The Nightmare Game (50 page)

I didn’t recognize one of the people, but I
recognized Virginia and Marcus. My hands began to tremble and I shuffled
through the papers I’d already set aside, hoping that by doing so, Geoffrey
would not notice my upset. Once I had regained control, I returned to the last
set of photographs. Regathering my courage, I carefully pulled out the photos
of Marcus and Virginia and studied them slowly, trying hard to recapture my
composure.

The young man staring back at me from the
photograph, light eyes and complexion, straight, stringy hair, gone so many
years, knew me as well as I knew him. As my outer vision began to blur, my
inner vision came fully into clear focus. Marcus. Of course, this was the young
man that kept popping up on Bourbon Street, the young man who indelicately and
often rudely urged me to continue my course, their cause.

I studied the photo of Virginia last because I’d
always found solace in her quiet strength and I certainly needed that right
now. How could I possibly have forgotten Virginia, the woman who appeared at the
apartment that I had rented for what was supposed to be less than a week’s
vacation? I knew now how she was linked to the house on Toulouse Street. She
had come with it.

I now remembered who I was and what I was supposed
to do, I now recalled the point of this whole endeavor, at least as much as I’d
been told. The game, the quest to rescue Edmond, the man in the portrait, the
man in my dreams, the one who had drawn me to New Orleans, the man, who had,
several times, himself rescued me in a way I could never have thought possible,
from within the confines of my own dreams. Yes, I now remembered everything in
perfect clarity.

I looked at the photographs and I remembered these
people, no longer alive, but not exactly dead, either. But what of that third
man? I did not recognize him. Who was he? Then I recalled that Edmond had
mentioned a third person, one I had not met yet. Was this Zachary? His must
have been the voice calling me up to the third floor. The baseball player’s
photo wasn’t even in this stack of photos, notably missing. Who was this fourth
person named Max? I only knew of one guy named Max, but it couldn’t possibly be
the same fellow. Could Max the bartender and Max the baseball player be the
same person, I wondered? No, I told myself, I was letting my imagination run
away with me. After all, I supposed, Max was not an uncommon name. The baseball
player was handsome, the bartender, ugly. It was impossible. Why, they weren’t
even the same height, for one was 6’4”, the other shorter than myself. But that
would be a moot point in this place, wouldn’t it? What was it that Ben kept
saying, about Arrosha changing all of them, making them all beautiful? Maybe if
she could make people oh so beautiful, she could make them oh so ugly as well.

As I stared at these papers, a second set of
memories resurfaced. I now fully remembered the Crypt and that the reason the
people in this house seemed so familiar to me was because I had run into them
there. I remembered Ben and Illea in particular because they had seemed so
nice; and I remembered Geoffrey for the opposite reason, for he had seemed so
mean, especially to the bartender. I remembered Rochere in both her old and
young guises and that she and Arrosha were one and the same.

I now knew everything in horrific detail that had
been hidden from me up until now. I remembered how I got here. I now remembered
the second door at The Crypt, I now recalled being one second in the back room
of a bar in the French Quarter, the next second in a hot, humid yet colorless swamp
only walking distance from this mansion and its perennially perfect climate.
With a shudder, I remembered those horrible creatures in the swamp that tried
to feed off me, the ones that chased me to this house. I realized now why I
could see the art’s eyes glow and Geoffrey couldn’t. The amulet, it let me see
something that the others could not. I wanted to scream out, but Geoffrey was
still watching me too closely, so I bit my lip and clasp my hands together,
fighting my normal reactions. I had to put on a good front. That might buy me
more time and I hoped that in the moonlight, he hadn’t noticed.

Now that I knew how I got here, the realization
that I had no idea how to get back unnerved me horribly. This was no ordinary
place, no real place on any real map. There was no way I could simply walk out
the door and keep going until I found a road and followed it to the nearest
town or fishing camp, at least, where I could find a phone and call someone.
This place existed outside of any reality of which I’d ever heard tell. Even if
escape were possible, it would have been a moot point, for the creatures that
had attacked me earlier were surely still lurking out there, watching for me on
that bayou road, sitting in wait to kill me before I could make it far.

