Agonal Breath (The Deadseer Chronicles Book 1) (19 page)

“Actually, referring to this entity as either a ‘he’ or a ‘she’ would be equally valid,” Lamiyah said. “Although Mister Long Brook — who loves the name that Polly has bestowed upon him, incidentally — appears in the physical form of an extremely strong male, he also possesses all of the ferocious maternal instincts of a female protecting her young whenever Polly is threatened — or even simply upset. He has already made short work of several dark entities in this place who have made that very mistake.”

“Dark entities?” Brandon interjected. “I’m not sure I like the sound of that.”

“Nor should you,” Lamiyah said equably. “As I said upon my arrival, you are all in the gravest of danger.” She winced, and suddenly staggered a few steps backwards, as if she were about to faint.

Lamiyah raised a hand to her temple, golden bangles jingling at her wrist, and for the briefest of instants I watched her body flicker out of existence like a candle flame, and then suddenly she was right back with us again, as solid as before.

“Lamiyah, are you okay?” I moved towards her, really starting to get worried now. I’d never seen her appear as weak as this before. Lamiyah was always completely calm and graceful, my rock when I was feeling vulnerable and emotionally unstable. It was hard seeing her get struck down like this, and to tell you the truth, it was freaking me out a little.

“I am sorry, Daniel. There is evil here —
great
evil. The entire place reeks of it. I am afraid that I will not be able to remain in this place for long, or else I, too, will be overcome.”

Her body phased out and back in again, and it took slightly longer for her to return this time.

“Great evil?” Becky’s eyes were out on stalks. “What kind of evil? Do we need to leave?”

“Yes, my dear.” For a girl of nine, Lamiyah had one heck of a commanding voice when she wanted to. The refined accent didn’t hurt either, like Peter Cushing ordering his Imperial minions around on the Death Star. “You must all leave this place immediately.”

“Uh…we
can’t
leave
.
” I explained all about the smashed-up engine on the SUV. In the background, Polly continued to swing, humming a wordless child’s tune as she worked her way higher and higher.

“Oh no,” Lamiyah moaned, screwing her eyes tightly shut. “We must hurry, because they are starting to awaken, and I have very little time left. Daniel, I shall be brief.” She opened her eyes and fixed me with her solemn gaze. “Get yourselves free of this place, even if you must do so on foot. I have just communicated with Mister Long Brook again, and he may protect you for a short time, to the best of his abilities — but you must remember that he is outnumbered, and despite his great strength, he may still be overpowered by those malevolent entities which inhabit this place. It would be unwise for you to rely on him to do any more than buy you time with which to make an escape.”

“Make our escape
how?
” Brandon wanted to know. “We’re in the middle of nowhere! You’re telling us to make a run for it in the dark?”

“I am telling you to do
precisely
that, Brandon Monroe.” I knew that tone well. It was the one Lamiyah used when she would accept no argument. “Because no matter what may await you in the darkness out there, it is as nothing compared to the horrors that you will find within these walls.”

“Well, that’s just freaking
great.
” There was a hysterical undertone to Brandon’s voice that I really didn’t like, even though I could understand it and even sympathize to a degree. This was starting to sound like the setup to an
Insidious
movie.

“Freaking out isn’t going to help.” Becky placed a supportive hand on his arm. I’d noticed that she did that a lot, and I felt dumb because I was a little jealous that he’d gotten the pat this time and not me. Grow up, dude.
Way
bigger fish to fry here. “We have our packs, right?” Brandon and I both nodded. “That’s pretty much all we need to get through the night, food and drink-wise at least. We’ll book it down the driveway, hit the Peak-to-Peak highway, and start making out way back towards Nederland. Hopefully it won’t be too long before we can flag down the first car heading that way, or maybe even get phone reception back.”

I wasn’t a huge fan of the idea, but I couldn’t see a better alternative. I’d seen the damage to the Blazer’s engine block, and even with my limited knowledge of auto repair (you could have written all I knew about cars on the surface of a postage stamp) I could tell that the SUV wasn’t starting any time soon, let alone driving anywhere.

“I fear that you have no other choice—”

Cut off in mid-sentence, Lamiyah was suddenly gone. The portal that had brought her collapsed down to a pinpoint and disappeared, like the
Deep Space Nine
wormhole slamming shut.

“Lamiyah!” I yelled, suddenly feeling as though my lifeline had been cut. When it came to matters of the spirit world, Lamiyah had always been my security blanket, a sort of mother figure who not only helped keep me safe, but also put everything in perspective…and now she was gone.

I had no idea that things were about to get much, much worse.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

“Polly, it’s been really nice playing with you and Mister Long Brook, but now it’s time for us to leave.”

Although Becky was smiling, I could tell that she was having a hard time with the idea of leaving Polly here if the sanatorium really was inhabited by some dark and nasty entities.

I didn’t feel great about the idea either, but I took a little comfort from knowing that Polly had the giant man-shaped tank to protect her. Besides, she and Mister Long Brook had both survived and maybe even thrived here for years, hadn’t they?

Still, I felt like I had to at least make one more attempt to make her see the light…quite literally. Or at the very least, get her out of this place. I could worry about helping her cross over once we were all safe again.

“Polly, if you wanted to come with us…that would be okay. You could stay with me and my mom.”

“That’s very kind of you, Danny,” Polly said with a seriousness and dignity that seemed far beyond her years, “but I can’t. Who would look after Mister Long Brook?” She squeezed the giant’s hand affectionately, and I swear that for just a second, I saw the big lug smile right back at her. “Anyway, I need to be here when Mommy comes back to get me.”

