The Killing Hour

‘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 paddock 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 down. 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. 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. 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 step out of the shower after maybe an hour, dry myself down, fill up a hot water bottle and make my way to bed. Before climbing beneath the covers I head to the back door and wedge a chair beneath the handle so it can’t be opened.



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 isn’t probably the best thing I could do right now but I figure it isn’t exactly the worst. I let it happen.





35


The smell makes Jo think of ground-up moths. It’s an earthy smell, certainly nothing like life. Tied up and gagged, locked down here in this basement, thinking of life is hard to do. Shaking, her mind racing, she fights uselessly with the ropes. The rag in her mouth tastes of vanilla and she wonders what it was last used on. Or who.

Cyris had 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.