Agonal Breath (The Deadseer Chronicles Book 1) (16 page)

Becky directed her flashlight towards the windows, playing the beam off the bare brick walls inside. “Well, there’s nothing there now,” she said doubtfully.

“Want to take a look?” Brandon asked us both.

“Sure thing,” I answered, hopefully sounding more enthusiastic than I really felt.

Nobody moved, and I realized that they were both looking at me as though they expected me to lead the way. Firing up my own flashlight, I picked my way carefully through the overgrown wild grass, taking a moment to examine the window frame for splinters. Although the paint was chipped and faded, the wood itself was in surprisingly good condition, all things considered.

The sill was only three feet from the ground. I hopped up easily, ducking my head underneath the frame and planting my butt on the sill, then pivoted around and swung my legs inside, landing on the corridor that stretched away further than I could see.

The scuffle of shoes on a hard surface behind me told me Becky and Brandon had both followed me in. Both were little more than outlines to my eyes, barely discernible human shapes that were visible only because they were slightly less dark than the background against which they stood. They were sensibly keeping their flashlights pointed towards their feet, which I very much appreciated. My night vision was starting to come back again, and I really didn’t want that to get spoiled a second time.

“Let’s get this party started,” Brandon said, a little nervously, or so I thought.

“Yeah.” Holding the flashlight at arm’s length in front of me like some kind of protective talisman, I began to walk. It was slow going at first, but as my eyes acclimatized, I began to pick up the pace a little, until finally I got a more confident stride going. It looked as though there were no patient rooms down here on the ground floor; this must have been where all of the day-to-day business of the sanatorium got taken care of, because we found doorways that led to huge laundry rooms, offices, and a massive kitchen with long metal tables that I assumed had once been used to prepare food, but were now falling apart and covered in rust.

“This place is
amazing,
” Becky whispered. We were working our way steadily along the same long hallway, keeping on eye on the exterior windows to our right side and peeking into every doorway we passed on our left. She and Brandon were taking it in turns to snap a picture of every room with their phones, and I made certain to keep my back to them while they did it so that the flash wouldn’t blind me again.

At last, we came to a stairwell, and I let them both go first so that they could snag their photos.

Flash.

“Waaaagh!” That was Brandon, screaming at the top of his lungs;
that
managed to
set Becky off, who yelled in an automatic reaction. I spun around from where I had been covering our backs by keeping an eye on the corridor behind us. My heart was suddenly racing again, and my eyes were looking everywhere for signs of danger.

“Dude,
what?
” I demanded, sticking my head through the doorway. All I could see was a dirty staircase leading upwards, and the words
I died here
spray-painted on the wall in dripping red letters, like something out of a low-budget horror movie.

“It was a girl,” Brandon replied breathlessly, shining his flashlight up towards the top of the stairs. There was a broken-out window in the wall just above the landing, where the staircase doubled back on itself and climbed directly over our heads. “A little girl. I saw her.
She was right there.
”

“I saw her too,” Becky insisted, squinting into the darkness above. She was standing on the fourth and fifth steps, seemingly reluctant to climb any further.

“You’re both sure?”

“Totally,” she insisted, and Brandon nodded in vigorous agreement. “She was standing just up there, where the stairs disappear up towards the second floor. I saw her leaning over the handrail. She was looking right at us.”

“Right,” Brandon agreed. “She was only there for a second, and then she ran, but I know what I saw. She had long, dark hair, hanging down over her shoulders.”

“What was she wearing?” I demanded.

“A dress,” Becky put in, “or maybe a hospital gown. At least, that’s what it
looked
like. I couldn’t see much more than her head and shoulders, but it looked like she was wearing some kind of white dress…”

“I still can’t believe we’re doing this,” Brandon muttered under his breath.

The three of us were carefully climbing the rickety wooden staircase, which creaked and popped each time somebody’s foot landed on a step.

“Try to keep to the sides, either by the wall or the handrail,” Becky suggested over her shoulder, obviously trying to be helpful. She was leading the way, running her flashlight over each landing as we passed it. We had just passed the fourth floor, and were starting up towards the fifth. Although the staircase was completely enclosed, each landing had a doorway which opened out onto the rear side of the sanatorium.

“Why?” I asked, curious.

“Because it makes less noise,” she explained. “I saw it in a movie once. Steps get weakest in the middle because that’s where most people put their feet, so they wear out and make more noise there. It should be quieter if we hug the walls.”

“Yeah, but who’s going to care?” Brandon pointed out, from his position at the rear of our group. “It’s not like we’re going to get any noise complaints all the way out here, is it?”

“We might,” I muttered darkly, unable to help myself. “Take it from me, we really do
not
want to wake the dead if we can help it.” That shut him up, and fast. As soon as I’d said it, I regretted it. It really wasn’t a good idea to crank up the tension any higher than it already was.

We kept on climbing. Becky was right — keeping to the outer staircase definitely made less noise, though there was still a little groaning from the old and weathered wooden boards. She suddenly stopped on the fifth-floor landing, holding up a hand in warning to us both.

“What is it?” I hissed, trying to peer over her shoulder.

“She’s right there,” Becky whispered back. “I don’t want to spook her…”

“Great choice of words, Becky.”

“Sorry, but you
know
what I meant.”

Idiot,
I told myself.
Why the heck are you needling her? That’s not exactly going to win her over, is it?
Knock it OFF.

“
She’s a ghost…” Becky whispered, entranced.

