I was still hoping for the scam artist explanation, something I thought I’d never hear myself say, but I knew I would have to have a plan for this third theory as well. I couldn’t stop obsessing about it until I did. I sat back and reassessed the situation, trying to size up whatever it was that I was up against and what to do about it, but instead my thoughts just hit a wall. I had no idea; I couldn’t figure it out. Who was I kidding? I couldn’t figure it out because I was up against a Great Unknown. If this actually were for real, I knew I couldn’t deal with it. Heck, I could barely think about it now without almost going into a panic attack. I didn’t know what they expected of me, these mysterious people, since they kept disappearing before I could even ask, but I did know who and what I was, and rather well, in fact. Whatever they expected me to do was completely outside the realm of my experiences and skills that I didn’t see how I could possibly be up to anything these disappearing people required. I was no international spy or action hero by any stretch of the imagination. These days, I was sit-at-home Sally; I held an unimportant little position at a desk in a small administrative office. Nothing that had ever happened in my entire life had ever prepared me in any way, shape or form for what it seemed these people needed me to do. Boy, oh, boy, had they ever picked the wrong gal for this job. Why hadn’t they chosen a CIA operative on leave or somebody like that, someone with some kind of specialized training? But they hadn’t. They had chosen me. Why? If I were to believe what I’d been told, I had no other option than to play this demented game, whatever it was, to the end if I wanted to stay alive. But how? Playing the devil’s advocate for a moment, I assumed that my first step, if this situation were truly real, would be simply to toss aside all rationalizations, all expectations of what normal was supposed to be, to take this situation, no matter how bizarre, as fact. That was something I was loathe to do. I felt crazy just entertaining this thought, let alone taking it seriously. On the other hand, I’d been trying to rationalize away everything that had happened but it would not go away, no matter how hard I rationalized. The sensation that these odd events were real kept nagging at me regardless of where my thoughts went. I couldn’t shake it. So, just in case, no matter how crazy it sounded, I needed to try to come to grips with this new “reality” and figure out the logic of whatever it was with which I was dealing. It was nuts, I knew, but what would it hurt just to think about it for a few minutes?
Okay, now, who or what was I up against? I had too little information. The strange guy with the pamphlets had told me “She almost had you before.” and the fortune teller warned of a dark, vile woman. The only woman I’d come across in the city that would fit these descriptions was Miss Rochere, although she wasn’t dark with her fair skin and her white hair. But the card reader might have used the word dark to mean evil. I thought Rochere was rude as hell and mean to boot, but what if she were more malicious than that? What if she were really and truly out to get me, out to kill me? That would explain why I had hated her so viscerally, practically at first sight. What kind of powers would she need to have to inflict such a real hallucination upon me and to scare the leaflet guy and the woman at the apartment away, literally, into thin air and to terrify the card reader to the extent that she would kick me out of the shop before getting paid? Going by the fortune teller’s reading, I’d been running from the wrong people. Both the woman Virginia and the leaflet guy had spooked me badly by their sudden vanishing acts, but looking back on it, they both did seem to be trying to help me. The person that really had it in for me and tried literally to destroy me, if this scenario were correct, I had thought of as merely ill-mannered and spiteful. I’d tried to chalk the attack upon me in her office up to an hallucinogenic allergic reaction, something similar to anaphylaxis, perhaps, most likely from that atrocious odor that had come and gone so quickly. I liked the allergy justification. It had made so much sense to me at the time and I was still hoping it was the right one. But in trying to follow the logic of this alternate reality, I had to look at it from another angle. Was it just toxic fumes in Rochere’s office that had made me so ill and delusory? Or was it Rochere herself? Had the attack been more than some mere hallucination; had it been a real assault on my life? Had she used some kind of mental power to convince my mind, and then my body that it was being attacked? Had she tried to kill me through some sort of hypnotic suggestibility? Even after I left her office, although I no longer felt as if I were being strangled to death, I still felt incredibly, overwhelmingly weak until I dozed off for a few minutes in the apartment.
Speaking of snoozes, I also recognized that there was something very unusual about that little catnap. In my entire life, no five to ten minute doze had ever refreshed me that much from such exhaustion in so little time. Why was that nap different? The attack in Rochere’s office combined with the traveling I’d done today normally would have worn me out completely by now, but just those few minutes of sleep had left me with tons of energy, a lot more, in fact, than I normally received from a whole week of vacationing at home and getting caught up on my R & R. It had to have been the dream that refreshed me so much. I was only now realizing this because my recurring dreams of my gentleman had always previously left me feeling far more tired than I was before I fell asleep. This sleep deprivation was a major factor in my depression deepening, a main cause for my need of a vacation in the first place, in fact. The dream this afternoon had been different, though. It was the first dream in which he and I had had any physical contact. When he breathed into me, in the dream I had felt a raw, smooth energy surging inside me and I realized that energy was still with me now, actually getting stronger instead of dissipating. So if the energy I received from him was real, and it was, then the man in my dreams could be real as well. After all, I had seen his portrait and that in and of itself proved he was more than just a figment of my overly active imagination. I was assuming that the portrait was recent but even if it wasn’t, even if it was terribly old, that fact alone didn’t mean anything. The man in my dreams, who was probably only in his mid-twenties to his early thirties, could easily be a look-alike great-great grandson of the man in the painting. The Royal Street fortune teller had told me that he was in great misery and sorrow and that he needed me to help him. That bothered me. How could I help him? What could I do? I had no idea of who was, where he was or what kind of trouble he was in. I didn’t have the slightest idea of where to start. I’d have to find out.
