The Nightmare Game (75 page)

The next day was uneventful, boring even, but the
day after that, Julian knocked on my door and said, so excited he could hardly
contain himself, “Ashley, he’s awake. Edmond’s come out of his coma. Please
come quickly.”

“Is he all right?” I asked, concerned.

“Yes, he’s fine. He’s still very weak, but the
doctors expect him to make a full recovery. He’s asking for you.”

I got out of bed. Julian helped me with my robe
and then pushed my hospital wheelchair to Edmond’s room. When we got to his
room, Edmond was sleeping again already. Julian pushed my wheelchair up to his
bedside and I looked upon him. Edmond, the man who had been a pillar of
strength to me during my ordeals, was lying in the bed, so helpless.

Whenever I’d seen him before in my dreams, he’d
been such a dashing figure of a man, the epitome of the classic hero of any
romance novel. His appearance had changed from even his captivity in the stasis
chamber, for the nurses had cut his hair, shaved his beard and mustache, and
trimmed his nails short. Lying upon the bed, he seemed so fragile in his
current condition and yet this touched me even more. No longer in danger
myself, my heart went out fully to this brave soul who had never given up, who
had kept fighting year after year, decade after decade, century after century,
against an evil powerful foe that threatened the existence of the world itself.
Yet the world would never know his contribution, for it was simply too
fantastic.

Julian, standing beside me, gently nudged him
awake.

“She’s here, Edmond,” he whispered, his head close
to Edmond’s ear. “You told me to wake you when Ashley arrived. She’s here now.”

Edmond began to stir. I could tell that it was
hard for him to wake up, that he had to force himself. I began to stroke his
hair as I told him, “Edmond, it’s me, Ashley. I’m here now.” I stood up from
the wheelchair and took his hand. Then I bent down and kissed him on the cheek.

Edmond blinked and forced his eyes open. He smiled
weakly.

“Ashley,” he said, “I’m so glad you’re here. I
finally get to touch you.”

“Are you okay, Edmond? Are you alright?”

“I’m tired. But I’m free, I’m finally out of my
prison. How did you do it?”

“I didn’t, Edmond, I failed you. It was Max that
saved you. He found a way to use Arrosha’s weaknesses to his advantage. It was
her underestimation of him that finally tripped her up.”

“Good for Max,” he said weakly, “But still he
couldn’t have done it without you. If you hadn’t gotten so far he would never
have gotten the chance to defeat her. Is he here? I need to thank him.”

“No, Edmond, he’s still in Intensive Care. They
don’t know yet if he’s going to make it.”

“What happened?”

“It was the things that Rochere did to him that’s
endangered his life.”

Edmond’s eyes welled with tears. “No,” he said,
“Oh, no.”

“She really underestimated Max,” I continued. “She
thought she had broken him completely. But he came through for us in the end.”

“Poor Max. Poor man.” Edmond began to become more
agitated when Julian put his hand on his shoulder.

“Steady, there, man,” Julian comforted him. “You’re
suffering from exhaustion. You need to rest.”

“Yes, yes, you’re right. I’m sorry. I am tired, so
very tired. I need to sleep. But before you go, Ashley, I’m so grateful that
you made it out alive. Are you alright?”

“I’m fine, Edmond. A few bumps and bruises, a few
broken bones, but I’m on the mend now.”

“Thank God. Please promise me that you will come
back tomorrow. I have so much to tell you.”

He looked up at Julian and said, “Take good care
of her, will you.”

“Of course,” Julian answered. “We’ll be back
later, when you’re up to it.”

On our way out, I turned to around to look at
Edmond once more. He was fast asleep before we reached the door.

We went back to my room in relative silence.

“I must say,” Julian told me, “that he looks much
better than I ever would have thought, considering what he’s been through.” He
tried to sound as upbeat as possible, but his face revealed his worry.

“Do you really think so?” I said, hoping he was
right. I was shocked when I saw Edmond lying in that hospital bed. I was so
used to seeing him so vital and strong in my dreams that the contrast was
startling. In reality, I supposed that he probably looked much the same as when
I’d seen him in the stasis chamber, but his long hair and beard had hidden a
great deal of his emaciation. For some odd reason, I’d always expected that if
I won, the Edmond that would greet me at the end was the Edmond that had
appeared in my dreams. I wasn’t disappointed, no, far from it, I was just
worried about his recovery. I had waited so long to be able to be with him and
now I had to realize that I had to realize that it would take longer than I’d
expected.

