The Nightmare Game (20 page)

“What’s the matter?” she asked after taking one
look at me. “You’re white as a piece of paper. Why, you’re trembling.”

“Nothing,” I lied. My voice, like the rest of me,
was shaking horribly.

“Hey, that’s not nothing. You were okay when you
were in the apartment. What happened?”

“Really, Brenda, it’s like I said, nothing. Just a
bad case of those heebie-jeebies again, I think.” I locked the sliding glass
door intently as I talked to her, afraid that if I looked her in the face, my
eyes would give too much away. “I had a panic attack. That’s all. I’m prone to
them.”

“You sure? You really sure that’s all it is?” She
was less than convinced.

“Yeah, it got cramped in there. It’s a small
bathroom and I’ve got a touch of claustrophobia. And I think I’m still a little
hung over from last night. I’ll be fine. I just need to get out a little and
get some fresh air.”

“Okay, if you say so.”

I collected myself, got the trembling under
control as best I could and forced a smile.

I put the key back into my pocket, but as I turned
to face the courtyard to walk out, I received yet another shock. Instead of the
pristine building with the lush garden that I remembered from yesterday, I now
saw the house as Brenda had described it. This was not the sight that had
greeted me the day before, not even the house represented on the web site. What
stood before me was a run-down, neglected structure. While it wasn’t exactly
derelict, it was obvious that only the absolute minimum upkeep had barely been
done over the decades to keep the building from being condemned. Poorly
painted-over water lines marked the bottom of the house like tree rings, a
testament to various floods from various hurricanes over the decades. The
wrought iron staircase leading up to the second floor was in disrepair, chained
from use by a heavy, rusted chain with a corroded sign hanging from it that
declared “Keep Out.” The outer wooden staircase going up to the third floor, so
crisply and freshly painted white when I saw it yesterday afternoon, was
stripped of all but a few splotches of paint. Some of its boards were missing
altogether. When I looked up I saw that the window glass of all the floors
except the apartment was replaced with unpainted plywood. Old set-in water
discolorations trickled down the sides of all outer windows, giving them the
tear-stained appearance of weeping, blinded eyes. Weeping for whom, I wondered.
For Edmond? For me? For everyone who had ever gotten pulled into this hellish
game? Chills shot down my back. I walked slowly toward the courtyard garden
which was as shocking a sight as the house. Instead of the lush flora that I
remembered from late yesterday afternoon, the only plants that now haunted the
courtyard were extremely dead. Even the shrubs that would normally be surviving
in late October, even those that required minimal or no maintenance were all
dead. Everything was brown and withered, to such an extent there were even no
weeds. Why no weeds, I wondered. This courtyard was worse than abandoned. In
Louisiana, with the rain and humidity, nature took back its abandoned. But not
here. Nothing grew; everything was dead.

“What the…?” I said, shocked.

“Something wrong?”

“The house, the garden, it all looks so different
than it did yesterday.”

“Is it that big of a difference?”

“Yes,” I said, still not believing my eyes. I
wanted to tell her how beautiful it all looked and what an amazing difference
it was, but I decided not to. It would do no good. “You were right, Brenda, it
does look a lot better at night. By day it’s even worse than on the website.”

She chuckled. “I know. I’ve seen the website. I
think they took an old picture and photoshopped it. I think they even did a
copy-paste on the courtyard and stuck in somebody else’s plants.”

“Really. I can see that the house is neglected,
but what’s going on with the garden?” I asked. “I’ve never seen anything so
dead in this part of the state.”

“I know. I mean, we get enough rain here, at least
something should grow. I can’t figure it out. It’s been a puzzle to me since I
started cleaning the place. I actually tried planting a few really hardy plants
here myself because it just looks so darn sad. I’m really great with plants
everywhere else, I’ve got a super green thumb, but nothing I planted here ever
took. Rochere said that it was the soil, that some tenant had poisoned the
ground at one time with a plant poison so lethal that it would probably be
decades before anything would grow here again.”

“That sounds like a reasonable explanation,” I
said, playing dumb.

Brenda shook her head. “That’s not it. I bought
that explanation myself when she first told me. But a friend of mine, a real
plant freak, moved out of town and couldn’t take with her all the potted plants
she had in her apartment, so she gave the bulk of her collection to me. I
didn’t have room for all of them cause her place was so much bigger than mine,
so I brought some of them here in their pots. Didn’t transplant them, mind you,
just left them in their pots. When I got here the next day, they were all dead,
just like the rest of the garden. It really creeped me out.”

