The Sullivan Gray Series Box Set

by H. P. Bayne

  And there was that other fact, the one in which Sully allowed himself to take a small level of comfort as he began to envision this new future he was mentally carving out for himself. His family had gotten each other through Flynn’s death; they’d get each other through Sully’s. He knew it wouldn’t be easy. But love healed. They’d be okay.

  What he’d told Dez not so long ago had been true. Sully could cope with time on his own because he knew the people he loved most in the world were somewhere nearby, waiting to welcome him home.

  For now, he’d have to search for peace in that. For now, there would be nowhere else to find it.

  A flash of copper in his peripheral vision proved him wrong. There was one other place. Gerhardt’s drugs had robbed him of the ability to see the dead, save in the ways the psychiatrist and his accomplices willed. As Sully had told Dez, he hadn’t seen a spirit, save within the confines of the Blue Room, since he’d been taken to Lockwood. The image of Flynn walking next to him through the passages he was currently navigating formed a lump in Sully’s throat—not only because this was his dad, but because it signalled a return to normal. It wasn’t normal for most people, but this was his. And, more than that, this was him.

  “Thanks for being here, Dad. Thanks for always being here.”

  As expected, there was no audible answer, Flynn knowing the parameters of Sully’s gift too well to attempt one. He limited his reply to a smile and an intangible pat on the shoulder.

  For the moment, it was enough.

  With his father at his side and a rocky path laid out before him, Sully followed the glow of his flashlight into the darkness ahead.

  Copyright © 2019 by H.P. Bayne

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover art by Fiona Jayde Media with image from innervision/shutterstock.com

  1

  Dez Braddock hadn’t seen it coming, the blow to the back of the head which sent him plummeting into darkness.

  He awoke to pitch black and deafening silence, the ringing in his ears doing its best to fill the void.

  His still-dazed brain began to keep time with his heart, thoughts spinning faster and faster. He tried to skirt past the one that nagged at him, the one telling him the throbbing injury to the base of his skull had caused so much damage he had lost the ability to see or hear.

  Panic caused him to squirm, the sound of his own movement reaching his ears and pulling an unexpected laugh from his throat. It was enough to clear his brain, to get him reaching for his mobile phone within the chest pocket of his jacket. Steeling his nerves with a deep breath, he closed his eyes and moved the handset toward his face, hoping to make out the display once he’d clicked the home button. On the way up, his arm collided with something hard. He felt around with his free hand. Between the hard surface and his palm was a layer of slick fabric, like satin; its feel took him back to the touch of his wife’s negligee, the one she’d worn on those nights that promised great things.

  Now he sought comfort where he could find it, praying to a God he no longer believed in as he manoeuvred the phone into a spot near his face, clicked the home button and slivered open one eye.

  A second rush of relief hit as he took in the blessed sight of the display, a photo of the lake at sunset his daughter had programmed in the last time he’d seen her. The time read 10:24 p.m. Barely any time had passed since he’d started pursuing Raynor, since he’d first entered this ….

  Cemetery.

  The relief passed as quickly as it had come, his mind turning to his current predicament, to whatever it was he’d managed to step into this time. He could practically hear Eva’s voice in his head, her tone reflecting her position as both wife and cop: “Damn it, Dez, you’ve got a brain. Learn to use it.”

  Too late to avoid the mess he was in, he hoped he could use his brain to find a way out. Thumbing in the phone’s password, he was rewarded with a second photo his daughter Kayleigh had put onto his home screen. Naturally, it was one of herself. The seven-year-old smiled impishly from behind the apps she’d also installed, most of them ones he’d never learned to use. One was useful right now and he tapped the small square featuring a flashlight.

  And immediately wished he hadn’t.

  The space around him lit up, nearly blinding him at first, the steady beam illuminating white satin. As his eyes adjusted, they took in the full horror of his situation, his heart back to pounding as he pushed against the surface above, finding it unmoving, himself sealed inside.

  Not until this moment was he able to shift past the pain at the base of his skull, past the fear, to realize the discomfort the rest of him was in, wedged tight between two immovable objects, knees and shoulders pressed hard against the walls of his prison, head resting against something firm yet moveable. He knew what it was without looking, fought against the urge to turn his head. But he was unable to resist a look down toward his feet, bathed in the light from the flash and the pale satin. His heart pounded against his ribs. He saw not one pair of feet but two, the corpse’s newly shined shoes resting against his own scuffed boots.

  He resisted the urge to scream, a noise that sounded like a choked sob making its way from his throat instead. Kayleigh smiled on his phone’s home screen, still smiling at him, dark ponytail defying gravity as she bounced on the trampoline he’d bought her for her last birthday. And he couldn’t look anymore, couldn’t face the possibility he wouldn’t see her again.

  Going into his contacts lists, he located Eva’s number, hit the phone icon and waited.

  Nothing.

  He could see now there was no reception here, the tiny message at the top of the screen reading “No Service.” He tried again anyway, waited until the phone stopped the call of its own accord.

  Fighting the rising panic, he next tried to text Eva, not caring as his fingers fumbled over the on-screen keys, creating words no one would understand. She would know. If he could just get a message through to her, Eva would know.

