Agonal Breath (The Deadseer Chronicles Book 1)

by Richard Estep

  Clawing at the brickwork for support, Jake somehow dragged himself to his feet, then turned tail and ran as best he could, fleeing down the long balcony towards the next stairwell. After he had made it about twenty feet, he turned and risked a quick glance over his shoulder at his pursuer.

  Mister Long Brook was picking up the pace as well, lumbering faster and faster along the balcony and slowly closing the gap between them both.

  “He really shouldn’t have upset Mister Long Brook,” Polly said sadly, shaking her head as she watched the predator and his prey disappear into the far shadows.

  Jake must have realized that he was never going to make the stairwell before Mister Long Brook caught up with him, so in a fit of desperation he cut sharply to his right, ducking into one of the patient room doorways.

  Before Polly’s protector even made it to that same doorway, there came a startled, high-pitched scream from inside the room.

  “Come on!” Becky urged, grabbing my sleeve and leading me along to investigate.

  The big spirit form now stood motionless in the doorway, simply staring down at the luminous little circle that I quickly realized was one of the glow sticks we had planted earlier to identify the many treacherous holes that were present in the rotting floor. A cloud of dust was still rising up from this particular hole, probably kicked up when a panicky Jake had fallen through it.

  “We should go and check on him,” I said, without any real enthusiasm.

  “What we should be doing is finding Brandon,” Becky argued pointedly.

  “I know, but at the very least, we need to take that pistol away from him,” I countered. Becky sighed.

  “Alright, you have a point there.”

  We made our way back down to the ground floor again, backtracking into the dining hall. Becky and I moved slowly in the near-darkness, keeping one eye on the ceiling until we finally found Jake’s body.

  He was lying on his back, arms and legs sprawled out in all directions. It would have been easy to mistakenly think that he was just sleeping, if it weren’t for the grotesque angle that his head and neck had been twisted into when his body had landed on the hard concrete — well, that and the pool of dark blood that was spreading slowly from underneath his head.

  I looked up, estimating the distance between the floor and the hole in the ceiling as being something like twenty feet.

  “I’ve got my CPR card,” Becky said briskly, taking a knee and reaching out to press two fingers against the side of Jake’s neck. She kept them there for what seemed like an hour before shaking her head solemnly. “There’s no pulse. I’m afraid he’s dead.”

  “Where’s the gun?” I wondered, looking around the body for it. The thing must have been dropped when he landed and skittered away somewhere. It took a few minutes of hunting, but I finally found it underneath one of the old wooden tables.

  “Do you know how to use one of those things?” Becky asked doubtfully as I approached, holding the gun awkwardly in my right hand. I shrugged.

  “Pointy end towards the man?” I quipped. The Princess Bride quote just made Becky roll her eyes. “Look, I’ve never used one before, if that’s what you’re asking. My dad was a Marine, but he didn’t teach me how to shoot. I mean, he offered, but I was never that interested. Kind of wish I had been, now,” I finished glumly.

  “Give it to me.” Becky held out an expectant hand. I carefully handed her the gun, making very sure to keep my fingers away from the trigger. She took the weapon confidently, ejected a round from the chamber, dropped the magazine out, and squinted to check it in the darkness. Unable to figure out how many bullets were left, she went over to the large window where the ambient light was a little better. “Looks like seven rounds left,” she said to herself, putting the magazine back into place (after replacing the ejected round) and racking the slide back with a click-clack that sounded like ice shattering. “I’ve gone with Dad to the range a few times,” she explained, catching sight of my raised eyebrows. “He usually lets me put a few rounds down too, when he’s in a good mood.”

  “I’m sold. You’re the expert.” If she was expecting some sort of macho, Alpha-Male BS from me, it wasn’t going to happen. I was more than happy to let somebody who had actually fired a gun take charge of one.

  “Cool.” Looking down at Jake’s dead body, we both fell silent. “It’s really a shame that he died,” she said at last.

