Sirens wailed three blocks away.

Garden railings and high wooden fences whipped past Wade as he ran, his feet pumping the earth hard enough to send bone-jarring jolts through his legs. Frantic, he cast desperate glances at the houses whose backyards let out on either side of him. Each one seemed to be a carbon copy of the other, their windows visible over the fences like the eyes of mischievous children. They all appeared new too, which made sense to Wade. After all, he’d lived in this city his whole life, knew its highways and byways as if the veins on the back of his hand were a topographical map, and couldn’t remember ever seeing a street called Seldom Seen Drive before. He figured it had materialized while he was in jail. Good thing he didn’t give a shit about preserving Harperville’s historical assets or he might have taken offense at the audacity of the city’s planners, because if memory served, an old cathedral had once occupied the space where now stood about sixty cookie cutter homes. Whoever had purchased the lot had apparently done so without fear of divine retribution, and though Wade appreciated that kind of balls-to-the-wall confidence, he had no time to ponder it.

As he ran, the gaps between the fences made the neatly manicured lawns flicker like projections from a vintage show reel. Here and there he saw brightly colored toys scattered in the grass, or doghouses missing their dogs, the chains snaking into the grass and ending in nothing, as if the animals had burrowed down into the earth and died there.

Breath like fire in his lungs, he picked up the pace, sweat running freely down his back, dripping from beneath his arms, slithering into his eyes in an effort to blind him. The midday sun was a helicopter spotlight roasting the skin on the nape of his neck. In a body that felt like it was cresting a thousand degrees, the only cool spot was at the base of his spine, where his revolver was tucked snugly into the waistband of his jeans.

All the gates appeared to be locked, and all the locks looked the same. Wade wondered idly if the community had a pre-approved list of merchants they dealt with for such things, and thought he wouldn’t survive a minute in such an anal-retentive neighborhood.

The alley between the rows of houses seemed endless, but the sirens kept him moving. Sooner or later it would open out onto a larger street—Kendrick Avenue, if he remembered correctly—and then he’d be even more exposed. And that was not good, not when the cops were so goddamn close. He had to find a place to hide, if only for a little while, just long enough for the cops to expand the radius of their search somewhere other than right up his ass.

He was thinking clearly and that was good, because the adrenaline was doing its best to disorientate him, making him feel as if he was a cartoon character, fleeing for miles past a looping, unchanging background.

Sirens wailed two blocks away.

Dammit. Rather than quicken his pace, he slowed to a jog. This was getting him nowhere, because although he had kept himself in shape over the years and could easily run for another ten miles if he had to, the reality of the situation was this: He was on foot, the cops were in cruisers. How long did he think it would take them to catch up? The only reason they hadn’t already done so was because he suspected they weren’t entirely sure where he’d gone, so for a brief time, the advantage had been his. But it wouldn’t take much looking to spot him, thus, whatever he was going to do would have to be done fast.

You’ve got a gun, chief, he told himself. Use it. You’re surrounded by houses. Houses with people in them. People who have cars and can be persuaded to transfer ownership.

The jog became a trot that became nothing. He stood still, the sirens sundering the hazy air around him. He had maybe five minutes before those cruisers came tearing through the alley. He looked at the nearest gate to his right. Locked, just like the others. It also seemed that every single one of the gates had a BEWARE OF DOG placard screwed onto it, as if having a mutt was a requirement of occupancy here in Stepford. A moment of scanning, however, revealed a gate a few houses down that didn’t. Remembering the dog-less chains and vacant kennels, he decided this was the safer bet. It wouldn’t do to break into a yard and get mauled, a possibility that might still be realized if it turned out the sign had simply fallen down, or been blown off. His options scarce, he decided to take the chance and made his way toward it.

He wasn’t surprised to see yet another padlock.

He reached for his gun then thought better of it. The sound of the shot would be like a public announcement, and besides, shooting locks only worked in the movies. In real life, chances were if the bullet hit the hard steel casing, it would bounce right back and put a hole in him. He thought about using the butt of the gun as a hammer, but that didn’t seem reasonable either. It would take too long and his hands were so sweaty he didn’t have much faith in his ability to keep a hold on the barrel.

Wade put a hand to the wood, craned his neck to peer at the width of the slats and nodded one time.

To hell with it. He positioned himself squarely before the gate, drew back and delivered a solid kick to the panel just beneath the padlock. The lock rattled, stayed intact, but the panel itself swung in from the bottom like a cat-flap. Another kick to the adjacent panel and he had a gap wide enough to squeeze through, which he did without pausing to look for splinters or jagged spars of wood that might cut his throat. Once inside, he cast a quick look over the house for a sign that his less-than-subtle entry had alerted someone, then, satisfied that the eyes of the windows had developed no unwelcome pupils, he quickly inspected the gate. The first panel was still attached, albeit barely; the second had been blown out entirely. That wouldn’t do. Leaving it as it was would be as good as erecting for the cops a sign with an arrow pointing toward the house. He made a hasty but serviceable job of setting the panels so they appeared undamaged. Of course, all it would take would be a nudge and the hole would reveal itself, but with any luck he’d be long gone from here before anyone thought to try. Plucking the largest of the splinters from the grass and pocketing them, he moved fast and low toward the house, one hand behind his back, fingers pressed against the butt of the gun.

A pair of garden gnomes, their bearded faces split wide by identical smiles, regarded him without judgment as he stepped onto the pristine patio and hurried into the cool shadow thrown like a dirty rug at the foot of the house. To his right was a koi pond, the colorful fish wavering lazily in an artificial current among polished stones made rough by algae. A stunted elm leaned over to gaze into the water. From one of its palsied branches hung a quartet of fake robins spinning in eternal circles, their route dictated by a motorized brass hoop. One of the robins was missing a leg, which Wade found oddly amusing despite the uncomfortable feeling of familiarity that came, he could only assume, from seeing so many bloody yards and their inane accoutrements.

He was startled then by the screech of tires and the staticky squawk of a radio from somewhere up the street.

Shit. They were almost on top of him, and he congratulated himself on having the sense to make the gate appear unbroken. With one hand still behind his back, he grabbed the gun, hefted it and hurried to the pair of sliding glass doors directly ahead of him. Only darkness showed within. Cupping his hands around his face he peered inside. He could just about make out the hunched silhouettes of furniture, the dull gleam of a mirror, but no movement, which didn’t mean that someone wasn’t in there, just that he stood a better chance of gaining access before anyone noticed.

Yeah, right.

There were any number of flaws in his plan, and though he tried not to think about them, they persisted, driven by self-preservation to remind him of the risk.

The door might be alarmed.

Someone might be waiting inside, hidden in the shadows with a gun aimed at where Wade now stood second guessing himself.

One of the neighbors might be watching him, a phone to their ear as they quickly related to the emergency operator what they had seen, and were seeing still.

Paranoia brought upon him the undeniable sensation of being watched. He felt it like lying like a cape across his shoulders. The hair on the nape of his neck prickled and he glanced back over his shoulder. There were windows all around him, staring vapidly down from over a labyrinth of privacy fences.

