The Nightmare Game (60 page)

“No, really. I insist you leave it behind. It
belongs to my family. I really don’t mind your wearing it, but I’d prefer you
didn’t go outside of this property with it. If you want to wear it, I’ll
accompany you on your walk, but I must insist that you take it off if you’re
adamant about going out alone. If you attempt to leave here with it, I’ll have
to consider it stolen. I’ll call the police and press charges.”

“I guess you’ll just have to do that, then,” I
told him, calling his bluff. By the look in his eyes, he was more afraid than I
was.

“Don’t leave. I’m warning you.”

“Sorry, Edmond,” I said, actually feeling bad for
him. “But I have to go now and I’m afraid that you can’t stop me.”

I turned away from him and walked out of the
apartment. As I got to the gate, Edmond, who had followed me out, yelled after
me and demanded, “The necklace, Ashley. Leave it here.”

As I opened the gate to leave the property, he
said, “If you walk out that gate with that necklace on, I swear I’m calling the
police. And I will see to it that you will be arrested and prosecuted to the
fullest extent of the law. My family has money and influence in this city.
Trust me, Ashley, you do not want any of that.”

“I’ve never wanted any of this. I’m sorry, Edmond.
I have to do this.”

“Ashley, don’t leave.” he said.

As I walked out of the gate and onto the street, I
realized I was leaving the best of the nightmares behind me and that greater
evil was still lying ahead.

The second that I walked out onto Toulouse Street,
every light turned off. The streets, businesses and homes were all completely
dark. As I suspected, everything here had existed only to extend Arrosha’s
illusion had I actually taken “Edmond” up on his offer to accompany me.

It wasn’t pitch black, but rather it was as the
dark of a full moon, holding just enough cold light for me to see where I was
going. There was no full moon, though, just the mysterious non-specific
twilight illumination that had no definable source, which seemed to be so
prevalent in this dimension.

Bourbon Street appeared sooner than it should
have. It had either been moved up a few blocks or I had taken another spatial
“jump” as I did at the mansion and shack and it had been too dark to notice.
I’d long since stopped trying to make sense of this dimension without normal
rules, for it was like trying to make logical sense of a nightmare.

When I turned the corner onto Bourbon Street, it,
too, was closed, dark, and deserted. I felt as if I were in an “end of the
world” scene in some bad movie that I didn’t want to watch. The city was silent
and there was no one else around, no sign that any other life existed at all. I
was sure the rest of the city would be the same, had there been a rest of the city,
but I suspected that only the parts of New Orleans existed here which suited
Rochere’s purposes. I could easily have been mistaken for a somnambulist as I
walked down Bourbon Street without purpose, for the lack of life in this French
Quarter, even though fake, was an unsettling and disturbing illusion.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, music began to play. It
jarred me, for it was sudden and unpleasant, certainly not the kind of music
that anyone would expect to hear in the Quarter. It was coming from the direction
toward which I was walking, becoming disproportionately louder as I walked
toward it. It was the warped sound of a calliope, the sound of a
merry-go-round, belonging to a broken-down fair or a carnival, not to the
French Quarter.

A dim light appeared at what had now become the
end of Bourbon Street, a light that grew brighter as I continued toward it. As
I got closer, I could see that it was an entrance of some sort, but I couldn’t
see what was on the other side of that entrance. Then, when I was about thirty
feet away, I heard a horrible laugh that started up without warning. It was the
dreadful, electronic “canned” laughter of a laugh box that sounded, in its dead
way, as if it were mocking me. At the same time that the laughter stated, the
calliope music became unpleasantly loud.

I covered my ears, not so much to dull the volume,
but rather to muffle the laugh, so evil and soulless, made even more bizarre by
the music. As if triggered by the laughter and the
“da-da-dudda-dudda-da-da-du-da” of the calliope, more, even brighter lights
turned on without warning. Startled, I looked up and the oversized face of a
huge, gigantic clown stared back. The lighted entrance was now the opening of
the clown’s mouth. It was not a friendly clown’s face, either, nor was it
exactly evil. Bad and tasteless, it was the “am I good or am I bad” in-between
kind of face that made it so horribly creepy.

The canned laughter thankfully stopped as suddenly
as it had started, but the music kept on playing. I began to back away from the
psychotic-looking clown, afraid to turn my back on it, but an invisible force
pushed me, against my will and beyond my strength, up to the entrance of the
menacing clown’s mouth. Something stronger than myself had control of my legs
and feet and I found myself crossing the threshold, even though I fought
against it.

I found myself back in the twilight world with
which I’d lately become far too familiar. Despite the amulet, I felt my stomach
sink, leaving a horrible, empty feeling in my gut.