Wait, I thought to myself, I’d had that thought
before, I’d sought a plan of escape before, since I’d been here; that thought
was not a new one. When was it that I’d remembered? It came to me in a flash.
The night after the essence, before the purge, that was when my memories had
come back to me, at least partially. What had caused me to forget them again?
Was it the purge itself? No, that shouldn’t have done it. It must have been
something I’d ingested. Was it the essence that had made me forget? No, if anything,
the essence had helped me remember. The water, it had to be the water. Of
course, that was it. I didn’t remember much of my recovery from the ghoul
attack; I’d been far too ill for that. But I did remember that I’d had an awful
lot of the water at that time. I’d tried to resist it, because Edmond had
warned me not to drink anything that came from Rochere. And I did resist it,
didn’t I? The necklace amulet was on its way to healing me when somebody put an
I.V. line into my arm and forced it into me. Who was it that did that to me?
Ben was there, true, and Illea, but they weren’t the architects of it. It was
Arrosha herself, aided by Geoffrey, that slimy reptile. I felt as if I’d been
raped.

I needed to get back on track. I had to find a way
out of here fast. It was more than just survival, I needed to resume the quest,
I needed to find Edmond and give him my necklace. The necklace! Did I still
have it? My fingers flew to my neck. Thank God, I thought as I touched upon it.
It had buried itself under my skin and become so light, so unnoticeable, I
could hardly feel myself wearing it. In an unguarded moment, I breathed an
audible sight of relief.

“Remember something finally?” Geoffrey remarked
snidely.

For a split second, I’d been so terrified that I’d
lost the necklace, so relieved to find I hadn’t, that I had let myself react
physically.

“No, no, it’s nothing,” I said, trying to sound as
convincing as possible. “It’s just that, well, all these people, it’s all just
so sad, so tragic.”

“Bullshit. You’re a bad liar,” he snorted. “So
you’re not going to tell me, huh?”

“There’s nothing to tell,” I said as blandly as I
could. This much was true. There was absolutely nothing that had come to me
that I wanted to share with Geoffrey. “I still don’t understand why you think
these people have anything to do with me. You said you had proof that I was
guilty of some offense that I still don’t understand,” I lied. “I see no
proof.”

“Okay, if you want to play it that way, we’ll play
it that way. You really are a stupid little snit, aren’t you, Ashley, thinking
you could play me like you played Ben. You see, I remember you from the city.
By virtue of staying clear of our special water, my mind wasn’t wiped clean of
that memory like the others’ were. You were that bitch that came into The
Crypt. Our own private club and you had the nerve to come into it. How did you
even see it anyway? Nobody’s supposed to be able to see it until they’ve taken
essence first! Tell me. Tell me!”

“I don’t know,” I said, trying not to sound as
scared as I was. “I really don’t know. I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to be
able to see it.”

“There’s something rotten about you and I’m going
to expose it before Arrosha makes the mistake of transforming you. You see,
Ashley, I haven’t yet shown you quite everything I found.” He reached behind
the trunk, retrieved another envelope. “Here’s all the proof I need. You see, I
found this at the apartment where you were staying.”

“What were you, stalking me?” I asked.

“You might want to say that.” He answered, quite
proud of himself. “I know about that place on Toulouse Street. I’ve known for a
long time. I’m the only one here that does, besides Arrosha herself. She told
me to keep an eye on it a long, long time ago. And for a long time, I was a
very good boy. I did as I was told. But then, one day, after the outsider water
kicked in, I woke up and stopped being such a good boy. And looky what I found.
Goes to show you what a wee bit of that old initiative will get you, doesn’t
it? Just going that one little extra step? Now, I’d have to say that this
pretty much falls under the heading of proof, wouldn’t you?”

“It’s an envelope, Geoffrey. That hardly qualifies
as proof.”

“Hold on a second. I’m getting to that. This is
too juicy for me to rush. Now, I’ve kept an eye on that apartment for what is
it, over thirty years? That’s a long time for nothing remarkable to have
happened, isn’t it?”

