Chapter Text
“I searched the bathrooms,” Charlie said, jogging in Stefani’s direction, just as their mother rushed back into the building. “They weren’t in the RV?”
“No. Look, if Erik was trying to kill Bobby, where would they be?”
Stefani’s eyes rushed over the pages of the book that was weighing on her the longer she carried it, stopping on an entry about an explosion that killed two people in a hospital room back in the 2000s. “I don’t know, but there are a million ways to die in a hospital,” she said, exasperated. She slammed the book shut, her eyes darting over everyone in the crowd around them, scanning for tattoo sleeves and a lilac sweatshirt. Stefani nudged her brother. “Call Bobby again, now.”
She tried Erik, but it went straight to voicemail. Stefani figured she’d been temporarily blocked after spamming him for hours on the night the tattoo shop burned down.
“It’s just going to voicemail,” Charlie said.
“Shit.” Stefani continued to charge through the hospital like hell was rushing after her. “Try calling them again,” she added after a couple of minutes.
Charlie’s phone was on speaker, and she cursed every low trill of the phone ringing until she heard “Uh, hi there, this is Bobby Campbell. I can’t take your call right now, but—”
Charlie hit the end call button. “What are we supposed to do now?” She didn’t answer. “Stef!” Charlie grabbed her shoulder, and she wheeled around to face him. “We have no idea where they are. We don’t know where the hell we’re going. If Erik’s trying to kill Bobby, then he’s not going to do it in the middle of the hallway in broad daylight. We aren’t going to find them like this.”
“So what should we do, Charlie, sit here and—”
Her attention was pulled away by a screen above them relaying a monotone message. “Be sure to remove all metallic belongings and devices that could interact with the MRI’s powerful magnet.” Stefani glanced up to see the list of prohibited items in yellow letters floating across the screen: COINS, KEYS, PHONES, BEEPERS, PIERCINGS.
Piercings. The walls and ceiling of the hospital melted to the floor around her, and suddenly, Stefani felt herself being yanked into a new room. It was dark, and in front of her, Erik was writhing between a wheelchair and the opening to an MRI machine. When she tried to call out to him, no sound came out, and before she could do anything else, she was back where she was ten seconds ago in the middle of the hallway.
“Stef?” Charlie was saying, shaking her. “Stefani, what happened?”
“I know where they are,” she whispered. “I know where they are!”
Stefani took off running before Darlene or Charlie could ask her to explain, following the signs to the MRI room. As they got nearer, she suddenly heard a man screaming. Just a roar of agony at first that was soon followed by a voice—that very distinctly belonged to Erik Campbell—screaming, “FUCK!”
“Go, go, go!” Charlie yelled, pushing past her as they all raced toward the source of the yelling. Stefani pushed the door open just in time to tackle Erik to the ground as the wheelchair shot toward the MRI, passing the spot where his head had been just a moment ago. His ears, nose, and the front of his shirt were all covered in blood.
Charlie’s phone shot through the air toward the MRI as Stefani crouched on the ground next to Erik and attempted to assess his injuries.
“Hey! I’m not on the list,” Erik screamed, shoving her away, “get Bobby to the ER, now!”
Stefani hadn’t even seen her other cousin covered in hives and losing consciousness on the ground. “Oh my God,” Charlie gasped.
Stefani grabbed Erik’s shoulders and shook him aggressively. “Where the hell’s his EpiPen?” she demanded.
“No, he needs to flatline and have the doctors bring him back, that’s the only way, or he’s just going to be moved to the end of the list, and you’re all still going to die! Take him to the fucking emergency room.”
“You guys, Bobby’s not breathing!” Charlie shouted.
“Fucking now!” Erik roared.
“Hey, we need a doctor over here!” Darlene screamed into the hallway, already rushing out to find one.
“Stefani, go!”
She got up and Charlie looked at her. “Help me lift hi—look out!”
Stefani ducked just in time as a collection of desk supplies, shot toward the MRI from the hallway, a pair of scissors barely missing her throat. She rushed over and helped lift Bobby up, and they met Darlene and a pair of doctors with a stretcher in the hallway. Bobby was placed onto the stretcher and rushed away. “Go with Mom and the doctors,” she told Charlie. “I’m going to get Erik.”
