The Nightmare Game (3 page)

Now that I had, for all intents and purposes,
memorized her office out of sheer boredom, I decided it was now time for me to
stand up and demand she hand over the apartment key. Enough was enough and she
was selfishly cutting into my vacation. I opened my mouth to speak, but before
I could, I was distracted by a change in the scent of the room. When I first
walked in, it was impossible not to notice the fragrance of the many flowers in
the vase on her desk. There were so many, the perfume was almost a little too
strong. But now the scent had changed and become a musty odor. The smell of the
flowers was still there, but it was rapidly intermixed with an undercurrent of
something dank, damp and dusty, something reminiscent of an old attic piled
high with moldy, nearly forgotten furnishings and memorabilia, the attic of
someone who had died years ago but whose effects no one ever bothered to clear
out. The atmosphere suddenly seemed overpowering and stifling. I tried not to
breathe in too deeply, but even so the dense smell engulfed me until I felt
suddenly shifted outside of time. Speaking seemed to take too much effort and I
was too lightheaded to get up. I was getting dizzy, so I tried even harder to
focus my concentration upon the physical aspects of the room in an attempt to
calm myself. But the more I tried to rely on my senses, the more woozy I
became. I attempted to center myself by fixing my gaze on the carved serpents
adorning the front of Rochere’s heavy desk, only to find that no sooner had I
done this than the relief-carved snakes began to “swim” and to twist upon each
other as if they were alive.

I must be overtired. Get
a grip, Ashley
, I rationalized to myself. A horrible new thought entered
my mind. Was I really just overtired or had someone aboard my flight had an
exotic new disease that the nightly news had yet to warn us all about? Maybe
this was serious. I was getting scared. I blinked my eyes and shook my head.
When I looked back at the desk, instead of stopping, this movement of the
serpents, which was surely an optical illusion, became even more animated, more
violent as the snakes turned upon themselves and began to consume each other,
starting with the tails. I looked up again at the woman behind the desk,
feeling sick, having a little difficulty swallowing, wondering just how long
would she keep me waiting, feeling that maybe if she acknowledged me I might be
able to get my orientation back and feel better enough to make these
hallucinations stop. I needed to get that damned key, make it to the apartment
and lie down on a bed. I opened my mouth to demand that she hand it over, but I
only weakly got the word “key” out of my mouth and was unable to finish the
rest of the sentence. She appeared not to hear me and I didn’t know if she was
still ignoring me or if I had just spoken too softly. Key or no key, I would
have left right there and then but I didn’t have the strength to get up out of
my chair. The surviving snake on the front of her desk had turned into one
enormous snake and hissing, struck out at me, somewhat leaving the confines of
its desk. Startled, I jumped backward toward the rear of my chair as far as my
waning strength would let me. That wasn’t standard behavior for office
furniture. I was either getting sick or going crazy. The smell then got even
stronger. Rochere didn’t seem to notice it. It was so overpowering, how could
she not notice?

I tried to pull myself together by analyzing the
situation. What was it about the smell that I found so offensive? What was it
about the odor that was making me feel so ill? Generally I found the aroma of
flowers pleasant and that of musty, dusty old attics, while not desirable, at
least interesting. But this was something different. Flowers, yes, and dust and
mildew, but something else, something familiar that I hadn’t smelled in years,
something from my school years. Suddenly the memory came to me. Formaldehyde.
The vision sat before me clearly of poor dead things in my eighth grade biology
class stuffed into gallon glass jars and stuck on a shelf. With a dizzying
revelation, I recognized it was the smell of death, the odors of an ancient
funeral parlor, the smell of flowers mixed with dust and embalming fluid that
was making me sick. Rochere still didn’t seem to notice it at all. Was it just
me? Was I imagining this? Had I really caught a new virus? Did I have food
poisoning from something bad I’d eaten at the airport this morning? Horrible
thoughts hit my mind. Was I going into anaphylactic shock from an allergic
reaction? Was I having a heart attack?

