“But Pangaea had been destroyed,” Julian said. “How on earth could the monks have gotten hold of the amulets?”
“I don’t know,” Edmond told us. “If she did not know it on some level, not even if it was buried deeply in the recesses of her subconscious, like the rest of what I’ve told you, then I had no way of knowing either. My long years trapped in her stasis chamber gave me ample time for speculation, though. My personal theories are all I can share.
“I think that there must have been at least two sets of amulets. The main set of amulets was kept in Illeaocea. They must have been hopelessly lost at the bottom of the ocean, buried under miles of rubble. The ones that destroyed her were probably from an extra set which, most likely always traveled with her entourage on official business. I can’t see how those artifacts could possibly have survived unless someone with her on that diplomatic envoy survived as well. Remember, they were designed to protect the person who had possession of them. She assumed that everyone was wiped out, but she never did any actual body count. They must have stayed in the possession of the survivor long enough for him to pass them onto someone he trusted. This had to have happened, person to person, until it survived into our era. That it took them so long to take action against her led me to believe that any real knowledge of her was lost for a great length of time. The parchment that was found with the pieces, the parchment we found along with the strange material, proved that whoever found her did not want that knowledge lost again.
“By way of the amulets, these monks imprisoned her for several hundreds of years without food, water or light, conditions guaranteed to force her into dormancy.”
“Why didn’t they just kill her?” I asked.
“Unfortunately, that particular sect of monks did not believe in killing anything. The world would have fared so much better had that not been true. They thought they could simply keep her prisoner forever. They were wrong.
“An earthquake in the Kathmandu region in the mid-thirteenth century destroyed most of their monastery. It also allowed in a tiny beam of light into Arrosha’s cell, but that was all it took. With that small sliver of light, she began to photosynthesize enough food to make her strong enough to escape, find people and go upon a feeding frenzy. She wound up killing almost all the survivors in the area, which is how the amulets earned their reputation of being cursed.
“After that, painfully aware now that the amulets existed but unable to find them, Arrosha swore that no one would ever be able to imprison her again. Knowing now that her own ingrained gifts, though more than considerable, were not sufficient to battle the amulets, she searched the world over for the help she needed in order to make herself strong against them. As in her early days after Pangea’s fall, as she traveled the globe, her existence once again gave rise to numerous legends of succubae and other supernatural creatures.
“In India and Asia, she studied the energy arts. In what is now South and Central America she studied human sacrifice. In Africa, she studied demonology and in the Balkans, she studied the black arts and alchemy. She found that while her newfound skills made her temporarily stronger and extremely powerful when used in conjunction with her innate technology, they also exacted a price from her that was so high she was loathe to use them except in the most dire emergency.
“These black arts were the only thing that she could use against you that would work, Ashley. Despite the price, she was desperate to get her hands on the amulets, for they were the only thing that could destroy her. She was willing to use anything to seduce you to her side, even if it was something that could temporarily hurt her.
“I still don’t understand one thing, though” I said. “If there were so many deaths surrounding your house, how could that not have aroused suspicions, even if she did make the deaths look natural? I mean, wouldn’t word have gotten around so that nobody wanted to stay there? Rumors at least that the place was haunted or something like that?”
“Rochere thought of that, so not everyone that stayed in the apartment was someone that I’d called. Not everybody that stayed there died, only my potential champions. Any regular person that booked a vacation at the apartment was allowed to go home unharmed, although after a while, most left long before that because the place became so run down. It helped to keep the suspicion and rumors away.
“She kept the realty agency as small and inconspicuous as possible. As a former deity and aristocrat, the role of realtor was something she considered a real step down. She felt trapped in the role and hated it, for it never suited her self-image. She took out her resentment on me for it regularly and often. However it was necessary for her to keep an eye on the people I called and to feel as if she had some control over the amulet pieces and their boxes. The situation at the mansion with her followers was more than just a trap for you, Ashley. It also helped to feed her ego until the game was over.”
“It’s such a shame, really,” observed Julian. “Arrosha had so much to give the world with such technology so literally at her fingertips. She proved that she could cure diseases that still baffle us today, even aging and death, but she gave us nothing but her worst. She could have been a blessing, but instead chose to be a curse.”
“She never really chose anything,” Edmond replied. “She didn’t chose to be insane. It was thrust upon her against her will.
“Even so, I am so grateful that at last she is dead. She’s one nightmare that is finally over.”
“Edmond, is that the end of your story?” I asked him.
“It’s all I can think to tell you right now,” he answered.
“There’s still something that I don’t quite understand,” I told him.
“What’s that, my love?”
“You said the transformations that the Illeaoceans used were gradual.”
“And you want to know why Arrosha’s transformations were instantaneous,” he replied. “Yes, you’re right. I did leave that out, didn’t I? It’s something don’t like to think about only because I learned it exclusively from the witch’s deepest, most horrible nightmares. She would always wake from them screaming, but never be able to remember why. I think her mind protected her from their content. Unfortunately, I was not so lucky. Not only did I remember the dreams, I would be left remembering the feelings she associated with them as well.
