We must have gone down maybe eight or nine steps before I noticed a pale, artificial white glow somewhere below and off to our left.
I kept inching my way down, one step at a time, holding the handrail in a death grip and sliding my right foot out in front of me to help feel out the way. After a couple more steps, I could feel that the consistency of the surface underneath my foot was no longer that of wood; it had more of a soft, dirt-like feel to it.
We’d hit the cellar floor.
There was a hard stone or brick wall to my right and in front of me, so the only way I could turn was to the left. It was so dark down there that I could barely make out any details, except for a bunch of metal pipes that paralleled the walls and ceiling.
Becky stepped down behind me with a soft crunch, placed a hand on my shoulder, and said quietly: “Head towards that light.”
Well, duh. There was really nowhere else that we could go.
“You still have that gun, right?” I whispered. She replied by holding up the pistol. It made me feel a little bit better, slightly less powerless.
The pale, electrically-powered glow got bigger and more intense the further Becky and I crept along that dirty and claustrophobic underground corridor. Brushing by a low-hanging cobweb almost caused me to jump halfway out of my skin at one point. Luckily, I was able to bite off the surprised yelp before it could escape.
The light turned out to be from a blue plastic camping lantern, which was sitting on top of a wooden workbench.
Gesturing for Becky to hang back for a moment, I crept in a little bit closer. Just ahead, the walls disappeared to our left and right as the corridor opened out into a wide underground chamber. A light-bulb hung dark and lifeless from bare wires in the ceiling. All of the light down there came from the lantern and two others just like it, which were laid out around the room in a rough triangle.
This part of the sanatorium had obviously been used for junk storage. Cardboard boxes, old furniture, outdoor tools, and even a bunch of ratty-looking Christmas decorations had been stacked in piles around the room, without any apparent rhyme or reason.
And right there, in the middle of the room, was Brandon.
Our friend had been trussed up, with both wrists tied behind his back and his ankles tied together for good measure. He was lying on his left side with his back towards me, perfectly still.
Sticking my neck out from my hiding place behind a rusting 55-gallon yellow drum, I took a quick look around for his captor. The mysterious Tony was nowhere to be seen, and nor were there any spirits visible.
Acting purely on instinct, I crept slowly towards Brandon’s motionless body.
It was a huge relief to see that he was still breathing. His hair was matted with dark blood, but it looked as though the wound was mostly superficial. I tapped him gently on one shoulder, and his eyes flew open, his entire body tensing up.
“Mmmmf!”
As he rolled towards me, I could see that somebody had stuffed a piece of dirty old rag into his mouth. One bright-red corner was sticking out. I grabbed it with my fingertips and slowly pulled it out, balling it up and tossing it into one of the dark corners. Brandon coughed and spat, trying to get the nasty taste out of his mouth.
“Oh man, am I glad to see you,” he gasped.
“Glad you’re okay, dude. Come on, we have to get you out of here.”
“Hey, no arguments from me.”
If this had been a Hollywood movie, I would have pulled out a knife and just cut him loose. What struck me as more than a little weird in this case was that whoever had tied Brandon up had done it with rubber tubing, not rope. It took me less than five minutes to find the free ends of the tubing and to work my way through untying the knots, which weren’t all that tight to begin with.
Brandon was free in no time, standing up straight and stretching out tight muscles with a satisfied groan.
“That feels so freaking good.”
“Brandon, we’re so glad you’re safe!” Becky had emerged from the shadows and gave him a quick hug, never letting go of the pistol as she did so. Releasing him quickly, she looked all around the room, scanning for threats. Brandon noticed the gun, nodded his approval, and realized what she was doing.
“Yeah, we should totally get out of here before the douchebag or his buddy comes back. One of them went looking for you guys.”
“We know,” Becky said, not taking her eyes from the dark corners of the room. “That was Jake. And he found us.”
“Uh-oh. How are you both still in one piece, then?”
“He’s dead,” I cut in.
