Agonal Breath (The Deadseer Chronicles Book 1) (15 page)

I took another sip of the Monster. It was almost gone. “Then they just need to call out for the light. It will come back for them in an instant, and they can move on like they’re supposed to.”

Becky pondered this in thoughtful silence for a moment, while I finished off the energy drink and carefully set the empty can down next to me on the stage. It was getting so dark now that I could barely even see Becky’s outline, despite the fact that she was sitting right there next to me. Finally, she said, “You said that there are other reasons for staying behind — not just attachment?”

I nodded, which I realized was kind of dumb when I came to think about it. It wasn’t like she could see it in the dark.

“Well, yes and no. Attachment is usually a big part of it…but some attachments are healthier than others. Sticking around because you want to watch over your loved ones is completely understandable. I think that’s why Brandon’s grandmother is still around. But think about those people who are addicted to things, like drugs, alcohol…even just material possessions, like owning a great big house and an expensive car.”

“Huh?”

“The desire for all of that stuff doesn’t just go away when you die, Becky…not if you’ve grown addicted to it. That’s why Deadseers tend to avoid bars and places where lots of alcohol is served — they’re usually crawling with those spirits of the dead who still crave a drink. They’re sitting next to the living, who usually don’t have even the faintest idea that they’re there; well, maybe they get the occasional cold draft or shiver, if the spirit’s energy is really high. But they spirits can’t drink, can’t even touch a drop of it, no matter how much they want to. So they end up doing the next best thing, at least in their minds.”

“Which is…?”

“Once they’ve hung around salivating for so long that they can’t take it any more, some of them will try and possess one of the living.”

“
Shut up!
”

“No, seriously. I mean, think about it. If you were desperate for something, so desperate that you could practically
taste
it, wouldn’t you go to almost
any
length to get what you wanted?”

“I guess,” she said doubtfully.

“That’s pretty much what addiction
is,
” I pointed out. “Some people think that when they die, they’re going to change their personally overnight, but it doesn’t work like that. We don’t become all-knowing, all-powerful, like some superhero version of Mother Teresa…”

“Though that
would
be pretty cool,” Becky laughed, causing me to join in as well. Her laugh was infectious, and I could listen to it all night long.

“Bad people die and stay bad people. Good people die and stay good people. All of them have the chance to move on, but those that don’t become earthbound. That’s where a lot of the scary haunted house stories
really
come from — nasty, vindictive people who are pretty much the same way in death as they were in life, angry and spiteful.”

“And invisible,”Becky added, “and with paranormal powers.”

“Right, those too,” I agreed.

“Then what was the deal with Chris?”

“He sincerely believed that if he stepped through into that light, he was going to hell. The truth is
way
more complicated than that, but the short version is that there are lower spiritual planes for those less-evolved spirits, and high planes (which are a lot nicer) for those who have developed good qualities like kindness and compassion. Chris seemed like a pretty okay guy to me…yes, he’d made a mistake, and it had cost him his physical life, but he wasn’t going to spend the rest of forever
paying
for that mistake. When he chose to call the light back and go into it, he’d have been met with spirit helpers who would have helped take care of him. Chris even had a spirit guide of his own — we
all
do — that had tried to help, but Chris had been so distraught that he had sent him away every time he tried to get close.”

“So you told him to call back the light and go into it?”

“I
tried,
but it wasn’t that simple. It rarely is.” I sighed. “He didn’t want to hear about the light, or moving on, or anything like that…just wouldn’t listen to it, at least not at first. So I ended up agreeing to what he
really
wanted, which was to contact his folks and tell them that he was doing okay — well,
kind of
okay, I suppose — and that he was really, really sorry for what he’d done.”

“And did you? Contact them, I mean.”

“I called them. He gave me the number. Chris’s mom answered the phone.”

“
And…?”

“And…how do you think any middle-aged adult is going to react when a teenage boy they don’t know calls them out of the blue and tells them that not only is their dead son actually still alive and sometimes follows them around the house, but that he’s also really,
really
sorry about accidentally taking a fatal drug overdose and causing them so much pain and grief?”

“Oh.” She sounded deflated. Which is pretty much how I had felt at the time. “They didn’t take it well, then?”

“That’s putting it mildly. I got such a chewing-out, I can still hear it now — and who can blame them, really? From their point of view, it must have seemed like some thirteen year-old kid had heard about their son and decided to make a crank call. I’m just lucky they didn’t call the cops on me, which they actually
threatened
to do,” I finished bitterly.

“Ouch,” Becky winced sympathetically. “I guess I can see it from their side.”

“Me too. It sounds pretty nutty, and pretty much the last thing you want to hear when you’ve just lost a loved one…it must have felt like I was dancing on the poor guy’s grave to them.”

“So, did they ever call the cops on you?”

“Luckily for me, they were willing to write it off as a childish prank…done in pretty horrifically bad taste, but still a prank. Chris wouldn’t let it go, though. He hung around me all hours of the day and night. I couldn’t get any sleep because he’d be right there, at my bedside — which was pretty weird all by itself — begging and pleading, trying to get me to change my mind and actually go over there to talk to his parents.”

“Sounds pretty ugly.”

“Yeah. In the end, I had to cast the poor guy out.” I didn’t like telling her this part, because it didn’t make me look like a particularly nice guy, but I was committed to telling the story now.

“Cast him out?” Becky sounded puzzled.

