The Killing Hour (8 page)

And then?

13

The ghosts are back. They’re telling me this is no dream, but I find it hard to believe them. I’m with Kathy and Luciana and they’re alive again, but in this dream I don’t even know they’re supposed to be dead. Do they know? I try to ask but the words don’t come out. Kathy is leaning into me, my arm around her as I help her leave the paddock the same way we arrived – alive and in one piece. She knows Luciana is alive because I’ve told her, and she smiles at me knowingly and without words tells me this is soon to be a lie. Luciana jumps from the car the moment she sees her friend and the two lock themselves in an embrace. It’s the embrace of close friends. I stand there looking at my car, this car that I’m sick of seeing, this car that I want to trade in, but at the moment is the best damn car in the world.

The two women break their embrace to include me in it, and no, they’re not ghosts, they’re very much alive, alive and grateful and warm to touch, and I try to warn them, try to tell them that they mustn’t go back home, that they mustn’t take me with them, but the dream is a memory and the memory has only one place it can go.

We pile into the car, Luciana in the back and Kathy next to me. We head to Luciana’s house, and as much as I try to steer us towards the police station, as much as I try to save their lives now, there can be no changing it. They want to go home. They want to clean up. Put on some fresh clothes. They want to reclaim some of the respect they’ve lost before walking into the police station and telling them their story.

I tell them that’s a mistake. But they don’t listen. I know this because their deaths were front-page news, and what you read in the papers is real, the dream is real, the memory is real, because we are in the Real World.

We drive past thousands of shadows. The roads are empty. A few wisps of cloud float in front of the moon, which is bright white and full. We park the car outside Luciana’s home. It is a single-storey townhouse, and through the haze of a lost day and a half, the image of the house shimmers. It’s made from red brick but then from white, and the roof is steel at one point but then tiled. The roses in the garden shimmer, then turn to weed. Nothing here is real. Everything is real.

We lock the car because any neighbourhood is a bad neighbourhood when you’ve just fought for your life. The back door is ajar and Luciana pushes it open. The air is warm inside. The girls tell me they were abducted from their own homes.

I sit in the lounge while Luciana takes a shower. I stay with Kathy and she hands me a bottle of beer that is cold in my hot hands. Tiny beads of condensation start to run down it. I flick the edge of the label with my fingernail. I look around me. The couch and two chairs are leather. Expensive. No claw holes in the furniture or fur on the cushions. The carpet is thick and soft, red one second, blue the next.

The dream leads me along, I can’t change it, can’t stop it, can only complete it. Kathy tells me Cyris wanted to take them away so he could hear them scream. That was the only reason he gave. He was going to kill them by driving metal stakes through their hearts. I sip at my beer that I drank a lifetime ago. Casual conversation. Casual drinking.

‘He was going to drive those metal stakes into us,’ she says. Her voice sounds disjointed and clipped, like William Shatner on speed.

‘Crazy.’

‘The world is full of crazy people. If you hadn’t come along who knows what he might have done to me.’

‘I don’t want to think about it.’

‘Nor do I,’ she admits.

‘Does Luciana live alone?’ I ask, changing the subject.

‘Her husband left her for a gym instructor. Hasn’t spoken to him since.’

‘Must have been some woman.’ My beer is cold and smooth and I’ve never felt like I’ve earned one so much.

‘Some man.’

‘Sorry?’

‘The instructor. Some
man
.’

‘Oh.’

She laughs the laugh of somebody who doesn’t know death is only a few hours away.

‘What’s so funny?’

‘You’re going to murder me later on tonight, Charlie, and there’s nothing I can do about it – except laugh.’

‘What?’ I ask, surprised at her words, surprised that she knows death is close by, surprised she can make her laughter seem so real.

‘Really, it’s okay, because neither of us can change it now. I’ll be upset at first – and rightly so. You’re going to kill Luciana too. I really wish you wouldn’t.’

‘I’m not going to kill you.’

‘It’s a done deal, Charlie. Things will change. You will change. Think of it as character development.’

The dream starts to fade and I call out to it because it has lied to me, lied about that conversation because it couldn’t have happened. Has it lied about anything else? I cry out, desperate for the dream to continue, desperate to see what I did next, but there’s nothing. I clutch my beer tightly but can no longer feel the glass beneath my hands. The women are ghosts again, telling me to wake, to wake.