“To understand her instantaneous transmogrification abilities, you need to remember that Arrosha was Illeaocea’s newest creation. She was the result of decades of research and represented many state-of-the-art technologies. She was the first full success of their genetic engineering processes and was heavily endowed with the latest and most powerful defenses of the time.”
“Do you mean she was like a cyborg?” Julian asked.
“In a way, but she was much more organic than that. Her abilities to transform people far surpassed anything else the Illeaoceans had invented to that date. The Illeaoceans, while peaceful, did not always play fair in their attempts to keep that peace. They were also slightly superior in their attitudes, particularly toward the Malituans. Rather than fighting their enemy, they developed technologies that would quite literally bring particularly important or warlike Malituans ‘over to their side’, changing them into anything they desired, most often Illeaoceans.
“As a creature of unequaled subterfuge, Arrosha was instilled with the latest Illeaocean technologies, among them the ability to change a person physically in mere seconds, mentally, within a day, although her abilities were limited to altering only one individual at a time, or, in case of an extreme emergency, two at the very most. It was that limitation that cost the Three Sisters their minds.
“The Malituans, possessing espionage of their own, too soon got wind of a new super weapon the Illeaoceans had created, though not the details. Understandably, they were not happy in the least. Arrosha, briefed on this latest development in the intelligence wars, was aware, at least on some deep, buried level, that it was her enemies’ less eloquent attempt to level the playing field
that went so horribly wrong and led to the eventual destruction of the entire continent.
“This was one of the things that drove Arrosha insane. I think on some level that she could not consciously acknowledge, she blamed herself for the total destruction of her world.”
Life Goes On
In his condition, it took a few days for Edmond to relay this entire story to us. In the interim, Ben and the rest of the followers that were still alive regained consciousness. I told them everything I knew and they felt horribly used for ever having trusted Arrosha.
Max never did regain consciousness. He died in his coma. The doctors told me that his soft tissues were far larger than his skeleton could accommodate and were ultimately crushed, but that they’d done their best to keep him comfortable until the end came. I cried when they told me about his passing. If it hadn’t been for him, for his last act of redemption, we would all be dead now and that mad creature that called herself Arrosha would be one tremendous step closer to fulfilling her insane plans. She was the one that killed poor Max, turned him into a man so deformed that he could not survive outside her domain. I took solace in the fact that he had finally avenged his beloved Gizelle and made Arrosha pay for having killed her. I knew that Ben and the rest would also have died if she had not restored their bodies to normal in preparation of feeding off of them. It was with sadness that I thought back on poor Max, the man whose promising future had been ripped from him, the man who had been forced into slavery by Rochere and reduced to the pathetic creature she enjoyed shaping and reshaping to suit her whims. I wished so that Max had survived, that I would have gotten a chance to meet him the way that God had made him, the way he was meant to be. In the years to come, I would think of Max often, about how he’d saved us all, about how he’d saved the entire world from that horrible creature Arrosha.
Julian and the Trust made good on their promise to take good care of all of us. After we were each released from the hospital, they took us to the Trust house, a large mansion in the best section of the garden district, whose location they made me vow not to disclose, and settled us into our rooms. My belongings were already waiting for me in my room, along with an open-ended first class plane ticket replacing the coach passage that I had purchased in Austin. Those first days were long and lazy, filled with the small talk of people with a common trauma trying desperately to forget.
The week after Edmond got out of the hospital, I went with him to revisit the house on Toulouse Street. He found its condition appalling.
“I can’t believe that Rochere let the house go this badly. I knew it was in disrepair, and that’s why I made it look beautiful to my chosen ones when they first saw it. They needed to see my home as a place in which they would want to stay. But I had no idea that it was this awful. Knowing it in my mind and seeing its run-down state with my natural eyes are two very different things indeed.
“The Trust told me that they found the boxes with both of the talismans in the room where Virginia took you,” he told me. “Julian asked me if I wanted them and I said no, that the Trust should hang onto them now. I know he only asked out of politeness, but I feel that I’ve been the amulets guardian for long enough. I’m very tired. It’s someone else’s turn now.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” I said. “By the way, do you feel like you’re getting used to our modern world?”
“It takes a lot of adjustment,” he replied. “Even though my knowledge was intellectually kept up-to-date by the connections I had made with different people, experiencing this new era firsthand is quite a different matter. Even our ride over here was a bit frightening. It was too fast. Everything here is too fast. There hardly seems time to think in this new day and age. When it comes down to it, I’m just a man from another time and I don’t know if it’s even possible for me to acclimate fully to this new century. Ashley, I promise you that I’ll do my absolute best to become a man of this age.”
“Don’t. I love you just the way you are. I hope you never succeed because I want you to remain the man I fell in love with. And, to tell the truth, if it makes you feel any better, I don’t feel like I’ve fully acclimated to this new century either. For all intents and purposes, I still feel stuck in the latter part of the twentieth century.”
“We’ll be out of step with the world together then,” he said, wrapping his thick wool coat around him even tighter.
“Edmond,” I said. “Are you cold? It’s actually pretty pleasant today.”
“I’m okay. It’s just that I can’t seem to get warm anymore.”
