The Glass Dagger (Afterlife Chronicles Book 1)

  “Yeah, when I finally stopped freakin’ out over my art studio, I finally looked at the rest of the room and nearly wept like a baby. Does beg the question exactly how many years Pip was stalking us for, though doesn’t it?” Theo nodded looking once again to the vintage looking Godzilla poster that had been made into a cover for Zane’s massive bed. Theo especially liked the title ‘The Titans of Terror’ that was written above the picture of Godzilla fighting other monsters.

  “That was the one where Godzilla fights Mothra and Ghidorah…it’s a great monster movie.”

  “No doubt, knowing stalker Pip, it’s in our collection,” Theo said in reply.

  “Already clocked it and written it in for monster movie night on Thursdays.” Theo smirked, remembering when Zane claimed the day and was the first one to write it down on their common room memo board that had the words ‘Time is precious, so waste it wisely’ written above.

  “So, what’s really going on? Because as nice as it is to show off my awesome room and chat about monster movies, it’s not really why you’re here is it?” At this Theo let out a deep sigh and slumped down on the bed, covering his face with his hands in frustration.

  “What is it?” Zane asked, this time with more concern in his voice.

  “I don’t know…no, that’s not true, I do know, but I am not sure.”

  “Sure about what…this place?” Zane said, his guess being an afterthought.

  “Yes, no…maybe, I don’t know but something just feels off to me.” Theo admitted, hating that he might be casting that same doubt onto another.

  “Okay, so I know the place is…well, let’s face it, it’s no Hogwarts, but come on, what exactly do you think they are hiding here?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, people locked up in the basement,” Theo said before thinking about it and Zane didn’t take it as a joke like Theo had half hoped. His eyes widened in shock momentarily but then looked side on as though he was now thinking about the possibility of such a thing. Theo wished he hadn’t said anything and slapped his hands to his knees before getting up.

  “Look, forget I said anything. I’m just being paranoid and clearly having trust issues or something.” Zane granted him a sceptical look, one that clearly said, ‘Yeah right’.

  “Look, don’t let my comedic genius fool you, I’m actually quite perceptive and even if I wasn’t, it’s not hard to know something happened the other night that’s got you all woggie.”

  “Woggie?” Theo raised an eyebrow.

  “Freaked, spooked, weirded out, in a funk... Look whatever you wanna call it alright… all I am saying is you were as psyched as we were when first seeing this place and now, well now you kind of look like…”

  “Like?” Theo asked when he paused.

  “Like you’re about to do something stupid and you came in here so that I would subtly talk you out of it.” Okay, so it was true, he was observant, Theo thought dryly.

  “Dude seriously, I am gonna start thinking you’re actually like a Jedi or something,” Theo joked making Zane smirk, before leaning back against the wall and saying,

  “Flattery will usually get you everywhere but you’re not a chick, so nice try.” Theo laughed once and decided to just go for it as Zane was obviously not going to let this lie.

  “Fine but it’s gonna sound crazy.” This time it was Zane’s turn to laugh.

  “Dude, are you being serious right now? A few days ago we all stepped on the bus from Hell driven by a blind chick, met Mr Death himself…who just so happened to pop by and KILL US…” he said raising his voice at this part for dramatic effect before carrying on his valid point,

  “…then snap, we are here and being told we have been reincarnated into kick ass Demons or Angels and are being trained to protect the world, like some supernatural super soldiers…” He paused a second and then counted down the facts with his fingers,

  “…Whose first lesson, I might add, consisted of a disco dancing demon and some demonic, shaolin monk style fighting by an albino Legolas lookalike, who we also had to explain to who the freakin’ Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were! Seriously, you think you got shit any weirder than that, then be my guest and amaze me.”

  “Okay, so you might have a point there,” Theo admitted, amazed that Zane had said all that and didn’t even sound out of breath.

  “Ya think?” Zane replied sarcastically.

  After this Theo decided to take a chance and do something he never did, which was confide in someone. So, Theo told him all that had happened. He told him about the book and the warning it bled out. He told him about Takeshi’s look after shaking his hand. He also mentioned what happened earlier that night, when getting lost. Hearing the girl crying and meeting Draven’s brother and also what Pip had said to him, warning him against going down to the lower levels.

  After he was done he looked to Zane to judge his reaction and finally after a few minutes Zane said,

  “Okay, so my rant seems tame compared to the creepy shit that’s happened to you since we’ve been here…and I am not even gonna mention a certain ‘blood bound’ incident we are all trying to forget.”

  “Dude, you just did.” Zane ignored Theo’s comment, passing it off with just a shrug of his shoulders and then asked,

  “So, when are we going down there?” Theo laughed in response but then saw that his expression was serious.

  “What…you’re joking right?”

  “Oh, come on, what are they gonna do, kill us…again.” Theo rolled his eyes and said,

  “I thought you said that I came in here for you to talk me out of doing something stupid.”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t say you made the right choice,” Zane said, slapping him on the shoulder and winking at him. So, what was supposed to be Zane talking Theo out of doing something crazy, ended up with roles reversed. Which meant he didn’t walk out of Zane’s door until he was sure that his friend wasn’t going to follow him down the road of insanity. So, to accomplish this, he did the only thing he could think to do…

  He lied…again.

