The Last Guests

by J. P. Pomare

  ‘Why do you need a baby?’

  He’s watching me closely. I think about the question; is it because of the fraught relationship I had with my mother? Because some part of me wants to prove I am not her? Or is it simply some hardwired evolutionary trait, an atavistic need to procreate? Cain was the same, so much of his depression spawned from the lack of meaning he had after the war. He didn’t have any family anymore either. A child would give him purpose.

  I give him the only answer I know is true. ‘It was an ache for both of us. I did it as much for him as me.’

  ‘How many times did you do it?’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Find men, cheat on your husband.’

  ‘You were the first. The only time. The guilt felt like it was going to kill me. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn – ’

  ‘Shh. Enough.’

  I stop talking.

  I had rationalised it in my head. I’d convinced myself through some magical thinking it was for the best, that I was doing it for Cain. I’d planned it meticulously. It was going to work. The night with Daniel fell right in the window of my cycle.

  ‘And what about Cain? Poor cuckolded Cain was going to raise someone else’s kid.’

  ‘He would never know. It would be his. It might be his.’

  ‘Wouldn’t he think it odd if the kid didn’t look like him?’

  ‘I was careful,’ I say. ‘I was looking at people like him.’

  ‘Except I have green eyes.’

  ‘Cain’s dad had green eyes,’ I say. ‘You’ve got a similar nose, lips, height. You’re a Maori boy like him.’

  He laughs again. This time he straightens his legs and the table moves an inch, sliding on the carpet. I see the keys jiggle but he doesn’t seem to notice or care.

  ‘And your mother, tell me about her, Lina? This is why you want the baby, right? To prove you’re not as much of a fuck-up as her?’

  I look away this time. ‘I just want to be a mother. I want to raise a child with my husband. I never wanted to hurt anyone.’

  ‘But she died,’ he says now. It’s a blow right to the gut.

  ‘She did.’

  ‘In this lake. Drove her car through the barrier. Awful way to go.’

  ‘Don’t,’ I say. ‘Please.’

  ‘The articles said she was leaving her parents’ house, which …’ A pause. He turns slowly, raising his arms. ‘… Is this place, right?’

  ‘Stop it.’

  ‘So what happened? Because the way it was written about in the news article I read from all those years ago it sounded like the police weren’t sure if she deliberately drove through the barrier or if it was an accident. Her blood alcohol was almost zero point two, enough booze to bring down a rhino and yet she drove. So it begs the question, did she do it on purpose? Did you push her over the edge?’

  I don’t respond. I sit balled up, slowly shaking my head. I’ve read the same articles. I was young, but I remember it all so clearly. I was in this room when the fight happened. When she turned up to take me away and Grandpa sent her packing. If I’d gone, would we both have died? Or would she have driven away slowly, carefully?

  ‘Oh, Lina,’ he says. ‘Don’t cry. It’s not your fault. You can never know what might have happened, what someone was thinking. What secrets they keep. It makes sense to me now though. Your behaviour.’

  ‘Please stop. Just let us go.’

  ‘I think we’d better get on with the action: Give. The people. What they want.’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘Let me show you,’ he says. He holds the phone out towards me again. I look at the screen. This time it’s not the room in that WeStay. It’s … our room, our room here. In the corner is that symbol again, the shape of a house with an eye at the centre. ‘We’re putting on a bit of a show,’ he says. ‘Smile for the viewers. Almost three hundred people watching this right now.’

  ‘What is this?’ I say, turning, looking up towards the corners of the room.

  ‘This is Peephole,’ he says. Then he stands again, and goes to the kitchen. Drawers slide open until he finds what he is looking for. ‘Ladies and gentleman,’ he says, his arms wide, as he slowly turns. ‘The main event is about to begin.’ Now the mask makes sense. People are watching this. He’s protecting his identity. He thinks he will get away with it. My eyes fix on what he is holding in his hands.

  In his right is a steel, in his left is the Japanese chef’s knife we got as a wedding present. He starts sharpening the knife.

  ‘His name is Daniel Moore,’ I scream. ‘Please call the police, our address is –’

  ‘They can’t hear you,’ he says. ‘No one is coming to save you, Lina!’ Lightning cracks the sky open.

