The Killing Hour

by Paul Cleave

  I start digging. My cold fingers send slivers of pain up my arms, but I like the pain-I deserve it, and when I think of Jo and what may be happening to her, I dig faster. I try to concentrate as the hole starts to grow. I dig down two feet before taking a break, standing in the hole up to my knees, sweating and shivering. The rain is becoming heavier again. A shaft of lightning hums across the sky. It lights up the hole and the creek and the plastic bag beside me, and it lights up my body. I’m covered in dirt and I’m digging a grave. I must be insane. I’ve come into the night only an hour or two before dawn, carrying a body part and a tool with which to hide it.

  I lean on the shovel and look into the creek as the following thunder chases the lightning. I suddenly realize that I’m not alone. I can sense her watching, but she says nothing as I slowly push back off my shovel and continue to dig. I last less than a minute before I sit down on the edge of the hole, close to tears.

  “I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry.”

  “What are you doing, Charlie?” Kathy asks.

  “I’ve no idea. Things have got out of hand. I’m even seeing ghosts.”

  “Is that what I am?”

  I shake the water from my hair and wipe a muddy palm back through it. “I don’t know. Are you?”

  “Don’t bury me, Charlie. Go to the police.”

  I stand up again and dig some more. All I’m doing is throwing mud to one side while more mud runs back in. “Is he going to hurt Jo?”

  “I can’t know that.”

  “Because you’re not real.” More lightning, more thunder, and it sounds like I have angered some vengeful god. As the sound rolls across the pasture the walls to my hole-and my sanity-start to cave in. I decide the hole is deep enough. I struggle out. Kathy takes a step back as I pick up the bag.

  “Is this really the way to go?” she asks.

  “You’re not really here,” I say, and she isn’t. She’s only in my decaying mind. Ghosts aren’t real, they don’t exist, and I don’t need Kathy to deny this. In this moment, in the Real World, I’m suddenly unsure of what is real. God, life, death, misery-does any of it matter? Of course it does. Sometimes it’s just difficult to see how.

  Tears dissolve on my face. I wipe them away with muddy fingers. I take the box out of the plastic bag and ball the bag up into my pocket. I gently lower the box into the hole. I figure the cardboard, the breast, hell, even my shorts will decompose after a while.

  “Why did you let us die?”

  “You don’t believe that,” I say.

  “What do you believe, Charlie?”

  “I believe that bad things happen for no reason. I really tried to save you.”

  “It’s hard to believe anything when you’re dead.”

  I close my eyes and grab hold of the moment on Monday morning when I drove past the pasture and found Cyris’s van missing. I knew he had to be heading to a hospital or a morgue. Both would ask questions so maybe he would head straight home. I told myself this over and over, but I knew I was lying because I put my foot to the pedal. I was lucky because there were few cars on the roads. Yeah, Monday was all about luck. It must have been, because in the end I found the missing van. The only problem was where I found it. It was parked outside Luciana’s house.

  “Don’t do this, Charlie.”

  I start filling in the hole.

  “I have no choice,” I say, and when the hole is filled in I turn back and find Kathy has gone. Perhaps burying that part of her has worked like I hoped. I climb up the bank, dragging my shovel behind me.

  No more lightning now. No more thunder. I stop at the top of the bank and look down to her resting place. Was this the right thing to have done? Of course not. Not for her. Her ghost told me that. I don’t know any prayers, only apologies, and I offer them to her.

  I turn my back and start walking. Dawn is approaching, bringing the killing hour along with it. The sky lightens, turning purple, but the purple hours of my life have brought only death to me over the last few days. I break into a jog, eager to be away from here, eager to escape the hell this light will show me. The trees, the grass, the muddy banks-they all reflect this dark Evil who has entered my life.

  By the time I make it home my chest and throat are burning. After all that’s happened, I’m probably going to wake up with the flu. I take the time to strip off my clothes outside. I smear the mud off my skin and flick it onto the concrete.

