The Nightmare Game (71 page)

“Weren’t you even listening?” she said,
aggravation in her voice. “There’s not enough left of them to control.”

“How did you get them to go after me, then?”

“Simple. It’s like putting moths into a dark room
and then turning on a light. The moths go after the light, these things go
after living energy, especially living human energy. And with that amulet about
your neck pumping strength into you, you were an absolute lighthouse beacon to
them.”

“They touched me. They almost killed me and if I
hadn’t made it to the mansion in time, they would have. Wouldn’t that have
deprived you of the pleasure of killing your, how did you put it, ‘prized sow’
yourself?”

Arrosha smiled slyly. “Don’t be so melodramatic.
Even though I couldn’t control them, I could still divert them. Before Geoffrey
had even opened the door to let you into the mansion, I’d already cloaked his
energy and begun to draw them away with another, stronger, energy source. That
source was a red herring, of course, but like I mentioned,” she said, tapping
her temple with her index finger, “there’s not enough gray matter left for them
to realize it.

“Don’t think it wasn’t tempting, though, letting
them finish you off. But by that time I’d already invested too much into you.
Once one passes through that second door, this game is on in earnest. Besides,
if it hadn’t been for that little shit Geoffrey, I would have been able to make
you mine at my mansion. All I had to do was make sure that you forgot why you
were there in the first place. The trauma of being touched by any of my lovely
creations,” she said, once again pointing to the impaled creature, “pretty much
took care of that. Their touch not only left you traumatized, it also left you
extremely dehydrated and weak, too weak to resist the intravenous injection of
my lovely, special water, ensuring your memory would be,” she almost giggled,
“a thing of the past. I would make sure that you couldn’t remember much. Oh,
you’d remember your name, some trivial memories. You’d remember just enough to
ensure that you didn’t pick too much at the memories that had been wiped. The
important thing is that you wouldn’t care. And you didn’t. Not only did you not
remember any details of your last few days or why you were there, the water
ensured that you wouldn’t care about them in the least! Then we would have had
a transformation ceremony in which you would have handed Ben, and thus me, the
amulet, and this whole mess would have been over once and for all.

“It wouldn’t have been a bad deal for you, either.
You would have found paradise on earth with all your desires fulfilled. Robert
would have made a suitable replacement for Edmond, whom you would have never
remembered. I eventually could kill him now with my new stasis-diversion
discovery, but no big loss there. With only a few more meals of essence and
water, you would have been as young and beautiful as the rest of my followers
in only a few short weeks.”

“Why so long?” Edmond had told me, but I was
buying time and wanted to hear her version. “From what I’ve been led to
believe, you changed the others in a matter of seconds or minutes.”

“Yes,” she said, smiling as if it were a happy
memory for her. “I did. I have the power of transformation over them. But you
were different. You wore the amulet and that made a difference. Even once you’d
taken it off, its residual energy would have stayed with you, so your change
would have to be much more gradual. So you see, my dear, I had counted on
rewarding you for joining my followers. I’ve been planning this thing for a
long, long time, long before you ever came on the scene.

“I have to say that, for the role of seducer, Ben
was a brilliant choice on my part. He was a loving, caring, safe man with no
designs on you, a man who would foster your ultimate trust. Yes, Ben was the key.
But soon after I enlisted Ben, I found that in order to keep him happy, I had
to add Geoffrey,” Arrosha sighed, “Ah, if Ben only had had better taste in men
we wouldn’t be here right now. Oh, well, what’s done is done. Now only the
clean-up remains.

“I want you to die knowing that you’re probably
the last serious contender that Edmond ever sends me. Most of his chosen few
are so easy to dispose of, especially after a good bout such as this one. It
always takes time for Edmond to recover enough to have much of himself to give
his champions. You’re lucky, or unlucky, depending on how you look at it.
Edmond was well-rested and well able to help you, to give you the power,
strength and healing that you needed. After this, it’ll be decades before he
can call any serious challengers again.” She looked at Edmond in the stasis
chamber and clucked her tongue. “Pity I can’t just release him and kill him and
end this for once and for all. But I can’t. He’s in there with the other half
of that amulet you wear. It would be death’s folly to allow them to get
together, of course.

