The Nightmare Game

by Martin, S. Suzanne

  “Part of it. We were just checking it out when we heard the commotion at the front door. We can all pick our search back up from where we left off,” Robert suggested.

  “Should we split up?” Robert asked. “You know, to cover ground more quickly?”

  “Dude,” said Ricky, “Don’t you ever watch any movies? You never, ever split up in a situation like this. It’s dangerous enough even if we all stick together.”

  “Okay, then, there’s one room down here this way that we haven’t checked out yet,” Robert motioned to the others as he went down the short hallway by the stairs. “And we haven’t looked upstairs either.”

  “Let’s finish the ground floor first, since you’re almost done with it,” Ben suggested.

  We went into the last of the back rooms and looked around. At first glance, it seemed to be empty, but then we heard a muffled growl and a moan coming from the little room’s sole closet.

  With caution, we walked up to the closet. Ben put his hands on the doorknob as Ricky and Robert again held up their boards high as makeshift weapons.

  “On three I’ll open the door, okay? 1-2-3,” whispered Ben. The other two nodded in agreement.

  Ben turned the knob and threw the door open wide. Something hideous hiding inside the closet jumped out, snarling. Rather than bashing it, the whole group screamed and ran.

  “Get outta here!” Ricky and Robert shouted to Illea and me as they ran past us.

  “It’s a monster!” yelled Ben.

  No sooner had we left the room than we heard uncontrolled laughter.

  “What the hell?” asked Robert.

  “Is that monster laughing at us?” Ricky said.

  As the laughing continued, Ben stuck his head back into the room, just in time to see the laughing monster taking off its Halloween mask.

  “Guys,” Ben said. “It’s not a monster. It’s just a prime specimen of the great American jerk.”

  The rest of us went back into the room, where Geoffrey was quite impressed with both himself and his joke.

  “What is wrong with you, man?” Robert said.

  “Geoffrey, you really are an asshole,” commented Ricky. “A first class, bonafide asshole.”

  “And that’s not even to mention that you’re a real little shit,” added Illea. “To think that we were ever worried about you.”

  “Just what did you think you were doing?” a furious Ben admonished him. “What did you plan to accomplish with this? Did you think you were being funny?”

  Geoffrey could not stop laughing. In between bursts of laughter, he said, “Oh, no, man, I don’t think it was funny, I know it was funny.”

  “To you, maybe, but not to anybody else,” Ben answered him.

  “I know, man, that’s what makes it so damn funny,” Geoffrey said.

  As Geoffrey continued to gloat, it was to ears that ignored him as the rest of us walked out into the entryway.

  “Oh, c’mon, guys, it was funny,” Geoffrey protested, on and on, but there was no response, for no one would speak to him.

  Once in the tiny kitchen, Geoffrey continued his pleas.

  “Ben, c’mon.”

  “No, Geoffrey, I would have been so happy to see you safe, but now I don’t want to hear a word out of you unless it’s something helpful. If it’s not that, then we don’t want to hear it. Robert, Ricky, keep an eye on him. If he moves, hit him.”

  “With pleasure, Ben,” Robert said.

  “Got that right,” added an angry Ricky.

  “Oh, c’mon, Ben,” Geoff said, “that was funny, admit it.”

  “I changed my mind,” said Ben. “If he blinks, hit him.”

  “Ben… Guys…” As Geoffrey protested, Ricky and Robert brandished their boards at him.

  “Shut up, Geoff,” Robert warned.

  “If you don’t, I’ll hit you,” menaced Ricky. “We’re not in any mood for more of your ‘jokes’, Geoff. I mean it.”

  “Have you guys checked this room?” Ben asked as we entered the kitchen.

  “Yeah,” said Robert.

  “Well, let’s see if there’s anything here we can use as a weapon if we need to.” Ben said.

  “Yeah,” added Ricky. “Maybe we can try it out on Geoffrey.”

  They looked around the kitchen and Ricky said, “There’s nothing here, Ben. This house seems to have been abandoned a long time ago. Everything’s empty.”