I really, really wanted to tell Polly that her mom
was
waiting for her, but that she needed to accept that she was dead first, and then cross over into the Summerland, but I just couldn’t get the words out. The last time somebody had suggested to Polly that she might not be among the living any more, she had gone ballistic and caused Mister Long Brook to practically force me off the roof. There was no way I was going to risk
that
happening again, but I could at least do the next best thing.

“If you change your mind, Polly, just call out to Lamiyah, okay?” Polly nodded happily. “Lamiyah will come and help you out, I promise.”

“Okay, Danny. It’s a deal.” She beamed at me, and my heart practically melted. I felt totally comfortable making the promise on Lamiyah’s behalf; I knew Lamiyah well enough to be sure that she would drop everything to help out another little girl in distress. “I’m sorry that you have to go. Would you like me and Mister Long Brook to go with you to the door?”

“I’d like that very much, Polly.”

Stepping carefully past the wreckage of the shattered wooden door, our group of five made its way slowly into the dark stairwell. Becky had wanted to go first again, but Brandon had overruled her (and surprisingly, she had
let
him) and took the lead himself. Becky went in the middle, I was in third place, and the Polly/Mister Long Brook pairing brought up the rear.

Everything was going great until we reached the third floor landing. Then all of our flashlights died at the same time.

I couldn’t help it: I yelled. Even Brandon let out a tiny cry of surprise. To her credit, Becky was the only one who stayed completely calm.

“Hey guys, cut it out!” She was talking to thin air, but didn’t seem even the slightest bit self-conscious.

The stairwell was now almost totally pitch black, brightened only by the small amount of light coming in through the windows on each landing.

While it’s true that I can’t read minds, or anything even close to it, I knew
exactly
what we were all thinking right now:
how did the batteries in three flashlights all crap out at the same time?
However I spun it, I came up with an answer that I didn’t like one little bit.

I pulled out my iPhone to check the charge on that, and found that it was down to 30% now. Tempting as it was to turn on its little built-in light, I knew that we might need it for something more urgent later on, and slipped it reluctantly back into the thigh pocket of my cargo pants. Draining electrical devices was a classic method for spirits to power their own physical manifestations. The hairs went up on the back of my neck at the thought of just who might be trying to do that to us.

“We’ll just take it really slow,” Becky encouraged us, sounding surprisingly chipper. That girl must have quite the acting chops, I thought, because she sounded a heck of a lot more confident than I was feeling.

We began to move again, keeping to Brandon’s pace as he picked his way cautiously from step to step, one hand on the outer wall and the other sliding along the handrail.

What felt like an eternity later (but really couldn’t have been more than five minutes of actual time) we had made it safely to the ground floor. I’d deliberately avoided peeking out onto each of the balconies as we made our way down from floor to floor, not wanting my worst fears to be confirmed by what I might see there. I could feel the energies inside the sanatorium starting to build, and not in a good way. This felt more like the negative energy that would be associated with darker spirits, completely different from the innocent, childlike vibe that I was getting from Polly.

Something was awakening within the walls of Long Brook Sanatorium, and whatever it was meant us nothing but harm. The power that I could sense growing slowly but surely in the background was something to be feared, not investigated. Our amateur ghost-hunting night was over, and it was time to change gears and switch over into escape mode.

Brandon led us out into the long, bare corridor that we had explored on our way up to the roof. We passed the kitchens on our right side, and damn me for a fool if I didn’t catch a glimpse of somebody moving around in there, a dark human-like shape that flitted quickly between two deep pools of shadow. We kept walking, but my mind wouldn’t stop turning the sighting over and examining it.

It had struck me as being really odd. I mean, I would have expected the earthbound spirits haunting Long Brook to be those who had died here, the patients who had coughed up lungs full up blood in the rooms upstairs. Why would one of the cooks have returned here after their death? It was hardly the sort of joyful paradise on Earth that would attract the employees to come back and hang out in.

None of us were expecting the gunshot.

It was deafeningly loud in the close confines of the corridor, the after-echoes running along its entire length. In the split-second flash from the muzzle, I caught sight of a man’s figure standing at the far end of the corridor ahead of us, pointing what looked like a handgun straight at our group.

Then the hallway was plunged back into darkness and silence again.

We were all too shocked to scream. There was a moment of silence and stillness; everything seemed frozen, just as it had on the roof when Mister Long Brook had made his spectacular entrance.

Suddenly, the dark form of the man began walking towards us, and a second man came out of the kitchen doorway behind me. I could see the cold shine of ambient light reflecting from a gun in his hand too.

“Don’t you take another
step,
” he growled, and that shattered the spell of immobility right there.

My eyes had gotten a little more used to the darkness since our flashlights had failed in the stairwell, so I was able to pick out Brandon tottering weakly for a couple of steps, reaching out an unsteady hand to support himself against the wall. I thought for a moment that he had perhaps been blinded by the flash, but then he slid limply down the wall and collapsed in a heap.

No, I realized, Brandon hadn’t been blinded at all.

Brandon had been shot.

I wanted to stick around and help my friend, I really, truly did. That’s what my mind wanted to do, what my
heart
wanted to do — check on Brandon, and get him away from the lunatic that had shot him.

But that’s not what I actually did.

What I
actually
did was what any sane person would have done under those same circumstances, or so I would tell myself later on when it would keep me awake at night.

I bolted.

Things got very confusing, and they got that way very quickly. My memory is still a little hazy now (gunfire in a pitch-black haunted building will play havoc with your sense of recall) but I remember turning around and slamming into a brick wall that I hadn’t even realized was there.