“I suppose.”

“It was interesting. Sort of. People came and
went. Mostly came in healthy and went out sick if they left at all. Then you
came along. I have to tell you that I didn’t like you from the beginning, so I
decided to keep an even closer eye on you. With the key Arrosha gave me – Ben
doesn’t have one, by the way – I let myself into the apartment. I can’t believe
you were willing to live like that, even for a few days. It’s so low-rent. I
found it oddly fitting for you, though, to be perfectly honest.

“So I looked around the place and went through a
few things, but there wasn’t anything there but your clothes and stuff. I have
to ask you, the pictures in your wallet, is that your family?”

“Geoffrey, you went through my purse?” I felt
incredibly violated now, realizing that the man I hated most in the world had
been toying with my personal property while I was gone.

“Yeah,” he said, as if bored, “but don’t get in a
snit. It was pretty dull. Just like your clothes.

“This was early this morning, as a matter of fact.
Since Arrosha had accepted you and you were starting to look passable, if I
didn’t find anything incriminating, I made up my mind to try to make nice. It
was about that time that I decided to leave the place, because it was obvious
none of the rest of that house had anything to do with you. But before I went
out that courtyard gate, I took one last look around and caught a glare off of
something shiny. I went over to that spot and noticed a weird-looking patch in
the dried up dirt on the far side of the courtyard, by the old slave quarters.
I didn’t notice it when I walked in, but as I walked out, I guess the sunshine must’ve
hit it just right and something glinted. Let’s just say it caught my attention.
At first, I figured it was just some garbage.

“But going that extra step, I checked it out and
guess what? It wasn’t just garbage, now was it? At least not the ordinary kind.
So I looked at it hard and up close now, and my, my, what did I spy with my
little eyes? Something’d been buried there recently. Very recently. And to make
it even better, whoever did it put ashes on the top and scattered chicken feet
and bones and feathers all around it. Must be some kind of hoodoo, I suppose. I
figured that since you’re the only one stayin’ there, that somebody must have
been you.”

“I don’t know who buried that stuff, Geoffrey, but
I know that it sure as hell wasn’t me,” I protested. “I don’t even know how to
do hoodoo.”

“Oh, so now you remember? How very convenient. I
had a feeling that you would have to drop your act when I showed you the proof.
It gets even better. Don’t you want me to tell you what else I found?”

“I’m sure you’re going tell me whether I want you
to or not.”

“Damn straight, babe. Damn straight. You see, when
I walked over to that spot to study it up close, I saw what it was that was
glinting in the sun, what caught my eye. It was this.” He held up a small,
shiny piece of metal.

“It’s a clip, Geoffrey. You can buy them in any
office supply store. I still don’t know what this has to do with me,” I told
him.

“True, but this isn’t just any old clip.” he said,
holding it back up as if he were a trial lawyer and I was the accused.

He removed the contents of the envelope and threw
them at me. They were duplicate 3-D pictures of Virginia, Marcus and the
unfamiliar man.

“More photos, Geoffrey? You’ve already shown me
these,” I said, feigning indifference as best I could. “I still see no proof.”

“But these photos are different, you see. These
were buried with that clip. That clip, you see, is connected with these people.
That proves you’re connected with these people.

“Take your time, my dear. I don’t want you to feel
pressured just because I’m here. I want you to look at them close. Recognize
any of these characters?

Of course I recognized Virginia and Marcus, but he
didn’t have to know that. “Like I said, Geoffrey, anybody can buy those clips
by the gross in any office supply store. I still don’t see how it proves I’m
connected with these people.”

“But it wasn’t just sitting all alone and lonely
like it is now,” he said, savoring the moment. “You wanna guess what I found
attached to it? Look familiar?”

He held up my photo ID badge from work, with my
picture on it, the plastic lanyard, torn from its clip, lying limp across its
top.

While I wanted to scream at him and demand he hand
my work badge over to me, I bit my lip and said nothing. I didn’t want to give
Geoffrey any more power over me than he had already.