Without warning, nausea engulfed me, but as I
tried to shift in my chair, I realized that my feet were trapped. I panicked.
Something was tying them down while something else was crawling on me.
Suddenly, the crawling something began to bite like fire ants. I jumped. As I
looked down, I saw that the plush white carpet had completely consumed my feet
while its little Oriental snakes were now slithering up my legs. With long
tongues swishing away, tickling my lower extremities as if they were creeping
insects, they bit me with their sharp little fangs, leaving behind tiny spots
of my blood. I cried out, but when I did, no sound emerged. I bent over and
brushed them off of me and thankfully, they slid away.

In shock now, my eyes implored Rochere to
acknowledge me, but she did not look up. In panic I looked around and, to my
horror, the wallpaper began to move. The vines slid down out of their patterns
and crept toward me. Now buried above the ankles, my feet were sinking ever
more deeply into the plush carpet, as if it were rising water, and the now
returning snakes were joined by the wallpaper vines in slinking and swirling
and twisting up my legs, higher and higher. I needed to get up, to run away,
but I was trapped. When I tried to swat everything away again, the tiny
hummingbirds flew off the wallpaper toward me, swarming about my head like
mosquitoes. Then something sharp grabbed my hands. It was the carved claws of
the chair, clutching my hands, then my forearms, crawling up as their thin
wooden strips wrapped around my arms the same way the vines wrapped around my
legs, gluing me to and imprisoning me in this chair. Trapped, I could only
thrash about in what was rapidly becoming a seat of torture as the little
snakes began biting my legs again. Berserk from pain and panic, driven almost
to madness, I looked around wildly for help from any source. Instead, the
drawers in the heavy black armoire next began to move, pursing themselves into
lips. A dark, deep, evil voice came out of them saying, “You shouldn’t have
come here. You should have stayed home.” “He’s right, you know,” something else
concurred. My head swung around to see the large garden-sized Greek-style bust
of a youth agreeing with him. “This is what you get,” it said in a low,
breathy, accusatory voice, “for sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong. For
not staying home.” My brain screamed in terror. This was impossible! How could
it be happening? Just when I thought things could get no worse, I saw, from the
corner of my eye, the ornamental wooden crown of the chair elongate and come
round to my front, wrapping itself around my neck as it began to choke me. I
couldn’t breathe. I thrashed around as wildly as I possibly could, being pinned
down so, but still Rochere took no notice of me. Overwhelming horror possessed
me. I was being murdered, right here, right now by, of all things, a chair,
wallpaper and carpeting.

Then I heard a little bell ring. The tiny portion
of my brain that could still think as I writhed in place, trapped, fighting for
air, wondered if it was yet another cruel trick or if there really was someone
at the door.
Please be somebody, please!
I
prayed. I tried to call for help, but the strong rope of wood, tightening about
and squeezing my windpipe, silenced me as it attempted to crush my throat. I
could feel my eyes bulge from the strangulation as I closed them and willed for
help as hard as I could.
Help me, please help me
,
I thought with all my might.
Rescue me! I’m in here!
I’m in here! Help! Save me!

“Hello, is anybody here?”
Thank God. He’s real!
I thought as I heard a man’s
voice yell from the front room. The wood enclosing my neck tightened further as
if in an attempt to finish me off before anyone could make the quick trip from
the front office down the hall.

“Hello?” the voice got louder. He was coming down
the short hallway. I could hear his footsteps. The pressure on my neck
lessened. I could feel my bonds fall away in seconds. The room returned to
normal. The death flower scent was gone.

“Hi!” A young man peeked timidly in the doorway.

I looked at him, relieved beyond measure. I rubbed
my throat, then my arms and legs. I looked around the room where everything
seemed to be the same as it was when I first walked in. Had I hallucinated the
whole experience?

“May I help you, young man?” Rochere asked coldly,
visibly annoyed at being disturbed.

“Yes, does a Gilda work here?”

“No one by that name works here. Whatever would
make you think so?”

“It’s just that I ran into her last week. She told
me she was working here.”

“Last week? Oh, yes, I did have one of those
‘temps’ here helping me part-time then. I never bother to learn their names.”

