The Nightmare Game (11 page)

I crossed the street and stood in front of the
club’s now-closed door, feeling even more apprehensive about going in now than
I had before, but I swallowed my fear and approached it. A very large antique
iron door knocker, also painted black, was strategically placed in a bare spot
between the blood red lettering. A sign next to the door read “Private Club.
Please knock.” So Troy was right, this was a private club. But that was odd.
Like the bartender mentioned, why would a private club hand out leaflets on a
street corner advertising it? I suddenly felt even more intimidated, probably
because the guy that handed it to me was dead and I was most likely the only
person that got one. That thought made me want to turn tail and run as the full
weight of my mission began crashing down upon me. On the verge of losing my
resolution altogether, I grabbed the iron ring and knocked reluctantly. A
bouncer, a broad, boxy, very ugly thug with a pock-scarred face appeared.

“What’re you doin’ here?” he said brusquely, his
voice and manner even more offensive than his physical appearance.

“I’d like to come in. Why do you think I knocked?”
His rudeness was contagious and I found my attitude mirroring his own.

He pointed violently to the sign.

“What’s the matter, can’t you read? It says right
here,” he thumped the sign hard with a meaty forefinger, “Private Club. And you
ain’t a member. We don’t want no riff-raff, so go away!”

“I was told to come here!” I shouted back, my
anger rising fast. I pulled out the flyer from my jeans pocket, unfolded it and
shoved it into his face. “I was invited, you jerk!”

He tore the flyer from my hand and read it.

“So you got a flyer, so what? How do I know where
you got this from? You might a stole it, for all I know. Get lost.”

Roughly, he handed the flyer back to me but when
he did, I saw that he noticed the necklace I wore. He continued to look looked
mean but something had definitely taken the wind out of his sails.

 “OK, so you comin’ in or what?” His bark hadn’t
changed, but his facial expression no longer matched the ferocity of his voice.
He was noticeably flustered.

“Asshole,” I said under my breath just barely loud
enough for him to hear as I walked past him and into the club.

The nightclub turned out to be a fairly small
space that certainly lived up to its name. It looked a lot like the inside of a
tomb. The entire place was either stone or an extremely convincing faux stone
equivalent. Everything that wasn’t stone, such as the fixtures, appeared to be
heavy black wrought iron. The light, which had seemed brighter from the vantage
point of the dark street, was actually quite subdued. I could see no electric
light fixtures or outlets at all, even though subtle back lighting was evident
throughout the room. The only visible light sources were heavy, thick white
candles in black wrought iron holders affixed to the walls, candles that were
melted down from much use, their holders and the wax catchers just beneath them
covered with copious drippings. Filmy drapes resembling funeral shrouds were
artistically hung from the ceilings in the corners while cemetery angel statues
were placed around the club strategically, some freestanding, some adorning
narrow recesses. The wall to my right as I walked in was dominated by a deep,
arched alcove. Virtually a room unto itself, it was framed with shroud-like
curtains, now tied back, that looked as if they could be untied for extra
privacy. The alcove contained a large curved black sofa unit that hugged its
entire length, upon which were now sitting the group that had come in just
before me. In front of the sofa, or rather, within the empty space the curved
sofa provided, was an interesting oblong half table, also made of stone, oval
on one side, cut flush with the alcove’s entrance on the other. The soft
backlighting behind the sofa was unobtrusive and an array of the same thick
white candles, burnt down to different lengths, sat in a large, black, shallow,
oblong marble dish in the center of the table. While the atmosphere was gloomy
and definitely Goth, it was all so convincing that the effect was not in the
least Halloweenish, but rather, convincingly medieval. Except for the curtains
and the sofa, the inside of the club reminded me of old castles and ruins that
I’d once seen during a trip that I took to Europe many years ago. It wasn’t
just the decorating scheme, either; the place didn’t seem new, it genuinely
felt old and established. I was probably just sensing something that wasn’t
really there, because the man at the other bar was certain that in fifteen
years of working in the Quarter, private club or not, he had never once heard
of The Crypt.