  He climbs the steps once more, leaving the shotgun on the couch. I can hear the shhhiiivd-shhhiiivd of the knife sliding up the steel.

  This is my only chance. If I don’t escape, I will die; we will both die – me and the baby. I move again, lying down, reaching with my toes for the table. It is slightly closer from where he had pushed it with his feet and I hook my foot around one leg, just my toes, straining for purchase. It’s enough that the table turns, shimmies closer. The keys are on top and now I bend my knee, pulling. The table lurches forward. The feet whisper against the carpet as I drag it closer. There is no time to waste. I keep it moving, the keys are towards the back edge and with each jerking movement they slide a little further, but the table is coming closer now. Soon it is on me and I can use my hands and feet to keep dragging it. The keys fall on the far side of the table, hit the ground. I reach with my foot again, I can just touch the steel ring.

  Sounds come from upstairs. A box moving, dragging over the wooden floor.

  Come on, Lina, stretch. Every sinew, every cell strives to move my toe closer. The edge of the cuff bites into my wrist. Between my two biggest toes on my right foot, I pinch the key ring and bend my knee. It is close enough to take in my hand. I turn, get the keys, push one in the lock. It doesn’t go. I try the next one. And the next. I can’t hear the knife anymore, or any movement. I drop the keys, take them up again, keep trying those three keys over and over but they’re not working. Why won’t the handcuff unlock? My breath is frantic.

  ‘Ha, ha, ha, haaaaa,’ he says, slowly, clapping his hands. ‘Brilliant.’

  I drop the keys. The table slides off me over the carpet. Looking up I meet his eyes in that mask. ‘They don’t work,’ I say, desperately.

  ‘Clever girl. They probably enjoyed that.’ He looks at his phone. ‘Even more viewers. They’re flocking to watch you suffer.’

  ‘You’re sick.’

  ‘I have to give the viewers something to watch, someone to root for.’ He calmly walks over, places the knife and the steel on the couch, then takes the keys from beside me and places them in his pocket. ‘I’ll take these. For now you can watch this.’ He shows me the phone screen again. I see myself on the floor beside the fire, I see him standing over me holding the phone. But the screen is cycling through the various cameras. For a second I’m looking at the downstairs bathroom, then the upstairs bathroom, then the hallway outside the bedroom, then … a scream tears out of me.

  He shoves a hand over my mouth, the cool leather gripping my cheeks. ‘Shh,’ he says. But it keeps coming. The scream dying to a whimper. I feel so weak now, as I look at the body wrapped in a sheet on the floor of the bedroom. The camera is in the hallway but it’s clear what it is. ‘Shh, he’s still breathing. But I want you to watch. I want you to see what they’re seeing.’ The cameras are cycling back through, so for a second I see us there in the living room. At the bottom of the phone screen words keep appearing, then are replaced.

  CallMeDaddy: This is the best stream I’ve watched on here. Incredible.

  Silvesterthekitten: I don’t know about this at all. It’s not what I signed up for, but I can’t look away.

  ‘They’re watching?’ It’s coming together now. This is about something much bigger than jealou
sy, or some feelings he had for me. This is something else completely.

  ‘I’ll let you watch, you shouldn’t miss out on this.’

  Again he rises to go. He leaves the knife, the steel, the gun on the couch.

  I scream and scream but the storm has grown outside. No one will hear me, no one will help. I can’t unlock the phone, I can only watch. There’s no one but me. Only I can save myself. He climbs the stairs and I watch the phone screen. He walks to the entrance of the bedroom where Cain lies. Taking Cain by the leg, he drags him up the hall to the spare bedroom. There’s no camera there. What is he doing? The comments keep flowing. One catches my attention.

  PlatoOf21C: Lift the base of the fireplace you stupid bitch. It’s your only hope. They’re not always bolted down.

  I study the fireplace. The foot where the handcuff is attached. It’s an old wood burner. Grandpa installed it in the open fireplace. I would only need to get it up half an inch to slide the loop of the handcuff out.

