The Nightmare Game_Slayers

by S. R. Witt

  When no one responded, Chase summoned her scythe, spun it once, and slammed its blade into the doorway. Bones chipped, but the shock of the impact rocketed up Chase's arms. She saw the durability of her weapon take a nosedive, and realized she couldn't hack at the door without seriously damaging the scythe.

  She took a deep breath, focused her attention on the door, and looked for a weakness. After a few moments, she found a chink between a pair of bones and slipped the scythe's business end between two femurs. She twisted the blade and used it as a prybar. Her leverage snapped both bones out of place without damaging the scythe’s blade. She repeated the trick twice more, opening a gap wide enough to fit an adult through. They’d have to fold up Paxton's chair and shove it through the hole, but that was better than the alternative.

  “Mom,” Chase said, “you’re first.”

  Her mother, a woman hardened by the years and her experiences in this godforsaken town, paused next to Chase. She put her palm on Chase's mask and let out a long, slow sigh. “I'm sorry, Chase.”

  Chase closed her bloody fingers over her mother's hand. “I know, you did your best. Come on, we need to get Paxton through here, and leave before an army of Sleepers arrives.”

  Her mother raised an eyebrow. “The Sleepers are coming? Into the Temple?”

  “Long story,” Chase said. “No time.”

  Her mother nodded, then squeezed through the opening Chase had created. Paxton had wheeled over to join them, his chair bouncing across the uneven bone floor. Chase lifted him out easily, and help him squeeze through the opening into his mother's waiting arms. Then she folded up the chair and crammed it through the gap in the door. “Let me get the rest of them out of here, and then I'll join you.”

  A long, ululating scream echoed through the caverns. It was joined moments later by a dozen more, and then an even louder chorus. The Sleepers were coming, and they were much closer than Chase had hoped. Their time was almost up. “The rest of you, come on, we have to go.”

  But the other prisoners only stared at Chase and shook their heads. One of the men, his back stooped from decades of hard labor and his long gray beard dangling almost to his waist stepped forward. “I don't know who you are, or where you came from. But you can't just leave the game. The ritual must be completed. If it isn't, we're all doomed. If you are the last Slayer, you must sacrifice your mother on the great altar to seal the darkness from our world.”

  Chase brandished her scythe. “That’s not gonna happen, asshole. C’mon, let’s get out of here.”

  The man spread his arms wide. “The ritual must be completed. The sacrifice must be made, or the Red God cannot protect us through the next cycle.”

  Chase let out a ragged sigh. “Maybe it's for the best. Maybe your Red God should suck a dick and die. You’ve been feeding your families to this thing for how many generations? How many of your families have died to satisfy his hunger?”

  The men and women turned away from Chase, lowering their faces as if ashamed to hear her words.

  “Fine. You know what? Fuck it. Stay, go, I don't give a shit. The door’s open if you want to leave. If you want to stay here, I can’t stop you. But the Sleepers are coming, and they’re going to kill every living thing they find in these tunnels.”

  Chase left the intended sacrifices and squeezed through the crack in the door. From the far side, she looked back at them. “I'm not kidding, you can go. Staying here isn't going to help anything. I’m not going to complete the ritual.”

  When no one joined her, Chase shook her head and dropped her scythe. She put her hands on the back of her brother's wheelchair and started pushing him over the bones littering the floor. “You guys know how you got down here?”

  Paxton pointed ahead of them. “There aren't many twists and turns. There should be a passageway that leads to the surface just ahead. There's some sort of altar in the way, but that's it.”

  The screams were growing closer, and Chase realized the screamers were descending the same passageway that she and her family were climbing up. “Get that shotgun fully loaded and ready, Paxton. Mom, you still know how to fight?” Chase asked. “I have a feeling that shit is about to get very ugly.”

  Paxton busied himself loading shells into the shotgun, and held it cradled across his lap. Her mother said nothing, but Chase knew that there were habits that died hard. If her mother knew anything, it was how to defend herself. If push came to shove, Chase knew she could rely on her family to get the job done.

