Paul Cleave - The Killing Hour

“Charlie.”

I roll over. Jo is next to me. This isn’t death. I can’t tell if she’s on her knees or not. Pine needles have created a blanket for us to rest on, but not one to crawl under and get warm. Branches rustle and leaves tear from their stems above us. Cones fall to the earth and pine needles fly through the wind.

“I’m awake.”

“And shivering,” she says.

“I can’t stop.”

“It’s a good thing,” she says. “It means hypothermia hasn’t started.”

I have no idea if that’s true. All I know is it doesn’t feel good.

She forces herself up, pressing against my stomach to raise herself. “I think there’s a light in the distance, perhaps only thirty yards away. If we can make it, promise me we’ll go to the police.”

“I promise.” I don’t want her help in getting up, but I need it. When I’m on my feet we stagger forward.

Head toward the light.

If this is the trail we took earlier and the cabin is ahead of us, then that makes Cyris. . where? Anywhere? Lost? Or here? We break through the trees into the clearing. Seeing Landry’s car is awful. It makes me realize that life goes on, no matter who is no longer in it. In ten years the car will still be here. The paint job will have cracked in the heat, the metal will have rusted in the rain, the tires will be flat, the rims of the wheels will have cut through them and made impressions in the ground. The whole thing will be covered in mold. The car is a slice of life waiting for the return of its owner, but it will never happen-its owner is pinned against a fallen tree, its owner will decay over the following weeks and break apart.

The cabin looks like a palace. Limping forward, I reach the porch. I can’t climb up onto it so I sit on the edge and roll myself on. Jo does the same.

I can’t clutch the door with my frozen hands, but Jo has more movement so she nudges me aside. The cabin was cold before, but it’s warmer and drier than outside. The wind ushers us inside and we close the door behind us.

“We can’t stay here,” I say.

“I know, I know,” she answers. “But I know I can’t drive either. What about you?”

I want to say I can. But I can’t. Put me behind the wheel of a car and I don’t even know if I’ll have the strength to change gears. And if I do, I’m only going to drive a few feet before hitting any one of a number of trees. “Not yet. What are we going to do?”

“Stay here,” she says.

“But we can’t.”

“Just a bit,” she says, rubbing her hands together in an attempt to get the process started. “Just long enough to warm up.”

“That could take hours. Let’s just warm up in the car.”

“This will be quicker,” she says. “I know it’s tough to do, but we have to hold out hope that Cyris is lost.”

“Yeah, but he may not be. He might be right outside.”

“If we try driving we’re going to crash. Then what? Start walking back to the city?”

“So what do you want to do?”

“Two minutes,” she says. “We spend two minutes warming up and then we leave.”

Two minutes isn’t a lot of time. In two minutes I’m probably going to be colder than I am now. She moves over to one of the lanterns. She picks it up, hooking it as if she has a claw. Plenty of dry kindling has been set in lots of old newspaper in the fireplace. Jo tries removing the glass top of the lantern, but her hands are too cold, then comes up with a more practical way. She throws her lantern into the fireplace. The glass breaks. A flame is released. The brittle paper lights up like an inferno.

We lower ourselves to the fire. The wood crackles, but gives off little warmth. It doesn’t take long for smoke to start flooding back into the cabin. The chimney must be partially blocked by a bird’s nest or leaves. My lungs are too full of water to make room for the smoke. Jo strips down and starts ringing the water out of her clothes. I can hardly move, but I manage to kick my shoes off. Nothing else.

Jo takes my shirt and helps me with my jeans. I look down at my body. It’s gray and covered in bruises and lumps and scrapes. We’re both in our underwear. I don’t want to strip any further-not because of Jo, but because if Cyris comes back in I don’t want to die naked. Side by side we sit, clutching each other for warmth though we’re so cold that hugging achieves nothing. Cyris could burst in and kill us, but if we step back outside the cold will do the same thing. Only fire can help us. Jo puts two more logs onto it.

I glance at my watch. The two minutes have already passed. We’re heading up to three.

I nod toward the bag in the center of the room. “There are clothes in there.”

Jo stands and grabs it. It’s difficult opening the bag, but we rescue the clothes Landry had been wearing. Beneath them is a towel. He came prepared to get wet. Or bloody. Either way he was right. Jo towels herself down, then I follow suit. I’m still freezing and my body hasn’t given up shaking. I can feel the heat from the fire, but it is only warming up my skin. It’s my core that’s chilled. I pull on Landry’s shirt. I give the pants and jacket to Jo.

“You take the jacket,” she says, handing it back to me.

“I’m fine,” I tell her.

“No, really, Charlie, you’re not. Take the jacket.”

I shake my head, which is a mistake for anybody sporting the kind of headache I’m sporting. I almost pass out. “No,” I tell her.

She pulls on the pants and puts on the jacket. She does the jacket up. It’s not a great fit. Then she finds the envelope with my account of what happened in one of the pockets. She tosses it onto the fire. “We don’t need it,” she says. “Let’s just go to the police and tell them.”

“Can we get a lawyer first?”

“Are you kidding?”

“I’m not sure. Anyway, we have to go,” I say, happy I can now feel the words coming from my mouth. She nods. Rags of smoke are hanging lower in the air. I could reach up and my hand would disappear into them.

“I know,” Jo says. She hooks out the two logs she just put into the fire and puts them into the duffel bag, which smothers the flames. She pushes the bag into my chest.

“Hug this,” she says. “It isn’t much, but it’s something.”

The bag feels like a lumpy hot water bottle.

She picks up her wet pants and hunts through them for the keys.

“How did you drive my car?” I ask. “I had the keys.”

“Like this,” she says, and she pulls her own keys out of her pocket. “They were still in my handbag,” she says, “and I never took off the spare for your car.”

It makes me feel good to know she never got rid of the key, as if by keeping it she was also keeping the chance that somehow we would get back together.

We scoop up our wet clothes. I carry the duffel bag and Jo carries the clothes and we step outside. Landry’s shoes are too big for me, but they do the job. The ground plucks at them as we run toward the cars. Cyris doesn’t jump out from the trees and shoot at us so I figure things are picking up. The rain hasn’t eased off and perhaps it never will. My arms and legs feel warm, but my stomach and chest are cold. Landry’s car is right out front, but I can’t see my car or Cyris’s.

“Where’s the car?” I ask.

“About twenty yards that way,” she says, and I follow.

I keep hugging the duffel bag even though it has cooled somewhat. We reach my car and dump the clothes into the back. There are still two stakes in the backseat. I take one out for protection.

Jo climbs into the car. I tell her to wait for me, and I run over to Landry’s car. It’s unlocked, and I pop the hood and grab hold of the cords going to the spark plugs, and I tug on them as hard as I can until two of them snap off. I carry them back to my car and climb in. I’m not sure how much time we’ve wasted. Five minutes, I guess. Ten at the most. I turn the key and the motor kicks into life. So does the heater. I turn it to high and it blasts cold air at us that is warmer than we are. It starts to warm up. So do we.