the bright side when he lived life outside of a multiplex, and away from his camera. He had known from the beginning of this widespread epidemic that Cameron was a part of it somehow, and he knew, deep down, even after the deaths of his own parents, that Cameron was going to save the day, and make it so that he could continue to live his life, and allow the world to start rebuilding itself again.
But as Wesley stepped out onto the brown lawn, stopping in front of the graves he had dug for his parents—Andrew and Kathy Craven—he was having a hard time thinking positive. This was it. The time had come. His parents were gone, and now, in the next half-hour, he was going to be gone, too. Cameron and Liesel had tried their best, but they had failed. There was nothing they could do to save him in time.
“Bummer,” he said to himself.
He sat down, Indian style, and ran his hands over the two mounds in front of him. He looked out in the distance, at the robust mountains up above his street. He had had so much to look forward to. He had his sophomore year at USC coming up in August, and
he was hopeful his first graded short film—a documentary about the East L.A. homeless—was going to be a memorable one. He couldn’t wait to see his dad’s face at Christmas when he showed him his film, finally proving to the old, sickly man that he had what it took to be a documentary filmmaker. He had so many stories he wanted to tell, so much he wanted to give back to the world. And Wesley had always wanted to share his hopes and dreams with the two people he loved the most: his own mom and dad.
“Mom… Dad…” Wesley brought his head down to his knees, the tears flowing within seconds, “I think I’m gonna be joining the two of you very shortly.” He didn’t say anything for a moment. He didn’t know what to say. He kept it simple. “I just want you to know that I love you, for all the opportunities you gave me, for all you sacrificed for me. Whatever happens to me, you both will be in my heart forever.”
Wesley wiped his eyes with the bottom of his dirty palms and got back up on his feet. He looked down at the two graves one last time before turning around and heading back inside the house.
He admired the top floor of the house again, waving to his pets in the distance, who all looked at him somberly, like they knew he would be leaving them, too. Wesley made his way downstairs.
He looked up at the clock in his studio. It was almost noon. His time was almost up. He was a survivor, that was for sure. But he also didn’t like to feel pain, especially when he didn’t need to, especially if he was just going to die anyway.
Wesley brought his hands down to his camera, the same one he’d had since freshman year of high school. He didn’t say any final words to it—even though he loved his video camera like it was his own child, he wasn’t about to go that far—but he took one last appreciative gaze at the device that had been his everything for the last five years.
Finally, Wesley walked into his bedroom and shut the door behind him. The gun lay on his pillow. He tried to ignore it as he rolled onto the middle of the bed and stared up at the ceiling.
“Well,” he said out loud, “I guess this is it.”
He closed his eyes, always having been curious about what would happen when he died. Would he see a bright light? Would he see his family? Would he see nothing? Wesley was about to find out.
Wesley unhooked the watch from his wrist and looked down. 11:57.
“Come on, Cameron,” he said. “Make a miracle happen.”
He lay back and waited, seeing 11:58, then 11:59.
Wesley sat up, brought his feet down to the edge of his bed, and reluctantly grabbed the handgun. He analyzed it for a moment.
He thought about waiting. He thought about giving it another ten minutes, twenty minutes. The pain would be excruciating, but it would allow more time for Cameron and Liesel to reverse the curse. He didn’t want to say good-bye that easily. He didn’t want to throw away the possibility of a future because he was too scared to endure a few more minutes of pain.
With ten seconds to go before the clock struck noon, Wesley let a couple more tears fall down his cheeks as he brought the gun up to his face.
He took a deep breath, shoved the gun into his mouth, and rested his finger on the trigger.
16.
I couldn’t take it anymore. I grabbed Liesel’s phone and tried to dial Hannah myself.
I had hoped there was a plan. I had hoped there was a clear destination. But there hadn’t been. We knew Hannah was somewhere in Reno, but we didn’t know where, and worst of all, the evil sister wasn’t even answering her phone.
“This is all a game to her, Cam, remember that. She doesn’t want to just tell us where she is. She wants us to use our heads. She wants us to think—”
I was tired of thinking. When the fifth ring went to Hannah’s ironically cheery voice-mail, I screamed: “Where are you, you sack of shit? You want me? Come and get me!”
Liesel grabbed the phone from me and threw it in the back seat. “Cam, screaming at her voice-mail isn’t gonna help us.”
“But we only have ten minutes until noon!” I took a scared deep breath and turned toward the dash, looking at the sights of my deserted neighborhood. “It’s just… we don’t have time to solve another mystery. We need to find your sister now. Right now!”
Liesel had been certain that Hannah would have been hiding out in the church we got married in, but nobody was there. Then we drove up to Krueger Stadium, where Liesel and I had floated in the air at graduation. We assumed she might be there. She wasn’t. Before we knew it, the minutes were ticking down to the hour of real demises, of real destruction, when everybody in the world would lose their lives.