He shook his head. Flaws, or not, he didn’t have a choice. It was hide or keep running and he could only run so far before they wore him down. He reached out a hand, closed his eyes for a moment, and gripped the cold metal handle on the sliding door. C’mon, you sonofabitch, he thought, and pulled. To his amazement, the door slid open with a soft whoosh.

He paused on the threshold, listening, heart hammering against his ribs.

There was no sound from within.

Wade smiled. Another furtive glance over his shoulder, and he was inside.

The interior of the house offered no surprises.

Wade gently slid the door shut behind him and locked it, then pulled the curtains.

He turned to inspect his surroundings, but it was hard to make anything out in the gloom. What he could tell was that beneath his feet was a carpet that had seen better days and the air smelled faintly of furniture polish and pine air freshener. He did not need to know what the room looked like, only that he was the only one currently occupying it.

He felt a little better now that he was off the street and hidden, though he remained intrinsically aware that this did not constitute freedom. He was far from out of the woods. Anything could still go wrong, and in cases like this, usually did. Until he knew that he was alone in the house, he wouldn’t let his guard down. Even then, he would remain on edge until a viable long-term escape plan presented itself, if one presented itself and he wasn’t just dawdling here while a juggernaut of doom bore steadily down upon him.

Goddamn you anyway, Cartwright, he thought, clenching his teeth in frustration. He remained where he was, standing in the darkness by the drawn curtains, listening.

The house was quiet as the grave.

Not fool enough to take that as proof that he was alone, Wade cocked the gun as quietly as he could, which was not quiet at all, and slowly crossed the room, bound for the door in the wall opposite. Twice he barked his shin against furniture that had been lurking in the dark and had to restrain a gasp of pain. At length, ankle throbbing, he found the door and beside it a light switch he yearned to turn on, but resisted just in case it gave him away should someone be waiting for him in the hall.

Quietly, he opened the door.

A naked bulb cast sickly yellow light down on the narrow hallway.

There were coats, children’s by the look of them, hooked over the newel post at the bottom of a short flight of carpeted stairs. A punctured football sat on one step beside the naked head and torso of a baby doll. Its eyes were closed as if sleeping. Wade gave it only the most cursory glance. He hated dolls, and had ever since that movie he’d seen as a kid in which one of them had opened its eyes in a darkened bedroom and grinned at a terrified child. The stupid movie hadn’t even been about dolls, he recalled, and shook his head as he edged into the hall.

Ahead of him was a doorway, the light from the hall unable to reach very far over the threshold. There’s no one here, Wade told himself. He was alone. He could feel it, but he knew better than to rely solely on instinct. Last time he’d trusted his gut, he’d enlisted Cartwright to help him with a heist and now six people were dead and the police were hunting them both. Unless of course they had already caught Cartwright, and Wade might not have been bothered to learn that was the case had his idiot partner not been lugging around with him the fifty grand or so they’d cleared from the bank job.

He moved on, back pressed to the wall, until he was inside the kitchen. It smelled like disinfectant in here, and he imagined the chaos of a busy family in the morning: kids yelling and shoveling cereal into their maws while their parents got dressed and tried not to let show the hatred and regret they felt for their own lives and each other. He pictured a woman, just this side of good-looking, her teeth grit as she vigorously scrubbed down the kitchen surfaces while pretending the sponge was a lathe and the counter her husband’s face. They would exchange pleasant farewells for the sake of the kids, all the while secretly wishing fatal misfortune on one another.

Misery.

Wade had lived it and so found it easy to envision. Indeed, though he recalled little of his childhood, so generic was this house that it summoned what unpleasant memories he had retained of it.

Pain.

Anger.

Annoyed, he shook off the reverie before it could properly take hold of him and moved further into the kitchen, sure now that he was alone in the house. The kitchen was empty. The dirty cups, bowls, and glasses piled in the sink in the center of the L-shaped counter confirmed his suspicion that what he had walked into was the aftermath of an ordinary morning in a hectic household. It was Monday; if he was lucky, the family would be gone until early evening when school and work relinquished its hold on them. If not, and someone came home for lunch, things could get ugly. He hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

There was a small calendar tacked to a corkboard beside the refrigerator. He noted that today’s date had been circled in red marker. August 16^th. The picture above it was of a lush green meadow, speckled with dandelions beneath a sprawling blue sky. It might have been a pretty scene if not for the monstrous black satellite dish dominating the right side of the picture, the red tip of its phallic probe turned heavenward.

After uncocking the gun and tucking it back into his waistband, Wade opened the refrigerator and helped himself to some milk, straight from the carton. He belched and, still thirsty, exchanged the milk for a cold bottle of water, which did a better job of soothing his parched throat. His stomach growled, but he decided that could be dealt with after he’d inspected the upper rooms. He finished the bottle of water and tossed it in the trashcan, then moved to the large window, which looked out on the street. Cautiously, he fingered open the Venetian blinds.

Cars sat silently beside curbs.

Windows reflected the clear blue sky.

Sunlight through the sycamore trees painted leopard skin patterns on the sidewalks. Heat shimmered on the road.

But there was nobody on the street, no neighbors enjoying a day off, no retirees out mowing their lawns, no housewives gathering up the morning paper, no dogs barking despite the signs he’d seen that claimed the place was chock full of them. It was completely deserted, which was odd. If he’d chosen a dilapidated neighborhood as his hiding place, the absence of people would not have bothered him so much, but Seldom Seen Drive, while clearly not upper class, was no ghetto either. There should have been someone out there.

And you should be thankful that there isn’t, he told himself and a moment later nodded his agreement. There would be countless obstacles in his path before he made it home free, he knew. Better not to question the things that weren’t a problem.

He let the blinds snap back into place and returned to the hall. Averting his gaze, he stepped over the doll torso and quietly ascended the stairs. The further up he went, the darker it got until his progress slowed to a crawl and he was left fumbling for a light switch. Again he was reminded of the danger of switching on a light before he had explored the whole house, but concluded that it was equally dangerous to be trying to explore it blindly.

“Shit,” he hissed, almost tripping when his foot connected with something hard and unyielding. He steadied himself, dropped to his haunches and listened for signs that someone had been drawn to his presence on the landing, but heard nothing. Only his own steady breathing. He squinted down at the floor and reached out with his hands until they touched on something smooth and round. An attempt to form a picture with his hands of what the object might be proved fruitless, so he lifted it, surprised by the weight, and lugged it over to the head of the stairs where he set it down on the top step.

It was a large pink ceramic pig with a slot in its back.

Jesus, Wade thought. A friggin’ piggy bank.

It was loaded with coins, but why it had been left in the middle of the landing, like a lure for thieves pettier than he, was a mystery that immediately seemed less of one when he reminded himself that children lived here. Not without difficulty, he shoved it aside and thought that maybe he’d rob it after all, just because it had inconvenienced him. Besides, it would do the kid who owned it good to learn a hard lesson about life early on, so maybe the shit that lay ahead of them wouldn’t be nearly so surprising.

He stood, turned, and flipped the switch on the wall behind him. The landing flooded with stark white light from another unshaded bulb and he raised a hand to shield his eyes. Spastic shadows slipped under the three doors on the second floor and down the stairs as he blinked ghostly orbs from his eyes.

Nice house like this, he thought. No shades. Fucking weird.