“It’s too bad that I didn’t have an extra stasis
chamber, but only the one survived the fall of Pangaea. I had enough resources
to make tiny ones to hold in the essence to fit in the hookah, but that was it
until I recently found out a way to siphon the energy out of Edmond’s chamber.
It was amazingly complicated and happened quite by accident. I’ve never cared
for tinkering with anything too technical, you see. I’ve always preferred
supervising while others do the heavy lifting.

“Shame, really. I wish I’d known about that little
technique before this horrid game ever started. I’d have been able to kill the
bastard in the nineteenth century and be done with him. Then you would never
have been put in this situation and we wouldn’t be having this little chat
right now.

“Oh, if only I’d known then what I know now! Then
I could have washed my hands of this mess in the beginning when Virginia first
began to stalk me. But I suppose that all’s well that ends well and I’ll be rid
of Edmond soon enough. When I kill him, which will still be far too gradual for
my taste, the stasis chamber will replace the box for his cane’s headpiece and
I can come in here and gloat over his corpse. Once he’s dead, I’ll only need to
have control over that one piece, for there’ll be no one left to call others to
his cause to challenge me or pester me. Then I can be free at last to take my
rightful position as ruler of this soon-to-be global, technologically more
advanced world.”

“You’re mad,” I told her, pointing out the
obvious.

“No my dear,” she retorted. “Unlike yourself, I
simply know my place. It’s Goddess and soon-to-be Queen of this entire world.
It’s been a real bitch, let me tell you, having to put up with upstarts like
you coming around, constantly trying to murder me. It’s a nuisance, but at
least your kind is soon disposed of, some more easily than others. It’s only
once in a long while that people like you and Max come along, people with
Edmond’s full strength and abilities behind them, that make my life truly
miserable.

“Oh, I am so giddy with excitement over the
thought of being able to kill that man at last! Soon there will be no more
Edmond. No more Edmond, no more of his called chosen, no more threats to my
existence!”

“There must be someone else out there that knows
about you and that knows the secret behind these amulets!” I screamed. The
thought of a world with Arrosha as its ruler terrified me beyond belief. To
find out now that I had been Edmond’s last real hope and that I had failed him
so miserably made my heart sink as if it were made of lead.

“I doubt it. Even if someone out there knows about
the amulet and all of its secrets, it doesn’t matter, anyway. Without the
second amulet, they would still have to go through me first and without
Edmond’s support, they wouldn’t stand a chance. The only thing one amulet can
do alone is to provide its wearer some protection from me on a personal level.
Each piece is essentially useless against me without the other.

“But if you already knew that this would be
Edmond’s last good challenge, that you had to win eventually, why bother
playing it out with me this far? Why didn’t you just stop playing and let me go
my own way somewhere down the line? You had plenty of chances.”

“You’ll remember that I did try to kill you
several times.”

“That’s not the same thing. I would have
appreciating your not trying to kill me at all. Why not just prevent my arrival
in the first place? You could have said that the apartment was booked up. I
would have stayed somewhere else.”

“Because, my dear, I might actually have won this
time around and that’s what I really want. Edmond was calling to you, you were
ready to come to New Orleans. Once you were in his head, it was an easy task to
find you, to contact you. Electronic data transfer makes things so easy these
days, don’t you think?”

As I struggled helplessly against my restraints,
she continued, “I suppose I’ll just have to look on the sunny side of this bout
and say it was worth it, because now we come to the fun part of the game. At
least, for me. I wanted you down here to see Edmond as he really is, so you
could understand just how pointless your existence, along with his other
helpers’, will be after you die.

“More importantly, I wanted you down here so that
Edmond can see you, his very last real challenger to me, fail so miserably and
die so terribly, knowing that he will never again have the strength to do
anything more than launch small, futile, impotent efforts against me from this
point forward.