  I make my way stiffly into the bathroom and turn on the shower. I don’t need to wait for it to warm up because the cold water is still warmer than me. I climb in and grit my teeth as my skin stings. I reach up and grab onto the showerhead. It’s all I can do to force myself to stay. All my nerve endings are tingling. I keep my head down and my eyes closed and the pain starts to fade. Five minutes later it’s gone. I turn the shower dial up and make it hotter. The pain returns, but I deserve it. I watch the water go from brown to red to clear as it runs down my body.

  I step out of the shower after maybe an hour, dry myself down, fill up a hot water bottle and make my way to bed. I sit on the edge of the bed holding a wedding photo and I start to cry. I’ve never cried so hard. I can’t bear to think about what is happening to Jo, even though my imagination is filling in all the blanks. Rape. Torture. Mutilation. It’s all there, my mind unable to get away from it. There are fates worse than death, and I’m pretty sure Cyris knows how to inflict them. I make a vow that no matter what the outcome, I’m going to kill the bastard.

  Before climbing beneath the covers I head to the back door and wedge a chair beneath the handle so it can’t be opened. I don’t know if it’s worth the effort, but figure it’s one of those things I could wake up to regret if I hadn’t done it.

  The killing hour is gone now, but there will be another arriving tomorrow. I try going to sleep. I keep asking myself how this happened even though I know the answer. My eyes close and the events of the night catch up with me before I can answer why Cyris took Kathy and Luciana to a clump of trees within the city and not to a similar place to where Landry took me. I want to answer it because I feel it’s important, but at the moment I can’t see how. Falling asleep with near hypothermia and a possible concussion probably isn’t the best thing I could do right now, but I figure it isn’t exactly the worst. I let it happen.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  The smell makes Jo think of ground-up moths. It’s an earthy smell, certainly nothing like life, and it reminds her of the time her grandmother died and they found a box of her clothes that had been hidden in her attic for twenty years. Tied up and gagged, locked down here in this basement, it’s easy to think of people who have died, and easy to think she’ll be seeing them soon. Her mother died the same year she met Charlie. In fact she met Charlie about two weeks before her mom passed away from one of the many random ailments of life-this one taking the form of a brain tumor. Charlie had been a patient of Jo’s-or, more accurately, his cat had been. Charlie had brought the cat in. Its name was The Wolf, and though Jo hadn’t dealt with pets before whose names had been prefixed by The, in this case she could see where the cat got its name-it was one of the biggest domestic cats she’d ever seen. It wasn’t well, and there wasn’t a lot Jo could do for it, and Charlie had been forced to make the decision to have The Wolf put down.

  It’s weird to think that a relationship can evolve from the euthanization of a cat, especially in a time of her life when her own mother was slipping away, but these things happen. She’d been single for over a year, her last boyfriend choosing a drinking habit over her, and she was happy to see the back of him and his drinking and the way it turned him from a pretty good guy into a complete asshole whenever they were at a bar. Charlie was opening a new chapter to her life-and back then, though he doesn’t know it, she used to call him Charlie Chapter to her friends. The chapter started when Charlie came into her work with flowers to thank her for her efforts to try and save The Wolf. It was her day off. She called him the next day at home to thank him. She asked
if he would get another cat. He said he wasn’t sure. He asked if she had pets. She said she did-a cat named Bing Bong. He laughed. He asked if she wanted to grab coffee sometime. She said yes. Three months later they were living together. In that time she lost her mother, and then Bing Bong got hit by a car, but she had Charlie Chapter.

  Then six months ago that chapter closed, and she was an idiot for letting that happen.

  Now a new chapter is opening. If she was out with her friends or coworkers having a few glasses of wine, maybe she would refer to Cyris as Cyris Chapter. Though that doesn’t have the same ring to it. Plus she’s kidding herself-she’s never going to see her friends again. Or Charlie, for that matter. Why the hell couldn’t she have believed him?

  If she had, would things have turned out different?

