The Killing Hour

by Paul Cleave

  “Stakes,” she says.

  “What?”

  “Stakes,” she says, and this will test just how far Charlie has slipped into the crazy. “That’s the next part of our plan,” she says, glancing at the dying vampire on TV, hoping like hell the scenario she’s about to pitch is going to work.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “Stakes,” Jo says.

  I look up from my letter. It isn’t going well. I’m up to the part where Cyris had his dead fingers curled around the handle of the knife, but I’m not sure whether to put that down. I don’t bother to ask Jo because she doesn’t believe I stabbed him, and looking back at it I’m starting to question it too. I didn’t want to check for a pulse because I’d seen too many horror movies and knew what would happen to me if I did.

  I don’t add any atmosphere because I’m not writing them a story. The English teacher inside me says nothing of my shivering from being scared to death, because the police don’t care about character development. I remember picking up the flashlight and pointing it at Kathy. What was it I said? That’s right. I told her everything was going to be okay.

  If I were to rewrite it, if I were to put things down differently, is there any way it could change what happened? I guess not. The past is definite.

  “What are you talking about?” I ask.

  “We make them,” she says. “We use them as weapons.”

  In the background the TV is going. I keep glancing at it, waiting for my photograph to appear on the screen with bold words beneath it saying Wanted for murder and Do not approach. It’s just a matter of time. Unless I can find Cyris.

  “Why?”

  “Finish your letter first,” she says.

  “It could take. .”

  “Just wrap things up. We don’t have all day.”

  I don’t mind that Jo is giving me orders because it means we’re about to do something right, and that’s going to feel good after thirty-six hours of doing everything wrong. I spend the next ten minutes wrapping things up, but don’t sign it.

  “Here,” Jo says, and she pulls out a phone bill from her handbag. She takes it out of the envelope and hands the envelope over to me. I fold up my story and tuck it inside. I grab the phone book, get the address for the police station, and print it across the front. I mark it as urgent. All I need now is a stamp.

  “When he shows up at your house,” Jo says, “we’ll be able to follow him home. That’s the plan, right?”

  “That depends on whether or not he shows up there. But yeah, so far that’s the plan.” And it’s a good plan. Almost too good, as if a part of it surely has to fail because we’re in the Real World now. Haven’t I told her this? Maybe she doesn’t get it. I run the scenario through my mind. Several faults stand out, but nothing stands out as being too dangerous. I try to imagine the sort of place Cyris lives in and end up picturing that big old two-storey house from Hitchcock’s Psycho.

  “So what are you saying? We hide down the road and follow him home? What do we need stakes for?”

  “Wooden stakes. Think about it,” she says, leaning forward, her voice picking up pace. “You said both the women-”

  “They have names, Jo. Kathy and Luciana.”

  “Of course, you’re right,” she says, leaning back. “I’m sorry. You said Kathy and Luciana were staked through the chest. Why? It’s a pretty unusual way to kill somebody, don’t you think? Outside of a movie?”

  “Maybe Cyris thought he was in a movie.”

  “That’s almost my point. Maybe Cyris thought they were vampires, or-”

  I shake my head. “No. I mean nobody is that crazy.”

  Jo carries on. “Or maybe he just wanted to stake them so people would think that he thought they were vampires.”

  Now I’m getting confused. “Why would he do that?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe so everything would seem a lot crazier than it really was. Think about it. The police find these two women and it looks like it was done my some madman, but maybe it wasn’t, maybe it just seems that way because of the way he did it. Maybe that’s why he did it that way.”

  I see where she’s going with this. “It makes sense,” I say, and then I think about it a little more. “In fact it really makes great sense.”

  “Or it’s the opposite,” she says. “Maybe he was delusional and not just acting crazy, but was crazy.”

  “I don’t know. I still don’t think people are really that crazy.”

  “Look at where we are, Charlie. Look at what you’ve done to me. Now tell me people aren’t crazy.”

