The Nightmare Game (56 page)

“How do I get there?”

“You don’t. You gotta wait for her to bring you to
him.”

Max picked up a glass and started to wipe it
forcefully, as if trying to wipe away his past mistakes. By the way he did it,
I knew he did that often.

“I was handsome before she came along,” he said,
more to himself than to me. “People told me so. She won’t kill me, you know.
She just keeps playin’ with me like I was her own personal pile of playdough,
makin’ me better when she’s happy, makin’ me worse when she’s pissed.

“Shit, I was really goin’ somewhere before all
this started. I used to play for the minors, but it was just a matter of time
before I hit the majors. I had talent, dammit, real freakin’ talent.

“She ruined my life and that necklace with its
cursed amulet ruined my life. I coulda, woulda been somebody if I’d never gone
to that damn apartment. And look at me now. On top of it all, she wound up
killin’ my girl anyway.

“I used to be handsome, you know that?” he said,
as if remembering I was there. “You know that ever since she got her hooks into
me, no woman’s touched me? Can you blame them, though, I mean? No woman’s ever
looked at me with love, only with repulsion. Or, if they’re really nice, with
pity. No woman’s ever kissed me since Gizelle. Arrosha killed her anyway and
now I wish she would have killed me, too. Heck I wish she’d kill me now. I wish
somebody would. Then I wouldn’t have to live like this anymore. Death would be
a blessing to me, a real freakin’ blessing.”

Max wandered off somewhere in his mind at this
point, no longer talking or even looking at me. He merely wiped the counter as
big tears welled up in his eyes until they rolled down his cheeks.

He kept going over that same spot on the counter,
lost in his activity until suddenly he looked up, startled, an old fear showing
in his eyes.

“She’s ready for you now. She’s finished with her
preparations and you can go on in. Might as well and get it over with.”

I got up from the barstool and shook his hand. He
seemed overly grateful for such a small gesture.

“It’s been nice to meet you, Max,” was all I said.

“Same here,” he responded, but the surprise on his
face said it all. He was someone who had been so long abused and who needed
someone, anyone, just to show him a little kindness. He smiled broadly at me, a
smile that looked grotesque upon a face that Arrosha had purposely engineered
never to smile.

I went through the door and into the tiny room
where three doors had once stood, then two. Now only one door remained, the
door that I now knew would seal my fate forever. It would be all or nothing
tonight, victory or doom. There would be absolutely nothing in between.

As I stared at that third and only remaining door
for a few long minutes, I wondered what terrors awaited me on the other side
this time. I turned the knob slowly, for it was with caution that I entered, remembering
what happened to me when I entered the previous doors. If the floor went out
from under me or if I was met by immense suction again, I wanted to be at least
somewhat prepared.

Thankfully, however, I didn’t get sucked into the
room and the floor stayed put. I entered into a perfectly plain room without
fanfare, a narrow room quite a bit longer than it was wide, incredibly ordinary
and unremarkable. It was white, an incredibly ordinary and unremarkable shade
of white. It was not blinding blue-white or even white-white, but rather the
same, nondescript off-white as the inside of a cheap apartment. It was well but
blandly lit, with no perceivable light source. And, save for an equally bland
bench and box, the room was completely empty. The bench was the kind that
opened for storage and could easily have served as storage for toys, linens and
the like, but when I walked over to inspect it, it was empty. The box, which
sat at the other end of the room opposite the bench, was cardboard and very
large, the sort that might have housed an expensive refrigerator in a past
incarnation. Someone had neatly cut a door, now closed, into the side facing
the bench. Both the bench and the box were painted the same bland off-white as
the walls and ceiling.

After I finished checking the bench, I decided to
investigate the box. When I walked around it, its outside revealed no secrets.
My touch indicated that it was extremely light. When I lifted it, the bottom
been cut out and it, too, was empty. Confused now, I put it down.

I then went back for a closer look at the bench.
Even taking into consideration the fact that it was empty, while heavier than
the box, it proved to be far lighter than it appeared. Freestanding and
unattached, it moved easily away from the wall, for the white, solid concrete
floor beneath it provided little resistance. I was perplexed, for there seemed
to be no point to this room. In an ordinary place, I would have left, but, as
usual at The Crypt, the door I’d arrived through had completely disappeared and
no longer existed.

