Agonal Breath (The Deadseer Chronicles Book 1) (5 page)

“Oh, wow. Weren’t you scared?”

“Not even a little. She was always so friendly, and I could just tell…could sort of
feel,
really…that she was this kind and loving soul. Her name was Annalise. She’d taken care of children at the hospital all her life, and when she died, she didn’t particularly want to stop doing that. She wasn’t ready to cross over yet, so she stuck around and did what she loved to do. As far as I know, she’s still doing it.”

Becky took another swallow of ice water. She was hanging on my every word. “What did the other doctors and nurses think? What about your parents?”

I laughed. “They just thought I had an imaginary friend and a really active imagination. Happens more often than you’d think.”

“What does?”

“Imaginary friends. Most parents write their kids’ invisible friends off as being imaginary, but a lot of the time, they’re actually real visitors. Maybe they live in the same house, or maybe they’re just passing through. Sometimes they’re old friends of the family or relatives that have come to drop in and say ‘hi’ to the newest addition to the family.”

“That happened to my cousin, Amanda,” she nodded. “Her baby boy was talking to an invisible kid who lived in his toy closet.” Becky went silent as the implication of that sunk in.

“Usually they’re not harmful,” I reassured her. Sometimes, the dead find it difficult to let go of the material world. They stick around for a little while, look in on their families and friends. Sooner or later, that attachment fades and they can cross over to what comes next. That’s why a lot of imaginary friends disappear within a year or two.”

“It makes total sense,” Becky nodded.

There was a pause. I was surprised to find that it didn’t feel awkward this time. We sat in companionable silence for a couple of minutes. I hoped that Becky was enjoying my company half as much as I was enjoying hers.

Finally, she broke the silence. “So, Danny…this is a little awkward, but I really wanted to ask you something.”

“Sure thing, Becky.” My mouth was a little dry now, but I was intrigued to find out what had really brought her over here. I mean, it wasn’t likely to be my winning looks or devastating charm, right? But her next question took me by surprise.

“What do you know about Long Brook?”

“The sanatorium?” I blinked. She nodded eagerly. I searched my memory. “Uh, it’s that big old place up on the Peak-to-Peak Highway. Been abandoned since the sixties or seventies, hasn’t it?”

“Since the Eighties,” she corrected me. “I’ve been reading about it on Wikipedia, and a few other places. It’s haunted, Danny.
Super
haunted, from what I hear.”

“OK,” I said carefully, not entirely sure where she was going with this — but suspicion was starting to build. “It’s a sanatorium, so it stands to reason that a lot of people died there. I can see why it would be haunted.”

“Exactly! That’s why I’m going up there this weekend. And...I’d really like it if you came with me.”

“
Come with you?”

“YES!” Becky was practically bouncing on her chair with excitement. “Ever since I first saw that place on TV, I’ve wanted to go and see it for myself, to spend the night there. A couple of my friends wanted to come along with me, but I figure someone like you would be the
perfect
guide!”

Despite doing a pretty good job of keeping a neutral face, I was wilting inside.
Yeah, like she’d be interested enough in a skinny, antisocial kid like you to come on over and hang out.

“I really don’t know, Becky…I know that the place is run down and abandoned, but word is, the owners don’t like trespassers on their property. They might be the kind to call the cops on us.”
Not to mention that mom would totally flip her lid if you asked permission to spend the night up at an old tuberculosis hospital in the middle of nowhere.

“There are no security guards up there, it’s much too far out of the way,” she told me, reaching into her backpack and pulling out a tablet. Swiping across the screen and bringing up the YouTube app, she fired up a video from one of those TV shows she was so fond of. I watched with considerably less excitement than Becky as a young dude who had muscles that looked like they were carved out of wood, backed slowly down a dark corridor, waving a camera around for emphasis. Occasionally, the feed would cut to the stream from his handheld camera, showing a couple of his buddies, both of whom also had cameras.
Awesome,
my inner bitch voice cut in,
he has only two percent body fat, hair product, and that skin-tight tee-shirt for protection.

Not wanting to get on Becky’s bad side, I sat next to her and watched for the next hour – well, about three quarters of that without commercials – as the three dudes prowled the shadowy corridors and dark rooms of what I soon learned was the Long Brook Sanatorium, one of those special hospitals where doctors used to send patients with tuberculosis. I watched with mounting skepticism as they jumped out of their skin at what I was pretty sure were just shadows, and a few admittedly weird noises, which you could probably file under “old buildings make weird noises.”

“Dude, did you hear
that?”
one of them yelled. “
Ssssh! Listen!
That
totally
sounded like footsteps!”

Yeah, right…

Taking regular sideways glances at Becky, I could tell that she was absolutely riveted by this stuff. Her eyes hardly ever left the screen, and I couldn’t help but wonder how much of that interest was because of the lead investigator, rather than any fascination with the sanatorium and its ghosts.

Finally, the show was over. Becky flipped up the cover on her tablet and stuffed it back into her backpack. It was replaced straight away with her phone, which she used to send a text, presumably to her mom. “What did you make of the show? Pretty amazing, huh?”

“It was…a sight to see,” I answered with as much diplomacy as I could muster. She grinned. I think she could tell that I was less than convinced, but it didn’t seem to dampen her enthusiasm any.

“So, what do you think?” She swatted my knee lightly with her fingertips.
Oh my…she actually
touched
me.
I know, I know. But Becky was
so
beautiful, I had a hard time believing she would even want to share the same room with me, let alone give me a friendly swat. That was it, I was pretty much powerless to resist.

