The Nightmare Game (78 page)

So as Virginia, in her death, was tied to the
apartment, so Marcus became tied to the streets around The Crypt and Zachary
became tied to the mirror. Max hadn’t died, so he became instead her slave to
do with as she pleased. She abused him horribly. I am so grateful that he
redeemed himself at the last and I pray that he makes it.”

After Edmond had finished this part of his story,
he told us that he needed to rest for a few days. He and I did nothing for two
days after that except get to know each other, making sure we kept the
conversation as light as possible. It was on the third day that he told me to
send for Julian, that he was ready to resume his story.

As we sat down near his bed, Julian asked him,
“Did you ever find out what she was, Edmond? Surely she was supernatural. An
evil entity of some sort? A fallen angel, perhaps?”

“No, she was none of those,” Edmond answered.
“Arrosha was simply a delusional psychopath whose madness led her into
imagining herself to be a deity. Her people, the Illeaoceans, gave her great
gifts, very real gifts that she misused badly after the destruction of
Pangaea.”

“Do you mean the transformations she performed?” I
asked. “They seem to be permanent. I’ve checked on the others and while they’re
not awake yet, not one person has changed back since her destruction.”

“The transformation was just one of the gifts. All
of her seeming miracles were the result of technologies given to her, actually
built into her by her people. The Illeaoceans mostly used the transformation,
an expensive procedure, in a limited fashion for internal organs and nerves, in
the treatment of injury and disease.

“For a few privileged people, however, such as the
very rich and those deemed indispensable to society, such as top scientists,
for example, they used this transfiguration, which worked, however, at a
considerably slower pace, almost as extensively as Arrosha did with her
followers. These people promoted it for extreme longevity and lived enormously
long life spans. Able to slow aging to a near stop, eventually even the
transformations stopped working and it became time for them to create new
bodies. That’s when the stasis chambers came into play. The Illeaoceans invented
techniques for growing new bodies that would serve as blank templates. Until
these new bodies were ready, they slept in the stasis chambers. Then they
downloaded the minds and personalities of the scientists, statesmen and the
very wealthy into their mindless clones. It made important Illeaoceans
virtually immortal, one of the things that their enemies feared most about
them.

“Arrosha didn’t really need the essence and the
water for the transformations, but she used the essence to keep her followers
in optimum health, and the water to keep them under control. However, its real
purpose was to set the stage to trick you, Ashley. Regardless of what excuse
she used, the fact was that she could not transform you suddenly like she did
the others. It was not in her power because you wore one of the amulets, both
of which were designed and built by the Illeaoceans to be impervious to the
technology they had built into her.”

“She was able to transform me gradually, though,
and make me younger.”

“Because you wore the amulet, her technology alone
could never have effected those changes,” Edmond replied. “For that she had to
rely on black magic, which she introduced into the water system specifically to
wipe your memories so that she could trick you into joining her followers.”

“Edmond,” I asked. “Did she create that weird
world, the one I saw when I stepped through the second and third door? It all
felt so real.”

“I know. Her nightmare dimension was enough to
fool anyone. All I can tell you is that it wasn’t the same kind of reality to
which we’re all accustomed. It was one in which matter was more fluid, more
changeable, more malleable, one in which whatever she desired manifested.

“It’s hard to explain and I don’t even pretend to
understand it. No one I’ve called has ever able to explain Illeaocean science
to me, either, since it was so much more advanced than our own. Everything
there was real and yet it wasn’t. In our reality, all of her creations would
have been nothing more than mere projections. In her twilight dimension,
however, reality was more fluid. Whenever anyone came into proximity with an
object or touched it, it became as real as anything here could be. Her dark
dimension was solid enough for her to imprison her defeated enemies and
forgotten lovers in the prisons of her paintings and her statues. The Crypt was
a gateway, half in this world, half in her realm. So was the first door, for
she felt it was too much effort to bring any of my champions into her world
until after her attack in her vortex. The house on Toulouse Street was, in a
limited extent, a gateway as well, created and protected by the boxes to help
my people.