“He can see you, you know. Even though his eyes
are closed, sensors within the chamber are transmitting images directly into
his brain as if he were looking directly at you. He can’t even close his eyes
or look away when things get too grizzly. I want you to know that he will see
you suffer and die so that you can realize just how much you’ve disappointed
him. Because of you, he has lost forever. Others have failed, but none so
completely, my dear, as you have. That’s why I brought you down here. That’s
the only thing that has kept you alive so far, but I will soon rectify that
mistake. In a few short hours, hours that I promise will be interminably long
for you, this game in earnest will be over for good.” She smiled coldly and
smugly at me. “Have I answered all of your questions, my dear?”

I couldn’t answer her. I needed to throw up again,
and heaved, but there was nothing left in my stomach.

“Ah, I see it does. And now we start to kill you.
Story time’s over, we torture you, you die now. Max, pick out an instrument and
make it a good one.”

Max looked up, reluctant to move. After a second,
he reluctantly picked up a sharp, nasty-looking scalpel.

“You see, Ashley. I’ll be having Max use that on
you as soon as he removes the necklace from your neck. I’ll let him have a
really good go at you, which should get most of its protective energy out of
you. Then I’ll throw you to my ‘friends’ in the floor, who are just dying to
get their hands on you and rip you to shreds.”

She spoke more incantations and soon horrible,
violent sounds issued forth from beneath my feet, far worse than those from the
corridor through which we had just passed.

“Let me give you a proper introduction to these
other ‘pets’. This is where I keep the worst of the worst of my enemies, the
strongest and most ferocious, the ones most bent on vengeance. They can’t wait
for me to unleash them upon you so that they have their way with you. I feel
it’s only fair to give you a taste of what’s in store.”

As she continued her incantations, I looked down
and the floor surrounding me once again came to life. At first it looked like
dark, murky water with the forms of transparent, snake-like creatures swimming
just beneath the surface. As the floor became more transparent, the forms
became more defined and began to emerge as grasping, metallic arms and hands,
clawing and scratching at the air. A few yards away, they were very solid,
gradually becoming more phantom-like the closer they got to me, disappearing
altogether only a few feet away. I screamed.

Arrosha ceased her incantations and the floor
returned to normal. She was breathing hard and looked terrible again, as bad as
she did when I first saw her after she’d thrown me off the tower.

“Oh, did my pets upset you? I’m sorry they’re so
vicious. Under normal circumstances, it’s generally quite dead around here.
They only get frisky when I’m around and once I’ve added you to my little
collection, I’ll be sure to visit often.

“My darlings want you so very badly,” she
continued. “Unfortunately, unlike what I did to you earlier,” she said,
pointing to the chains and floor which held me, “this isn’t as simple and they
won’t be able to get near you as long as you wear that amulet which hangs about
your neck. Of course, with Max’s help, it’s a situation I’ll be remedying
shortly. Even then, enough of its energy will remain with you to make you
untouchable for awhile. That shouldn’t be too much of a problem, though,
because my dear, sweet Max will simply torture the residual protective energy
out of you.

“It’s then I’ll be able to unleash my former
enemies upon you. My poor darlings have been so very frustrated for so very
long, you see, that they’ll be quite happy to tear you limb from limb. It will
be most excruciatingly painful, child. I would like to ask you one more time to
hand over the amulet, but you know as well as I that it would be of no use. Now
that you know what fate awaits you, the amulet would merely consider my offer
to be coercion and would simply return back to its box once you removed it. No
matter. I’m quite excited about and very much looking forward to dealing with
you properly. However, with that amulet being in this same room, my revelation
of what lies in wait for you beneath this floor took far too much out of me
again. I’m tired and famished once more. I simply must have someone to eat,
this time in a way that satisfies more than just my hunger.”

Once again she waived her arm and the lights went
low. Another young man appeared, again as if from nowhere. He was just as
strapping, vibrant and strong as the first one had been, but this one was fully
clothed. He was just as surprised and disoriented as his predecessor, but when
he looked at Arrosha, instead of fear and revulsion, he smiled, for while
rousing the floor had taken a great deal out of her and left her extremely
anorexic, in the dim light of the room she now was still beautiful enough to
elicit the attentions of a man.

“Yes, my dear, she said to him. Her voice, which
had been shrill and rough just a moment before, was now throaty, husky and
soothing, full with the promise of sex. “Come to me, my sweet, make love to me.
Yes, that’s it.”