My mental wheels were already turning. I wasn’t scared of a creaky old building, believe me…whether it was haunted or not wasn’t the point. On the one hand, I would have to lie to Mom – probably sneak out at night, or fake a sleepover at some nonexistent friend’s house – which I really didn’t want to do. She deserved better than that. And then there was the risk of getting caught by the cops, which would mean getting grounded for the next…
forever;
but on the other hand, I was being asked to do this by
Becky Page.
If I said yes, it would net me the grand prize of being alone in Becky’s company for a good twelve hours, not to mention the still pretty awesome bonus of putting me squarely and firmly in the middle of her good books.
Besides, if I said no, that was pretty much it. My already near-astronomically small chances of one day getting Becky to think of me as something more than just “that kid who can see ghosts” would be shot forever.

“When do we leave?” my mouth answered, getting the sucker punch in before my brain had a chance to debate any further.

Becky’s smile alone was almost worth the vague sense of disquiet that was already starting to gnaw at my belly.

“Tomorrow night. That gives us all day tomorrow to prepare. We’ll need to go to the store and get some things – don’t worry, I’ll take care of all that –and then head up there after dark, maybe nine or ten-ish.”

“How are we going to get up there?”

“Oh, I have a friend that could drive us,” she answered evasively. I let that pass, figuring that she would want some kind of chaperone along just in case I turned out to be a real weirdo.

“Alright. Sounds like a plan. I’m in.” I hoped that I sounded ten times more nonchalant than I actually felt. My heart was racing, the blood pounding in my ears so loudly that I half expected Mom and Becky were going to hear it.

“We’ll figure out the details tomorrow.” Becky waved casually, dismissing out of hand any other concerns that I may have been about to raise. She rose to her feet and shrugged the pack onto her shoulder.

I escorted Becky into the living room, where Mom was curled up in her recliner watching
CSI
on TV.

“It was a real pleasure meeting you, Rachel,” Becky extended a hand solemnly. Mom blew the handshake off, choosing instead to get up out of her chair and give her new-found best friend a big old bear hug.

“And it was a real delight to meet you too, honey.” By the time they had both hugged it out, the headlights of a car pulling up outside were visible through the window. “It looks like your mom is here. Have a safe trip home, OK?”

“I sure will. Goodnight Rachel. Goodnight, Danny.” Hopefully Mom didn’t catch the wink that she tossed my way. Even I almost missed it, because I was too caught up in the one thought that kept running around and around in my brain,

What had I done?

CHAPTER FOUR

“
That
went well!” Mom was giddy, practically fit to burst. I rolled my eyes. Her little boy had spent less than two hours in the company of a girl, and she could already hear the wedding bells. But I guess I couldn’t really blame her for that. This family had been pretty short on happiness for quite some time now.

Grunting noncommittally, I poured myself a glass of milk and told Mom that I’d be in my room and was probably headed to bed. I let her kiss me goodnight and gave her a hug.
It’s good to see her this happy, so let’s just enjoy it while it lasts.
I’m not sure who had taken the bigger shine to Becky, me or Mom. Although I felt lousy about having to deceive her if I was going to make good on my promise to Becky tomorrow night– and I
was
going to make good on my promise to Becky – it helped me to rationalize it away by telling myself that hey, staying in Becky’s good books might just keep her around a little longer. Who knew, she might even grow to
like
me, like me, if you catch my drift; and
that
would make Mom happy. So it was all good…right?

I sighed. I was in this now, in it right up to my neck. My hormones had done all the talking, and there was no way I could back out now, not without Becky hating me for the next thousand years anyway. It’s not like I had a TARDIS to take me back in time and replay the last two hours over. And you know what – I’m not so sure that, even if I
could
change it, that I
would
change it. When I’d gotten out of bed this morning, I was hardly even on Becky’s radar. Now I was verging on “maybe a little cool,” and who knew – after our little trip up to Long Brook tomorrow, I may even be edging into the territory of “boyfriend material.” Was that really too much to hope for?

The milk was cold and refreshing. It was a little early for bed, and besides, I needed to let some of the adrenaline that had built up over the last couple of hours drain out of my system. Besides, it might be a good idea to read up a little on Becky’s destination of choice, I figured. Parking my butt at the computer tower, I opened up a browser window and clicked open a Google tab. Typing
Long Brook Sanatorium
brought up hundreds of hits. Surfing my way from link to link, it wasn’t long before I had amassed a ton of background information on the place. It surprised me to learn that this stuff was actually kind of interesting, and it wasn’t long before I was engrossed.

If you don’t know much about tuberculosis, you’re probably not that different to most other people today, assuming that you live in the western world; but a hundred years ago,
everybody
knew about it – and was terrified of catching it. The tuberculosis bacterium is passed on through the little droplets in coughs and sneezes. One of the scariest aspects is that it’s just
so
freaking easy to catch, particularly back in the days when there wasn’t a wall-mounted dispenser of hand sanitizer in every restroom. Once it gets down into the lungs, things can start to turn really nasty. The disease rots your lungs away from the inside out, and then it makes you cough up blood until you’re almost drowning in it. It’s pretty awful.

At the turn of the century, thousands of Americans who contracted the disease had already flocked right here to Colorado; when they started hacking up a lung, a lot of them just hopped on board the first train heading towards the dry and fresh mountain air, the bright sunshine, and the beautiful countryside. Special hospitals, called either
sanitariums
or
sanatoriums,
depending on whose website you read – I never could figure out any difference – sprang up all over the state. Some rich people got a whole lot richer catering to the wealthy and famous ‘lungers’ – that’s people with bleeding lungs, by the way, not Crossfitters who like to do lunges. ‘Lungers’ has a hard ‘g.’ Grammar is important, kids.