  “Yeah,” said Robert. “That seems to be just about the only thing left behind.” He pointed to a cheap old kitchen table against one wall of the room, with two badly worn chairs, the only furniture we’d seen in the place since we’d arrived.

  “At least let me get comfortable, guys,” Geoffrey said as he sat down upon one of the chairs at the table.

  Ben walked over to the faucet of the old sink and opened it, but the only thing it had to offer was a dry, sickly groan of air, which soon stopped as the faucet spent itself.

  “I don’t know what we’re going to find in this place. It must be years since anybody’s lived here,” Ben said. Pointing to a closed door in the kitchen, he added, “I wonder where that leads. It seems like the next logical thing to investigate.”

  “I don’t know, Ben,” Robert said. “It wasn’t here when we looked around earlier.”

  “Really,” Ricky added. “It couldn’t have been. I’m sure would we have noticed it.”

  “Maybe it’s the cellar.” Geoffrey remarked, unsolicited. “After all, isn’t that where the juicy stuff usually is in a place like this?”

  “Shut up, Geoffrey,” Ben told him.

  Ben carefully opened the door. Behind it was only the dark.

  “I can’t see a thing,” he said. “If I only had some light.”

  “Try the light switch on the chain in front of you,” Geoffrey offered.

  “We already tried some of the other light switches. They didn’t work. The place has no power,” said Ricky.

  “Where’s the light that’s in here coming from, then?” Geoff asked.

  He was right. The low-level light inside the shack was about the same as it was outside, but where it came from was anybody’s guess.

  “Okay, Geoff,” Ricky admitted. “You’ve got me there. But what makes you think this switch will work when the others didn’t.”

  “Just a hunch,” Geoff replied. “Humor me. Try it anyway.”

  “Well, here goes nothing.” Ben said as he pulled the chain and the bare bulb turned on in the cellar.

  “What the?” Ben looked at Geoffrey with suspicion. “How did you know this switch would work?”

  “Like I said. It was a hunch. While you’re down there, why don’t you look around?” When Geoff said this, the group began to eye him questionably. “Might as well. I mean the place is lit now, ya know?”

  Ben started down the rickety stairs into the basement.

  “Ben, don’t go down there on your own,” I warned him.

  “I’m not,” he replied. “I’ll be careful. I’m just going to walk down a few steps and glance around. I want to see if there’s anything that looks worth investigating before the rest of us go down.”

  He ventured down about three steps and peered down over the railing.

  “See anything yet?” I asked.

  “No, not yet,” he answered.

  “Anything yet?” Silence. “Ben? Ben?”

  Ben screamed as he ran out of the basement as fast as he could. He ran up to the old sink, where he became violently sick, vomiting water and hanging onto the counter for support, his knees weak. Everyone except for Geoffrey ran up to him.

  “What is it? What is it?” Ricky said.

  “Ben, are you alright?” Illea asked.

  “Ben, what happened?” I asked.

  “Don’t go down there!” Ben implored.

  We helped him over the one empty chair left, where, shaking violently, he sat down. He was deathly pale and so much sweat was pouring out of him that his shirt was soaking wet. We all hovered over him
except for Geoffrey, who continued sitting at the table opposite him, eyeing the situation a little too coolly.

  “What the hell’s down there?” Robert asked.

  Ben looked up with an expression on his face that looked as though he’d just witnessed his own death. Emotionally traumatized, he began to talk, although the words came hard for him. “I-I don’t know what’s down there. I don’t know what it is. Timothy. I think it’s something that used to be Timothy that’s down there.”

  After saying this, Ben just stared ahead, shell-shocked. All of us except for Geoffrey, who didn’t seem particularly interested, and Illea, who was still hovering over and tending to Ben, started toward the basement. The guys went in first, myself right behind them. We went down only as far as Ben did, and stood upon the stairs, where we could peer down over the railing. Suddenly we all saw what Ben saw.