He took a step and put a hand on the nearest door. It swung easily open revealing a cramped, unremarkable bathroom that seemed unsuitable for anything but a bachelor who didn’t mind getting piss in the sink. The shower curtain was spotted with mildew and pulled back to reveal a bathtub with a pink slip-proof mat, a drain clotted with long dark hairs, and a decidedly unhappy looking rubber duck. Time and multiple saturations had erased the pupil of one eye, leaving it with a cataract, while the other stared myopically upward as if questioning the injustice of it all. Wade grinned and turned away.

In the absence of any ambient sound, the sudden vibration against his right thigh made him jump and he scowled, embarrassed and glad as hell that no one had seen his reaction. From the pocket of his jeans he withdrew a slim silver cell phone. It hummed faintly as he checked the display.

“About goddamn time,” he muttered, and though he wouldn’t have admitted it under duress, he was relieved to see his partner’s name on the phone’s readout. It meant two things: Cartwright was alive, and he was loyal enough to keep in touch. The opposite in either case would have meant a whole lot of money lost to the wind.

Beneath Cartwright’s name was a flashing envelope icon. It was not a call but a text message. One of the last things Ward had barked at Cartwright had been “no calls, you hear me? I don’t want to be hiding up a goddamn tree and have the cops find me by following my Mission Impossible ring tone.” And he was glad he’d imparted that little caveat, for while there were no cops breathing down his neck at the moment, he still didn’t know for sure that there wasn’t someone hiding in one of the other two rooms. Turning the phone off hadn’t been an option either. He needed to regroup with Cartwright once the heat died down a little, and the sooner he knew the score, the better. If I don’t hear from you by sundown, he’d told his partner, I’m going to assume one of two scenarios: (a) you got caught, or (b) you got greedy and decided to split with the money. If the latter happens, I won’t come after you, because I probably wouldn’t know where to start looking. That’s just me being honest. So you’ll probably get away with it. I won’t dog you. Instead I’ll visit your family and you can see what I’ve done to them on the main evening news from whatever hole you’re hiding in, got it?

And apparently, Cartwright had.

Wade pressed the green phone symbol and the text message spread across the screen:

Wade bit down on his lower lip, his breath whistling through his nose. What the hell did that mean? Sorry, I fucked up. Was he referring to his little rampage at the bank despite Wade telling him only to shoot if someone got brave? Or was this some new turn of events? Had he lost the money?

Aggravated, he quickly hit REPLY and thumbed the buttons until he had typed:

He hit SEND and cursed a little too loudly. He ran his free hand through his hair and caught a whiff of himself. The odor was rank, unpleasant, like sour cream, an unnecessary reminder that he needed to take a shower. And he would, but not here. He was relatively fearless, but not enough to totally disregard common sense by taking a soak in the house he’d broken into.

Agitated and eyeing the phone in the hope that he wouldn’t have to wait long for the response, he pushed away from the wall. “C’mon, c’mon,” he whispered urgently, willing Cartwright to respond. If it turned out the money was gone, Wade figured he might as well come out with his hands up. His share of the takings wouldn’t be nearly enough to pay back the men who were out to break his legs, but it would keep them off his back for a while. Without it, he was as good as dead. And if they didn’t get to him first, the cops surely would. But if he settled some of his debt, he still ended up with nothing, which was why Wade planned to kill Cartwright and take his share. It would be just enough to finance his relocation somewhere south of the border. It was a cliché, sure, but one that held endless appeal. He liked the sun, he liked Mexican food, and he liked dark women. Where was the catch?

So intent was he on the phone’s display that it took him a moment longer than it should have to sense that there was someone standing behind him. Hair standing on end, body braced for the feel of slugs punching into his flesh, he turned, fumbled for the gun, but by the time he had it withdrawn, cocked and aimed at where the—what?—had been standing only a split-second before, it had vanished into the bathroom, slamming the door shut so hard behind it that for a moment Wade thought he’d pulled the trigger.

“Jesus H,” Wade murmured, his heart thundering. For a moment he stood there, vacillating, unsure what to do next. Only when he carefully walked himself through what he’d just seen did he realize how convinced he’d been that there had been nobody in the house with him. And perhaps he hadn’t been entirely wrong. After all, he couldn’t be certain that whoever had scurried into the bathroom hadn’t just come home. Wade hadn’t heard a car, or a door, but that didn’t mean squat.

No, he told himself. No… they were here all along.

His hackles rose, his senses on full alert now. He had let himself get complacent after the exhaustion of the chase, and that was an amateurish mistake to make, one that might have been his last.

Swallowing a lump the momentary shock had lodged in his throat, he pocketed his cell phone and took a step closer to the bathroom door.

It was a kid, he thought. A teenager maybe.

Not that it mattered a damn. He had no interest in taking hostages, only lives, especially those that intersected with his in ways in which he didn’t approve.

Slowly, he dropped to one knee and brought his face close to the latch panel, his eye to the keyhole. He squinted, caught a glimpse of a bare chest rapidly rising and falling, the acne-flushed cusp of a chin. It was a boy, probably no more than fifteen or sixteen, sitting on the toilet, terrified.

Wade exhaled explosively, his knees cracking as he stood up.

“Hey,” he said evenly. “Hey kid, come on out.”

There was no answer, but he fancied he could now hear the faint hush-whisper of the boy’s breathing as it quickened in panic.

“There’s nowhere you can go. You understand that, right?” Wade said into the door. “You’re stuck in there and I’m out here with a gun. What’re your options?”

He waited a few moments, but the kid didn’t answer.

“How about I give you three seconds to open the door, huh? One way or another, this hide-and-seek game’s gonna end, but it’d be easier on us both if you just came on out of there on your own. One…”

Despite what many people had said over the past twenty years, Wade would get no pleasure at all from what he was about to do.

“Two…”

But that didn’t alter the inescapable reality of the fact that it had to be done.

“Three.”

Gun held low, he kicked in the door so hard the jamb splintered and sent daggers of wood flying. Bringing his weapon up to draw a bead on the kid sitting on the lid of the toilet, he expected screaming, crying, pleading. What he got was silence. The kid, pale and hollow-eyed and stripped to the waist, didn’t even look at him. He just sat with his head down, looking at the straight razor he held in one hand, his chest rising and falling rapidly, the breath hissing in and out of his nose.

“Okay,” Wade said. “Nice and easy now…”

In response, the kid made a strangled noise, then thrust his head back until it was resting against the wall and his green eyes were focused on the scabrous patches of mildew on the bathroom ceiling. His Adam’s apple looked like a small fist pushing through white plastic as the kid stamped one bare foot against the floor and whined.

I know him, Wade thought, and felt his skin go cold.

It was a ridiculous notion and he shook his head to deny it. If the kid looked even remotely familiar it was because he lived in the same city. It was entirely likely Wade had seen him making his way to school one day, or hanging around outside one of the shadier clubs where grownups who had forsaken the thankless monotony of blue-collar life engaged in riskier but more lucrative pursuits. At such venues, Wade had once been a regular, and he’d often seen the children of gangsters hanging around outside, looking sullen that they’d been excluded from the proceedings, their eyes shining with ambition. A million years ago Wade himself had been one of them, had stood outside a warehouse that had appeared abandoned to anyone not affiliated with the people who owned it. But Wade knew what went on in there, and dreamed of the day he’d been enlisted to help one of the men on a job. That day had come, and it had helped to carve from shapeless useless clay the man he had become.