A second, more thorough examination of the box
revealed nothing, either. There just wasn’t much to it. It was simply an empty
box out of which someone had cut the bottom and into whose front they had cut a
door, as if it had been prepared as a child’s playhouse. Its bottom dimensions
were squarish, for it was about as wide as it was long, but the box was quite
tall, taller, in fact, than myself. I could see no reason for the objects to
exist, or for this entire room, for that matter. I opened its “door” and walked
in, turned around inside it a few times, opened the door and walked out.
Nothing.

Entering the box the next time, I closed the door
behind me using a string that was attached, thinking that perhaps this was the
door I needed to walk through in this world that operated with different rules,
but again, nothing happened. After I left, I closed its “door” behind me,
thinking that perhaps this would trigger something, but it did not. It didn’t
even disappear behind me, like the other doors around here had.

Frustrated, I gave up. Mixed into my confusion was
the anxious feeling of waiting for the other shoe to drop. I shook the box and
checked the bench one more time before giving up on both altogether. I’d come
prepared for a fight, but all I’d found so far, it seemed, was a prison.

The room was so unnaturally quiet, that the only
noise I could hear was the sound of my breathing and of my own heart beating.

“Hello?” I called, but the only one to answer me
was the echo of a near empty room. I was grateful that the claustrophobia that
had plagued me most of my adult life hadn’t reappeared yet, and that I hadn’t
been forced to resort to taking deep breaths and other meditation techniques
upon which I relied just to keep myself calm. I figured that I had Edmond to
thank for my current composure and the amulet as well, which, when touched,
exuded a calming energy.

For a while, I was fine, even managing to relax
momentarily, hoping the air didn’t run out until I could find a way out of
here. Was that Arrosha’s plan, I wondered, to keep me here until I suffocated?
It seemed anticlimactic somehow. Just as soon as I’d reached a level of
comfort, though, the lights dimmed considerably and the room was left in
twilight.

There were no visible light switches in the room,
no way of controlling the lights, so I went on alert. My heart began to beat
faster as I waited for whatever was going to happen to happen. The light
remained bright inside the box, however, a fact to which the outline of its closed
“door” attested. The minutes passed and yet nothing else happened. I could
either stay where I was or I could check it out. While I knew there was nothing
in the box, since I’d checked it myself several times already, I decided to go
ahead and try again just because it gave me something to do.

With caution, I walked up to the box and opened
the door, then closed it again. As before, there was nothing in it and I
breathed a sigh of relief. The bench was still empty as well, so I sat upon it.
As I did so, the light was dimmed for a third time and the room, with the
exception of the door outline on the box, was now plunged into total darkness.

I sat there for a few more minutes until I got
antsy enough to think about checking yet one more time when the door to the box
now opened of its own accord. Out of it stepped the most hideous woman that I’d
ever seen. Dressed in black funereal shrouds was the young version of Rochere,
her skin as white as chalk, her lips blood red, her hair black. She smiled at
me with a vicious hunger on her face. I sat there, just frozen in fear for a
second. As this woman returned my stare, her canine teeth grew long and sharp,
until they nearly reached the length of her chin. The smile on her face grew
ever more brazen as, slurping, she licked her teeth with her tongue and the
whites of her eyes turned to red and began to glow.

At the opposite side of the long room, she said
absolutely nothing, but began to move toward me, very slowly and very
deliberately. When she reached her hand out pointing toward my throat, the heat
in the room rose dramatically, as if this room were an oven that someone had
just turned on.

In a panic, I looked around for somewhere to run,
but there was nothing in the room but the empty bench. The light inside the box
extinguished, sending the entire room into pitch-blackness, Arrosha’s now
seemingly disembodied eyes, glowing red, drifting toward me.

While intellectually, I knew that she cold not
come very close to me because of the necklace and amulet, the darkness of the
room left me with no depth perception and her eyes seemed to come dangerously
close. So with nowhere else to run, backed up against the bench, I opened the
top and crawled inside. The box was much deeper than it originally appeared.
Even so, it was surely a deathtrap, but as Rochere’s floating, disembodied eyes
seemed to grow closer, I closed the lid of the bench in temporary retreat.

