The Nightmare Game (58 page)

“We already tried some of the other light
switches. They didn’t work. The place has no power,” said Ricky.

“Where’s the light that’s in here coming from,
then?” Geoff asked.

He was right. The low-level light inside the shack
was about the same as it was outside, but where it came from was anybody’s
guess.

“Okay, Geoff,” Ricky admitted. “You’ve got me
there. But what makes you think this switch will work when the others didn’t.”

“Just a hunch,” Geoff replied. “Humor me. Try it
anyway.”

“Well, here goes nothing.” Ben said as he pulled
the chain and the bare bulb turned on in the cellar.

“What the?” Ben looked at Geoffrey with suspicion.
“How did you know this switch would work?”

 “Like I said. It was a hunch. While you’re down
there, why don’t you look around?” When Geoff said this, the group began to eye
him questionably. “Might as well. I mean the place is lit now, ya know?”

Ben started down the rickety stairs into the
basement.

“Ben, don’t go down there on your own,” I warned
him.

“I’m not,” he replied. “I’ll be careful. I’m just
going to walk down a few steps and glance around. I want to see if there’s
anything that looks worth investigating before the rest of us go down.”

He ventured down about three steps and peered down
over the railing.

“See anything yet?” I asked.

“No, not yet,” he answered.

“Anything yet?” Silence. “Ben? Ben?”

Ben screamed as he ran out of the basement as fast
as he could. He ran up to the old sink, where he became violently sick,
vomiting water and hanging onto the counter for support, his knees weak.
Everyone except for Geoffrey ran up to him.

“What is it? What is it?” Ricky said.

“Ben, are you alright?” Illea asked.

“Ben, what happened?” I asked.

“Don’t go down there!” Ben implored.

We helped him over the one empty chair left,
where, shaking violently, he sat down. He was deathly pale and so much sweat
was pouring out of him that his shirt was soaking wet. We all hovered over him
except for Geoffrey, who continued sitting at the table opposite him, eyeing
the situation a little too coolly.

“What the hell’s down there?” Robert asked.

Ben looked up with an expression on his face that
looked as though he’d just witnessed his own death. Emotionally traumatized, he
began to talk, although the words came hard for him. “I-I don’t know what’s
down there. I don’t know what it is. Timothy. I think it’s something that used
to be Timothy that’s down there.”

After saying this, Ben just stared ahead,
shell-shocked. All of us except for Geoffrey, who didn’t seem particularly
interested, and Illea, who was still hovering over and tending to Ben, started
toward the basement. The guys went in first, myself right behind them. We went
down only as far as Ben did, and stood upon the stairs, where we could peer
down over the railing. Suddenly we all saw what Ben saw.

Slowly crawling across the basement floor was a
something that resembled a slug, a huge slug the size of a man. It had the head
of a man and human hands that had been reduced to flipper-like appendages that
it used to help it crawl. It had Timothy’s face. When it saw us, it opened its
mouth and gurgled out in a horrible, yet sad and pathetic voice wracked with
pain, “Help me”. We ran back into the kitchen, where, in shock and trauma, we
slammed the door shut behind us.

“What the hell was that?” asked Ricky.

“Timothy, man, it used to be Timothy!” Ben
answered.

“What the hell happened to him? Is that going to
happen to us, too?” Robert said.

“It can’t! It just can’t! We have all got to stay
together!” Ricky said.

“Why? So that can happen to all of us together?
I’m leaving! I’m getting out of here!” exclaimed Robert.

As they started toward the door, Geoffrey
leisurely stood up and walked toward them. “You can’t leave. You don’t know
what’s out there now.”

“The hell we can’t leave! There can’t be anything
worse out there than there is in here,” Ricky said.

“Trust me, you don’t want to face what’s out
there.”

“What could be worse out there than what’s in
here?” asked Robert.

Geoffrey calmly walked up to the front door and
opened it. The others followed him out onto the front porch. A few yards away
were the zombies, circling the shack as if they were waiting for us.

“Because Ashley’s little friends, the ones she
brought with her, the ones with which she infected our previously wonderful
paradise, are out there.”

He looked at me, a nasty sneer upon his lips. I
really hated the bastard.