“Do you think that maybe whoever poisoned the
garden may have snuck back and poisoned those plants as well?” It was a
reasonable assumption. Wrong, I knew, but I was just playing devil’s advocate.

“That’s what I thought, too, at first. But the day
after they died, I took them home. Most of them I just threw away, but there
were a few that I held onto because they were in really great containers I
wanted to keep. I’d made plans to throw out the plants and the soil, since I
was sure it had been poisoned, wash out the pots really well and use them again
for something else. I mean, the containers I really liked weren’t too porous,
so I figured I could reuse them. But then the funniest thing happened.”

“What was that?”

“Well, I took them home with me at my regular
time, in the evening, right about this time of day and set them out on the
balcony at my apartment over night. The next day, every single one of them had
new growth. It wasn’t even on the heartier plants like the ivies and the
philodendrons; it was some of the more delicate ones too, the types that are
harder to grow. Once they got out of this courtyard, they came back with a
vengeance. I thought they were all so dead that I’d just have to throw them
away, but I still have those plants and to this day, they’re all doing great. I
don’t know, Ashley, poisoned soil doesn’t act that way.”

“Did you try it with the other plants here?”

“Yeah, I wanted to know what was going on. So I
took some of the dead roots from the garden and transplanted them at home. But
nothing took. I think this stuff’s just been dead too long. I don’t know what
it is, but just between you and me and the lamppost, from time to time, I’ve
seen some trash or something laid out way back over there,” she pointed to a
spot by the far end of the old slave quarters. “It had a black circle drawn
around it. Now I don’t know if it was some kind of hoodoo curse or something,
but that sure would make sense.

“Now you promise not to breath a word of what I
tell you?” She was leaning in now, whispering. I nodded. “You know how I said
that I heard something coming from upstairs a few times before?”

“Yes, and looking at the house in the daylight now
I can see why it would spook you,” I said, realizing that yesterday I’d only
seen an image of the house that someone, and I didn’t know who, had wanted me
to see instead of the truth.

“Just from my experience with this garden, well, I
don’t know what it was, but I really don’t think it was squatters or
transients. I don’t think this place even has rats. At least not live ones. I
guess this place is okay for vacationers, to stay a week maybe, even though
nobody ever stays here longer than a few days. Hardly anybody ever stays for
their entire rental agreement and I can’t say I blame them. Anyway, I can’t
help but think that if anybody or anything ever actually tried to live here on
a more permanent basis, well, I don’t think they could. Live here, that is. I
think they’d die, just like the plants. If the cops or someone ever found
anybody or anything here, I think they’d just find bones. I don’t think that
anything could stay here for long. At least not alive.”

Brenda had been caught up in her own tale and
then, suddenly, snapped out of it.

“Oh, I’m sorry. I forgot who I was talking to! I
mean, I can talk like this to my friends, it’s just like telling a tall tale or
an urban legend, but I am so sorry about talking to you like this. I know if I
were staying here alone, I wouldn’t appreciate somebody running off at the
mouth, telling me creepy stories about the place I was staying at. Please,
forget I said anything. My imagination starts to run away with me here. I don’t
know why, it just does.”

“No, that’s alright. I appreciate a good story.” I
didn’t want her to stop. I needed all the information that I could get at this
point. “I’ll remember it anytime I’m sitting around a camp fire.” I tried to
make light of it, to keep her talking. Her stories had me terrified, because I
knew that the forces causing her concerns were very real. I couldn’t let on,
though, because that would have shut her up for sure.

I walked toward the old servant’s quarters
stairwell and looked up at it. It was dark there, with a aura of always being
imbedded in shadow. I walked into those shadows so that my eyes could adjust.

“I wouldn’t go up there if I was you,” Brenda
cautioned. “Rochere warned me that violators would be persecuted. I laughed
when she said it, cause I thought she meant prosecuted, but by the look on her
face I could tell that, man, she wasn’t kidding. I’ve never actually gone up
into that section myself. It was never tempting in the first place, but after
that threat, no way!”

“Oh,” I said casually, “I’m not about to go up
there.” Even without Rochere’s threats, those stairs looked dangerous enough on
their own now that the illusion was gone. I wondered how I’d managed yesterday.
Virginia had probably guided me up a safe path without my even knowing. “I just
wanted to take a peek.”

“Well, sure,” Brenda acquiesced, “I guess just a
peek wouldn’t hurt.”

When my eyes grew used to the darkness, I saw
that, barricading the door that I’d walked through from the quarters into the
house proper was a barrier, sloppily yet thoroughly nailed shut with several
old and warped two by fours, held in place with thick, thoroughly rusted nails.
All the doors that lead from this part of the house to the next, on either
side, were the same. Condition of the staircase aside, how on earth had I ever
even entered the upper house yesterday? How had we gotten through those boards?

