The Last Guests

by J. P. Pomare

  ‘Come on, little rabbit,’ he says. He steps back, and gestures again. In the light of the hallway, his black hood keeps his face and that awful mask in shadow.

  ‘Please,’ I say, ‘let me go, you can take whatever you want but just don’t hurt us. Please don’t hurt us.’

  ‘Shh.’ A sound like a slow gas leak. I fall silent but my lip quakes. ‘I know I can take whatever I want,’ he says, showing me my car keys. ‘I know that already.’ I turn back to Cain, who is still prone, facing away. My phone is in the car, why didn’t I grab it? ‘He’s not waking up any time soon,’ he says. ‘Downstairs, let’s go.’

  Impossibly, despite the numbness, my legs respond and I walk past him, my body a struck bell. ‘You’ve been watching me.’ Even my voice shakes. ‘It’s been you.’

  ‘We are all voyeurs, Lina. You included.’

  Me? What does he mean? I take the stairs, gripping the handrail tight.

  ‘Up all night, searching your mother’s name. Trying to know everything about her. You’re just as obsessed as the rest of us.’

  I grit my teeth, biting back against the rising anger. It’s not due to some protective instinct, but rather the simple fact that this man, this monster, possesses my most private secrets. ‘How do you know about that?’ My head is swimming.

  He doesn’t answer my question. ‘Over there by the fireplace. Sit.’

  ‘No, please just – ’ The gun barrel comes up to my face again. ‘Okay, okay. I’m sorry.’ I sit down and see the handcuffs. One end is closed around the foot of the fireplace, the other is sitting loose, open on the tiles.

  ‘Go on, you know what to do.’

  ‘No,’ I say, tears coming. ‘No, please don’t do this.’

  ‘Put it on!’ His voice rumbles. I sit down, reach for the handcuff and close it around my wrist. ‘Tighter.’

  I squeeze it until the cold steel is pressing against my skin all the way around.

  He sits on the coffee table near me. Places the shotgun down.

  ‘You’re a paramedic, right?’

  I just stare at that mask, those green eyes.

  ‘You’re Daniel, aren’t you?’

  ‘Who I am is not important right now.’

  ‘What did you do to my husband?’

  ‘He’s just having a sleep, that’s all.’

  It comes down on me like a thunderclap. This has been planned. Daniel, or whoever this is, has gone to a lot of trouble. ‘What did you do to him?’

  ‘I gave him something, ketamine.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘I don’t know. I put a sedative in the wine, I assume he drank it all. Then I gave him ketamine while you were in the shower.’

  Shit. Cain is in trouble. He’s mixed anaesthetics. Ketamine overdose is very rare and unlikely but in high enough doses he could choke on his own vomit, or the ketamine could interact with the other sedative and suppress his breathing. ‘Please let me help him.’

  ‘You were supposed to have a little each, you were supposed to stay at the house with a mild buzz. Why didn’t you drink, Lina? Why did you go out to a restaurant instead of staying here?’

  ‘What was the other sedative?’

  He shakes his head slowly. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Tell me, you’re going to kill him.’

  ‘That would be a shame, wouldn’t it? I know what I’m doing, Lina. I didn’t kill him. Not yet.’

  I swallow. ‘You’ve not done anything irreversible. You can just let me go, walk out that door. I won’t call the police. I won’t do anything.’

  He pauses, staring out at me, considering it. A hack of laughter now. Then he turns away, picks up the shotgun and strides up the stairs towards the bedroom.

  I sit there with my hand cuffed to the fireplace. If I could get my hand free, I could run. There’s the front door through the kitchen, or the exit that overlooks the lake. And the third door. Does he know about the side exit? I could slip out through the laundry, past the clothesline and into the bush. Then it’s not so far to the road. I pinch all my fingers together, tear at the steel loop over my skin, but it won’t go past the joint of my thumb.

  He’s moving around upstairs. I hear him. Any hope I had of Cain coming out of his stupor and saving me is disappearing. Even if he can wake, with enough ketamine he would likely just sit there, unable to move his legs or arms, scarcely lucid to the world around him.

