The Killing Hour

The current swirls around my legs, begging me to join it, but it had its chance and lost. My feet touch the riverbed and I continue forward, and soon the water is only up to my waist, my thighs, my knees. When it’s around my ankles I collapse, my body slapping into the muddy bank.

I roll onto my back. The rain drums against my eyelids. I think about my warm bed – lying in it with a hot water bottle between my feet and another behind my back. All I want to do now is go to sleep. I start thinking of a Friday or a Saturday night, so I can sleep all day and then the next. I close my eyes.

Something touches my face. It’s frightening away my sleep. I open my eyes to see Jo slapping me. Only I can’t feel it. I can see it, but that’s all.

‘Come on, Charlie, wake up.’

I am awake. Can’t she see that? I try to tell her but it’s hard since my lips and tongue no longer work.

‘Charlie!’

She slaps me hard and again I open my eyes. Does she really think this kind of tough love is going to work? I brace my elbows against the ground and try to tilt my body upwards.

‘Charlie!’ Jo’s slapping me again and I open my eyes again. I’m no longer propped up. She needs to save herself and forget about me.

I explain this in careful detail. ‘Juss wev’m ere.’

‘You got me into this mess, Charlie. You can help get us out of it.’

She stands and grabs the front of my wet shirt. My body bows forward as she pulls. I reach up weakly and grab hold of her arms. My mind is still a maze of confusion. My right eye is aching – it feels as though somebody has stapled it directly into the socket, only backwards. The inside of my head is pounding, over and over, over and over. I manage to sit up and with more of Jo’s encouragement I force myself onto my knees, then onto my feet. I hang onto the nearest tree to get balanced and then onto Jo as we make the first steps. And I’m exhausted. We rest against a tree. Now we have to pick a direction.

‘How far do you think we’ve travelled?’ I ask. I stutter the sentence out. My teeth keep chattering.

Jo shrugs. ‘What time does your watch say? Mine isn’t waterproof.’

I look at my watch but can’t make anything out. I hold it up to my eyes and try to focus but it’s no good – it’s just a blur of hands and dashes. Jo seizes my wrist and holds it in front of her face.

‘It’s two-sixteen,’ she says.

‘Late.’

‘My watch says two-ten.’

‘It’s a cheap watch.’

‘Exactly. It would have stopped when we dived in the water. We’ve been on the bank for probably four minutes. That means two minutes in the water.’

Two minutes in the water. The river was close to the cabin, but so what? There was a track we took that was barely a track and we walked it for maybe ten minutes. Easy to find if you know where it is. And when it’s daylight. And dry. I think harder, then realise some of what she’s trying to get at. We’ve come downstream towards the cabin. We’ve crossed the distance much quicker than if we’d walked.

‘How far can you go?’ she asks.

‘Further than you.’

We both doubt it but say nothing.

We carry on but it’s barely a minute before we’re hit with a gradual slope. We struggle against it, often supporting ourselves against trees and each other. Some feeling begins to return to my legs and arms but not my feet or hands. The slope becomes steeper as we walk further. I’m hoping, when the slope levels out, that we’ll be near the makeshift track. Then all we have to do is turn right and we’ll find the cabin. Or left.

My feet have gone but my toes remain – ten individual spears of pain ready to be snapped off. This little piggy went to market. This little piggy drowned. And this little piggy caught pneumonia and died. I remember Landry telling me the cabin was a minute from the river but I don’t know how much that’s going to help. The trees form a tent that keeps the rain off our faces but not the wind. If we don’t get out of our wet clothes and find somewhere warm we’re going to die. It’s that simple. With each passing second we’re slowing down. Jo’s wrist tells us time has stopped. My watch suggests differently. I don’t know which one to believe. My jeans are so wet I can hardly bend my legs.

I quickly explain what Landry told me.

‘Then we follow the river,’ she says.

‘Yeah, but which way?’

‘Which way do you think?’