Free Agonal Breath (The Deadseer Chronicles Book 1) by Richard Estep

sixth.
    I was wheezing and out of breath by the time we reached the top of the staircase. Turning left, the nurse pushed her way through two sets of double-doors and dragged me into what looked a lot like an operating theater.
    The room was covered from floor to ceiling in tiles. In the middle was a big operating table-slash-chair, padded and covered in leather. To one side of it was a metal tray on a stand, which was covered in tools or implements of some kind. It was hard to make out exactly what they were in what little dim half-light was coming in through the three small windows, but it seemed like a safe assumption that they were a mix of scalpels, saws, and other sharp and pointy implements used for putting new holes in people. That’s when I really began to struggle, fighting her for all I was worth, but even on a good day, she would have had over sixty or seventy pounds on me, and I guess a surprising amount of it must have been muscle, because before I knew it she had hoisted me up onto the table and was pinning my arms and body down from above me, breathing heavily through her face-mask.
    “I said— get the hell off of me!” I was thrashing like crazy now, kicking up at her with both feet. It was completely useless. I could already feel my chest tightening up, the thousands of tiny little air sacs in my lungs clamping down and squeezing shut. The air couldn’t get out — it was trapped inside me, swelling my chest from the inside out; suddenly I was coughing and coughing, bloody phlegm hacking up out of my raw and swollen throat.
    Suddenly, a bunch of other figures were converging on the table, emerging from the dark corners of the operating theater. Most of them were nurses, dressed identically to the mad woman who was pushing me down onto the operating table. I could only make out their eyes, and all of them had that same black, unblinking reptilian stare, as though they all came from the same twisted, merciless family.
    Strong hands encircled my ankles and wrists, splaying them out to the sides of my body with a forceful yank. I yelped, more out of fear than discomfort, and I’ll be the first to admit that it wasn’t a manly yelp, if there even is such a thing. I felt something rough and firm replacing the handholds on my limbs. Craning my head to the side, I was just in time to see a set of sturdy leather straps being buckled into place, tying me securely down to the table.
    I was totally helpless.
    Two of the nurses separated themselves, shuffling aside to make way for a tall, slender man who suddenly stepped forward into a patch of ambient light; he was outlined in the cold blue aura that told me without a shadow of a doubt that he was a ghost. The new arrival was dressed in a surgeon’s clothes, complete with gown, face-mask, and some type of bandanna that tied at the back of his head. Actually, slender might not have been the best word for him; this dude had missed more than a few meals. He looked almost as thin as one of the standing lamps Mom loved so much, the ones she had picked up at Wal-Mart for twenty bucks a pop.
    The eyes were the same though — completely black through and through, just like those of the nurses. There was something almost hypnotic about him, and without meaning to, I realized that I’d suddenly stopped struggling. He stood silently over me for I don’t know how long, head cocked to one side as if he were sizing me up somehow. Then I saw the mask contort, his eyes wrinkling at the corners. There was no humor to be found there, but he was smiling anyhow.
    Somehow, that made it even worse.
    “Ah, Nurse Baker…what have we here?” The voice was that of a really, really old man, a dry and croaking rasp. He sounded like he could have done with a glass of water or six. Every word was delivered slowly and with great precision, as though he was thinking carefully about each one before he spoke it, weighing it and carefully considering alternatives. There was a definite accent