I heard her scratching upon the lid of the bench,
laughing an insane cackle as she did. The lid of the bench opened a crack as
red, glowing eyes peered inside. Her hideous laugh stopped momentarily,
replaced by soft slurping noises, the sound of the thing that was Rochere
licking its lips and fangs. As I prayed that she couldn’t get any closer to me,
the bottom of the bench opened, plunging me into what seemed to be an endless
void.

The air was pushed out of my lungs as I fell
sharply downward. Then everything vanished. The wind was gone, the downward
motion was gone, the air around me was gone. With no air left in my lungs, I
tried to gasp for oxygen, panicking, left to wonder how long it would take for
me to suffocate in this new vacuum which held me suspended in mid-air. Just as
I thought there was no hope, Arrosha’s mansion appeared suddenly in front of
me. Frozen and floating in mid-air, I sucked in a quick lungful of air and
began to breathe again. As I looked around from my odd perspective, I wondered
why I was back here. No sooner had this question manifested itself in my mind
than I heard a loud scream coming from within the house. In a jump, without
moving a muscle, I was suddenly closer, standing now at the side of the house,
watching the commotion of Arrosha’s followers as they ran away from the mansion
in a panic. I had no intention of getting any closer, but it seemed I had no
say as to where I stood or what I saw, so again, without any movement on my
part, another jump landed me near the back doorway where I’d exited with Ben on
my first outing.

More screams.

“The mirror!” a man’s voice yelled in the chaos.
It came from the bottom floor of the mansion. “It’s gone! It’s gone! It’s not
where it’s supposed to be! It’s not on the third floor!”

“She moved it! She moved it! How are we supposed
to get out of here now?” came another panicked shout from within the house.

Another jump placed me on the garden path that led
to the fountain. No sooner had I landed there than time seemed to return to
normal. Wham! Someone had just slammed into me. It was Robert and I was
surrounded by the followers.

“Ashley! Where’d you come from? No matter,” he
said, breathing hard from a combination of panic and exertion. “We’ve got to
get out of here! The mirror’s gone! Can you help us?”

“How?” I answered, befuddled. I had no idea of how
to help him, let alone from what. “What’s going on here?”

“Creatures,” Kenny answered. “They’re loose inside
the mansion. We don’t know how they got there. They’re horrible, like zombies
or ghouls or something. And they’re after us.”

“I don’t know how to help you,” I confessed.

“But you got out of here the last time without
using the mirror,” Antonio said.

“The only other way I know is the reflecting
pool,” I answered, “but I don’t think that will work with so many people.”

“We don’t have a choice,” Robert said. “The
reflecting pool, people!”

“Geoffrey!” I heard Ben yell as he herded the
group forward. “Where are you?”

“Ben,” I told him. “Don’t worry about Geoffrey. He
can take care of himself.”

“He’s missing,” he said.

“Just look after yourself now,” I advised.

We all started to run toward the reflecting pool,
not knowing what we would do once we got there. We’d just come up to the two
stone guards when the screams of those in front of us pierced the air.

“It’s gone! The reflecting pool, it’s not here
anymore! It’s disappeared!” they cried.

Ben and I caught up with the others, who were
already gathered on the stone platform. Standing around the spot where the pool
used to be, they were completely confused and baffled as to what to do next.

“They’re coming!” Illea screamed, as she pointed
behind me.

When I looked to the direction in which she was
pointing, I saw the ghoulish brigade of creatures that had once attacked me
shuffling up the walk, already nearing the fountain, a lackluster army walking
to the sluggish cadence of a slow, non-rhythmic beat of “help me”. Upon seeing
these creatures again, horror gripped my heart.

“Run!” I screamed.

“Where?” asked Timothy.

“I don’t know!” I said. “Just run! We can’t let
them catch us!”

As if on cue, the two stone guards turned around,
raised their hands and pointed to the same place.

“That was never there before!” shouted Ricky.

When I looked over to the direction the statues
indicated, there stood a crypt, a real graveyard crypt made of stone with an
iron fence surrounding it. The creatures were not only behind us but all around
us a distance, coming closer. There was nowhere else to go, so everyone in the
group ran for the crypt. It was shelter at least and well-built; it seemed to
be the only place for us to hide. However, when we reached it, the gate of the
fence refused to open, only ‘giving’ a little to prove it was stuck and not
locked.

