I crossed the street and stood in front of the club’s now-closed door, feeling even more apprehensive about going in now than I had before, but I swallowed my fear and approached it. A very large antique iron door knocker, also painted black, was strategically placed in a bare spot between the blood red lettering. A sign next to the door read “Private Club. Please knock.” So Troy was right, this was a private club. But that was odd. Like the bartender mentioned, why would a private club hand out leaflets on a street corner advertising it? I suddenly felt even more intimidated, probably because the guy that handed it to me was dead and I was most likely the only person that got one. That thought made me want to turn tail and run as the full weight of my mission began crashing down upon me. On the verge of losing my resolution altogether, I grabbed the iron ring and knocked reluctantly. A bouncer, a broad, boxy, very ugly thug with a pock-scarred face appeared.
“What’re you doin’ here?” he said brusquely, his voice and manner even more offensive than his physical appearance.
“I’d like to come in. Why do you think I knocked?” His rudeness was contagious and I found my attitude mirroring his own.
He pointed violently to the sign.
“What’s the matter, can’t you read? It says right here,” he thumped the sign hard with a meaty forefinger, “Private Club. And you ain’t a member. We don’t want no riff-raff, so go away!”
“I was told to come here!” I shouted back, my anger rising fast. I pulled out the flyer from my jeans pocket, unfolded it and shoved it into his face. “I was invited, you jerk!”
He tore the flyer from my hand and read it.
“So you got a flyer, so what? How do I know where you got this from? You might a stole it, for all I know. Get lost.”
Roughly, he handed the flyer back to me but when he did, I saw that he noticed the necklace I wore. He continued to look looked mean but something had definitely taken the wind out of his sails.
“OK, so you comin’ in or what?” His bark hadn’t changed, but his facial expression no longer matched the ferocity of his voice. He was noticeably flustered.
“Asshole,” I said under my breath just barely loud enough for him to hear as I walked past him and into the club.
The nightclub turned out to be a fairly small space that certainly lived up to its name. It looked a lot like the inside of a tomb. The entire place was either stone or an extremely convincing faux stone equivalent. Everything that wasn’t stone, such as the fixtures, appeared to be heavy black wrought iron. The light, which had seemed brighter from the vantage point of the dark street, was actually quite subdued. I could see no electric light fixtures or outlets at all, even though subtle back lighting was evident throughout the room. The only visible light sources were heavy, thick white candles in black wrought iron holders affixed to the walls, candles that were melted down from much use, their holders and the wax catchers just beneath them covered with copious drippings. Filmy drapes resembling funeral shrouds were artistically hung from the ceilings in the corners while cemetery angel statues were placed around the club strategically, some freestanding, some adorning narrow recesses. The wall to my right as I walked in was dominated by a deep, arched alcove. Virtually a room unto itself, it was framed with shroud-like curtains, now tied back, that looked as if they could be untied for extra privacy. The alcove contained a large curved black sofa unit that hugged its entire length, upon which were now sitting the group that had come in just before me. In front of the sofa, or rather, within the empty space the curved sofa provided, was an interesting oblong half table, also made of stone, oval on one side, cut flush with the alcove’s entrance on the other. The soft backlighting behind the sofa was unobtrusive and an array of the same thick white candles, burnt down to different lengths, sat in a large, black, shallow, oblong marble dish in the center of the table. While the atmosphere was gloomy and definitely Goth, it was all so convincing that the effect was not in the least Halloweenish, but rather, convincingly medieval. Except for the curtains and the sofa, the inside of the club reminded me of old castles and ruins that I’d once seen during a trip that I took to Europe many years ago. It wasn’t just the decorating scheme, either; the place didn’t seem new, it genuinely felt old and established. I was probably just sensing something that wasn’t really there, because the man at the other bar was certain that in fifteen years of working in the Quarter, private club or not, he had never once heard of The Crypt.