“Why, if I’m not mistaken, it’s the pre-essence
you. I almost forgot how ugly you were. Tell me, what would your ID badge be
doing buried in a hoodoo pile with photos of these other people, the same people
I found in Arrosha’s secret trunk? Don’t bother to lie to me. These people are
all connected somehow and now I know that you’re connected to them.

“Speechless?” he said with haughtiness upon my
silence. “I had a feeling you would be. You see, my darling little Ashley, when
I first got up the nerve to enter this room a mere few weeks ago, it had
nothing to do with you because I didn’t even know at that time that you even
existed. Initially, I simply wanted to find out more about Arrosha so that I
could feel closer to her, be more connected to her, hopefully be more useful to
her and able to serve her better.”

“Serve yourself better, you mean,” I added, trying
not to sound as frightened as I was.

“One and the same, my dear, it’s all one and the
same. I took my time exploring the room’s objects and found little of any real
help to me. I saved the trunk until last because it was locked.”

“I would think that would have made it the first
thing that you would have gone to.” I said, distaste rife in my voice.

“Under different circumstances, you’d be right,
but at the time, I was in no hurry. I wanted to savor the experience. And then
you showed up. I must admit, even though I’d been expecting you in a way, I
didn’t expect your arrival to be quite so unceremonious. I thought I’d run out
of time to explore the trunk in anything more than a haphazard way. But,
fortunately for me, you were a lot sicker than anyone should be and still be
alive. In fact, we thought you were going to die because you kept refusing the water.

“Great stuff, isn’t it, our water. It makes you so
strong, so young, so beautiful, so pliable, so forgetful; and blissfully it
keeps you that way. Don’t be so surprised, Ashley, I noticed it, too, just very
recently. It’s funny that I should, after all of these years. It turned me into
such a goody-two shoes that, looking back on those days, it just makes me want
to puke.”

“Ben’s didn’t mention a word to me about the water
having any side effects.”

“He doesn’t know. Sweet, loveable, huggable Ben.
Dear old Ben’s so much smarter than me. I realized that when I first met him so
many years ago. But he’s only book smart and that never did him a whole lot of
good out in the real world. Me, I’m street smart, and it’s the only kind of
smart that really counts in the end. I’m quicker, I’m more clever. I look for
all the angles, all the in’s, know how to find them, know how to use them.”

“Why?” I asked. “To take advantage?”

Geoffrey smiled, “Why sure, baby, why else? Don’t
go looking for any real answers from Ben. He doesn’t know a thing about our
water. I didn’t either until all the extra essence opened my eyes. It made me
even smarter and I started to see what a schmuck I’d been for decades without
even realizing it.

“Ben’s changed lately, too, but because he keeps
drinking our marvelous water, the shifts in him have been much more subtle,
almost too small for the average person to see. Good thing I’m not average. As
a matter of fact, I’m sure that I’ve noticed more changes in him than he has in
himself lately.”

“What kind of changes?”

“For one thing, he hasn’t been nearly as patient
with or forgiving of my foibles of late. Poor, poor Ben, he’s just too much of
a conformist for his own good. It’s his nature to be kind, good and loveable.
It isn’t mine.”

“So I’ve noticed.”

My comment received only a self-satisfied smirk.
“Those aren’t the qualities I value; they’re for saps. I’d rather be smart,
savvy, one step ahead of everybody else. I’m not the person getting played,
baby, I’m the player.”

“Good for you, Geoffrey,” I said in my most
loathing tone.

“Damn straight, good for me. That’s why when
Arrosha takes us public, I’m going to be the one at the top, I’m going to be
the most powerful man in the world, not Ben.”

Fearful that Geoffrey would go on another egomaniacal
rant that might lead to his threatening violence again, I tried to steer the
conversation back on course.

“Have you noticed a change in anyone else besides
the two of you?” I asked.

“Illea seems touchy these days. She’s been
watching me a lot lately. She hasn’t said anything, but I’ve been catching her
just watching and disapproving. She’s really been pissing me off.”

“Anybody else?”