  The gun is just there, and I know it is loaded, or it was. Hopefully there are more rounds in it. I try to stand now, bend at the knees. I grab the underside of the fireplace. It moves. It’s working. I use my foot, gripping the chain with my toes, sliding the handcuff. It comes free. I breathe. I’m free. This isn’t a trick. I’m free. Relief fills my head like an inert gas. I might lift off the ground. But it’s not over. It’s far from over.

  PlatoOf21C: She did it! She’s listening. Good girl. Now get the gun. He’s upstairs unarmed. He went into the end bedroom. Kill the lights, you’ve got the advantage. You can do this.

  NINETEEN

  I SCRABBLE ACROSS the floor and clutch the gun to my chest. Then fall silent listening to the house. More footsteps. I try to trace them, focusing my hearing in the direction of the stairs but I can’t tell where he is. I look at the phone. It shows me the inside of the bathroom, then the bedroom upstairs. I can hear a knocking sound. My other hand trembles around the gun. The storm lashes the house outside. Could he have worked out I have freed myself? What if he has another weapon? He’s unarmed. I drag in a breath and step towards the kitchen as quietly as I can. I need to get help, my phone is still in the car but he has the car keys. I could break the window, but what if he’s already taken my phone? What if the car alarm goes off? Cain’s phone was in his pocket but it had run out of battery. What is he doing with Cain?

  There’s a little light passing down the stairs from the bedroom; the bedside lamp is on. I imagine Cain, a body with no head, just a spray of blood, bone fragments and that colourless pulp of brain matter. My breath shakes in my chest. Keep going, Lina. Do something. I hold the gun out in one hand, the phone in the other. He’s not anywhere on the screen. Is he hiding, waiting for me? My experience with firearms is limited to the single time Cain took us to a shooting range in the US. It was our honeymoon and he insisted we go. Everyone should know how to fire a rifle, just in case. In case of what? Did he ever imagine this scenario? I wouldn’t trust myself to aim, or pull the trigger if it came to that. I could run, through the dark and rain. Where would I go without a car though? Aim it with both hands, always the centre mass, spread your feet.

  I creep further, heading towards the front door. Gently turning the lock and the handle, pulling it silently. The wind presses the door hard, it whistles past me into the house. Then I hear a scream. Loud, tearing agony. Another gale blows the door from my hand. It slams against the wall. I’m electrified. Cain is alive. My relief is suspended because he’s in pain, we’re not out of the woods. I look at the phone. It’s locked on these streams, touching the screen does nothing, there are no buttons to press. With the gun in my right hand, keeping watch over my shoulder towards the stairs, it takes all my strength to close the door quietly against the force of the wind. It clicks shut. Move, Lina. Easy steps over the cool wood floor.

  I know this house like the back of my hand, I have the view of the cameras, the gun. I have the advantage. I stride to the switchboard near the bottom of the stairs and hit the power for the lights. The house falls dark, a sheet fallen over the canary’s cage. Everything is still and silent but for the storm outside.

  ‘Shit,’ I hear a voice mutter upstairs. I look at the screen now, the cameras show the rooms in greyscale night vision. I watch for a few moments, then I see Daniel wandering carefully up the hall towards the spare bedrooms where there are no cameras at all, just a terminal of darkness, train tunnel black. Then a flash of something behind him. Is that someone else? Maybe a glitch on the camera. I thought I saw movement. The image changes to the next camera.

  I go to the fire, feeling my way in the dark, holding the gun out in front of me, and find the long lighter. Back at the stairs I begin the climb, one step at a time, feeling the muscles in my calves tightening and knotting, trembling with adrenaline. On the camera, I see Daniel in the hallway. It fixes on him. He’s removed his mask and seems confused by the darkness with his arms out before him, still and silent. He could fall down the stairs. I place the phone on the step, face down, so the light from the screen doesn’t give my position away. Rising, my hands ache around the gun and the lighter. I creep my way up towards the top of the stairs. It’s muscle memory. He’s close, he must be. I know this house so well, know the points where the floor squeaks, the distance from the top of the stairs to the master bedroom. I pause at the landing, holding my breath and squeezing the lighter in one hand, resting the gun across my left forearm. The trigger feels hard and electric against my right index finger. He’s there at the end of the hall. A gust presses the house. The windows creak in their frames. I fumble with the lighter and flick it on. A tiny glow leaps ahead. I see him, see terror in those green eyes.