  I get her point. Only I’m not crazy. I’m just caring. I want so much to make sure nothing bad happens to her. There’s no way I can explain that and have her believe me.

  “I guess. But what’s your point about the stakes?”

  “Wooden stakes make for good weapons,” she says.

  “Yeah, that’s true. Only his were metal.”

  “Does it matter?” she asks.

  In vampire mythology, perhaps. In the Real World, who the hell knows? “I guess not. I’m still not seeing where you’re going with this, especially if all we’re doing is following him home,” I say, which is true-only I’m not so sure that’s all I want to do. I want to make him pay for what he did. Jo is figuring the stakes might make great weapons if we have to defend ourselves, but knives would do an even better job. Knives and a hammer.

  “Do you want to catch him, or just follow him home?”

  “I want to catch him,” I say, but it’s more than that. I don’t share this with Jo.

  “Then we need weapons of our own.”

  “So your plan isn’t just to follow him, but to catch him.”

  “Yes,” she says, and she leans forward again, “because we don’t know for a fact we’ll be following him home.”

  “Huh?”

  “If he shows up at your house tonight, and we start to follow him, how do we know it’s his house he’s going to next? For all we know he could be going into somebody else’s house to attack them. In which case we need to stop him.”

  “Which would put me into a similar position to last night,” I say, “which means we should call the police.”

  She stares at me for a few seconds, then slowly nods. “You still don’t have a cell phone, and you left mine behind. So we can’t call for help once we start following him. Level with me,” she says. “What’s your plan? To call the police? Capture him? Or are you after revenge?”

  “I don’t know,” I tell her, and it’s true. “It’s always changing. I woke up yesterday just wanting him caught. Last night I wanted to capture him. Now I want him dead. I guess. . I don’t know. I guess we just follow him and see what happens.”

  “That’s not much of a plan,” she says.

  I grab the remote control and turn off the TV. I get the feeling most of Jo’s plan is coming from the movies that have been on this morning.

  “So you believe me now,” I say. “You believe that Cyris exists.”

  “Let’s just say I don’t not believe you.”

  “Taking stakes. . I don’t know. It just seems crazy.”

  “Cyris didn’t think so, and anyway, isn’t crazy our buzzword for the day?”

  “We could take some knives,” I say, and I think about my tire iron. Maybe it doesn’t matter what we take.

  “Sure, but we’re playing on his terms, Charlie, and that means we have to fight the same way he fights. If he really is delusional then we have to get down and dirty and be just as delusional, and if we show up on his doorstep armed with stakes he’ll not only know we mean business, but he’ll freak out more.”

  “I don’t know. It doesn’t sound like a great plan. It really doesn’t.”

  “And if you’re planning on killing him,” she says, “don’t you want to be acting all crazy when you’re doing it? People aren’t going to be looking for a schoolteacher, Charlie. They’re going to be looking for a madman. Come on, it’s a plan. We’re not going to come up wit
h anything better.”

  I don’t like it. “Staking out my house with stakes. I dunno. It sounds like a bad joke.”

  “We take hammers and stakes to threaten him and we use wire to bind him if that’s all you want to do. We need to go to a hardware store, Charlie, and we also need to swap cars. We can’t sit outside your house in your car. Think about it.”

  I am thinking about it. It’s all I’ve been doing. “I’m still not so sure about the stake thing.”

  “I thought we’d moved past it.”

  “I wasn’t even aware we’d agreed.”

  “Well, we’d better start agreeing on something, Charlie, because we don’t have all day.”

  “Okay, okay, so assuming we do this. What happens?”

  “First of all you have to let me come with you,” she says, even though I haven’t even said yet that I’m going. “We can go back to my house and get my car.”

  “I can get your car and I can get the tools. You stay here while I’m getting them.”