I wake as I woke yesterday, submerged in guilt and aware that the design of life is to be full of useless hopes. I feel more tired than before I fell asleep. I open my eyes and see Jo standing above me. She’s holding the mallet I purchased earlier this afternoon.

I roll aside and the mallet hits my pillow. Jo’s face shows the surprise I’m feeling, and a moment later also reflects the rage. She starts to take another swing at me only this time I kick out at her, aiming for anything that will keep my skull from being crushed, and make contact with her stomach. She falls, throwing the weapon at me so that it skids off the side of my head, bringing back the headache. I wobble back and hit my head against the concrete block wall. The world darkens and for a moment I’m back in the dream – two dead women are waiting there for me – so I grip onto this world as tightly as I can and claw myself from the blackness.

Jo is lying on the floor, her hands pressed into her stomach. I climb off the bed and use the phone cord to tie her up. Was she ever planning to help me? The letter, the car, the tools, they were all elements to fool me into trusting her. Well, it worked. Does that change the plan? Why should it? I still need her to believe in me and that need makes me feel ill.

It isn’t dark outside yet and won’t be for another couple of hours. I check the clock and see the alarm would have been going off in twenty minutes. I figure we may as well leave now. We need to get to my house before Cyris does, and I’m assuming he won’t get there until after sunset. I would put Jo in the boot of the car but she won’t fit. I bet that’s why she suggested swapping cars.

I’ve bound her hands in front of her. I grab her wrists and sit her upwards.

‘I thought you were going to help me.’

She doesn’t answer, just stares at me silently.

‘Please, Jo, let me prove to you I’m not lying.’ I figure it’s a reasonable request. I figure I’m allowed to be angry with her right now, and the fact that I’m not yelling at her goes a long way to prove just how sane I am.

She still doesn’t answer. I look outside to make sure nobody is around, then open the door and quickly load our suitcases into the car before pushing Jo into the passenger seat. She doesn’t struggle or complain. It’s as though she’s given up, but I don’t trust her. A minute later we’re pulling away from the motel.

The day has warmed up but the dream still has me chilled. There are no clouds in the sky and the earlier breeze has died away. You’d be crazy to think it had even rained. The headache has faded but only a little. I hang my arm out the window. At this rate it will be thirty-five degrees by nightfall, and I think about the old guy giving the weather report on the radio this morning.

We drive through town, and for the first time I’m able to see past the garden city postcard image and see Christchurch for what it really is. People are getting killed here every few weeks. It’s a building statistic that everybody seems to be keeping a secret. We even have serial killers here now – at the moment a man dubbed the Christchurch Carver is awaiting trial for God knows how many murders. His face and his story have been in the papers non-stop for the last few months. It’s becoming a part of modern-day life, like rising petrol prices, and we just sit back and accept it because nobody is showing us an alternative.

In the distance, on the Port Hills, the sun glints off house windows. It looks like a giant tub of glitter has been spilled over them. Teenagers go up there at night in their hotted-up cars and pour diesel over the roads so they can do burn-outs and impress their mates before killing and dying. Daytime and the hills are filled with mountain bikers and paragliders and the husks of incinerated stolen cars, patches of landscape cordoned off with yellow police tape where some poor kid is getting peeled off the asphalt.

We reach the motorway I was driving down when the Sunday night Old World collided with the Monday morning New World and created the Real World. Just after the turn-off I pull the car over by the paddock with the trees and the grass and the shallow graves that were meant to be. I kill the engine. The hot sun has burnt away most signs of the rain. We have enough light for maybe another hour.

‘What are we doing here?’ Jo asks. It’s the first time she’s spoken since she attacked me. She sounds pissed off.

I nod toward the trees in the distance. ‘This is where it all happened.’

‘So what? You going to kill me here too?’

‘The only thing I’m trying to kill is time. How about I show you where everything happened?’

‘How about you don’t?’

‘Come on, Jo, there’s no need to be like that.’

‘Really? I guess this is all my mistake.’

‘Jo …’

‘Shut up, Charlie. What the hell do you expect from me? Gratitude?’

‘Hey, you’re the one who was trying to knock me out.’

‘And you can’t figure out why?’

‘I can figure it out.’

‘Really? I’m not so sure.’

