by Brian Rowe
I took a few more steps down the hallway, past the door to the basement. “Liesel? Where are you?”
“Cam? I’m down here!”
I couldn’t believe it. Liesel had just shouted at me from the basement.
What the hell is she doing down there?
“Leese?”
“Yeah?”
I didn’t want to ask, but I felt like I had to. “Are there any… you know… corpses down there?”
“No. My mother’s gone.”
Sometimes it amazed me just how focused Liesel could get. She was talking to me as if I had asked her what her favorite brand of cereal was. It seemed almost as if the cage and the corpse hadn’t affected her at all. As I started descending the winding staircase, though, a thought occurred to me: Maybe Hannah is down there, with a knife to Liesel’s throat, making her say these things in a calm, monotone way.
When I reached the bottom step, I was relieved to see Liesel walking up to me, no knife or gun or bow-and-arrow in sight. She shoved two cans of paint into my hands and turned back around.
“Go on. Take these to the car.”
I looked down at the unopened cans, which were outrageously heavy and bulky.
“Leese… are these…”
“Yes.”
“The silver paint… but I thought you can’t get near them.”
“I can if they’re unopened.” She stopped and stared at me. “So, yeah, don’t open them.”
“Trust me, I wasn’t going to.”
I made my way to the staircase again and turned around, seeing Liesel on her hands and knees reaching as far as she could into a small hole in the wall. I turned to my left to see the cage gone, the crib gone, only that black leather couch still in the center of the room. It didn’t look very livable down here, but it definitely didn’t look like a madman was torturing innocent victims.
“How many cans are we taking?” I asked.
“A lot. Hurry.”
It felt so ridiculous, considering all the madness that was just only beginning in the world, for Liesel and I to be carrying cans of silver paint back and forth to my car. Hannah had told me wet silver paint was her and Liesel’s kryptonite—why she decided to reveal this to me I’ll never know—so I figured Liesel had to know that the only way two regular human beings like ourselves, ones without Hannah’s staggering witchly powers, could defeat this girl, was with the paint. It seemed smart, I guess. Still though, I had no idea how Liesel and I were going to find Hannah’s top secret location.
By the end of the hour, Liesel and I had smuggled sixteen cans of silver paint to the car. I asked her why we couldn’t have just gone to the local paint store. Apparently the kind of paint Hannah had been using on Liesel in the basement was an expensive imported kind that was rare and hard to find; it also, due to its weight, seemed to be thicker than an average coat of paint.
I slammed the last two cans in the back of the car and turned to my right to see Liesel locking up the house. She ran right up to me and glanced into the trunk.
“Did you get them in?”
“Yeah.”
“All of them?”
Breaking through the scary silence, a car blasted through the garage door in the driveway behind us and came to a screechy stop, just yards away from us on the street. Liesel screamed and I jumped around, knowing full well that the startling noise had been a cause for concern.
Is it Hannah?
But it wasn’t the evil witch. In the car looked to be a concerned father, shouting at someone over the phone, while a mother, dressed in gym clothes, pulled her little boy out to the driveway.
“You’re going far away from here, you understand me?” the father shouted. “You’re no son of mine! You’re a freak is what you are!”
Liesel and I watched in horror as this little boy, who looked about four or five, just kept screaming, no words coming out, just loud sounds, the kind that a one-year-old baby would make.
The mom opened the passenger side door of her husband’s car and shoved the boy inside, the boy crying now louder than ever.
“Mommmmmyyyyyyyyyy!” the boy shouted.
The woman stopped in her tracks at the edge of the driveway. She didn’t say anything for a moment. Then: “Jeff,” the woman said to her husband in the car, “that was our son’s first word.”
Nothing else was said after that. The father drove off into the distance, the kid still screaming at the top of his lungs as the car sped around the corner.
Liesel and I stood close together, taking in this moment with both heartache and amazement.
The woman started walking back up to the house. She caught us in her eyeline right before she disappeared.
“What the hell are you looking at?” she shouted, and stepped inside the hole in her garage.
Liesel and I turned to each other. And then we got back in the car.
“We need to leave L.A,” I said to Liesel as I turned on the ignition. “People are starting to go mad, Leese. We don’t want to be in one of the most crowded cities in the world right now. By tomorrow… it’s going to be impossible to drive out of here, to get out of here, with our lives still in tact.”
“I know, Cam. We just have one more stop. Then we’re heading somewhere secluded.”
“Secluded? Secluded where?”
“You’ll see.”
There it was again. Another destination left up to my imagination. I didn’t want her talking to me in clues and ambiguities. I wanted her to be straight with me.
But I trusted her. I had to.
“OK,” I said. “Where’s the next stop?”
Liesel turned her head toward the paint cans in the back, then nodded toward me. “Where do you think?”
I wasn’t the smartest nineteen-year-old in the world.
But I knew exactly where we needed to go.
TOMMY & BECKA
The OPEN sign in front of the psychic’s home wasn’t lit, but Tommy’s friends pushed him out onto the sidewalk, anyway.