  Slowly crawling across the basement floor was a something that resembled a slug, a huge slug the size of a man. It had the head of a man and human hands that had been reduced to flipper-like appendages that it used to help it crawl. It had Timothy’s face. When it saw us, it opened its mouth and gurgled out in a horrible, yet sad and pathetic voice wracked with pain, “Help me”. We ran back into the kitchen, where, in shock and trauma, we slammed the door shut behind us.

  “What the hell was that?” asked Ricky.

  “Timothy, man, it used to be Timothy!” Ben answered.

  “What the hell happened to him? Is that going to happen to us, too?” Robert said.

  “It can’t! It just can’t! We have all got to stay together!” Ricky said.

  “Why? So that can happen to all of us together? I’m leaving! I’m getting out of here!” exclaimed Robert.

  As they started toward the door, Geoffrey leisurely stood up and walked toward them. “You can’t leave. You don’t know what’s out there now.”

  “The hell we can’t leave! There can’t be anything worse out there than there is in here,” Ricky said.

  “Trust me, you don’t want to face what’s out there.”

  “What could be worse out there than what’s in here?” asked Robert.

  Geoffrey calmly walked up to the front door and opened it. The others followed him out onto the front porch. A few yards away were the zombies, circling the shack as if they were waiting for us.

  “Because Ashley’s little friends, the ones she brought with her, the ones with which she infected our previously wonderful paradise, are out there.”

  He looked at me, a nasty sneer upon his lips. I really hated the bastard.

  “They’re waiting for us patiently” he added. “They’re waiting for us to come out and play.”

  “How did you know they were out here?” asked Ben. “You seem to know a quite a few things before we do. What gives?”

  “I saw them when I was out here earlier, before I entered the house.”

  “You got here before we did, Geoff. They weren’t around when we first got here,” Ben said in a tone that was evident he’d lost his trust in Geoffrey.

  In their staggering shuffle, the ghouls began to move toward us slowly.

  “Hey guys,” said Ricky nervously. “I think we’d better go back inside. I don’t want to be standing out here if they get any closer.”

  We hurried back into the house and shut the door. Ricky took one of the kitchen chairs and placed it under the doorknob, since there was no lock on the door.

  “What are we going to do?” asked Illea.

  “I don’t know,” said Ben. “But one thing’s for sure. We have to stay together. And we need to look around to see if we can find some boards and nails for the door. That chair isn’t going to hold for long if those things want to get in.”

  “Maybe there’s something we can use in the cellar,” Geoffrey smirked.

  “Geoff, if you don’t shut up, I’m going to punch you,” Ben told him.

  “Really, Ben, just trying to help,” said Geoffrey in a mock-innocent tone.

  “Fine, then. If we have to go down there, you’ll get to be the one that does it,” Ben said to him, losing his patience. “There’s got to be a back door to this place. We’ve got to secure that, too.”

  “We didn’t see one, Ben,” said Ricky. “We looked for it before you, Illea and Ashley got here, but didn’t see it. I know, it’s weird. I’ve never heard of a house without a back door either.”

  “Can you secure the cellar door?”

  “Sure.” Ricky took the other dilapidated chair from the kitchen table and stuck it under the cellar door. “In case it leads outside,” he explained.

  “Okay, guys, lets see if there’s anything in this house we can use to board up these doors. If we’re lucky, we can reinforce the windows more, too. But remember, stick close. Everybody stay together,” said Ben, taking a mental head count.

  “Robert, where’s Robert?” Ben asked.

  The others looked around.

  “He was with us on the porch,” said Illea.

  “He was standing right next to me just a second ago,” said Ricky.

  “Robert! Where are you?” yelled Ben.

  “Robert! Robert!” shouted the others.

  “C’mon, Robert!” Ben yelled again.

  “Robert, man, this just isn’t funny!” said Ricky. “Robert! Robert!”

  We heard a “thump” from the hall closet, followed by a moan.

  “What was that?” Illea asked.

  “Open the door and find out,” Geoffrey suggested.

  “I’m not opening that door. You open it,” said Ricky.

  “Alright,” agreed Geoffrey.

