Paul Cleave - The Killing Hour

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 forever. 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, the other cuff has flesh and blood scorched against it because his first shot after Charlie and the bitch woman jumped into the water was into the policeman’s hand. It blew apart into a pulpy mist. He walks back over to that policeman now. He points the shotgun at the cop’s head.

“Where’s the key?” he asks, but he already knows the answer. The key will be somewhere in the forest, out there making friends with the hedgehog he stood on earlier.

The cop doesn’t answer. His answering days are in the past, back there with days of breathing and thinking. This guy ain’t living no more. And now he has a stupid set of handcuffs hanging from his ankle. No way to shoot them off without shooting himself in the foot.

He searches the policeman for a flashlight, 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. The only thing he can think of that might help is to throw the dead cop into the river, which he does, only it doesn’t help at all. It was stupid to think that it even would. It does make him feel better, though-mentally, at least, but picking that bastard up has hurt his stomach. He presses his hand against his wound as he walks in the direction he thinks he came from. Then 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. What he needs is the shit his buddy gave him years ago, but that’s all used up. He doesn’t know if he can get more. There’s his wife’s morphine-but he vowed never to touch that. Shit-has he touched it already?

He tries to remember how long he walked earlier, and for some reason his mind goes back to the other night. He cut one of the breasts off one of those women, and then he put it in a cardboard box, and then he left it in Charlie Feldman’s house. Why the fuck did he do that? He’s never done anything like that before and, come to think of it, he’s not even real sure he did that the other night. There’d be no reason to. Unless doing random shit is a good reason.

He looks for a track, but the black moon keeps it hidden. He wishes he had a flashlight, then remembers that he does-it’s the same flashlight he used earlier to read the note in his pocket. 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.

A moment later vomit erupts from him, and his thoughts seem to focus for a few seconds as the drugs leave his stomach, but surely they’re in his system by now, aren’t they? He wishes he knew. For a few seconds things are clear and he knows the painkillers are killing much more than the pain. They’re killing his ability to think. He knows the shotgun is empty and knows there has to be more to all of this than just killing.

He continues to walk. He’s passing branches that have snapped. Somebody came this way. Suddenly there’s a lull in the storm and another flash of clarity comes to him, and he knows what’s happening. He reaches into his pocket for the painkillers, then throws them as far as he can into the trees. He hears them rattling as they fly through the air, then they are gone forever and already he misses them. He pushes ahead. He can see shapes-no light, but shapes-and he realizes that some of the branches here are pushed back so perhaps this is a track, a track after all. He smiles and laughs, then stops and rests a hand across his throbbing stomach. He sucks in a deep breath and the duct tape holding the wound closed feels hard beneath his fingers. He reaches into his pocket for the painkillers, but can’t find them, then searches his other pockets, but they’re not there either. Must have left them at home. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

He carries on walking, yeah, yeah, and his body is cold, so cold, but at least he’s wearing a jacket, and at least he’s not the one in the water. He wonders if good old Charles is dead yet. He scratches a hand across his face and buries his fingers beneath his beard, then flicks the nails over his skin and draws blood. He needs to think. Thinking and walking, that’s all he has to do, and he does this as he moves deeper into the darkness, hoping he won’t be lost forever-and forever started around nine o’clock the previous night.

“Into the realm of dark never he traveled,” he says, wondering what he’s talking about, if he’s even spoken. Hopefully Charlie will survive the river. The woman too. Because he’s just remembered he’s doing this for the money. And going through all of this has to have been worth something.

I’m stuck.

I’m pressed against a boulder and I don’t have the strength to roll myself away. One moment I can breathe, the next I can’t as water splashes into my mouth. Jo is against me, her head pressing into my chest.

If I drown right here and now, will the current keep me pressed against this boulder? Probably. Yes. At least until the rain eases off and the river calms down-if that can even happen. Maybe the river is always like this.

My strength is gone. Drained by the efforts of the night, the efforts of the week, drained by the lack of oxygen. If I can just get a deeper breath, then maybe. . maybe I can fight back.

My hands are becoming numb. I have never been in water so cold. Somehow I’m still holding the flashlight, and somehow I manage to unscrew the base. The batteries drop into the water and I can’t feel my body enough to know if they hit me on their way past, off to wherever it is that batteries go underwater. I unscrew the top of the flashlight and let it go the way of the battery. I’m left with a tube. I lift one end above the water and hold the other end to my mouth. The air above is cool and I drink it in and my energy returns, not quickly, but at least it’s something. I put the tube in Jo’s mouth and she gets the concept quickly, and we’re able to climb a few more inches.

“We need to roll away at the same time,” I tell her.

“What?”

“We need to roll away at the same time!”

“We should roll away at the same time!” she says.

In other circumstances I’d roll my eyes at that. But not these circumstances.

“On three,” I tell her. “We go left.”

“Your left?” she shouts.

“My left. One. Two. Three!” With renewed yet frozen energy I push away at the rock, Jo pushing with me, and we twist out into the current. Nothing at first, it seems we’re dead in the water, then suddenly something hits us hard, and it takes me a second or two to realize it’s a body. It’s Landry. The impact gets us free from the rock, and suddenly we’re traveling down the river with the dead man, gasping for air as we bob up and down, breathing in cold water, cold air, cold rain. I have nothing to hold on to except the wet darkness and Jo. As I fumble against the water, I sense more than see the branches that jut from the bank toward us like spears. They try to stab and skewer as we rush by, try to hold us with wooden fingers beneath the surface. I stay in front of Jo, trying to take the impacts away from her, Landry only a few feet or so ahead of me, not trying to do anything. When a bright orange flare lights up the night sky I genuinely believe help has arrived, but soon realize the glow is inside my head, ignited by the back of my skull cracking into a boulder. When it happens again only a few moments later the flare is gray.