  She fights uselessly with the ropes. They rub into her skin, rubbing it raw, and if she keeps fighting then soon she’ll start bleeding. She stops struggling. The rag in her mouth tastes of vanilla and she wonders what it was last used on. Or who. Cyris said little on the ride here. In the end, either he had forgotten the way to his house or he had enjoyed driving in large, out-of-the-way circles for over an hour. She had considered speeding into a lamppost because surely death was better than letting Cyris do what he wanted to her, but she was too pissed off with Cyris to let herself die because of him. Pissed off with Charlie too.

  Sometimes Cyris makes sense, but it’s the random comments that frighten her most. When he asked if she knew how his hedgehog was feeling she had sat silently, confident that any reply would be the wrong one. Occasionally he would clutch at his stomach, and she wondered if there was a chance of grabbing the gun off him, but if she tried and failed then failure around a guy like this was certainly going to be unpleasant. He is sick, wounded-Charlie was sure he’d stabbed him, and the way Cyris has been clutching himself is evidence of that. Is he doped up? His eyes are bloodshot and his hands have been shaking a lot. If he’s on medication it might mean he’s ready to snap at any moment, but it might also mean he could forget he has her locked up in his basement.

  The house she’s tied up in, the house she could die in, isn’t the run-down hellhole she’d thought it would be. She’d conjured up images of a Unabomber shack, a dilapidated slum property with flaking paint, holes in the plaster, and the windows boarded up-a more domestic, suburban version of the cabin in the woods. There would be the smell of death and decay and of countless others who had breathed hard from fear near the end. That’s what the house would be like-and she’s frightened that it isn’t. Frightened to find normality in a home that’s five years old at the most. Coming through the house looking at the carpets and the walls and the general décor she could see it had a woman’s touch. A few nice paintings. Small knickknacks. And everything was tidy, like a show home. There was a TV going in one of the bedrooms, she could see the light coming into the hall, but couldn’t hear anything. Is it possible Cyris doesn’t live alone? It would explain why he wanted her to be so quiet. Or maybe he has women tied up in all of the rooms. Or perhaps this isn’t even his house.

  The basement is cold-the concrete floor is uncarpeted. She’s resting in the corner with her hands tied behind her and her feet tied ahead of her. There’s a coil of rope wrapped around her body. It holds her against a large drum that she prays isn’t full of human body parts or the acid to dissolve them. Maybe that’s the smell she can’t identify. Tossed over her is a blanket from which she can draw no warmth.

  She starts struggling again, twisting her hands and wrists, the rope biting into them. She can feel blood. Are there any rats down here with her? The scent of her blood will have them creeping along, creeping along, their noses twitching and their tiny paws scratching at the concrete. Any second now whiskers are going to brush against her hands, little claws will dig into her legs, small teeth will chew at her fingers, gnawing away skin, tearing through flesh. .

  No. There are no rats down here. The house is too modern. The garage too tidy. The only messy thing down here is her. She’s still wearing Landry’s jacket and Landry’s pants, and her underwear is still a little damp, but it did dry out a bit in the car. She squeezes her eyes shut, she forces herself to think of Charlie, to forget about the rats, to forget about Cyris.

  She focuses on the ropes. She tries not to focus on what may happen over the next few hours. She keeps twisting her wrists and tries not to think about the blood and the pain as the tiredness and exhaustion start to creep in.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  I wake up in the afternoon into a dark world full of sunshine and without the aid of ghosts. My room is stuffy with stale air and my head is full of bad dreams. I can’t believe I’ve slept so long. There is a second-maybe even two-where everything is as it should be. That honeymoon moment where you wake up and all the bad shit doesn’t exist, and then the honeymoon ends and you remember your wife has been kidnapped, you saw a man shot apart the night before by a shotgun, a cop tried to kill you, and you spent an hour burying a dead woman’s breast while talking to a ghost that isn’t really a ghost, but a manifestation of your guilt.

  I climb from beneath the blankets. The cold hot water bottle is on the floor. I have slept on a bed that less than a day ago held a body part. The storm has passed and when I look out my window it’s as though it never happened. I wish I could say the same thing about everything else in my life. I stare out at the warm day and wonder how much longer summer can really last. Maybe we can bypass autumn and go straight to winter. For that matter, maybe we can bypass winter too. And spring.