“Dead? You mean you killed him?” Brandon was agog, gesturing at the gun Becky was holding. I actually think he found the idea kind of cool.
Becky shook her head.
“No. He was looking for us, and he found us, just like Danny said. But he also found Mister Long Brook. It…wasn’t pretty.”
“Oh.” There was a pause while the implications of making Mister Long Brook angry sunk in. I think we all shivered a little at the thought.
“What happened to you?” Becky asked him curiously. “After the shooting started, I mean. We thought you were dead.”
“Oh, that was just a flesh wound.”
Brandon fingered a small gash in his head, and I couldn’t help snickering at the Monty Python reference. From his puzzled expression, I guessed that he had never seen The Holy Grail before.
“Close call though.”
“Yeah,” he agreed ruefully. “Way too close. It knocked me down and made me see stars for a while. Before I knew it, that massive turd Tony had a gun in my back and forced me to come down here. Practically kicked me down those freaking steps. I guess the other dude was chasing after you guys?”
We both nodded.
“Anyways,” Brandon went on, “he tied me up with that stupid rubber tubing and then took off.”
“Where to?”
“No idea. But he’s definitely armed, so I’m glad you are too, Becky.”
I examined the rubber tubing under the light from one of the lanterns. “This is a pretty weird thing to tie you up with. Where did they even find this stuff – in fact, what were they doing here in the first place?”
Something must have caught Becky’s eye, perhaps a weird shape in the darkness or a reflection from some shiny surface, because she suddenly stiffened and began to walk towards one of the far walls, the gun held out in front of her like a protective ward or talisman.
“Becky, what is it?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered back. “But come see this.”
Curious, Brandon and I both went over to see what she had found.
“Holy crap,” Brandon whistled, loud enough that I had to shush him. “Sorry. But what is all this?”
It looked as though some mad scientist had been carrying out bizarre experiments down in the basement. A couple of small propane tanks were surrounded by a whole bunch of chemical containers, including bottles of drain cleaner and bags of salt. There were coffee filters everywhere. Boxes and boxes of cold medication tablets were scattered around randomly between what had to be dozens of mostly empty clear plastic bottles, the kind that Gatorade usually came in. Some of the bottles had dark brown liquid in them. There were even a couple of cat litter containers and a big plastic cooler.
“Looks like a chemistry experiment,” I said, nonplussed.
“Oh, please. Don’t you guys ever watch Breaking Bad?” Becky rolled her eyes.
“Not really,” I countered. “In my defense, I’m more of a Battlestar Galactica fan.”
“Monday Night Football,” Brandon added helpfully.
“Whatever. I know what all this is for. Guys, this is a freaking underground meth lab.”
“A meth lab?”
I felt like such an idiot. Why hadn’t I connected the dots? Now that Becky had pointed it out, it was so obvious. What else would two crazy types be doing in an abandoned old sanatorium in the middle of the night? Jake hadn’t exa
ctly seemed like the ghost-hunting type to me — after all, how many ghost hunters went around waving firearms, shooting at anybody who crossed their path?
“This kind of crap can be really dangerous.” Brandon was already backing away. I figured that was a pretty smart thing to do, and followed suit myself. Meth labs tended to explode, or at least that’s what I had seen on news reports.
“Then let’s get the hell out of here. I know the Blazer’s trashed, but we can flag down a cop out on the highway, or even hoof it to Nederland if we have to.” Becky was already making her way towards the staircase.
I was right behind her, and had the presence of mind to grab one of the camping lanterns, just in case we needed a little extra light with which to find our way out of this hellhole.
“That may not be the best idea,” Brandon pointed out, tapping the lantern for emphasis. “We know that the other drug dealer dude is still out there. If he sees a light anywhere in the building, he’s bound to come and see what’s up, right?”
