Agonal Breath (The Deadseer Chronicles Book 1) (34 page)

“Does the same go for the medical staff?”

Lamiyah nodded. “It does. You must understand that ultimately, there is no escaping judgment — for
any
of us. But it is not a ‘fire and brimstone’ situation, as some would have you believe; the spirits who serve as part of the judicial process act as assistants, helping the miscreant to discern the true nature of his or her own crimes. In the end, we all judge ourselves, with a little help from other compassionate souls, and none are banished for all eternity. Although they may be sent to lower planes of existence for a time, it is entirely possible for them to outgrow such places of imprisonment by developing one’s spirit and nurturing a good heart.”

We all fell silent for a moment, partly because some of us were considering the ramifications of what Lamiyah had just told us, but also because we were just plain exhausted.

It had been one hell of a night, and I for one was glad just to have survived it.

Above all else, I was glad beyond words to have my Dad back.

I suppose it was inevitable that I wouldn’t get to keep him.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Through the swirling clouds of angry black smoke and the pillars of flame that fueled them, we could see that a host of golden lights was appearing in each of the windows of the abandoned sanatorium.

“The light is coming for them,” Lamiyah said matter-of-factly. “It is coming for them all.”

And one by one, the spirit-residents of Long Brook sanatorium made their choice.

Our motley little crew watched in awed silence as the earthbound souls took one last glance back at us and the material plane that they were leaving behind, and then walked slowly into the welcoming spirit portals that had come for them at last.

Some walked slowly, their hesitation obvious even from this far away; others seemed to welcome this next phase of existence with open arms, marching eagerly towards the golden conduits as they formed in the air of their rooms and on the balconies outside.

I don’t know exactly how much time passed — I was captivated by the drama unfolding right in front of my eyes — but after a while there were no more human figures visible in any of the windows, just the waste products of combustion that were gutting the old building from the inside out.

In the end, not a single one of them had chosen to remain earthbound.

Towards the very end, just before the crumbling old sanatorium finally collapsed in on itself, I could have sworn that I saw the dark silhouette of a huge hulk of a man holding the hand of a little girl. They were both waving at us, the little girl excitedly, and the larger figure a little more awkwardly.

Then they turned and walked off into a portal together. It flashed and winked out of existence, leaving behind only the fire.

“Goodbye, Polly,” I mouthed silently. “Goodbye, Mister Long Brook.”

Above the crackle and roar of the flames, a new noise could be heard — the sound of sirens, probably the cops and firefighters heading up from Nederland. A column of smoke and flame this big would be impossible to miss, even at this early hour of the morning.

“Son, I have to go,” my Dad said gently.

“I know.”

“It’s going to be okay.”

“I know.”

And I
did
know. For once, I wasn’t reacting like a sulky teenager who wasn’t getting his own way. Dad had to go back and finish his course of healing, and then…well, who knew what the afterlife had in store for him— and me?

We hugged again. It went on for so much longer than any hug we’d ever had when he was alive.

Finally, I was the one who let him go. His Marines had formed a circle a discreet distance away from us, not so close as to be intrusive, but near enough that their hint was being taken clearly.

Time to go.

I watched as one of them, a big corporal whose name-tag read SCHULTHEIS, bent over Tony and said something in a low voice. Whatever was said made the criminal turn pale again; he responded with a stiff, jerky nod that evidently satisfied the Marine, because he came back to hang out with the rest of his buddies, assault rifle slung casually from his right shoulder.

“We’ll be together again, Danny — I promise. I’ll come back to visit, probably when you least expect it.” Dad straightened up, and we both grinned at each other.

“I can’t wait, Dad.”

He reached out and ruffled my hair. It was the most wonderful coldness I had ever felt.

A portal began to form in the air behind them, starting out as a sphere roughly the size of a dime and spiraling quickly to become six or seven feet in diameter. One by one each Marine threw us a respectfully nod, then turned to walk into the light.

Corporal Schultheis threw Tony a look that was full of meaning, and I saw the meth dealer shudder. Then he was gone too, and it was Dad’s turn.

“Dad, wait,” I said, stalling for time. I didn’t want him to go, not yet. Not so soon.

He paused, turning back to look at me. I could tell that it was taking everything he had to walk away from me again, that it must be tearing him apart to leave his son behind for a second time, and that made me burn with shame at my selfishness.

“Yes, son?”

I said the first thing that popped into my brain.

“What the hell am I going to tell Mom?”

Dad paused to think about it for a moment. Finally he said, “You’ll figure it out, Danny. You’re smart and you always do.”

I flushed with pride at the compliment.

Then he had to go and spoil it by adding, “And watch your language, son. Swearing is a sign of a limited vocabulary and a shackled mind. Okay?

And with that, he turned and walked straight out of the world of the living for the second time of his life.

“Brandon, you can tell me to shut up and mind my own business if you want,” Becky said, rolling over on the grass to face him. “But I’m pretty sure that right around the time those Marines came to bail us out, I saw an older lady talking to you up there on the roof. Was that your grandmother?”

“Yeah.“ He smiled wistfully.

“Can I ask you what she said? I mean, if it’s too personal—”

“No, it’s okay. She told me that she was proud of me, and that she loved me, and that everything was going to be okay.” Then he shot a look over in my direction. “And she told me to be nice to Danny, and not pick on his skinny butt any more.”

The three of us laughed. It broke the tension a little, which is something I’m pretty sure we were all in dire need of just about then. The light of the fires was casting dancing shadows across the weeds and wild grass. Those flames showed no sign at all of dying down; in fact, they seemed bent on consuming the entire sanatorium and everything within it.