“Nope, nobody else, baby, except for you and you
don’t count. You see, everybody else is too new.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Of course you don’t. Arrosha didn’t transform you
yet. You weren’t worthy of that. You see, when you get transformed, it’s
sudden, your whole molecular structure gets changed in an instant. It
discombobulates you. Then just add the water and it becomes a real mind-fuck!
Whammo, you’re livin’ in la-la land. Even after all these years, I’d probably
still be there if it weren’t for the extra essence.”

“What about the essence?” I hadn’t told Geoffrey
the effect it had had on me and I wasn’t about to. He was in the mood to talk
and I was in the mood to listen. Even if I didn’t make it out of here, even if
Rochere managed to kill me, if I wound up like Virginia and Marcus, the more I
learned here, the more I hopefully could help the next poor schmuck that got sucked
into this game.

“The essence is wild, but you know that. It’s
different every time. Most of the time it makes you hornier than a goat and
most of the time you trip out on it in one way or another. We usually don’t get
it very often because it keeps you full for such a long time. We used to get it
about once every two months. But for some odd reason, in the last three months,
we’ve been feasting often. It was right about then that I started noticing some
of the more, let’s just say less desirable aspects of the water and decided to
do something about it.

“That’s always been one of my talents. I can pick
up on things and pin-point them; I can put two and two together faster than
anybody else around. You see, usually, we transport some water back and forth
through the city.”

“Ben mentioned it.”

“The only thing is, we take our water into the
city and we bring back the empties. But for the last few weeks, I’ve been
bringing in empties and filling them up in the city with tap water.”

“And nobody noticed?”

“The extra essence kept me looking healthy,
camouflaged any nasty tell-tale physical effects. Even so, though, Ben started
to suspect something was going on, nosy bastard that he is. That’s when I
raised a big stink with Arrosha and got my own room.”

“She didn’t think that was odd?”

“Something was ready to go down then. I could feel
it and she could too. I told her that I could keep a look-out for you better
without Ben breathing down my neck. Besides, she trusted me.”

“And look how you repaid her.”

“I caught the traitor in our ranks. I should get a
fucking medal for it. I’ve done a lot of work in exposing you. I’ve taken one
for the team and my contribution’s gonna be recognized as soon as I expose you
for what you really are.”

“Exactly what did you take ‘for the team’,
Geoffrey?”

“I’ve been sucking down nasty outsider water for
the last two months.”

“Nobody told you to do that.”

“You’re right. They didn’t. That’s because I’m a
leader, not a follower. Do you have any idea of how hard it is to go back to
regular water again? It’s horrible, it’s nasty, disgusting, especially after
thirty-plus years. It’s worse than drinkin’ diarrhea. No wonder Arrosha tells
us that nothing is denied us in the outside world. It’s like telling us that
the dog-shit on the street is not denied to us. No matter how excellent the
food, how fresh, how well-prepared, no matter how rare the wine or brandy, it
all tastes putrid after you get the water and the essence in your system. And I
don’t care if it’s the purest water from some fuckin’ unspoiled mountain stream
in Tibet, it all tastes like crap to us. That’s why we stick to the drinks at
The Crypt when we’re in the city. They’re like the water here except with a
little extra buzz.

“I guess that’s the real reason that nobody
suspected I was smuggling the full bottles in from the city and smuggling the
empties out to refill. They would have thought I was crazy. Drinking that shit
was hard, let me tell you. The first few times I tried, I threw it all back up.
It took me over a week to find the perfect mix of our water and outsider water
that I could keep down and still keep some clarity at the same time. After
that, it was over a month before my tolerance was up to allowing me mostly
outside water, another two weeks before I weaned myself onto it alone. None of
this would have worked on any level whatsoever, I never could have gotten away
with any of it had it not been for the frequent essence feasts we were having
then. They kept my looks and my youth from going downhill, they camouflaged my
activities. I went into the city alone frequently, telling everyone that I had
some new lovers there and in a way I did, for my new lover was the outside
world’s water.”

“Didn’t Ben get jealous?”

