The Killing Hour

‘I don’t know. If we go left we might end up where we started. We should go right first at least for a bit. We can always turn back.’


She looks at me long and hard, knowing we don’t have the energy to turn back if we go the wrong way, and in the end decides to follow my advice. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s because I’ve fucked up everything I’ve done this week so I’m due for some decent luck. We turn right and start moving, doing our best to stay parallel to the water, using only its sound as a guide. The trees get thinner and closer together. I want to turn them into firewood, want to burn down the whole lot. We stumble between them, breaking our way forward. It looks similar to the track we’re looking for. Lots of black. Lots of trees. Lots of roots. We carry on in silence, watched by the night and the small wet unhelpful creatures living in it. Kathy and Luciana are watching me too. I can feel them, but that’s all.

My foot snags on a root, and as in the early minutes of Monday morning I fall onto my hands and knees. I roll onto my back and look up at the trees. Jo kneels down next to me. She rests her head on my chest and I can hear her laboured breathing. I want to put my arms around her and think back to better times, but those times have gone, they are gone and the forest is here replacing them and the killing hour has arrived.

I close my eyes and look for Kathy and Luciana and hope Landry isn’t there too.





30


You’re shooting at nothing, Cyris, shooting at nothing.

The boulders he hits are laughing at him, and inside the laughter he can hear them telling him things he doesn’t want to hear. He shuts them up by firing the gun again and again, and his fingers feel heavy against the trigger.

Charlie and his girlfriend have gone, gone into the river and gone from sight, and maybe for ever. He’s left out here in the darkness. Oh God, it’s so dark. The moon is up there but it’s covered by cloud, and all he can see is absolutely nothing. He hates the black moon. He wants to kick it but has to settle for screaming.

He moves away from the river. The handcuff is still attached to his ankle, and the policeman is dragged along by his handcuffed hand. He points the shotgun down at the policeman’s wrist and pulls the trigger. Nothing happens. He goes through the motion of chambering another shell, but he’s used them all up.

‘Where’s the key?’ he asks, but he already knows the answer. He crouches next to the cop but he isn’t answering, no, uh uh, ‘cause the cop isn’t living no more. He runs his hands over the ground but can’t find it. It’s vanished into the forest somewhere.

His stomach aches so he digs his heavy fingers into his wet pocket and pulls out the bottle with the twist-off cap but the cap won’t move, not at first, but in the end it does, and he swallows two pills, maybe three – he loses count.

He searches the policeman for a torch but finds only a packet of matches. He lights the first match and the rain puts it out, and the second, and the third, and suddenly he’s out of matches, just like that. He goes to walk in the direction he thinks he came from, but the weight of the dead policeman holds him back. No key. No ammunition. He has handcuff keys in his car but he can’t make it to his car, not like this. He bashes the stock of the shotgun into the policeman’s cuffed wrist and hand, over and over, shattering the bones inside until the hand is flexible enough to slip through the bracelet. The bracelet dangles from his ankle as he walks.

He tries to remember how long he walked earlier. He looks for a track, but the black moon keeps it hidden. He wishes he had a torch, then remembers that he does. It’s only a small one but it will do the job so he pulls it from his pocket and turns it on. He walks further from the cave and river, and he keeps on walking, following the sound of the water because he seems to remember hearing it on the way here, but this time he keeps it on his right. His stomach hurts. Hurts like a bitch.