The Nightmare Game (67 page)

I dug my nails into the fleshy petal onto which I
clung in desperation, puncturing its skin. A thick, sticky liquid oozed out,
clinging to my fingers. As if in pain, the flower shuddered but did not stop
its relentless efforts to pull me into itself. Finally, despite my desperate
struggling, it managed to break my hold as it swallowed my entire body into its
muscular gullet. I managed to keep my head lifted toward its surface opening,
trying desperately to avoid suffocation, gasping in the air whenever the
strong, relentless peristaltic action of its gullet relaxed. The flower forced
me further and further down into itself, its strong muscles squeezing and releasing,
squeezing and releasing, until I could see sunlight no longer. My brain
screamed into itself as the prospect of being slowly digested alive by a
man-eating plant loomed ahead of me. I tried to find a foothold or a handhold
to fight my downward decent, but the gullet surface was too slick and too
mobile to allow for that. Being crushed by a fall to earth now looked like a
pretty good idea compared to this. Was this the fate for which I had been
saved? Was this to be the unceremonious end of all my efforts to save Edmond?

It was becoming harder and harder for me to
breathe as the squeezing action increased. The flower continued forcing me
downward until suddenly it stopped and I was abruptly spat out onto a hard
surface. I stumbled and fell, the wind knocked out of me for a few moments. I
stood up as quickly as I could and checked myself for damage; except for some
soreness and bruising from the squeezing, I seemed to be okay. I looked to
examine the exit of the flower from which I’d been spat, but there was just a
solid, blank ceiling and wall. Looking around, I seemed to be at one end of a
man-made tunnel of some sort.

The light level was dark, the tunnel foreboding.
However, considering its originator was Arrosha, I could have expected no more.
The narrow corridor was very tall but very thin, wide enough for only two
people to pass through side by side comfortably, and it seemed to be
constructed of the same iridescent bronze-like metal from which the tower room
had been made. A dim light was coming from the other end of the tunnel, which
was formed in the shape of a pointed archway, casting its reflection upon the
smooth, polished walls and floor.

 Cautiously, I entered the corridor, looking
behind myself often to make sure that none of Arrosha’s nasty surprises popped
up unexpectedly. But none did, and as the passageway continued, I began to
relax just enough to examine my surroundings, still vigilant, however, for any
new movements or noises. The entire length of the corridor seemed to be
consistent in its construction. The support beams, which were set about ten
feet apart, were skeletal in appearance, suggesting long, curved metal human
femur bones. The metallic walls between them were blank and cold to the touch.

That the corridor was reflected back onto the
polished floor was more than a little disorienting. I could see neither
beginning nor ending to the pass now, only that the light that beckoned me
seemed a little brighter since the pupils of my enhanced eyes had now dilated
to adjust. Somewhat dark though it was, gone was the dullness of some of the
other nightmare realms that Arrosha had created, for while the light level was
low, I could still see the iridescent rainbow shades that the bronze metal
reflected.

My thoughts as I traveled down the long, long
hallway were accompanied only by the occasional squeak of my sneakers when I
took a misstep, the sound of my breathing and the occasional clearing of my
throat, all of which echoed loudly in the corridor. The only other sound
present in my ears was the pounding of my own heart. The absolute aloneness was
frightening. Lost and trapped here with no one to help me, I missed Ben’s
company intensely. He had made me feel protected in our journey on the surface;
and my having to console him and cheer him up had made me more optimistic in
the process. Without his presence, dread fuelled my thoughts and emotions. The
knot I felt in my stomach grew larger and tighter with each passing step that I
took. The impression that I must be getting close to Arrosha was replaced by a
horrible thought that came unbidden into my mind. What if this was another
unending hallway such as the one at the mansion? If so, I could follow it for
years, never to reach its other end. I shoved that idea out of my mind because,
at this point, it would only lead to panic. Besides, didn’t Edmond say that
Arrosha would bring me to him at the end so that he could watch me die? The
only solace I received from that thought was that the end for me was not quite
here yet.