“Ma’am, you cannot go past this point,” another doctor said, presumably to attend to the malfunctioning MRI.
“My cousin’s in there,” she snapped, ignoring him and running back to the MRI room. Erik had managed to crawl out and was trying to steady himself in the hallway.
“I’ve got you,” Stefani said, pulling him off the ground.
“Bobby?” he asked, breathless either from the effort of standing up or from the adrenaline rushing through him.
“He’s in the ER with Charlie and Darlene. You need a doctor too,” she added, looking at the state he was in.
“Not till somebody brings Bobby back to life,” he answered through gritted teeth.
They ran to the ER—as much as they could run with nearly all of Erik’s weight leaning on Stefani’s shoulder—asking where to find the boy who was just brought in, and they arrived at the room just in time to see a lifeless Bobby shocked with a defibrillator. Charlie’s face was buried in his mother’s shoulder, and she held him close to her as he shook with sobs. In hindsight, maybe sending him in here is a bad idea.
“Start CPR,” one of the doctors said. The other began to do chest compressions as Darlene took Charlie out of the room with her. Stefani stayed with Erik, partially because she couldn’t handle the anticipation of waiting outside to hear if Bobby had been revived or pronounced dead and partially because Erik was holding onto her with a death grip.
After what felt like an endless bout of CPR, Bobby was shocked with the defibrillator again to no avail. “What are you doing?” Erik demanded as the doctors stopped working. “You’re doctors, fucking fix him!”
“Erik—”
Bobby suddenly gasped loudly, frantically trying to sit up, and Erik let go of Stefani to rush over to him. “Bobby! You’re okay, I told you you were gonna be okay, didn’t I?” Erik's voice was weary, and one hand was holding onto the bedframe to keep his balance. There were tears in his eyes as he hugged a very disoriented Bobby, who hadn’t yet seemed to register where he was and what had happened; the doctors gently pulled Erik away so they could monitor how Bobby was doing.
“It’s over,” Stefani whispered, rubbing her heavy eyelids. “Jesus, it’s over.” There was a thud, and when she opened her eyes, she saw that whether from pain or exhaustion, Erik had passed out onto the floor.
—
After both of the Campbell boys were released from the hospital, things didn’t quite go back to normal. For one thing, Howard and Julia were still dead. Erik had taken over arranging Julia’s funeral because Brenda couldn’t manage a third one in the same week. Stefani had helped because she’d been the closest to Julia at one point, though that seemed so long ago now. More than anything though, it didn’t feel right leaving Erik alone to do it himself.
He was scrolling through pictures of urns, his eyes unblinking and bloodshot from evading sleep for days and staring at the computer in his bedroom with Stefani for hours to find funeral home information, flower arrangements, and detailed guides on how to write an obituary.
To put it nicely, they’d cremated what was left of Julia. To put it less nicely, several pieces of Julia had been found in the back of the garbage truck, but all in all, there wasn't much to bury, and this had been the more practical option.
“She wouldn’t want something boring,” Stefani said. Most of the urns on the website were in neutral shades or sported old-fashioned floral designs. “We should look at the different colors.”
“She likes pink,” Erik said, monotone.
They scrolled until they found a light pink urn with lavender butterflies painted on it. “I think she’d like this one,” Stefani said, pointing to it.
“Mhm.”
Stefani glanced over at Erik, who looked like there wasn’t much left behind his eyes. She nudged him. “We should take a break. You’re tired, you’ve hardly eaten all day. We’re having the funeral on the weekend, we don’t need to rush.”
Erik sighed. “Wanna take a drive?”
“Yeah. Yeah, we can do that.”
Forty minutes later, they were sitting in a Wendy’s parking lot on the opposite side of town. Erik was picking at a single fry every couple of minutes, and stayed silent until he suddenly asked, “Do you think we’re gonna be this fucked up forever?”
Stefani shrugged, taking a sip of coffee and shaking her head. “I still see the Skyview sometimes when I’m trying to fall asleep. Maybe this shit goes away eventually, I don’t know. I’m not an expert, I’m just the one who got stuck with the nightmares.” She paused. “We need closure, I think. We need to have Julia’s funeral so we can just grieve and not be in this weird limbo stage anymore.”