“Oh no, not again,” was my initial reaction.

When I turned to look behind me, the clown, facing
this world now, had changed and possessed long, sharp and pointed metallic
upper and lower teeth. The music, like the laughter, ceased and the world
became all too quiet again until, as if for effect, the clown let out one last
single, soulless laugh and its sword-like teeth clamped shut with a clang,
interlocking to become an impenetrable metallic wall. That done, the clown
disappeared altogether, leaving me stranded, once more, in the grey, dismal,
silent landscape in which I’d found myself all too often before. For the first
time I now recognized this dull, dreary twilight world as a land of my own
making, one which I myself, inside of my own nightmares, had invented. It was
my personal world of fear and helplessness. No wonder Rochere kept bringing me
back here. It had taken me so long to recognize the landscape because my dreams
had not taken me here since childhood. My conscious mind had wisely forgotten
about this terrible place. My unconscious mind, however, had obviously not.

This time, the only difference was the atmosphere,
which, instead of exhibiting the dryness of an extended drought, now had the
ominous, oppressive feeling of impending tornado weather. It was so hot and
sticky, that even though I’d only walked a few steps, I could feel the sweat
running down under my arms, soaking my clothes. The humidity was so burdensome
and profound that the air was thick and hard to breathe. The barometric
pressure spoke of catastrophic storms just over the horizon as heavy
thunderclouds, black and sinister, hovered in the air, exerting a pressure that
I felt to my very soul. Even the atmosphere was now itself a heavy cargo.

Once again, there was nothing around but the dirt
road upon which I walked. While I walked in the direction in which I was
prompted, away from the spot where the clown’s mouth once stood, I knew it
didn’t matter, that I’d wind up in the same place regardless. So I traveled
along the dirt road toward nothing as the familiar dead trees of this realm,
again sparse in number as well as in appearance, dotted the landscape. Whatever
remained of an old wood rail fence on either side of the road was so rotted
that it was falling apart, with only bits and chunks of it left standing. It
was in fear that I prayed that the ghouls were no longer here, for there was
nowhere to hide from them. Realizing that in this oppressive humidity, I needed
to conserve my energy until I needed it, I put that fear aside and kept my gait
to a slow walk.

I hadn’t gone far when I heard the calliope music
again, very low and far off into the distance this time. Rather than getting my
hopes up, I dreaded what I would find when I got to its source. As I walked
toward it, the flat landscape suddenly changed to a low, dropping slope.
Downhill, in the distance, I saw brightly colored lights, loud and garish
against the drab countryside.

While I had continued my slow pace, without even
noticing another spatial jump, I came upon the source of the lights all too
soon. Judging distances in this nightmare land was tricky because the distances
themselves tended to change. Things that seemed close could take forever to get
to, and things that were far away were sometimes ridiculously easy to reach. As
I approached the lights, the calliope music started up again, becoming
gradually and normally louder until I had arrived at some kind of carnival
midway.

A run-down chain link fence enclosed the area.
Actually, I should say that it once enclosed it, for it had long since stopped
doing its job. The ticket booth sat dead at the gates to the carnival, far past
caring if anyone bought a ticket or not. When I walked into the carnival area
proper, all the rides were closed, for there was neither anyone here to work
them or to ride them. Everything was closed down; the carnival was deserted.
The only signs of life were the lights that I saw from the distance and that
had led my way, yet once I crossed the entrance gates into the park proper,
they went dark as well and the music stopped. The Ferris wheel and the roller
coaster appeared skeletal, standing stark and rusted against the gray,
storm-clouded sky. Everything looked old and had a shoddy, decayed look and
feel about it. Even the air in this place seemed to have a grimy, rank quality
to it.

Slowly, I walked through the midway looking for
signs of life, almost hoping I wouldn’t find any. Even as a child, carnivals
and fairs held an unhealthy feeling for me. I always found them a little
creepy, especially the traveling, transient ones. It was only the crowds that
provided the gaiety, an element that was notably absent today. Since this
carnival was the only thing in sight, I was sure that it was the only thing
that even existed in this forsaken land, for like the tomb and the crumbling
shack, it was most likely the sole point if this particular section of this
dismal, dismaying realm. I was at my destination and I dreaded it, for I knew
in my heart that there would be nothing good here. This was an evil place. I
could feel it.

I wished that I could wake up, but I knew that
even though this place had the look and feel of a nightmare, it was real.
Almost as if on cue, a bead of sweat ran down my face, reminding me of that
fact. I knew that when the time was right and when Arrosha became bored with
playing with me, that unless I could stop her, she could and would kill me.
Edmond, my real Edmond, had told me as much.