At first the curve of this interminably long,
monotonous corridor was so slight that I’d hardly noticed it, but after a
while, the curves started becoming tighter. The passageway was now winding in
upon itself like a nautilus shell, the source of the light never revealing itself.
As I continued down the corridor, there was nowhere to turn, no doors or other
passageways shooting off of it that I could take. In the back of my mind loomed
the fear that I might finally come to the end of this corridor and discover
there a only a light, a single lamp burning at another dead end and I would be
stranded in a long, winding corridor that had only a beginning and an end, with
nowhere to go and nothing to do for the rest of my days except wander this
stretching hallway that went nowhere back and forth until the necklace amulet
gave up on me, returning to the home of its little box, leaving me here to die
alone of dehydration and hunger. But I worked hard to keep those thoughts in
the back of my mind, because I knew that mindless panic and hysteria awaited me
were I to allow myself to think them openly. I reassured myself with the
thought that wasn’t how this game was played.

As I continued, I concentrated on simply putting
one foot in front of the other while keeping an eye and ear out for any sign of
danger. Just when I thought the circular pattern of the passageway was becoming
compact enough to be nearing the end, it straightened out again. This time,
though, at the end of a very long, straight section of the hallway, the source
of the light, bright to eyes now, revealed itself. As I grew closer to it, I
could see that the light took up the entire length and breadth of the corridor.
My heart sank as my fear of its being another dead end seemed confirmed.
However, as I grew closer still, I now saw that there were other colors to the
light, even an object, perhaps, and my hope returned. Maybe it was a door of
some kind. Closer and closer I came to it and the objects in the light became
clearer, more distinct. It seemed to be a brightly lit machine of some kind
with an object in its center. As I approached still nearer to it, the object
revealed itself to be a man. I picked up my pace until I was close enough to
recognize him. It was Edmond! I began to run, excitement coursing through me. I
had found him at last! I had actually passed Arrosha’s nightmarish trials and
now I would be able to free him and he would know how to get us out of this
hellish place and we would both be free and safe at last! That this is where
she might finally kill me was yet another thought I did not allow myself to
think.

I was trembling wildly as I slowed my pace and
walked the final few steps up to the machine in which Edmond was trapped. The
minute I saw it up close, I recognized it as a stasis chamber from the visions
that Edmond had shown me in the dream and Arrosha had confirmed in the tower
room. I remembered that in my last dream at the apartment, Edmond had told me
to throw the necklace toward him when I was close to him, that the two pieces,
when placed in a near enough proximity to each other, would recognize each
other, set him free and put an end to Arrosha. But there he was, only a few
feet away from me, seemingly asleep, clutching the cane with the crystalline
dragon headpiece and nothing was happening. Did it not work unless I threw the
amulet at him? Did the velocity of my throwing the amulet have anything to do
with its ability to penetrate the stasis chamber? No, I thought, that didn’t
feel right. I fingered the necklace as I pondered this, searching for a signal
from it as to what I should do. Instead of giving me a sign that it was nearing
time for it to be removed, again the little dragon began burrowing its wings
painlessly into my flesh, trying to hide itself within me, its tail flicking
about like an angry cat’s. No this isn’t it, I decided, this is not the time.
So again I looked for another way to release Edmond from the stasis chamber,
but there seemed to be no latch, no opening device. I reached out to feel for
one, thinking that perhaps touch would reveal something that sight had not. I
was shocked at what I found. While to the eye, what lay before me looked
three-dimensional, it was nothing more than a flat, smooth surface, as cold to
the touch as the walls of the corridor had been. This had been just another one
of Arrosha’s tricks. I stepped back, my newfound hope gone, even more at a loss
as to what to do next than I had been before.