“What about the rest of it? The Sky View and the death curse and all that bullshit. How are we just supposed to go back to normal after finding out we’ve been on Death’s hit list our whole lives, and we’re not supposed to exist? I mean, what kind of fucking closure can we even get on that?”
Stefani leaned her head against the window. “I have an idea. It might be stupid though.”
“Well, you’ve been consistently right about everything for the last little while, so go on.”
“I think, for me at least, I need to go see it. The place where they built the Sky View. Leave a bouquet of flowers or something. I don’t know. It’s dumb”
“You know it’s gone now,” Erik said. “That lot’s been empty for the last fifty years, except for the fountain.”
“Yeah, I know. That’s the point. I think I just need to see that it’s gone.”
“It’s not dumb,” Erik said. “I mean, it’s a little weird. But what hasn’t been weird about the last two weeks?”
“Tell me about it.”
“Look, if putting flowers in the Sky View lot is gonna make you feel better, then go for it. What else do we have to lose?”
Erik called Bobby and Charlie to tell them about Stefani’s plan, and they agreed to come help build the memorial. They opted for fake flowers so that they’d last; Charlie helped Stefani navigate a craft store in search of some that resembled carnations while Bobby looked for wood.
When they returned to the lot where the Sky View Tower had once stood, they started putting up their memorial, turning the pieces of wood they’d bought into a makeshift cross.
“Uh, usually you write something on it,” Stefani said, “like the name of whoever died.”
“Well, we can’t write ‘Victims of the Sky View Disaster’ or something,” Charlie said. “The place never actually collapsed. They just tore it down.”
“Yeah, it’s got to be more subtle than that.” He glanced over at Stef who had a Sharpie in hand. “Any ideas?”
“How about… ‘To Those Taken From Us Too Soon’?”
“Works,” Erik said.
Bobby gave her a sad smile. “I think it’s perfect.” He helped Stefani arrange the flowers, painting the barren lot with a small sea of pink.
They all stood there for a moment, looking at the memorial. “It’s been… a really bad time lately, to put it lightly. For all of us. And I don’t think we’re ever going to forget about all this. But we can start to move on. All of this… it’s always going to be a part of us, but it doesn’t have to consume who we are. I don’t want to give Death that much power. And I know I’ve been distant, and I’m awful at picking up your calls when I should, but I don’t want things to be like that anymore. Regardless of everything that’s happened, we still have each other, and I don’t want us to forget that. You guys have me, even if that wasn’t true before.”
“Amen,” Charlie said after silence had hung in the air for a moment.
“Yeah, Amen.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Erik said.
“And you know, Stef, you’ve got the rest of us too. The last few years have been weird, but you’re back now, and that’s what matters.”
“Thanks,” she whispered.
“We ready to say good riddance?” Erik asked.
“Almost,” Stefani said. Everyone followed as she walked over to the fountain and fished the penny from Iris’ Death Book out of her pocket. “I’ve been carrying this around with me, and I think it’s time I let it go.” The Sky View fountain had stopped running long ago, though a pool of water still sat stagnant within it whenever it had rained recently.
“All of this over a fucking penny, right?” Erik said as Stefani turned the coin over in her hand one last time. She tossed it in, and it landed with an unceremonious plop.
“Rot in hell,” Charlie said to the fountain.
“Good riddance.”
“Go fuck yourself.” Erik spat on the fountain for good measure.
“Bye forever.” Stefani paused. “I think we’re ready to go home now.”
Later that night, Stefani walked out to the backyard in her pajamas, placed Iris’ Death Book in the Campbells’ fire pit and set it ablaze. Decades and decades of death and decay turned to ash in front of her. And once the fire faded to black, Stefani Reyes was no longer a visionary; the burden no longer belonged to her. When she returned to the living room couch where she was sleeping for the night, her dreams weren’t plagued with disaster, and she didn’t wake up the next morning until the sun had been shining for an hour.
Stefani never saw the Sky View Tower again.