  We discuss it some more and I feel like I’ve just agreed to do something I totally don’t want to do, and I have a slight feeling that this is exactly what Jo wanted. I tie her back up and head outside, then go down to the manager’s office and pay for another night’s accommodation. He looks at me like I’m crazy. I tell the guy not to bother cleaning the room though I don’t think it was really on his to-do list. I drive to Jo’s house. It’s surprisingly hot, and because the air-conditioning in my car is faulty I have to roll the windows partially down. In the distance rain clouds are starting to move in. I keep my Honda below the speed limit. When I get to Jo’s house I just keep on driving because the garage is open and her car is gone. Has Cyris been here? How did he know to come here? Has he been following me? No, because if he was following me, he’d have broken into our motel room last night and stabbed us a few dozen times.

  I take a left and start putting distance between me and Jo’s house. I turn on the radio to listen to the news. Nothing new has developed. Disappointed but not surprised I turn the radio off and stare out at this world I’m driving through.

  I know this world. I live in this world. Yet it has become a stranger to me.

  It’s starting to rain when I pull into the parking lot of a hardware store. It’s a large single-storey place made completely from concrete, the sort of one-piece slabs constructed on the spot. A line of wheelbarrows is parked out front, along with garden sheds and patio furniture. Nothing small enough to pick up and run away with. Nothing exciting enough to make an impulse buy. In the middle of a Tuesday afternoon the large store is close to empty as I make my way up and down aisles. I start in the gardening section, but the garden stakes are too big and would fill our hands with splinters. I move to different sections where I buy rope, duct tape, a craft knife, a chisel, a broom handle, and a small saw. The last thing I select is a large wooden mallet. It feels like I’m shopping at Vampires RUs. The guy at the counter looks like he missed his calling as an undertaker. His skin is stretched tightly on his skull with black smudges of some long-suffered or soon-to-arrive illness beneath his eyes. He says, “Raining out there, huh?” in a tone that suggests it’s my fault. I pay in cash and he forgets to tell me to have a nice day.

  I drive back to the motel and carry the purchases into the room, first making sure nobody is around. The room is stuffy. A faint taste of perfume lingers in the air. Cheap perfume. The type of perfume you find lingering in the air in cheap motels. The earlier scent of bacon and eggs has disappeared. I close the door and untie Jo, who smiles at me. She seems to have come a small way toward forgiving me. The unsent letter in the back pocket of my pants feels warm.

  “You didn’t get my car?”

  “It was gone,” I tell her.

  “Charlie. .”

  “I’m not making this shit up, Jo. It was gone. I’m not saying Cyris took it, all I’m saying is it wasn’t there.”

  “But you think he took it, don’t you.”

  “If he did, then. .”

  I stop talking. Jo stares at me. “Then what?” she asks.

  “Then nothing.”

  “You’re unbelievable,” she says.

  “What?”

  “You’re trying to tell me that if Cyris did steal my car, then he knew where I lived, which means you’re saying you did the right thing by kidnapping me.”

  “I’m not saying that at all,” I say, but it’s what I’m thinking.

  “Let’s just get this done,” she says.

  We pull the tools out of the plastic bag and line them up on the floor. I didn’t buy any top-of-the-line gear, just the basics. I lay some newspaper down for the mess, then we cut the broom handle into four pieces. On the last cut Jo slips on the saw handle. It twists and flexes and the blade snaps into half a dozen pieces.

  “Sorry.”

  “It’s not like we need it again,” I say.

  Jo holds the first stake on the ground while I chip away at the end with the chisel and mallet. I manage a sharp but not very sculptured point. I repeat the procedure on the second and get the same result. The third and fourth don’t work out any better. I try not to think about how this must look to an outside observer.

  The sawing and chiseling is hard work and soon the sawdust sticks to our wet faces and hands. I want to take a shower, but I don’t want to leave Jo by herself.

  “Some arsenal,” she says, looking down at what we’ve achieved. “Can you think of anything we may be missing?”

  I look at what we have. Don’t see a gun. I point this out.

  “What about garlic or holy water?” she asks.