  He waited again, long enough to receive the message the delivery had failed.

  With nothing left to do now but panic, he slipped deeply into it, hands pushing hard on the lid of the casket just inches from his face. Ramming his shoulder against it, as his hands made no impact. He shoved once, twice, three times. Reality trickled in with the sound and smell of soil sprinkling down the side of his tiny prison. The coffin wasn’t locked or strapped shut.

  It was buried.

  He was underground, far enough down to render his mobile phone useless, trapped inside this small box, his only companion a dead man.

  He knew what he should be doing with no air coming in. If he avoided further panicking, he likely had no more than twenty minutes of oxygen remaining. He had to do everything he could to conserve it, to allow Eva time to find him. He tried to ignore the reality she couldn’t have any idea where he was; even if she realized something was wrong, she’d never get here in time.

  No one would, even if he managed to buy himself every second he could. They had been alone in the cemetery, he and Raynor.

  No one was coming.

  He released the scream he’d been holding onto, the sound deafening in the enclosure, drowning out the satin-muffled pounding of his hands.

  He had no idea how long it went on, his terror stealing precious seconds of air, replacing oxygen with poison. He’d passed being light-headed, was edging back into what he knew would soon be unconsciousness. He welcomed it, relished the idea of it, arms too tired now to strike as he sank into the space beside and above the emaciated body, his head finding as comfortable a spot as he could alongside the corpse’s substantial nose. His breathing slowed as his eyelids fluttered shut, the sound of his pulse dull in his ears, muffled and yet persistent.

  It must have bee
n the lack of air playing with his brain that had him hearing what seemed to be two pulses now, his own and another coming oddly from above. The one beyond was a pace quicker, less even and yet no less constant, no less willing to give up on its life-sustaining rhythm.

  It was going to have to give up. He certainly was.

  His thoughts turned to his daughter, and he considered how Eva was going to have to break the news to her, the little girl he doted on, the little girl he didn’t deserve. Would never deserve. There was no taking back the past, after all.

  And yet, here he was, hearing the past in his head, the voice of his baby brother, forever five, echoing across time and space.

  “Hold on, Dez. It isn’t time. Please hold on. It isn’t your time.”

  They were not the words of a five-year-old, and yet there was no mistaking the source. He heard Aiden’s name on his lips, breathed it out like a prayer, the whisper of the word reverberating in his brain long after the sound had died in his ears.

  “Dez, hold on. Sully’s coming. Just hold on for Kayleigh. Sully’s coming.”

  His brain caught on the name Sully, wondering what it meant that the little boy had uttered the name of Dez’s foster brother, whose own grave had been added to this same cemetery two years ago. But the question fell away as he settled into the feeling of the long-lost voice, Aiden’s presence, so palpable, so close he felt as if the child might be a solid presence lying there beside him.

  He drifted again, his brother’s voice no longer enough to draw him back. As the darkness folded around his body, enveloping him in warm nothingness, he felt both lifted up and dragged down.

  A sound like thunder broke through, replacing the encroaching void with something substantial and firm, something that left no doubt it was part of the mortal world.

  He initially fought to remain in that warm, dark place, where Aiden wasn’t confined to videotape and memory. Hands—he knew they were hands—tugged on his shoulders, urged him into consciousness, pulled him from the brink. They swept aside the fog from his muddled brain as he made the unwilling trek into consciousness and the horrors he knew he would find there.

  But it wasn’t a satin-lined prison and a deceased cellmate he saw greeting him; it was a lean, hooded figure crouched on top of the casket, hands holding Dez up to sitting. Above the hooded figure, just visible in the light of the moon cresting the edge of the grave, the shape of a large dog peered down at him. The sound of canine panting mixed with the nighttime noise of crickets and a breeze rattling the branches of the cemetery trees.

  He considered for a moment he might have gone farther down than he’d thought. “Is that a hellhound?” he asked, voice a croak.

  “What?” The hushed voice from the hooded figure was not what he’d expected from Death, masculine but not deep, human rather than demonic.

  More than that, it sounded familiar.

  “This isn’t hell?”

  The reply came in the form of an almost whispered, “That’s a matter of perspective.”

  The hooded male helped Dez crawl out of the casket and it was somewhere between there and standing on solid ground that his senses fully returned, bringing with them a rush of emotion and nausea. He fell to his knees and vomited violently to the side of the grave, a hand against a pile of displaced dirt all that kept him from falling face-first into the mess.

  He heard movement around him, the closing of the coffin lid, the shifting of fabric and earth as the hooded male pulled himself out of the grave, the pelting of stone and soil back onto the casket.

  “Wait,” Dez managed around a couple of heaving breaths. “My phone. I need my phone. I have to—”

  A hand landed briefly on his shoulder, long enough to draw his attention to the smartphone on the ground near him, flash side down, just a couple feet from the large black dog. Ignoring the animal for now, Dez grabbed his handset, hit the home button and was rewarded with a glimpse of that lake. A few more clicks had him looking down at the smiling face of his little girl.

  He couldn’t resist the giddy laugh. “I’m not dead?”

  “No.”

