The Nightmare Game

by Martin, S. Suzanne

  “She’s not dead yet, you mean. Look at the date, darlin’.”

  “It can’t be. This is next Tuesday’s paper. That’s three days from now.”

  “Less than,” he said dryly. “This murder’s gonna happen in the wee hours of Tuesday mornin’ if you don’t keep playing the game. She knows you liked Brenda. This is her punishment for it.”

  “It can’t be. I thought that she always makes the deaths look like natural causes.”

  “She does. Normally. This ain’t her handiwork, though, it belongs to one of her goons. I was only able to get my hands on this because she wants you to see it. She wanted the murder to be dramatic enough to catch your attention and she wanted it ordinary enough so it’d feel real to you. She ain’t ordered the hit yet, though. She won’t, either, as long as you keep playin’ her game.”

  “But if I hadn’t stopped to talk to you, I wouldn’t even have seen this.”

  “No, you wouldn’t have. She still woulda killed her anyway, only then it wouldn’t have looked like murder. See, luv, everything here’s not about you. Brenda pissed her off cause that soulless witch was counting on killing you today and dissolving your body afterwards. Brenda showed up for her shift way too early, a whole lot earlier than she was supposed to. There was a chance that Brenda might have found a lot of blood or whatever was left of your body. Then the witch woulda had to get rid of Brenda, which woulda cost her a real good cleaning lady. That possibility really pissed her off.”

  “But it didn’t happen. I was fine by the time Brenda got to the apartment. Why would she still kill her? It seems so counterproductive. It just doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Besides bein’ evil, did I forget to tell you that the vicious bitch is also insane?”

  “Our gentleman friend informed me of that little tidbit.”

  “Good. I can not emphasize enough just how crazy she is. Certifiable. It’s one of her failin’s. Double-edged sword, though. Makes her potentially defeatable, but also makes her more unpredictable, more dangerous.

  “But showin’ up too early ain’t the only thing that Brenda did wrong. She told you too much.”

  “How’d she find out? I thought she couldn’t use surveillance to bug the apartment.”

  “She didn’t need to. Brenda took too long in talkin’ to you, so the witch got into her head and found out the details of that conversation. Our enemy didn’t like that, so she left this newspaper at the apartment for Virginia and me to see. She knew we liked the girl. Brenda couldn’t see us cause nobody sees us except those in the game, but we could see her and we liked her all the same. If you keep playing the game, if you keep the witch occupied, if you win, this will never happen. Brenda’ll live and so will a lot of other people.”

  “I can’t believe it,” I said, badly shaken.

  “Yeah, it’s different when it’s somebody you know out here in the real world, ain’t it? It’s different when it gets this real.”

  “Okay, okay, I get it. I’ll go,” I said reluctantly. “I’ll go back to The Crypt. I’ll finish the game.”

  “Good girl. And I’ll remind you yet once again, don’t ever drink anything that she or her cohorts give you. Ever. It lets her get under your skin and gives her access to you.”

  “I won’t. Trust me, I’ve learned that lesson. He told me, you told me, I’ve got it now. I won’t forget.”

  “Brilliant. Keep it that way,” he replied.

  “Can I ask you one more thing?” I said. “Just something I’m curious about.”

  “Ask away. I can’t say I’ll answer, though.

  “It’s about the apartment.”

  “What about it?”

  “It looked so different today when I saw it with Brenda today than it did yesterday. Why? Who caused the illusion? Was it the witch or was it the man in the painting?”

  “Both. It’s the only time they’re ever on the same side. He wanted you here to fight for him. She wanted you here to kill you.” Upon saying that, he disappeared right in front of my face. None of the many people passing around us noticed.

