The Dead Game (9 page)

Chapter 12

E
arly next morning, Linda drew her living room drapes wide open to gaze out at the sparkling white beach and the deep blue ocean. It was a beautiful Saturday morning with plenty of bright sunshine. Fishermen could be seen taking out their boats. People were jogging along the beach. Dogs were running around while children were laughing and playing.

She couldn’t believe what had happened to them last night. For a moment, she wistfully thought that she’d imagined it all; but she knew that she didn’t have such a vivid imagination.

From the kitchen she heard strange new sounds. Then she happily realized that it was only Todd, who was still in her apartment after spending the night on her couch. It sounded and smelled like he was preparing breakfast.

“I could get used to this,” she exclaimed as she entered the kitchen, finding Todd frying eggs while coffee brewed in her coffee maker on the counter.

He looked unbelievably cute and disheveled to Linda. He even wore one of her frilly white aprons over his shirt and jeans as he brought food over to the kitchen table. His dark hair, still damp from the shower, hung over his high forehead. His dark eyes sparkled mischievously as he gallantly served her coffee, scrambled eggs, and pancakes.

He sat down at the table across from her, giving her one of his infamous grins. She couldn’t believe that he was actually sitting here in her house, eating breakfast with her. Unfortunately she was tongue-tied again.

Then she noticed that her two usually aloof cats were enthusiastically rubbing themselves against his legs. Todd explained, “Since they looked hungry, I fed them their cat food. Is that all right?”

“Sure. They usually don’t like strangers; but if they like you, that’s great.” She couldn’t believe how silly she’d sounded…maybe silence would work better in her favor.

They ate their breakfast in silence, but it did feel good just being with Todd. 
Too bad it took such awful events to bring us closer together
, she reflected unhappily.

“I’m going to End House today with Sheriff Sam. Do you want to join us?” Todd unexpectedly asked.

He took her by complete surprise, but she promptly responded, “Of course I do! I’m not going to rest until I find out who was responsible for that awful hoax! I’m very worried about Tom and Edward; they could still be alive somewhere in that dreadful house.”

“We’ll leave as soon as you’re ready. Be sure to stick close to my side again so that I can keep you safe,” cautioned Todd.

“Like glue,” saucily responded Linda.

He winked at her before she dashed upstairs to get ready.

Sheriff Sam had his hands full that morning. Not only did Shana want to go to End House, but also Mike and David, who both adamantly refused to leave Carl’s side. Earlier that morning he had called for reinforcements to help with their search for Louise. Police of neighboring towns and state troopers were busy scouring the beach and park for any sign of her. He hoped to find her alive and well—and not just her lifeless body, like the others that had been found on the beach.

Deputy Carl was busy loading Mike and David into his car with a very exasperated look on his face. Sam couldn’t understand why Carl always acted irritated whenever he was asked to do his job. It was definitely time to replace his indignant deputy with newer and fresher talent.

Glancing down at Shana, he remarked quietly, “You’re coming with me, but don’t wander off by yourself in the house. I know how independent you can be.”

Becoming livid at his orders, Shana raised her voice, “You don’t know me well enough to predict any of my actions!” Her face turned a bright crimson red. He enjoyed pushing her buttons to test her reactions; and again, she didn’t disappoint him.

“That could be arranged,” responded Sam. He knew that in time Shana would be all his and under his control; he just had to be patient a little while longer.

Pulling up in front of End House, Todd and Sam sprinted from their cars. They headed straight for the basement stairs.

Shana and Linda followed behind, groping the basement wall to make their slow descent down the steep stairs. David sniffled behind them as he loudly clomped down the steps.

As Mike descended, he animatedly described the pool of water with the falling cages and the deadly swinging saws.

At the bottom, they stopped short in amazement. Instead of the horror scene that they’d witnessed yesterday, today they found an empty basement.

The basement appeared to be a great deal smaller than before, realized Mike. The opposite wall seemed to be much closer. It also lacked the wide staircase that had led up to the three huge doorways. And where were the doors? There was only a blank wall facing them. And the floor was dry—as if it had never been wet.

“Where are the wild animals and the deep pit into nothingness?” Mike cried out as he searched all four corners of the room, frantically trying to locate the elaborate devices that had been used against them. He couldn’t believe how quickly everything had disappeared from sight. Where were the pointy cages and sharp saws? He looked up into the blackness above and could see only an empty ceiling with pipes. And where were Tom and Edward? All that were visible were pipes and a boiler—just like an ordinary basement.

Todd replied, “We’ll figure this out…it’ll just take some time. This was a game that went deadly wrong; we’ll track down the owner and make him sorry that he had ever arranged this travesty.”

“Let’s check upstairs,” suggested Sam.

