Paul Cleave - The Killing Hour

The pasture is broken up into sections, different vegetables growing in each. Wire fences run between them as if the owners are worried the cabbages are going to mingle with the potatoes and create some hybrid vegetable nobody would like. Long dirt roads trail off into the distance. Dozens of irrigation pipes create a maze that leads to the nearby river. Iron sheds with spots of rust on them house farm equipment. The ruts in the dirt formed by tractors going back and forth are filled to the brim with water.

I decide not to bury the box anywhere in the pasture. The dirt is turned over all the time. Crops are planted then reaped. Tractors dragging large plows bite into the ground. One day it’s pulling up carrots. The next it’s decomposing flesh.

The dirt road I’m following keeps the pastures to my right. To my left the land is bordered by a long ditch with a small creek running through it. A dozen or so trees space out the distance. I walk for ten minutes, the rain no longer feeling cold against my skin. I’m numb inside, but not because of the weather. I pass more trees, and I wonder what could be buried beneath them. Just before the creek sweeps into the river, where the road turns right to move along the top end of the pasture, there’s a small bank. I climb down and stand a few feet from the creek. I figure this is as good a place as any.

I start digging. My cold fingers send slivers of pain up my arms, but I like the pain-I deserve it, and when I think of Jo and what may be happening to her, I dig faster. I try to concentrate as the hole starts to grow. I dig down two feet before taking a break, standing in the hole up to my knees, sweating and shivering. The rain is becoming heavier again. A shaft of lightning hums across the sky. It lights up the hole and the creek and the plastic bag beside me, and it lights up my body. I’m covered in dirt and I’m digging a grave. I must be insane. I’ve come into the night only an hour or two before dawn, carrying a body part and a tool with which to hide it.

I lean on the shovel and look into the creek as the following thunder chases the lightning. I suddenly realize that I’m not alone. I can sense her watching, but she says nothing as I slowly push back off my shovel and continue to dig. I last less than a minute before I sit down on the edge of the hole, close to tears.

“I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry.”

“What are you doing, Charlie?” Kathy asks.

“I’ve no idea. Things have got out of hand. I’m even seeing ghosts.”

“Is that what I am?”

I shake the water from my hair and wipe a muddy palm back through it. “I don’t know. Are you?”

“Don’t bury me, Charlie. Go to the police.”

I stand up again and dig some more. All I’m doing is throwing mud to one side while more mud runs back in. “Is he going to hurt Jo?”

“I can’t know that.”

“Because you’re not real.” More lightning, more thunder, and it sounds like I have angered some vengeful god. As the sound rolls across the pasture the walls to my hole-and my sanity-start to cave in. I decide the hole is deep enough. I struggle out. Kathy takes a step back as I pick up the bag.

“Is this really the way to go?” she asks.

“You’re not really here,” I say, and she isn’t. She’s only in my decaying mind. Ghosts aren’t real, they don’t exist, and I don’t need Kathy to deny this. In this moment, in the Real World, I’m suddenly unsure of what is real. God, life, death, misery-does any of it matter? Of course it does. Sometimes it’s just difficult to see how.

Tears dissolve on my face. I wipe them away with muddy fingers. I take the box out of the plastic bag and ball the bag up into my pocket. I gently lower the box into the hole. I figure the cardboard, the breast, hell, even my shorts will decompose after a while.

“Why did you let us die?”

“You don’t believe that,” I say.

“What do you believe, Charlie?”

“I believe that bad things happen for no reason. I really tried to save you.”

“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 pasture 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 to the pedal. 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. Perhaps burying that part of her has worked like I hoped. 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. After all that’s happened, I’m probably going to wake up with the flu. 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 watch the water go from brown to red to clear as it runs down my body.

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. I sit on the edge of the bed holding a wedding photo and I start to cry. I’ve never cried so hard. I can’t bear to think about what is happening to Jo, even though my imagination is filling in all the blanks. Rape. Torture. Mutilation. It’s all there, my mind unable to get away from it. There are fates worse than death, and I’m pretty sure Cyris knows how to inflict them. I make a vow that no matter what the outcome, I’m going to kill the bastard.

Before climbing beneath the covers I head to the back door and wedge a chair beneath the handle so it can’t be opened. I don’t know if it’s worth the effort, but figure it’s one of those things I could wake up to regret if I hadn’t done it.

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