The Broken Clock is Right Thrice: Confessions of a Fake Psychic Detective #4

Chapter 30 - ITSATRAPAXE

"Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak."

~ Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Sunglasses pulls the trigger, but nothing happens. No bang. No wisps of smoke out the end of the barrel.

"Looking for these?" Zandra says. She reaches into her pocket and reveals a fistful of cartridges. "Remember when I wiped the gun clean? It's like they always say. Never give a psychic your hand, or your gun for that matter."

Sunglasses shoves the revolver back into his pocket and heads for the pool table. Zandra leaps from her chair, but she slips and goes to the floor. She keeps the bite of the blade facing away from her, scrambling to get up as Sunglasses grabs a pool cue and breaks it across his knee. He tosses the thinner half aside and charges at Zandra with the jagged end of the wider half.

Zandra gets up in time to raise the lawnmower knife in defense, but it's no match for two-and-a-half feet of pool cue. Sunglasses winds up with the cue and slaps the knuckles on Zandra's hand, forcing her to drop the knife. He swings for a blow to her face, but Zandra shoves the chair into his stomach. Sunglasses falls backward. That buys her a few seconds to get a head start.

The head start dissipates quickly as Zandra limps out of the lounge, so she leaves as much of a mess as she can in her wake. Anything not nailed down on the walls or in the hallway crashes to the floor.

The tactic works at first, catching Sunglasses by surprise. He slips on broken glass and rubs a few shards into his hands, turning his grip red and sloppy against the pool cue.

Zandra retraces her route back toward the wine cellar and tries to recall where the room was with all the weapons mounted to the wall.

I never went there. No idea. I need something with range, something longer than the pool cue. There are shovels in the wine cellar.

Sunglasses gains on Zandra, leaping over the debris and screaming something incoherent. A flash of something out of the corner of Zandra's eye catches her attention as she drags a painting off the wall.

Snapping her head in the direction of the flash, Zandra expects to see someone walking toward her at the turn in the long hallway. Instead, she sees no one up ahead.

Sunglasses screams in a way that nearly rattles the painting back up onto the wall. Zandra twists her head once again, anticipating an injured Sunglasses howling in pain, and once again she's wrong.

Sunglasses is frozen in place, jaws hanging loose.

He didn't scream.

Zandra forges on ahead, turning right at a split in the hallway. The wine cellar isn't far now.

Tell someone a house is haunted, and they'll find ways to make it true. That scream was probably Emile in the freezer again. Lots of pipes and vents in this place to move the sound around.

The heavy, wooden door leading down to the wine cellar slows Zandra down, but only for a moment. She grabs onto the cast-iron handle and pulls. Sunglasses's footsteps aren't far behind.

The door swings open, and Zandra steps down onto the wooden staircase leading into the wine cellar. She catches a glimpse of Sunglasses as she closes the door behind her. To her surprise, Sunglasses doesn't turn right at the split as she did. He hangs a left.

Fuck. He's going to the weapons room. The guns in there must be inert, but there's no way to switch off a medieval battle axe or whatever is in there.