“Don’t touch the mouth,” he told me.
“It’s calling me, it wants me, I have to go to it,” I protested. “Can’t you smell it? Its fragrance is beautiful.”
“No, it stinks. It is foul. You’re drawn to it only because the witch still has hold over you. It’s why I brought you here, only to test the extent that her infection is still in you.” He pulled me back farther.
“Let me go,” I objected, reaching out, so longing to touch the flower again. “I want to go back, I need to touch it again.”
“You can’t,” Edmond told me. “It’s a filthy thing. You’ll have to face it one day, but you’re not strong enough yet.”
He held me softly as the black door with its thorns and obscene flower began to float away. The fog became denser until he and I stood alone in a universe of thick mist. He began to stroke my hair as if I were a child.
“Get some rest, you need to sleep, you need to heal. A long journey lies ahead of you. Sleep now.”
In my dream, I became very drowsy. I put my head upon Edmond’s shoulder and, as he continued stroking my hair, I drifted into a deep, restful sleep.
I think I was out for a long time, although with sleep it’s always hard to tell. I woke up on the bathroom floor, the tickling sensation of my own drool awakening me. For a moment, I was completely unaware of my surroundings or what had happened to me. I slowly came to my senses and realized where I was. I ached all over and my head was splitting. When I rubbed it, revealing a large bump, I remembered that I had hit my head on the hard tile of the bathroom floor with a vengeance.
“Oh, shit,” I groaned as memory returned to me. I looked around. I was still alive. I couldn’t believe it, I was actually still alive. Feeling had returned to me and my body was no longer numb. I didn’t know if that was a good thing, because it hurt dreadfully. My arm felt baked and raw, my throat felt as if it had been slashed, my entire body felt almost cut in two, especially when I breathed. Ok, then, as the old joke goes, I thought, trying desperately to keep myself together, just don’t breathe. For some strange reason, that made me feel a little better. If I was in good enough shape to be corny, I reasoned, then my life force, although battered and bruised, must still be intact.
I’d gotten some strength back, so I was able to lift my head. The first thing that grabbed my attention was the YOU’RE DEAD blood message on the bathtub wall. All of the events leading up to my landing on the wet bathroom floor came flooding back into my mind. My corny sense of humor, so recently resurrected, departed even faster than it had appeared. I’d been so hoping that this message had been a part of a dream, that I’d simply fallen and hit my head and that the shower from hell and all the danger I was in had been only side effects of a concussion gone wild. But it wasn’t. Now that the writing on the wall was in my conscious awareness again, it stared at me through my peripheral vision wherever my eyes wandered. Before I’d been too traumatized and too numb in every sense of the word to be overly bothered by the message, but now it horrified me. Rochere was out to kill me and I finally understood just how unstoppable her power must be and how large her grasp was. I knew the bloody graffiti was more than a threat; it was a prediction. I couldn’t stand to look at it a moment longer; it was terrifying me badly and I realized that it was for this moment that she had written it. I had to maneuver myself into another position, one in which the death threat wasn’t staring me straight in the face, where I could think without that hideous thing commanding my every attention.
Before I moved, though, I had to take stock of my injuries so that moving wouldn’t do more harm than good. I prayed vehemently that no real damage had been done, that despite my previous impressions I would be merely hurt and not maimed. With a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, terrified as to what I would find, I reluctantly forced my eyes to glance down for inspection. I studied my arm first since it was the easiest for me to see. Instead of the cooked, flayed flesh that I remembered before losing consciousness, my arm now looked and felt no worse than an extremely bad sunburn. The cuts I’d seen going down to the bone, the ripped flesh I was sure I would find there, were now only nasty red welt trails spiraling upward. I sighed with relief, realizing that my right arm was still intact; I’d been so sure earlier that its injuries were so extreme that I would surely lose it. My chest, which still hurt badly, had been bleeding profusely earlier from the spot where I’d felt something pierce me. All blood was washed away by the water from the headless, undirected shower rod that was spraying relentlessly all over my body and most of the floor. I realized now why the bathroom floor and not just the tub contained a drain. I glanced down to see that the flesh of my chest was red and still bloody looking; I was afraid to examine it too closely, afraid of what I would find when I did. With a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, I reluctantly forced my hands down to feel my skin and breathed a sigh of relief when I discovered nothing more than a few bruises and a nasty scab. It was still quite tender and it hurt to the touch, but other than the scab, there was no evidence of punctures or cuts. Finally, I felt my throat but found there only the dragon necklace I still wore. I had no idea of what had tried to strangle me; I only knew that it had come from behind me, from outside the vortex. I was sure that I’d felt my throat being cut or crushed, perhaps even both, but, as with the rest of my body, it checked out fine as well. It was still very sore, but seemed perfectly intact. I knew that I’d been hurt alright, but now I was beginning to wonder about the severity of the injuries I’d received. Nothing heals that fast, I knew, suddenly realizing that I was already in much less pain than I’d been in only a few seconds ago when I first awoke. Had the intensity of the wounds been an hallucination or a product of my own imagination?
