Agonal Breath (The Deadseer Chronicles Book 1) (8 page)

The next thing I heard was the coughing, coming through the wall on my right. This was not the light cough of somebody who’d picked up a dose of the seasonal lung-crud; this sounded more like the poor unfortunate cougher was trying to hack up a lung. The cough had a harsh, rasping quality to it that set my teeth on edge. It echoed from the balcony walls outside. Whoever it was, they surely weren’t long for the world if this was what their lungs sounded like.

As if on cue, there came another cough, but this time much fainter and further away along the balcony. It sounded a lot like the first one had, though, cruel and grating on my nerves, that sort of nails-on-a-chalkboard sound that made you want to wince in sympathy for the owner.

I sat up slowly. My legs were covered by crisp white bedsheets, which actually felt as though they might have been starched. The mattress seemed like it was old and lumpy, much worse than the one on my own bed. I could see what looked like an iron bedframe at the foot of the mattress, and confirmed it when my toes brushed up against it as I shifted position.

Where the hell was I?

Well, I wasn’t going to find that out by laying in bed. Swinging my legs around, I got a bit of a jolt when my bare feet came into contact with the cold, hard floor. Hobbling slightly as I found my footing, I wandered outside onto the balcony, which stretched off into the distance to the left and right of me. At regular intervals, there were rooms that looked like they were exact duplicates of mine. The balcony had a waist-high parapet made of brick. Beyond that, I could see a landscape composed of trees and rolling hills for as far as my eye could see. A tiny sliver of moon was riding high in the sky, casting a small amount of light down onto a lawn formed mostly of weeds and overgrown, out-of-control wild grass.

The night was warm, and I could see that the stars were out, the speckled band of the Milky Way arching high above the treetops. Now
that
was a Colorado mountain sky, I’d know it anywhere. From somewhere up above me there came another barking cough, and then several more in various different directions. Taking a firm grip on the brick parapet with both hands, I leaned out and craned my neck to look upwards. There were five or six floors reaching up into the night, and from the look of them, all of their rooms were similar (if not identical) to the one I’d just woken up in. Reversing my position and looking downward, I could see one ground floor beneath me, but the construction was different to the others – it contained several sets of double doors, for starters, lots of glazed windows, and what looked like a main entrance, complete with a porch and two support pillars.

For a moment, I wondered just exactly what this place was. I mean, it was obvious that it was a healthcare facility of some kind, but it was like nothing I was used to seeing around here. I’d been to Boulder Community Hospital to get my tonsils taken out when I was a lot younger, but that had been all plexiglass and steel, with a warm and friendly interior that made you feel just a little bit comfortable and secure. Not
this
place, though. I hadn’t been here that long, but this place felt cold and impersonal to me, the brick and stone and concrete generating a forbidding vibe that I really didn’t like.

Before you come down too hard on me and thinking I’m a total idiot, please remember that I was
dreaming,
OK? Your sense of logic doesn’t work properly in the dream state. Things that would seem perfectly obvious in the light of day can appear very much less so when you’re asleep. I walked slowly along the length of the balcony, looking curiously into each dark opening that I passed. Inside the shadowy recesses of each one was the very same thing, a twin-sized bed with a wrought-iron bedstead. My night vision was getting better, and I could just about make out the lumps and bumps under the pristine white sheets, some of them moving as the body beneath shifted position.

Coughing accompanied me along the entire journey. I passed maybe nine or ten rooms before I finally came to a door which opened onto a central stairwell. A glass-fronted cabinet was mounted at waist-height on the wall, and in it was a neatly-coiled length of white fire hose. And suddenly it hit me; because right there, stenciled in red lettering on the glass door, was the name of the institution.

I was at Long Brook Sanatorium.

At the end of the hall was a small restroom, little more than a couple of stalls, a sink, and a urinal. I pushed my way inside, wary of running into any other nocturnal visitor wanting to use the restroom, and was relieved to find it deserted. On one wall, adjacent to the small window, was a half-length mirror. I stood in front of it. What I saw made my eyes grow wide in surprise.