There was only one barstool set out as an obvious
afterthought, for it was just a plain, regular stool that definitely, by any
stretch of the imagination, did not fit the rest of the immaculately executed
ambiance. I walked up to it and took my place at the bar, which reminded me of
a tall, narrow sarcophagus more than anything else. Behind the bar, instead of
the mandatory mirror amplifying the obligatory display of liquor bottles that
would normally sit at that post for enticement, there was an ancient looking
relief carving that ran the entire length of the wall. Trying to get acclimated
but feeling increasingly out of place, I figured that I could at least stare at
the intricate carving of multitudes being sentenced to hell and pretend to
study it as I tried desperately to establish a comfort zone. I looked over at
the beautiful people sitting on the sofa and realized that, like the barstool,
I didn’t fit in here at all either.

 The bouncer stepped behind the bar and asked me
what I wanted to drink. Apparently Mr. Wonderful also doubled as the bartender.
I remembered the warning not to drink anything that Rochere gave me, but I
looked around and her presence was nowhere to be seen. The place was so small
that unless she was hiding under the bar, she was blissfully absent. I actually
got up off the stool, leaned over and checked for her there. There was no
Rochere present.

“Whatcha think you’re doing?” the bartender said roughly.

“Just checking for something,” I said, trying not
to be embarrassed. The beautiful people were looking at me and whispering.

“Lookin’ for your lost youth?” the ugly,
pock-marked man said, smirking.

“How did you know?” I shot back. This jerk was definitely
not bringing out the best in me. “I thought I might find it in the same spot
where you lost all your looks.”

A few muffled giggles emerged from the gorgeous
crowd. I looked over at them and one, an incredibly handsome Asian fellow, gave
me the “thumbs up” sign. I breathed a little easier; I felt at least a little
less out of place now.

The bartender seemed far more humiliated than my
remark should have left him. He peered sheepishly at the clientele and I
realized that in his rudeness, he must have been trying to make points with
them. Too bad, I thought, he’d been nothing but nasty to me since I first met
him.

“Okay, Miss Smartass, whatcha drinkin’? If you
wanna stay in here, you gotta drink somethin’ or else it’s out with you.”

Even though I had no intention of drinking
anything, I ordered just to be able to remain in the club. I asked for a ginger
ale. They did not serve ginger ale here, he informed me. They also did not
serve, I found out, beer, wine, any mixed drink I asked for, club soda or water.
Fine establishment we have here, I thought to myself, with such an excellent
range of drink offerings.

“OK, mister, let’s make this simple.” I said, my
patience running out. “What
do
you serve?”

He pointed to the tables. “See what they’re
drinkin’? Well, that’s what we serve.”

I looked at the glasses of the others in the club
and all of the drinks were, for lack of a better word, fluorescent. As a matter
of fact, I had seen school crossing guards dressed in subtler colors. The
drinks were fluorescent orange and green, as well as day-glo hot pink, blue and
magenta. I turned back around to the bartender.

 “You’re kidding.” I said, matter of factly.

“No,” he said dryly. I got the feeling he never
kidded.

“You know, I don’t even know why I was supposed to
come here. Nothing’s happening and you don’t have anything to drink that looks
halfway appetizing,” I started to get off my stool to walk out.

“Hey, try one for free, on the house,” he said,
changing his tune, now trying to get me to stay. “They ain’t as bad as they
look. The drinks are really pretty good.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Go ahead and try one. It’s free. You don’t like
it, don’t drink it. Whatcha got to lose?”

It was beginning to look like I would have to wait
awhile to find out why I’d been sent here. As I sat, a mere mortal in the
company of a group of people that made even super models look dowdy, I had no
intention of drinking it but maybe it would help me feel a little more
comfortable at if I at least had a drink in my hand.

“Try a blue one, it’s the weakest one we serve,”
he suggested.

“Well, I’ll try a sip but I won’t promise I’ll
drink it.”

“Fair enough, but you’ll like it, trust me.”