I felt better. I no longer felt quite as victimized. At least I had narrowed down my list of theories. The hypothesis that these events were part of an hallucination was a moot point. If they were, I’d eventually wake up or come down from it and until then I’d have to play along anyway. The second option was for me to go to the police with the believable portions of my story and the necklace. It would be the safest course for me to take and I was determined to stay on the alert in case this theory was the one that actually panned out. The factor holding me back from acting on it immediately was that everything didn’t fall in place, there was too much left both unexplained and unexplainable. It was the sensible, the logical thing to do but in my gut it just didn’t seem right. All else being equal, I think the deciding factor for me was the man in the portrait. If this were an elaborate scam, if everything else could be explained away by a clever network of criminals sporting high tech illusions, the portrait of the man in my dreams was the exception. I’d never described him in such great detail to anyone, not even Carolyne and the likeness was exact, right down to the tiniest detail. I would have to be wary, I would have to be very careful, but for the moment I would travel under the assumption that, as spooky as it seemed, this was real.
Before I could do anything, though, I needed more input because I had no idea what I was up against. I didn’t have nearly enough information and I couldn’t see how I could even have a chance of winning this game or whatever it was without more to go on. I decided that my next step was to go back to the apartment because that was where everyone who
seemed to be on my side kept telling me I needed to be. With my mind now settled and made up, my appetite returned. I finished my coffee, now lukewarm, and my beignets, now cold. Leaving a tip for the waitress on the table and picking up my purse, I got up and left the café, resolved to do whatever I had to do to help the man of my dreams. With more courage, energy and clarity of mind than I could ever remember having in my entire life, I began my walk back to the house on Toulouse Street.
CHAPTER FIVE
I made it back to the apartment in record time, filled with an urgency that as yet had no concrete point assigned to it. The leaflet guy had just said to be at “The Crypt” tonight. The flyer that he’d shoved in my hand had the address and today’s date on it but no specific time, just “after dark”. I didn’t know what The Crypt was, except that I assumed it was some kind of club. I had no idea what awaited me there. But I knew I needed to clean up and change clothes before I went out again. While I was still filled with lots of extra energy from the dream, I felt dirty. “Traveling dust” always left me in need of a bath or a shower but now that I was no longer operating in sheer panic, I was embarrassingly aware that the incident in Rochere’s office had left me feeling unusually grimy, as if I had just sweated out a fever which had flushed out a layer of filth. It clung to me like a foul second skin that I couldn’t wash off fast enough. I pulled the leaflet out of my pants pocket and set it on the table in the dining area. Then I went into the bedroom, took the yellow pages out of the top drawer of the night table and opened it to the “hotels” section, just in case. I stuck the “do not disturb” sign in as a bookmark, closed it and left it out on the other bed. I would go along with this “game” for the time being, since my curiosity was aroused, but in case I later changed my mind about leaving, I wanted the hotel section handy. If I had to leave quickly, I wasn’t above ripping out the whole section and taking it with me. That done, I undressed and stepped into the shower because it was quicker than a bath. I showered and washed my hair as fast as I could, feeling more vulnerable than normal as I stood in the shower naked and wet; it bothered me that I was unable to hear if anything unusual was happening outside the bathroom over the running water, especially considering that “unusual” seemed to be the watchword of the day. Finishing up, I stepped out onto the mat, dried myself, wrapped a towel around my hair, brushed my teeth and went into the bedroom to get dressed. Checking myself in the mirror, something I’d avoided before the shower, I noticed that the sick, scary-looking version of myself wasn’t staring back at me anymore. I was relieved to see a healthy and rested reflection. In fact, I actually looked better than I normally did. It seemed as if, weird or not, this vacation was actually beginning to agree with me after all.
I pulled out my favorite jeans and put them on. Halloween was just around the corner and Fall was in the air. While it had been a little muggy when I’d gotten off the plane, as the day progressed into evening the air had turned mild and perfect, blissfully devoid of the humidity for which the Crescent City was famous. I figured it might even get a little chilly after the sun went down completely, so I opted for a light, long sleeved t-shirt and took the towel down from around my hair. Even though I was looking so much healthier now, I thought as examined my face in the mirror, I still looked frightened. I definitely needed a little makeup; maybe that might help soften the “frightened animal” expression I couldn’t seem to shake. Grabbing my blow drier and my makeup bag, I headed back into the bathroom where the lighting was better. I was still paranoid about not being able to hear over the blow drier, though, so I dried my hair fast, leaving it more than a little damp.