“Ben? No, I told him it was a group of women and
he only ever got jealous when a lover on the side was another man. The women
never bothered him because he knew they were mere dalliances to me. Unlike Ben,
I need a great deal more sexual variety than he does.”

“So I’ve been told,” I said, heavy sarcasm in my
voice. “Didn’t it bother Arrosha?”

“I minded my manners around her and kept her
up-to-date about the activity going on in the Toulouse Street house. She
appreciated that. I don’t think it would have bothered her for me to go a
little above-and-beyond.”

“Don’t you think you may have gone over her head
just a little?”

“What? Just wanting to be able to think for myself
once again? Hey, if I hadn’t been able to do that, I never would have come to
know about you and find out what you really are.”

“Why are you telling me all of this?” I asked. I
did want all the information that I could get because I’d come too far in
knowing too little, but his motives puzzled me.

“Because like I told you before, you don’t matter.
You see, Ashley, you’ll be dead soon and then you’ll be just like all those
people in the trunk and in the box. They didn’t matter either. At least not in
the end. Nobody that matters cared about them and nobody that matters is going
to care about you either.”

“Ben will care, Illea and Robert will care,” I protested.

“Not once I expose you as the fraud and traitor
that you are, not once Arrosha executes you for being one. They’ll see you then
the way I see you now. And they’ll remember you like that forever.”

“No they won’t. I’ll tell the others everything you
just told me.”

“It would be only your word against mine. And I’ll
tell everybody that you decided to make up nasty lies about me. But this is
moot, because when I get through with you, you won’t be in any position to tell
anybody anything.”

“Are you going to kill me anyway?”

“No, you convinced me not to do that. You’ll die
soon enough, I’ll see to that personally. But I will make sure that Arrosha
executes you while every single one of us watches.”

“There are those who will believe me.”

“It doesn’t matter, cause I’ve just decided that you
won’t be telling anybody anything. I’m going to silence you without killing you
by filling you so full our special brand of water that you’ll forget everything
that just happened. That and a few well-placed suggestions and I’ll give special
meaning to the term ‘brainwashing’. Do you honestly think I’d be so stupid as
to tell you everything without having a plan to make you forget it all again?”

“No! No, I’m not drinking that water again, I
won’t do it!”

“You won’t have a choice, bitch. I’ll do it like
we did it the first time. I’m going to strap you down, stick an IV tube in your
arm and let’s just say that the term ‘intravenous’ comes to mind. It won’t be
long until you won’t remember a damn thing any more.”

“No, you’re not! I won’t let you!”

I bolted up off the floor and tried to run but
Geoffrey had stood up as well, grabbed my arm hard and pulled me too close to
himself.

“Let go of me, Geoffrey,” I screamed at him. “Let
go of me!”

“Why, so you can do something stupid and deprive
Arrosha of the honor of executing you?”

“It’s no more than what you were going to do
yourself only a little while ago.”

“Yes, but then you showed me the error of my ways,
didn’t you, Ashley? Quit struggling and I’ll do you the honor of returning that
favor.”

Still tightly holding my arm, he walked over to
the cord that hung from the light and turned it off. It was dark for only a
second or two until my eyes adjusted to the lower light level and the room once
again became illuminated, this time by cold moonlight streaming in from the
attic room’s single window, which Geoffrey roughly pulled me toward.

“You see, my dear, the beauty of it all is that
you’re as good as on death row right now. This mansion is nothing but a prison
for you from now on. You have to stay here and await your fate. You have
nowhere to go, nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. You see, I never told any of
the others, but I know what you were running from the day you banged so
frantically upon our front door. When I opened that door, I saw those creatures
that were right on your heel, quite literally, I might add. I had a feeling
that just one more touch would kill you; I also knew that I was safe, for the
moment they saw me they retreated. Arrosha would never have allowed them to touch
me. So you see, Ashley, if you make any attempt to leave the mansion and its
grounds, you lose the protection it affords you and even before Arrosha gets
the chance to do away with you, those lovely little creatures out there will
make sure that you wind up dead along some unmarked roadside where you so
deservedly belong.”