“I know.”

“Yeah, but…she’s a
ghost!”

“I
know.
That’s why we’re here, right?
”

Becky fell silent. From the look on her face, I guessed that she was trying to adjust to the fact that her entire world had just changed, and changed
forever.
No matter how strongly you believed in the paranormal or the supernatural or whatever you want to call it, it’s a heck of a lot different when you finally come face to face with it.

Cautiously, I stepped around to stand on the right-hand side of the doorway. Becky still hovered on the top step, peeping around the left side. I motioned for Brandon to move up and stand in between us both, so all three of us could take a better look.

“That is
sick,
” was the best he could manage.

The fifth-floor exterior balcony stretched away into the distance, the entrances to its patient rooms almost completely buried in long shadows. Standing there in the center of the balcony perhaps thirty feet away was a young girl with long dark hair, maybe eight or nine years of age. She seemed remarkably calm, all things considered. Becky had been right — she
was
wearing a full-length white hospital gown (though I could see how it might easily be mistaken for a dress at first glance) and no shoes or slippers.

The girl gave no indication that the concrete floor was cold beneath her bare feet, though; she simply stood there, staring back at us in a serene, tranquil way that was borderline unnerving, and glowed with an ethereal blue light. I could see the balcony
through
her body, which looked a bit like a pencil-sketch drawing done with a very light hand.

Finally, just to break the silence, I said, “Hello.”

“Hello,” the girl replied. After another moment she said, “My name’s Polly. What’s yours?”

“Danny. This is Becky, and this is Brandon.” They each said ‘hello’
in turn. “We don’t mean to frighten you, Polly, or to harm you in any way. How old are you?”

“I’m eight.”

“Oh, that’s cool,” I smiled. “I’m fourteen, but I’ll be fifteen soon. Can we be friends?”

“I guess.” She sounded a little doubtful. “I don’t have many friends. Just one.”

“One good friend is better than ten acquaintances, my mom always says,” Becky told her.

“What’s an ack…ack…ack-waint-ance?” Polly sounded the word out phonetically, mangling it horribly in the process.

“It’s sort of
like a friend,
but one that you don’t really know very well.”

“Like a friend before they become a friend?” Polly asked in puzzlement.

“That’s a very good way of putting it,” replied Becky, taking a few tentative steps out onto the balcony. She seemed encouraged when Polly didn’t back away, allowing her to slowly close the distance between them. I stayed where I was for now, not wanting to frighten the girl, and Brandon appeared to have the same idea. Let the two girls have a moment, and maybe start to form a bond. “So tell me about your friend?”

“He lives downstairs,” Polly was dismissive, taking on an air of ‘
it’s no big deal.’ “
He’s big —
really
big — but he’s very nice,” she assured Becky. “Sometimes we play games together, like hide-and-go-seek.”

“That’s nice,” Becky replied, trying to sound encouraging. “Does your big friend have a name?”

“Uh-huh.” Polly nodded.

“Is it a secret?”

“Nuh-uh.” She shook her head in the negative. “I don’t think so, anyway.”

“That’s wonderful. Can you tell me what it is?”

“Sure. His name is ‘Mister Long Brook,’ he told me so…but that’s not what they call him. Only I call him that.”

“Who’s
they?
” Becky asked, sounding a little confused.

“The other people here. The sick ones.” Then, almost as an afterthought, she added, “But not the mean people. They call him ‘
Lurker.’
”

Brandon and I looked at one another. Even in the darkness, I could see him mouthing the same words that I was.
The mean people?

Evidently Becky had latched onto those words too. Obviously a little more worried now, she asked, “Polly, who are the mean people?”

“They’re supposed to be kind and take care of us,” Polly explained, her tone extremely serious and earnest. “But they’re
not.
They’re spiteful and mean, and I don’t like them.”

“They’re supposed to take care of you?” Becky echoed. “Do you mean the doctors and nurses?”

Polly nodded, her eyes suddenly downcast. “Yes. They come to people when they’re sleeping, come to their rooms and take them away from their beds.”

Uh-oh. This wasn’t sounding good.

“Take them where?”

“I don’t know. They tried to take
me
once, but Mister Long Brook stopped them.”

“That was nice of him,” Becky said encouragingly.

“He really didn’t mean to hurt them,” Polly explained. The little girl suddenly started to tear up, overcome by sadness as she replayed some traumatic incident in her mind. “But they tried to carry me away, and everybody knows that it hurts a
lot
when they carry you away. I don’t know what they do when they take people, but it must be something
really
bad.”

I really wasn’t liking the direction in which this conversation was heading.

“Polly?” I said gently, slowly approaching the two girls. She wasn’t at all afraid, and allowed me to walk right up to her. I squatted down on my haunches, not wanting to intimidate her by towering over her…although come to think of it, I’ve never been capable of intimidating
anybody,
even if I’d wanted to. “Polly, do you know where it is that they take those people?”

She nodded solemnly, but did not volunteer any more information than that. Finally, I asked her if she would be willing to show us where the doctors and nurses took people. I had a suspicion that I already
knew
where, and it was quickly confirmed when Polly simply pointed upward…towards the sixth floor.

This time when the shiver came, I knew precisely why. The sixth floor was the top floor of the building, directly underneath the roof. It was where the demented nurse had dragged me in my nightmare last night, where the operating theater in which the surgeon and his ghastly team of assistants had tortured me had been located.