“Oh, yes, quite. I’d imagined that he would have
been more harmed by his ordeal than he has been. I’d say that after all is said
and done that he looks extremely well, considering.”

“It’s only because that vicious bitch that held
him prisoner found out too late how to kill him.”

“What do you mean?”

I explained to him about the zombie creatures that
Rochere created and how she found the way to preserve them was to tap into
Edmond’s stasis field.

“So,” Julian remarked, “if he hadn’t been rescued
this time, there was a good chance he never could have gotten away?”

“That’s pretty much it. Unless we got very, very
lucky.”

“Oh, my, I had no idea we had cut it so close.”

“Arrosha told me that this was the last real
chance we had.”

“Oh, dear,” he said, newly distressed. The room
got quiet again. After a brief while, Julian said, “Well, anyway, I think he
does look remarkably good, considering.”

The next day, Edmond was awake for a longer period
of time, although he was not able to stay awake for more than a few minutes at
a time. It took him days to relate his tale. He told it to us in pieces, each
time relating it only until he was too tired to continue.

For the sake of clarity, I have compiled his tale
here, unbroken.

“It started simply enough. My friends and I were a
group of adventurers. Bored with the traditional life in England that my father
had lived, bored with the life that I was expected to live, we three friends
decided to make the most of our money, money that had come to us by the simple
act of being born, more money than we had a right to waste on selfish pursuits
alone. The three of us each believed strongly in archaeology; it was our
passion. We felt that it was a true science whose future warranted it
furthering and thus we founded the Institute for Antiquities in order to do so.
Young and idealistic, unmarried with no children at the time, we were able to
indulge our interest in the civilizations of the past.

“Always more at ease in a tent on an expedition
than in Society, we started our little group, which Julian has just informed me
to my utter surprise, still survives to this day under a different name.
Christopher, a friend of mine since childhood, and I were primarily responsible
for cataloging and researching the artifacts we found. Freddie, our mutual
friend, had gone to law school and was in charge of the business end. All three
of us went on the expeditions together, expeditions to Greece, Egypt and
beyond.

“It was during one particular expedition to the
Himalayas that we found the artifacts responsible for Arrosha’s demise. We had
spent a couple of weeks at a ruin site and come up pretty empty. While the
area’s rich history had promised a great number of artifacts, the locals were
extremely protective of them and did not want us outsiders meddling with their
heritage. As a result, the expedition was proving to be a failure until one
night, a local boy sought us out and told us that for a certain amount of
money, an enormous amount to him but a piddling sum to the three of us, he
could make sure that we did not go home virtually empty-handed. He led us into
a cave that the locals considered haunted and in a sub-chamber, several
openings below the initial cave, under a pile of debris, were small artifacts.
There were the things we expected to find, crumbling wall paintings hidden
behind centuries of soot, fragments of clay pots and clay idols, but among
these latter was the treasure he had promised. Two boxes, incredibly intact
with no damage whatsoever, lay among the rubble. He said that he had found them
several years ago but when he told the others in his village, they said that
all things in this cave were cursed and forbade him even to touch them. He
warned us not to go back to the village with our find. We would not be welcome
and our lives would be in danger. The discovery was so remarkable that we paid
him more than we had promised. We spent the night in those caves, waking up
early the next morning only to find the youth gone. Climbing down the mountain,
we saddled up our horses and rode until we made it to a town where we could
catch a stagecoach and then later the train to make our way home.

“I can’t tell you the feverish excitement we felt
at this discovery. I wasn’t able to eat or sleep past what I needed to do in
order to stay alive. As soon as we arrived home, we cataloged our find and
carefully began to study it. We looked at these boxes en route, of course, but
were not able to place them to any known time period or civilization. We knew
that we’d have to wait until we reached home to give them the attention they
demanded.

“When we finally arrived in England, we raced back
to our Institute, which was little more than a large study at the time, and
began to examine our treasure from the expedition.

