Final Cut, page 8
“I called 911,” Wren says without stopping. “It’s protocol.”
“But this wasn’t a crime,” Autumn argues frantically. “We didn’t need to—”
“My top priority is the safety of our cast and crew.” Wren’s voice is clipped and clear as she turns to Autumn. “Which, if the last two days are any indication, maybe we should all care a little more about.”
Autumn goes quiet, guilt dripping into her stunned expression.
“If we even have a cast and crew tomorrow,” someone mumbles behind me. I turn, alarmed, to find Mike shaking his head. “No way this doesn’t get shut down.”
It had barely even crossed my mind, but obviously, Mike is right. There’s no way we can go on with one of our actors in the hospital, or even—
I push down the thought as soon as it comes. Brooke isn’t going to die. At least, it didn’t seem like the EMTs think she will. But would they really say so if they did?
I have to remind myself to breathe. The swamp air is dank and thick enough to chew, to choke on. I look back at the prop table, but Cameron is gone.
I grip the knife tighter as the full weight of my earlier realization settles over me.
Someone on this set just attempted murder.
“Autumn?”
Hearing me, she looks away from Brooke and the ambulance, her face filling with fresh concern.
“Everything okay, Haze?”
I hand her the knife. “I think someone switched it.”
Autumn frowns, looking at the bloody weapon like she doesn’t understand. “Switched it?”
“Like, it’s a real knife.”
Her eyes widen, no doubt catching the sharpness of the blade. “What? But—”
“Harry put it down on the table during his water break,” I explain. “Someone must have swapped it out for a real one when he did.”
Autumn gives the blade another grave look.
“Thank you,” she says, glancing over at the cops. “I’ll let them know.”
She looks around for something to wrap the knife with before finally settling on the bandana tied in her hair, red to match today’s overalls. As she takes it off and swaddles the knife, it hits me that this is evidence—and now it has both of our prints on it.
Autumn takes the knife away, and there’s nothing for me to do but stand in silence as it lands in my gut, the truth that I’m not sure anyone else has understood yet: fifteen years after the Pine Springs Slasher’s twisted finale, another killer is stalking this swamp.
* * *
Compared to the average eighteen-year-old, I spend a lot of time thinking about murder. Why some people are capable of it and others aren’t. What it takes to turn you from one side to the other.
With a slasher, it’s easy. Vengeance, obsession, jealousy, mommy issues—the list of possible motives goes on. Even the real freaks, the ones without a clear-cut motive, have something: the thrill of the kill coupled with some sort of psychological break, a head injury, or a healthy dose of childhood trauma.
With Cal, I still can’t figure it out. And I’ve tried. The whole world has, and despite over a decade of theories, no one can land on the absolute truth, least of all the people who investigated him.
Including Chief Carpenter. As soon as they send us all home from the swamp with no one to arrest and thinly veiled threats that more investigation will follow, I lock myself in my motel room and look him up. Amos Carpenter started on the tiny Pine Springs police force thirty years ago and has been here ever since, working his way up to chief of police. He was one of the officers to arrest Cal, along with the former chief of police, Frank Jones.
“We are working tirelessly to bring all of the details of this tragedy to light,” reads a quote from Chief Jones in the article I just pulled up about Cal’s arrest. “The important thing is that we’ve got our man.”
I let out a bitter laugh. Obviously, the arrest is important, but it’s never enough. That’s the reason there’s a whole industry of true-crime podcasts and documentaries, Reddit threads active long after the case is closed: people want their why.
Even after Cal confessed, he wouldn’t say a word about his motive. The police interviewed Mom, but clearly, she had no idea either. Sometimes I wonder if she was just too shocked to think straight—if maybe something has occurred to her in the years since—but I know better than to bring it up.
In my head, I’ve gone over all the usual explanations: an affair with a student, maybe, a classic if I can’t have her, no one can. But that doesn’t explain why he killed five of them, and anyway, no one ever came forward with anything. Cal was Teacher of the Year. According to most everyone who knew him, he was smart and kind and funny and not at all a creep.
His parents were two perfectly normal people who never abandoned him or dropped him on his head. The worst thing that ever happened to them was Cal confessing; even when the town ostracized them, they wouldn’t leave like Mom and me, too stubborn to flee the only home they’d ever known. They both died within the year, Cal’s mom of a heart attack and his dad, they think, from the grief.
Even when the cops searched his house—our house—there wasn’t anything that pointed to why. Only the murder weapon, the violent and terrible how.
The only theory that holds any water is that Cal loved slashers so much he wanted to live in one. But enough to ruin his life? To lose his wife and daughter?
I’ve made peace with it, the not knowing. Or at least I thought I did.
Now I close the article on my laptop and reach into the drawer of my bedside table, where I stashed the bracelet and wrap-party invitation. I take out the bracelet first, turning it over like there might be an answer woven in with the leather, but there’s nothing. And maybe it is nothing, just a forgotten trinket someone left behind.
The fear in my gut knows better. After what happened to Brooke tonight, I’m starting to think that all of it—the falling lamp, the invitation and this bracelet, even the sawed-up rabbit—was no accident. Those things were messages. Threats.
