Paul Cleave - The Killing Hour

He sits down on the bed and uses the bedside drawers as a writing table. He sets about going to work. She doesn’t care whether he mails it-she suggested it to see if she could get him to go outside without tying her up, and to hopefully get her phone. She also suggested it hoping that by putting words on paper he may begin to realize what he’s doing. If some of the old Charlie is still in there then maybe he’ll see the decisions he’s making are insane. Hopefully he’ll take responsibility for his actions. Hopefully some of the old Charlie will start to filter back through.

“I don’t really know where to begin,” he says.

“The beginning seems as good a place as any,” she says, concerned that that wasn’t obvious to him. He rubs at the bump on his forehead and winces. Is that partly the reason he’s so off the rails? A blow to the head?

He starts writing. She watches him, the pen flowing across the page, it all seems to be rushing out in a stream. She looks at the TV, at the black-and-white vampire doing what he can to get all the hot chicks. She wonders if this horror movie was on yesterday morning because it might suggest where Charlie got some of his ideas from. The news said the two women died violently. It mentioned ritualistic killings. Did they really die by being staked through the heart as Charlie said? No-surely not. Because that would be. . what? Too horrific? She’s deluding herself if she thinks horrific things don’t happen on a daily basis on a global scale. So if that is how the women died, did Charlie do the staking? It depends. It depends on how guilty she thinks he is. Her loyalties now lie with two dead women she’s never met. She needs to get out of here. Needs to get the police. And the vampire on TV is giving her an idea on how she can do that.

“Stakes,” she says.

“What?”

“Stakes,” she says, and this will test just how far Charlie has slipped into the crazy. “That’s the next part of our plan,” she says, glancing at the dying vampire on TV, hoping like hell the scenario she’s about to pitch is going to work.

“Stakes,” Jo says.

I look up from my letter. It isn’t going well. I’m up to the part where Cyris had his dead fingers curled around the handle of the knife, but I’m not sure whether to put that down. I don’t bother to ask Jo because she doesn’t believe I stabbed him, and looking back at it I’m starting to question it too. I didn’t want to check for a pulse because I’d seen too many horror movies and knew what would happen to me if I did.

I don’t add any atmosphere because I’m not writing them a story. The English teacher inside me says nothing of my shivering from being scared to death, because the police don’t care about character development. I remember picking up the flashlight and pointing it at Kathy. What was it I said? That’s right. I told her everything was going to be okay.

If I were to rewrite it, if I were to put things down differently, is there any way it could change what happened? I guess not. The past is definite.

“What are you talking about?” I ask.

“We make them,” she says. “We use them as weapons.”

In the background the TV is going. I keep glancing at it, waiting for my photograph to appear on the screen with bold words beneath it saying Wanted for murder and Do not approach. It’s just a matter of time. Unless I can find Cyris.

“Why?”

“Finish your letter first,” she says.

“It could take. .”

“Just wrap things up. We don’t have all day.”

I don’t mind that Jo is giving me orders because it means we’re about to do something right, and that’s going to feel good after thirty-six hours of doing everything wrong. I spend the next ten minutes wrapping things up, but don’t sign it.

“Here,” Jo says, and she pulls out a phone bill from her handbag. She takes it out of the envelope and hands the envelope over to me. I fold up my story and tuck it inside. I grab the phone book, get the address for the police station, and print it across the front. I mark it as urgent. All I need now is a stamp.

“When he shows up at your house,” Jo says, “we’ll be able to follow him home. That’s the plan, right?”

“That depends on whether or not he shows up there. But yeah, so far that’s the plan.” And it’s a good plan. Almost too good, as if a part of it surely has to fail because we’re in the Real World now. Haven’t I told her this? Maybe she doesn’t get it. I run the scenario through my mind. Several faults stand out, but nothing stands out as being too dangerous. I try to imagine the sort of place Cyris lives in and end up picturing that big old two-storey house from Hitchcock’s Psycho.

“So what are you saying? We hide down the road and follow him home? What do we need stakes for?”

“Wooden stakes. Think about it,” she says, leaning forward, her voice picking up pace. “You said both the women-”

“They have names, Jo. Kathy and Luciana.”

“Of course, you’re right,” she says, leaning back. “I’m sorry. You said Kathy and Luciana were staked through the chest. Why? It’s a pretty unusual way to kill somebody, don’t you think? Outside of a movie?”

“Maybe Cyris thought he was in a movie.”

“That’s almost my point. Maybe Cyris thought they were vampires, or-”

I shake my head. “No. I mean nobody is that crazy.”

Jo carries on. “Or maybe he just wanted to stake them so people would think that he thought they were vampires.”

Now I’m getting confused. “Why would he do that?”

“I don’t know. Maybe so everything would seem a lot crazier than it really was. Think about it. The police find these two women and it looks like it was done my some madman, but maybe it wasn’t, maybe it just seems that way because of the way he did it. Maybe that’s why he did it that way.”

I see where she’s going with this. “It makes sense,” I say, and then I think about it a little more. “In fact it really makes great sense.”

“Or it’s the opposite,” she says. “Maybe he was delusional and not just acting crazy, but was crazy.”

“I don’t know. I still don’t think people are really that crazy.”

“Look at where we are, Charlie. Look at what you’ve done to me. Now tell me people aren’t crazy.”

I get her point. Only I’m not crazy. I’m just caring. I want so much to make sure nothing bad happens to her. There’s no way I can explain that and have her believe me.

“I guess. But what’s your point about the stakes?”

“Wooden stakes make for good weapons,” she says.

“Yeah, that’s true. Only his were metal.”

“Does it matter?” she asks.

In vampire mythology, perhaps. In the Real World, who the hell knows? “I guess not. I’m still not seeing where you’re going with this, especially if all we’re doing is following him home,” I say, which is true-only I’m not so sure that’s all I want to do. I want to make him pay for what he did. Jo is figuring the stakes might make great weapons if we have to defend ourselves, but knives would do an even better job. Knives and a hammer.

“Do you want to catch him, or just follow him home?”

“I want to catch him,” I say, but it’s more than that. I don’t share this with Jo.

“Then we need weapons of our own.”

“So your plan isn’t just to follow him, but to catch him.”

“Yes,” she says, and she leans forward again, “because we don’t know for a fact we’ll be following him home.”

“Huh?”

“If he shows up at your house tonight, and we start to follow him, how do we know it’s his house he’s going to next? For all we know he could be going into somebody else’s house to attack them. In which case we need to stop him.”