The kid began to weep.

Yes, Wade decided. That’s how I know him. But he didn’t believe a word of it.

“Listen,” he said, “I want you to put that blade away, ok?”

The boy kept his head back, his eyes staring upward. Then he brought the ivory-handled razor up in front of his chest, the blade facing Wade.

Wade aimed for the head. “Put it away, kid. I’m not going to tell you again.”

The blade hovered, reflecting both the harsh light and Wade’s likeness back at him. He trembled for a moment in the boy’s slender fingers. Then the razor carried on and up, stopping before his exposed throat.

“Hey…”

“Sorry,” the boy replied in the smallest of whispers, tears trickling down his gaunt face. The blade danced, and when the dance was over, there was a wide yawning smile just above his Adam’s apple. Unlike Wade, the blood seemed almost hesitant to run.

“What the fuck?”

The boy continued to stare at the ceiling, at nothing. His hand fell away, the razor clattering off the bathtub, spattering the white surface with red periods before it hit the floor.

Wade let out a slow breath and lowered the gun. In some distant part of his brain, it registered that this development was a positive one—it had saved him an ugly job and —but so unexpected and sudden had it been that he wasn’t entirely sure how to react. Why had the kid killed himself? Because of him? As obvious a solution as that was, he didn’t believe it. Over the years he’d become something of an expert in the human response to fear, to the threat he represented, and never before had he seen anything like this. Then there was the question of the straight razor. It hadn’t been in the bathroom when Wade had checked it. He knew because it had been a nice one, and if it had been there, he’d have taken it as a souvenir, and possibly as an unpleasant how-do-you-do for the first cop who tried to cuff him. Of course, it could have been stashed in a drawer or something…

He ran a hand through his hair, scratched his eyebrow with the still cocked hammer of the gun and closed his eyes. A few moments of indecision later, he back stepped out of the bathroom and closed the door behind him.

You need to get out of here, he told himself.

As if the thought had been a cue, his cell phone buzzed. Glad of the distraction, he snatched it from his pocket. Cartwright again. Another text message. Wade hit the button. His partner’s response was a single word, damning in its implications:

So they’d caught him.

And the motherfucker had sung like a canary.

Wade felt such a surge of anger he grimaced in actual pain that burrowed up from his balls and twisted through him until it snagged in his throat and burst into flame. Face crimson, he started to tremble. A roar trapped behind his teeth, he aimed the gun at the floor, the walls, the closed doors at the end of the landing, his finger itching to squeeze off a few rounds to see if the clamor of the shots could compete with his own expression of rage.

“Fuck!” he yelled, for the moment uncaring about who did or didn’t hear him. His muscles felt like ropes twisted to breaking, his blood like acid coursing through his veins. “Goddamn cocksucker!” Spittle flew from his lips as he spun on a heel back to the bathroom. In here was a piñata for all that violent anger, and hell, the kid wouldn’t even mind, the little split-throat shit. He was beyond feeling anything anymore. But right now, Wade felt too much and he needed to hit something, needed to imagine the corpse in there had a different face, namely the pinched face of his backstabbing rat-bastard partner.

Cartwright, you’re a dead man.

He shouldered open the door, a sneer on his lips.

The body was gone.

Phone in hand, Wade paced the landing. The sooner he was gone from this place the better, but every now and then he’d hear the distant squawk or the whoop-whoop of sirens as cruisers pulled to a halt, and it would remind him why he needed to be patient. Problem was, there was now a prankster running around out there covered in fake blood just dying to tell the cops about the guy he’d fooled. Oh, and Officer, did I mention he broke in and had a gun?

Wade cursed himself. What the hell was wrong with him? Had eleven years in the pen made him rusty or what? There was a time when he could have sniffed out a ruse without even being in the same building as the guy pulling it. But not only had he fallen for the kid’s prank, he hadn’t even realized the kid was in the house to begin with. He was getting old, that’s what it was. Old and rusty, kept going by his addiction to vices and the consequential need to compensate for them with cash he didn’t have. And that, he suspected, would never change.

“Hell with it,” he said, and scrolled through the names in his cell phone’s memory until he found one that read simply: “CUJ” which was an abbreviation for “Clean-Up Job”, itself a code name for a man named Alex Eye, which no doubt was an alias but it was better than a series of stupid letters. Alex had proven useful, if ridiculously expensive, in the past when things hadn’t exactly gone the way they’d been supposed to. Alex was six-foot six, black, and didn’t speak a word. He just showed up, did what he’d been hired to do, then charged you up the ass and back down again for it. But he could untie the knot in almost any situation, thinking up clever escape plans where there didn’t appear to be any. As a matter of pride, Wade had never used Alex’s services. But he needed them now.

He made the call. Listened to the dial tone buzzing in his ear.

Paced.

Stopped when a phone in one of the rooms he was facing began to ring. He frowned, hung up on his call and cocked his head slightly.

The house phone stopped ringing.

He waited, expecting to hear whoever had answered muttering urgently inside the room. Please help me there’s somebody in my house! But they were either being painfully quiet, or the person calling had given up. Wade waited a few more minutes. The doors to the rooms he had not yet investigated faced each other across the narrow landing. He hit the SEND button on Alex’s number, and walked slowly to the door on the left.

The call went through.

Inside the room on the right, the house phone began to ring again.

“What the hell is going on?” he mumbled, and took the phone from his ear to check the display. Alex’s name showed above the miniature icon of a phone ringing so violently the receiver was dancing. Frowning, Wade jabbed the END button, canceling the call, and immediately raised his eyes to the door from which the ringing sound had come.

It stopped.

He surprised himself by chuckling and shaking his head, as if he’d just been told a hoary old joke but owed it to the teller to laugh.

“I’ll be damned,” he said. “Now that’s clever.”

Just to be absolutely sure, he tried Alex’s number again.

The house phone rang.

Hung up.

The phone went quiet.

A single bark of laughter and he pocketed the phone, raised the gun. “Jesus, I never…” he said, wiping a tear from his eye. “But…how?”

A number of possible explanations came to him.

One: By some miracle or coincidence, he had broken into Alex’s home, which would explain why the house phone was ringing when he dialed the man’s number.

Wade groaned.

Two: Alex had some kind of weird but ingenious redirect function attached to his number that, rather than lead to an answering machine, led to the phone nearest the caller.

Wade closed his eyes.

Three: Someone was fucking with him.

Wade opened his eyes.

Enough.

In three short steps he was at the door on the right and throwing it wide. It thumped against the far wall and shuddered back toward him, giving him the deeply unpleasant sensation that the room was shrinking while he watched.

The sunlight stretched languidly into the room through net-curtained windows, spotlighting the fall of dust motes to the bare wood floor. An old vanity squatted in shadow in one corner. In another was a rocking chair. Atop it sat an old black rotary phone. In the center of the room was a bed with a single dirty white sheet, and beneath it lay a woman, her long silver-gray hair spread out around the stained pillow.

Wade put a hand out to stop the door from closing, and stepped into the room.

The old woman shifted, turned her head. “Billy?”