After the initial shock wore off, I studied my reflection in the shadowy depths of the glass.

Looking back at me was the face of a much younger boy, maybe ten or eleven years old. He – I – was wearing flannel pajamas. Plastered with sweat across my forehead, I saw that my hair was dark brown, mussed and tousled because I’d just woken up from sleep, and my frame was a lot skinnier than I was accustomed to.

Most worrying of all was the color of my skin, though. It was a pale, sallow complexion that greeted me in the mirror, the skin clammy with a cold and sickly-looking sweat. Dark bags hung under my eyes. This was not the face of a well kid, not by a long shot.

No sooner had I thought that than I felt a tickling sensation in my chest, just behind the breastbone. The tickling flared up into a full-blown tornado demanding to be released; there was no point even
trying
to stop it. Without even thinking about it, I brought a hand up to my mouth in time to catch the cough. When it finally came out after a couple of false starts, it was a monster, almost deafening in the cramped confines of the small bathroom. Just when it seemed like the cough was over, it would come back again, forcing all of my muscles to work just to get it out of me. My throat felt red raw, my lungs swollen and inflamed. Once it had finally subsided, I took my hand away from my mouth.

Three small droplets of blood had splattered on the mirror. More stained the palm of my hand. I looked down, then at my reflection in the mirror. A trail of pink, frothy drool was hanging from my lower lip. My gums were dark in patches, coated with blood.

I suddenly felt dizzy, the light-headedness coming on out of nowhere. I staggered backwards out of the restroom, back into the stairwell once more. I needed to get back, needed to get
home.
I didn’t belong here, along with all the sick and dying people. Opening the door, I retraced my footsteps shakily back onto the balcony.

The nurse came out of nowhere.

One minute, the balcony was completely empty, nothing but shadows running along its entire length as far as the eye could see; then suddenly there she was, standing directly in front of me. I practically jumped out of my skin.

I hurriedly looked her up and down. She was tall and stocky, dressed completely in a white uniform. White shoes, white-stockinged legs covered by the hem of a white dress which buttoned up tightly over a few extra pounds. What I could see of her hair appeared to be dark, pulled back severely into a bun at the back of her head, and was topped off with one of those old-fashioned hats that you saw nurses wear in those black-and-white movies that were shot in the Forties or Fifties.

What really set my nerves on edge was the white breath mask that concealed every part of her face except the eyes. The eyes were creeping me out, to be honest. Something about the way they glinted in the low light and seemed to be constantly in motion gave me the jitters.

Then she grabbed me.

Her fingers were icy cold, so cold that her touch upon my upper arm almost took my breath away, even through the cloth of my pajama sleeve.

“Come along with me, boy. Time for you to see the doctor.”

If her sudden appearance and creepy countenance hadn’t scared the crap out of me, that voice would certainly have done the trick. There was no warmth or compassion in there at all, not the slightest hint of it; the tone was even colder than the touch of her fingertips was, as they dug into the fleshy part of my bicep.

“Get the hell off of me!” I tried jerking my arm away, but her grip was too strong. There came a stinging slap to the side of my head that almost made me see stars.

“Show some respect,
boy,
” she hissed, leaning in close until her eyes were just inches away from mine. All I could focus on was that pair of coal-black orbs, and noticed now that the nurse was up close and personal that there were no whites surrounding her pupils — her eyes were totally and utterly black. She also never seemed to blink, just continued to stare at me coldly with that fixed, lizard-like glare.

She tugged at my arm, and I had no choice but to follow her into the stairwell. I couldn’t even begin to match her strength. Tightening her grip, the nurse frog-marched me up the stairs. I had to break into a jog to keep up with her angry stride, and still managed to stub my toes on a few of them before we reached the top floor, the sixth.