With nothing else to do now, I studied Edmond’s
face very carefully for the first time. It really was Edmond, the man in the
portrait, the man of my dreams, but he looked older now, about thirty-five
years of age perhaps, and unlike in my dreams, he was unkempt. His hair was
disheveled, in need of a cut or a trim, his fingernails were far too long,
beginning to curve inward. While he was still wearing his expensive,
old-fashioned suit and looked clean, he was sporting the scraggly, ungroomed
facial hair one would expect from a man living on the streets, a man unable to
avail himself of either razor or scissors. His eyes were closed and at first
glance, except for the sad expression on his face, he seemed to be sleeping
peacefully. When I looked closer, he was lying too still. There was no gentle
movement of his chest to indicate breathing. While the stasis chamber itself,
or at least its image, was undulating slightly as if it were alive, Edmond
himself was as quiet and still as if he were a wax figure or, worse still, a
corpse laid out for viewing at a funeral home. I was suddenly grateful for
Arrosha’s history lesson; because of it I could recognize the suspended
animation that looked so very much like death. I continued to stare at him, my
heart pouring out to him, this poor, poor man, trapped in his prison for over
one hundred and seventy-five years.

Even though this was only a projection, I was
seeing him for the first time in my waking life. This wasn’t like looking at
the portrait which, no matter how well executed, was still only a painting,
completed so long ago, before he was entrapped. The projection that I now
looked at was so life-like, so three-dimensional, that I felt a sense of
immediacy about it. I was viewing a projection of him as he was now, at this
very moment. How I knew that, despite my concerns about the tunnel, he was
nearby, I could only ascribe to the amulet, since he was not able to
communicate with me psychically in this other-worldly dimension that was
Arrosha’s domain.

As I gazed at him in this projection, my heart
recognized him in a way it had not in Arrosha’s phony scenario. There were none
of the feelings of lust or eroticism, of course, for in his pitiable, coma-like
state, how could there be? But I felt that I knew this man, that I had known
him all my life, as if we had grown up together, as if we had been childhood
friends. I couldn’t explain these feelings of having a lifelong familiarity
when, in fact, no real-life connection had ever even existed, but these
feelings were here and they were real. I loved him. Purely and simply, in a way
that both embraced and transcended sheer romanticism, I loved him.

I continued to study Edmond’s face for a little
while longer until I realized it was becoming less and less clear. Slowly at
first, then more rapidly, the projection in front of me faded until there was
nothing to look at but a blank wall, identical to the one at the other end of
the tunnel. Before the full implications of my immediate worst fear coming
true, of being trapped in this tunnel without a way out, had a chance to sink
in completely, the wall itself then began to dissolve until it, too,
disappeared entirely.

A short stretch of tunnel, now exposed, lay before
me, bathed in a blue light that came from a room at its now open end. I hoped
that, unlike the projection of Edmond, the room would turn out to be real. I
walked the remaining length of the corridor until I reached the chamber and
cautiously peeked into it. It was enormous, at least as massive as the Great
Room in Arrosha’s mansion, although all resemblance ended there. From my
vantage point, it appeared to be completely round in shape, both in
circumference and in height. I was standing at the doorway of what was,
essentially, the inside of an enormous dome. Everything, the walls, the floors,
matched the metal of the corridor out of which I had just walked. The support beams,
which here still suggested bone structures, were rib-like, jutting out like
buttresses, long and thick at the bottom, tapering in length and width and
becoming more delicate at the apex. At the dome’s top they met, joining and
crossing over each other seamlessly.

Within the floor itself, a few feet from the
entryway in which I stood, a circular stream about seven feet wide was cut into
the metal and appeared to run all the way around the room. It was filled with
what seemed to be some kind of glowing, incandescent liquid which, as it
flowed, continually changed color from electric blue to cold cyan green. At
floor level, the metallic ribs of the room ran in depth from the wall to the
edge of this man-made stream, barring anyone from travelling from one section
of the wall to the next. The only way to get across the stream was by way of a
small foot bridge that existed on my particular section alone.