Agonal Breath (The Deadseer Chronicles Book 1)

by Richard Estep

  A pair of glowing red eyes burned like two red-hot coals. I somehow couldn’t bring myself to look away from them; there was some weird kind of hypnotic quality there, and beneath it, what felt like a bottomless well of almost animalistic fury. Powerful-looking arms spread wide, in the manner of a predator stalking towards its prey and casting a broad net in which to trap it.

  The man-shaped thing was picking up speed, stomping towards me and causing tremors with every footstep, making the roof shake and my body tremble when I realized that I seemed to be its chosen target. I couldn’t go left. I couldn’t go right. He was too close for that. All I could do was stumble backwards, towards the edge of the roof.

  “Oh, crap,” was all that I could think of to say.

  It appeared that Mister Long Brook had just arrived.

  “Mister Long Brook — no!”

  Polly’s high-pitched squeal stopped the thing dead in its tracks. Frozen in fear, I almost wet myself with the sheer relief when Mister Long Brook obeyed her shrill command.

  There was maybe five feet of rooftop separating us — six at most — and when I slowly turned my head to look behind me, reluctant to take my eyes from the malevolent dark form for even a fraction of a second, I saw to my absolute horror that the parapet was only two or three strides away. I was three steps away from a six-story drop that would turn me into another resident ghost here at the sanatorium.

  Time seemed to stand still, all five of us frozen in place where we stood. Mister Long Brook and I watched each other in total silence. After who knows how much time had passed, I slowly let out a long breath that I hadn’t even realized I had been holding until now, and fought to regain control of trembling muscles that until now had refused to obey my commands.

  Mister Long Brook turned slowly towards the little girl whose scream had been the only thing which had prevented him from chasing me to my death. He cocked his head to one side and regarded her in the manner of an inquisitive dog eying its mistress.

  In the aftermath of her outburst, Polly’s ghostly form had flared into a spectacular purple color. Now that she seemed to be calming down a little, it was slowly returning to its usual faded blue.

  “Come here, Mister Long Brook.” Polly beckoned the creature over towards her, and Mister Long Brook obeyed, plodding over to stand beside her like a well-trained dog.

  The little girl encircled the tree trunk-sized torso in a hug. Her arms could barely make it all the way around his waist, because it was so thick and chunky, and I noticed with genuine interest that her arms didn’t sink into Mister Long Brook’s body as they had with Becky’s. He looked amorphous, as though his body were made of smoke, but the damage that Mister Long Brook had inflicted on the rooftop door, not to mention the pounding of his feet on the rooftop, had all been very, very solid and real.

  Just what on Earth was he?

  In fact, come to think of it, was Mister Long Brook even a he at all? Or was the term ‘it’ more appropriate? I studied the dark and nebulous form with as much concentration as I could drum up, considering that my heart was pounding its way out of my rib cage right now at the thought of what had almost just taken place. Mister Long Brook looked like the silhouette of a man, albeit a freaking huge one. His thick body, arms, and legs all looked male in their shape and dimensions, in the same way that the silhouettes of most male body-builders would look mannish (is that even a word? If it’s not, I’m making it one) if you brought one up here onto this same shadowy rooftop.

  Was Mister Long Brook the spirit of a man who had died here at the sanatorium after which Polly had named him? I didn’t think so. He wasn’t giving off that ‘dead person’ vibe to me, and he wasn’t glowing or even a little bit transparent like most human spirits. No, I was starting to think that Mister Long Brook was something else entirely.

  “Dude, what is it?” Brandon was staring at me with a look of obvious confusion written across his face. Becky was watching me too, which seemed kind of odd when you considered that there was a seven foot-tall supernatural creature not six feet away that was competing with me to be the center of attention.

  I opened my mouth to speak, then closed it again when realization suddenly dawned.

  “You can’t see him, can you?”

  “See who?” Becky asked.

  “Him. Mister Long Brook.”

  “I saw the door explode,” Becky replied, looking all about her on the rooftop, “and then you freaked out and almost jumped right off the edge of the roof. But I can’t see any ‘Mister Long Brook,’ no.”

  “Me either,” Brandon agreed warily.

  “Well take it from me, he’s standing right there.” I nodded towards Polly, who had released the enormous entity from her bear hug and was now happily holding hands with him, her small little hand dwarfed by Mister Long Brook’s enormous one. “And he practically chased me off the roof.”

  “He didn’t mean to,” Polly pouted, jumping to his defense. “When I get upset, Mister Long Brook gets very upset too. He thought you were hurting me.”

  Mister Long Brook growled in affirmation, a low bass rumble that only Polly and I could hear. The sense of warning — and implied threat — in that growl was very clear, and I resolved to do everything in my power to stay on Mister Long Brook’s good side.

  “Polly, do you know who Mister Long Brook is…I mean, where he came from?” I asked.

  Polly shook her head.

  “No. He lives here, with me, but he doesn’t like to talk much. He just likes to play with me, and keep me safe. He won’t hurt you as long as you’re nice to me,” she said in what she obviously thought was a reassuring manner.

  Carefully, I approached them both. “I have a special friend, a girl who’s about the same age as you. She knows a lot of stuff about a lot of things. Do you mind if I ask her to come and play with us for a while?”

  “Is she nice?” Polly asked doubtfully.

  “Very nice,” I assured her. “Her name is Lamiyah, and she always dresses in the coolest and most colorful clothes.”

  “I guess that would be okay,” she decided. I smiled, walking back to join Becky and Brandon.