  The tunnel ahead of them slowly widened into an oddly shaped chamber with a natural stone roof. A slab of large flowstone emerged from the center of the chamber, its surface polished flat and stained with countless layers of vivid crimson.

  Chase felt a twist in her guts, and she recognized this was where the ritual was completed. The stone was the gateway, a portal from one world to the next, and only the blood of Crucible’s champion could keep it sealed.

  Or, more accurately, the blood of the Champion’s sacrifice. The blood of a Slayer’s family.

  The power of the place staggered Chase. Her feet tripped on the smooth stone, and she had to summon her scythe to use as a walking stick. “This is the place all right,” she whispered.

  Something reared its head and glared at Chase across an impossible distance. Its eyes flickered and flared in her thoughts, filling her head with a darkness so complete it obliterated her thoughts and left her gasping. The Red God’s stare had been awesome and horrifying, but it had been alive.

  The thing glaring at Chase from across the chasms between worlds was not. It was death incarnate, and it wanted nothing but to extinguish all life.

  Chase looked away from the portal stone and sagged. This wasn’t a gate with only one destination on its far side. There were many worlds out there, and things from any one of them could shove their noses through the gate if someone opened it from this side.

  She suddenly understood what the Sleepers wanted. While the Red God simply wanted to keep the gate closed and the souls sacrificed to him where they belonged, the Sleepers wanted to wanted to open the gate.

  They’d found a new master, and they wanted it to help them conquer this world.

  “You feel it?” a tall, slender man asked from the doorway leading to the surface. His black suit was impeccably tailored, and his pale features were refined to the point of being almost inhuman. His long, tapered fingers were folded across his chest, and he nodded toward Chase. “This can all end, Miss Harrow. It has to end.”

  Sleepers crowded into the hallway behind the man, their black masks soaking in the red light emanating from the air around the sacrificial stone. The businessman motioned to the Sleepers behind him, and they thrust a captive into the sacrificial chamber.

  She collapsed onto her knees, leaving bloody smears on the stone. The businessman tore the burlap sack from off her head.

  Sarah gasped and stared at Chase with wide eyes. She twisted to look at the man behind her. “Let me go, let me finish this.”

  The executive ignored Sarah and smiled at Chase. “As you know, I have made every one of the Slayers, including you, a simple offer. All of those who accepted this offer have failed me. And yet, you, against all the odds, have gathered four of the tokens of the Martyrs. The librarian has the fifth. I had hoped her plan, her subterfuge to fool you into thinking she was another victim, would allow her a last-minute victory. But, alas, she has failed me.”

  Chase tensed, her scythe shaking in her fist. “So, what? Your little friends here are going to kill me and take the tokens I’ve gathered?”

  The executive laughed, a thin chortle that sounded more derisive than amused. “No, don't be foolish. Why would I offer a position to an inferior applicant, Miss Harrow? I'd like to extend my offer to you again.

  “I’d like you to reconsider.”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Counteroffer

  Chase's thoughts raced. What the fuck did this asshole expect her to do?

  “I se
e you’re confused,” Caleb Marsh said. “My offer is simple. You will take the mark from the librarian. You will complete the ritual, and, in return, we will remove the burden of being a Slayer from you.”

  Chase narrowed her eyes. “Are you really asking me to kill my mother and my brother, after you've already killed my father, to save myself from becoming a monster?”

  The executive raised one finger as if making a point of order. “Oh, no. Miss Harrow, my offer for you is far more altruistic. The sacrifice, in this case, is you.”

  A paranoid twitch stirred the back of Chase's thoughts. “And if I do that, I commit suicide on your red rock, then you make sure my family gets out of here in one piece? You’ll make sure they have enough money to get by?”

  “Chase, no!” her mother shouted, but Chase raised a hand to still the outburst.

  Caleb smiled. “Your family will want for nothing if you do this. I assure you, they will not be harmed, and they will have enough money and security to do whatever they choose, whenever they choose. We might even be able to do something about your brother’s…condition.”