I walked up to him and wrapped my arms around him. It felt good to be able to touch him now. He felt so solid, so tangible. Touching him made it seem even more real that we had actually defeated Arrosha and won. The battle had been so hard and seemed so long that I had to keep reminding myself that this was reality now, not just another of Arrosha’s illusions in her make-believe dimension.
“I’m going to restore the house to make it look even lovelier than it was when I lived here. I want it to match the illusion of beauty that it was when you first laid eyes on it. I have the money, you know. In talking with Julian, it seems that I find myself even more wealthy today than I was when Arrosha imprisoned me. Not only did the Trust manage to retain my property, but it seems that my quite sizable fortune is now even more sizeable.”
“Well, I guess that goes to show you what the power of almost two hundred years of compound interest will do for you,” I joked.
“Indeed,” he replied. “I couldn’t wrap my head around how much money I have now until Julian explained to me that money isn’t worth nearly what it used to be. When he told me what the equivalent would have been in 1830 pounds, it was much less staggering. It’s funny, but in all that time of connecting with people, no one ever mentioned much about money.”
“I guess they had other things on their minds.”
He smiled. “Yes, I suppose they did. Ashley, I feel I need to tell you that once I restore this house, I’m going to sell it. I would never be able to live there again, not after everything that’s happened.”
“I don’t blame you. I don’t think I could either.”
“I’m going to need another house in which to live. I need to start over somewhere else. Ashley, will you help me find a new home? “
“Of course. I’ll be happy to help you pick one out.”
“I don’t know anyone that I trust more than you. You rescued me, saved me from that witch and the hellish prison in which she kept me enslaved. I’ve been drawn to you for years, calling you for decades before the connection was strong enough and events were synchronized enough actually to bring you to me.
“Ashley, when you pick out my house, I’d like it to be a place that you truly love, because I want it to be your home, also.”
“Edmond, are you asking me to move in with you?”
“Much more than that, Ashley.” He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small box. “Julian tells me this is how one goes about this these days,” he said, handing it to me.
I opened the box and it contained a beautiful diamond ring set in gold.
“Illea and Ben helped me pick it out. I hope you like it.”
“It’s absolutely beautiful. I love it. Does it mean what I think it means?”
“It means that I hope dearly that you would consent to be my wife.”
I wanted to throw my arms around him and say yes, but instead I asked him to kiss me.
“Edmond, we haven’t had a chance to be intimate since we left the hospital,” I told him. “Everything’s been so busy and we’ve been surrounded by so many people since we defeated Arrosha. I’d like a kiss. It would let me know that everything between us was real. Before I give you an answer, I just need to know that what passed between us was more than just a dream.”
“It would be my pleasure.”
In the courtyard of the house on Toulouse Street, the man of my dreams drew me into his arms and we kissed. Our connection had no
t faded. When our lips touched, it was as if a jolt of electricity passed between us. The kiss lasted a long time. It was long and hard and soft and smooth and everything in between. I tasted him, I felt him, I knew him from that kiss. It was the first time we had touched intimately in real life and the impact was overwhelming. I felt as if my brain would explode with sheer pleasure and wanting. The heat within me became a consuming fire, a fire that, the more it was fed, the hotter it burned. More than anything, I knew I wanted him, body, mind and soul, from that point forward. Never, in my entire life, had a kiss meant so much to me. Never again, I knew, would a kiss ever again mean so much. As we kissed so deeply and passionately, I realized that in all my life before this moment, I had only ever tasted stale remnants of what I was now feeling. For decades, I had awaited the “real thing” and now, unbelievably, here it was. I was aware of nothing except Edmond until that kiss finally ended, leaving me to know that I loved him more now than I had ever loved him before. Now he was no longer only in my dreams, now he was real. We were both real and we loved each other. I wanted to marry him and there was not a doubt in my mind that said otherwise.
“Yes, Edmond. I’ll marry you. I can’t think of anything I would like to do more.”
“Wonderful. Ashley, you’ve made me the most happy man in the world.”
As we hugged, he said, “As we kissed, I just realized that I can’t look into your mind any longer.”
“Still want to marry me?” I asked.
“Of course,” was his answer.
“Then maybe it’s for the best that you can’t look into my mind,” I said. “I can finally keep some mystery with you now.”
As if he finally realized that the weight of the world had quite literally been lifted from his shoulders, Edmond laughed. It was the first time I’d actually heard him laugh. His laugh was rich and spontaneous. I loved it.
Later that week, I went back Austin, where I quit my job, hired a cleaning crew to pack my belongings and clear out my house, and said goodbye to a number of people. I told Carolyne that if she oversaw the sale of my house, she could keep whatever profits that came from it. My family were finally back from their cruise, so I called them to tell them about Edmond and that he and I were getting married. They were surprised and a little concerned that I was marrying someone I had just met and that I was moving to New Orleans, but I put their minds to rest as best I could. At my age, I suppose they were just happy that I was getting married at all. When I called Edmond to tell him that I’d taken care of everything that I could, he told me that the Trust had arranged a chartered flight for Samson, Delilah and myself to make bringing them to Louisiana easier for me.
The Nightmare Game Page 78