  Dez struggled to his feet, considered he should be helping his saviour re-bury the dead guy. He shut off the flashlight, dropped his phone into his pocket and moved to help, but was stopped by a hand on his arm. Straightening, he was surprised to find he had a good five or six inches on the other male. He’d expected his rescuer to be gargantuan in proportion rather than six feet and lean bordering on skinny. The guy swam in his clothes, a pair of baggy cargo pants and a dark hooded sweatshirt tucked beneath an army jacket, both clearly a few sizes too big. The hood, which Dez had initially mistaken for a cloak or a robe, was still up, forming a halo for the strands of long hair concealing the man’s face in shadow.

  “I’ve got this,” the guy muttered, the near-whisper again striking Dez as one he’d heard before. “Get out of here.”

  “I can help.”

  “I don’t need any.”

  Dez helped anyway, kicking dirt into the grave for the time it took to rebury the casket. They worked in silence, both huffing with exertion and exhaustion. Dez expected some sort of conversation at the end, was shocked when the other male simply whistled for his dog to come and started away from the grave, away from Dez.

  He reached out, grabbing hold of the guy’s arm, and was instantly met by a light warning growl from the dog. He released the man, but did what he could to hold him with a question. “Did you get a look at the guy who put me down there, enough to provide a statement to police?”

  The man didn’t turn to face him as he provided a one-word answer. “No.”

  Damn. “What’s your name?”

  The man’s head turned slightly, the moonlight catching just a hint of his profile. “Does it matter?”

  “You saved my life. Yeah, it matters.”

  There was no reply, leaving Dez to fill the void.

  “I’m Desmond Braddock …. I don’t know you, do I?”

  “Goodbye, Desmond.” The male took a step to leave, and Dez was unable to stop himself from grabbing ahold of him again. This time, he jerked him a little too hard, causing him to spin, the hood to fall away and the shaggy veil of pale brown hair to shift. The dog barked, but Dez’s attention was locked onto the face of the young man rather than the potentially dangerous animal at his side.

  “Oh my God,” Dez whispered as the light of the moon and scattering of cemetery lamps revealed hints of the other man’s face, concealed behind the remaining curtain of hair and unkempt beard. It was the eyes—the slightly more visible right one, anyway—that revealed the truth, that and the finely shaped nose and cheekbones. Two years had passed since he’d set eyes on him, but a decade and a half had made him an expert on Sullivan “Sully” Gray.

  Sully put up what fight he could but was deftly taken to the ground by Dez, whose mental exhaustion had cleared with the return of both precious oxygen and his brother. Another low growl emanated from the dog, but it didn’t attack like Dez had anticipated, despite the fact its master was struggling futilely next to the resealed grave, pinned beneath the weight of the larger male. After a minute or so of useless fighting, Sully went more or less limp in his brother’s grasp.

  Dez used the defeat to sweep the remaining hair from the younger man’s face, needing absolute certainty before allowing himself to give in fully to the joy and confusion of the inexplicable reunion.

  “Sully?”

  “Yeah, Dez, it’s me. Let me up.”

  The sound of the voice, spoken now at normal volume and tone, was the final proof he needed. Dez jumped up and staggered backward as if attempting to escape another corpse.

  “I was there when the cave collapsed. They told us no one could have gotten out. We held a funeral for you, damn near spitting distance from here.”

  Sully rose to his feet, eyes pinned to Dez’s as he kept his own expression guarded. “I know. I was there.”

  “Where?”

  Sully angled his chi
n toward the treed edge of the cemetery, visible just beyond the far row of lamps that lit the bordering driving paths. “In the trees.”

  “Watching?”

  Sully nodded. “Hardest thing I ever had to do.”

  “Hardest thing you’ve ever ….” Dez let the parroted statement go midway, the rage rising unexpectedly and channeling itself into his fists. He barely saw it coming himself as he unleashed his fury in one solid punch, laying his brother out on the ground.

  Sully lay there a moment before balancing himself on one elbow, cupping his jaw in his free hand and testing it cautiously before quirking up one side of his mouth in a smile. “Still pulling your punches for me, bro.”

  The raised eyebrow and warm smile were pure Sully, had Dez extending a hand and hauling his brother up in one fluid movement. He didn’t let go until the smaller man was encased in a hug tight enough to restrict breathing. Dez ignored the fact he could feel Sully’s ribs even through the jacket, and the smell that suggested the guy hadn’t managed a shower in at least two weeks. Right now, all that mattered was his brother—a man who had shared everything with him but blood—was back.

  At long last, he held Sully at arm’s length, casting an appraising eye over him. “You look like hell, kiddo.”

  Sully chuckled, the sound ending in a lingering grin. “Damn good to see you, Dez.”

  He pulled away and turned, and Dez realized Sully didn’t mean to stay. “Where are you going?”

  “Away.”

  “You’re going to have to do better than that.”

  Sully turned partway, enough to meet his brother’s eye. “I can’t.”

  “Listen, man, judging by the look, feel and smell of you, I’m going to take an educated guess and say you don’t have anywhere to go. You can come home with me, all right? Maybe then you can fill me in on what the hell you’ve been doing the past two years.”