  The Sleepers had fanned out around the perimeter of the sacrificial chamber. They held their weapons at the ready, but none of them had moved to attack. Sarah remained on her knees in front of Chase, her eyes wide and confused.

  Chase glanced at the girl for a moment, then back to the businessman. “I need to understand this better. Explain why you want this or no deal.”

  “Don't do this,” Sarah begged, her eyes wide and pleading with Caleb. “I’ll kill her for you. I’ll do anything for you.”

  Chase narrowed her eyes and felt her mask tighten against her skin. “You can't believe that he's going to follow through with this, Sarah. Whatever he promised you, he’s lying.”

  “My offer doesn't stay open forever, Miss Harrow.” Caleb straightened his cuffs and crossed his hands in front of him. “I do not need to explain myself to you. You have until the count of three to make your decision. After that, the sleepers will take you prisoner, and the librarian will finish the job you have refused. She is not the most qualified applicant, unfortunately, but it appears she may be the only one willing to do the job that is required.”

  “One,” the executive said.

  Chase tightened her grip on the scythe. Her thoughts raced around the inside of her skull like a pack of monkeys wound up on meth.

  If she didn't do something, the Sleepers would kill her mother and brother, they'd kill Chase, and they'd still get to complete their plan. The only chance anyone had was Chase doing something insane.

  But she wasn’t sure what she could do.

  “Two,” the man said, raising a second finger. “I really do not want to do this, Miss Harrow. It would be much better for both of us if you worked with me on this. The world will be a much better place for your sacrifice.”

  Chase swung the scythe’s blade into Sarah’s chest. The tip vanished under the librarian’s ribs and burst through the side of her neck. Blood gushed from the wound, spraying into Chase’s face like a fountain.

  “Chase!” her mother screamed, frozen in horrified shock. Paxton remained silent, but Chase felt his unpsoken dread at what she’d done like a millstone around her neck.

  Whatever else happened in that chamber, Chase knew her family was lost to her. They would never be able to understand the monster she’d become. They would never accept the darkness that was part of her now.

  Chase let the scythe vanish and kneeled before Sarah. She shoved her hand up through the wound she’d created and into the librarian’s chest to find the pounding heart.

  Their eyes locked and Chase understood so many things that had been mysteries before. No one in Crucible wanted this Nightmare Game. They wanted to be free, but their lives were bounded on all sides by eternal darkness and ancient terrors. Crucible wasn’t the source of evil, it was the child of evil. The Nightmare Game was what became of humans who lived too long without hope.

  “I’m sorry,” Chase whispered in the librarian’s ear.

  She plucked Sarah’s heart from her chest and eased the dead woman to the ground. Sarah had never claimed a mask, and without one she would not rise again.

  The last soul token called to Chase, and she didn’t try to hide what she had become from anyone in that room. She chewed the marker and Sarah’s bezoar from the thumping meat of her heart and licked them clean. Self-loathing crawled up Chase’s throat like a spurt of vomit, but she swallowed it and kept going. She had a job to do, and she was going to do it.

  The last marker’s name rang in Chase’s head. “The Vestal.”

  The final girl, Chase realized. The power of the soul token flared through her body, filling Chase with the last pieces of the puzzle.

  She understood. A sacrifice had to be made. But there was no one saying to whom that sacrifice had to be made.

  “The sacrifice,” Caleb commanded, an unholy gleam shining in his eyes. “Hurry, before the gate is breached.”

  Chase spun the sickle with blinding speed. It hissed as it sliced through the air buried itself in its target with a meaty thud.

  Caleb stared down at the blade that had punched through his gut. With a roar, Chase lifted the impaled Sleeper into the air and brought him crashing down on the altar.

  The sickle's blade slammed into the sacrificial slab, pinning the executive to the soft stone. The ancient altar, weakened from twenty-one years with no blood, fractured. The tainted blood of the Sleeper boiled out of his body and spilled through the cracks, corroding the stone like pure acid against flesh.