Instead of mixing it up, he just pulled out a
large bottle of the stuff from underneath the bar, poured it into a glass over
ice and handed it to me.

“Ice,” I said. “You have ice but no water.”

He simply shrugged.

I really didn’t want to drink it, so I turned my
attention instead to the other side of the room. I felt so awkward sitting
here. I could not remember ever feeling as unattractive in my entire life as I
did right now. What made it even worse was that the beautiful people were still
looking me, too, and I realized that a few of them at the far end of the sofa,
a man and three dark haired women, were whispering, even pointing at me and
snickering. I knew I didn’t have my shirt on backwards and I knew my hair
wasn’t on fire, so I figured that they were probably making rude comments about
my not being supermodel material. The man, a Nordic blond with icy blue eyes
who, had his hair not been a wavy shoulder length, could easily have passed for
a Hitler youth, the ideal Nazi Übermensch. He looked me up and down, giving me
the once-over, making it obvious that he didn’t like what he saw; he sneered
disapprovingly before breaking eye contact. The three women, sitting next to
him, each with perfect Snow White coloring, fawned over him, leading me to
suspect that his opinion was usually their opinions. Most of the others just
glanced at me and seemed nice enough. One of them, though, a fine-boned blonde
girl who looked somewhat shy and embarrassed by the blond man, smiled at me
warmly. She was sitting at the other end of the sofa next to the most handsome
of them all, young man with dark hair and young Gregory Peck looks; he beamed
me a friendly, infectious smile as he raised his glass to me in an air toast.
Well, at least they weren’t all bad, I figured. But good grief, they were
awfully gorgeous, weren’t they? They were, as a group, really far too beautiful
to be true.

“So when are the camera people coming to shoot the
perfume ad?” I asked the bartender.

“Beg pardon?”

“Them. The people across the room.”

“Yeah, pretty, aren’t they?” the dark sarcastic
tone in his voice was impossible to miss.

“You don’t like them?”

“I just work here. It’s not up to me to like or
dislike anybody. They come in to party, I serve them drinks, that’s all that’s
to it.”

“Why are they all so beautiful?”

“Why not?”

“Because you don’t just get that many good looking
people in any one place at one time without having some regular people mixed
in, too. I mean, do they all work together for a modeling agency or something
like that?”

“Nope, they’re just pretty,” he replied, although
pretty really was a gross understatement as far as this lot were concerned.
Never in my entire life had I seen such intensely beautiful men and women, such
elegant, graceful people with such perfect posture. They almost seemed like a
separate species. The women were all so svelte, the men so well muscled; they
were all so young, not a single one seemed to be over twenty-five. Only the
ones that had snickered at me looked haughty. Had they not been so incredibly
beautiful that kind of arrogance would have detracted from their loveliness.
But theirs was the kind of beauty that was so extreme that nothing could have
detracted from it.

“So, you ain’t gonna try your drink?” the
bartender said.

“Umm, just haven’t gotten around to it yet,” I
lied, trying to avoid eye contact with the fluorescent liquid. I needed to
change the subject, so I decided to make some small talk. As time progressed I
started wondering more and more why I was even here. Was something supposed to
happen? Was someone going to come in that I was supposed to meet? The stunning
human scenery in the club was really only so interesting and I was beginning to
get fidgety.

“So what’s your name?” I asked the bartender.

“None of your business. Why should I tell you?”

“Because, buddy, in case you hadn’t noticed, you
and I are the only regular people in here.” I hated to lump myself in with this
hideous creature, who would not have been so repugnant had it not been for his
personality or lack thereof, but I was trying to get him to talk. Maybe he
could shed some light on what was going to happen.

“Name’s Max.”

“Hi, Max, I’m Ashley,” I said, reaching out my
hand.

“Nice to meet you, Ashley,” he replied, shaking my
hand. His manner in responding was odd, as if manners and pleasantries were
something very rusty, something he once knew, that he remembered from long ago
and was trying hard to recall.

“Hey, dog, you got a girlfriend now?” came the
loud, sassy remark from the blond Hitler youth in a mean, caustic tone.