There had to be a trigger somewhere in the house that enabled the upstairs rooms to revolve in an endless loop, Todd decided, as he searched through every room on the second floor, under every piece of furniture. Finally behind a portrait hanging in the living room, he discovered a miniature camera lens. It was embedded in a small hole at the center of the painting, with a single wire leading into the wall behind it.

Excited about his find, he called out, “Everyone, come here!”

As they assembled in the living room, Todd revealed to them the tiny camera hidden in the portrait. “There must be other cameras scattered about the house…taking surreptitious pictures of unsuspecting guests…and I’m going to find all of them!” For the first time, he believed that they had a fighting chance to catch the evil perpetrator.

Hurriedly retracing his steps through the rooms, Todd rechecked all the portraits on the walls; each one portrayed a different subject. Some were of old men, while others were renderings of young men and women. But they all had one thing in common: they displayed the same lone animal standing hungrily in the distance. And behind each painting, he found a tiny camera. Turning around to inform the others, he found them standing right behind him. He eagerly explained, “We must now find where all these wires lead to.”

Sam yelled from another room, “I found the place—they all converge in the library and travel up through the ceiling.”

Joining Sam in the library, Todd noticed a ladder standing folded up in the corner of the room—which had not been there yesterday. Standing the ladder beneath the huge engraving on the ceiling, he quickly climbed up.

Using his fingers to follow the intricate design, he announced, “This design is an engraving of a wolf’s head…with the wolf’s tongue being the lever that opens the trap door in the ceiling.” He pushed himself up through the door into the house’s attic. Once he noticed the sloped ceiling with its small triangular window, he became angry with himself. He should have realized sooner that the house had an attic: the turret with its small window could easily be seen from the outside.

The group, which had quietly followed Todd through his discoveries, climbed up behind him into the attic that spanned the entire width of the house. The long room was empty, except for an elaborate computer system with monitors set up along the back wall. Todd sat down in one of the two desk chairs and began to skillfully scroll through the rooms shown on the monitors. All the rooms appeared to be empty.

“Let’s test out this fancy equipment and see how the rooms are controlled from up here. If I remain here, I can track what happens when someone follows the loop of rooms,” Todd quickly explained, impatient to find some answers. Before he found these monitors, he’d erroneously concluded that a supernatural force had planned the party. But now he was open to a new possibility: a human could have devised and implemented the complicated computer system. He didn’t know which was more dangerous, since he was acutely aware that humans could be just as devious and evil as any demons.

“I’ll follow the rooms in a circle and then retrace them in the opposite direction,” offered Sam as he paced back and forth in the room. “And I’ll bring Shana along with me.”

“Linda can remain with me…while Mike and David can follow along with Carl,” Todd suggested.

They all eagerly followed his orders, except for Mike, who shot an annoyed look over his shoulder before climbing down the ladder. Todd turned his face away, refusing to acknowledge Mike’s silly show of stubbornness. First Carl made unexplained disappearances, and now Mike had issues with authority. All the dangerous missions that he’d successfully led in the past didn’t have all the grumblings, complaints, and disregard for authority that this group exhibited. He knew that if they didn’t learn to work well together as one close-knit unit, then they weren’t going to be successful in defeating their enemy. He had a lot of work ahead of him before he could bring this rag-tag group to some semblance of working order.

Todd sat with Linda in front of the monitors, watching as Shana and Sam roamed through the rooms, while Mike and David scrambled over each other to be the one closest to Carl. He was amazed at the sophistication of the computer system as it quickly responded to the actions of the participants.

Once someone entered a room, a switch on the monitoring system clicked to close that door and quickly conceal it into the wall. At the same time, a second door was revealed in the room. When the second door was opened, another switch was activated to make the first door resurface again. Once the second room was entered, a switch clicked to close and conceal that door while revealing a new door in that room. The doors opened and closed to indicate the path that they were supposed to have taken at the party: a path that would have led them in a perpetual circle through the same sequence of rooms.

They watched as Sam and Shana—with Mike, David, and Carl following close behind—retraced their steps through the rooms. When they held both doors to a room open at the same time, the switches weren’t triggered. This enabled them to backtrack through the rooms—just as they had done last night: by doing it in reverse and thereby bypassing the system.

Afterward, the group grudgingly left the house without uncovering any new evidence on the identity of the perpetrator of the elaborate scheme. However, Todd felt less crestfallen than the others. He was thrilled to have figured out how and where the rooms had been controlled. The rooms rotated in a circle around the trap door to the attic. Now he was able to formulate a few new ideas about who had been really behind the bogus party.

Chapter 13

S
hana feverishly tossed and turned most of the night. She was caught in a nightmare where she was able to see herself—as if from a distance—running through town in the middle of the night while still wearing her nightgown. It felt so real. The night air felt bitterly cold on her skin and the wind blew her nightgown against her legs. Her feet hurt terribly; they felt bruised by the sharp rocks on the ground. She looked down and saw that she was barefoot.

