Kealan Burke - Seldom Seen in August

So how do you explain this? he asked himself. Did I break into a haunted house or what?

No , he thought. I didn’t. It’s a trick, and a damn good one, but a trick just the same.

He slowly, painfully got to his feet.

Wade didn’t believe in ghosts. In his line of work, he couldn’t afford to. Bad enough that he spent his life looking over his shoulder looking for living enemies than have to consider the ones he’d already put in the ground. But it was that clear whoever had engineered this little theater production knew him, and had somehow managed to corral him here for a little show-and-tell. But to what end? And exactly how had they known he’d be here , in this particular house? Were all the others similarly booby-trapped? He might have thought that stoolie sonofabitch Cartwright had included Wade’s hiding place among the notes he’d sung to the police, but Cartwright didn’t know where he had gone after they’d split up.

That’s when he thought of the gate.

The only one without a sign. And while Wade had no particular feelings about dogs one way or another, common sense dictated that a man seeking a haven would choose the path of least resistance. No psychological profiling necessary to glean that particular nugget. But what if he hadn’t? What if, instead of choosing Seldom Seen as his hiding place, he’d run on and sought sanctuary elsewhere? He had chosen to come here, to this house in this neighborhood. Why then did he feel as if he’d been lured here?

No, it didn’t add up. Factor free will into the equation and nobody could have known he’d have chosen this house, dog sign or no.

And yet, here you are .

Because of a sign, or rather, the lack of one?

The sign, he realized, and the sirens. He now recalled that those wailing sirens had seemed to come from everywhere, from all around him until he hit Seldom Seen Drive. Then they’d only been behind him. Closer and closer all the time until he felt trapped, vulnerable, desperate…

“Jesus, this is ridiculous,” he said aloud and brushed himself off. He took a deep breath and slowly released it.

How are they doing this?

He didn’t know, nor did he care. It was time to go.

A kick sent the doll torso flying over the balcony and down the steps. Wade listened to it tumbling, waited until it stopped, then followed it down.

At the foot of the stairs, he stepped on the doll and gave a start when it emitted the sound of a woman quietly sobbing. He had no wish to give this further consideration and so stalked through the house until he had reached the living room and the sliding doors he had used to gain entry.

Wade was no idiot. He knew that walking out there with the cops on his tail was likely to be the last thing he ever did, at least as a free man. But he couldn’t stay here either. Not while there was someone hiding in the house who knew him, knew what he was and what he had done, someone who was having just the grandest time tormenting him with sideshow trickery. It all felt a little bit too predestined for his taste.

No. He was going, and he would just have to be careful once he crossed the threshold. He did not want to think about Cartwright and the money, and what it meant for his chances of a future. All that mattered now was getting gone.

Resolute, he stayed down and moved in a crouch to the curtains, parted them with a finger and felt his breath catch in his throat.

There were two cops in the yard, and they were heading toward the house, guns drawn.

“Great.” Wade backtracked to the hall, then hurried into the kitchen where he flexed the fingers of his free hand, the sweat oozing from his pores, and tried to think. In seconds the cops would knock on the sliding door. After seeing the gate they wouldn’t be so easily persuaded that nothing was amiss. They would force the door and they’d have him.

Keep it together, man , he told himself. You’ve still got a weapon. You’re not done, yet.

But despite his own encouragement, he felt done.

Cartwright was gone.

The money was gone.

The pigs were at the back door and his hidey-hole was filled with spiders.

Check the front.

The rapping of hard knuckles against solid glass echoed through the house, each knock sending a jolt of electric fear up his spine.

Wade ran to the kitchen window, looked outside.

Two cruisers were parked at the curb, lights flashing. The trio of cops standing around them was the only sign of life on an uncannily empty street. If the sight of police hadn’t lured the curious out of their homes, then it was quite possible that nobody lived in them after all. It put him in mind of the fake homes filled with mannequins the military set up in the desert as targets for nuclear testing.

His head hurt. Things had gotten way more complicated than they should have been. Rob the bank, nobody gets hurt, split up and meet later to divvy up the score. That was it. A simple plan. Instead, people had died, victims of Cartwright’s itchy trigger finger, Wade was stuck in some kind of sick-joke carnival funhouse designed from blueprints straight out of his head, and now Cartwright was in custody and telling the cops…

Still looking out onto the street, he frowned.

Just what did Cartwright have to tell them? That he hadn’t robbed the bank by himself? There were ample witnesses who’d testify to that, and if not, there were the security cameras. There wasn’t much else he could give the pigs that they could use. Cartwright didn’t know him well enough. He wouldn’t, for instance, be able to tell them where he was likely to hide, or whom he might seek sanctuary from. In fact, Cartwright didn’t know jack. So, assuming Wade had properly understood the text message, what exactly had he “TALKED” about? Who exactly had he “TALKED” to?

Then it clicked.

Not the cops, but the instigator of this little ghost house tour that had been set up in his honor. Whoever the Wizard behind the curtain was, he would need to know everything about Wade to be able to pull this off and had, it seemed, enlisted Cartwright’s help in constructing the charade. Which in turn explained why the only “ghosts” Wade had seen had been ones he had managed to forget over the years. The minor transgressions. The puppet master of the house hadn’t had access to his deeper, darker secrets or the show might have been an altogether more gruesome one.

He smiled. Figured you out, you fuck .

Glass shattered in the kitchen.

“Wade Crawford,” one of the cops called. “This is the police.”

You don’t say , Wade thought and crossed the room, shoving his back up against the wall beside the kitchen door.

His phone hummed.

Christ, now what?

“Wade, we’d like to do this quietly if at all possible. We don’t want anyone to get hurt, and that includes you. We just want to talk.”

Wade hadn’t fired a shot since he’d arrived at the house, out of fear that it would alert the cops to his position, but that was hardly a concern now. Fortunately, it meant he had a full clip now together with the extra one in his jeans pocket. He could hold them off for a little while, at least until a better option presented itself.

He took out his phone, slid his back down the wall until he was sitting, and peeked around the corner. There was nobody creeping up on him, but it wouldn’t be too long before they would, right before the SWAT team arrived to teargas his ass. He checked the phone. Another message from Cartwright, and just as cryptic as before:

He studied the message for a brief moment before pocketing the phone. He didn’t know if there was a basement in the house or not, and didn’t much care. Basements were not traditionally famed for being good escape routes unless they had a series of intricate tunnels leading elsewhere. They were traps. And even if he’d chosen to overlook that glaring fact, he wasn’t about to take advice from Cartwright now that he knew he was in on the whole thing.