  Reluctantly, I turned around and set my sight once more upon The Crypt. Again, when I reached the corner at Ursuline, I felt evil energy come in waves at me and I felt my alarm increase. I told myself it was just my own fear, that Rochere was simply exerting a force that was amplifying my own dread. The less I was afraid, the less that there would be for her to amplify. It actually helped. I was glad I’d arrived early, for it was still daylight and would be for awhile; I now appreciated daylight savings time in a way I never had before. Daylight kept the monsters lurking in my mind from overwhelming me. I would just keep plodding along and I would get through this, I told myself. As I walked down Ursuline, I stared down feet, mechanically putting one foot in front of the other. I tried to remember every single technique I’d ever learned to chase away fear, everything from silently reciting the few Bible stories I’d learned as a child on my rare excursions to Sunday School to whistling and singing aloud. I worked at recollecting every technique that was ever successful in killing movie monsters. I didn’t know what Rochere was, except that she was evil, and I knew it wouldn’t work, but right now I dearly desired to possess a full arsenal of wooden stakes, holy water, silver bullets and anything else that had ever worked in any Saturday matinee creature feature ever made.

  When I stopped walking, I looked up and found myself on the block of my destination, across the street from The Crypt; I’d taken the exact same route as I had last night. An abrupt chill overtook me and I began to shiver from it. I stared at the repulsive black door splattered with red, unable to tear my eyes from it, my gaze fixed hypnotically upon the entrance to that club. I suddenly regretted all the times that I’d asked the Universe to unveil the destiny it had in store for me. Fixed in that spot, paralyzed by fear, I stared at the heinous entrance to that monstrous club, realizing for the first time just how well off I really had been in my life. Destiny was highly overrated, I now realized. Lying on a comfortable sofa with a good book, a cat on my lap and a nice cup of hot chocolate and a cozy life without purpose might have seemed empty to me only a few short days ago; but it looked awfully damn good to me from where I was standing now. I didn’t want to go into that bar but I had to. I had to continue, to do my very best and pray that it would be good enough for me to be able to win, for me to be able to live. I was most likely committing suicide going in there and I wasn’t in a particularly suicidal mood today. As I continued to stare at the black door, late afternoon turned to dusk. I don’t know how long I stood there, transfixed by reluctance, but my trance was suddenly broken when that entrance opened. The bartender, holding onto the doorknob, walked out into the doorway.

  “You gonna stand there all night?” he said, obviously getting a kick out of my timid hesitation. I tried to speak, but nothing came out of my mouth. “C’mon in, doll,” he said in a softer tone. “I’m just opening up.”

  My heart pounded loudly in my head as the paralysis gluing me to that spot on the concrete gave way. I crossed the street, trudging slowly forward, realizing that my feelings for Edmond, coupled with the knowledge that I had no choice, gave me the only sad excuse for courage that I had to work with. I wished I still had the conviction and courage that were with me when I left the coffee shop. I walked as slowly as I could, putting off entering as long as possible, but no matter how slowly I walked, my steps still led me to the gateway of what would surely be my doom.

  I walked into the club, past the bartender, who closed the door behind me. I went up to the bar and sat at the same, lonely barstool where I had sat last night. He came up behind me, taking his place behind the bar. He didn’t look quite as repulsive to me as he had last night. He was still no beauty by any stretch of anyone’s imagination, but the extreme unnaturalness of his appearance seemed significantly less profound. At first I thought I that maybe I was just getting used to looking at him, but there was something different in his manner, in the way he carried himself. Not on
ly was he a little bit better-looking, but he exhibited a cocky flirtiness that hadn’t been there last night.

  “Where are all the supermodels?” I asked, making conversation to cover my extreme discomfort at having to be back in this place. “Too early for them?”

  “They’re not coming in tonight.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “They gotta be somewhere else.”

  “Another party?”

  “Not really. You might say it’s a command performance,” he said, the cockiness also showing in his voice.

  He took an empty glass out from under the bar and put it in front of me.

  “I never thought I’d see you in here again,” he said.

  “Yeah? And why’s that?”

  “Because before they can come back, most people just,” his voice trailed off.

  “Die?” I finished.

  He looked embarrassed. “Hey, how would I know? I just work here.”

  “Right,” I said, unconvinced.

  He poured a drink of fluorescent liquid into the glass. It was purple this time. “Here,” he said, pushing the glass over to me. “No hard feelin’s doll. Have a drink on me.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said, pushing the drink back at him.