She didn’t know why she was running, or from whom. She knew only that she had to get somewhere quickly before it was too late. Then she noticed the church’s large building looming in front of her. Why would she want to go into the church in the middle of the night?

Why was she running up the stairs to the tall bell tower? She was terrified of heights and would never willingly climb up a tower. What was happening to her? The next moment she was gazing over the ledge—high up in the tower—looking down at the town below her. Everything seemed small and insignificant. She felt small and unimportant. She just wanted to fly away and finally be free.

Standing up on the narrow ledge, she spread her arms out wide; she wanted to know what it felt like to be free from this town and all the fear that she’d felt trapped in since she moved here. She would desperately miss Linda, but sadly knew that Linda would be much happier without her and her paranoid fears.

In the distance she heard someone calling her name. She tried to ignore it, but kept hearing her name being called over and over again. Looking down, she noticed Sam standing below her on the sidewalk, yelling out her name and telling her how much he cared for her. Gazing adoringly down into his pretty face and soulful green eyes, she suddenly realized that she didn’t want to leave him. She asked herself, 
what was she doing standing on a ledge in the middle of the night?

Feeling like she’d been released from a trance, she called down to Sam, “I don’t know how I got up here, and I don’t think that I can get down by myself.”

Sam’s whole body trembled with relief; for a moment he’d feared that she’d been trying to kill herself. In the middle of the night, he’d heard her moving around the apartment, but hadn’t realized right away that she’d snuck out.

When he’d checked her bedroom, he’d found her sheets rumpled and her bed empty. Immediately panicking, he’d raced out after her. He’d run like a madman through the dark streets. He hadn’t been able to find her until he had happened to glance up and notice a white shadowy form balanced on the ledge of the church’s tower. He’d been stunned when he’d recognized the white indistinct shadow to be Shana in her snowy white nightgown. He’d called her name over and over again until she’d finally focused on him. It was if she’d been sleepwalking and had just woken up.

He dashed up the tower stairs and found her clutching the side of the building. He ran to her, safely pulling her into his arms. As soon as she realized that she was finally safe, she began to sob incoherently. Between sobs, she tried to explain to him that she hadn’t climbed up the tower willingly, since she was acutely terrified of heights.

“Maybe you were sleepwalking?” suggested Sam as he gently carried her down the stairs, holding her close to his body to shield her from the brutally cold wind. He couldn’t figure out why it was freezing cold tonight when there was usually a warm breeze blowing in from the ocean. But most of all, he couldn’t figure out why Shana—a reasonably sane woman—had climbed up to the top of the church’s tower to balance on its narrow ledge.

“I’ve never sleepwalked before; I was definitely in a trance. Someone had hypnotized me!” insisted Shana as she huddled in Sam’s arms. She was relieved that it had been Sam who’d found her, since she would’ve been mortified if a total stranger had come to her rescue. She felt safe and warm in his arms. And he smelled so nice, like cologne or aftershave. She could fall asleep in his arms and dream….

“What do you think was the hypnotic suggestion that had been given to you?” Sam asked, waking her from her brief reverie.

“I think I was supposed to feel unimportant and insignificant in the scheme of things…making me want to kill myself by jumping off the tower.” Shana got the chills when she thought about what had almost happened to her.

“Don’t worry, you’re safe now. I’m bringing you to my office; no one will be there. You can rest and put on some warm clothes. When you’re ready, I’ll take you back home.”

“Please don’t tell anyone—not even Linda. I have to figure this out myself,” pleaded Shana as Sam entered his private office and carefully laid her down on the couch.

“You’re definitely not alone in this; all your friends are here for you. You can tell Todd anything. I’ve been through so much with him that I know you can trust him with your life.”

“You can tell Todd, but my friends don’t need to know yet. It wouldn’t serve any purpose except to frighten them further.”

“Okay, I’ll do whatever you ask. When you’re ready, you can inform them yourself.”

After she changed into Sam’s extra clothing and rested a bit, he drove her home. She felt embarrassed about what had just happened; she couldn’t understand what could have made her climb up a tower in the middle of the night and then seriously contemplate jumping off. Huddled against the car’s door, she snuck a quick peek at Sam’s face. He was staring intensely ahead at the road, deep in thought. Then he turned his face toward her and gave her a warm smile.

Opening her eyes, Shana was startled: she didn’t know where she was. Panicking, she peered into the darkness. She was lying on her bed in her room—but she had just been in the car with Sam. Looking over at the chair beside her bed, she found Sam sound asleep. He had obviously carried her to her bed and then had conked out on the chair. He did look tired: events must be getting to him. He carried so much responsibility on his broad shoulders. She’d just have to be nicer to him in the future. With that thought in mind, she fell asleep. She slept through the night, knowing that she had Sam beside her to protect her.