“I’m a friend of hers from high school, you see.
I’m in town for a just few days. I heard she worked here and just thought I’d
look her up. I ...”

“This is a place of business, young man, not a
high school reunion.”

“I know that,” he said, still smiling, apparently
unscathed. “It’s just that I’m only in for the weekend and I thought she might
want to get together later.”

“Well, you’re too late. I suppose that Gilda will
have to live at least a little bit longer without the pleasure of your company.
I’m afraid you’ve missed her.”

“Bummer,” said the young man, his high spirits
flagging somewhat. “Think she’ll ever come to work for you again?”

“I seriously doubt it. In all these years, I
rarely see the same temporary worker a second time,” said Rochere, harshly.
“Now, you will excuse me because, as you can see, I have a client with me.” I
was surprised she had actually remembered me.

“Okay,” he said, still standing in the doorway.

“So I guess you’ll be going now then,” Rochere
replied irritably.

I was not about to let him go out without me, but
before I could say anything he looked at me and said, “Hey, ma’am, you look a
little green around the gills. Are you okay?”

“Not really!” relieved I didn’t have to bring it
up myself. I needed to say something that would make him stay. “I think I may
have eaten something that didn’t agree with me at the airport before I left
home.”

“Pity,” said Rochere, as if she didn’t think it
was a pity at all.

“I’m not sure I can make it alone to the apartment
I’m renting,” I said to him in a weak voice that was more imploring than I had
intended. “Would it be too much bother for you if I asked you to help me?” I
knew it sounded desperate asking a complete stranger to walk me to my rental
apartment. While I was recovering very rapidly from the worst of the attack, I
still felt delicate and somewhat sick, as if I were getting ready to come down
with a bad flu. I didn’t trust myself to be able to walk the few blocks alone.
I still could not absorb what had just happened.

“Sure, glad to,” he said.

I looked down at my arms and legs to see how bad
the bruising was, but there was no sign of my having been trussed so tightly.
I
must
have been
hallucinating
, I thought to myself, as my skin, which marked so easily,
showed no evidence of trauma. What was going on? I had to get out of here. I
refused to be left alone with Rochere again.

“Can you wait here for me to finish?” I asked him.
“It shouldn’t take long.

“Take your time, ma’am. I’m in no hurry.”

“Thank you.” There was no way for him to know just
how truly thankful I was.

“There’s no need for that,” Rochere replied,
sounding for all the world as if she were someone whose opinion counted to me.
“I close early on Fridays. I will walk you there myself.”

“No, I’ll take this gentleman up on his offer.” I
told her. I turned to him and said, imploring, “Can you please wait for me?”

“Sure,” the young man said cheerfully, not budging
an inch. “I don’t mind helpin’ at all.”

“You don’t know where it is,” said Rochere, almost
grating her teeth.

“Hey, I grew up in the city,” he replied. “Just
give me the address and I can find just about any place.”

“Surely, you don’t trust a complete stranger…”
Rochere said to me in a tone of voice that implied he would strangle me the
minute we turned the corner.

“He looks trustworthy to me,” I snapped back at
her. Having almost been strangled once, I figured the odds of it happening
twice in one day were pretty slim.

“I suppose
some
people would trust almost anyone these days,” she admonished me in a voice that
implied I would be rubbish if I were to trust a strange man.

“I know him as well as I know you,” I said edgily,
“and frankly, I like him a lot better so far than I do you.” The long wait, the
hallucination and feeling ill had taken all the patience I had out of me. “Now,
I’ve been here long enough. Let’s say we get this show on the road and you give
me the key.” I wiped sweat off my forehead, which was hot and clammy. I was
running a fever and I had to lie down soon.

“You’ll have to wait awhile for her while I get
the paperwork done,” she pointedly told the young man. “I’ll understand if you
prefer not to stick around.”

“Not a problem,” he said unflappably, “Happy to
wait, happy to help.” He grinned and winked at me with an expression that read
that he wouldn’t want to be left alone with Rochere either.