  “Suit yourself,” he said, picking it up and drinking it himself. “Personally, I happen to like them. They’re real ass-kickers. They help make life bearable, if you catch my drift.”

  “I’m sure I don’t.”

  “C’mon, kitten, don’t tell me that you wouldn’t like to get shit-faced drunk right now. Helps keep the frights away, don’t it. I mean, the things that go bump in the night. Oh, they’re still there, it’s just that with enough of these,” he motioned to the now half-empty glass, “you don’t notice ‘em as much.”

  My face must have belied that he had struck a nerve with me.

  “Bet ya’d like to leave about right now, huh? Bet ya’d like to walk right back outta the door that ya just walked through right now.”

  I continued my silence. The bartender became bolder. “But you can’t, can you?”

  “I wasn’t going to. It isn’t an option.”

  He grinned, then uttered a cynical laugh.

  “You don’t get it, you can’t leave. Not even if you wanted. You can’t go out that door.”

  “Why, did you lock it?”

  “Lock it? I never said I locked it.” He was growing more and more amused at my discomfort.

  “Then why can’t I go out that way?”

  “Go check.”

  I looked over to the door to see what he was prattling about. There was no front door. It had disappeared. Perplexed, I rose from the barstool, headed toward the entrance that was only a few feet away. I felt along the wall, thinking that it was an illusion and merely camouflage, but there was nothing to feel. The front door I had just passed through moments ago was gone, a solid wall now stood in its place.

  “What happened to it? It was here a minute ago. What is this, some kind of a trick?”

  “No trick.”

  “What happened to it then?”

  “Nothing. It’s just that it happens to be an entrance, not an exit. At least not for you.”

  “That doesn’t make sense. Tell me what happened to it. Doors don’t just disappear.”

  “I guess you got pretty used to that in your world, huh? Doors leadin’ both in and out.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Hey, you wanted direction, didn’t you. Consider yourself directed.”

  I was stunned. Was he being a total jerk or had he read my thoughts a few minutes ago? How could he possibly have known about my struggles with trying to find direction, either before or after I’d arrived in New Orleans? He was nothing but a stranger to me and an unwelcome one at that.

  “This ain’t like no other place you ever been before, baby,” he whispered his answer hoarsely. I could feel the hair on the back of my head standing on end. I was repulsed and frightened. “You wanted a clue? Well, you got one now. You can only go in one direction here, sweetie. You got your entrances and you got your exits and they are two very, very different things. We are on a one-way system here. Capiche?”

  I was shaken, but I glared at him as defiantly as my waning bravado would allow me. Within his face that still looked unnatural somehow despite its improvement, I saw something completely unexpected, something almost resembling kindness. It was as if, despite his gruff manner, he was on the brink of trying to help me.

  “Okay, then,” I answered back, “how do I get out of here?”

  He pointed toward the black wrought iron that had led to tiny room containing the three doors. “Same as last night.”

  “So which door should I pick today?” I asked.

  “The only one you can,” he answered.

  I stared at the wrought iron door leading to the little black room.

  “Okay, then. Let me get this over with,” I said, putting on a brave front, clinging to it so that my increasing fear wouldn’t overpower me. “I guess I’ll talk to you next time.”

  “If you’re lucky you will.”

  He wasn’t being egoistical. There was no longer cockiness in his tone. He was just stating a fact. With greatest reluctance, I walked to the back, past the swinging wrought iron doors and into the tiny black room that had, last night, housed the three red doors with their black doorknobs.

  But tonight there weren’t three doors, there were only two. I guessed that the third had gone the way of the club’s entrance. I stared at these two doors for a long time, not knowing which one to chose, knowing that I did not want to go through either of them, feeling that whichever one I chose would be the wrong one. Then I realized that it was all a moot point; there was no right choice. I would wind up wherever Rochere wanted me to be. I wished more than ever that I had passed up this entire trip and just stayed home.

  “Okay,” I said to myself aloud, trying to psych myself up. “I guess this is it.”