I was wheezing and out of breath by the time we reached the top of the staircase. Turning left, the nurse pushed her way through two sets of double-doors and dragged me into what looked a lot like an operating theater.

The room was covered from floor to ceiling in tiles. In the middle was a big operating table-slash-chair, padded and covered in leather. To one side of it was a metal tray on a stand, which was covered in tools or implements of some kind. It was hard to make out exactly what they were in what little dim half-light was coming in through the three small windows, but it seemed like a safe assumption that they were a mix of scalpels, saws, and other sharp and pointy implements used for putting new holes in people. That’s when I
really
began to struggle, fighting her for all I was worth, but even on a good day, she would have had over sixty or seventy pounds on me, and I guess a surprising amount of it must have been muscle, because before I knew it she had hoisted me up onto the table and was pinning my arms and body down from above me, breathing heavily through her face-mask.

“I
said—
get the hell
off
of me!” I was thrashing like crazy now, kicking up at her with both feet. It was completely useless. I could already feel my chest tightening up, the thousands of tiny little air sacs in my lungs clamping down and squeezing shut. The air couldn’t get out — it was trapped inside me, swelling my chest from the inside out; suddenly I was coughing and coughing, bloody phlegm hacking up out of my raw and swollen throat.

Suddenly, a bunch of other figures were converging on the table, emerging from the dark corners of the operating theater. Most of them were nurses, dressed identically to the mad woman who was pushing me down onto the operating table. I could only make out their eyes, and all of them had that same black, unblinking reptilian stare, as though they all came from the same twisted, merciless family.

Strong hands encircled my ankles and wrists, splaying them out to the sides of my body with a forceful yank. I yelped, more out of fear than discomfort, and I’ll be the first to admit that it wasn’t a manly yelp, if there even
is
such a thing. I felt something rough and firm replacing the handholds on my limbs. Craning my head to the side, I was just in time to see a set of sturdy leather straps being buckled into place, tying me securely down to the table.

I was totally helpless.

Two of the nurses separated themselves, shuffling aside to make way for a tall, slender man who suddenly stepped forward into a patch of ambient light; he was outlined in the cold blue aura that told me without a shadow of a doubt that he was a ghost. The new arrival was dressed in a surgeon’s clothes, complete with gown, face-mask, and some type of bandanna that tied at the back of his head. Actually,
slender
might not have been the best word for him; this dude had missed more than a few meals. He looked almost as thin as one of the standing lamps Mom loved so much, the ones she had picked up at Wal-Mart for twenty bucks a pop.

The eyes were the same though — completely black through and through, just like those of the nurses. There was something almost hypnotic about him, and without meaning to, I realized that I’d suddenly stopped struggling. He stood silently over me for I don’t know how long, head cocked to one side as if he were sizing me up somehow. Then I saw the mask contort, his eyes wrinkling at the corners. There was no humor to be found there, but he was smiling anyhow.

Somehow, that made it even worse.

“Ah, Nurse Baker…what have we here?” The voice was that of a really, really old man, a dry and croaking rasp. He sounded like he could have done with a glass of water or six. Every word was delivered slowly and with great precision, as though he was thinking carefully about each one before he spoke it, weighing it and carefully considering alternatives. There was a definite accent going on under there as well, I was guessing at German based on the way he mangled “what have we” into “vot have ve.”

“Another patient demands my attention, hmmm?” It was phrased as a statement rather than as a question. The surgeon took up an old-fashioned stethoscope in hands that were trembling (I couldn’t tell whether it was with fear or excitement) and after a couple of unsuccessful attempts, finally managed to get the two listening tips gingerly into his ears. Snaking one hand up beneath my pajama shirt, he placed the metal circle at the far end of the rubber tubing up underneath my armpit. It was freezing cold, and I tried to recoil but couldn’t. If Nurse what’s-her-name — oh yeah, Nurse Baker — hadn’t been pinning me down helplessly, I would have leapt six feet off the table in shock.