Lets Drink To The Dead by Simon Bestwick Read Free Book Online Page B

long enough to–
    Her legs buckled; she clutched at the walls again, but she couldn’t get a grip. And then hands caught her, turned her round. John smirked down at her. Her knife – but before she could put a hand in her jacket pocket he punched her, hard in the solar plexus. Air whooshed out of her; she fought for breath. Pain. Couldn’t fight.
    The cloth was pressed to her face. “Shh,” he whispered.
    A cold surgical smell; the darkness coming down. Masked figures appeared behind John as he let out that high, childish titter.
    Dad, I’m sorry.
    Then black.
     
     
    6
     
    W AKING. A DULL throb in her stomach. Head pounding. The taste of blood in her mouth; the smell of it in her nostrils. Metal digging into her back. Light all around her, bright even through her eyelids. Squinting against it. Trying to move away, but something biting into her ankles and wrists.
    “Ah, you’re once more in the land of the living, if we can so dignify this place. Welcome back, Dani.”
    She opened her eyes. John stood over her, holding the knife.
    “Gideon,” she said. Her voice was a raw, ragged croak, a gallows-bird’s caw. Her head throbbed and spun; she struggled to focus her eyes. Whatever he’d given her was still in her system. “You’re Gideon Dace.”
    He clapped silently. “Just so, my dear.”
    She gritted her teeth. She wanted to scream, cry, beg, but that wouldn’t help. Not with his history. Assuming any of it was the truth. “Aren’t you supposed to be a bit dead?”
    “I told a little white lie, I must admit,” he said. “The part about the fire was true. However, I got out in time. Lost my family home and pretty much all else, but I survived.” He gestured about them. “This was all I had left.”
    Dani looked around. They were in a large, empty room. Candles burned all about them. Christ, what the hell was she lying on? She looked down the length of her body and saw it was a metal bedframe. Like the one she’d dreamt about. Complete with leather restraints at the corners, which were fastened around her wrists and ankles. On the floor around the bed, he’d drawn weird symbols in charcoal. “This?”
    “Ash Fell. The land belonged to my family, remember? I’d managed to win back control of it, but I couldn’t sell it. And after a while, there was no point trying.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Oh, come on, Dani. In Ash Fell, you’re never really alone. You can’t stay here, even as briefly as you have, without knowing that.”
    “Yeah,” she said at last.
    “A lot of patients lived and died here over the years. Even the ones who were still alive when the place closed... seem to have left something of themselves behind. And they were... displeased with me. They’ve made my life hell for the last thirty-two years. Ever since I was forced to move in here.”
    Dani felt a smile twist her mouth. “Nowhere else to go, eh?”
    He sighed. “Let’s not make this any more unpleasant than it has to be. It’s not just that. I can’t leave. Oh, I can venture as far as one of the nearby farms to trade something from here – you’d be surprised what odds and ends are still lying around, even now – for bread, milk, eggs, bacon and the like. They wouldn’t want me to die too early, after all. They’d rather prolong my suffering. But they’ve... affected me in some way. I can’t go far from here. Barely make it as far as Kempforth. Otherwise I experience pain, nausea, disorientation. Blinding headaches, vomiting. And they only stop when I come back here. They’ve trapped me, you see. And I’ve found things here. Enough that I could spend my remaining years in some degree of comfort. If I can only get out of here.”
    He took the knife away, tapped it against his chin. “The thing is, you see, it’s becoming quite urgent that I get away.” He turned, paced a little; Dani pulled at the restraints. The one securing her right hand gave, just a little.
    “Age hasn’t been too unkind to me,”