  I’m not sure if she’s joking and I start to wonder whether she’s missing the whole point here, but perhaps I’m missing it too. That’s why I’m looking at four wooden stakes and a mallet. Jo sits on the edge of her bed and watches me pack up the mess.

  “We should try and get a few hours’ sleep,” I suggest. “We don’t want to fall asleep while watching my house.”

  Jo silently nods. “That’s just what I was going to suggest.”

  “Um, I’m sorry, Jo, but I need to tie you up. .” I say, my voice trailing away.

  “I’m not going anywhere, Charlie.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “Then why do it? Don’t you trust me?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Then you’re not tying me up, okay?”

  If I don’t tie Jo up I won’t be sleeping either. I let her use the bathroom and then she makes it easy for me by not struggling as I tie her to the bed. I lie back on my own bed. The alarm clock looks forty years old. It’s big enough to think it may be powered by a mouse running on a wheel. I fiddle with the buttons and set it to give us three and a half hours. Assuming we can sleep.

  My body molds into the previous outline of thousands of other people who may or may not have known what love is, but probably came here to experience a fifteen-minute imitation of it. I turn on the TV and am given the menu for porn or wholesome family TV. It seems every motel these days has religion and sex only a fingertip away. I flick channels looking for some news and come up with nothing.

  On Sunday night I was a schoolteacher with a simple life and complicated students. My head is starting to throb and I raise a hand to the lump. It’s still the same size as yesterday. Maybe it’s never going to go away, maybe it’s going to be like a badge of honor-or in my case a badge of dishonor. I think about untying Kathy from the tree and how grateful she was for it. I think of Cyris and how dead he looked. We left him there, just a body of evil trapped inside human skin with a bad name and a poor haircut. We left him with every intent to go to the police. We left him in the dark to come back.

  And that’s exactly what he did.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Landry goes through the drive-through of a fast-food chain and orders a burger that he knows is going to taste great, but won’t feel that great in an hour or so. He becomes so convinced about how sick it’s going to make him feel, t
hat he ends up pulling over beside the next garbage bin he sees and dumps it on top without taking a single bite. He eats the fries and has the drink and drives away, and a minute later he’s so hungry he’s tempted to go back for the burger.

  It’s raining now, but not heavily, and he wonders how long it’s going to last. He hates the rain. Always has. When he was a kid he often had to walk to school in the rain, then sit around in wet clothes all day. He wants to pull over somewhere and take a nap. Or go home.

  He reaches Luciana Young’s house. The media activity has died. In fact there are no journalists anywhere at the moment. Maybe there’s been a massacre across town he hasn’t been told about. He knows the media still has its uses, but he likes to think that horse shit has its uses too, as do leaches and maggots. There are still patrol cars at the scene, and some of the forensic guys are still looking around inside and out. Neighbors are being reinterviewed today.

  Stomach rumbling, Landry heads into the victim’s house wishing he could go into the kitchen and fix himself something to eat. The smell of death stained into the carpet quickly kills his appetite, though. The smell of death has stained his clothes too. He can smell it on himself. Or perhaps that smell is him.

  He’s been inside only a minute when Detective Hutton shows up. There’s another guy with him. A guy who’s obviously not a cop.

  He approaches them. Hutton introduces the man as the dead woman’s husband. They don’t shake hands. The husband is here to take a look around. He’s in his mid- to late thirties, with a hairline that looks as though it’s been receding for at least half of that time, and a pair of designer glasses that he takes off so he can put the arm into his mouth while he studies everything. Landry follows them. They go from room to room, the husband the entire time looking like he’s going to be sick. The husband’s task here, Landry knows, is to see what is out of place. Has anything been taken. Has anything been added. They spend a few minutes in each room before finishing in the master bedroom.

  In the end it’s just the missing clothes. Pants and a shirt are missing. Feldman probably changed after getting blood on his. Landry stares at the victim’s bed thinking she probably wouldn’t mind if he spent three hours lying on it. It would be a reward for what he’s going to do later, by finding and dealing with her killer.