  “It was a total accident. Besides, this was not a nice guy. He tried to kill us, and either him or his buddy shot Brandon, remember?”

  “Yeah, I suppose you’re right.” Becky side, tucking the gun into the waistband of her pants just like a Hollywood cop. “Okay, so what next…we need to find Brandon, right?”

  “Right,” I agreed. “Let’s go and check that back hallway again. Jake and his friend surprised us back there. Maybe we can figure out where they came from, and where they’ve taken Brandon.”

  “Is it just me, or did it suddenly get really cold in here?” Becky was shivering, wrapping her arms around herself in an effort to stay warm. I frowned. The air did suddenly feel a whole lot colder. And that had to mean—

  “Step back, Becky. Now.”

  I ushered her away from Jake’s corpse, just in time for his spirit form to rise up and out of the skin and bones that had once housed it and stand over it in bewilderment, staring down at a lifeless mirror image of its own face. A silver cord connected his astral body to the dead physical version of itself, extending from his ankle like one of those bracelets the cops use to keep tabs on offenders.

  “What the hell is happening?” Jake sobbed, trying to touch the dead body’s face and seeing his blue-limned hand pass through its cheek and nose as though it were a hologram.

  “Take it easy, man.” I held up my arms in what I hoped was a placating way. “You’re dead now, and you have to learn to accept that.”

  “Danny, who are you talking to?”

  “It’s Jake, Becky. He’s in his spirit body now.” She squinted towards Jake’s corpse, but obviously couldn’t see the ghost standing just behind it, who was having a major freak-out about his totally unexpected arrival into the afterlife.

  “Oh my God, man!” Jake wailed. Tears were streaming down his face. “I knew I shouldn’ta gotten involved in all this. Easy money, my ass. I shoulda listened! I should never have come here…” He kept going on in that same vein, and I just let him rant. People coped with the stress of passing over in very different ways. Those who died suddenly, or maybe didn’t believe in the possibility of life after death, tended to suffer the most and have the roughest transition. It looked like Jake was going to be in that camp.

  “Danny, let’s go,” Becky hissed. “Whatever it is he’s doing or saying, he can’t hurt us now, right?”

  “Not really,” I agreed. “But just wait a second. Jake, listen to me. Jake!” I had to practically yell in his face, but I finally got his attention. “Remember me? You know, you held a gun to my head upstairs?”

  “You can see me, kid? How the hell does that work?” Jake was trembling, and I needed to stay right there in front of him and keep him focused on me in order to get the answers I wanted.

  “I can see dead people. Natural talent. Don’t worry about it.” I dismissed it with a wave of my hand. “Look, man, if you want to go somewhere…nicer when the light comes for you, it would be a good idea for you to answer some of my questions.”

  “I’m a Catholic,” Jake whined, crossing himself in a pathetic attempt to win the head honcho judge in the sky over in his favor. The whines turned to sobs really quickly. So much for him being a tough guy. I’d seen five year-olds with more backbone. “I’ve been a good Catholic, man. Tell me I ain’t going down there, to that place…”

  Now was going to be my best chance to get something useful out of him. I decided to grab it with both hands.

  “Oh, you’re going down, man. Like, downstairs to the basement, where it’s really good and hot. It’s pitchforks and pyromania time
in Hell, Jake.”

  Jake sank to his knees and began to pray, clasping his trembling hands together as he muttered desperately for some way to escape from what he believed was an express elevator to Hell. He began to jabber and tremble.

  Man, it was pathetic.

  “On the other hand, I could maybe put in a good word for you. You know…with the spirits” It was said casually, but it sure got his attention right away.

  “You’d really do that for me? Really, man?” The new-found hope I could hear in his voice was even more pathetic than the desperation had been.

  “I might,” I hedged. “Might. But you have to do something for me first.”

  “Anything, dude. Just name it. Anything!” Jake was full-on begging now. I’m not gonna lie — it was more than a little satisfying to hear. Put a gun to my head?