  What does this man want? Why is he doing this?

  I hear a tap running then footsteps back down the stairs.

  If we buy enough time and Cain comes out of his stupor, he could get to the ladder in the bunkroom, climb down and get out the side door at the back. He could find help. But that’s not my husband, he wouldn’t leave me here, he would stay and fight. Without a weapon and in the state he’s in he wouldn’t be too much help. Then I realise this man wouldn’t leave him up there without something restraining him anyway, probably another pair of handcuffs.

  ‘Please, just take what you want, I won’t call the police, I won’t do anything.’

  ‘You’ll never call the police about this?’

  ‘No,’ I say, a flash of hope. ‘No, I promise. Please.’

  ‘But you know who I am, don’t you?’

  ‘How could I know?’

  He laughs again. Hoarse through the mask. He sits on the couch, places the shotgun down beside him and unclips the keys from his belt, setting them on the table between us.

  He holds his phone out so I can see the screen. A video begins playing.

  ‘What is this?’

  ‘Just watch.’

  There’s something familiar about the room he is showing me. A night-vision lounge room. There’s a watermark in the corner of the footage: a small outline of a house with an eye in the centre. Then a flare of light, the camera adjusts, and the scene is thrown into colour. A plunge in my stomach, my gaze leaves the screen, bolts to the man’s green eyes again. I take in the shape of him, the bulging shoulders. It is him. It has to be. Why else would I be looking at the house where Daniel took me? I look back to the screen as fresh sparks of adrenaline crackle up my spine. In the video I’m pushing him up against the wall, the view of us is from the ceiling. I’m pinning his hands back, kissing him hard.

  ‘You set it up …’ He booked the WeStay, he recorded us. What’s the end goal? Blackmail? Is it possible that he targeted me somehow? He finds married women and fucks them, then what? The dating app relies on proximity, perhaps he was following me until we matched.

  ‘It looks like you, doesn’t it?’ he says. ‘But it can’t be you because you’re married.’

  ‘You … you were recording? You’ve been stalking me.’

  ‘Not me,’ he says. ‘I didn’t do the recording.’

  ‘What do you mean? You have the footage.’

  ‘I do,’ he says. ‘Someone shared it with me. When you decided to stop messaging me, I planned this rendezvous, a date you couldn’t say no to.’

  He taps the screen. Now I see myself afterwards, in the bathroom sitting on the toilet.

  ‘You’re a pervert,’ I say, staring him in the eye. ‘Is this some game? Something you do to women?’

  ‘You did this to yourself, Lina.’

  I let out a groan, something deep and atavistic, that trembles through me.

  He taps the screen again and I see night-vision footage in the bedroom. I see Daniel. He reaches out and takes my phone sitting on the bedside table. He’s doing something, holding it close to his mouth as if talking to it.

  ‘Pretty clever, isn’t it? Even when a phone is locked, if Siri is turned on, you can ask it to call a phone number. I asked it to call my phone so I would have your number.’

  It makes sense now. On the screen, as he puts the phone back something falls out of my handbag. It’s my ID for the ambulance service. He stares at it a moment, then towards the bathroom door and back at the ID before shoving it back into my bag. That’s how he got my real name. Did something else fall out?
Maybe my necklace and ring?

  ‘Why do this? To punish me for something?’

  ‘This isn’t about you, Lina. This is about me. Some people like to watch, but more than that, some people like to control. I need control.’

  He seemed so normal on the date but it was an act. ‘Please, just go. Just leave us alone. I’ll forget everything. You can just walk out that door.’

  ‘I’ll make you a deal. If you can reach these keys, you can unlock your hands and you can go help your husband. I’ll walk out that front door and you’ll never see me again.’ He nods at the table. His voice is croaky.

  I watch him for a moment, dubious. Then I crawl towards the table until the chain is taut. The keys are still far away. Lying flat, I turn and kick my foot out and reach with my toes. They just touch the corner of the wooden table, but I’ll never be able to reach the middle where the keys are.

  ‘Go on,’ he says. ‘Stretch.’