There are only a few cars on the motorway behind us. I could probably dig a grave a few metres from the road and nobody would notice. Or care. I wonder how much evidence has been washed away over the last few days. A strong heat wafts through the window and it smells like mown grass. My clothes are sticking to me. Out there is a patch of ground that may or may not be covered in blood. Pieces of clothing are out there too. I had come along the other night, I had been a saviour, a knight in shining Honda. Cyris had offered me to join in on the fun, but I wanted a different sort of fun. I start the car and pull away, heading for home. Jo starts back in on the silent treatment. When I pull her Mazda into my driveway I turn towards her.

‘I want you to come in with me.’

‘What for, Charlie? I thought we were going to sit outside and watch.’

‘I just want to check it out. I want to see if he’s been here.’

‘Have fun.’

‘You’re coming with me.’

‘Your neighbours will see me tied up, Charlie.’

‘I’ll risk it.’

I step outside and circle the car to open her door. She climbs out and I put my hand on her shoulder. I’m expecting her to start screaming but she doesn’t.

I open the gate and it turns out I don’t actually need any luck. Things have been taken care of for me. My back door is yawning wide open – splintered pieces of wood where the lock once was have twisted away. I think back to Kathy’s door, then to Luciana’s. Neither of theirs were forced or pried open.

‘Who did this?’ Jo asks.

‘Who do you think?’

‘Why would you break into your own place?’ she asks, but immediately she has an answer. ‘It’s all part of the show, isn’t it, Charlie? What, you came by here this afternoon and kicked in the door so I’d believe you?’

I don’t bother answering because she’s already decided to disbelieve anything I have to say. All the curtains inside are drawn. Did I leave them like this? The air inside isn’t as stagnant as yesterday, thanks to the back door being broken open for the day. Cyris wasn’t thoughtful enough to smash the windows to let the air circulate. Apart from the door nothing seems out of place. The living room is relatively tidy and I can’t see anything damaged. I lead the way into the lounge. I’m expecting to see torn curtains, the TV tipped over, the sofa and chairs shredded, but there’s no evidence he even came in here. I move to the windows. The sun has nearly gone and so has the blue sky. The clouds from this morning are back. They’ve appeared from nowhere and in the distance they look black.

I turn from the approaching rain and enter the hallway. We pass the bathroom and I think back to when I stood outside the bathroom door at Luciana’s. I remember opening it and seeing the most grisly thing I’d ever seen. That would change fifteen minutes later.

There are no corpses behind the bathroom door and no damage either. We check the spare bedroom and once again everything’s intact. We double back and check the bedroom on the right, the room I use as a study.

And here is the evidence of vandalism I was thinking I wouldn’t find. Only this is nothing as menacing as the plugholes blocked with rags and the taps turned on full so the house is flooded. This is not as vulgar as large body parts drawn on the walls with paintbrushes. This is time-consuming. It has taken effort.

The computer monitor lies on the floor. The tube isn’t cracked but several crevices run the length of the plastic casing. It looks sad down there. The keyboard has fared no better: it has been twisted and bent and several of the keys have popped off from the pressure and are scattered like misshapen dice. My laser printer has been tossed aside. It has gouged out a hole in the wall and a black puddle of toner has spilled onto the carpet. Of the two bookcases the first has been tipped over so that it lies on an angle with books crushed beneath it, their pages and covers bent and torn. The second bookcase is upright but the books have been removed and the covers ripped away. A pile of loose pages has been stacked next to it.

Straight ahead beneath the window in a black cabinet is a small stereo system. The covers have been removed from the speakers and the cones pushed in and ripped. The front of the stereo has been smashed in, damaged by the computer lying at the foot of the cabinet. The stereo is on and some of the lights work – most of the display doesn’t. Hissing comes from the speakers but no music, and the CD player is making a soft clicking noise over and over like a metronome. The TV has been repeatedly rammed until the tube finally shattered. It takes a lot of strength and determination to break a TV tube. The aerial, twisted on the floor, looks like a tool somebody would break into a car with. The remote control is next to it. Each of the rubber buttons has been stretched and torn out. The batteries have been removed and crushed with what seem to have been teeth. Behind the TV my aluminium rubbish bin has had the sides and lid kicked in denting any reflection it once offered. Its contents, only paper and plastic, have been littered over the rest of this mess. My small collection of die-cast cars, all classics from the fifties and sixties, haven’t been smashed underfoot, but the doors, the bonnets, the wheels and the boot lids have all been removed. The cars are still on the shelves, on the drawers, on my desk, but the broken accessories are in a mixed pile on the floor like confetti.