But why?
The fear winds its way deeper, threading itself as tight as the bracelet in my hand. I put it down, reaching for my phone with fresh determination to research harder.
When I see the missed-call notification, my heart almost stops completely—until I realize it’s not the number I was expecting.
Mom called again. Guilt wedges between my ribs.
The last time I asked her about Cal, it was after I submitted my audition for Swamp Creatures, before I officially got the part. I hadn’t told her about the movie yet—I wanted to put off dropping that bomb until it was a sure thing.
That day, Mom and I had gone to get frozen yogurt after school, a trip usually reserved for epically bad days or good news, but that day, it was neither. Just a little treat on a random Wednesday.
Unless, I wondered, she could tell what was on my mind.
I’d put it off until we were back in the car, sitting with our yogurt and our joint playlist of the best film scores of all time bumping through the speakers. Hit with the sudden feeling that it was now or never, I beheaded a sour gummy worm with my teeth and asked, “Do you ever wonder if he could have been innocent?”
“Who?” Mom asked automatically, even though we both knew.
I ate the other half of the worm, not meeting her eyes. “Cal.”
The music shut off, and I turned to find her watching me, a haunted look in her eyes.
“Just, I’ve seen theories,” I went on quickly, knowing I should stop but somehow unable to do it. For so many, these questions had burned in my chest—small crackling embers igniting into a sudden, raging flame, and I needed her to see it, to acknowledge its existence, before it engulfed us both. “Some people think it’s weird that he swore he was innocent and then suddenly—”
“Cal Dupre is exactly where he should be,” she said sharply, turning back to face the windshield. “You can go down that path all you want, Haze, but believe me, it’s not worth it. He doesn’t deserve the energy.”
With that, she clicked on the radio, pop hits overtaking our curated collection.
We’ve had worse fights—this barely even qualified as one—but something about it felt final, a period on the end of a sentence I’d barely even gotten to start.
You can go down that path all you want, she’d said, and now here I am, feeling my way through the dark. Finding shadows of things more horrible than I’d imagined.
Maybe if I called her back and told her the truth—all of it—then things would be different. But something won’t let me press the button. Fear, maybe, that she’ll shut me down again, or hit me with the biggest I-told-you-so of all time.
Or even worse: Mom would be kind about it. She’d forgive me.
And I’d have to admit that, as much as I swore otherwise, I couldn’t handle this alone.
I unlock my phone and navigate to my email, thrumming with anxious energy as I refresh it. Still nothing from Autumn or Wren. As of now, no one has any idea if this production is shut down or not.
And maybe it should be. That would be good, right? A chance to wipe the slate clean, to tell myself that at least I tried. I could find another film, somewhere less inextricably linked to my childhood trauma, and forget this one ever happened. But as I think of my room in Pensacola—movie posters peeling at the edges from being moved so often, boxes shoved under my bed that I never even bothered unpacking—the certainty cuts quick and deep.
I don’t want to. Not yet.
The invitation, the bracelet, the falling lamp, the knife—each one slips into place like beads on a string, locking into one unit, a single thought as hard and clear as a diamond.
Someone out there knows more about the Pine Springs Slasher than they’re letting on—someone who might even be here now, beckoning me to come and find them.
And I’m not leaving until I do.
EXT. HIGHWAY – NIGHT
Harry should have known better. He’s a teacher, for Christ’s sake, not an actor. Community theater, sure. But a thirty-four-year-old man driving out to the middle of nowhere on some whim that he could have a film career? Ridiculous. And now look what’s happened.
He grips the steering wheel tighter, trying to forget the sound of Brooke’s screams as the blood dripped down her fingers. He did that to her. A man who lets his wife kill the cockroaches because he can’t bear to watch them squirm.
And tonight, he was just as much of a coward.
As soon as the police released him from questioning, Harry raced back to the motel. They didn’t exactly say he could leave town, but they didn’t tell him not to, either, which was enough for him. Harry shoved clothes and shoes haphazardly into his suitcase and forced it shut, running out to his car without even making the bed, half afraid the cops would change their minds and knock on his door to arrest him any minute.
He sent Autumn an email. It would be rude not to.
Well, he scheduled it to send to her at eight A.M. tomorrow morning—just about seven hours from now—and by the time she got it, Harry would be back home in New Orleans, walking the dog and then making Jenny breakfast. Trying to forget what he’s done.
It could have been so much worse, he reminds himself. Brooke is alive. He knows that. A braver man might visit her in the hospital, wait by her bedside until her parents get there—God, her parents. She must be seventeen, eighteen. The same age as his students back home.
But Harry is not a brave man.
The car veers, and Harry rights it, heart shuddering. The last thing he needs is an accident. He tries to focus on the road, asphalt spilling out ahead of him in near-complete darkness, lit up only by the hazy glow of his headlights. Out here, the road is frightening, desolate—nothing on either side of him but trees and water rolling past. At any moment, in this darkness, it’s as if the road could drop off at the edge of the world, plunging Harry and his sorry conscience into a bottomless void.
