The Nightmare Game (53 page)

Ben rushed over behind Geoffrey and pinned his
arms behind his back.

“Ashley, run up to the sphinx. Call Arrosha’s name
three times. She’ll answer you. Tell her what you need to say to her. I’ll make
sure Geoffrey leaves you alone until you’ve had your say.”

“Ben, you fool. You stupid, gullible fool,”
Geoffrey accused.

“Hurry, Ashley. Hurry,” Ben urged.

I snuck past Ben and the struggling Geoffrey as
the others stood, transfixed, not know which of the two men to believe or follow.
I ran up to the reflecting pool and stood at its end for several moments as I
heard Geoffrey behind me, struggling against Ben and cursing him. I looked into
the pool of deadly liquid but could not jump in yet. Something greater even
than common sense was restraining me and preventing me from moving further.

As it had previously when I stood in this spot,
the necklace began to vibrate, this time far more strongly than ever before and
I could feel it bore itself out of my flesh. My fingers and toes began to
tingle and my body began to numb. A tight, protective enclosure began to encase
me like a second skin.

“Ben, look!” Illea shouted. “What’s happening to
Ashley?”

I could almost feel the group’s stares boring into
my back as the field around me grew stronger. As this was happening, the sphinx
statue at the other end of the pool awoke suddenly. Its eyes opened wide and a
woman’s loud, violent, shrill screams issued from its mouth.

“Guards! Guards!” commanded the bronze sphinx
whose voice was unmistakably Rochere’s. “Get her at once! Capture her! Capture
the infidel!”

Ben and the others seemed stunned as the statues
in the garden came to life in an instant. The stone guards ran up the walkway
while more stone and bronze winged statuary, including an angry Kingfisher bird
which had dropped its fish, flew overhead to help them. I needed to move, to
jump into the reflecting pool to make my getaway, but the energy field around
me was not quite finished and I could not yet move to save myself.

“Ben! You’re a stupid fool!” Geoffrey shouted. “I
told you she was a traitor!”

I glanced back for only a split second to see
Arrosha’s bizarre brigade gaining fast upon me. Ben looked shocked and betrayed
as he let go of Geoffrey. He stood in place, stunned, while Geoffrey bolted
toward me, joining the animated group of statues in their pursuit of me. The
others, now no longer confused, came running as well.

The force that had held me in place at the foot of
the pool began slowly to relax its grip upon me and I was able to move at last.
It was not a second too soon, for out of the corner of my eyes, I could see the
flying statuary swoop down upon me as, at my sides, the hands of the stone
guards reached out to grab me. Without success, they tried to snatch me, the
field encompassing me, causing their hands to slide off as it simultaneously
pulled me into the reflecting pool. Once I hit the liquid, I swam as hard and
as fast as I could toward the bottom. It was then that Arrosha’s last line of
defense, the water lilies, sprang to life and wrapped themselves around me in
an effort to pull me back up to the surface and to capture. But as it had in
the shower vortex, the necklace, with its dragon amulet leading it, began to
pull me down to the bottom of the pool and toward escape. Fighting the stems of
the water lilies made the swim slow and arduous and I felt as if I would drown
before reaching the exit. My fear of drowning soon gave way to a fear of being
dissolved. My skin began to prickle as its layer of protection was overly tested
and began to wear thin. However, just as I was on the verge of losing hope
again, the little dragon shot forth with a tremendous burst of energy and
speed, cutting into the back of my neck with the necklace chain. This action
caused the water lily roots to tear, giving me fresh hope for escape. Now
finally unencumbered, I soon reached the bottom of the pool.

Instead of being solid as I expected, the floor of
the pool was spongy, and gave way around my body as a slimy, gooey substance.
As soon as I knew I could hold my breath no longer, my face, immediately
followed by the rest of my body, felt air and I gasped. Opening my eyes, I saw
that I was standing in the bedroom of the apartment in Edmond’s house, dripping
the goo I had just passed through onto the carpet. My legs and entire body were
weak and I gasped for air again, this time audibly, as I collapsed into a heap
on the floor.

I did not sink into darkness, however; instead, I
rose up into a soft glow, a glow I could clearly see, although my eyes were
closed. It was more than mere light, for I not only could I see it, I could
feel it pulse about me as well, first matching my rapid, erratic heartbeat,
then regulating it, bringing it into a relaxed, even rhythm. The light show I
saw through my eyelids shifted, from soft to neon to metallic and then back
again with an electric clarity that massaged my brain and soothed my skin until
neither no longer hurt. A quiet whispering accompanied these sensations, a sound
so regular, so relaxing, that I wondered about its origins. Several minutes
seemed to pass before I realized that the soft whispering I heard was the sound
of my own breathing and I awoke.