  “You have to tell me where you took my friend.” He looked puzzled. “You know, my friend. The one you shot.”

  “Oh, that kid. He ain’t dead. Bullet grazed him, but he didn’t die.”

  Becky and I shared a look. I could tell that the sense of relief she was feeling must have matched mine. Brandon was alive.

  “So where did you take him?” I pushed.

  “Tony took him down to the cellar. He’s still down there, keeping an eye on the kid. I came up here to look for you.”

  Tony. That must be the other guy who’d shot at us.

  Becky pushed in front of me. “What’s down in the cellar?” she demanded. “What were you two doing down there?”

  “We were just—”

  The big double doors slammed open. All three of us turned around to look. A cold blue light was streaming in through the doorway, dancing and flickering in the same way that the auras on Polly and Mister Long Brook had, but this looked more like we were underwater.

  “Good evening,” said the transparent, lanky figure dressed in a surgical gown who stepped through the doorway into the hall. He was the source of most of the blue glow, but not all of it; some came from the squad of nurses and assistants that followed in his wake.

  “Oh crap,” was all I could whisper.

  “I am Doctor Marko von Spiessbach. And who, pray tell, might you be?”

  Wearing scrubs, gowns, and surgical masks, the gang of nurses fanned out in a semicircle on either side of their leader.

  Dr. Spiessbach kept walking towards us, unhurriedly strolling as though he had all the time in the world — which technically he did, I supposed.

  “Danny, what is it?” Becky asked. “Who’s there?”

  “It’s him,” I answered helpfully. “The doctor, Spiessbach.”

  She looked back at the doorway and blinked. “I can’t see anyone. Just that blue light.”

  “He’s there. Trust me. And he brought company too.”

  “Oh yes, indeed I am here.” Spiessbach flashed me a sickly smile. “You look familiar to me, boy. Have we met before?”

  “Maybe,” I grunted back, stalling for time.

  “And how is it that you are able to see me, when your really quite lovely young friend cannot, hmmm?”

  Spiessbach kept coming towards us as he talked. He was only ten feet away from us now. Close enough for me to say that his eyes were black within black.

  He was definitely the doctor from my nightmare.

  “Maybe I’m just gifted.” I was stalling for time, and something about the surgeon’s demeanor told me that he knew it.

  I started to shuffle to the right, trying to shift myself into a position in front of Becky, hoping to offer her a little protection.

  “Maybe you are,” the surgeon conceded with a nod. “And you are still among the living, which makes you a rare and precious commodity indeed within these walls. And what of your other friend there, hmmm?”

  I glanced across at Jake. The thug was staring at Spiessbach and his cronies with bug-eyes, as if the Devil himself had risen up from the depths of Hell to claim his soul. He started to cross himself and say ‘Hail Marys’ over and over again, in a desperate attempt to protect himself from the evil spirit now bearing down on him.

  “Becky,” I whispered, not taking my eyes off Spiessbach now, not even for a second. He seemed totally fixated on the newest ghost in the sanatorium.

  “What?”

  “Back away. Slowly. Come on, let’s go.”

  True to my word, I started to edge backward. From the corner of my eye, I could see that the dark smudges that were the crazed surgeon’s cronies had started to flank us on either side.

  This was going to be bad, unless we got moving pretty quickly.

  “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou…”

  Jake was lost in his own personal afterlife of fear. I was surprised that the light hadn’t come for him yet, but I also knew that it could take a while after the loss of the physical body — sometimes hours, sometimes days.

  It looked like things were about to get ugly.

  Spiessbach loomed over the terrified thug. The lanky doctor reached out and gently lifted Jake’s chin with the fingertips of one transparent blue hand, tilting his head back so that the two of them could look one another in the eye.

  “Don’t be afraid, young man. We are going to help you, I promise.” The surgeon’s smile widened, his German accent getting stronger and thicker as he spoke.

