The Killing Hour

I tell them that’s a mistake. But they don’t listen. I know this because their deaths were front-page news, and what you read in the papers is real, the dream is real, the memory is real, because we are in the Real World.

We drive past thousands of shadows. The roads are empty. A few wisps of cloud float in front of the moon, which is bright white and full. We park the car outside Luciana’s home. It is a single-storey townhouse, and through the haze of a lost day and a half, the image of the house shimmers. It’s made from red brick but then from white, and the roof is steel at one point but then tiled. The roses in the garden shimmer, then turn to weed. Nothing here is real. Everything is real.

We lock the car because any neighbourhood is a bad neighbourhood when you’ve just fought for your life. The back door is ajar and Luciana pushes it open. The air is warm inside. The girls tell me they were abducted from their own homes.

I sit in the lounge while Luciana takes a shower. I stay with Kathy and she hands me a bottle of beer that is cold in my hot hands. Tiny beads of condensation start to run down it. I flick the edge of the label with my fingernail. I look around me. The couch and two chairs are leather. Expensive. No claw holes in the furniture or fur on the cushions. The carpet is thick and soft, red one second, blue the next.

The dream leads me along, I can’t change it, can’t stop it, can only complete it. Kathy tells me Cyris wanted to take them away so he could hear them scream. That was the only reason he gave. He was going to kill them by driving metal stakes through their hearts. I sip at my beer that I drank a lifetime ago. Casual conversation. Casual drinking.

‘He was going to drive those metal stakes into us,’ she says. Her voice sounds disjointed and clipped, like William Shatner on speed.

‘Crazy.’

‘The world is full of crazy people. If you hadn’t come along who knows what he might have done to me.’

‘I don’t want to think about it.’

‘Nor do I,’ she admits.



‘Does Luciana live alone?’ I ask, changing the subject.

‘Her husband left her for a gym instructor. Hasn’t spoken to him since.’

‘Must have been some woman.’ My beer is cold and smooth and I’ve never felt like I’ve earned one so much.

‘Some man.’

‘Sorry?’

‘The instructor. Some man.’

‘Oh.’

She laughs the laugh of somebody who doesn’t know death is only a few hours away.

‘What’s so funny?’



‘You’re going to murder me later on tonight, Charlie, and there’s nothing I can do about it – except laugh.’



‘What?’ I ask, surprised at her words, surprised that she knows death is close by, surprised she can make her laughter seem so real.

‘Really, it’s okay, because neither of us can change it now. I’ll be upset at first – and rightly so. You’re going to kill Luciana too. I really wish you wouldn’t.’

‘I’m not going to kill you.’

‘It’s a done deal, Charlie. Things will change. You will change. Think of it as character development.’

The dream starts to fade and I call out to it because it has lied to me, lied about that conversation because it couldn’t have happened. Has it lied about anything else? I cry out, desperate for the dream to continue, desperate to see what I did next, but there’s nothing. I clutch my beer tightly but can no longer feel the glass beneath my hands. The women are ghosts again, telling me to wake, to wake.

I wake as I woke yesterday, submerged in guilt and aware that the design of life is to be full of useless hopes. I feel more tired than before I fell asleep. I open my eyes and see Jo standing above me. She’s holding the mallet I purchased earlier this afternoon.

I roll aside and the mallet hits my pillow. Jo’s face shows the surprise I’m feeling, and a moment later also reflects the rage. She starts to take another swing at me only this time I kick out at her, aiming for anything that will keep my skull from being crushed, and make contact with her stomach. She falls, throwing the weapon at me so that it skids off the side of my head, bringing back the headache. I wobble back and hit my head against the concrete block wall. The world darkens and for a moment I’m back in the dream – two dead women are waiting there for me – so I grip onto this world as tightly as I can and claw myself from the blackness.

Jo is lying on the floor, her hands pressed into her stomach. I climb off the bed and use the phone cord to tie her up. Was she ever planning to help me? The letter, the car, the tools, they were all elements to fool me into trusting her. Well, it worked. Does that change the plan? Why should it? I still need her to believe in me and that need makes me feel ill.

It isn’t dark outside yet and won’t be for another couple of hours. I check the clock and see the alarm would have been going off in twenty minutes. I figure we may as well leave now. We need to get to my house before Cyris does, and I’m assuming he won’t get there until after sunset. I would put Jo in the boot of the car but she won’t fit. I bet that’s why she suggested swapping cars.