I sighed, reluctantly twisting the lantern’s power switch to the ‘off’ position, plunging the corridor back into near-total darkness. Brandon was right. As comforting as the light source would be among the claustrophobic twists and turns of Long Brook’s rooms and hallways, the bad guy who was almost certainly still out there hunting us would be drawn to it like a moth to a flame. I decided to keep the lantern though, just in case it came in useful later on.
“It’s too late for that, boy.”
The voice was coming from the bottom of the rickety wooden staircase in front of us.
“Oh crap,” was all I could think of to say.
We had to assume that the short, skinny male silhouette standing between us and freedom was Tony. It certainly wasn’t a spirit, because his body didn’t radiate even the faintest suggestion of psychic energy.
Also, just like the rest of his shadowy figure, the pistol that he was holding in his right hand looked one hundred percent solid.
“’Oh crap’ is right. You kids back up. Go on, move. And if any of you pulls that same move you did upstairs and tries to run for it, the next bullet is going to do a whole lot more than give you a scar.”
Obediently, we started to back up slowly into the meth lab. Becky was still out in front, closest to Tony; I was right behind her, with Brandon bringing up the rear.
The fact that Tony hadn’t said anything about Becky’s gun was the one bright spot, because it implied that he may not have actually seen it yet. Even in what little light was being thrown off from the two remaining lanterns, I could see that Becky had her right hand tucked into the small of her back, hopefully concealing our ace-in-the-hole from him.
“Stand in front of a lantern,” I hissed over my shoulder as Brandon and I turned the corner into the open space of the cellar. For once he didn’t question me, and went over towards the wooden workbench on which one of the lanterns rested, positioning himself to block out most of the light it was putting out. I made sure to do the same to the other lantern, standing in what I hoped was a nonchalant, completely innocent-looking way that made the rest of the cellar much, much darker than it had been just a minute ago.
Slowly and deliberately, Becky backed up until she was standing roughly in the middle of Brandon and I. Tony shuffled warily into view. The guy can only have weighed one-ten, maybe one-twenty tops. He looked like a stick figure, albeit a very dangerous one. His body twitched and jerked with what looked like tiny little seizures, which I figured was a side-effect of the meth. A grimy Denver Broncos baseball cap, turned backwards in the style of a sniper or a gang member, sat on top of a mop of lank, greasy shoulder-length dark hair. The look on Tony’s face was somewhere between a smirk and a sneer and kept shifting, as though the muscles couldn’t quite decide which expression to go with and wanted to split the difference. A pair of frayed jeans with holes in both knees and a stained Broncos vest to match his cap completed the whole ugly ensemble.
“Y’all just couldn’t take the hint, could you? You just had to stick your ugly little noses in again, and now just look at what you’re going to make me do.”
“Make you do? We’re not making you do anything.” Becky sounded truly indignant, which was kind of surprising given the circumstances we had found ourselves in. Poking the bear was not a strategy I would have gone with, personally. But there was no stopping Becky now — she was working up a real head of steam.
“Nobody made you come up here, Tony. Nobody made you go with meth cooking as your career choice, did they? That’s all on you, you pathetic, miserable excuse for a human being.”
Looking down without actually moving my head, I could see that Becky’s right hand was beginning to inch slowly down towards her side. My first instinct was to try and calm this down, get all “whoa, whoa, wait a minute!” and play the peacemaker, but I knew deep down that it wouldn’t be a smart move. There was something in those eyes of his that warned me away, and I trusted the small inner voice that was telling me not to trust him, not one single inch.
I could already tell that Tony was the worst kind of bully; not just the casual kind that Brandon had seemed to be, but the real deal, the sort of truly malicious, black-hearted son of a bitch that genuinely enjoyed inflicting pain and misery on others. His kind got off on having those who were weaker than him in his power.
Besides, how nuclear was he going to go when he found out about what had happened to Jake?
For either our side or his, this wasn’t going to end well, and this time we couldn’t count on Polly and a pissed-off Mister Long Brook to ride in like the cavalry and save the day. It was totally up to us — or more accurately, it was up to Becky.