Her voice, like the room, was dusty.

“’Fraid not,” Wade said. “And who might you be?”

The old woman rose out of the bed like a specter. There was no series of movements, just one fluid one, as if she were attached to ropes threaded through hooks in the ceiling. One moment she was on her back, an ordinary old lady, the next she was floating toward him like something out of a horror movie, her feet tangling in the sheets, pulling them away, revealing the bloodstains on the mattress beneath.

Gooseflesh rippling all over him, Wade retreated from the room, his attempt to shut the door behind him so frantic he missed the knob on the first try and had to lean in to make a second one.

The lady, in no hurry at all, drifted toward him and now he could see that she was blind, that her teeth were gone, that her flimsy nightdress was spattered with blood both old and new.

She was almost upon him, her withered arms outstretched toward him in a gesture of pleading or longing, her face twisted into an expression of such profound sadness it almost drained the energy from him.

“Jesus,” he said and pulled the door shut, but not before he heard her say, “You never come to see me anymore, Billy…”

He stood there, perplexed and unsettled. Just what in the blue hell was going on? Had he broken into a lunatic asylum masquerading as a suburban home?

As he stood there, his brain telling him that the best course of action, the only course of action now was to get moving, get as far away from this madhouse as possible, he heard a humming sound he at first assumed was his phone. Cartwright, he thought with a by now familiar flare of anger, but the cell’s display was dark, the phone quiet. The humming was coming from the walls.

“Okay,” he muttered. “Okay, we’re done.”

He turned, intending to head back across the landing, down the stairs, and out, when the door to his left, the only one he hadn’t yet opened, creaked and swung wide, exposing the room beyond.

Go, Wade told himself, absently slipping the cell phone back into his pocket. Don’t bother looking in there. Just go.

But without being fully aware that he was doing so, he moved slowly to the door and peeked inside.

The floors and walls were blackened, as if by fire. The air smelled like soot and charcoal, and burnt meat.

The windows were boarded over.

There was no furniture.

Staggering drunkenly toward him was a woman with a broken neck. She was naked, her heavily veined breasts like punctured balloons hanging down over ribs that poked through her mottled blue skin. One broken-fingered hand covered the dark thatch of her pubic hair in a gruesome parody of modesty. Her head had been twisted almost all the way around, the skin on her neck bunched into folds. He could see the ridge of one ear, the faintest curve of a bloody smile as she tottered like an infant toward where he stood, horrified. There were needle marks on her arms and legs and feet, and he could not stop looking at them.

The woman gargled, then flickered.

Wade blinked rapidly.

The woman flickered again, like a movie with gaps in the reel, like the yards seen through the fences as he’d fled, and then she changed, whined much like the boy in the bathroom had. Abruptly the film jumped and she became a terrible charred thing, patches of red visible through a veritable carapace of roasted flesh.

She stopped her tottering advance and screamed, and though it made little sense to him, it was that scream rather than the pantomime of broken-necked burning that made him remember who she was.

“Gail?” he said, and the door slammed shut so suddenly and so forcefully it cracked the wood and shattered the frame. Wade cried out in surprise, his attempt to back away foiled by something that had insinuated its way between his feet. The doll torso, he saw but was already falling, the notion of another cry dissuaded by the floor as his back thumped against it, winding him.

Though the instinct to flee was overwhelming, he stayed on the floor for a moment, eyes closed while he regulated his breathing.

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.

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.

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.”

“What were you hoping for then?”

“Gradual dawning.”

Wade pondered this a moment, then said, “Well if by “dawning” you mean figuring out your game, then I won, didn’t I? What’s my prize? Few hookers and some Cuban cigars? One-way trip to Mexico?” He grinned, but let it fade when he realized it wasn’t being returned. Cochran suddenly looked all business.

“Wade,” he said, leaning forward again, his palms flat on the table. “You’re a psychopath.”

“That’s kinda strong, isn’t it?”

“It’s fact.”

“Well, so’s the fact that you’re an old fart, but you don’t hear me pointing it out.”

“You killed a man three weeks shy of your fifteenth birthday. There was a boy with you. Do you remember?”

Wade remembered the man clearly, the boy only vaguely.

“Not the kid. Only met him that one time,” he said. “But the guy had it coming.”

“Or so you were told. That he deserved to die. If they’d said the same about anyone, whether it was true or not, you’d have done what they asked of you, wouldn’t you?”

“I suppose so,” Wade said. “It was the way things were.”

“And it was the way you wanted it to be.”

Wade frowned. “Have we entered the psychological evaluation stage of our relationship, Mr. Cochran?”

Cochran ignored him. “The boy’s name was Eddie Scarsdale. Like you, he wanted to be a gangster, wanted some way to make a lot of money so he wouldn’t get mocked at school anymore for having holes in the soles of his shoes, but he didn’t have the chutzpah, the nerve to take the life of another human being. After you killed the old man, he was so distraught, so guilty, he went home and got his father’s straight razor…” He waved a hand in the air. “You know the rest.”

Wade thought of the kid in the bathroom upstairs and shook his head. “So it’s my fault he took the chickenshit expressway?”

Cochran just stared, his face unreadable.

“Whatever,” Wade said. “So who was the old floating bitch in the bedroom?”

“My wife,” Cochran said evenly.

“Whoops.” Wade chuckled. “I’d put my foot in my mouth if it wasn’t tied to the chair.”

“She was never the same after Eddie’s death.”

Despite the lingering skeins of disorientation, Wade was able to connect the dots fairly quickly. “Your wife?”

Cochran nodded.

“So then, this Eddie character was your son?”

“No.”

“All right then, I’m lost.”

“He was already dead by the time I met and married his mother.”

“Gotcha.”

“But I saw how she suffered. Saw how it ate away at her worse than any cancer.” A distant look entered his eyes. “I think she married me just so she wouldn’t be alone. Not sure there was any love there. At least, from her.”

Wade leaned forward as much as his restraints would allow. “Can I interrupt you for a sec?”

Cochran waited.

“Thanks. Um… how did you get the impression from my record, which I assume you’ve read in detail, that I would give a cartwheeling fuck about anything you’ve just told me?”

Cochran shook his head.

“Hey, look, I am sorry about what happened to your…whatever he was to you, and your wife. Really, I am.”

Cochran gave a feeble smile. “Perhaps you should care, Wade. It is, after all, part of the reason you’re here.”

“Okay, so what’s the other part of the reason?”

“Do you know what nanotechnology is?”

“Computer classes for grandmothers?”

“Funny,” the old man said. “But no, it refers to control of matter on the atomic and molecular scale.”

“Sounds fascinating. And is it safe to assume that it also means we’ve moved from psychoanalysis to psychics? Because if we have I’d like to apologize in advance if I nod off during your lecture.”

“In this case, they’re interlinked.”

“Your losing me again.”

“Then I’ll condense it for you,” Cochran said patiently. “In 2000, my company announced a breakthrough in psychotherapy following a fusion of two distinct but radically different departments of the University of Ca—

“Jesus Christ, get to the point already,” Wade said around an exaggerated yawn.

“Very well. What we developed was called “nanoreality”—a means of using nanotechnology to construct realistic visual images, or as you so rightly guessed, “mental holograms” based on the memories of a subject.”