The young man walked over to her as if he were
walking in a dream, his eyes fixed upon her, seeing nothing but her. An overpowering
fragrance of flowers, the same one that she had used on me in her office,
filled the room. However, instead of formaldehyde undertones, it now contained
musky, spicy ones, pheromones that reeked of sex, the same fragrance I had
smelled during my essence experience.

I looked over at Max, who had returned the scalpel
to its table, and saw that the fragrance had quite an effect upon him as well.
He stared at Arrosha with intense desire in his eyes, took a step forward
despite himself and then stopped abruptly, clenching his fists and his jaw
while staring intently at the ground. I could tell it took a great deal of
willpower for him to stay away from her; but he knew she would punish him
harshly should he follow his desires and walk up to her.

“That’s it, my precious, lovely young thing. Come
to me, let me feel your passion,” Arrosha coaxed as the man walked slowly,
somnambulistically, nearer and nearer to her. Finally, he approached her and
said, with a tone so desperate one could feel that his desire was so extreme as
to be painful to him, “I want you. I have to have you. I need to have you.”

“Then take me, my dear,” she said in a voice both
sexual and mocking.

At this, he took her into his arms and began to
kiss her passionately. To the unknowing eye, they could easily be just another
couple in the throws of lust. Max peered up form the floor, naked jealousy in
his eyes. But within only a few minutes, the young man’s passion began to wane
as Arrosha’s vitality grew. His grip on her became looser, he began to pull
away. At this point, Arrosha wrapped her arms tightly around him, pulling his
body close with her left arm, pinning his head to hers with her right hand. The
man began to struggle. Muffled protests emerged from his mouth, now imprisoned
by Arrosha’s embrace. He continued to struggle for a little while longer until
Arrosha released him, completely and suddenly. He staggered and stumbled around
dizzily as if drunk; I imagined he must have felt much as I did when I was
trapped in Rochere’s office. He looked extremely ill.

“S-sorry,” he managed to say weakly. “I – I don’t
know what h-happened. I feel bad. I n-need to go h-home.”

“Then perhaps you should” said Arrosha, waiving
her arm. The young man disappeared as suddenly as he had appeared.

“Where did you send him?” I asked.

“Where he wanted to be sent. Home, where he will
die before the day is through, and there is nothing anyone can do to stop it.
There will be an autopsy; they will attribute it to an unknown disease or, more
likely, a congenital defect of some sort or another, as they always do in one
so young. Oh, I could have sent him where I often do, to the top of a bridge or
a skyscraper, where the poor things inevitably fall off. It’s such a pity,
really, all those suicides. Or I could have sent him into a busy highway where
he would have been hit by a car. His death would then be most likely ruled
accidental, unless the driver was doing something he shouldn’t have been in the
first place and then he’ll go to prison for something that was never really his
fault.” She smiled at the thought. “But with you here, everything’s going so
terribly well for me right now that I thought I’d be generous and just send him
home where he can die in peace.”

Her voice now held a richness and a vibrancy which
I’d never heard in it before. She almost seemed to be glowing. At this moment,
now that she was fully satiated, she was, by far, the most beautiful woman that
I had ever seen in my entire life. Her eyes sparkled brightly; her skin, while
still as white as ever, was now tinged with a pinkish blush, setting off the
black of her hair, eyebrows and eyelashes with a contrast that was striking and
almost startling. She was now luminous and had the supple radiance of youth.
Her mouth, which, before her first feeding, had been pulled back into a
deathlike grimace, was now luscious and sensuous, with full, red lips. Had it
not been for the worldliness in her eyes and the expression on her face, she
would have appeared to be no more than eighteen years of age, the epitome of
Snow White incarnate. I could truly understand and appreciate now why she was
so successful in her feedings off of men. I looked at Max again and could see
that her beauty was not lost on him. But mingled with his admiring glances lay
signs of bitterness and hatred as well.

“Now that I’m full, let me get back to you, my
dear. Shall we continue, then?”

“No! Not yet!” I whelped, sounding more hysterical
than I wanted. I needed to stall. “Can you at least tell me why you killed or
maimed everyone in the group when it was only me that you were after? I need to
understand before I die.”