“One thing was certain, though. Her world was a
dangerous place, real enough to kill you. It was the dimension entered through
the second and third door of The Crypt. It was also the dimension of the vortex
in the shower, the one into which she partially dragged you. She easily could
have killed you there, but she could not hurt you further once you were outside
of it. That’s why she didn’t come after you. She couldn’t.

“As with the transformations, Arrosha’s access to
her twilight dimension was built into her by the Illeaoceans. It was given to
her to enable her to slip behind the front lines of the enemy, the Malitiuans,
unseen, acting as a ‘secret tunnel’ of sorts, in order to cross a border that
was guarded by otherwise impermeable technology. Once inside, her
shape-shifting abilities allowed her to pass in the shadows among the enemy,
seeking out her victims for intelligence gathering, sabotage, or assassination.
Originally instructed to use this passageway as little as possible, once Pangea
fell, Arrosha became increasingly dependent upon that dimension, addicted to
the escape it could offer. Over the years, centuries and eons, usually by
accident, as she did most things technical, she discovered more and more ways
to manipulate it and push its limits.

“She created an fantasy Illeaocea for herself
there, comprised of her favorite places. When she was not feeding, sleeping, or
manipulating, it became her real home and she lived there, surrounded by her
select few, as at the mansion. She started to abuse that dimension in earnest
when she began to study the black arts, practicing freely, and at first
unsuccessfully, on the most unfortunate of those select few.

“It was only after she captured me that she
discovered a more important use for that world. She barely used it with
Virginia or Marcus, because in her arrogance she dismissed them too easily.
They each just briefly crossed into it in their attempts to rescue me. It was
only with Zachary that she introduced the dimension deliberately, after she had
realized that my supporters were more difficult to dispatch than she originally
calculated. She did not introduce Zachary to the mansion, however. She merely
let him wander about within that world without food or water for a few weeks
until she became bored when he did not die as she had planned. Even that
episode backfired on her when Zachary learned the secret of the mirror and the
reflecting pool, for no matter where she moved them after she killed him, he
could always sense their location.

“How is it that you know so much about her,
Edmond?” asked Julian. “Did she tell you these things?”

“No. Arrosha never spoke to me except to gloat. Her
insanity and arrogance made her blind to what she really was.”

“Then how were you able to find out?” I asked.

“Ashley, you and I shared a mental and psychic
link because of the stasis chamber. In a most unpleasant way, it was much the
same with Arrosha. Because of this link, Arrosha could always feel it when I
had called someone. That’s how she discovered how to contact you in Austin,
Ashley. She got into the energies of those I called before they ever arrived in
New Orleans; it never took her long to tap into someone’s energy, to be ready
for them by the time they first arrived, as she did with you. She read many of
your thoughts through me and that’s how she learned where to send the faxes and
e-mails to make sure that she made the offer so desirable that when you came,
you would stay at my house on Toulouse Street. We couldn’t hide that
information from her because gathering electronic data came so naturally to
her. Once she realized, through me, that Carolyne was coming with you, it was
easy for her to get the information out of your mind and make sure your friend
would not accompany you to New Orleans. It was also Rochere that caused the
awful argument that the two of you had over the phone the day after your first
trip to The Crypt.

“She was able to get into your mind to interrupt
the dream I was trying to send you. She found out a long time ago that if she
interrupted the dream I was trying to send you, a dream meant to call you, a
dream meant to strengthen you, she could fatigue you before the game was even
underway. I tried to avoid her detection, but it wasn’t possible. At first the
dream came from me, but after you had answered my call and made your
reservations for the trip to New Orleans, I stopped calling you since you’d
gotten my message, using the dream only once more, on the plane ride into the
city. She hijacked that dream once you made plans to visit and used it to
exhaust you before you even arrived in New Orleans, knowing that if you were
exhausted when you arrived in the city, it would make you more susceptible once
you got to her office and therefore easier to kill. It’s why she was able to
get into your head and almost destroy you before Troy came in and rescued you.
She wanted to murder you, Ashley, to have you collapse on the street and die
right after leaving her office before you even made it to my house, as she had
done with so many others. I shudder to think that if Troy hadn’t come in when
he did, she might have succeeded. Now I know why there were no viable people to
champion me since Virginia before the Trust allowed Rochere to manage the
apartment. I’m truly grateful, Julian, that you offered this protection. I
think it was the only way that anyone at all made it through.