“They’re waiting for us patiently” he added.
“They’re waiting for us to come out and play.”

“How did you know they were out here?” asked Ben.
“You seem to know a quite a few things before we do. What gives?”

“I saw them when I was out here earlier, before I
entered the house.”

“You got here before we did, Geoff. They weren’t
around when we first got here,” Ben said in a tone that was evident he’d lost
his trust in Geoffrey.

In their staggering shuffle, the ghouls began to
move toward us slowly.

“Hey guys,” said Ricky nervously. “I think we’d
better go back inside. I don’t want to be standing out here if they get any
closer.”

We hurried back into the house and shut the door.
Ricky took one of the kitchen chairs and placed it under the doorknob, since
there was no lock on the door.

“What are we going to do?” asked Illea.

“I don’t know,” said Ben. “But one thing’s for
sure. We have to stay together. And we need to look around to see if we can
find some boards and nails for the door. That chair isn’t going to hold for
long if those things want to get in.”

“Maybe there’s something we can use in the
cellar,” Geoffrey smirked.

“Geoff, if you don’t shut up, I’m going to punch
you,” Ben told him.

“Really, Ben, just trying to help,” said Geoffrey
in a mock-innocent tone.

“Fine, then. If we have to go down there, you’ll
get to be the one that does it,” Ben said to him, losing his patience. “There’s
got to be a back door to this place. We’ve got to secure that, too.”

“We didn’t see one, Ben,” said Ricky. “We looked
for it before you, Illea and Ashley got here, but didn’t see it. I know, it’s
weird. I’ve never heard of a house without a back door either.”

“Can you secure the cellar door?”

“Sure.” Ricky took the other dilapidated chair
from the kitchen table and stuck it under the cellar door. “In case it leads
outside,” he explained.

“Okay, guys, lets see if there’s anything in this
house we can use to board up these doors. If we’re lucky, we can reinforce the
windows more, too. But remember, stick close. Everybody stay together,” said
Ben, taking a mental head count.

“Robert, where’s Robert?” Ben asked.

The others looked around.

“He was with us on the porch,” said Illea.

“He was standing right next to me just a second
ago,” said Ricky.

“Robert! Where are you?” yelled Ben.

“Robert! Robert!” shouted the others.

“C’mon, Robert!” Ben yelled again.

“Robert, man, this just isn’t funny!” said Ricky.
“Robert! Robert!”

We heard a “thump” from the hall closet, followed
by a moan.

“What was that?” Illea asked.

“Open the door and find out,” Geoffrey suggested.

“I’m not opening that door. You open it,” said
Ricky.

“Alright,” agreed Geoffrey.

When he opened it, a thing, and it could only be descried
as a thing, fell out. While none of us knew exactly what it was, we recoiled in
horror, for lying on the floor, it was twitching and moving.

“Timothy!” shouted Ricky. “How did he, I mean,
that thing, get out here so fast? I mean, it was barely crawling, wasn’t it? I
mean, wasn’t it?”

“Guys, that’s not Timothy,” Ben said, horrified.

“What do you mean, that’s not Timothy. How many of
those creatures can there be around here?”

The slug creature could barely raise its almost
unrecognizable head to say “help me”, as it gasped for air like a fish out of
water.

“It’s Robert,” said Ben.

“Oh, no, Robert. Not you, too. Robert, Robert,
no!” Ricky screamed, distraught. “No, man, no! No!”

We stood there for a few seconds, speechless, for
we did not know what to do. As with Antonio, Kenny and Timothy, there was
absolutely nothing in our power that could help him or save him. In shock, we
simply stood there, feeling utterly helpless.

We were in shock. It was as if time had stopped.
Soon, though, the faint strains of music wafted into the room. It was a few moments
before this even registered with us.

“What’s that music?” I asked.

“It’s Illea’s mother’s music box,” said Ricky.

“It’s coming from upstairs,” Ben told us.

“Illea!” Ben and Ricky shouted simultaneously.
There was no answer.

“She was just here a second ago,” Ricky said in a
panic. “Where’d she go?”