“It’s something that people like me…Deadseers…can sometimes do if a spirit is really bothering them,” I tried to explain.

“Like a spell or something?”

“Kind of, I guess. It’s a little difficult to put into words, but if we concentrate our energies up in a certain way, we can sometimes push a spirit out of a place that it’s been haunting…sort of like…”

“An Expelliarmus spell?” Becky laughed. I didn’t mind it at all. She was laughing
with
me, not
at
me, and I couldn’t help joining in.

“Yeah, if we were at Hogwarts, that would be a great way to put it,” I grinned. She was probably smiling too, and I wished that I could see it, but our entire surroundings were now just a big mess of grays and blacks.

“Hey — listen. Do you hear that?” she suddenly exclaimed.

It was the sound of running feet, accompanied by an echo that was coming steadily closer. A burly silhouette filled the doorway for a moment, pausing for breath. It was holding a flashlight in its right hand.

“Brandon?” I called out, hesitantly.
Of course
it was him. It looked just like him.

“Yeah!” he huffed.

“Over here, man!”

The flashlight beam swung in our direction. Instinctively, I threw up a hand to shield my eyes. We had been building up a little night vision while we waited in the dark for him to come back, and I didn’t want to have that ruined now. It meant I’d have to start acclimatizing my eyes all over again.

“Guys, you’re never gonna be believe this.” Brandon jogged on over to join us, nearly tripping over a chair that was sticking out from one of the tables. By the sound of it, he’d come back from parking the Blazer at a flat-out run; for a guy in as great shape as Brandon was to be out of breath, meant that he must have really poured it on.

“Try us,” Becky invited him. The beam of of light swung around to light up her face, causing her to screw up her eyes and let out a curse.

“Oh, sorry Becky. Guys, listen up. I saw something. Out there. When I was parking the car…”

“Saw what?” I asked.

“I’m not sure exactly.” His voice was half-excited and half-nervous, from the sound of it. “But I’ll tell you what: we sure ain’t alone in here…”

CHAPTER NINE

“What do you mean
‘we’re not alone in here?
’” Becky demanded. “Tell us what you saw, Brandon?”

“It was a figure,” Brandon began excitedly, waving his hands around to illustrate his point. Unfortunately he’d forgotten about the flashlight, which had the effect of halfway-blinding Becky and myself when it swept drunkenly through the darkness in front of us both. “Like, a
person
, I mean. I saw it through the windows when I was outside, parking the Blazer.”

“
It
?” I didn’t like the sound of that. “Was it a ‘he it’ or a ‘she it’?”

“Sheee-it!” Brandon laughed. “Hey, man, there’s no need to swear!”

Becky and I both groaned, but at least it lightened the mood a little. The atmosphere was starting to feel a little more oppressive. I’d felt this happen a few times before, and it usually meant that something less-than-pleasant was right around the corner.

“Anyway, I couldn’t tell for sure whether it was a man or a woman, but it was definitely shaped like a person — but a really
short
one.”

“Short…like a dwarf?” Becky asked. “Is dwarf the right word anyway?”

“I think they prefer ‘little people,’” I replied, not entirely sure myself. I pushed thoughts of Hobbits and magic rings aside and got back to the matter at hand. “Do you think it was a really short adult, or a young kid?”

Brandon paused to consider it.

“Could have been either,” he said at last. “I’d just finished parking the Blazer out back. I locked it up, turned around to come back inside, and there it was — just inside the window on the ground floor, looking right at me.”

“How could it have been looking right at you, and you can’t tell whether it was a male or a female?” Becky asked skeptically.

“It was really dark in there, I couldn’t make out much in the way of details…well, except for a white dress, or gown or something. Come to think of it, it’s getting pretty dark outside too…”

White dress or gown.
My mind instantly flashed back to a few hours ago, when we’d first arrived at Long Brook. Getting out of the car, looking up at the huge abandoned building — and seeing a flash of white, all the way up there on top of the roof.

It could have been a sheet or piece of trash,
was my first thought; but then I quickly realized that that wasn’t very likely. We had been up on the roof, and could see all the way across from one end to the other. There had been nothing white up there at all, nothing but a rusted old swing set and a few chairs and tables.

“
Show us
,” Becky and I said together.

The sun was now so low in the sky that you could reasonably have called the time of day ‘twilight,’ and it was almost dark enough that any vampires we ran into probably wouldn’t sparkle.

Don’t ask me how I know about that.

Brandon retraced his steps to the front door, which he had wedged open just a tiny crack with a small rock, and out onto the lawn.

Looking up, I saw that the first stars were starting to make an appearance, far above the sanatorium’s flat roof. Between them and me, a gargoyle leered down from a corner eave. Despite the arrival of evening, the air was still warm and mostly still, with just the occasional very light breeze — so why did I feel another sudden shiver run through me?

Becky and I followed Brandon along the entire front face of the two eastern wings, and then turned northward and followed the tire tracks made by his Blazer in the soft mud, circling around to the rear of the building. We kept to what passed for a dirt road, some instinct warning us to steer clear of the dark unknown that waited for us in the trees.

The Blazer had been parked close to the building, and Brandon had made sure to lock all the doors. “I was standing right here,” he told us, the words gushing out in a great torrent of excitement, “and I was just about to head back to meet you guys, when right
there
” he jabbed a finger repeatedly towards two of the empty window-frames “I saw it…whatever
it
was,” he added as an afterthought.