Final Cut, page 24
He disappears into the night.
31
It’s like I’m watching myself. Standing here, staring at Evan in stunned silence, I could almost be in one of Cal’s plush theater chairs, my own shocked face projecting on the screen.
It rushes up like a scream building, the kind that will rip through my throat and leave me empty: I don’t want to believe what Evan just told me. But the scream doesn’t come—only a quiet whimper, because my body knows the truth.
I don’t want to believe him, but I do.
Cal may not be the Pine Springs Slasher, but he’s still a monster. He recorded his students without their consent. He cracked Susie Trahan’s skull against the swing set—my swing set, I think, with a childlike twist of possessiveness—and buried her body in the swamp, cleaned up Evan’s messes, too, all while I slept soundly upstairs.
Evan stares back at me now, hands clasped behind his back, a professor finishing his twisted lesson, and he looks so pleased with himself. Not just pleased—relieved, too, and a little exhilarated. I can see it in the shining of his eyes: This is his magnum opus, the thing he’s been holding close to his chest for so long, and now here it is, laid bare.
He wants me to like it. His captive audience, revolted and enthralled all at once.
“Does he know?” I manage. My ears ring with the memory of Cal’s desperate voice on the phone. “Does Cal know what you’re doing here?”
Evan’s mouth twitches—a crack, I think. A weak spot. But then he fixes it back into a small, satisfied smile.
“Call me superstitious, but I don’t like to show anyone my work before it’s finished. And it still needs an ending.”
Panic beats between my ribs. “An ending” can only mean one thing. I look down at Nina and Cameron, both paralyzed in fear. Nina’s tears have dried on her cheeks, leaving only cold dread, and Cameron … Cameron stares straight back at me with something like grief.
“Cameron Warner,” Evan croons, sauntering toward him. “I couldn’t believe my luck when you agreed to do my movie, Hazel, but both of you?” He lets out an awed laugh. “It was better than I’d hoped for. But in retrospect, I should have known that neither of you would be able to resist my emails inviting you to audition. You were just too curious.”
Cameron tries to speak through his gag, but it’s muffled. Evan crouches down to meet him, tracing a finger over Cameron’s cheek and stopping it right in front of the gag, like he’s telling him to shh.
“And isn’t it special that it happened this way?” Evan looks between the two of us, dripping with irony. “Star-crossed lovers brought together by their shared tragedy.”
A snarl pulls at my lips. Evan knows about us, just like he knew about my calls from Cal. It feels obvious, now: a camera in my motel room, probably, a microphone slipped beneath the furniture.
Cameron struggles to speak again, and this time, Evan yanks the cloth out of his mouth.
“Go ahead,” he instructs, a director on the verge of cracking a great scene. “I have a feeling this’ll be good.”
“I’m sorry.” Cameron is breathless, green eyes lasered on me. “I didn’t mean to lie to you about who I was.”
“Did you know?” The question comes out quietly, and I’m humiliated to feel my throat constricting with hurt. That even now I need to hear it from him. “This whole time, did you know who I was?”
And now the guilt finally floods Cameron’s face. He looks down.
“Yes,” he says quietly.
I turn away, the betrayal like a fist squeezing hard in my chest. My instincts were exactly right this whole time: I couldn’t trust him.
“But it’s not like you think. I just—” Cameron stops, taking a shuddering breath. I don’t look back at him, afraid the sad look in his eyes will convince me. “What you said about coming to Pine Springs, wanting to know the place where you grew up. Just wanting to know, period. It’s exactly the same for me.”
I turn to face him, and my breath stalls. That cracked-open expression, the self-loathing slipping out with it … I know it. I’ve felt it.
“We never talked about Reeve after we left,” he says. “I was so young, I barely even have any memories of him, and that’s all I ever wanted, growing up. To know who I was missing.” His face warps like he’s in physical pain. “But it was like Mom thought it was safest just to pretend he didn’t exist. That it had never happened. So when I saw the casting email for Swamp Creatures, I had the exact same thought as you, Haze. I thought I’d come and find out for myself.”