My back still hurt terribly from the fall and seemed more damaged now than the rest of me. Like my head, it hadn’t been injured by any supernatural forces, but rather by the very mundane act of falling backwards over the bathtub wall in my violent expulsion from the shower. For some reason my head and my back, my greatest concerns now, hadn’t healed quite as quickly as the rest of me. I had no strength in my legs, but I could move them, albeit slowly and with great pain and difficulty. Okay, I thought, I’d checked out well enough, so now it was time to rearrange my position and slide off elsewhere, to get away from the water spraying down upon me. Most importantly, I had to get out of eyeshot of that horrible message, because now that I was no longer on the brink of death, it was preying upon my psyche and my mind.
I began feeble attempts to adjust my position. Even though I was so sore that my every move hurt and ached, my horribly battered body was now at least ambulatory. Slowly and incredibly painfully, I pulled myself along the wet, damp, slippery floor, grateful now still to be alive, grateful I could still move at all. I continued these efforts until I reached the wall by the door leading into the bedroom and propped myself up against it. No matter how I shifted I could not escape the pain in my head and in my back. I sat as best I could in a semi-seated position, feeling for all the world like a broken marionette whose master had abandoned her for bigger and better things. The floor was cold and wet, and still being soaked by the shower pipe left without direction when it lost its head. I had turned outward toward the bathroom during my fall and now noticed the large snail-like semi-dry trail I’d left in my wake during the arduous crawl, a trail rapidly disappearing by the shower’s flow of water. My position wasn’t ideal, but at least I could see very little of the obscene message on the tile tub wall from this vantage point. The linen closet to my left obscured most of it. The bathroom door, which I’d left partially open before the shower, hid the words’ reversed image in the mirror. Maybe without having that abominable note staring me straight in the face, I could actually assess my immediate situation better and with more clarity.
Settled into this passably comfortable semi-seated position, I wondered if I could get up. I needed to get up, because I feared another attack by Rochere. I felt far too vulnerable sitting here on the bat
hroom floor. I braced my hands beside my torso and tried to get traction with my feet. The first time they slipped out from under me, so I tried again. The second time I got the traction, but could not find the power to stand. The third time I held onto the bathroom doorknob, trying for leverage to pull myself up, but I didn’t have the strength for that either. Then I just quit, too exhausted for another try. I was tired, really tired. All of my energy reserves had left me. I needed more sleep and a lot of it. It wasn’t like the feeling I’d had earlier, when I thought that blacking out would mean certain death. No, now I was just really, honestly tired. The burst of steam I used to move across the floor was all gone and I needed to rest. I felt as if I could, like Sleeping Beauty, sleep for one hundred years, awaiting only my true love to awaken me. I didn’t have that luxury, though. It wasn’t the sensible thing to do. For all I knew, I could have a concussion and the worst course of action now would be to let myself fall asleep. Since I was alone, I knew I should drag myself into the bedroom right now and call an ambulance; but I was just too exhausted. I couldn’t move another inch. I needed a little rest. I would just close my eyes a little, rest for only a minute, and then maybe I’d have enough strength to do what I needed to do. Yes, rest sounded awfully good right now. So I closed my eyes, telling myself it would just be for a second, that I wouldn’t allow myself to drift off to sleep.
Yet drift I did, despite my very best efforts. Within me I felt a lightness that defied gravity. It was pure pleasure, containing no tinge of death as did my last sleep. I rose upward again, weightless for a moment, toward union with the oneness with all that most of us feel only in the first fleeting stages of a truly splendid sleep. Hovering rapturously for a few seconds, I then came crashing down and the sensation I felt changed from one of bliss to one of menace. Black was the pit into which I fell, black and fearful. I did not know where I was or how to escape. I wandered down a hallway dark and barely navigable, fearful that each step might send me tumbling down a flight of stairs or plummeting into yet another, deeper pit. With trepidation, I continued down this corridor because I could do nothing else. I could go neither left nor right, for it never branched. I could not even turn around and go back the way I came, for the tunnel immediately closed itself behind me as I walked. It merely kept twisting in upon itself, a hellish treadmill with no destination. Finally, after what seemed like hours, I saw a tiny, dim light in the far distance. My heart leapt and I began to walk toward it with intense anticipation, for it was my only hope of escape. The floor beneath my feet was cold, the walls even colder to the touch. Despite that extreme iciness, the air itself suddenly became excessively hot. The longer I walked toward the light, the hotter the air became and the colder the walls and floor grew. The winding hallway was becoming stuffy, lack of oxygen making it harder and harder to breathe. I broke out in the same cold sweat as I had in Rochere’s office, the layer of filth once again wrapping itself around my body like a nasty second skin. Fear enveloped me and I began to panic. I burst into a run, racing as fast as I could to reach the source of the light before it disappeared. The faster I ran, however, the slower I actually went and the further away the light became. Out of breath, I slowed to a stop, knelt against the icy wall which chilled me without cooling me, and collected myself. I forced my mind to realize that I was in a dream. None of this was real. I didn’t have to be at its mercy, I could control it. So I closed my eyes and with great effort, willed myself to the end of the path. It worked, for when I opened my eyes, I stood at the tunnel’s mouth where a white room, a room that had existed as a mere pinpoint of light only an instant before, unveiled itself to me. It was so bright after the dark tunnel that even in my dream I was blinded and disoriented for a few seconds.