  I do. The cuff bites, but I feel no pain. I keep stretching. My body is at its limit, fully stretched out and yet my toes are still two feet from the keys, barely an inch past the edge of the table.

  ‘Too bad.’

  I drop to the carpet. Knock my forehead against it. ‘Fuck you.’

  ‘I know what you did, I know what sort of woman you are. You think you can have it all but I’m going to give you a simple choice. Him or me?’

  I don’t hesitate, the anger is coiling in on itself. Growing more intense by the moment like a grudge. ‘Him.’

  ‘Him?’

  ‘I would never choose you over him. He’s my husband.’

  ‘Oh,’ he says, a teasing note of sadness in his voice. ‘That’s the wrong answer, Lina. Or are you still going by Anna?’

  ‘Fuck you.’

  ‘I’ll give you another chance. Your husband or you?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Pick one.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Lina, please just play the game.’

  ‘I’m not playing your stupid games.’

  ‘Here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to drown you in the lake. And I’m going to blow your husband’s head off with this gun. I have killed people before. You may not believe that, you may not want to believe it’s possible, but I promise you I have. And once you have done it, it changes you. Just ask your husband.’ He doesn’t speak for a moment. ‘Here is what the police are going to find: a textbook murder–suicide. It will only take them a few days to investigate. Your family and friends will assume you were the latest victim of an epidemic of domestic violence and your husband will be just the latest piece of shit to murder his wife. PTSD, they will say. CTE from the head knocks. There is nothing you can do about it. Unless, of course, you choose me. In which case I’ll simply kill him. You and I can be together. So let me ask you again. Cain or me?’

  The rage swells. ‘You’ll never be half the man Cain is,’ I hiss. ‘You’re a weak little man. My husband is a hero.’

  ‘A hero,’ he says, his voice chillingly neutral.

  Then he takes the gun from the couch, strides towards the stairs and climbs them. A moment later there’s an explosion upstairs.

  EIGHTEEN

  ‘CAIN!’ A LONG wretched cry escapes me, stinging everything inside. I try to scream again but anguish clogs my throat. In the seconds after, everything is almost silent except for the static of the rain on the iron roof and the wind tearing across the lake, through the trees, up the hills. And that other sound growing louder now: an animal whining, reverberating from my own chest. The explosion still rings in my head, would anyone have heard it out in the world? Wiremu and Melissa up the road might be close enough if not for the storm.

  I scream again, my body contorting against the handcuff; blood wells around the steel. He’s coming. Footsteps down the stairs. I kick out for the keys and the table moves a little further away. The shotgun blast can’t have hit Cain. My mind rejects it as something fundamentally impossible, an apple falling towards the sky, water flowing uphill. If it did hit him, the shot didn’t kill him, he can survive. He went through worse in Afghanistan. He’s built to survive.

  My next thought comes on as a burning imperative: protect the baby. Kicking once more at the table, my foot impotently passes by without touching the wood. The footsteps come closer. Then he is there, in the room, rushing towards me. ‘Stop screaming!’

  But I can’t. The sound pours out of me. He forces his gloved hands into my mouth, compressing my tongue, blocking the sound. He wraps something behind my head. I’m coughing against whatever he’s tied in my mouth but it doesn’t move from between my teeth. My words are just a panicked hum.

  ‘That’s one of your husband’s socks. He’s up there, lying in blood.’ He yawns, whatever is disguising his voice crackles. ‘And now you’re going for a swim.’

  My head shakes, my body convulses violently, ripping against the handcuff.

  ‘Stay still,’ he says. ‘I’ll take the sock out, but if you scream it’s going straight back in and you’re going in the lake, understand?’

  I nod.

  ‘Good.’

  He steps forward again, his boots knocking on the carpet. I draw away, pressed hard against the black iron side of the fireplace.

  ‘Stay still.’ He reaches out. When the glove touches my cheek I wince. I eye the shotgun behind him, what I would do to have the gun in my hands, aimed at him.

  He unties the sock and I cough, resisting the urge to spit.

