Kealan Burke - Seldom Seen in August

So no, to hell with the basement.

An attic on the other hand…

It would still be trapping himself, but better the high ground than the low, and it would be difficult for anyone to get at him without getting a bullet to the head.

He almost laughed at the image of himself, knees drawn up, shooting a succession of cops one after the other as they poked their heads up into his hideout.

It wouldn’t work. The only option then was to shoot his way out and hope for the best.

Movement in the hall made his shoulders tighten. He leaned out and saw a young, fresh-faced cop doing the same thing. Only the cop looked surprised.

Even more so when Wade shot him in the head.

The cop fell back against the wall.

There was stunned silence for a second.

Then all hell broke loose.

More glass shattered, men shouted commands, furniture was overturned, more crashing, hammers were ratcheted back, static exploded from radios.

Wade grinned. “Get the message, you assholes?” he called out.

“You’re a fucking dead man,” one of the cops shouted back and was quietly reprimanded by another.

From one of the upstairs rooms came the sound of footsteps. They were penning him in, as if he wasn’t already penned in enough.

As he prepared to rise into a crouch and make a break for the stairs, his plan to intercept whoever this latest unwelcome visitor was before the option was taken away, he noted that the doll torso had somehow found its way into the kitchen. It lay between his legs, eyes open and staring at him.

He rose onto his haunches.

“You hear me, Crawford?” the angry cop yelled at him, his voice cracking. “You’re not walking out of here.”

It was clear the young cop’s death had hit the guy hard. Boo-hoo , Wade thought.

“What? You mean like that kid out there missing the top half of his head? Like him, you mean?” he called back.

The humming sound came again.

A quick check told him it was not his phone.

He tried to filter out the clamor from the cops as they tried to talk some sense into their incensed comrade.

Hunkered shadows moved past the kitchen window.

Shit.

He put a hand on the floor to steady himself, his mind buzzing.

Gotta be a way—

His fingers brushed against the doll and he recoiled. Was it his imagination or had the doll appeared to be shivering when he’d touched it? He returned its unwavering stare for a moment, until he realized he’d found the source of the humming sound.

The doll was vibrating.

Gunfire made him duck as a chunk of plaster and wood the size of a fist exploded from the doorway mere inches above his head. Gray dust rained down on his shoulders.

“Hear me now, you prick?” the cop roared at him.

Rustling in the hall again. The cop the shot had been meant to cover, he assumed.

Well, this is it , he thought with curious calm, and took a deep breath, bracing himself to swing out around the kitchen door and plug another dumb cop. He cast one last look down at the doll and smirked.

The doll smirked back.

Wade flinched.

The doll opened its Cupid’s bow mouth wide. Wider. Something glinted inside, and despite the horror, despite the urgency of the situation in which he was currently mired, Wade leaned forward and peered into that open plastic maw.

The doll began to hum again.

Needles , Wade realized, it’s got needles in its mouth , and jerked back a second too late to avoid their trajectory as the doll winked and spat them into his face.

He awoke what felt like only seconds later, but clearly it had been more than that because he was no longer in the house, or at least in any part of it that he had seen during his turbulent time there. As the effects of whatever drug the needles had contained gradually abated, he was left with only a mild headache, slightly muddled vision, and a great disappointment not only that he had been caught, but also that he hadn’t managed to take down a few more of the cops before the end. Not that he blamed himself for that. Who knew a doll could spit poison darts? He shook his head and it hurt.

They had bound him to a chair by his feet and ankles. In true modern fashion, they hadn’t used ropes, but PlastiCuffs, the kind that you had to gnaw through your own limbs to escape. As expected, when he tested their hold, there was no give at all. He was, as Shakespeare had once said, well and truly fucked.

There was little to see in the room but a small blue card table, the cheap kind you could pick up at any convenience store. A chair was set on the other side of it. Behind the chair was a wall of television screens. The screens were on, but showed nothing but gray.

Wade waited.

At length a door opened somewhere behind him. He tried to see who was there but gave up when it caused fiery threads of pain to scurry up the back of his neck.

“Mr. Crawford?” the visitor asked in an oddly benevolent voice, as if he had been dying to make Wade’s acquaintance.

“Yeah? Who’re you?”

The man came around the table, allowing Wade to get a good look at him.

“My name is Hank Cochran. You may have heard of me?”

“Nope,” said Wade.

“Ah. Well, no matter. We have plenty of time to get to know one another.”

Cochran was silver-haired and dressed in a charcoal colored suit and a midnight blue tie. A matching handkerchief poked like the tongue of a hanged man from his breast pocket. As he sat and put his hands together, Wade saw that his nails were neatly clipped. The man’s face was long and pale. Bushy eyebrows fought to unite over a pair of light blue eyes. Everything about him spoke of money, of a no-nonsense attitude toward life.

Wade wondered if he was a lawyer, a mortician, or a mobster. He looked like a combination of all three. Of course, many of the lawyers he’d known who’d worked for the mob had been forced to adopt all of those roles at one time or another. One thing he did know for sure was that the old man in front of him was not on the right side of the law.

“I’m sorry for keeping you waiting.”

“No problem. It was a good chance to gather my thoughts.”

Cochran looked at him, a faint smile on his face. “Do you know where you are, Wade? May I call you Wade?”

Wade shrugged. “So where am I?”

“Still in Seldom Seen.”

Wade looked around again, noted the dirt walls around the bank of television screens, and nodded. “The basement, right?”

Cochran smiled, exposing brilliant white teeth. “Right.”

“Why?”

“We’re conducting a project here.”

“And it’s not arts and crafts.”

“No. No it isn’t. It’s a little more elaborate than that, though I suppose there are similarities. Both require the coming together of certain elements to work.”

“And I’m an element.”

“You are, yes. A vital one.” Cochran seemed to be enjoying their exchange, which baffled Wade somewhat.

“So what does the project entail?”

“Rehabilitation.”

“By what means?”

Cochran raised his eyebrows. “Oh, but you’ve already seen the means.” He looked up at the ceiling, which consisted of a network of wires and rotting beams Wade didn’t think would take much to bring down. “Upstairs.”

“The ghosts?”

The old man shook his head. “They’re not ghosts.”

“Holograms then.”

“In a way, if you think of yourself as the projector.”

“So you put on this show of things from my past in the hope that I would—what? Drop to my knees and pray for forgiveness?”

Cochran sat back and folded his arms. “That’s the gist of it, though given your history, we’d all have been rather astounded if your reaction had been so dramatic, or so easily attained.”