Kealan Burke - Seldom Seen in August

“I didn’t, no. And the intent was never to take his life, but it would appear we still have a few bugs in our system.”

“Huh.”

“Does that surprise you?”

Wade nodded. “A little. You talk about this project of yours like it’s going to be the greatest gift to mankind, but don’t blink when you talk about someone dying because of it.”

“It would be hard to defend my position without sounding like a Bond villain, Wade. Or worse, making me sound like you.”

“Why stop now? I was enjoying the monologue.”

“I’m sure, but I’m afraid you’re not the only subject I have to deal with today.” He half-turned and indicated the monitors with a sweep of his hand. On one of them, Wade saw that the woman was fishing through the kitchen drawer. She stopped and withdrew a long carving knife, then smiled.

“There’s something I don’t get,” Wade said.

“Yes?”

“What was with the text messages?”

“How do you mean?” The sparkle in the old man’s eyes suggested he already knew exactly what it meant.

“Who sent them?”

“Why, Cartwright, of course.”

“What did they mean? That he’d talked to you?”

Cochran nodded. “Yes. Unfortunately, he was not as inclined as you were to follow the predetermined path. He strayed, so we had to rely on backup to bring him in. From the outset he knew the house was a ploy of some kind. He just didn’t understand the nature of it. Before he died, we asked him one question, and one question only. It concerned you, and he was most forthcoming.”

A chill spread like cold hands across Wade’s back. He jerked on his restraints, to no avail, and decided he might have to try dislocating his arm. “What was the question?”

Cochran stood and checked his watch. “I must be off. The day’s only a quarter done. I will, of course, check back in with you later.”

“Wait.” Wade tried to keep his voice calm, but it was getting difficult. The implications of what Cochran had said about Cartwright nagged at him.

“Yes?” Cochran asked, clearly amused.

“What did Cartwright tell you?”

The old man seemed to consider his answer, then smiled. “Something that proved that the host settings for each subject need tweaking because not every mind is the same, and the ability of a subject to repress memories may be stronger in some than in others.”

He nodded his farewell and walked around the table. In frustration, Wade tried to lunge at him, hoping at the very least he might be able to pin the scrawny old man down with his body weight if he timed it just right. But Cochran merely stepped aside and Wade hit the floor, still bound, the dirt floor rough against his skin.

“I’ll kill you, you know,” he promised. “When this is over—”

“When this is over, Wade, you won’t feel the need to harm anyone ever again. And I suspect you’ll be referred to as the project’s greatest success. They only gave us a month, you know. They gave us August, the hottest month, which suited us just fine. Nothing pushes a man closer to the edge than heat, and entrapment. I think we managed to recreate that scenario quite well, don’t you? The pressure, the panic, the cops, the backstabbing friend… ”

“The cops….”

“Actors.”

“I killed one of them. I saw it.”

“You saw a hologram. No cop would be dumb enough to stick his head out knowing you were armed. They would have waited for the SWAT team. You know that.”

He did, but it hadn’t occurred to him at the time. He’d been fighting to survive, to escape. Now it seemed he’d been feeling that way because it was how they’d wanted him to feel. They’d played him like a chump from the very beginning, and somehow that, above all else, enraged him. He began to thrash against his restraints, but only succeeded in making the ties slice through the skin on his wrists.

“While you’re waiting,” Cochran said, and he sounded farther away now. “It might do to ponder something else about this month that’s of personal significance to you. I must apologize in advance that we had to condense the experience into what’s left of it.”

He exited and a moment later, the lights went out. The indigo glow from the television screens was the only illumination in the room.

Behind him, Cochran’s voice: “Goodbye, Wade,” followed by the sound of a door closing.

He was alone.

Days seemed to pass him by as he lay on the dirt floor suffocating beneath a sheet of sweat and above a mattress of old dirt. He tried hard not to let Cochran’s words drain the fight from him. August was a month that meant nothing. The longer he spent obsessing over it, straining his mind, the less chance he stood of keeping it together long enough to deal with whatever came next, so he banished it from his mind.

Then something on one of the monitors caught his eye. At the same time he was startled by a shriek of static. It quickly abated, fading to a muffled stutter as someone fed audio from the screen he was watching into the basement.

A tall thin man dressed in a dark suit was absently scratching his thigh with the muzzle of a revolver while his other hand turned the hot water faucet in the bathroom sink. The bathroom looked identical to the one in which the phantom child—Eddie—had killed himself, only reversed, like a mirror image. A simulation , Wade reminded himself. That’s all it was. Nothing to do with me no matter what that old bastard said. I don’t control what other people do with their lives. Onscreen, the man in the suit leaned over to stare into the sink. The water was exposing something that had been written there, washing away a thin veneer in the basin to reveal a clue, or a message. With great effort, and disregarding the absurd twinge of jealousy that he hadn’t thought to do what the man was doing now, Wade tried to straighten his head to make out the words. As it turned out, it wasn’t necessary. The man in the bathroom spoke them aloud in a low gravelly voice.

“Revelation.”

Beneath the crackle and hiss of the audio, the familiar humming began. To Wade it was like invisible hornets had been released into the room and were coming closer.

The man in the bathroom stopped scratching, set his gun down on the rim of the bath tub, his attention still focused on the sink.

“Repentance.”

A noise distracted the man and he turned, made a grab for his revolver, but only succeeded in knocking it into the tub. He cursed loudly as the shower curtain tried to strangle him, and retrieved the weapon. When he straightened, he saw what Wade had already seen. An enormous shadow had darkened the bathroom, cast by someone or something standing on the threshold, just out of frame. Fear contorted the man’s face and he jerked out his arm, reflexively and without aiming, pumping one, two, three rounds into the shape before him. The reports were too much for the small speakers to handle. They sounded like a gloved fist thumping a microphone.

Apparently the bullets had no effect. The man screamed and fell back against the sink, cracking his skull against the porcelain rim. He slid to the floor, unconscious.

Allowing Wade to see the final word.

Wade yanked at the restraints so fiercely he felt the flesh bunch up and begin to tear around his wrist bone. He didn’t care. He was well able to handle himself, well able to think his way out of damn near any situation, no matter how hopeless it seemed. The pain his efforts incurred was inconsequential in the grander scheme of things. But this situation made him nervous because he wasn’t sure what was coming next. The humming was getting louder all the time and the dark was unsettling, obscuring as it would any enemy Cochran might throw at him. Worse, whatever it was would be something from his own head. Something apparently he had forgotten, and what worse monster is there than one with which we are not familiar?