“Um, I hate to rush you,” Brenda said. “But I
really need to be going now.”

“Oh, yeah,” I said, snapping out of my thoughts,
my mind returning to the moment. “Sorry, Brenda.”

We walked through the gate and shut it behind us.

“Listen,” she said to me as we faced the street.
“I’m sorry I told you all of that crap. That was very inappropriate of me and I
feel terrible about it. I’ve been known to talk a blue streak before, but I
don’t know what made me shoot my mouth off like I did today. I sure hope that
you don’t get too spooked tonight because of it.”

I gave her a smile that held far more reassurance
than I felt. “Like I said, don’t worry about it. I enjoyed listening. I’ve
always been one to enjoy a juicy piece of gossip. It was fun. And I promise, my
lips are sealed.”

I wasn’t completely lying. Aside from Troy, Brenda
was the only normal person that I’d spent time with since arriving at Rochere’s
office. There was a lot to be said about conversing with the living. I also
appreciated any new light that anyone could shed upon the nature of this
bizarre endeavor within which I was trapped.

“Thanks a lot. I might see you Monday then. Bye.”

“Bye,” I said back, wondering what the events
between tonight and Monday would bring.

We parted and went our separate ways; she turned
to the right as I turned to the left toward Bourbon, walking away from The
Crypt rather than toward it. It was still late afternoon and I figured that I
probably had a few hours left before my next showdown with Rochere and her
forces. I had no more of an inkling of what I should do than I did yesterday or
of what would happen next; still, I knew that again I had no choice but to let
my feet return me to The Crypt tonight.

I knew I should have gone in the same direction as
Brenda. I didn’t, though, because again I really needed to put off the
inevitable just a little bit longer. I knew that I had no choice but to go back
into that horrible club and I was fully aware of the duty that rested on my
shoulders; I just wasn’t ready to face it yet. In my heart, I knew that I would
never be. I was overwhelmed, tired of the burden already and I had not yet even
begun to fight this challenge in earnest. I was tired of The Crypt, I was tired
of the apartment, tired of the whole damn thing. Why couldn’t this be a simple
nightmare so that I could just wake up and go home?

I needed some normalcy around me so that I could
think. My first instinct was to hit a bar and get drunk. I had no real courage
of my own, so perhaps the liquid variety would suffice. I could already feel
Edmond’s courage in me wearing off and I really didn’t want to face whatever
was in store for me stone cold sober. But I decided against it. I’d need my
wits about me tonight. I simply needed a place, any place, to be alone to
think. I needed to sift through some of the madness that had now become my
world. I’d barely awakened from my second dream when Brenda arrived and, as
welcome as the normalcy she’d injected into the insane asylum that was now my
life had been, I’d had no opportunity to process any of the information that
Edmond passed on to me. So instead of a bar, I popped into a coffee shop, sat
down and looked at the menu on the board. I was still uncharacteristically full
from the half a sandwich and pudding I’d eaten at the apartment, so I just
ordered a cup of coffee. Maybe the caffeine would sharpen my brain and give me
a little edge. I laughed at that thought. Edge? What edge? Who was I kidding?
Like a simple cup of coffee could make any difference in this impossible,
perverse situation. Unless it was magic coffee made with magic beans, there
wasn’t a thing it could do except, perhaps, give me an excuse to delay the
inevitable for a little bit longer.

The waitress brought over my cup and set it on the
table. After adding some cream and sugar, I blew on it awhile until it was cool
enough to drink. Coffee in hand, I sipped it in solitude, realizing that I
couldn’t put off thinking about my night ahead any longer. I wished that Edmond
could have told me exactly what lay before me. All I knew was that Rochere had
a full bag of tricks and there was no telling which ones she would pull out to
use on me. The healing dreams he’d brought to me held warnings, but they’d been
vague, far too vague, for me to make any practical use of them. I needed
specifics, I needed a definite, sure-fire, step-by-step, easy-to-follow plan,
with each step clearly outlined. Oh, hell, who was I kidding? Even that
wouldn’t be enough. This endeavor called for somebody else, somebody completely
different from myself, somebody more fit and more qualified to execute it. It
always came back to that, didn’t it? It always came back to my own lack of
suitability for this impossible assignment. This battle demanded a person with
a sense of adventure which I did not possess. It required someone who was a
thrill-seeker, not a homebody like me. It was all I could do to keep from
freaking out just thinking about it. No, I just wasn’t up to it. I was no
heroine, just your basic, garden-variety coward. I’d never been happy about
being a coward and I wished I could change it, but I knew myself well enough and
that was who and what I was.