Maybe that was for the best, I reflected; purge the place, and all of the misery that it had seen over the course of the decades. Wipe it from the history books and be done with it.

I looked across at Tony, who was laying twenty feet away with his injured leg stretched out in front of him. Getting shakily to my feet, I made my way over there to stand next to him. I guessed he would be a whole lot nicer to be around when he wasn’t pointing a shotgun at my face.

“’Sup.”

“’Sup,” he replied. Tony gestured for me to sit down. I pulled up a piece of ground next to him.

“Hell of a night, huh?” was the best I could think of as an ice-breaker.

“Hell of a night,” he agreed.

A couple of minutes passed in awkward silence. The sirens kept getting louder. They’d be here pretty soon, and Tony must have known that he was going to jail. I wondered if that was what occupied his mind the most right now. The fact that he had just witnessed positive proof of life after death had to be pretty solid competition for that spot.

Finally he said, “I’m going to tell the cops everything when they get here, man.”

“Oh, uh…that’s awesome, man. Way to go.”

“Well, not
everything.
It ain’t like they’re gonna believe the ghosts and goblins stuff, right?”

We both laughed, drawing a bemused look from Becky and Brandon.

“Listen kid, you just tell them that you and your two friends were up here doing whatever, okay? I’ll tell them all about the meth lab and that I accidentally started the fire when I dropped some stuff. Leave you out of that part.”

“Okay. Thanks, man.”

“Call me Tony.”

“Thanks, Tony.”

He nodded, telling me that I was welcome.

“They’re gonna find Jake’s body in there, when all of this is over. I’m going to jail, but when I get out, I’m gonna do right by his family. And when I’ve done my time, I’m gonna get out of the drug business and find something decent to do with my life.”

“Sounds like a plan to me.” I paused, unsure of how to ask the question I really wanted to ask. Finally, I just decided
to hell with it.
“Tony, I have to ask…what did the Marine corporal say to you?”

Brown eyes flashed up at me, and Tony almost recoiled as if he had been stung.

“You saw that, huh?” I nodded. He blew out a long, slow breath. “Well,” he began, “he said that when he got back…over
there,
he was going to find Jake and sort of look out for him, you know? Take him under his wing.

“Then he said that if I tried to weasel out of my responsibility for causing all this mess, that I’d open my eyes in the dark one night, and me and him would be having words again.” Tony shivered.

I nodded, finally understanding. Leave it to a Marine to try and right a wrong.

Even a dead Marine.

The Nederland Fire Department had a good reputation in Boulder County, but they weren’t in the business of working miracles. Their fire engines ran out of water not long after arriving, dumping the few thousand gallons they brought with them on the burning sanatorium from a couple of hundred feet away.

“I’m not putting any of my people inside that old deathtrap unless you tell me that somebody might be trapped inside,” said the fire chief sternly, interviewing the four of us. We all shook our heads solemnly. “Alright then. This area’s too remote to be hydranted. Considering how we’ll have burned through all the water we brought with us in about…oh, a couple of minutes more, I’d say that
surround and drown
isn’t a viable tactic…so it looks like it’s going to be a case of babysitting our scene overnight and letting this thing put itself out.”

He seemed disappointed, as though not having enough water on hand to extinguish a building was a personal affront.

An ambulance crewed by an EMT and a paramedic turned up right behind the first fire truck, and those guys wasted no time in checking us all out. We all showed signs of minor airway and respiratory irritation, they said, and so we’d all earned ourselves a trip to Boulder Community Hospital so that a doctor could evaluate us more thoroughly. Tony would be going first, on account of the gunshot wound to his leg, and they’d send more ambulances for the rest of us as soon as possible.

Then it was the turn of the cops to ask us questions. Tony made the ride into Boulder handcuffed to the cot and accompanied by a deputy. We all stuck to a pretty similar story about having traveled up to the haunted old sanatorium to get our kicks ghost-hunting, and how surprised were we to discover that there were a couple of meth dealers cooking their drug up in the basement.

Which was true, at least as far as it went. When it came down to how Tony happened to wind up with a bullet in his leg, we were a little more circumspect, preferring to leave it to him to make up that part of the story for himself.

It took another hour for the ambulances to make the journey up from Boulder, so we passed the time talking in hushed tones, and also by watching the firefighters stand helplessly by while the sanatorium burned to the ground. There was a colossal crash as the roof finally fell in, pancaking down onto the sixth floor in a shower of sparks and a massive cloud of dust.

Of Spiessbach and Jennifer there was no sign at all. It looked as though they had both chosen to enter their portal, just as Lamiyah had predicted in the case of Becky’s grandmother.

“It is time for me to take my leave also, Daniel,” Lamiyah said, pressing her palms together and offering me a respectful bow. “I have done all that I can do to assist you here, and my work as a guide beckons me elsewhere.”

“Thanks for everything, Lamiyah,” I said, and meant every word of it. “Above all else, thanks for bringing my Dad back to me.”

“You are most welcome,” Lamiyah replied solemnly. “I am glad that not only are you and your friends unhurt, but also that we were able to get to the bottom of this particular mystery.”

With so many first responders around, Lamiyah was in her most ethereal of spirit bodies, invisible to everyone except me. Even Becky and Brandon couldn’t see her any longer, so she asked me to pass on her farewell to them when time permitted. I promised that I would, and then she was gone as well, leaving the three of us alone.