I did not see the apartment bedroom or the floor
upon which I’d collapsed upon the floor. Instead, my eyes opened to
surroundings that were very different indeed but I was not afraid. I was on a
beach in an island paradise. A perfect blue sky dotted with only a few wispy
white clouds within it lay above me. I was dressed in a flowing white gauzy
summer dress, lying in a large, oversized hammock stretched between two large
palm trees that shaded me from the tropical sun while a comforting breeze blew
in from the ocean, carrying with it the smell of salt air mixed with the
fragrance of blossoming exotic florals. Beneath the palm tree at my feet stood
a small wooden table; upon it sat an old Victrola from which a sweet love
ballad from the 1920’s emanated softly. Contented, I watched the waves of the
ocean to my right flow in and out for several minutes, the primal rhythms of
their ebbing and crashing reaching deeply into my soul, relaxing me in a way
nothing else had ever done, touching a place within me that nothing else had
ever reached. I stretched luxuriously, an exquisite laziness soaking into my
every pore, my every cell, and looked around. White sand covered the ground,
palm trees and lush tropical plants grew ever denser the further from shore
they grew. The sounds of bird calls filled my ears, growing ever louder until
it reached a crescendo and broke suddenly with a boisterous flapping of wings
as, abruptly, a large flock of huge, colorful birds took flight into the air.

“It’s beautiful here, isn’t it?” Edmond said
softly.

I looked over to my side that faced the beach and
he was there, where he had not been only a second before, lying next to me on
the hammock, one arm propped up beneath him upon which he rested his head. His
long, wavy brown hair, streaked with gold from the sun, flowed in the ocean
breeze. He wore white beach pants of the same gauzy fabric as my dress, tied at
the waist, legs rolled up to his calves, but was otherwise naked, his skinned
tanned to a buttery nut brown, the hair on his chest sun-bleached a golden
blond.

“Yes, it’s very lovely,” I replied, smiling up at
him, incredibly happy just to see him again. His sudden appearance had not
startled me in the slightest, for it seemed only natural that he should be
here. I realized now how much I’d missed him during my time at the mansion.
Even though I hadn’t remembered him for most of my stay, his presence now made
me feel complete.

“I tried to pick a spot that you would like,” he
said.

“It’s wonderful. I love it, but where are we
exactly?”

“We’re in a place of which you’ve dreamed for many
years,” he replied. “A place you created, made up of images you’ve seen in your
life, visions of paradise on earth gleaned from travel brochures, fashion
magazines, perfume commercials.”

“Oh, yes, I know the place. I’ve always wanted to
come here. It’s just the way I imagined it would be.”

“I tried to keep every detail true to your
vision.”

“Thank you, Edmond. You succeeded marvelously. By
the way, what was going on before I opened my eyes? You know, the light show.”

“It was the amulet helping me to heal you. Through
it, I’m able to provide healing and help for all those that answer my call to
help me.”

“But you’ve always breathed it into me before. Why
not this time?”

“Our connection is special, Ashley. I haven’t felt
one this strong in years. I can’t revive most of the people I call that way,
though. This is only the way I can resuscitate them. Besides, I’ve always liked
our intimacy, Ashley, and it always worked so well.”

“Why didn’t you do it this time?” I asked.

“Because it would have awakened you and you need your
rest now. You were sleeping so peacefully that I didn’t have the heart to waken
you.”

“Am I awake? Did we win? Is this our reward?” I
asked hopefully.

“No, you’re still asleep.”

“Then how could you wake me?”

“It’s a sleep within a sleep, Ashley. All things
are possible inside our dreams.”

I smiled up at him and said, “I like it here. I’m
really glad you chose this spot.”

“We both chose it, Ashley. I wanted it to be
special for you because you’ll soon have to leave for the last part of your
journey. I wanted to give you one last taste of paradise before you have to
enter the nightmares. You’ll soon have to pass through the final, remaining
door, the most difficult portion for you to endure and I need to prepare you. I
thought it might help if you gained strength here, in your ideal place of
peace, before you go on your most demanding path. As it stands, this might very
well be the last chance I’ll ever have be with you romantically again, so
please accept this from me.”

He held out his empty hand, palm side up, and a
delicate white orchid materialized into it. Stroking the hair out of my face,
he placed the flower behind my left ear.

“There,” he continued. “That looks lovely. Ashley,
I don’t mean to be so forward, but what we’ve shared has been so intimate. It’s
so rare for me to connect so romantically with someone I call. May I kiss you
properly, like a lover?”