Lack of enough information had managed also to
turn this nasty struggle into a game of cat-and-mouse, an enigma whose real
mystery was not just how to win, but also how to stay alive long enough to do
it. I hated mysteries, at least in real life, because I was no good at solving
them; my mind simply didn’t work that way. Oh, I adored a good mystery novel or
movie; there was no risk, it was all make-believe. In the final scene the
handy-dandy detective, professional or amateur, always came through to solve
the crime. There were no loose ends, no guilty parties left unpunished. But
this wasn’t fiction. This was my life; it was on the line and I sure as hell
was no detective.

While constructing my list of inadequacies, I
realized that I would be remiss to leave out the fitness requirements. This
endeavor cried out frantically for someone who was up to the challenge
physically, for there was an obvious need for a great deal of energy, stamina
and co-ordination. I’d almost failed phys ed in school, besides which, I tired
easily. Even though Edmond had said that the amulet would help me in that
department, I doubted that anything truly could help me that much. Yep, when it
came to the physical requirements alone, I was a complete wash-out. This game
really needed a disclaimer: “couch potatoes need not apply”.

Yet Edmond had such high hopes for me. He seemed
to be under the misguided assumption that I was the very best candidate for
this job. Poor Edmond. He knew me only from my dreams. In this situation, that
was tantamount to not knowing me at all, for in dreams, the laws of physics do
not apply. Anyone can be a secret agent in their dreams. My thoughts came full
circle as once again, I desperately longed for a game plan. What the heck was I
supposed to do? How the heck was I supposed to win? It was maddening and I was
driving myself crazy just thinking about it. If I only knew, then maybe I’d
have more conviction than I did now, more confidence in myself, but as it was I
merely being pushed and prodded by forces over which I had no control
whatsoever. Only the tiniest pieces of the puzzle were being thrown at me
without even so much as a picture on the box to show me how to put it all
together. How the hell was I going to figure this out? I simply did not have
enough information with which to work! Besides not drinking anything or
removing the necklace, I knew only three things. First, not only was Edmond in
trouble, but also, it seemed, the entire world. Hey, no pressure there. That in
and of itself was enough to scare me shitless and back under the covers.
Second, Rochere was something truly evil, what it was, I didn’t know. She was
not human, virtually indestructible, and had supernatural powers. Still, no
pressure, right? Third, if I didn’t solve this puzzle and win, I was a dead
woman.

I could not do this. For the briefest of moments,
out of sheer desperation, I had the same lame idea I’d had earlier of calling
the cops into this, but no sooner had that crossed my mind than I dismissed it
just as quickly. Of course that would do no good. If all the world powers using
all the weapons of mass destruction at their disposal couldn’t stop her, I
really didn’t think that the N.O.P.D. would have much of a chance. If it was
that easy, this battle would have ended a long time ago. Apparently, only the
wearer of the amulet had any chance of winning and defeating Rochere and I was
the lucky lady that had landed that booby prize. Besides, the cops would
probably just throw me into Mandeville or some other mental health facility for
my trouble, where they’d slap me in a padded cell and pump me up with
thorazine, where I’d be left to wait helplessly for Rochere to come by and
finish me off. No, the old science fiction movies were right – it ain’t easy
convincing a disbelieving world. I quickly abandoned this line of thinking
altogether; it was pointless. I had no choice but to handle this one alone.
Poor Edmond, again I thought as a feeling of hopelessness washed over me, did
you ever put your money on the wrong horse this time.

I couldn’t even bring myself to think about the
vortex in the shower from which I had so narrowly escaped only a few short
hours ago. It seemed unreal to me now, a bad dream from which I’d awakened
rather than the alternate reality that it truly had been. I wondered why I was
not more traumatized by it now. Probably for just that reason, it didn’t feel
real. I’d been worse than injured in that experience, I’d been maimed. By all
reason, with those horrible injuries, I should have died on that bathroom floor
or at the very least, had paramedics reached me in time, been disabled for the
rest of my life. But here I sat now, sipping on a cup of coffee without a mark
on my body, physically no worse for the wear. It really was like a nightmare,
wasn’t it, a nightmare in which horrible things happen to you but when you wake
up, you are whole and unscathed, untouched. What forces were these that were at
play for both good and evil? They were strong indeed and those that were there
for my benefit seemed to rival those that were working against me. I felt
tremendously better when I realized this. No matter how much I wanted to deny
it, I had to face the fact that, as desperate as I was to go home, playing this
nightmarish game, while it would probably wind up killing me, also held my only
real chance of survival. Others had been telling me this all along, but I now
knew it deep within myself. I was at last convinced.