“First of all, you don’t need to understand squat.
I maimed them because I needed to punish them and I ordered Geoffrey to kill
the Sisters because you didn’t like them.”

“What did that have to do with anything?”

“It made them of no further use to me. Besides,
they were never in my original plan for this group, anyway.”

“What do you mean?”

“They were just substitutes. You see, there used
to be two other, different women amongst my followers, Robert’s girlfriend and
another who was intended for any man that Edmond might sent our way.
Unfortunately, one day they were both out and about in the city alone and they
inadvertently caused a massive, horrible accident. Many people died. Normally,
I would have simply swept it under the table and life at the mansion would have
gone on as usual. But in this instance there were far too many witnesses, not
to mention police and news reporters. There was far too much clean-up involved
to make it worth my while. So I just killed them.”

“No one ever mentioned any other women,” I said.

“That’s because no one remembered them. I wiped
them from their minds as easily as I wiped their memory of meeting you that
first night at The Crypt. Even Robert did not remember his own one true love.”

Perhaps not, but it explained a lot about Robert’s
behavior at the mansion. Although he did not consciously recall his girlfriend,
emotionally, the poor guy was hard on the rebound.

“The timing could not have been more atrocious.
Edmond’s next would-be champion, a man, was scheduled to arrive in New Orleans
in two days and there was no woman at the mansion with which to seduce him. I
couldn’t use Illea, because there is a limit to how much major memory obliteration
that anyone’s mind can accept in such a short period of time. I then fondly
remembered three women I had met along the way during my search for Timothy.
They were so wonderfully, brilliantly evil that I could not resist bringing
them into the group. Victory was so near to me that I could feel it wrapping
its delicious arms about me, and I knew I would need someone other than a bunch
of goody-two shoes and Geoffrey to help me rule.

“First, however, the Sisters had to be made
suitable Edmond’s chosen man. I needed to wipe out their memories and clean
their spirits, so they would be appropriate for what was left of this game. I
was in a hurry, so I decided to add all three of them to my group at the same
time. But, sadly, transforming all three of those wicked little wenches
together whilst trying to erase all of their evil instincts, albeit
temporarily, was simply too Herculean a task. It just served to make them
permanently stupid.

“In the end, it turned out to be a moot point,
anyway, for Edmond’s contender wound up being dissolved and flushed down the
bathroom drain. Then you came along and I did not need them for you. Shame
about The Sisters, really, because I did so enjoy those three evil little
creatures before I transformed them. If you could have seen the three of them
before I changed them, you would have been shocked. What lovely, degenerate,
black hearted little mercenaries they were! After their transformation, even
Geoffrey bought my fictitious background story, lock, stock and barrel, for he
had no reason to doubt me. The Sisters, fresh from having their minds
laundered, wept sorrowfully from hearing their ‘tale’ when I told them.

“I hated having to kill them because such an evil
little trio I’ve not come across in ages! They were so wonderfully horrid!
Originally, I had big plans for them for after I took over the world. Whereas I
needed good little people like Ben to do my P.R., I needed people like the
Sisters and Geoffrey for my less, shall we say, savory chores.”

“I still can’t imagine the Sisters being of any
diabolical use to anyone.”

“You only knew them damaged. I wish you could have
met them earlier. They were extraordinarily bright and conniving before I
changed them.

“Oh, well, what’s done is done,” she sighed. “In
the end, the whole group let me down. Geoffrey’s telling them who you really
are contaminated them all. Sure, I could have wiped their memories, but I was
too angry with them to do that. Besides, it’s more refreshing to start over
with new people.”

“I thought you liked them,” I said.

“Of course I liked them. I liked Max’s group, too.
I just didn’t like them that much.”

“You hurt them. You can’t just leave them all
maimed like that until they die!” I argued, understanding that death would be
preferable to the pitiful state in which I had last seen them.

“I’ve been wondering when you were going to
mention that. I didn’t kill the rest because I had a further use for them.
Actually, I’ve been saving them for just this moment,” she said, waving her arm
again. “Surprise!” At the wall next to her, appeared her group, still
disfigured, in metal cages.

“Help me, help me,” they mumbled, more or less in
unison.