  “Lamiyah is my spirit guide,” I explained. “Sometimes I can call her up and ask her to help me out a little. I’d really like to know a little more about Mister Long Brook there.”

  They both looked across towards the patch of empty air next to Polly. To them, it must have appeared as though she was holding hands with nothing. “If you could see him, you’d understand why.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Becky, her eyes darting from Polly to me and back again.

  “I don’t know what he is, but I’m pretty sure that he’s no human spirit.”

  “Cool!” That wasn’t quite the reaction I’d been expecting from her. “Is he an elemental or something? I’ve read about those. Nature spirits of rocks, streams, and trees…”

  “Yeah, I know what an elemental is. I don’t think so, but I’m not really sure. That’s why I want to try and call Lamiyah.”

  “Call her how?” Brandon sounded intrigued. “On your iPhone? There’s no signal up here.”

  I tried really hard not to roll my eyes, but I’m not sure that I succeeded. “No, man, not on my iPhone. Everybody has a spirit guide watching over them, but most people can’t actually get them to appear in the physical world. They usually talk to them in dreams. People like me are…a little different,” I added awkwardly. “If I concentrate really hard, I can sometimes get Lamiyah to manifest visually.”

  “So that means that we’d be able to see her too?” Becky asked, eyes wider than a kid’s on Christmas morning.

  “Sure, if she wants you to. And I don’t see why she wouldn’t want you to.”

  “That sounds awesome.”

  “It would really help if I could hold your hands and use a little of your psychic energy.” Now that really did feel a little awkward, but neither of them objected. Brandon asked me if it was going to hurt, and I assured him that it wouldn
’t in the slightest.

  I took both of their offered hands and closed my eyes. This was basically an informal seance. I’d been involved with the real deal several times before, supervised by a materialization medium and sitting with a circle of people around a big wooden table, but it really wasn’t necessary for a Deadseer to use any of those things to talk to the spirits.

  However, adding the energy of my two friends into the mix would make it a lot easier for Lamiyah to manifest, assuming that she was ready and available. Shutting out the outside world and all of its distractions, I sent a mental call to her, which was as easy as simply broadcasting her name in my mind, over and over again, and backing it up with the request for her to answer me.

  I don’t know how much time actually passed, but I could suddenly feel Becky’s hand squeeze mine so forcefully that it hurt.

  I opened my eyes and blinked a few times. A golden yellow portal of energy had swirled into existence in the air over by the swing set, swelling rapidly from a tiny pinpoint into a sphere of about six feet in diameter. Lamiyah stepped gracefully from inside it. She was dressed in the same colorful sari that she had worn in last night’s dream-meeting, but the look on her face was a heck of a lot darker.

  “You are in grave danger, Daniel,” she began without preamble. Uh-oh. That wasn’t a great way to start this conversation off.

  “Thanks for coming, Lamiyah. These are my friends, Becky and Brandon.” Each of them offered Lamiyah a smile, which she returned with a curt nod that was a far cry from her usually warm and sunny disposition. “That’s Polly over there, and her friend, Mister Long Brook.”

  “Hello,” Polly offered a shy smile, obviously happy to have another kid her own age around — at least, Lamiyah seemed her own age, though in reality she had more than a century on Polly. “I really like your dress.”

  “Thank-you, Polly,” Lamiyah returned the smile, although hers was tighter and seemed a little forced to me. Her eyes never left Mister Long Brook, as though she was weighing and calculating the facts about him, trying to determine just what exactly he might be.

  For his part, Mister Long Brook simply stared placidly back at Lamiyah, towering over her slender form, but not in a particularly menacing way. He simply waited for her to complete her assessment, regarding her with those calm red eyes.

  It took a moment for me to realize what was actually going on here. Lamiyah and Mister Long Brook were communicating telepathically. The dead have no real need for verbal communication once they have left their physical body behind, but most of them keep up the ability to speak anyway, if for no other reason than that it will be needed again in their next physical incarnation; I had learned that spirits actually prefer to communicate directly with one another, mind-to-mind, because there is a much smaller chance of their meaning or intention being misunderstood using that method.

  “None of the nuance is lost,” Lamiyah had explained to me once. “Human language is such a clumsy medium, Daniel. Can you imagine what life would be like upon your Earth if each person actually understood the other’s true meaning perfectly? If there were no miscommunication?”

  Actually, I thought that I could, and based on what I’d learned in history class, most of our wars might never have happened if the leaders in charge of all those countries had been able to make themselves totally understood. No bluffing, no posturing, no misdirection…just absolute clarity.

  Her earlier upset now forgotten, Polly went back to playing happily on the swing. The three of us flesh-and-blood types watched silently as Lamiyah and Mister Long Brook seemed to stare each other down, though there was nothing confrontational in their body language. At last, Lamiyah broke away and turned back towards us.

  “This is a most extraordinary being,” she said at last. “Think of him as a psychic manifestation of all of the combined emotion, both good and bad, that has taken place within the sanatorium over the years — a kind of protector, if you will. Are you familiar with the expression ‘if only these walls could talk?’” We all nodded. “Well, this is more a case of ‘if these walls could come to life and walk.’ Mister Long Brook has no real name, and no gender as such, because he has never walked the Earth plane as a mortal human.”

  “So, I get that Mister Long Brook is a sort of supernatural security system, but…he’s not a man at all, right?” I asked, feeling equally confused and fascinated. “I mean, I know you just said that he’s an ‘it’ not a ‘he’ or a ‘she,’ but it seems a little rude to call him an it…if that makes any sense.”

  “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 s
tarting 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?