“Even after more than a century and a half,
though, I would know almost nothing about her if she had not dreamt. I saw her
dreams as she slept, the same way she saw into my mind; they were thrust upon
me against my will. When it got to me too much, it took great effort to keep
them out. It was a function of my stasis prison, and since she hated that I
could see into her mind at all, it was a function she would gladly have
disconnected had she known how. When she reached into my mind, as she so often
did, to torment me and gain access to the people I called to this cause, she
would see what I knew and scream that I was a liar. After she calmed down, she
accused me of madness, that I was delusional, for she never could acknowledge
that my information about her was correct. She dreamed of Illeaocea and the
world of her dead Pangaea so very frequently. It is because of this that I know
more about that monster than she knew about herself, truths that her warped
version of herself would not contain. Even as her ego never let her remember
these things, her subconscious would not let her forget.

“In her twisted mind, she fancied herself to be a
goddess, as you well know, Ashley. She lived out this fantasy under many
different names in her many different lifetimes. It was only her madness,
though, that deluded her into thinking she was divine. The truth resonated with
her constantly, even as she refused to acknowledge it. It was why she refused
to remain in her guise as a goddess or queen for more than a few eons at most.
Inside, she knew what she was and this knowledge would not allow her to
overstep her bounds for any real length of time; it went against her original
programming. The truth was that she was created to serve, not to rule, so
eventually the role of divinity would begin to wear on her and she would, with
disappointment or boredom as the excuse, live differently, although always at
least as a member of the privileged class. Now mad, even though her ego
demanded to be worshiped, her original programming overrid it.”

“You say that she was mad, Edmond,” Julian remarked.
“Was she always?”

“Oh, not at all. She was created to be one of the
sanest of creatures.”

“That evil witch was actually born sane?” I asked
in disbelief.

“She was never born. There was nothing natural
about her. She was merely a man-made thing, created, grown in a laboratory. She
dreamed often of those who created her, aware of them on some level even before
she was completed, and I saw and heard them through her dreams. Her creators
did not realize that she was capable of understanding them at the time, but she
listened to their conversations as they talked, burying the things they said
deep inside her mind. These conversations re-emerged from her subconscious only
when she was well within her dream cycle. Everything I understood of her, I
understood through those dreams. When not actively engaged in a battle with one
of my own, she slept a lot, not because she needed it, but because it offered
her an escape from her pain.

 “I hope I can explain this well enough. I saw
images from her brain that I still don’t understand. For almost all of my years
as her prisoner, I thought it was all magic. More and more, however, whenever a
scientist or biologist answered my call to arms, and there have been many, I
was able to receive some real explanations, especially within the last few
decades. I now know that there was sophisticated science behind my enemy’s
existence. If the artifacts had never been found, there would have been no
stopping her. It’s only lucky for us that they were almost as intelligent as
she was.”

“Artificial intelligence, you mean?” asked Julian.

“It was more than just that. The amulets and their
boxes were almost alive in a way I cannot explain. It was how they were able to
adapt to various situations.

“You see, I’ve seen the Illeaoceans through Arrosha’s
dreams. They were indeed a beautiful, graceful people, only so incredibly
perfect because they were designed by their own genetic technology. It was
Illeaocean genetic experimentation that created Arrosha. However, with Arrosha,
the Illeaocean template stopped being a human one, although she still had to
look like a beautiful woman in order to seduce Malitiuan men in power. She also
had to have the wiles to lure and control them easily.