  He left letting Zane believe he had changed his mind and hoping that his friend wouldn’t be stupid enough to think about going down there by himself. And until he reached his own room he believed that he would be doing the same.

  Of course, he was wrong.

  Theo was back in his room and his eyes automatically went to where the book had been but there was nothing there. So, with this in mind, he decided the best thing for him to do was to relax in front of his TV and fall asleep. He went into the bathroom and completed his nightly routine, which mainly consisted of using the toilet and brushing his teeth, but this time, he added a quick shower to the short list. He had already had one today, as they’d all done after being dismissed from their last lesson with Zagan.

  He had worked them hard and they hadn’t realised it until they looked at the time but they had been in with him for three hours, so no wonder he was feeling it. But this time, he wasn’t showering to get clean or to feel the relaxing heat ease his strained muscles. No, this time it was to sooth his soul.

  He let his head fall under the blast of cascading water and closed his eyes, letting the cool liquid wash away his mental torment. He knew what he wanted to do and he knew what he should do but neither of these two were the same. There was something down there, he just knew it and he wanted to find out what. But he also knew that he should just leave it and speak to the one man who could grant him answers…

  Dominic Draven.

  But through that option brought forward the fear of lies for Theo. For now, he trusted Draven and he wanted to keep it that way. But something told him deep down in the pit of his stomach that if he went to him with this, then that trust would be shattered in a second. Because he knew that Draven was the type of man that if he felt it necessary, he would lie and had many times in the past, even to those he cared for deeply.

  Theo didn’t know how he knew these things, he just did.

  He ran a frustrated
hand through his wet hair, smoothing it all back before pushing off the wall in anger. He hated not knowing what to do and wished he had a sign, anything to tell him what he wanted to hear.

  He got out of the shower, grabbing a towel off the rack to wrap around himself before walking back into his room. He grabbed a clean pair of underwear and a comfortable pair of flannel pyjama bottoms to put on. Then he sank back into the giant denim hand chair and grabbed the used towel off the floor and reused it to dry some of his floppy hair, that pretty much fell where it wanted and stayed there.

  He grabbed the remote off the cool side table that was an old vintage amp, which had one side replaced by glass so you could see all the workings inside. Pointing it at the TV he pressed the button and went back to drying his hair. But the lack of sound filling his room made him frown under the towel. He lifted it up over his face and continued to rub the back of his head with it, catching the droplets falling down his neck. But none of that concerned him as he just went through the motions. However, what did concern him was the snowy static on the screen that seemed to be on every channel he clicked through.

  His logical brain told him that it just hadn’t been programmed in yet, but then that same logical train of thought quickly led him to this being an unlikely reason. After all, you don’t go to such lengths as picking out people’s favourite music, movies and even colour schemes, to then kitting out rooms with the latest tech, without setting it up as well. And besides, this was only a flat screen we were talking about, it should have just been a plug and play type of deal.

  Which begged the question, why was he now faced with hundreds of channels that all showed the same grainy black and white fuzz that occasionally had a white line running through it.

  “Great…just great! All I wanted was five minutes of normality that can only be found in trash TV,” Theo said speaking aloud and letting his head fall back with exasperation. He didn’t know what happened next but he must have fallen asleep this way, because the next thing he knew a buzzing sound was waking him up.

  “Oh, what now?” Theo asked rubbing his eyes in annoyance and trying to focus on where that noise was coming from. He first looked around the room after seeing briefly that the TV still showed nothing but static. His first thought was the book and he looked to the window half expecting to find another message written there waiting for him. Theo let out a sigh of relief when finding nothing there, but this turned out to be premature when a flickering on the TV caught his attention.

  It looked as if it was trying to find a signal of some kind as grainy shapes started to emerge. Theo lent forward trying to make out what it was, when an image started to zigzag across the screen in white lines. The image was a haunting one, as the second it snapped into place it looked like surveillance footage of some medieval prison.

  There was a long stone corridor with heavy iron cell doors running along each wall. But it was the door at the very end that held Theo’s attention and his mind quickly snapped back to another door at the end of a hallway. One he had seen only hours before. The two images in his mind started to merge into one until the one on the screen in front of him won the battle.

  The screen started to flicker as it had done in the beginning, but this time when it snapped back into place it showed the door even closer. It continued to do this, crackling in and out from the picture to static, only to once more re-emerge closer and closer to the door. Theo was transfixed waiting to see what it wanted to show him. His breathing became laboured and beads of sweat gathered on his forehead before dripping down the sides of his face.