  I don’t think. I simply drop the lighter. The gun comes up. I hold it tight. Centre mass.

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘Please!’

  I pull the trigger. The room explodes. I fly back, a sledgehammer to the chest that hurls me hard against the wall at the top of the stairs. The house falls into complete darkness.

  My breath is gone. An ache in the sternum. What happened? Did it hit him? I scrabble along the floor. A gurgling sound. Heavy breathing. I find the lighter. A breath, stillness. I click it and the room glows once more. Outside, the storm quietens a little. I slide my back along the wall. There’s blood, pooling. The shotgun blast has left a shark bite at the side of his torso. Heavy metal tang on the air, burrowing into my nostrils. I feel sick, a medical compulsion to help. But not this man, first I must find my husband. The light from the lighter only travels a few feet. I glance once more up into the darkness of the hallway, the other rooms. Then slide along until I can see into the spare room at the end of the hallway, the wall first, then I see more blood. A single drip first of crimson on the pale wall, but the further I slide the more I see. An arc of red. A slash. Cain’s blood. Rain is trickling into the house through a hole in the wall. It must have been from the shotgun blast. But Cain’s not there. Daniel had dragged him in a sheet further along to the spare room. I continue deeper into the hallway. Then I see him. He’s on the floor beneath the sheet; a bloodied mess where his head is.

  ‘No, no, no, no, no.’ The words rush out. I drop to my knees, pull the sheet back.

  One eye moves. He sees me, shock spreads across his bloody face. His mouth open. I see his hands now, taped together, he’s almost got the tape apart, it’s torn the hair off his wrists.

  He’s alive. Relief, a surge replaces the adrenaline with something softer, heavier. I rush forward and pull the tape from his mouth. Tears run down my face.

  ‘Quick,’ Cain says, louder now. ‘Untie me.’

  I drop down beside him and pick at the tape. Over the slamming of my heart I hear that sickly breathless gurgling sound in the hall.

  A thought sends an ice pick sliding in beneath my ribs. What if there is someone else? I thought I saw movement.

  ‘Cain,’ I begin, the tape coming away from his hands. ‘Was it just one?’

  He looks confused. ‘I,’
he says, pausing, ‘I think so, yeah. Just him.’

  My breath comes back. ‘I thought I might have seen … I don’t know, it was hard to see anything on the camera but there looked like movement behind him.’

  ‘Camera?’

  ‘It’s a long story.’

  Cain shakes his head, stands up and takes the gun from my hands. I light the lighter again. He checks the gun is still loaded before stepping forward into the hallway, motioning for me to wait in the room.

  ‘You shot him?’ His words are still a little slow and slurred. He’s shocked. I’ve never seen such a deep look of concern.

  ‘I had to,’ I say. ‘He was coming towards me, he was going to hurt us. I had to.’

  ‘You pulled the trigger,’ he says. It’s not a question. He knows what killing does to someone. ‘Are you okay? Shit.’

  ‘I had to, Cain. He was coming towards me. He was – ’

  ‘It’s okay. It’s okay. Don’t look,’ he says. It’s obvious he’s still heavily medicated by the way he walks, the looseness to his stride. ‘You’ll be okay.’

  I hear him now, dragging something down the hall and I turn away. When I step out of the room and see the blood I feel a sudden overwhelming nausea. I look at Cain instead and notice that blood still silently seeps down his cheek from his eye. Cain steps over the body, holding the gun ahead of him and using the lighter to look in the bathroom. He picks something up, the gas mask, the hoodie Daniel was wearing.

  ‘He was wearing this, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I say.

  Cain is still wearing just his underwear. ‘Doesn’t look like there’s anyone else but I wonder why he took it off. I can check the other rooms or we can just get the fuck out of here. If there was someone else, they probably cleared out after the gunshot but let’s not wait around and find out.’

  The wheezing tells me Daniel is still alive. We both look down at the same time.

  ‘Turn away,’ he says.

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘He’s not going to make it,’ Cain says. ‘He’s just going to suffer and bleed out.’