“Interesting,” Wade said, sounding bored. “But it makes me wonder why you felt the need to strap me to a chair when just listening to you would have been enough to bore me into a coma.”

Cochran continued, unfazed. “It was primarily developed as a way for doctors to abandon professional speculation and actually see the trauma in the minds of their patients, as if it were a movie, to witness firsthand the core of the patient’s illness in living color, and therefore treat the patient accordingly. Of course the possibilities didn’t end there. Witnesses afraid to talk, or abuse cases with repressed memories…all of it could be found in the suconscious and projected for observation and study. We could, in essence, see reflections gleaned from the subject’s life. Better yet, a dying man could project images of his killer and we could save them. Better than any mugshot. It stands to turn the justice system as we know it on its ear.”

Wade felt the restraints biting into his wrists. There was a way out of these zip-ties. Someone had told him how to do it once upon a time, but the method eluded him now.

“But like any great discovery, “nanoreality” had its problems, and some pretty significant ones at that. Once access was gained, we found it difficult to isolate the memories we wanted. The mind doesn’t have an index, you see. It’s like a library full of books with no titles. We ended up selecting them at random.” He shook his head. “Which had unfortunate consequences for some of the subjects, otherwise good people who had seen terrible things and had managed to forget them. Essentially we made them relive those nightmares, and of course, when memories are recreated in front of you, they cease to be memories anymore. They become the present, the now. So those who had witnessed or endured tragedies were forced to witness them again. And once the present became the past again, the memory was duplicated, intensifying the level of emotional turmoil. It proved counterproductive, exacerbating the very symptoms were were trying to cure.”

Wade smiled. “So you fucked them up even more, in other words.”

“Yes,” Cochran conceded. “And I’ll spare you the speech about every great advance needing sacrifice. It was my fault. We weren’t ready.”

“But now you are?”

Cochran sat back again and appraised Wade for a long moment. Then he offered him a tight smile. “Yes. Many lives have been lost trying to perfect this thing. The initial project was deemed a failure and shut down until I decided to fund a new version of it. As you might imagine, the old concerns were revived right along with it, but I had done my homework this time. We had planned to go public until someone in my staff leaked word of the project to the press. It was not received well. They accused us of trying to steal the last of mankind’s secrets, invading the only place left the government hadn’t already probed. During this wave of negativity, the government men showed up, stirred from their nest by the media and on the warpath. After an admittedly impressive demonstration, I was able to keep them from shutting us down, but only if I agreed to sign the whole thing over to them when complete, with my role reduced to advisor.”

“That had to suck,” Wade said, grinning.

“Not nearly as much as I thought. You see, the advances we made in that three year period were phenomenal. We broke barriers we never imagined we’d break, and extended the realm of possibility almost infinitely. There is very little we can’t do with this technology, but of course claims are nothing without proof.” He smiled and joined his hands. “Which is where you come in.”

Wade nodded his understanding. “I’m the guinea pig.”

“Yes.”

Wade was sweating again, but this time he was glad of it. Enough lubrication and he stood a better chance of slipping free of his restraints. Not a much better chance, but anything was better than nothing. And if he got free, the first order of business would be to strangle the boring old bastard with his own tie. He could think about what to do with the cops upstairs—assuming they were still there—later.

“So what’s next?” he asked Cochran.

“We’ve already run through the first stage. Exposure to select memories to gauge your reaction.”

“Which was disappointing if the reviews are to be believed.”

“Yes, but as I said, hardly surprising.”

A thought occurred to him then. “You said you weren’t able to isolate individual memories, didn’t you?”

Cochran seemed pleased. “So you were listening after all?”

“Can’t help it,” Wade said. “My ears don’t listen to reason.”

“Well, you’re correct. We weren’t able to isolate individual memories. But we figured it out. Now, not only can we pick and choose the memory, we can transfer them.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means,” Cochran told him. “That the memories you experienced upstairs didn’t significantly affect you for a good reason.”

“Which is?”

“Not all of them were yours.”

“Hardly a shock,” Wade said. “I wasn’t there to see the kid die. I’ve never even seen the old w…your wife before. And…”

“Correct, but the last one, the hooker, couldn’t have come from anybody’s brain but yours.”

For the first time since meeting the old man, Wade felt a pinch of anger in his belly. There was no denying that Gail, a girl he had loved, if only for a short time, had been a prostitute. God knows she’d turned him away enough times or asked him to wait in the diner downstairs because she was “entertaining” but then as now, he hated hearing her called a ‘hooker’. It was, he knew, the typical reaction of the blind, those people who judged her based on how she looked and what she did rather than who she was. And if they’d known, they might have been surprised to find that she had a college degree (though in what, he no longer recalled), and a six-year old child she’d adored (but who lived with her mother for obvious reasons), and that she’d played piano like a virtuoso. She hooked to make enough money to buy a house for herself and her son, and she’d been pretty close to realizing that goal when she’d decided she’d had enough of Wade. A violent man by nature, he nevertheless managed to rein in his temper for her. Hurting her wasn’t the way to secure her love, to persuade her that her life would be better with him in it, even if it only served as a constant reminder of what she’d done in the years before she made a clean break. So instead of beating her, he’d introduced her to drugs, and that had worked like a charm. She’d grown to depend on him again, to appreciate him, and that had lasted until the night she threatened him with his own gun. By that time, the drugs had completely taken hold of her, leaving her delusional, unreachable. When she’d pleaded with him to let her go, he knew she was talking to the cocaine in her system, in her brain, so that when he killed her, it was a mercy.

“Did I strike a nerve at last?” Cochran asked.

“Nope.”

“Ah well,” Cochran said, sounding not at all disappointed, “There’s plenty of time.”

Wade sighed. “Okay, let’s quit fucking around. What am I doing here?” As he spoke, he tugged his arm up as much as the restraint would allow. The zip tie caught on his wrist-bone and moved no further. It would though, he was sure of it.

Cochran smiled broadly and gestured at the room around them. “It’s actually quite clever. I shifted the focus of the project as needed to keep its validity in the eyes of those who might be swayed to pull the plug.”

Wade closed his eyes, exasperated. “Good for you.”

“I proposed, instead of concentrating solely on mental patients, that we expand our scope to include violent criminals. Not that I believe there’s much of a difference, mind you. I suggested we build a fully functional neighborhood right in the middle of Harperville’s black zone, where recidivism is out of control.”

“Black zone?”

“The area worst affected by crime.”

“Careful Reverend Sharpton doesn’t get wind of that.”

“It was to be, what my workers affectionately called a ‘glue trap’. The objective would be to lure or force pre-selected criminals into the house chosen for them.”

“Where they would be visited by the ghosts of Christmas past,” Wade said with a smirk.

“In a sense, yes. Each house contains two-dozen hosts, which are units installed in the walls behind perforated plaster. When triggered—remotely, of course—they send out spores, nanobots, which are then inhaled. Once inside you, they begin to acquire your information, much like a system search on a hard drive. When they find what they want, they shoot signals against your eyes like a cathode ray will shoot electrons against a television screen. So what you’re seeing in front of you, isn’t really there.”

“But why images that weren’t mine?”

