She smirks at that and I don’t blame her. “Trust you? You must be pretty far gone if you think I should trust you after this. So what are you going to do now? Kill me, or stay here and monitor who I call?”
“Come on, Jo, stop overreacting.”
“Stop shouting. I’m sick of you shouting.”
Well, I’m sick of people dying. I’m sick of seeing blood. I’m sick of being chased by Evil and spoken to by ghosts. I’m sick of guilt resting like a bowling ball in the pit of my stomach. I hate that I no longer have any control in my life. I hate this Real World, the killing hours that make up the days. I think I have the justification to scream and shout until my throat is raw.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to shout,” I say, not realizing I had been. “All I want is for you to believe me.” I try to keep my voice low and steady. As if I’m talking to a woman on a ledge.
“I believe you, Charlie. Is that it? Does that make you happy enough to leave?”
“You don’t believe me.”
“No, I really do. It’s just come to me now. So you can leave.”
I reach toward her to help her up and she flinches away, and in that movement I see myself through her eyes. Suddenly she believes there are monsters in this world, and I’m one of them. I look away, unable to face her. For a moment I think of last night, the highs and the lows, of which there were both. Incredible, incredible highs. Sick, ravaging lows. One of those lows came when I finally decided to do more than just stand and watch. I ran from the tree line to confront Cyris. I ran and the only thing I did successfully was step on the flashlight and lose my balance. Seconds after I hit the dirt, Cyris started hitting me. That was another low point. He was hitting me and telling me how stupid I was for trying to save a dead woman.
She’s like a baby, he said, and I was trying to ward off his blows, flying through a windshield that hasn’t landed yet. Another punch. Another struggle. He got me in the side of the head. Got me in the shoulder. Surely you can see that, he said, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t see any windshields. Any babies.
“I think you might be in danger,” I tell Jo.
“You have a talent for seeing the obvious.”
“You need to come with me.”
“No.”
“Please. He’ll come for you. I know it.”
“You need to leave, Charlie. You need help. Professional help.”
I reach back out to help her up. This time she takes my hand. “You need to go somewhere for a few days,” I tell her, “and you can’t call the police.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” she says, “and the first thing I’m going to do is call the police. For your own benefit, Charlie. That blow to your head has done more damage than you think.”
“What can I do to convince you?” I ask.
“Pushing me wasn’t a good start, Charlie.”
“There’s nothing I can say?”
“No.”
“You’re sure?”
“Positive.”
“In that case, I’m sorry.”
“What for?” she asks.
I push her to the floor and we struggle, but I’m heavier and stronger and more determined to save her than she is to save herself. It’s the only way. It makes me sick, but not as sick as if Cyris were to find her. I pull the phone cable out and use it to bind her hands and feet. She stops struggling. I gag her with a hand towel. Action Man has taken the wheel and he’s steering me right past morality and into an abyss. I take a step back and look down at her shaking body. I spend the next thirty seconds almost untying her and the following thirty convincing myself this is for the best. For both of us. She isn’t safe by herself. Not now. I pack a suitcase full of her clothes and dump it in the backseat of the car along with her handbag.
I try to get Jo to her feet, but she refuses to stand. I’ve bound her arms behind her so I pull up on her wrists and the pain in her shoulders forces her up. I cut the cord by her feet. She tries to pull away from me, knocking over a dining table chair on the way to the door. I straighten it back up. I tighten my grip and lead her out to the car.
“It’ll be easier for us both if you cooperate, Jo. Otherwise I’ll put you in the trunk. Come on, Jo. Help me out here, okay?”
She doesn’t help me out. I force her into the trunk and tie her feet back together. I feel exhausted. I also feel like that stranger is still living in my body. I’m watching my real self in this Real World and not enjoying the ride. With the suitcase in the car it feels like we’re going on holiday.
I roll down the window. The air is cooling down, but still has a warm edge to it. It’s hard to imagine being in danger in the tranquility of this night. I hear banging against the roof of the trunk, but try to shut it out. I want to be with that tranquility, I want to feel it inside me, but that’s not possible. It may never be possible again. It was tranquil last night too, up to a point.
I rub my fingers across the bump on my head. It was just after Cyris, his breath on my sweating face, asked me if I wanted a piece of the action that I thrust my head forward and felt his nose explode beneath my forehead. That was one of the high points.
The windshield of the car shimmers and I dig my fingers into the tears and wipe them away. From the back of the car Jo beats out a steady rhythm. We head west and pass through the central city. Monday nights have little traffic and even less foot traffic. Nobody can hear Jo making trunk music.
I pull into the parking lot of the Everblue Motel. Its design is similar to other motels that have been built where traffic is heavy and land is cheap-just two long rectangles of concrete block running perpendicular to each other. It’s hard to tell in the light whether the paint on the walls has faded in areas from the sun or darkened in the opposite areas from exhaust fumes. In between, strips of brown grass run parallel with the sidewalk. The sidewalk is chipped on the edges and patches of grass bleed between the long cracks. The neon b in Everblue has blown out. The rooms face away from the road. I count seven cars in the parking lot and nobody around. I stop outside the office. It’s lit by harsh fluorescent lights. I leave the engine running and the stereo turned up loud with the window open to help mask Jo’s sounds, even though sounds coming from a trunk are to be expected in a neighborhood like this.
Pamphlets on touristy things to do in Christchurch line one wall. You can start the day by skiing and then go surfing in the afternoon. You can go skydiving or Jet Skiing or play one of thirty or forty golf courses. You can wake up one day and watch two women get killed then kidnap your ex-wife. It’s all part of the Christchurch experience. Slipped in among the pamphlets are leaflets from the Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons and medical clinics in the area, all offering to save us from something. A strip of flypaper hangs in the corner covered in a variety of insects, a few of which are still twitching. An electric fan with a bent propeller circulates slowly, the tip of the blade pinging against the grille every half second.
I ring the bell and a man steps out from behind a greasy curtain with a piece of greasy chicken in his hands, and I’m grateful he’s wearing a black T-shirt instead of a fishnet wife beater. The T-shirt has You can never have too much duct tape written across it. He has tiny pieces of toilet paper stuck to his neck from a recent attempt at shaving. He starts talking in short, uncomplicated words either for his benefit or mine. He gives me the hourly charge for the rooms. I tell him I’m staying the night, and then I ask for a room with two single beds.
He gives me a funny look. “You some kind of weirdo?” he asks.
“Some kind, yeah.”
I give him a false name and real cash because that’s all he’s expecting. He glances out at the car and doesn’t ask where the second person is, but a man in his position probably has a pretty good idea. His T-shirt sums it all up.
I move the car up to the room and park between an old Toyota and an even older Ford. Both are painted white. One of the side mirrors on the Toyota has been broken off, maybe from an accident, maybe from vandalism. I carry my suitcase inside then come back outside for Jo’s. I head back and, making sure nobody is looking, I open the trunk. Jo doesn’t make it complicated for me to help get her out. I carry her inside and sit her down on the bed. I lock the door with the cheap dead bolt and slide the chain across.