Norman Partridge - Wildest Dreams

The child was paralyzed with fright. She stared up at that cleaved face, unable to look away from icy blue pools nestled beneath bloody brows. I yelled at the girl, begged her to run, but she couldn’t move at all. She couldn’t even look at me and I tried to snatch her away from the thing but I couldn’t even touch her, there was never a way I could touch her, and soon the mutilated shade closed its ravaged arms around the little girl and they joined in a midnight wail and together they were gone.

Silence filled the room, or it should have.

But it didn’t. I was holding my breath, shutting everything out just as I had the night before in Circe’s bed.

I couldn’t afford to do that now.

There were sounds and I had to hear them. My own ragged breathing. Circling flies cutting buzzsaw melodies. And the deputies were coming. They must have heard me warn the little girl, and now I heard them climbing the twisted wrought iron staircase.

I snatched the K-bar from between the corpse’s ribs.

On the landing, booted footfalls muffled by carpet. I heard every step. They were close. Two men trying to be quiet who didn’t know how to be quiet at all:

“We should be using those damn Dobermans.”

“Uh-uh. Dogs wouldn’t know us from him.”

“Maybe. But this stinks.”

“So let’s get it done.”

More footsteps. I took a deep breath and held it, the stink of death burning in my lungs.

No one was going to smell that stink on me.

I clutched the knife. The room had two doors: one that opened onto the hallway and another that led to a bathroom with no other exit. There was a window on the other side of the bed, but I wasn’t going through it. A twenty-foot drop to a brick driveway didn’t seem like an option, and I wasn’t going to get shot in the back while I jumped, or while running for the security fence that separated the property from the shadow-choked treeline beyond.

A floorboard creaked in the hallway.

I heard the smooth sound of automatic slides as both men chambered shells.

They had guns, and I had a knife.

And there was only one way out.

I gripped the K-bar and stepped into the hallway.

Both pistols were aimed in my face. The deputies stood shoulder to shoulder. The one on the left yelled, “Drop it!”

His partner didn’t waste that much time. He pulled the trigger. The bullet sang past my ear like a steel fly as I moved in on him, slicing the inside of his right forearm to the bone. He dropped his pistol and before it hit the carpet the K-bar had pierced his Kevlar vest and his rib cage, gouging a trench in his heart.

He dropped the same way his gun had. His partner watched him fall, but that was a mistake. He should have been watching me because I had not stopped moving. My arm came up and the pommel of the knife caught his square jaw and I followed through with my elbow. There was a wicked crack as his jaw splintered and then he was off-balance and I waded in, tumbling him over the railing.

His brown eyes stared up at me in shock as he slammed against the hardwood floor below.

“Sweet Jesus,” he moaned, slurring the words through his shattered jaw. He tried to get up, still muttering like he was down on his knees in church, but his brain tripped a circuit and cut him off soon enough.

My heart thundered in my chest. Adrenaline was burning me down. Flies buzzed around my head. I stared down at the deputy I’d stabbed. He was dead. Not even bleeding anymore. But he’d spilled more than enough blood. Or I had spilled it for him.

Soon the flies would find him.

I took the dead cop’s pistol. I wanted out.

I hurried down the wrought iron staircase, rolled the wounded deputy, and took his gun belt and two spare clips of ammunition. I buckled on the belt. Then I peeled off the cop’s shit-brown jacket and put that on too. I didn’t think I was going to fool anyone. Not really. But the jacket might buy me a second’s worth of hesitation, and that was all I wanted.

In the adjoining room-the dining room where I’d eaten the night before-a window shattered and broken glass sprayed across the floor.

I remembered the configuration of the room. A wall of glass doors that opened onto the pool area.

Someone was coming in the back way.

So I’d go out the front. I jammed the K-bar under the gun belt and grabbed the second pistol. The front door stood open. I elbowed through it, an automatic in each hand.

No one stood in my way. I eyed the treeline to the north. Nothing, but that followed expectations. This was local yokel law enforcement. No SWAT teams. No snipers.

And no prowl car parked under the porte-cochere. The deputies had probably walked down the long driveway from the main gate. I figured there were four or five cars parked up there. Probably the whole fucking force was down on me.

Why…I could certainly guess that after seeing the corpse upstairs.

But who had set me up…that was another story. Right now I didn’t have time for it.

The property was surrounded by a security fence. Any way I went, I’d have to climb it. The question was which way to go. A bare rocky wasteland separated the house from the ragged cliffs that dropped to the ocean. To the north was forest, but too much open space separated me from the treeline.

I started moving in the opposite direction, following a rustic porch that ran south along the front of the house.

I didn’t see anyone until I turned the corner.

Another deputy. His back was turned, and he was taking little Indian steps, his gun held out before him.

I aimed both pistols at his back.

If he turned around, he’d be dead before he ever saw me.

Someone yelled from the pool area behind the house. The deputy hurried toward the noise without a backward glance.

I lowered my pistols. On the south side of the house, the trees grew close. I squinted into the dark forest. Nothing. It was clear. Had to be. If anyone was waiting in ambush, they would have brought me down by now.

A voice behind me: “Freeze, asshole.”

The guns were in my hands, but I knew I couldn’t make the turn fast enough.

“Drop the guns,” he said. “Do it now.”

I did. He told me to get my hands in the air, and I did that too. Then I turned around.

I recognized the deputy. He had a trench in his heart gouged by a K-bar knife, and the front of his uniform was stained with blood, and I could see through him like a window.

I knelt and picked up the pistols.

The deputy’s ghost tried to shoot me. If there was something in his hand, I couldn’t see it. But his trigger finger kept moving, though nothing happened at all.

He stared at me, shaking now, aiming a weapon that only he could see. “You’d better not move,” he said. “Y-you’d better not even twitch.”

My words came out in a cold whisper. “There’s something I’ll tell you. You probably won’t understand. Maybe you can’t. But you’d better get used to it, all the same.”

He squinted at me, his brows twisted in confusion.

“You’re finished,” I said. “Back there, in the house. I stabbed you in the heart. Remember? I killed you. You’re dead.”

He looked through his hands. “It’s not true.” He stared at the bloody hole in his transparent chest. “It can’t be true.”

“It’s true,” I said.

He stood there staring like he couldn’t understand at all. I left him to it. I vaulted over the porch railing into bright daylight, landing in a bed of yellow and orange marigolds.

Fat blossoms snapped on weak necks as I kicked through the flowers.

They didn’t stand a chance.

The dead cop was crying now.

No one heard him but me. But I didn’t pay attention. I’d murdered him and there was nothing else I could do. The woods were so very close.