Cochran’s smile disappeared. “A personal touch. A signature. For that, I’m sorry. It’s not something I’m permitted to do, but I wanted you to see them. You’ve gone so long not feeling a damn thing for the lives you’ve destroyed. You killed a man. A child killed himself over it, and his mother went mad. I married her and watched it happen. And I didn’t help. Didn’t know how. Instead I buried myself in my work. Dedicated myself to finding a way to make remorseless killers regret what they did, and experience in vivid detail the pain they’d caused.”

“Doesn’t seem to have worked though, does it?”

“We’re not finished, Wade.” Cochran tilted his head and spoke in a low voice to someone who wasn’t there. “Monitors, please.”

Immediately the bank of screens behind him came to life. Each one showed a different man, and in one case a woman, exploring rooms similar to those in the house above Wade’s head. Some of them had weapons, others looked as if they were the weapon.

“Who are they?” Wade asked, but already knew the answer.

“Criminals, just like you,” Cochran said, without looking at the screens. “Murders, rapists, drug-dealers, arsonists…”

“And you think the glue trap is going to work on them?”

“That’s the hope, yes.”

“Rats in a cage,” Wade said bitterly. “To me it doesn’t look like you’ve come that far from sixth grade biology.” He watched as, on one of the screens, an enormous man riddled with tattoos, bent down to inspect something on the stairs in front of him. It looked like a jack-in-the-box.

“Perhaps,” Cochran replied. “Or perhaps the key to our worst fears can be found in childhood games.”

Wade thought of something and studied the television screens for a moment before he brought it up. “Where’s Cartwright?”

“Hmm?” Cochran said, the faintest hint of a smile on his lips. “Oh, Cartwright, yes. He’s not currently active.”

“Active? You killed him?”

“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?

He yanked again and his wrist caught fire. His head swam, lightning bugs sailing through the dark before his eyes. Teeth clenched, he persisted until he felt the zip-tie on one hand slip lower, taking with it a flap of skin. Wade hissed air through his teeth, and looked back at the screens to distract himself from the mounting agony.

The woman with the knife was standing in the living room, watched by a half-dozen indistinct and curiously faceless shapes. They twitched and shook every time she raised the knife and brought it down on her abdomen. At least a half-dozen of them were small, like children, watching impassively, shivering with almost orgasmic glee.

“Fuck,” Wade said and redoubled his efforts. Skin tore free, muscles strained, and nerves sang. With a startling burst of pain, his thumb broke with a dull popping sound, but there was no time to consider the injury. Slick with blood and sweat, his hand slipped free of the zip-tie.

“Hallelujah,” he said, hoarse from the effort it took not to scream. He took a moment to nail down consciousness as it struggled to leave him, then pulled on the seat of the chair while moving his feet downward. A bit of wriggling and the chair legs were free of the plasticuffs, freeing his own legs in the process. He stood, shakily, his limbs numb, the pain fierce in his right hand. Briefly he inspected it and grimaced. It would need some work, and soon, if he didn’t want it to get infected. He had come close to slipping the skin off like a latex glove. The restraint on his left hand proved no easier to remove now that he had all but flayed his right, but eventually he managed to snap the frame of the chair and slide the hand free.

Then he turned to face the screens.

The humming was so loud now it seemed to come from inside him.

Three of the screens had gone dark. Not just blank, they’d been switched off. Wade felt he knew what that meant, and didn’t like it much. He felt a modicum of relief that he wasn’t on one of those screens, waiting to be switched off, then realized he probably was, in some other place, with some other captive watching fearfully on the other side.

Resisting the compulsion to massage the blazing pain from his hand, he used his other hand to search his pockets, his waistband. He was not surprised to find they’d relieved him of his gun, and everything else he’d had on him.

On another of the monitors, a small squat man with a comb over was peering up at the light bulb in one of the upstairs bedrooms while behind him, a black man with half his head missing wriggled like a lizard out from under the sodden mattress.

August, Wade thought as he headed for the door through which Cochran had exited. The hell happened in August?

Another screen went blank. Wade could tell only because the blue light from the bank of screens faded a little. It inspired urgency in him. He did not want to be in this musty room when the lights went out.

August…

Despite what Cochran had said, he was sure that particular month held no significance for him. Unwillingly, he ran through a mental list of the people he had encountered and the things he had done over the years. It was difficult, as there had been more than one incident that had occurred during his “gray period”, a time in which, like the ill-fated Gail, he had worshipped a chemical god. Of the memories he was able to summon, was not proud, nor could he stand to dwell upon them for long, a development that Cochran might have found of great interest. Wade was not immoral; he did have a conscience. He had just found a way to exist and do what needed to be done without it plaguing him. Regret and remorse were like a pair of mean dogs he kept staked out in his backyard. He knew they were there, but only because he heard them barking, and it was easy enough to drown out the sound.

He found the door. It was made of metal and cold to the touch. There were a number of dents in the surface. Wade scrabbled for a knob and found it, turned, and the door would not open. It hardly budged at all.

“Shit.” He hammered on it with his good fist. “Hey!”

To his ears it sounded as if his cry had not gone further than his lips. Meanwhile, the humming seemed to have settled in his ears, those industrious hornets searching for the fastest route to his brain.

His shadow, blurred at the edges, faded as another screen died.

Wade turned. With only a half-dozen screens still on, he would need to find an alternate way out before the room was in total darkness. Quickly, he inspected the ceiling, but saw little, the light blocked by the heavy beams. He recalled how they’d looked in the full light—as if a few tugs would bring them down. It was a risky proposition. If it did come down, he’d be standing right under it and stood a good chance of getting crushed under the weight of its collapse. Another problem was that he was now one-handed and as such doubted he had the strength to cause those rafters much distress.

Sudden frantic motion on one of the screens made him look at them again. Just before it went dark, he thought he saw an obese man try to punch a sobbing woman, until she looked up at him and screamed from the open, fleshless hole of her face.

Wade winced and shook his head, his wounded hand throbbing and dripping blood on the floor. He looked back up at the ceiling. Darker now, the shadows thicker still. Okay, forget trying to bring it down, he thought. If it was as fragile as it looked, there was a chance he might be able to use something to knock a hole in it large enough for him to squeeze through. The table would help give him the boost he needed to reach up and pull himself out. Of course, he didn’t know where it would lead, but considering his options, it was the better one.

He squinted around the ever-darkening room, eyes scanning the gloom for something, anything he could use, and found only the broken remains of the chair. With difficulty, he braced the broken frame against his chest and kicked out at the legs until they broke away and fell noiselessly to the floor.

Another television went off.

Grabbing one of the chair legs, Wade all but leaped onto the table. It wobbled but held under his feet. He looked up at a dark space between the beams. There was nothing to see there, so he reached up with his unwounded hand and pressed his fingers against the wood. It was soft, spongy and crumbled at his touch. Wade smiled. Perfect. As he’d guessed, it wouldn’t take much to punch through, though the space between the beams was going to make it a tight squeeze.

He stepped back, the leg of the chair held like a sword before him, splintered end up, and paused as abruptly, Cochran’s words came back to him: I suggested we build a fully functional neighborhood right in the middle of Harperville’s black zone. Wade frowned, so preoccupied by this newest mystery that he scarcely noticed when another television died. If they had built the neighborhood only recently, why was the basement ceiling decayed, as if it had suffered the weathering of countless generations? The answer, when it presented itself, reduced dramatically the hope that he’d felt at the sight of that crumbling wood.