There was only one barstool set out as an obvious afterthought, for it was just a plain, regular stool that definitely, by any stretch of the imagination, did not fit the rest of the immaculately executed ambiance. I walked up to it and took my place at the bar, which reminded me of a tall, narrow sarcophagus more than anything else. Behind the bar, instead of the mandatory mirror amplifying the obligatory display of liquor bottles that would normally sit at that post for enticement, there was an ancient looking relief carving that ran the entire length of the wall. Trying to get acclimated but feeling increasingly out of place, I figured that I could at least stare at the intricate carving of multitudes being sentenced to hell and pretend to study it as I tried desperately to establish a comfort zone. I looked over at the beautiful people sitting on the sofa and realized that, like the barstool, I didn’t fit in here at all either.
The bouncer stepped behind the bar and asked me what I wanted to drink. Apparently Mr. Wonderful also doubled as the bartender. I remembered the warning not to drink anything that Rochere gave me, but I looked around and her presence was nowhere to be seen. The place was so small that unless she was hiding under the bar, she was blissfully absent. I actually got up off the stool, leaned over and checked for her there. There was no Rochere present.
“Whatcha think you’re doing?” the bartender said roughly.
“Just checking for something,” I said, trying not to be embarrassed. The beautiful people were looking at me and whispering.
“Lookin’ for your lost youth?” the ugly, pock-marked man said, smirking.
“How did you know?” I shot back. This jerk was definitely not bringing out the best in me. “I thought I might find it in the same spot where you lost all your looks.”
A few muffled giggles emerged from the gorgeous crowd. I looked over at them and one, an incredibly handsome Asian fellow, gave me the “thumbs up” sign. I breathed a little easier; I felt at least a little less out of place now.
The bartender seemed far more humiliated than my remark should have left him. He peered sheepishly at the clientele and I realized that in his rudeness, he must have been trying to make points with them. Too bad, I thought, he’d been nothing but nasty to me since I first met him.
“Okay, Miss Smartass, whatcha drinkin’? If you wanna stay in here, you gotta drink somethin’ or else it’s out with you.”
Even though I had no intention of drinking anything, I ordered just to be able to remain in the club. I asked for a ginger ale. They did not serve ginger ale here, he informed me. They also did not serve, I found out, beer, wine, any mixed drink I asked for, club soda or water. Fine establishment we have here, I thought to myself, with such an excellent range of drink offerings.
“OK, mister, let’s make this simple.” I said, my patience running out. “What do you serve?”
He pointed to the tables. “See what they’re drinkin’? Well, that’s what we serve.”
I looked at the glasses of the others in the club and all of the drinks were, for lack of a better word, fluorescent. As a matter of fact, I had seen school crossing guards dressed in subtler colors. The drinks were fluorescent orange and green, as well as day-glo hot pink, blue and magenta. I turned back around to the bartender.
“You’re kidding.” I said, matter of factly.
“No,” he said dryly. I got the feeling he never kidded.
“You know, I don’t even know why I was supposed to come here. Nothing’s happening and you don’t have anything to drink that looks halfway appetizing,” I started to get off
my stool to walk out.
“Hey, try one for free, on the house,” he said, changing his tune, now trying to get me to stay. “They ain’t as bad as they look. The drinks are really pretty good.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Go ahead and try one. It’s free. You don’t like it, don’t drink it. Whatcha got to lose?”
It was beginning to look like I would have to wait awhile to find out why I’d been sent here. As I sat, a mere mortal in the company of a group of people that made even super models look dowdy, I had no intention of drinking it but maybe it would help me feel a little more comfortable at if I at least had a drink in my hand.
“Try a blue one, it’s the weakest one we serve,” he suggested.
“Well, I’ll try a sip but I won’t promise I’ll drink it.”
“Fair enough, but you’ll like it, trust me.”
Instead of mixing it up, he just pulled out a large bottle of the stuff from underneath the bar, poured it into a glass over ice and handed it to me.
“Ice,” I said. “You have ice but no water.”
He simply shrugged.