It was quickly coming down to life or death for all of us. My mouth was as dry as a desert. Please, please let her make the right play.
Becky’s gun came down a little further, held at the level of her thigh and pointing straight down towards the floor. She had been smart enough to angle her body slightly, so that her left side was facing towards Tony, leaving the right in deeper shadow.
“Missy, you want to be very, very careful how you talk to me. Young girl like you could get herself in a lot of trouble running her mouth like that.”
“Thank you for the attitude correction, Anthony,” Becky said in the sweetest, most charming tone of voice that I had ever heard her use, “you pathetic, miserable little turd.”
Time seemed to slow down then, warping and distorting as if everything was happening all at once. I’ll tell it as a best I can, but you’ll have to forgive me if my memory isn’t one hundred percent clear on what happened just then, because I was too busy diving for the questionable cover provided by a workbench to make note of all of the details.
One thing was for sure: Becky’s insult must have really hit the mark, because Tony’s expression went from ‘attempting to intimidate you’ to ‘you’ll pay for that’ in the space of a few seconds.
He extended the pistol out towards Becky from where it had been held to casually cover us at the level of his waist before, bringing it up and out, though whether he meant to actually kill Becky or simply to tighten the thumbscrews of fear, we would never know for sure.
Dad always talked about armed enemies in exactly the same way. “Don’t listen to what they tell you, don’t try and figure out their intentions or read their body language or any of that other BS the ‘experts’ like to talk about. If they have a weapon in their hand and they’re pointing it at you, it’s nearly always too damn late. And if it isn’t, thank the Lord for His gift to you, and get the drop on him first. Make damn good and sure that you’re the one who walks away and goes home safe.”
I guess Becky’s mom or dad must have taught her something similar, because she didn’t flinch or hesitate for a split-second. It was only afterward, when it was all over and I had time to reflect on it a little, that I realized that Becky had actually pulled two triggers. The first had been that sweet little insult, which had done a fine job of getting Tony riled up
and thinking even less straight than he had been before.
Shooting angry is not a great way to shoot accurately, something else Dad had loved to preach.
The second shot (and the third, fourth, fifth, and so on) had been fired maybe two seconds later, when Becky was diving to her right like Chow Yun Fat in some classic Hong Kong action movie.
It could only have been more Hollywood if she’d been firing two pistols at the same time instead of just the one. Fortunately, that one turned out to be more than enough.
For the second time that night, the sounds of gunfire echoed throughout Long Brook Sanatorium. Becky must have just kept jerking the trigger until the hammer fell on an empty chamber.
Tony got off a couple of shots as well, but his weren’t nearly as accurate as Becky’s had been. Looking back on it now, I think that he must have felt so superior looking down on us from what he thought was his position at the top of the food chain, that he couldn’t even begin to imagine that one of us poor, helpless kids might have been armed ourselves, or in any condition to actually fight back.
That turned out to be an expensive mistake to make.
I hit the ground fairly hard, but managed to break most of my fall with outstretched hands. The only injury I suffered was a couple of scraped palms. It had been necessary for me to drop the lantern in order to do that, and it had smashed on impact, littering shards of broken glass all around it. The bulb still worked, though, throwing out a small circle of light for us to see by.
Man, but those gunshots were loud. Once the ringing in my ears had gone away, the first thing I could hear was the sound of Tony screaming, and with damned good reason; the drug dealer was clutching his left thigh with both hands, the pistol now resting on the ground at his side, trying to control a steady stream of blood that was oozing out from between his trembling fingers.
“Come on!”
Becky was on her feet in a flash, scooping up Tony’s pistol and making for the way out. I staggered upright too, snatching one of the two surviving lanterns to replace the one that had broken. Bringing up the rear, Brandon grabbed the last and we left Tony bleeding and squealing in near-darkness on the cellar floor.
Agonal Breath (The Deadseer Chronicles Book 1) Page 18