As I sauntered about the deserted complex, for the
first time since walking through the third door and for a few minutes, at
least, I wasn’t dealing with some attack or another. I had time to think and I
almost wished I didn’t. Now I had to face the truth that I was presently
existing inside of a real living nightmare. This was nothing from which I could
wake; it was not a movie I could leave if it got too intense. I was trapped in
a realm where there were no exits.

A slight wind started up, making the old, rusted
carnival rides squeak and groan, sounds of mechanical objects far beyond the
need of simple oiling. It startled me and I jumped. I looked around nervously.
The sound of the squealing metal acted as a reminder that I needed to keep on
alert, that ghouls could be skulking around any corner. I stopped my
reflections and proceeded slowly and deliberately, once again becoming very
aware of my surroundings. I put one foot in front of the other with care, as
aware now as any policeman entering a building in which he knew armed
perpetrators were hiding.

Then, as suddenly as it sprang up, the wind stopped
altogether, and along with it, the creaking of the rides. Looking at their
skeletons against the sky, I wondered if anyone was ever killed on these rides
in a past incarnation. Knowing Arrosha as I did now, I was sure the answer had
to be yes.

I continued to walk along slowly, suspecting
danger at every turn. When I came to the middle of the carnival, I heard the
calliope music start up again. Arrosha was using it to set me on edge and it
was working. Once I rounded the bumper cars, I saw the lights were on at the
freak show. It was the second time I’d passed it. When I’d come this way
before, this particular “attraction” was closed. Since this was now the only
exhibit that showed any sign of life, I knew this was where Arrosha wanted me
to be. A recorded voice, very hard to understand over the old speaker system,
then joined in with the calliope music as, in garbled manner, it announced its
“come one, come all” sales pitch.

I approached the exhibit slowly, my guard up. When
I reached it without incident, its lights began to flash, but it was quite
deserted. The music and the voice stopped, leaving the carnival, once again
unnaturally quiet. The doors at the entrance to the freak show were still
closed for business, but I tried them anyway. Locked. I backed up from the
exhibit and studied it. It was a seedy, squalid-looking attraction. Even the
tent itself was dirty and moth-eaten.

Five large posters that had seen better days
advertised the exhibit, three widthwise across the top and one at each side of
the ticket booth. “Nightmares of Science”, the exhibit billed itself. Of the
three posters above, the first was a snake with a girl’s head. It was flanked
to the right by a mentalist with an oversized brain who was levitating a very
scantily clad woman, while to the left marched quite animated, almost
cartoon-like skeletons, dripping blood as they walked through a graveyard. The
poster to the left of the ticket booth bragged a rather well-muscled red-eyed,
wild-eyed lizard man, drooling and raging against jailhouse bars, while the one
to the right boasted a seaweed-laden swamp creature carrying away a screaming,
even more scantily clad woman.

I now recognized this particular nightmare. It was
not so much the carnival rides, but rather the freak shows and their posters
which always frightened me as a child whenever my family had taken our yearly
trip to the parish fair. I always found them creepy and depressing with their
half-amateurish, distasteful crudeness. A cheap and trashy semi-sexual
vulgarity seemed to course through them, appealing to the base in most of us.
No matter how sordid or unsavory the subject matter, they had a smutty
sleaziness that appealed to that coarse, unhealthy part of the human psyche
that had a fascination with the twisted steal and human blood intertwined of
auto accidents, to the part of us that wants to watched the horrific in movies
and steal ourselves against greater and greater shocks. No matter how strange,
sad or pitiable the actual “attractions”, the oddities themselves were inside
the tent, the posters turned the strangeness of their unfortunate qualities
from something that should garner empathy and compassion into something dirty
and unsavory. Feeding not on our need to help the less fortunate, but on our
opposing, usually stronger voyeuristic traits, turning even normal people
momentarily into sordid peeping Toms. It had been so long since I’d been to a
fair that I didn’t know if the posters still were that way, but those were the
ones of my childhood, the ones that I remembered, the ones upon which Arrosha
was capitalizing. These particular posters looked old, and their once garish
and gaudy colors were now faded, their paper, like the tent they advertised,
shabby and tattered. Yet while their colors were well-faded, they still
retained that loud, exploitative quality that made people want to stay away and
go inside at the same time. It was a quality that seemed to speak opposing
messages to the opposing sides of human nature, so often portrayed as the angel
sitting on one shoulder, while simultaneously the devil sat on the other. The
calliope started to play again, this time at so low a pitch I had to strain to
hear it.