I really didn’t want to drink it, so I turned my attention instead to the other side of the room. I felt so awkward sitting here. I could not remember ever feeling as unattractive in my entire life as I did right now. What made it even worse was that the beautiful people were still looking me, too, and I realized that a few of them at the far end of the sofa, a man and three dark haired women, were whispering, even pointing at me and snickering. I knew I didn’t have my shirt on backwards and I knew my hair wasn’t on fire, so I figured that they were probably making rude comments about my not being supermodel material. The man, a Nordic blond with icy blue eyes who, had his hair not been a wavy shoulder length, could easily have passed for a Hitler youth, the ideal Nazi Übermensch. He looked me up and down, giving me the once-over, making it obvious that he didn’t like what he saw; he sneered disapprovingly before breaking eye contact. The three women, sitting next to him, each with perfect Snow White coloring, fawned over him, leading me to suspect that his opinion was usually their opinions. Most of the others just glanced at me and seemed nice enough. One of them, though, a fine-boned blonde girl who looked somewhat shy and embarrassed by the blond man, smiled at me warmly. She was sitting at the other end of the sofa next to the most handsome of them all, young man with dark hair and young Gregory Peck looks; he beamed me a friendly, infectious smile as he raised his glass to me in an air toast. Well, at least they weren’t all bad, I figured. But good grief, they were awfully gorgeous, weren’t they? They were, as a group, really far too beautiful to be true.
“So when are the camera people coming to shoot the perfume ad?” I asked the bartender.
“Beg pardon?”
“Them. The people across the room.”
“Yeah, pretty, aren’t they?” the dark sarcastic tone in his voice was impossible to miss.
“You don’t like them?”
“I just work here. It’s not up to me to like or dislike anybody. They come in to party, I serve them drinks, that’s all that’s to it.”
“Why are they all so beautiful?”
“Why not?”
“Because you don’t just get that many good looking people in any one place at one time without having some regular people mixed in, too. I mean, do they all work together for a modeling agency or something like that?”
“Nope, they’re just pretty,” he replied, although pretty really was a gross understatement as far as this lot were concerned. Never in my entire life had I seen such intensely beautiful men and women, such elegant, graceful people with such perfect posture. They almost seemed like a separate species. The women were all so svelte, the men so well muscled; they were all so young, not a single one seemed to be over twenty-five. Only the ones that had snickered at me looked haughty. Had they not been so incredibly beautiful that kind of arrogance would have detracted from their loveliness. But theirs was the kind of beauty that was so extreme that nothing could have detracted from it.
“So, you ain’t gonna try your drink?” the bartender said.
“Umm, just haven’t gotten around to it yet,” I lied, trying to avoid eye contact with the fluorescent liquid. I needed to change the subject, so I decided to make some small talk. As time progressed I started wondering more and more why I was even here. Was something supposed to happen? Was someone going to come in that I was supposed to meet? The stunning human scenery in the club was really only so interesting and I was beginning to get fidgety.
“So what’s your name?” I asked the bartender.
“None of your business. Why should I tell you?”
“Because, buddy, in case you hadn’t noticed, you and I are the only regular people in here.” I hated to lump myself in with this hideous creature, who would not have been so repugnant had it not been for his personality or lack thereof, but I was trying to get him to talk. Maybe he could shed some light on what was going to happen.
“Name’s Max.”
“Hi, Max, I’m Ashley,” I said, reaching out my hand.
“Nice to meet you, Ashley,” he replied, shaking my hand. His manner in responding was odd, as if manners and pleasantries were something very rusty, something he once knew, that he remembered from long ago and was trying hard to recall.
“Hey, dog, you got a girlfriend now?” came the loud, sassy remark from the blond Hitler youth in a mean, caustic tone.
“No,” said the bartender meekly, his eyes cast down as he seemingly examined his shoes. This was exactly the opposite reaction of what I would have expected from a big bruiser such as himself.
“Dog?”
“It’s his nickname for me,” he said quietly. I could hear the shame in his voice.
