Earthbound : A gripping crime thriller full of twists and supernatural suspense Fynn Perry (if you liked this book TXT) 📖

to have to make a split-second decision in choosing a host. Instinct told him to possess the guy on the ventilator––he must be valuable to them; otherwise, he wouldn’t have been kept alive. His bloodied, swollen eyes would also make it hard for any other spirit to detect possession. The downside was, of course, that it would also make John’s own vision severely limited.

Compared to his other hosts, this body was like being in a coffin. He couldn’t sense any brain activity. Nothing. Just a functioning shell with air being pushed in and pulled out. As he lay in his voluntary prison, he let his mind drift for a moment, thinking of his own inanimate, artificially supported body, lying soulless in an ICU in Queens. How would he ever return to it? He longed for it to be a part of him once more. He yearned for the ability to properly hold Jennifer and be close to her.

His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of footsteps coming closer and a hand grasping the handle of the side door. It slid open.

John tried to look out through the swelling but could see very little. There was a shuffling sound, and he could sense the body of the black youth being dragged forward by his feet.

“Nice watch,” a gruff voice said.

“Leave it—and the neck chain. I told you, take nothing, then nothing can be traced back to us. You’re paid enough,” a second, stern voice warned. “Wait!” it added. “A few of these pills placed in his pocket will make it look like he was dealing.”

At that point the body with the gold sneakers was lifted out of the van.

Despite the blood in his host’s eyes, John could just make out that one of the two men had a uniform.

“Over there! On those boxes!” the second voice directed.

A thud. It was the sound of the body being dumped.

“So that leaves our friend here, who’s going to the chop shop,” the first voice snickered.

Clearly, he was talking about John’s host, but John didn’t understand what he meant. It didn’t sound good, that was for sure. He heard the men now approach his host, and he felt the stretcher with his host’s body being pulled out and then lifted into the rear of another vehicle with a brightly lit interior. From what he could make out through the slits of his host’s eyes, it looked like he was inside an ambulance.

There was a switch from one ventilator to another and John felt his host’s body being lifted and transferred to a spine board. A heart monitor was connected and it started pinging with a regular rhythm. One thing John knew for certain—the guards at Mayhem might be animals, but they had medical training.

“All good,” said someone in a uniform. John guessed he was a paramedic.

John had been right in thinking that El Gordito was behind the incidents of people going missing at his clubs. But there was more to this than just El Gordito protecting the image of his clubs. John’s host was being kept alive for some specific purpose, which the other body clearly didn’t qualify for. But why would they want to keep this guy alive?

The other paramedic got in and sat next to the body of John’s host and inserted earbuds connected to his smartphone, as he sat back looking at the ECG readout. The engine started up. After a while, the driver let the sirens rip and the ambulance sped off.

After a twenty-minute journey, the vehicle finally came to a stop. John felt his host being pulled out with the ventilator and ECG still connected. The pulsating red and blue lights of the ambulance bounced off white walls, but barely registered on a brightly illuminated sign with red lettering. John tried to focus on the sign. He could just make out that it read EMERGENCY ROOM. His host had been taken to an actual hospital.

Inside, the paramedic was stopped by someone wearing a white coat over surgeon’s scrubs. Some paperwork changed hands. An orderly took over, and the gurney was pushed down a corridor and into a waiting elevator.

John could feel the elevator car descending. He could see the floor number display panel only as a bright red blur. He couldn’t decipher the digits, but he could count how many times they changed. Three times, therefore three levels.

The steel doors snapped open, and the gurney was pushed quickly down a narrow corridor before being pulled to a halt. John heard a code being entered into an electronic keypad, then the sound of bolts sliding open. As his host was wheeled through, John caught a fleeting glimpse of the top half of a guard. He had a tattooed neck and a black combat uniform and looked very similar to the guard John had possessed at the fulfillment center.

The gurney came to a halt again, and a woman dressed in pale-green medical scrubs peered over the face of John’s host.

“Brain-dead, like the others,” the orderly informed her.

Brain-dead? If his host was expected to be brain-dead, then what was the use of bringing him to this place? John pondered.

“Christ! Do they always have to be beaten up so bad?” she asked, concerned, as she made notes on a form attached to the clipboard she was carrying.

The orderly gave a pathetic shrug. John caught a blurry glimpse of the woman’s eyes. Even with his limited vision, he could tell they were normal––she wasn’t possessed.

“What if any of the organs are damaged? A kidney with internal bleeding or a ruptured liver is no use to us!” she complained then, noticing his blank expression, shook her head dismissively and ordered: “Put him in the prep room with the others.”

John’s host was wheeled into a room with bright lighting. John could just about see, in his peripheral vision, other gurneys carrying bodies. All around him was the sound of ventilators and heartbeat monitors clicking, hissing and pinging, out of sync with each other.

It took John a moment