“It’s gonna be hilarious,” Tommy’s best pal Bryan said. His other friend Zeke handed him two ten-dollar bills.
“I think it’s gonna cost more than that, guys,” Tommy said, rubbing the back of his shaggy brown hair, which had grown a few inches in just the past two days.
“What do you think she’s gonna say?” Zeke asked Bryan.
“I don’t know,” Bryan said. “Hopefully something that explains what the hell’s going on in the world.”
“You sure you guys don’t want to come in with me?” Tommy asked.
“You go,” Bryan said. “It’d probably cost more with the three of us.”
Tommy nodded. “You’re probably right.”
“Find out, Tommy,” Bryan said. “Find out why your hair’s growing longer, why I’ve shot up five inches, how Zeke finally got… you know… hair down there.”
Zeke punched Bryan in the shoulder as Tommy laughed and started making his way toward the psychic’s home. He glanced back at Bryan’s car in the distance, and wondered, jokingly, if this was the last time he was ever going to see daylight.
He turned toward the front door and knocked, loudly. He analyzed the sign beside her door, which said, in bright pink letters: “MAGICAL ROSE. Successful Palm Readings for 35 Years.” He wondered if thirty-five years was enough experience to help him out on this warm June afternoon.
He knocked again. No answer.
Tommy tried the doorknob. Miraculously, the door wasn’t locked. He jerked it open just wide enough so he could slink his way inside.
“Hello?” he asked. “Is anyone here?”
As he scooted his way through the waiting room area, trying to find a bell he could ring, he tried to think of how he was going to phrase his questions. He had never been to a psychic before, and he didn’t believe in magic and paranormal phenomena. But what was happening to his little sister Megan, and to most of his younger friends was, for all practical purposes, really happening. People had gotten older in the last
seventy-two hours—a lot older—and nobody, both locally, or on the news, could explain what was happening. His current girlfriend Gertrude—a cute but ultimately boring straight A student who he was thinking of dumping as fast and efficiently as his two previous girlfriends, Kimber and Karen—had been the one to suggest he see a local psychic. Then Tommy’s friends insisted they skip school on Monday to go see the most talked about psychic in town—Becka Rose. “She won’t know anything,” Tommy kept saying. But he knew, by the time he was passing over English, French, and Algebra 1-2 to drive down Plumb Blvd with his buddies, that today’s little field trip was something he had to go through with. He knew that no matter what this psychic had to tell him about his future, and about the future of the world, it would have to be something more concrete than what all the reporters were saying. The only person who had ever had any insight into this aging problem had been his former girlfriend Kimber, who had once told Tommy of her older brother’s brush with death as he rapidly aged into his senior years. Tommy had thought about calling her today. But he knew she hated him. He knew all of his exes hated him.
Tommy pulled the curtains open and walked, a bit fearfully, into the psychic’s work zone. A large table greeted him, along with two chairs and a multitude of un-lit candles. A large candle sat on the center of the table, also un-lit.
He opened his mouth to say something, when a figure entered from the right, loudly chewing, as she sat down on the other side of the table. The woman had a large kitchen knife in her hand. Tommy wondered if he should run for his life.
But the woman wasn’t using the knife to harm another person. She pulled a half-eaten apple from her pocket and cut a few more slices for her to munch on.
Tommy felt it was safe to say something. “Umm, excuse me—”
“Who’s there?”
“Hi,” Tommy said, stepping out from the shadows. “I’m sorry to bother you, but I was wondering if you could give me a reading.”
“Please, get out,” the psychic said, setting her utensils and apple core down on the edge of the table. “I’m not having any readings today.”
“It’s very important,” Tommy said. “I don’t know if you’ve been watching the news.”
She sighed and crossed her arms. “I have.”
“I just wanted something really quick. Just a few minutes.”
“I really can’t—”
“Please,” Tommy said. “It’s a matter of life and death.”
She stared at the boy for a moment, then licked her lips. “OK. Fine. It’ll be sixty dollars for twenty minutes.”
“I just want five minutes.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
He set his two ten-dollar bills on the table. “I only have twenty dollars.”
“I’m sorry,” the psychic said, standing back up.
“Please. My sister. My little sister. She’s very sick.” Tommy wanted to laugh. He certainly had perfected the art of lying. “You’re the only person who can help me.”
The psychic sat back down. She grabbed the money and motioned for Tommy to take a chair. “Please sit,” she said.
“Thank you.”
“What’s your name?”
“Tommy.”
“Nice to meet you, Tommy. I’m Becka. Please give me your hands, and close your eyes.” He did as he was told.
The psychic didn’t say anything for a moment, but Tommy could feel, within seconds, the room becoming frosty cold.
“Is everything OK?” Tommy asked.
“Shh. Quiet.”
He opened his eyes, briefly, to see that the psychic had her head tilted down. He re-closed his eyes.
“I’m sensing that you’ve had great troubles recently,” she said.
“Uhh… that’s right,” Tommy said.
“And I sense that things are only going to get worse for you. I just see… for your future… I see… oh my goodness… I see blackness.”
“Blackness?”