  Two gowned nurses closed in on each side, grabbing Jake by the upper arm and lifting him slowly to his feet. Jake continued to sob out repeating cycles of Hail Marys as they led him away towards the double doors.

  “Ssh-ssh-shh-shh-shh! We shall take the very best care of you,” Spiessbach cackled, raising a theatrical finger up to his lips.

  “That guy’s freaking insane,” I hissed.

  “Why? What’s going on, Danny?”

  “Just keep walking. That’s it. Keep going.”

  Backing away past the stage, we were soon swallowed up in the deepest, darkest shadows of the huge room. The nurses were totally preoccupied with hauling Jake off to who knew where…probably the operating room upstairs, if I had to guess.

  Dr. Spiessbach, on the other hand, seemed more interested in us. He reached out and beckoned with thin, almost skeletal fingers.

  “Come to me, my children. Let the doctor make you better, hmmm?”

  Screw that. I grabbed Becky’s hand, and we ran for our lives.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  I lost track of all the twists and turns we took after that, moving blindly through the dark with our gasping, rasping breaths echoing in our own ears.

  “Danny, what the heck was that back there?”

  “No time for that now,” I cut her off. We needed to get to some kind of safety, but before that, we had to find Brandon.

  The narrow, cramped side corridor we were in suddenly opened out into a fairly large room. All of the machinery may have been rusted and falling apart, but it was still very easily recognizable as a laundry room.

  I remembered from our explorations earlier that the laundry room backed directly onto the main hallway where Brandon had almost been shot. Then an idea suddenly hit me.

  “Hey Becky, does your iPad still have any charge left?”

  “I don’t know. Let me check.”

  She pulled out the tablet delicately and hit the ‘on’ button, and was instantly rewarded with the lock screen: that muscle-bound dude from the ghost-hunting TV show. I was glad she couldn’t see me making a face in the dark.

  Instead, I said, “That’s awesome. Can you pull up those floor plans you downloaded?”

  “Sure. Just a minute.”

  Becky punched in the four-digit passcode and went into her photo collection. I looked over her shoulder at the screen. The floor plans had obviously been scanned from an old black-and-white original master, because there were hand-written annotations marked in cursive pencil script all over it.

  “Right there,” I pointed excitedly. “Look. There’s the laundry room.”

  Becky’s finger tracked across the
screen, until it finally came to rest on what we were both looking for.

  “There’s the entrance to the cellar.”

  I had just figured that one of the main stairwells would go down a floor as well as up, but that turned out not to be the case. It was actually just two room to our left, next to what appeared to be an old janitorial supply closet.

  Becky killed the iPad to conserve the 28% of battery life that was left and stuffed it back into her pack.

  Too bad we didn’t have our flashlights any more, but at least I should be able to see the mad doctor or any of his sidekicks coming, thanks to the spirit light they gave off.

  Everything stayed dark and quiet as we groped our way out into the long hallway. Unsurprisingly, there was no sign of either Brandon’s body or Jake’s ‘friend’ Tony. It stretched away into the shadows in both directions, dark and foreboding.

  “Come on. This way.” Becky led me to the left, bearing west for about twenty feet until we reached a small alcove on our immediate left. Stepping into the dark recess, I found a battered wooden door that was covered in chipped and flaking paint.

  Easing the door open as quietly and as carefully as I could manage (and wincing every single time one of the hinges squeaked) revealed a set of wooden steps, leading down into the gloom of what had to be the cellar.

  There was a rough wooden handrail on the left. I used it to guide me as I made my way gingerly downward towards the bottom. Another creak from behind me told me that Becky was right on my tail.

  It suddenly got a lot darker, and I took a quick glance over my shoulder. Becky had closed the cellar door behind us, which was probably a good idea if all things were considered, but actually made me feel more vulnerable than I would have liked to admit.

  I felt trapped down here. There was nothing for it but to keep descending into the darkness. My breathing was ridiculously loud in my ears now, competing with the pounding of my heartbeat for the prize of most deafening bodily function.