Against my better instincts, it’s working. The icy shield I’ve thrown up again is thawing quickly.
“How did you know who I was?”
He swallows, looking down. “My mom was friends with your parents back then. They invited her to their wedding. I found the invitation in this old box of stuff she had, and once I knew your mom’s maiden name, I looked her up. I couldn’t find much. Barely even any pictures of her, and none of you. Your name wasn’t anywhere, either. But then on the first day, when I met you, and you told me your name…” His eyes soften. “I wasn’t positive at first, but as I got to know you, I knew.”
I hear an echo of the way he said my full name on that first day, rolling it over his tongue like hard candy, sweet and a little sharp around the edges.
He knew. It should make me feel angry, violated, but all the rage burns away to sadness. Cameron could have hated me—should have—and instead, he latched on, eager to know me. To him, I wasn’t the daughter of the man who murdered his brother. I was the only other person who might understand what he’d been through. Because I lost my home, too.
Evan applauds, jolting me out of my head.
“Very moving,” he says. “Perfect take, don’t you think?”
Cameron’s eyes are still locked on mine, pleading. He still thinks I hate him, I realize. And maybe I should, after how he’s lied to me, but it lands like the sharp piercing of an arrow: I can’t. My heart lifts into my throat, fueled by an urgent need to tell him, but before I’ve even taken a breath, Evan shoves the gag back in Cameron’s mouth.
“Now that we’ve gotten our touching moment out of the way…” Evan crosses the room, his shadow passing over the projector screen, still frozen on himself and Cal fifteen years ago. “Shall we get on with our grand finale?”
My stomach lurches, my heart picking up to a gallop. Everything is moving too fast, now—the air in my lungs, Evan’s hand as he slips the gun into his pocket and takes out something else.
When I see it, time slows to a crawl.
A knife, stained with dark rusty flecks of blood.
“I do appreciate the gun, Hazel.” Evan smiles, wiping his sleeve along the blade. “But when it comes to weapons, I’m more of a traditionalist.”
“Cal will never forgive you.” It rushes out of me, a sharp and desperate plea. “I know you think he wants this, but if you kill more people—if you kill his only daughter—he will never speak to you again. Whatever revenge or notoriety you think you’re getting from this, it’s not worth it.”
Evan watches me, the thrill fading from his eyes, and I think maybe it’s working. I’m convincing him. Fueled by hope, a new idea takes shape.
“But if you let us all go, I can help you,” I tell him. “You’ll go to prison, but you’ll be with Cal—and I can talk to him. Help him understand that you need each other. It can be exactly like it was before.”
Just saying it sends a sick shudder through me, but I bite it down, focusing my most genuine look on Evan. He stares back at me. Thinking. Caving.
But then he smiles again, as cruel as a bleeding gash, and I know it’s too late.
“You think this is still about Cal? That I’m a poor little outcast looking for my surrogate father?” He laughs, like he’s charmed. “No, Hazel, I gave up on Cal long ago. I’ll admit that when he confessed, some part of me thought he’d done it to protect me, but I know now that Cal is only capable of serving himself. He might have taken their plea deal to save his life, but he wanted it, too. The fame, the love letters, the undying legacy of ‘the Pine Springs Slasher.’ He wanted all the credit for himself, so he stole it.”
Evan’s grip tightens on the knife, and my heart jumps, my body angling on impulse toward Cameron and Nina like I could shield them.
“That’s why he never spoke to me again,” Evan continues, hurt hardened to bitterness. “Why he ignored my letters. He was ashamed. And I tried to forgive him—to live my life and forget. I went to film school. Even made it out to Los Angeles after graduation, one of those kids with big dreams and starry eyes.” He laughs darkly. “Everyone in that town is full of shit, obviously. I realized it soon enough. So, I found myself going home, getting a job at the university. Before I even realized it, I’d walked myself back into the same grave I’d been trying to escape all my life, burying myself one shovel of dirt at a time.”
Evan scrapes his free hand from his beard down to his neck, like he’s struggling to breathe through the invisible earth. I can almost picture him crawling out, one hand gnarling up through the swamp mud.