The ceiling was old and weak because in an otherwise sealed room, it would be the only logical escape route. The decay was deliberate, subtler than a flimsy trapdoor or a neon sign pointing upward, but the nature of it was the same. Like so much of what had occurred since he’d come to Seldom Seen Drive, this move had also been premeditated. Just not by him.

He swore and rammed the chair leg up into the ceiling. It punctured a hole in the wood on the first try. He quickly withdrew the spear and attacked the panel as hard as he could with only his left hand. It was an awkward assault, but the objective was reached. The leg penetrated as if the ceiling were made of bread. With almost manic glee he watched as a hand-sized hole appeared in the wood, lit by the faintest suggestion of daylight.

The last of the television screens went off and now he was surrounded by darkness that felt dense, heavy, suffocating. The humidity made it seem as if he were in a room with a thousand men, each one struggling to draw air as thick as glue into their lungs. Fresh sweat broke out all over his body. The sound of his blood smacking against the surface of the table was the only sound in the room.

He resumed his assault, jabbing up at the ceiling as if he were Jonah struggling to open a rent in the belly of the whale, every thrust marked by the pained rasp of his breathing.

The air was close, clinging to him.

Wood crumbled. The hole widened.

A television lit up.

Wade did a double take, then glanced over at the screen, guardedly thankful that the cloying dark had been allayed even if only for a moment.

But what he saw on that screen quickly changed his mind.

The picture was grainy black-and-white, the kind of poor quality image generally associated with cheap closed circuit cameras. This one stared unblinkingly down at a wrought iron gate three times as tall as the men waiting in line behind it. A klaxon sounded and the gate swung open, revealing a parade of men in orange jumpsuits, each one with a number printed on the pocket. The majority of the men were black, but here and there a white face was glimpsed, looking distinctly out of place and more than a little scared. Among those faces, Wade recognized a much younger version of his own. He was skinny, his eyes huge dark holes in the round oval of his face. To the adult Wade’s older, experienced eyes, he knew the term for a boy who looked like that: “punk” – which meant a prime candidate for rape. The sight of that boy, his face struggling to find a suitably sullen expression to make him appear less vulnerable, sent a wire spinning out from him to his older self, reestablishing a connection Wade had managed to sever in the intervening years.

With the connection, came the memory.

Standing atop the table, Wade exhaled a shuddering breath that took most of his will to fight with it. The arm holding the spear slowly fell to his side, the chair leg clattering off the table. Wade didn’t notice. His attention was fixed, not on the video of a younger version of himself entering the maw of hell, but on the time code in the lower left hand corner, which read: 12:15:32 - 8-16-1983.

August 16^th, 1983.

Flailing blindly with his one good hand, Wade eased himself down off the table, and moved in an almost dreamlike fashion toward the monitor. Tears filled his eyes as the memories—cold feet, cold hands, cold walls and warm, heavy bodies, of blood and electric terror, of animal violence, of screaming, of sweat and hate and laughter and loneliness, of hanging bodies, and nakedness, cruel smiles and broken teeth and busted bones, of endless darkness and hot breath in his ear and I’ll kill you if you tell—came to him in a merciless torrent that almost knocked him off his feet.

“Jesus…” he whispered, the humming so loud in his ear now he felt as if something in his brain must surely give. Standing before the screen, trembling, feeling as if everything in him had been scooped out, leaving only a hollow vessel behind, he reached out with his wounded hand and touched bloody fingers to the screen.

The young man tripped over his chains and fell.

No one picked him up.

Plenty kicked him while he was down.

The guards did nothing.

A frightened sob burst from the elder Wade’s mouth.

And the screen went off.

Darkness crashed back in on him like a wave.

He fell to his knees, mouth agape.

In the dark, someone chuckled.

Cochran’s voice came again. Whether or not it was in his head or in the room with him, Wade didn’t know, but he could barely make it out over the raging of the hornets.

They only gave us a month, you know…

Wade raised his head. He’d been in prison many times. The longest had been the first time, shortly after his eighteenth birthday. They’d released him from Hell on his twenty-ninth.

Eleven years.

They only gave us a month

And though he remembered every other period of incarceration, he had managed to forget the first, and with good reason.

I must apologize in advance that we had to condense the experience into what’s left of it.

Wade stood. He was blind, but as soon as he located the hole in the ceiling he would run to it and get out. He promised himself he would. He was not afraid. No. He could handle himself. He didn’t have to run, but enough was enough. Cochran had made his point and he would tell him so and endure the old man’s piety for however long it took until this fucking charade was over.

Already he could smell them.

He swallowed, felt his way toward the table.

It was gone.

No. How?

Keep it together keep it together keep it together. They’re visions, holograms, images. You could walk right through them if you wanted to. They’re not real.

Relief then as his hip collided painfully with the table’s edge. He had misjudged it in the dark. He almost laughed, but couldn’t quite summon the air required. He was drenched in sweat, could hardly breathe. The room had become a sauna, and a foul-smelling one.

In the dark, he heard them pacing.

Wade dropped to his haunches, his hands like antennae, searching the floor for the chair leg. He didn’t need a weapon. It would hardly do much good against an immaterial thing, but he wanted it, knew it would make him feel less vulnerable.

They can’t hurt you, he reminded himself.

A klaxon sounded in the room, and he cried out in fright.

Gates opening.

No, not gates.

Cell doors.

Keep it together, it’s a trick, just a trick, just—

In the dark, someone touched him.

Born and raised in Dungarvan, Ireland, Kealan Patrick Burke is an award-winning author described as “a newcomer worth watching” (Publishers Weekly) and “one of the most original authors in contemporary horror” (Booklist).

Some of his works include the novels KIN, MASTER OF THE MOORS, CURRENCY OF SOULS and THE HIDES, the novellas THE TURTLE BOY (Bram Stoker Award Winner, 2004), VESSELS, MIDLISTERS, and JACK & JILL, and the collections RAVENOUS GHOSTS and THE NUMBER 121 TO PENNSYLVANIA & OTHERS (Bram Stoker Award-Nominee, 2009).

Kealan also edited the anthologies: TAVERNS OF THE DEAD (starred review, Publishers Weekly), BRIMSTONE TURNPIKE, QUIETLY NOW (International Horror Guild Award Nominee, 2004), the charity anthology TALES FROM THE GOREZONE and NIGHT VISIONS 12 (starred review, Publishers Weekly, British Fantasy Award & International Horror Guild Award nominee).

A movie based on his short story “Peekers”, directed by Mark Steensland screened at a variety of international film festivals and won a number of awards. You can view the film at the author’s website.

As actor, Burke played the male lead in Greg Lamberson’s film SLIME CITY MASSACRE, the long-awaited sequel to the cult classic SLIME CITY, which will be released on DVD, Blu-ray, and Video On Demand in 2011.

Visit Kealan on the web at www.kealanpatrickburke.com, and read more titles by the author at Smashwords.com.

Copyright 2010 by Kealan Patrick Burke

Cover Photography by Adrienne Wallace

Cover Design by Kealan Patrick Burke

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