The Killing Hour

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

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.