“We’d never seen anything like it. Upon first
glance, the boxes appeared to be a rose quartz, the artifacts, a dragon and a
dragon’s head, seemed to be of clear crystal, but closer scrutiny did not bear
this out. They were made of a strange material that no one had ever before
seen. All the experts with which we spoke, even those in the field of materials,
were completely stumped.

“The only clue that we found had proved to be
almost as much of a mystery and as indestructible as the rest of the treasure.
Hidden in one box was what, at first glance, I thought to be merely a piece of
parchment, but it did not behave as parchment. While it was tightly folded for
what must have been centuries, it was in pristine condition, white as could be
with not one sign of aging. When we removed it for closer study, the paper
showed no sign of ever having been folded. When we crumbled it, it would not
stay crumbled. The only way that it would keep any fold at all was to be folded
along its original lines, an arrangement into which it fell quite naturally.
Written upon it were strange, indecipherable symbols. In the box that contained
the second artifact was yet another parchment, one which behaved normally,
folding when it should and showing the wear and tear of its many years. We had
to be particularly careful with it, for it was becoming quite fragile. Upon it
were written letters in three other languages. While none of them were familiar
to me, Christopher, more a linguist than myself, was certain that at least one
of them would turn out to be in a language that could be deciphered. He copied
down all of the symbols to paper and made it his quest to translate at least
one of these languages, so eager was he to know what the strange parchment
meant, hoping that at least one of the languages would still be alive to make
the second parchment a ‘Rosetta Stone’ of sorts.

“We’d only been back a couple of weeks when an
overpowering urge to travel to New Orleans took hold of me. I couldn’t figure
it out, for I’d never been interested in traveling to America before. It was a
young country and at the time I was interested only in very old, ancient
civilizations. I tried to ignore this urge, but it soon became an all-consuming
obsession. Looking back, I realize now that the amulets were placing me on the
track of Arrosha; it was they which wanted me to track her down. At the time, though,
I had no idea from whence this urge was coming. I knew that I needed to get to
New Orleans right away, for I was becoming almost physically ill from my
obsession with that city. I thought it would be hard to convince the others to
let me go, but as soon as I brought it up, I found that they, too, were caught
in the grip of the same fixation of traveling to New Orleans and taking the
amulets with us.

“We decided not to travel together. Freddie was
engaged to be married, so he decided to stay in England with his fiancée. I
would go ahead to get settled and Christopher would follow me. For the sake of
the objects, we felt it would be safer for us to travel separately, that I
should take one of the amulets and he the other, just in case one of the ships
went down during the voyage. I’ve spent many years regretting that decision,
for it was the one that allowed Arrosha to take me prisoner.

“I arrived in New Orleans a little over a month
later. I found a temporary place to stay while I looked for a more permanent
home. More restless than I’d ever been, I played many more games of chance than
was my habit. One night, I played poker with a man who liked to gamble too
much, one who did not have the cash to back his losses. The next morning I
found myself the proud owner of a house on Toulouse Street and a black female
slave named Virginia. I moved into my new home, and, not knowing what to do
with Virginia, since not only I was unaccustomed to having a slave, I was
vehemently opposed to the practice, I freed her. She had no family and nowhere
else to go, so I kept her on as paid housekeeper, a decision I never regretted,
for she became my right hand man, so to speak, a person upon whom I knew I
could always rely.

“Still restless, still bored and starting to
wonder why I had left England in the first place, I joined the New Orleans’
high society, where, due to my family’s wealth and standing, I was welcomed
with open arms. I soon began to attend their parties and gatherings with great
regularity. This perplexed me, for it was not my nature. I had always been more
at home working or sleeping in a tent on an expedition than with taking tea and
sherry as I whittled away my time with people I found frivolous.

“It was at one of these social functions, however,
that I first met Arrosha. Surrounded at all sides by every able-bodied man
there, she was by far the most beautiful woman that I’d ever seen. When she
looked at me, it was as if the world contained only the two of us. She came
over and whispered something in my ear. I think it was just ‘pleased to meet
you’, or some other polite banality, but what I heard was a promise, a promise
of unending lust and sex. There was more to it than just her words or just her
looks. She exuded an exotic fragrance, a fragrance of flowers, musk and
incense, a fragrance that spoke of long ago, faraway worlds. I was reared to be
a gentleman, but I could have thrown her to the ground that very instant and
ravished her right then and there. The animal instinct I felt stir within me
stir was driving me to a madness I head never before imagined.