An uncharacteristic pluck stirred in me. Maybe I
didn’t know what kind of game I was trapped in, but I suddenly realized, for
the very first time, that I was a player and not just a victim. I was a player
with a very powerful ally on my side, an ally for whom I cared deeply. Even if
I couldn’t do this for myself or even for the world, I knew I had to stay and
fight for Edmond. He needed me. My thoughts kept returning to him and to the
wonderful curative dreams that he sent me to mend all of the wounds that
Rochere had inflicted. He was counting on me and I couldn’t let him down. When
we spoke in my dreams, the look in his eyes, begging me to stay, begging me to
rescue him, hounded me. Whenever I thought of Edmond any coldness I felt left
me and I became warm again. I’d fallen in love with him; I couldn’t deny it.
Even though I’d never met him in the real world, he had taken possession of my
heart, of that I was sure. He was in trouble, deep, deep trouble and right now
I was the only one who could help him, the only one who could rescue him. I
closed my eyes and as I fingered the dragon necklace I resolved to continue
this quest. I had to come through for him, I just had to.

Determined now to go forward, I paid the waitress
and left the café. The quickest way for me to get there from my present
location was to walk down Bourbon again, the route with which I was familiar. I
figured that Ursuline, bustling with pedestrian traffic now, would be a safe
route to take alone this time of the day. I walked down Bourbon with a new
sense of purpose. I was going back to The Crypt and I was going to get this
over with one way or another.

I reached Ursuline before I realized it. My
newfound boldness, which I contributed to the dream energy that Edmond had
given me, evaporated quickly as I stood at the corner, staring down it. My feet
refused to turn that corner, refused to walk upon the street which housed my
destination. I felt a strong, evil force oozing toward me from the direction of
The Crypt. I thought back to the bravado that had been with me until just
seconds ago. What was I thinking? Was I crazy? I couldn’t do this, not even
with Edmond’s abilities to heal me, not even with whatever protection that this
necklace was supposed to offer. I’d seen Rochere, I’d dealt with her already.
To be more accurate, she had dealt with me and very powerfully, as a matter of
fact. Who did I think I was? Jack the Giant Killer? I continued staring down
Ursuline, a sick feeling in the root of my stomach. I had a feeling, a
premonition almost, that I would soon be attending my own funeral. I decided
that if I had no choice now except to be the guest of honor at that auspicious
event, I’d prefer to have the precipitating events befall me at home. If it
were inevitable, it might as well happen in a comfortable environment. An
intense urge to flee overtook me even more strongly than it had yesterday.
Home, I had to go home. The overwhelming need to escape overrode all else. I
turned, walking as fast as I could in the direction from which I’d just come.
My walk turned into a run. I was attracting attention, people were staring, but
I didn’t care. I had to get out of here, I had to go home. Whatever happened
next, I didn’t care, I just had to get home.

Everything around me was nothing but a blur. I had
just enough of my wits about me to avoid barely getting hit by several cars
while crossing the side streets. I’d gone a few blocks up Bourbon before a
strong hand grabbed my arm, stopping me cold. I spun around to see who it was
that had the audacity to hold me back, to delay my escape.

Stringy dirty-blond hair framed the young face. He
was so young, I realized, only sixteen, maybe seventeen years at most. I hadn’t
noticed that on our first meeting. I knew what he wanted, so I wrestled with
all my might to get away from him. His grasp on my arm was strong; I couldn’t break
his hold. He held my stare with an almost hypnotic grip.

“Where d’you think you’re goin’?” he said, as if I
were a child he’d caught shoplifting.

“Home.”

“You know you’ll die if you run, don’t you?”

“I don’t care anymore.”

“You’ll be takin’ a lot of people with you.”

I stopped struggling. “I know,” I said, suddenly
ashamed. “I’ll only be able to help them if I win.”

“So stay. Keep goin’. You don’t have anything to
lose.”

“No, I’m afraid,” I said, still struggling to get
loose of his grasp.

“You gotta listen to me, to us. Your life depends
on it.”

“I know, I know. I didn’t really get it before,
but I do now because I’ve talked it over with...”

“The guy in the paintin’,” he cut me off. Yeah, I
figured or else you wouldn’t be here. You’d a’been already flushed down that
drain a few hours ago. But looks to me like you’re no worse for the wear, now.
Good thing that the necklace didn’t take your pretty little head right off,
ain’t it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t tell me you didn’t feel it strangle you.”

“Of course, I felt something strangle me. It was
that evil woman.”