Tommy felt a sudden breeze hit the right side of his body, as if a window had been left open in the back. He opened his right eye to see that no windows were in the room.
“I see… oh God… more blackness… for your family… for your friends.”
The breeze intensified, becoming, within a few seconds, a fierce wind. Tommy opened his left eye this time, seeing some papers falling to the ground in the distance, a book falling over, a candle dropping down.
“Umm, ma’am, I think—”
“Oh God,” the psychic said. “Oh my God! I see blackness everywhere! I see pain and suffering and… oh God… death… death everywhere!”
The wind picked up even more. It was spinning around the room, like a tornado. Tommy’s long hair covered his face. He couldn’t see a thing. He gripped the table in front of him; the psychic did the same.
“Stop this!” Tommy shouted.
“Oh God. I don’t believe it. I don’t believe it!”
“You don’t believe what?”
The tablecloth flew off the table, just past Tommy’s head. The plate with the apple core smashed against the wall behind him.
The kitchen knife struck him in the center of his throat.
Tommy grabbed his throat with both his hands. An artery burst. Blood shot out in spurts, striking the table in front of him and the hardwood floor beneath him.
He reached out for the psychic to assist him, but her eyes were still closed, and the wind was still spinning around the room at a violent speed.
Tommy fell off the chair and pulled himself toward the curtains in the distance. Blood shot everywhere. He couldn’t breathe. He could barely see.
“It can’t be,” the psychic said at the table. “I’ve never seen it before! I see… I see…”
Tommy reached the curtains. As a dark red pool of blood formed around him, he extended his arm out and grabbed the left side of the curtains. As he let out his final breath, he pulled as hard as he could, ripping the curtains down toward the floor.
“…my future,” the psychic said. “My future is black, too!”
She opened her eyes. The wind stopped. She took a few deep breaths.
Then she stared forward. The boy was nowhere to be seen.
“Uhh… hello?”
The psychic stood up and looked across the room to see the dead teenager surrounded by the most blood she had ever seen in her life.
“Oh my God!” the psychic said.
She ran around the table and across the room to assist the boy, but she didn’t make it all the way. She lost her balance, slipped on a pool of Tommy’s blood, and cracked her head open on the hardwood floor.
5.
While our drive from Reno to Los Angeles had taken half a day, our drive to the small but colorfully decorated exterior of Tinseltown Paintball near Hollywood & Vine took less than half an hour.
“This is so absurd,” I said as I parked the car at the back of the near-empty parking lot.
“What is?”
“We’re going to save the world with paintball guns?”
Liesel shrugged. “I didn’t make up the rules.”
“What about just a real gun? Would real bullets hurt her?”
“Of course.”
“Could they kill her?”
“Cam!” Liesel unbuckled her seatbelt and opened her passenger door. “We don’t have the time to get a gun. You have to put in an application and—”
“You’ve known about this for six weeks, Leese!”
She had one foot out of the car when she darted me an annoyed look. “Killing my sister with the silver paint is a more humane way to put her down.”
“Put her down?” I asked. “Like a dog?”
“No, but—”
“She’s killing everyone we know! Humane?”
“This will be faster,” Liesel said. “Just trust me.”
“There you go again with the ‘trust me.’ I swear, Leese. I’m putting a lot of faith in you.”
“I’m the best chance you’ve got to see
your family again, Cam. Come on. Let’s go.”
I shook my head and stepped out of the car. I caught my face reflected off the window. I looked so… normal. Normal and attractive. No rapid aging, forward or backward. While everyone in Los Angeles was suffering with the fastest aging of his or her life, I had somehow obtained a free pass this time around. I didn’t want to tell Liesel, of course, but I was ecstatic we could go about trying to solve this third magical mystery without the two of us having to age along with everyone else. I knew, in the end, no matter what, Liesel and I wouldn’t have to perish. It was a tiny luxury in an otherwise gargantuan mess of a situation, but it was something.
“Shit,” Liesel said up ahead, near the front of the building.
“What?”
“It’s closed. They’re closed on Mondays. Isn’t that nice?”
“Are there any other stores in the area? Maybe I can look—”
“No. Not enough time. Come on.”
Liesel walked around the left side of the building, and I hurried up to follow her. I had no idea what she was planning to do.
The back of the building faced a giant cement wall. Nobody was around. We could barely even hear the loud traffic in the distance.
“What are you gonna do?” I asked.
“We need those paintball guns, Cam,” Liesel said, before fiddling with the knob on the back door.
“Leese, it’s locked.”
“I know,” she said, taking three steps back.
“So? What are—”
Before I could finish my sentence, Liesel brought her right leg out and slammed it against the door, twice, three times. The fourth time was the charm, the door flinging back against some lockers.
Liesel took a deep breath, then smiled, and turned to me.
I just shook my head. “Who… are you?”
“Come on.”
I followed her inside. She turned on some of the lights. It was dead silent inside.
I was far more nervous about this breaking-and-entering than Liesel was. “Jesus, Leese, what if someone comes in here?”
“They won’t.”
“But what if they do?”
“I married a man, right?” she asked, without even looking at me.