We all looked to the area from which the music
seemed to be coming and there stood Illea, motionless, at the top of the
stairs. We ran to the stairway and, looking up, we saw that Illea was standing
in front of an open door on the second floor. We raced up the rickety stairs to
her.

When we reached her, Ben asked, “Illea, what are
you doing up here by yourself? I thought we agreed to stay together.”

It was as if she could not answer. Frozen in fear,
her mouth was open, her jaw slacken. Her eyes looked forward in a catatonic
stare.

“Illea, honey, what is it?” asked a concerned
Ricky.

She could not answer. It was as if she were beyond
terror, but she managed to lift one hand in a feeble motion, pointing into the
room outside of which she stood.

We looked into that room, dark except for a single
old, small and cheap lamp standing on a nightstand emitting a pathetic light
through a tattered and stained red lampshade. Right next to it sat Illea’s
mother’s music box, which was open and playing its tune.

The Three Sisters were in that room, lying in a
nasty old bed that should have been thrown out years ago. They were together,
as usual, making out. At first they didn’t notice us or even look up, too
involved were they with each other to show any sign of awareness of anyone
else. As we continued to stare, we noticed that something was wrong. The three
women were smeared with blood from small trickles that ran all over their arms
and down their backs. It wasn’t a lot of blood and while it didn’t look as if
anyone had sustained any serious injuries, on top of everything else tonight,
the sight was disturbing.

“I told you that they feed off each other,” said
Illea flatly, as if in a trance.

The Sisters heard her, taking notice of us now.
Looking up, there was something different about them now, something hungry and
feral that combined lusts for both sex and blood, as if these two things were
one and the same.

They stared at us eagerly, smiling. Their teeth,
both upper and lower, were long and looked razor sharp. Leisurely and lazily,
they said together, “help me,” but it was as if they did not mean the words and
were using them only as bait to lure us, to draw us closer.

“I think they’d like to feed off of us now,” I whispered
a warning to the others.

Ben took hold of Illea’s arm and began to back
away slowly, pulling her along.

“We should go now,” he whispered to us, trying not
to make any sudden moves.

The sisters, now fully aware of us, pulled back
the covers and got out of bed. Slowly they began coming toward us. For the
first time, we could see what they’d now become. The three of them, joined at
the lower torso, had been turned into a form insectile from the waist down.
They shared six legs between them and their crawl was similar to that of a
scorpion.

“Oh, my dear Arrosha,” uttered Ricky.

“Help me,” they sing-songed in unison as they
slowly crawled toward us. The combination of their sexual, seductive manner
coupled with their insectile lower halves and movements was revolting. The
three giggled coquettishly in unison.

All of a sudden, the creature that used to be the
Three Sisters began moving surprisingly fast, insect-like on its six legs.

“Run!” Ben screamed, turning around and pulling
Illea and myself with him.

We ran down the stairs as fast as we could, not
stopping to look behind us. When we reached the bottom of the stairs, Geoffrey
was already there, pointing toward the kitchen.

“This way,” he said. “I found a door that leads
into a tunnel back here.”

“A door? A tunnel?” Ben asked. “Where’d those come
from?”

“Who cares? At least it’s a way out of here,”
Geoffrey answered him with in a casual tone that did not fit the circumstances.

“Is everybody safe?” Ben shouted.

Illea and I alone answered him.

“Ricky? You okay?” he asked as he ran.

There was no answer. For the first time, we slowed
down long enough to look back to the top of the stairs where we’d been
standing. Still in that same spot, in the grips of the insect creature the
Sisters had become, stood Ricky. As the creature cooed and moaned, the blood
began to run freely down Ricky’s body.

“Ricky! No! Ricky!” Illea screamed as she made a
start to go back.

Ben grabbed her by the arm before she could,
saying, “He’s lost, Illea! Leave him. You can’t help him now! You have to save
yourself!”

We ran toward the kitchen, Ben dragging Illea,
where Geoffrey stood by an open door.

“This is screwy. That door wasn’t there just a few
minutes ago!” screamed Ben.

“Well, it is now. Let’s go!” Geoffrey ordered.

“I don’t trust it,” I said.

“Look, it’s the only chance we’ve got!” yelled
Ben. “Let’s go!”