“I left early that night, for I knew that I could
not stay and still keep my sanity. Thoughts of this new, exotic woman swam
through my mind as I returned home. Upon getting there, I found the box I had brought
with me from England sitting out upon my desk, open. When I left the house,
that box had been closed, tucked away in my shirt drawer and tied up in one of
my handkerchiefs. I asked Virginia if she had taken it out and she said no, not
only had she not, but no one had been at the house all evening. I believed her,
for by that time, I had known Virginia long enough to trust her implicitly.

“After I dismissed her to go to bed, I sat in my
armchair with the box in my hand, troubled, staring at it for hours, studying
it, unable to figure out how it had wound its way onto my desk or how it had
been opened. As I sat, I began to grow sleepy and started to doze. I woke with
a start a few hours later. The amulet had escaped its box and moved itself over
to my walking stick, without which I never left the house. In amazement I
watched as elongated, inching its way up the stick in the same elongating and
contracting motion as a caterpillar, until it reached the top, merging with the
cane, claiming its place as headpiece before becoming immobile and stationary
once more.

“It was then I realized that this woman who called
herself Rochere and the artifacts were related. The evening had simply been too
bizarre for them not to be. I knew now why I’d been pulled to New Orleans, why
I had to be here and why I’d joined high society when it was not my custom.
From that point forward, whenever I attended a social function, Rochere did not
notice me when I had my cane. It was the strangest thing, for when I walked
away from it, she was friendly, as if I had just entered into the room, but
when I had it with me, it was as if she could not even see me. Also gone were
the seductive impulses she sent me and the intoxicating aroma that had
previously made my head reel. I began to notice that even her behavior became
strange, for when I had my cane with me, she would not stand near me, as if
some invisible force of which not even she was aware, was keeping her away.

“I sent Christopher a letter telling him that I’d
discovered something completely fantastic about the relics and telling him to
hurry. About this time, a gentleman in our New Orleans social set, Thomas,
became quite ill. It seemed he’d suddenly become very weak the night before,
right after one of our parties. It was his heart, the doctor said.

“‘I should have known my heart would begin to fail
me one day,’ Thomas told me when I went by to see him. ‘It’s an affliction that
runs in the family, although it’s never affected anyone as young as myself
before. I was certain I’d have at least another decade or two before my
problems with it began.’

“When I quizzed him briefly about Rochere, he had
no memory of having been with her after the party, although he’d certainly seen
her at the event. Thomas died the next day. It was then I began to track her in
earnest.

“When first I followed her, she was always alone.
I stood vigil before her house every night, but she did not come out every
night. In the very beginning, she intrigued me. After her first excursion, she
repulsed me. I observed quietly as she walked to the docks or into saloons and
picked up men at night, men far below her station, but always young and
handsome. She would then lure them into deserted side streets or alleys. Since
she was unable to notice me, I became brave and walked closer than I should
have, close enough to overhear her hints of offers of sexual favors. Once in
the alley, she would embrace each man and give him what would seem, to any
casual observer, a very passionate kiss. After several minutes, she would release
him. He would invariably seem confused and completely discombobulated, not
knowing where he was or how he had gotten there. She would then tell each man
that he had simply taken a wrong corner, that he should be on his way, or
something to that effect, if she told them anything at all. The poor fellow now
was left wandering, lost and confused, the luckier ones making it home to die,
the less fortunate ones shot, stabbed or beaten while being robbed on their way
home. Several of them simply fell into the river and drowned, they were so
helpless in their extreme stupefaction.

“I waited for weeks for Christopher to inform me
of when he was coming to the city, but the letter I received left me
crestfallen. It was from Freddie, who told me that Christopher was ill. Nothing
serious, he relayed, but it was enough to keep him from travel. Christopher had
deciphered part of the parchment and the words of which he was most certain
were ‘succubus’, ‘destroy’, and ‘together’. He said Christopher was most eager to
join me, that he had extended his deepest apologies, and would be traveling
just as soon as he was able. It would be a few weeks yet until he could leave
for America. It seemed I would have to wait still longer for him to aid me in
my hunt for Rochere.