The Killing Hour

‘I am thinking. I’m thinking about your next victim.’


I don’t know how far we’ve come. Obviously Landry doesn’t want my body found near the cabin. I’m picking he has a nice location out here for me. Maybe a big hole. The colder I get the more I lose any comprehension of time. It could have been half an hour now. We could have walked a couple of kilometres. Kathy told me that time and distance slip away when you’re being dragged through a bunch of trees towards your death. Well, she was right.

‘I was right about a lot of things, wasn’t I, Charlie?’ Kathy asks, and she’s walking along with me now, gliding easily through the trees.

‘You were right,’ I admit silently, and she starts to nod.

‘Do you remember what I told you?’

I remember. ‘You told me you owed me everything. We were heading away from Luciana’s house. It couldn’t have been long before she died.’

‘Oh, it wasn’t that quick, Charlie. You dropped me off home before she died. Do you remember what we were discussing?’

‘We were heading towards your house, we were talking about going to the police. I remember driving past the paddock and you pointing out the black van parked opposite. Seeing it gave me the creeps. We both looked towards the trees as we went by.’

‘Dali’s trees,’ she says.

‘Dali’s trees.’

‘What the hell are you on about?’ Landry asks, but I don’t answer. I keep walking, scraping my hands and arms on the branches, shivering hard.

My mind tries drifting to a time where the world was safe and we didn’t know that Evil was a timebomb waiting for us. Then it drifts far enough so I’m no longer walking through the trees but turning left into Tranquillity Drive and Kathy is no longer a ghost but flesh and blood that was warm to touch. All I knew about Tranquillity Drive was I couldn’t afford to live there. Looking at her house, I knew Kathy was rich. That was fine by me. The house was a two-storey place, a tad more mansion than townhouse. Maybe ten years old. Dozens of shrubs dotted the front section and there were patches of roses in bloom. At that time of night they were black roses. The trees were black too. Like the birds sitting in them.

This is the house I wanted to live in, with Kathy. All my life I had imagined backing out of my driveway into a neighbourhood where Mercedes cars littered the street like cheap Toyotas. Kathy was the woman I wanted to be kissing goodbye as I left for work in the morning on my way to being a brain surgeon or an astronaut instead of an underpaid high school teacher who is the enemy of dysfunctional teenagers.

I walked her inside because her husband wasn’t home.

‘He was off screwing some bimbo,’ her ghost says, ‘and I told you he would be back at some point for some fresh clothes before work. You were glad to hear I was having marital difficulties.’

‘Yeah, sorry about that,’ I say, but something about it bugs me. The same something that bugged me when I read the newspaper this morning.

‘It wasn’t your fault. You helped me check the house and it was nearly five o’clock when I walked you outside. I wrote your name and number down. You left then, and I was dead.’

‘You weren’t dead.’

‘And you’re splitting hairs.’

I walked backwards down the driveway to my car, watching her watching me. We waved then she stepped inside. I heard the door lock and I would never again see her alive. I climbed into my car. I was yawning and dozing, just driving along with the windows down and the breeze coming through, and I had this feeling of normality that made me feel ill. When I drove past the paddock I already had an expectation of what I would see – Cyris stalking through the grass towards the road.

What I saw was worse. When I drove past the paddock …

‘The van was gone,’ Kathy finishes, and then she’s gone too.

I break between two trees and see the flashing movement of the river flowing quickly over and around large round boulders, the water white and violent. The rain is hard here, unsheltered by the trees. Huge drops pluck the dirt next to the river, sending out small splashes of mud. It hammers on my head and shoulders and drives those angry needles of ice deeper into my soul. Landry’s footsteps are loud behind me, and each time I wonder if I will hear another. It would have been warmer had he just shot me back at the cabin. All this would be over and I wouldn’t have to be scared or talk to ghosts.

‘Hold it there,’ Landry says.

I stop walking and study the landscape. Black trees, black ground, black water, black sky. This is what colour the end must be.

‘Turn around slowly.’



I turn. The rain lands on his Kiss the Cook cap and runs off the brim. Does he have the apron to match? I can’t stop shaking. Water runs down my face. I don’t bother wiping it from my eyes. ‘Nice place,’ I say, quietly. Too cold to be loud. Too scared to be funny.

He comes forward. ‘We’re nearly there, you know?’

‘Where?’