“That’s not a nice nickname,” I said. While I’d heard ‘dog’ used as an affectionate nickname among men in the past, the blond’s attitude left no doubt to the hurt he intended to inflict with it. I was starting to feel a little sorry for this man that I had earlier found so offensive. “Why do you let him call you that?”
“I just work here,” he said brusquely, pretending to be too busy cleaning the bar to look up. “So whatcha you gonna do, you gonna drink your drink or you just gonna let it sit there?” It was more of a demand than a question. Underneath the rudeness, however, I picked up on a sense of real shame that went beyond much more than just displaced anger at the blond man.
“Well?” Max said, annoyed, as if my refusal his drink would be a personal insult.
“I’ll take a sip in a minute, okay. I’ll try it then,” I said as nicely as I could, but I had no intention of actually drinking the stuff. I was just trying to be polite because I really felt bad for Max. “But I have to make a side trip, first. I’ll try it when I get back,” Lying and stalling, I was not about to drink his bizarre cocktail. The warnings of Marcus and Virginia seemed tremendously easy to heed now, for the concoction did not look even mildly tempting.
“Max, can you tell me where the ladies’ room is?” I whispered. I needed an excuse to get away from the bar and then afterward, I would leave. I saw no reason that I needed to stay, no sign of any impending action. Marcus and Virginia had told me that this was my first step, but all I saw here was an enormous waste of my time.
He pointed towards a black wrought iron door to the rear of the club and said, “Just go through there.”
As I walked toward the door, I heard muffled giggles that reminded me of junior high school, followed by a man’s loud whisper of “Geoffrey, stop it. You three as well, stop it right now,” as if chiding small children misbehaving in church. Well, at least one of them was decent, I thought as I continued on my way without bothering to look behind me. I opened the door that lead to the bathroom area and on the other side was a tiny room that was painted completely black, floor, walls and ceiling. Three blood red doors with black doorknobs were all that the room contained. None of the doors were marked.
“OK,” I thought
to myself, completely confused. “One is for men, one is for ladies, one is for what? Extraterrestrials?”
I didn’t know which door to use, so I turned to go back into the main room and ask the bartender. But when I did, the entryway was gone. There was just a blank wall where the wrought-iron door had stood only a moment ago. Immediately, I felt trapped and began to panic. Claustrophobia set in. My only option was to go through one of the three red doors. Two must be bathrooms and the other one must be the exit. But which one? Since my objective was simply to get out of here, I chose the odd door at the far wall opposite between the one at my left and the one at my right. If it wasn’t the rear exit, well, nothing ventured, nothing gained and I’d just try another door.
The door, which closed on its own immediately behind me, led into an incredibly dark room, and was not the exit. Dark was an understatement, in fact; pitch black was more accurate. Panicking, I fumbled for the door handle to go back, but it seemed to have disappeared. Then I fumbled for a light switch but couldn’t find one. I did not like this place. I needed to leave, now!
No sooner had increasing anxiety manifested in my mind, on the verge of taking it over, than the floor went out from beneath my feet and I felt myself falling. The next thing I knew, I hit the ground hard and painfully, the abrupt landing compelling my mouth to open in reflex as I groaned “Ohhh!”. I had landed in a liquid which had splashed into my face, more than a few drops of it making its way, unwanted, into my mouth.
I was discombobulated and didn’t know where I was. The light level, while now was no longer non-existent, it was still minimal. I seemed immersed all around in a fluorescent concoction that looked like the drinks in the bar and seemed to stare back at me whenever I looked down at it. The unwanted liquid on my tongue tasted unexpectedly good, sweet and smooth, and reminded me of oranges mixed with a touch of liquorice, but I was afraid, for I now knew that this was the stuff of which I’d been warned. I pulled myself up and onto my elbows and looked down at the radioactive-blue, day-glo liquid that had forced its way into me. Suddenly, my thought processes began to take place through a thick layer of cotton wrapped around my brain. The world began to whirl around me as I began to feel very sick to my stomach.
The Nightmare Game Page 10