  Slowly, cautiously, reluctantly, I turned the doorknob, remembering that the floor of the room had fallen away under my feet last night, wondering what I should hold onto should that happen again. No sooner had I opened the door just a crack and before I could shut it again, than the door ripped open with a terrible force. A blinding light emanated from the entrance and a violent power beyond my strength sucked me in, beyond the door, beyond my ability to retreat.

  PART TWO – SEDUCTION

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The bright light blinded me as I was suctioned into the doorway and felled to my knees by the intensity of the force. I covered my eyes, prostrate, unable to move, steeling myself against the violence of the wind whipping around me, wondering if this storm would pass or if, like the one in the shower vortex, get only worse. Very soon, however, its pitch lessened until it died altogether. It was only then that I had the courage to uncover my eyes.

  I found myself alone on a dirt path. There was no evidence that any storm had ever come this way at all, for the air was stifling, hot and extremely humid, with heavy blue-black thunderclouds dominating the sky, signaling a storm’s mounting rather than its aftermath. I seemed to be in a countryside somewhere; there were neither homes nor any other evidence that another human being was around besides myself. Only the dirt path lay before me and behind me a dead end. This world was framed by grasses and weeds alongside trees dripping heavily with Spanish Moss.

  I had no way of knowing where I was, so I simply got up and headed down the path. The day was becoming even hotter and more humid as I walked and the sun rose higher in the sky, fighting the thunderclouds for preponderance. I knew I was now in the realm that Edmond said that Rochere controlled, if for no other reason that it had been evening when I opened the second door at The Crypt a few moments ago and it was approaching mid-day at present. If I kept walking, I wondered whether or not I would find another living soul in this place. I thought it best not to ponder too much on it, for the idea of being abandoned alone
in this realm would only accelerate my fears and I was working hard to keep them at bay. The only course of action for me to take was to keep walking, so I just continued down the path. My spirits perked up a little when, after about ten minutes, the path broadened into an uneven, pocked dirt road; I took it as a sign that perhaps there was more life in this world, after all. I hoped I wasn’t being overly optimistic.

  I kept making progress down the road, but after I’d walked for about another twenty minutes, I was still in the middle of nowhere and still in the same situation as when I first arrived. I’d seen neither another person nor any sign that one even existed here. I could feel my anxiety rising, so I decided to focus my attention less inward and take in the scenery for distraction. Odd that I hadn’t noticed it before, but there was a remarkable lack of color here. Had it been this way all along or was I just observing it now? This place, whatever it was, suddenly seemed even more threatening. If there was concrete evidence that I was no longer in the real world, this lack of color saturation was it. The scenery in all other aspects now strongly resembled that not of New Orleans, but rather that of southwestern Louisiana, a part of the country I remembered well as being quite colorful in many varied ways, not least of which was visual. Despite any superficial resemblance to Cajun country, this place was strange, unearthly, unhealthy. It was truly colorless without the dull, dead appearance of an area hit by a long, heavy drought, because all the trees were lush, all the grasses overgrown. Everything did have some color, it was just that its saturation was incredibly low. I wondered why I only now noticed it. My question was soon answered, for as I walked, the remaining color around me began to leach out. The entire area suddenly appeared to have been shot in black and white, but not a black and white captured on good film. If I looked at something long enough, it seemed to have a slight tint of color, but I couldn’t be sure that it wasn’t just a trick of my eyes or my brain trying to fill in what wasn’t really there. Everything was in shades of muddy grey. The light suddenly began to dim and I was left with the feeling that I was in the middle of one of those “daytime-nighttime” scenes made famous by the old low-budget “B” movies, whose scenes were shot in the daylight on low-cost, low-contrast film with the brightness turned down in an attempt to emulate a night shoot that the producers couldn’t afford. The world around me became even more unreal; I felt as if I were on a cheap movie set and if I veered off this path, the set would end and I would find myself in a warehouse or a back lot. When I heard thunder overhead, I picked up my pace. The dense thunderclouds, now darkest grey for they had lost their blue, had taken over the entire sky. Once again, I reminded myself that these were only tricks that Rochere was using to frighten me, so I kept walking. Whatever mission I was here to accomplish, I needed to get it accomplished as soon as possible.