When I was finally able to examine what stood before me, I realized that it was not a room at all, for I could see no floor, walls nor ceiling. It was simply a nebulous area of pure, brilliant whiteness. I stayed in the shadows, lurking, hugging the entrance of the dark tunnel in which I stood, transfixed. I longed to enter into the formless space, but I was far too apprehensive to step out. Suddenly I heard footsteps in the distance, low and far away, but soon they began to come closer to my hiding place inside the mouth of the tunnel. As they grew louder, I recoiled further into the tunnel, terrified that the footsteps were signaling Rochere’s return. Was she coming back to extract her punishments upon me once again? I held my breath as the figure belonging to the footsteps slowly, gradually, began to materialize within the whiteness and walked toward me steadily, becoming more solid with each step.
I exhaled loudly with relief when I saw at last that it was Edmond, moving across the whiteness in a fluid manner, in slow motion. He stopped before the tunnel’s mouth and held out his hand to me. I was ecstatic to see him, but still I could not make myself walk out to him.
“It’s okay, you can come out now,” he said to me as if he were coaxing a kitten from under a bed.
“I can’t. The light will burn me.”
“No, it won’t. The poison is completely out of you now; the infection is gone. She’s no longer in your mind and she no longer has direct access to you. You’re completely clean and you can enter at your own will.”
The warmth of his eyes entranced me and I wanted so much to run up to him, to throw my arms around him. I wanted him to make me feel safe, to feel protected, but I held back because what I really needed was for him to tell me that I could go home. I desperately yearned to hear him say that I didn’t have to continue this horrible endeavor, that I could just quit; but I knew he wouldn’t tell me that, because I knew without asking that it was not possible. Instead, I merely took his hand and stepped out into the brightness.
As we stood encircled by the incredible whiteness of our surroundings, I simply asked him, “What is this place? Where are we?”
“We are nowhere,” he answered. “This is just a sector within my mind from which I can block out the evil one. I found this haven a long time ago and it’s the only place that I can hide where she can’t find me when she is actively looking for me. I can speak freely to you here, but we can’t stay long because the effort is extremely taxing to me. It takes an enormous amount of exertion for me to block her thoughts to this extent, but there’s a lot that I need to tell you before you proceed, a lot you need to know.”
“Okay.”
“First of all, I wish I could let you know everything that’s going to happen from this point forward, everything you need to expect. I wish I could tell you every move you need to make, but I can’t because I never know all the details. It is only at the very beginning that the witch’s methods of operation are predictable because she knows that my abilities to warn those I call are, at that time, extremely limited. Even then, most people are either completely scared off and leave or don’t believe Virginia, Marcus and the dreams in the slightest, preferring to think it all a hoax. In both cases, their fates are terminally sealed. So you see, there’s absolutely nothing causing her to go to the trouble of changing her initial moves.
“However, you are past that stage now and entering a point at which her actions are no longer as predictable. Her plans begin to evolve because she knows that here I can warn you. Once you go through the second door at The Crypt tonight, which will be your next move, you’ll be entering into a realm that is her domain; there she rules absolutely and there she will try to beguile you into surrendering the necklace and its amulet. I can never help you in her world; she does not allow me into it. I can tell you only that her strategies are never exactly the same every time. She repeats some elements, discards others, and I have no way of knowing which is which. She may change everything this time. I don’t know. I do know one thing for certain, for she’s taunted me with shadowy hints that reveal nothing, hints that she has changed at least one crucial element from the last time the battle progressed this far. It’s due to the fact that I don’t know what it is that I can’t tell you exactly what to do or expect, because I don’t want to lead you down
a wrong path by giving you outdated information. I made that mistake with Marcus and it still haunts me. I can only inform you about the elements that remain constant within this struggle, to let you know as best I can what you will be up against. I am so sorry, Ashley, that I had to bring you into this battle, this war, even. Marcus and some of the others found it helpful to think of it as a game. It made it less intimidating to them, less frightening. I hope thinking of it in that way will help you as well.
“I can’t emphasis enough the need for you to be on your guard. I don’t want you ever to be susceptible to that witch again. I know what you’ve just been through has been horrible and once more, I am truly sorry.”
“Oh, Edmond, it was hideous. That shower, the vortex, it was all so terrifying. I honestly thought I was going to die.” Just thinking about it now made me want to burst into tears.
“You almost did die. You came very, very close to it. I am so sorry she hurt you. However, at least now you’ve seen her true face in full. No matter how she tries to charm you, no matter how she tries to court you later on, and she will, you have experienced first hand how undeniably evil she really is.”
“What I don’t understand is, how did she even get to me? All your friends told me that this necklace would protect me from her, that I’d be safe from her as long as I wore it. I’ve never taken it off but it certainly hasn’t helped me much up to now.”
The Nightmare Game Page 14