After rechecking the apartment, I returned to the bathroom to put on a little makeup, which tonight felt more like war paint. Silly or not, to a small extent, I felt better primed to face whatever unknown task that I was being forced to confront tonight. Then I returned to the bedroom, remembering that I’d almost forgotten to call Carolyne as I’d promised. I picked up the phone to dial and then put it down again as I heard a noise coming from the front room. My renewed confidence evaporated even faster than it had appeared. I remember having locked both the gate and the sliding glass door behind me. Was it a burglar? Had somebody broken in while I was in the shower or blow drying my hair and unable hear it? Was there a hiding place I didn’t know to check earlier? The day had left me jumpy; my heart was in my throat and I didn’t know what to do. For the second time today, I searched for something which with to defend myself, but again I didn’t see anything convenient that I could just grab without making noise and giving myself away. There was always the handy lamp, but the phone looked heavier, so maybe I could use that if I had to. Oh, God, what if it was Rochere coming back to finish me off? She had the keys and could come in at any time. Barefoot, I tip toed up to the bedroom door, peeking around the doorway with as much stealth as I could muster.
“What’s the matter, chil’, you look like you seen a ghost.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. It was the woman who had presented me with the necklace. Her eyes stared straight at me.
“Have I seen one?” I asked, staring back, studying her, sizing her up, hoping my gut would tell me whether she was on the level or not. “You tell me.”
Tall, thin and dignified in appearance, she was an extremely striking figure of a woman, who, while standing so still, gave the impression of an ancient obsidian statue rather than a real person. Her features, more tired than old, seemed carved in stone and when the light shone upon her skin, it was a rich blue-black in color, a deep ebony that I had never before seen in an African-American. She continued to stare at me at me as I continued assess her, but it was not a confrontational gaze. Her eyes were kind and wise, her expression patient. She seemed to understand that I needed to know with whom I was dealing.
“What’s your name?” I asked her. The disappearing man had told me, but I wanted to hear her say it.
“Virginia,” she answered.
Yep, that was it. “Are you the same Virginia that the guy who practically shoved that leaflet down my throat told me about?”
“One an’ the same. That was Marcus. He’s a friend o’ mine, he’s a friend o’ yours now,” she answered. Her velvety smooth voice was low in pitch for a woman’s. I could not place her soft accent. From what little I knew of accents, it sounded reminiscent of a cross between some kind of African and West Indies accent.
“Listen, what is this all about?” I said firmly. I was determined to get an answer from her this time. “You and that guy Marcus, who exactly are you people? You should know that it has crossed my mind that all of this cloak and dagger stuff is baloney, that maybe this whole thing is just some kind of scam and maybe you guys are just nothing but a couple of con artists. I’ve thought about this long and hard and that’s the only explanation that makes any sense to me.” I wasn’t being completely honest with her, but I needed to see how she would react. “I have to tell you that if I don’t get an explanation from you, I’m moving into a hotel. There must be at least one vacancy in the city somewhere.”
Instead of getting defensive, she just looked and sounded sad and tired, as if she’d heard accusations like this far too many times before. “It ain’t no scam, don’ you fool yourself into thinking it is. You’ll die thinking that way.”
“Is that a threat?” I was still being somewhat unyielding, gauging her reactions.
“No, darlin’,” she said kindly. “I’m tryin’ to help keep you alive.”
“So what would you say if I called the police right now? Would you say that would make me a fool?”
“No, it would jus’ make you dead.”
“What do you mean? Explain yourself,” I said. Her answer left me feeling queasy and weak. I sat down at the dining table, she on the chair next to me. I studied her face, her expression closely, hoping it would reveal to me what I should believe and what I shouldn’t. I realized at first that she was far older than I’d first thought. She was so lean and her skin was so taut upon her
impressive bone structure that I really had to see her up close in order to notice her age. Her countenance was tired, as if emotionally rather than physically, she needed to rest badly. Her eyes seemed to reveal a humble and forgiving nature and her mouth, now drawn and serious, suggested that the weight that rested upon her shoulders was real. Unless she was one of the best actresses in the world, she struck me as being both honest and a person I would definitely want on my side.
“Okay, let’s just say that you’re on the level.” I said, softening my stance somewhat. “Who are you, really? I mean, what do you and that guy do exactly?”
“We both of us work for the man in the paintin’ upstairs. Like I tol’ you before. That man’s the rightful owner of this house.”
“What’s his name?” The cynic in me, while dwindling, still wanted a name attached. With a name, I could always research her story to find out if it was true.
Her voice got low, and it seemed as if she was almost afraid to tell me. “I can tell you once an’ once only. So remember it always and don’ repeat it. His name’s Edmond Montgomery.”
“So who exactly is this man and why can’t I repeat his name?”
“You know who he is. You been dreaming ‘bout him for weeks now.”
I was shocked at what she just told me. I had told no one in New Orleans about my dreams and now this woman, whom I had met only earlier today was telling me about them.
“How do you know about my dreams?” I replied accusatorially. It bothered me to hear a complete stranger talking about something so incredibly personal.
The Nightmare Game Page 7