  An agonized howl erupted from the bottom of the fathomless pit beneath the altar stone. It echoed through the ritual chamber as more and more of the stone cracked and fell away. The earth shook, and Chase stumbled. Paxton rolled backward, and she spun, fingers groping for his wheelchair before it could slam into the Sleepers on the far side of the room.

  She caught the spokes, pinching her fingers against the axle, but Chase didn't care. She yanked her brother back and seized hold of the chair's handles. “You idiot,” Caleb screamed as his body sank into the earth. “You've broken the seal. You've opened the way!”

  Chase understood more than Caleb knew. If she’d done as he asked and sacrificed herself, the Red God’s power would over Crucible would have been obliterated. But the sacrifice in Caleb’s name would have allowed the executive to name some new power to the ancient throne at Crucible’s heart. Caleb wasn’t interested in freeing Crucible, he wanted to enslave it to a new god of his own choosing.

  But Chase had other plans. She hadn’t given dominion over Crucible to any of the dark gods lurking at its edges. She’d instead sacrificed Caleb’s tainted blood to give power over the altar and its gate to those who deserved it most.

  The dead who’d been sacrificed on Crucible’s filthy altar.

  Freed from their dark prison and enslavement to the Red God, the angry dead were returning with a vengeance.

  The voices of the returning dead wailed through the sacrificial chamber like a hellish siren. The Sleepers, hearing the voices of the fallen, understood the horrible fate awaited them when the dead they’d tortured and killed rose up to destroy them, tried to run from the chamber. They tangled together, bumping into Chase and her mother, knocking them both prone. The Sleepers wailed in panic as they realized the spell that had once barred them from this place now bound them to it. The vengeance of the dead was coming for them.

  The sacrificial chamber’s floor tilted, caving in toward the collapsing altar. Jagged chunks of the stone ceiling crashed down around its occupants. One of the Sleepers screamed as a falling rock the size of a bowling ball slammed through its arm and shattered its skull.

  Eva Harrow slipped on the canted floor, and her feet shot out from under her. She slid over the rough rocks, her body slipping to the base of the altar.

  With a howl of victory, Caleb Marsh hooked a hand around Eva’s throat and drew her close to his body.

  “Your mot
her comes with me, Harrow. Remember this moment for the rest of your wretched days.”

  The last of the ritual slab collapsed, revealing a grave-sized hole in the center of the sacrificial chamber’s floor. Caleb vanished into the opening, dragging Eva Harrow into the depths with him.

  A charnel stench rose from the ancient and bottomless grave, sweeping through the chamber on a shrieking wind that circled once, twice, and then vanished through tiny holes in the ceiling. Something stirred from the pit, and a spectral face emerged, jaws spread wide, eyes glowing a ghostly blue.

  “All must die,” it moaned and lunged toward Chase.

  But the last Slayer’s hands closed over its gaping mouth and sank into its ectoplasmic flesh. Chase held it at bay and stared deep into its eyes. “I have opened the way for you and yours, but I am not your prey. You may take the lives of any child of Crucible, but you cannot have the Harrows.”

  A flood of spirits burst from the hole and circled around Chase as if in answer to her challenge. They screamed into her face and plucked at her flesh with icy fingers. They whispered amongst themselves, filling the chamber with the horrifying susurrations of the grave.

  “Very well, Slayer,” the spirits answered in unison. “You and yours have free passage from this temple. But your lives are forfeit if you remain past dawn. And if you ever return to this haunted city, we will claim your souls.”

  The spirits screamed from the chamber, chasing down those who had kept them chained to this dark place for so very, very long.

  Sleepers wailed as they were snatched up by ghostly fingers and their flesh was shredded by phantasmal fangs. Blood spun on a whirlwind around the room, splashing across Chase in viscous streaks.

  Long moments later, the last of the spirits had vanished through the opening in the ceiling. Screams echoed from the chambers above. It was going to be a long night for the people of Crucible.