  My body feels okay until I try to walk. When I do, my jaw starts throbbing. I can barely turn my head, my neck is so stiff. Yesterday I looked and felt like I’d been hit by a car. Now it feels like I’ve been hit by a bus that has reversed back to hit me again. Every muscle in my arms, legs, and chest is tender. I turn on the radio and tune in to a news bulletin. Some woman talks about the police investigation, but she says nothing new. The same old guy who gave yesterday’s weather report comes on and says it will be fine all day. I wonder what he means.

  I stagger through the house and head for the bathroom. I stand in the shower for twenty minutes trying to loosen up. I’ve been spending way too much time lately showering. Too much time in the woods. Too much time bitching about why life can’t be better, why the Real World must be so Goddamn real. I study myself in the mirror when I get out. My jaw is puffed up and swollen. My neck is dark blue on the left. My eyes are bloodshot. The bump on my forehead isn’t looking any smaller. I study the back of my head with my fingers. Several valleys and mountains there from my journey down Cold River. It’s like following a map to hell.

  I’m looking at a man who has been both beaten up and beaten, but enough is enough, and that’s where I am right now. Somewhere deep inside I’ve just pulled a giant lever, not so much an on and off switch as a one-armed bandit and five bars with the word hate have all landed in a row. I hate that I can never be the same Charlie I was a week ago, and that saddens and scares me. I hate Cyris, and I wonder what I’m capable of doing about that. Murder? I close my eyes and pull the giant lever inside my mind. Bells and whistles and alarms all start going off inside of me. Yeah, murder is now within my capabilities. Murder will be as easy as riding a bike. I sense other things are within my ability now too, but I’m too scared to keep pulling on that lever to find out.

  The beaten man stares back at me and what seems like pity fills his eyes. The man looks like he isn’t sure what I’m going to do. He looks concerned for me as though he’s worried I might start screaming and take my rage out on the world. He offers no answers, but he looks ready to start laying blame.

  “I’m no longer going to be the victim,” I tell him.

  He nods. He must think that’s a good thing.

  I get dressed. I walk through the house, opening up the rooms and staring out windows as if all the answers lie outside in the fresh air and warm sun. My study is still a mess, broken parts still forming piles
around the room. Ideas of what to do next start firing at me from dark corners of my mind. I keep following them, one in particular is starting to take shape. More than one, actually. Each minute that goes by is a minute Jo has to spend with Cyris. Each minute that goes by is another one in which she could be dying.

  Beneath my computer desk is a small set of drawers, three in total, all still intact. The bottom is a filing drawer. I pull it open and start flicking through the partitions. It takes some time to find the one for my bank. They’re all out of order. Cyris has gone through them as I figured he had: this is where he got the idea of the forty thousand dollars from.

  The whole concept of a revolving mortgage is simple. It’s basically an overdraft where you can draw out the money you’ve paid in. I’ve paid forty thousand dollars off my mortgage and that’s how much I can now access. I bought this house ten years ago. When I met Jo and we began living together, I kept my house and put it up for rent. I had one family living here for five years until they moved out, and another family was here for two years until I asked them to move out because I needed to move in.

  I push the statements aside. It doesn’t matter how much money I have. Money can’t buy you happiness. It can’t buy life. And no amount will stop me from killing the son of a bitch.

  It is after three o’clock and the sun has peaked in the sky and is starting its long, slow spiral down toward a new day on the other side of the world. Ideally I’d like to be there to see it, there with Jo.

  Okay, Action Man, it’s time to act.

  I find my wallet and everything inside it is wet. I take out my credit cards and my driver’s license. I use a hand towel to dry them, then leave them on the bench in the sun. I go into the bathroom and do what I can to turn the broken Charlie Feldman into one who will fit back into society. I smile a pained smile then add some cologne and some hair gel. I load my wallet back up and head outside.