“This latch is rusted!” cried Antonio.

“We’d better get it unstuck soon,” said Kenny.
“Look what’s coming our way fast!”

Down the path, and now surrounding us, the ghouls
were getting closer, their miserable moans of “help me” getting louder.

“This gate’s not opening,” said Timothy. “We’ve
got to find someplace else to hide and fast!”

“We’ve got to stay together,” recommended Robert.
“How about over there?” he said, pointing to a clump of trees in the not too
far distance.

As soon as they backed away from the tomb the
heavy iron gate opened on its own.

“C’mon, everybody!” yelled Ben. “It’s open!”

The group, now in total panic, ran into the crypt,
for the ghouls outside were at our heels, growing closer. As soon as the entire
group entered, Antonio yelled, “C’mon Kenny. Close the door!”

“It’s stuck now, too! It won’t close!”

“Ah, shit!” yelled Antonio.

“Guys,” Antonio announced to the room, “they’re almost
here. There’s no time for us to run anywhere else. So we’ve gotta push this
door closed from the outside, okay? You guys pull on the handle. We push, you
pull. We gotta get this door to budge!”

Antonio and Kenny stayed outside to push as the
rest of us, except for the Sisters, who seemed not quite to understand the
gravity of the situation, watched and giggled. As the ghouls came ever closer,
the door began to give a little, but still it did not close fast enough, for
the two ghouls that led the dismal parade touched Antonio and Kenny.

“Oh, fuck,” said Kenny as he went down. Antonio
was silent as his legs slid out from under him.

The two ghouls stopped moving forward, high off
their energy “hit”, as they had been with me. In the seconds remaining until
the rest of the zombies caught up with the first, we grabbed the two men and
pulled them inside.

As the rest of the ghouls walked toward the nearly
open door of the crypt, we still could not pull it shut. When they were on the
verge of entering, as the tomb came close to fulfilling its intended purpose,
the door slammed shut by itself, leading to a collective sigh of relief by
those of us inside. The things outside began scratching to get in but
eventually gave up. We suspected that they were hovering by the door, just
waiting for us to come out.

“We’re trapped,” Robert remarked.

“We didn’t have a choice,” Ricky replied. “Those
new ones seemed to come out of nowhere. I guess they were hiding behind those
trees. Anybody remember those trees being there? I sure as hell don’t.”

“But there’s no exit,” Robert said. “What do we do
now?”

“It doesn’t matter that there’s no exit right
now,” Ben pointed out. “We’re surrounded by those creatures anyway. Let’s look
around and see what’s in here. If worst comes to worst, I’m sure we’ll see
Arrosha by the morning at least and she’ll provide us with a way out.”

In the relative calm that followed, we examined
Antonio and Kenny to see how badly they were hurt. They were both emaciated
from the attack and in much worse shape than I had been upon my first arrival
at the mansion. For the first time ever, I understood just how much the amulet
had protected me. The devastation of the creatures’ touch had already spread
throughout the two men’s systems, leaving them barely breathing statues of
stone and ice.

“Oh, dear God, no,” was the only thing that Illea
could say as she gazed upon their pitiful, withered bodies, for there was
nothing that could be done for them.

“You poor little things,” said the first of the
Sisters as she finally grasped the situation.

“Pitiful,” said the second.

“Yes, so very pitiful,” added the third.

We tried to get our collective wits back at this
point, taking advantage of our relative, albeit temporary, safety. We looked
about the tomb to take stock of our surroundings. Three stone coffins stood
within the center of the crypt, empty, lids open. At the far end rested a dark
area fenced off by an iron grate.

“It’s probably just another chamber,” said Robert.

“Or hopefully an underground tunnel out of here,”
Ben finished for him.

“Has everyone been accounted for?” asked Timothy.

“Everyone except for Geoffrey,” Ben answered. “I
sure hope that he’s alright. I haven’t seen him all day.” Ben’s worry for his
true love revealed itself upon his face as deep lines in his forehead. “I hope
he got away from those zombies, or whatever those things out there are.”