“But then.” His eyes light up again, locking on mine. “Then I came across your casting profile online, and I knew. Right away, Hazel—your name, your face, all the little things you inherited from him. Even the way you look when you’re angry, you know that? A little flare of the nostrils, a pinch between the eyebrows, but then you school yourself back into this icy calm, like a lid over boiling water.”
He shakes his head in awe, and I get a flash of that image again, only reversed: now I’m the one being slowly buried, Evan shoveling me into a shallow, swampy grave.
“I couldn’t believe my luck,” Evan says. “Here was Cal Dupre’s daughter—an actress. That’s when I got the idea.”
“The idea?” I echo, feeling like my throat is full of mud. I already know the answer.
“For the film.” Evan gestures around us with the knife, the camcorder still recording from its tripod. “The defining project of my career. I’ll finally tell the truth about the Pine Springs Slasher, and Cal…” His eyes sparkle. “Cal will have to watch his daughter relive it. And then he’ll have to watch her die.”
It’s like the room falls out from under my feet, dropping me into a free fall through endless dark. There’s no way out of this, nothing I can say to convince him. Nothing I can do. Except—
The knife glints in Evan’s hand, and my heart picks up. It’s my only chance. I have to hurt him. End him. Like I’m reaching for a cliff’s edge, the last solid thing I can grasp before oblivion, I lunge forward and grip the handle.
With a grunt, I yank it toward me—but Evan is stronger than I am. My arm explodes in pain as he twists it behind my back, making me drop the knife with a clatter. He presses one gloved hand to my mouth as he pulls me to him, choking me on the scent of blood and sweat and muck.
“Good,” Evan breathes into my ear. “Now you get to watch.”
Cameron and Nina stare at me, desperate, and tears sting my eyes. I’ve failed them, and now he’s going to make me watch as he kills them. I wait for the gun to slide from Evan’s pocket, for the bang to shatter my eardrums.
But that isn’t what happens.
Instead, the shed door swings open and someone else runs inside. A lanky shape with auburn curls and glasses perched on his nose. A boy who shouldn’t be here, because some impossible number of hours ago, we watched Evan slit his throat.
Lucas.
And then I realize he’s holding a knife.
His name forms on my lips, but Evan presses his hand harder to my mouth, keeping me from calling out to him.
Keeping me from screaming as Lucas runs across the room and plunges his own blade into Cameron’s stomach.
32
Cameron doesn’t cry out. He just stares, open-mouthed and sheet-white, as Lucas pulls the knife out again.
The blood pools instantly, and Cameron can’t even use his hands, still bound behind his back, to stanch the bleeding. I try to run to him, but Evan holds me back. Cameron doesn’t even notice. He’s just looking helplessly at Lucas like he’s seen a ghost.
We all have.
And now that ghost is examining the fresh blood on his blade, his eyes lighting up with a sick wonder—the kind I saw there when he first told us the Pine Springs Slasher story, only dialed up to eleven.
“God.” Lucas breathes out, shuddering with awe. “That never gets old.”
I stare at his neck, clean and gash-free when he should be dead. You were dead, I think. When Evan finally lifts his hand from my mouth, I realize I’ve said it out loud.
“Funny what a little stage blood and low lighting can do,” Evan croons in my ear. “Especially when you’re terrified enough to believe them.”
Lucas smiles cruelly at me. “Who’s a bad actor now?”
Evan chuckles at my stunned expression.
“A bit of a sore spot,” he tells me. “I had to let Autumn think she had the reins on casting, to keep up the ruse that she was in charge. It all worked out for the most part—you and Cameron were shoo-ins—but she didn’t think Lucas was right for Bill. So, we waited until the other actor she’d hired showed up, and…” Evan draws a finger across my neck as he makes a slicing noise. My entire body tenses. “Turns out he had a last-minute engagement elsewhere. So, Lucas was kind enough to step in.”
My head spins, even though I’d suspected there was more than one killer. But Lucas … he’s been pretending to be on our side, to be my friend, all while he’s been working with Evan in the shadows.