There was one last idea: Maybe she went to my house.
Yolanda had alluded that Hannah would go after Kimber, which made sense, considering she had dumped Wesley’s body off in Graeagle. With my parents both gone, the last person remaining for Hannah to torture before my very eyes would be my little sister.
“I don’t know what we’re gonna do if she’s not at the house,” I said. “I mean, she wants us to find her, right? It’s the last place that makes sense…”
“Keep your fingers crossed,” Liesel said, “because we’re almost there.”
“Almost…”
We made our way up the slim two-lane road, until finding the turn-off to the even slimmer one-lane road that led to my house.
“Oh my God,” I said, noticing the smoke. “Oh my God… what did Hannah do…”
“Here let me—”
“Just pull over, Leese.”
“No, wait—”
“Pull over!”
She still wouldn’t, so I just opened the passenger side door and leapt out onto the dying shrubs that ran alongside the road. Liesel finally slammed on the brakes, but I didn’t stay to chat. I was already running at top speeds toward my house at the top of the hill.
“Kimber!” I shouted. “Are you in there?”
“Cam! Stop!” I heard Liesel shouting from behind, but I didn’t pay any attention. If Hannah had done something to the house with Kimber inside, there was a chance she could still be alive, maybe down in the basement or something. The house was engulfed in smoke, but I didn’t care. I ran inside without thinking twice.
I headed straight for the staircase down to our bedrooms, where I thought maybe Hannah had tied up Kimber to the wall or something. I had my arm covering my face, as I could barely see through all the smoke.
“Kimber? Kimber?”
The smoke was too heavy. I became light-headed almost instantly. A bad case of nausea hit me without warning, and before I could turn around, I found myself falling to the carpet.
“Kimber… are you… are you in here…”
I didn’t hear her. Better still, I didn’t see a body.
It hit me, right then and there, that if Kimber was in the house, she’d be long dead. I’d only been in the house for thirty seconds, and I was already feeling the effects of all the smoke. I needed to get out.
Part of me wanted to just close my eyes and fall asleep right here on the ground, not sure if I’d ever wake up again, but I pushed myself back up to my feet and headed upstairs, toward the living room area and the kitchen. I tried to look out to see where Liesel was, but I couldn’t locate her.
I coughed a few times, then turned back toward the front door.
That’s when I saw the body, burnt to a crisp, sprawled out next to the exploded refrigerator in where the kitchen used to be.
“Oh my God! No! Kimber?”
I wished I had a mask, something, anything, to keep the smoke from entering my lungs. I had nothing. I ran over to the body. It was unrecognizable, except for a few strands of long, black hair.
My mouth dropped open, and my eyes started to burn. “Mom… oh God… mom… no…”
“Cameron!” Liesel leapt at me from behind, grabbing my waist and pulling me back down to the ground. She jumped up and started dragging me to the front door.
“No,” I said. “No… I can’t… I have to get my mom… I have to—”
“
Cam, there’s nothing you can do! Come on!”
“I can’t just leave her here,” I said, my tears mixing in with the dirt on my face. “I can’t just—”
“I know where Kimber is!”
The interruption brought me right back to reality. I got up on my feet, as Liesel helped me out of the house, out of the smoke. “What? Where?”
“Kimber was never here, OK? The house was never Hannah’s destination!”
Liesel coughed a few times, then I followed suit. When we erupted back into the sunlight of what was a beautiful, crystal clear June day, I fell and slammed my arm against a rock, scraping it more gruesomely than expected. Blood dripped to the ground.
“Shit,” I said.
“Oh, God, Cam, are you OK?”
“I’m all right,” I said, standing back up, with trouble.
“Cam, let me look at it,” Liesel said.
“No, no, it’s OK.” I applied pressure to the wound and looked up toward the car. “So where’s Kimber? How do we get to her?”
But before Liesel could answer, I heard a familiar barking coming from the side of me. I couldn’t believe it. I ran to the edge of the driveway.
“No way,” I said. “It can’t be!”
There was my dog Cinder, running at top speeds down the road, barking loud as ever.
“Cinder, you’re alive!” She jumped up on me and almost knocked me down to the ground. She started licking me all over, cleaning all the yucky dirt off my face. “I don’t believe it… I don’t believe it!”
She barked a few more times, then raced further down the street, past Wesley’s car, and over to the spot where the road dipped down the hill. The dog turned her head to her left and started barking again.
I looked at my dog, who had remarkably survived whatever devastation had struck my home. “What is it, girl? What do you see?”
I jumped back up to my feet, my arm still noticeably bleeding, and raced over to my dog. I knew she was trying to tell me something.
“What’s out there? What are you—”
“Cam!” Liesel shouted, by the front of the car. “We have to go!”