  When he opened it, a thing, and it could only be descried as a thing, fell out. While none of us knew exactly what it was, we recoiled in horror, for lying on the floor, it was twitching and moving.

  “Timothy!” shouted Ricky. “How did he, I mean, that thing, get out here so fast? I mean, it was barely crawling, wasn’t it? I mean, wasn’t it?”

  “Guys, that’s not Timothy,” Ben said, horrified.

  “What do you mean, that’s not Timothy. How many of those creatures can there be around here?”

  The slug creature could barely raise its almost unrecognizable head to say “help me”, as it gasped for air like a fish out of water.

  “It’s Robert,” said Ben.

  “Oh, no, Robert. Not you, too. Robert, Robert, no!” Ricky screamed, distraught. “No, man, no! No!”

  We stood there for a few seconds, speechless, for we did not know what to do. As with Antonio, Kenny and Timothy, there was absolutely nothing in our power that could help him or save him. In shock, we simply stood there, feeling utterly helpless.

  We were in shock. It was as if time had stopped. Soon, though, the faint strains of music wafted into the room. It was a few moments before this even registered with us.

  “What’s that music?” I asked.

  “It’s Illea’s mother’s music box,” said Ricky.

  “It’s coming from upstairs,” Ben told us.

  “Illea!” Ben and Ricky shouted simultaneously. There was no answer.

  “She was just here a second ago,” Ricky said in a panic. “Where’d she go?”

  We all looked to the area from which the music seemed to be coming and there stood Illea, motionless, at the top of the stairs. We ran to the stairway and, looking up, we saw that Illea was standing in front of an open door on the second floor. We raced up the rickety stairs to her.

  When we reached her, Ben asked, “Illea, what are you doing up here by yourself? I thought we agreed to stay together.”

  It was as if she could not answer. Frozen in fear, her mouth was open, her jaw slacken. Her eyes looked forward in a catatonic stare.

  “Illea, honey, what is it?” asked a concerned Ricky.

  She could not answer. It was as if she were beyond terror, but she managed to lift one hand in a feeble motion, pointing into the room outside of which she stood.

  We looked into that room, dark except for
a single old, small and cheap lamp standing on a nightstand emitting a pathetic light through a tattered and stained red lampshade. Right next to it sat Illea’s mother’s music box, which was open and playing its tune.

  The Three Sisters were in that room, lying in a nasty old bed that should have been thrown out years ago. They were together, as usual, making out. At first they didn’t notice us or even look up, too involved were they with each other to show any sign of awareness of anyone else. As we continued to stare, we noticed that something was wrong. The three women were smeared with blood from small trickles that ran all over their arms and down their backs. It wasn’t a lot of blood and while it didn’t look as if anyone had sustained any serious injuries, on top of everything else tonight, the sight was disturbing.

  “I told you that they feed off each other,” said Illea flatly, as if in a trance.

  The Sisters heard her, taking notice of us now. Looking up, there was something different about them now, something hungry and feral that combined lusts for both sex and blood, as if these two things were one and the same.

  They stared at us eagerly, smiling. Their teeth, both upper and lower, were long and looked razor sharp. Leisurely and lazily, they said together, “help me,” but it was as if they did not mean the words and were using them only as bait to lure us, to draw us closer.

  “I think they’d like to feed off of us now,” I whispered a warning to the others.

  Ben took hold of Illea’s arm and began to back away slowly, pulling her along.

  “We should go now,” he whispered to us, trying not to make any sudden moves.

  The sisters, now fully aware of us, pulled back the covers and got out of bed. Slowly they began coming toward us. For the first time, we could see what they’d now become. The three of them, joined at the lower torso, had been turned into a form insectile from the waist down. They shared six legs between them and their crawl was similar to that of a scorpion.

  “Oh, my dear Arrosha,” uttered Ricky.

  “Help me,” they sing-songed in unison as they slowly crawled toward us. The combination of their sexual, seductive manner coupled with their insectile lower halves and movements was revolting. The three giggled coquettishly in unison.

  All of a sudden, the creature that used to be the Three Sisters began moving surprisingly fast, insect-like on its six legs.