It was an accident, he reminds himself. The knife malfunctioned. That’s the only explanation. But that can’t erase the heady rush of adrenaline as the blade plunged through Brooke’s skin—the little echo of concern as he thought, That took more strength than I thought.
Harry squeezes his eyes shut for just a moment, stomach lurching as he tries to breathe through the image, that blade sticking through meat and bone.
When his eyes open again, someone is in the road.
Harry slams on the brakes, his heart nearly stopping. When the car screeches to a halt, his hands are shaking, and a prickling, cold feeling shudders from his shoulders to his fingers, still gripped around the wheel.
The person has disappeared.
Wait, there—movement in the shadows. The figure bleeds out of the darkness and takes shape in Harry’s headlights. A kid, Harry thinks—face obscured by a hoodie, lifting a pale hand, and that’s when Harry sees it.
The blood.
Harry’s heart jumps back into action as he throws open the car door, stepping out into the middle of the road.
“Hello?” he calls out. “Are you all right?”
In one swift motion, the stranger pulls something out—a camcorder. One of the kinds people used in the late nineties and early 2000s, Harry thinks in confusion.
When the stranger pulls back the sweatshirt hood, recognition floods Harry at the familiar face.
“What are you doing out here?” he asks. “Are you—”
But before Harry can finish, he sees something unmistakable in the glow of the headlights.
A knife.
10
No One’s slept well. Probably, no one’s slept at all. When Wren assembles us all for a meeting in the shabby picnic area behind the motel, it’s nine A.M.—less than twelve hours since the EMTs carted Brooke off to the hospital—and we’ve all spent the off time wide awake, if the mass of dark under-eye circles and steaming coffee cups are any indication.
I grip my own cup, an instant brew courtesy of Deb in the management office. It tastes a little like hot sawdust, but I need the caffeine as I stand in the back of the group, scanning the cast and crew with the same thoughts on loop.
Someone here switched that knife. Someone here wanted Brooke dead.
I spent all night wondering who, trying to settle on some sort of theory, but nothing concrete ever took shape. I’d hoped seeing everyone in the light of day might help, but even now, I can’t pick up on a single clue.
“Whew.” Cameron makes an overexaggerated grimace as he sips his coffee beside me, clearly trying to get my attention.
“Coffee’s terrible,” he says, as if I didn’t pick up on the implication.
“I think it’s fine.”
To prove it, I take a sip of mine and almost choke.
With a tiny amused smirk, Cameron sticks that infamous toothpick between his teeth and gestures at the headphones around my neck. “You ever leave the house without those?”
I return it with a glance at the toothpick. “You ever leave the house without that?”
He gives a slightly embarrassed laugh, taking out the toothpick and sticking it in his pocket.
“I know people think I’m putting on airs, or something, but it’s a nervous habit.” Cameron runs a hand through his messy hair. “Helps me calm down.”
I watch him for some hint of dishonesty, but he seems genuine. I’m kind of surprised at the implication that Cameron could ever be nervous, but maybe that’s the point—exaggerating his own confidence from the moment he walked on set so that none of us would clock his insecurity.
A string tugs deep in my chest: maybe I’m not the only one who likes acting because I can become someone else.
“I guess you could say the same for these,” I admit, brushing the headphones.
Cameron smiles, that little sideways lift of his lips.
“Listen,” he starts, face turning serious. “I feel like things have been off since we went to the museum, and with what happened last night…”
Cameron swallows, and I get a flash of how he looked at me across the prop table—that brief moment when we were the only two people who understood what was really happening here.
“I guess I just want to make sure you’re okay,” he says. “And that, you know … we can be friends. ’Cause I’d like to be.”
A warm feeling spreads in my chest, despite the rational part of my brain urging me to fight it. Cameron wants to be friends—even though I’ve been cold to him ever since the museum, for no reason besides the fact that he was looking at me a little too closely.
Maybe it wouldn’t be the worst thing to let him.
“Friends,” I say, sticking out my hand.
He gives another one of his good-Southern-boy handshakes.
“And you’re right,” I add. “This coffee’s terrible.”
A grin melts over his face like butter.
“All right, everyone,” Wren calls, standing with Autumn at the front of our group. “Let’s listen up.”
We all turn to face them, a hush falling over the group. I can feel us all bracing for it: the announcement that the film is shutting down. I clutch my cup tighter, holding my breath.
“Hi, y’all,” Autumn starts in a somber tone. Today, her overalls are gray to match the occasion. “So, I want to start by letting everyone know that Brooke is okay. They’ll be keeping her in the hospital for a few days, but her parents are with her now, and she’s going to be fine.”
I let out a relieved breath. Brooke’s earsplitting scream is still playing in my head on loop—how impressed I was before I understood that it was real.
It’s a moment too long before I think to glance around the group again, searching for anyone who looks a little too disappointed about Brooke not being dead. My eyes meet Cameron’s, but he looks away before I can determine what’s waiting in his expression.
“However,” Autumn goes on, “we can’t ignore the serious lapse in safety protocol that led to last night’s accident. As your director, I take full responsibility, and I can assure you that moving forward, this won’t happen again. We’re already in talks with the manufacturer of the prop knife to hold them accountable for the malfunction.”