  “What…what is it you want me to see?” he demanded, getting angry with the creepy dramatics, when all he wanted it to do was get to the point. But it continued to play out, over and over with the same sequence until Theo knew the last time was coming. The image was so close to the door now, there was only one image left…

  Theo watched with breath held firmly in his lungs, not letting it go again until he saw the horror he knew was coming. Slowly at first, small fingers started to reach up through the bars as one hand was trying to take hold. The second those fingers found metal and curled around the iron, Theo gasped as a desperate face quickly followed. They slammed their face against the small opening and Theo couldn’t believe his eyes as he recognised the face behind the veil of terror…

  “No…it can’t be…it…” he started to murmur his denial but nothing could hide the truth, nothing could hide those eyes.

  Eyes he knew belonged to…

  “Janie.”

  29

  Going to Need Faith

  Theo didn’t think, he just ran. He ran out of his room and found himself in front of Janie’s door in seconds. He had to know. He had to find out. So, he knocked on the door, never in his life praying for something so much. Not since he was seven and little Sarah ended up in hospital after his touch.

  “Come on, come on,” he said knocking again, but trying also not to wake the others. In the end, he couldn’t wait for what was most likely her getting out of bed and stumbling around for a robe or something. At least that was what Theo was hoping to see when he opened her door and walked in.

  Her room was dark, which at first Theo took as a good sign. The full moon was high in the sky and casting shadows in her room, giving him at least enough light to see. He slowly approached the bed, not wanting to frighten her if she woke to find him there. He squinted his eyes, trying to see if he could make out her form on the bed which would have been hidden by the floaty material that surrounded it.

  He frowned when feeling the slight breeze, as though a window was open somewhere. Theo’s hand reached out to touch it but the mysterious breeze blew back the material attached to the tall metal bed frame.

  “Janie?” he whispered as he took that final step closer, but as the material whipped across his face, he pulled it back to reveal her bed was empty and Janie,

  Was gone.

  He frowned, briefly scanning the room before placing his palm on the mattress to see if it was still warm. A chill ran up his spine the second he realised it had been a while since she had been there as, like his blood, the bed was cold. He let out a growl of frustration, before hitting the switch on the wall letting light flood the room in hopes of giving him answers. And he didn’t have to look far.

  “No Janie, not you too,” he said as that chill turned his body to ice, frozen at the sight of the same message he himself had received. He looked at the destruction on the table in front of the window that held the remains of what looked like an old typewriter. Then he looked up to see cracks in the glass, spelling out the same words of desperation he had also read in his own room.

  Death awaits me,

  Imprisoned below,

  Tonight, it ends,

  Tonight, I die.

  Theo closed his eyes as the guilt he felt morphed into anger. He was so stupid. How could he have let this happen? He knew something had happened to Janie, even asking himself if it had been the same that he had experienced. Then why not ask her? Why not push her on the matter? He should have been honest with the others, maybe that way, she too would have opened up or confided in him. Then he could have convinced her to leave it be or at least leave it up to him to take action. But now what? Where was Janie now?

  He asked himself these things with clenched fists, wanting to scream out her name in hopes that she would answer. But once more the moon answered his silent questions and cast shadows along the floor. Theo frowned, wondering if he was seeing it right, as it almost looked as though elongated words were stretching out, trying to tell him the answer. He stepped back, once, twice, three times until he was far enough away to read what the shadows were telling him, as the missing piece of the sentence started to take shape,

  Tonight,

  You will

  Save me or…

  She dies.

  Theo ran out of the door as though someone had lit him on fire. It had been confirmed. Janie had taken it upon herself to go down to the low
er levels and become someone’s saviour. Theo’s next actions took him back into his room, where he grabbed a pair of jeans and a t shirt, dragging them over his body in a hurry. It was as if he was on autopilot, going through the motions and not even thinking about what he would do once he got down there.

  To start with he didn’t even know how to get to the lower levels, let alone know where to find Janie once he was there. For all he knew it could be like a bloody labyrinth in Hell down there!

  Once dressed he rammed his feet into some high top, red and white converse shoes and ran out the door. He only paused for a second outside Zane’s door, battling with himself on whether or not to knock. Eventually he thought of the dangers that he could possibly face and he knew he would never have forgiven himself if he was the reason any of them got hurt. So instead of shouting for them all to wake up, as he selfishly wanted to, he didn’t.

  He was blaming himself already for not talking to Janie when he had the chance. Maybe if he had, then she would be sleeping in her bed now, where she belonged. He shook his head, letting his anger fuel his need to get to her quicker, but looking at all the doors he passed he started to doubt he would even get there.

  “Which way?” Theo said to no one…or so he thought.

  “That all depends on where you are trying to get to?” A girl said behind him and he turned to see a beautiful girl about his age, stood with her arms crossed. She had long, wavy, raven black hair and a pair of startling blue eyes. Theo had to mentally shake himself out of being dumbstruck by a stunning pair of eyes, a colour he could only imagine was close to a tropical blue shade. Ones that were currently framed by a pair of thick black rimmed glasses.

  She also had soft, cute features that, at that moment, Theo thought were contradictory to her frown and body language. She pushed her glasses up her nose once, twice before clearing her throat and saying,