  My body is aching. I squeeze everything inside. ‘Please don’t kill me. You – you can’t.’

  He is so close now, the black mask hovering inches from my face. The leather of his gloved finger grazes my cheek. ‘And why is that?’

  The panic reaches a crescendo. ‘I’m pregnant,’ I say, a note of hysteria in the chorus of desperation. ‘Please, my baby. You can’t hurt my baby.’

  Something in his eyes changes, those two green discs narrow. He draws himself back away from me. Hands on hips. ‘Pregnant.’ It’s not quite a question but it’s clear he wants a response.

  ‘Yes, six weeks.’

  ‘Six weeks,’ he utters to himself. He turns away from me, his hands still on his hips. I can hear him breathing.

  ‘Six weeks,’ he says without turning back.

  I find myself fervently nodding. ‘Yes, it’s already got a heart.’ This detail might make him more sympathetic. I was going to tell Cain tonight, it was going to be perfect, the start of our new life and here I am telling this man instead.

  He turns back, tilts his head one way then back again like an owl studying its prey. The hanging canister of the gas mask swings below his chin. ‘This changes things.’

  A splinter of hope lodges between my ribs. He won’t hurt me, now that he knows about the baby. He thinks, or perhaps he knows that it might be his. ‘Are you sure you’re pregnant, Lina?’

  ‘It is you, isn’t it, Daniel?’ I say. ‘Why are you doing this?’ The adrenaline, the anger, it’s fading now, cooling, forged to a sharp edge. I need to get away. I need to get Cain to a hospital. Cain.

  ‘I asked you a question. Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I took a test.’

  A long pause, he studies me.

  ‘I’m the father … I’m going to be a dad.’

  He rises suddenly and heads back up to the bedroom. I can hear him moving around up there. Then a moment later he returns.

  ‘This place is different since last time I was here,’ he says. ‘Or maybe it’s just a bit different during the day, it seems cleaner, nicer somehow.’

  He’s been here before. Of course he has. He drugged the wine. He got inside, he must have changed the code to the lock. Rain pounds the roof. Even through the mask, I see a bead of sweat running down into his eye. But it’s not hot in here. He’s nervous.

  ‘Let me ask you something,’ he says, sitting on the couch. He rests his feet on the table near the keys for the handcuff. ‘Why did you choose me?’

/>   ‘What?’

  ‘Why did you choose me, on the dating app? My tattoos? My looks? What was it?’

  I swallow. ‘Why do you want to know?’

  ‘Because I want the truth. Because I am a fucking caveman, Lina. That’s why. Now answer the question.’

  ‘It was supposed to be one night,’ I say. ‘I’m sorry if I gave you the wrong impression.’

  ‘Was I not good enough for you?’

  I take a breath. ‘Please take this off? Then we can talk properly.’ I raise my cuffed hand so the chain is taut.

  ‘No. Tell me why you chose me, explain to me why you ghosted me afterwards.’

  ‘Because you seemed normal, you had a good job, you were young.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with it?’

  ‘There was less chance we would have friends in common. You said you were a country boy but I didn’t think you meant Rotorua. I never would have –’

  ‘You thought you had gotten away scot-free, you’d never see me again.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘So it was just sex?’

  ‘No,’ I say, without thinking. I hesitate. ‘Well, I guess it was.’ I need to keep him onside.

  ‘Oh, Lina, you’re going to have to give me a little more than that. Do you love your husband?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then why were you cheating on him?’

  ‘It’s complicated.’

  ‘We’ve got time.’

  I lean up against the fireplace, my shoulder and hips ache from sitting in this awkward position but I can’t turn from him. I don’t have the mettle to look away from his eyes even for a moment.

  Those years of pain, of trying for a baby. Marking dates on the calendar app on my phone, reminders to have regimented sex. Killing the joy we once took in each other’s bodies. ‘We’ve been trying for a baby for years,’ I say. ‘I thought I could get pregnant, tell him it’s a miracle. I needed it,’ I say. ‘We needed it.’

  He guffaws now. ‘You selfish bitch.’

  ‘I did it for him, I was doing it for us.’