He was never just a run-of-the-mill true-crime fan. He was something so much darker.
My gaze flickers over to Cameron. He’s upright, still breathing, but losing blood fast, pale and dazed. Nina’s tried to angle herself to staunch the bleeding, but her hands are bound behind her back, too, barely able to reach. He doesn’t have much time, and neither do we.
I look back at Lucas. Evan is too far gone, but I have to bank on the hope that Lucas can still be saved.
“Lucas,” I plead. “You don’t have to do this.”
He gives me a bored little shrug. “Have to is relative, don’t you think?”
His tone is impassive, but he’s averting his eyes. Maybe I’m getting to him, cracking through the cold, unfeeling killer role he’s playing. I cling to that hope and press harder.
“You can still get out of this. Evan’s the one behind this, right? If you get us out of here, no one has to know that you helped.” I give a meaningful look at the knife still gripped in Lucas’s hands. “We’ll vouch for you.”
Stab Evan, I think as hard as I can in Lucas’s direction. If Lucas attacks him, then maybe I can get Evan’s gun, incapacitate Lucas, and get us all out of here before Cameron bleeds out. As if to remind me, Cameron groans quietly, his head dipping.
Lucas notices, too, and watches with removed interest. He looks back at Evan.
“What do you think, Evan?” Lucas asks. “Should I kill you and free myself from your evil manipulation of my poor, impressionable brain?”
My chest deflates. If there’s any shred of humanity still left in Lucas, I can’t find it behind the cold amusement in his eyes. Evan laughs like he can feel my devastation, holding me tighter.
“Nice try,” he says. “But Lucas is so much more than you think. He has a real talent, in fact. The rabbit on the first day was his idea. An amuse-bouche of sorts. And the severed hands in the swamp…”
Lucas stands taller, prouder. “My idea, too.”
My knees start to buckle, but Evan holds me up.
“I was lucky enough to find Lucas in my Intro to Film class last year,” Evan tells me proudly. “Right away, I could sense it. That special something I’ve always known Cal and I both have. But Lucas … with him, there was never a doubt.”
Lucas leans toward Evan like a flower to the sun.
“When Lucas told me about his father, I knew we had a special opportunity,” Evan continues. “I proposed it as almost a theory, an exercise—wary, of course, of scaring him off—but I knew already that Lucas was the real deal.”
Sick pride gleams in Lucas’s eyes.
“It takes longer than you’d think,” he says, “to dismember a body.”
Nausea churns in my gut.
“I wanted him to be alive for longer, so he’d feel every last limb, but it’s hard to saw through bone.” Lucas looks disappointed for a moment before a vicious smile cuts across his face. “He bled out before I’d gotten through the other leg.”
Bile rises in my throat. That sad, vulnerable look in Lucas’s eyes when he told us about his dad at the diner … I felt sorry for him. Some part of me still does.
I know what it’s like to have a hole where your father should be. An empty void filled by a monster.
“After that, I knew I needed Lucas on board for Swamp Creatures,” Evan says. “Together, we’d make a masterpiece.” He tucks a piece of hair behind my ear and leans in close so I can feel his voice like beetles skittering down the canal. “And now it’s almost finished.”
Lucas grins wildly, and I know what’s about to happen. With a move as swift as lightning, he lifts the knife high.
“Wait!” I shout. “Wait, this isn’t your finale.”
It surprises Lucas enough that he lowers the knife. It’s an opening, and I grab onto it with all my might.
“Do you really think this is your big inspired twist?” I press. “You kill Nina, let Cameron bleed out, and then kill me, too? Cal would hate that. It’s so contrived.”
Evan’s laugh rumbles in my ear, but I hear defensiveness dulling the edges.
“Is it?” he prods.
I clench my hands to keep them from shaking, forcing myself to go on.
“You say the final girls don’t really matter, but I disagree. Slashers need them just as much as they need their monsters.” I twist around in Evan’s grip to look him in the eye. “They need that glimmer of hope at the end—knowing that someone makes it out.”