Everybody in the room was shaken, including the
Three Sisters, who simply sat in a corner, rocking back and forth as they
chanted in unison, “Oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear.” Of the others, some were
praying to Arrosha for rescue, some were bargaining with her. Things along the
lines “if you let me get through this, I promise I’ll be good from now on”
emanated from the lips of more than one person.

Illea seemed to be the most stunned of all the
followers. She clung fast to Ricky.

“I can’t believe Arrosha would allow this, Ben,” I
heard her say in a somnambulistic manner.

“She didn’t, Illea,” was Ben’s misguided answer.
“I don’t know where those things come from, but they didn’t come from her.”

I wanted to tell him that Arrosha was exactly the
one who sent the creatures and that she had even more nasty surprises in store
to send our way, but I couldn’t. The faith onto which Ben clung at this moment
was paper-thin and it was the only thing he had. Arrosha was going to break his
heart into a thousand little pieces tonight. I just didn’t want any of that
news coming from me.

Whatever his reason, Ben kept going. Always a
tower of strength, he checked to make sure that the others were okay and taken
care of, although there was nothing that anyone could do for Kenny and Antonio.
Not exactly dead, they were definitely dying and seemed to be beyond hope of
any kind.

The Three Sisters had huddled together, chanting
as they rocked back and forth, consoling each other as best they could, while
Timothy and Robert just looked stunned.

“Ashley,” Ben asked. “Do you want to explore this
place with me?”

“Sure,” I agreed.

“I’ll come with you, too, Ben. I feel like I need
to do something,” said Illea, waking up from her stupor. “Ricky, come with me,
please. Don’t leave me.”

Illea took Ricky’s hand in one of her hands, Ben’s
in the other. Ben then took my hand in his free hand and together as a
daisy-chain, we went to explore what was past the interior iron gate.

“Hey, guys,” he said to the group. “This seems to
lead to a tunnel. Maybe we can get out of here this way.”

“How can you be sure?” asked Robert. “It’s so
bloody dark in there, you can’t see a thing.”

“Yeah,” agreed Timothy. “Maybe it’s a dead end.
You don’t know.”

“No. Now that I’m getting used to the light level
in here, I can see a little bit in here. It’s really dim, but just enough for
me to see that it goes on for a while. I’m hoping it turns out to be a tunnel
of some sort. There’s only one way to find out and that’s to explore it.
Besides, with those things out there, staying here’s not the answer.”

“We can’t go with you,” said Robert. “We’ve got to
look out for the Sisters. Besides, Antonio and Kenny are still alive and need
us to watch over them.”

“That’s fine,” Ben said. “This route may not even
pan out. The four of us will check it out. If it’s a dead-end , we’ll come back
and join you. If it does lead to a way out, we’ll come back to get you. You’ll
need help moving Kenny and Antonio anyway. For now, just stay here and look
after them.”

“Sounds good, Ben,” Robert said, still stunned.
“Let’s go with that.”

It was with caution that the four of us entered
into the dark recesses of the crypt. Without my enhanced night vision, I would
not have been able to see past the first few feet, but as it was, I could tell
that we were heading down a tunnel that continued for a while. Once we cleared
the gate, though, we heard it slam shut behind us. We ran back, trying to get
the passageway to reopen yet unable to, impotently watching those still trapped
inside, unable to rescue them.

The main room began to shrink, becoming smaller
and smaller. Robert and Timothy ran up to the gate, struggling against it, as
powerless to open it from their side as we were from ours.

We stared in horror, helpless, as Kenny and
Antonio disappeared into the walls as the room seemed to consume them. An
invisible force pulled the Three Sisters each into one of the empty coffins,
the heavy stone lids snapping shut behind them, sealing them inside. As the
room continued to shrink, the walls closed in, absorbing the coffins. Robert
and Timothy clung to the gate as long as they were able. We watched, terrified,
as the shrinking walls swallowed them whole.

Not content to stop there, the walls continued to
shrink even faster, encroaching now upon the rest of us. Whatever served as a
light source around here was also eaten and soon it became pitch black. The
four of us, holding hands to avoid separation, ran into the tunnel. It was so
dark that we could not see, but still we ran. At one point I stumbled and Ben’s
hand slipped out of mine.

“Ben! Ben!” I cried. “Illea! Ricky! Where are
you?”

There was no answer and I was left to run alone in
the darkness.