As soon as he said this, our eyes locked. He was
so handsome, so tender. There was pain in his eyes, an oldness beyond his
seeming years, which attested to the fact that he’d lived far too long and seen
far too much, but as I stared into his eyes, so warm, so richly, gold-flecked
brown, I saw a sweetness, a romantic shyness that belonged to another, more
innocent age. I reached my left hand up to him, caressing the back of his neck,
and gently pulled him down until our lips met, actually touching for the very
first time.

His lips were soft against mine, his breath sweet.
His tongue, gentle yet so agile, set off a fire within me with an urgency that
begged to be slaked. He wrapped his arms around me, pulling me so close to him
that had it not been a dream, it would not have been possible, but I could
actually feel our bodies merge. As we kissed for a long, long time, I could
once again feel him transferring energy into me, but of a different kind, for
now instead of just a healing energy, it contained a powerful strength and
confidence, a courage I knew was not my own, for I had never before felt those
things. When he had finished kissing me, he lay back, exhausted.

“That’s all I have to give you, Ashley,” he said.
“You’ll need it, I know. I’m sorry, I wish there were more.”

“Thank you, Edmond,” was all I said, for I was
left with the odd sensation of energy satiation mixed with sexual frustration.

“Are you alright?” he asked, weariness now showing
upon him for the first time since I’d met him.

“Oh, yes. I guess I was just wondering if we’ll
ever be together in real life, if we’ll ever be able to make love.”

Edmond smiled at my words. “I want that, too. If
you win, if we get out of this trap, back into a sane reality, may I court you
properly?”

Now it was my turn to smile. Although he had been
vicariously modernized through the players he had called over the years into
this game, his nineteenth century mind and manners still reasserted themselves
when he imagined the real world.

“I’d like that very much,” I said.

We lay in silence for a few minutes when I asked
him, “By the way, Edmond, what day is it today?”

“When you wake up, it will be Sunday.”

“You mean it’s next Sunday? I lost a whole week?”

“No, it’s this Sunday. Only a day has passed since
you left here.”

“That can’t be possible. I was gone a lot longer
than that.”

“You’ll find that, in a limited fashion, she can
make time pass quite differently in her dimension than it does out here in the
real world in order to suit her needs. She knew that you were expected back
from your trip by Monday night and she couldn’t have anyone suspect you had
missed your flight until she was through with you. You see, she plays tricks
with time, like she does with everything else. Sometimes it’s faster and
sometimes it’s slower.”

“Edmond, speaking of time,” I asked. “Why do we
have so much of it now and why can we speak so freely? We’ve always had to
hurry before and to be so careful.”

“There are primarily two reasons. Do you remember
I told you that the longer you wear that necklace, the more it would be able to
protect you?”

“Yes, even though it seemed to have failed me at
the mansion. I mean, it came through like a champ at the end at the reflecting
pool, but before that point, it didn’t protect me at all. Why didn’t the
necklace help more at the estate, Edmond? What happened to it?”

“I mentioned the witch’s dampening field, which
weakened it considerably at first, but still it kept you from dying at the
touch of her abominable creatures. The talisman also enabled you to hear
Zachary call to you from the mirror. You never could have heard him from
another room, let alone another floor, without it.”

“Why wasn’t I more aware of it at the mansion? I
didn’t even notice it. In fact, when I first got my memory back, I was afraid I
had lost it.”

“Its first priority in that hostile world was to
keep you from taking it off inadvertently while, in its weakened state, it
worked toward making you immune to the water’s effects. It had to ensure that
it made itself as unapproachable as possible, to you and to the others, so it
embedded itself underneath your skin and disguised itself as a raised tattoo, a
plausible disguise in this day and age.

“You see, before protecting even you, the amulet
had to protect itself. Let me remind you that if you would have removed it
willingly or absentmindedly, without being forced, then all would be lost. The
evil one would have won at last and I don’t need to remind you about that
outcome.”

His words frightened me. “Do you think she’ll try
to trick me with the water again?” I asked. “I was lucky to be able to escape
this time; that might not happen a second time. Geoffrey wanted to force the
water into me against my will and I honestly think that’s what would have
happened if I hadn’t gotten out of there. What’s to prevent them from trying
the water trick on me again this time after I go through the third door?”

“As with her poison at the The Crypt, it wouldn’t
work any more,” he assured me. “As long as you wear that necklace, Ashley, the
amulet can now neutralize the water’s effects and will henceforth act as its
antidote.”

“Then why didn’t it work the first time I got my
memory back after the essence?”

“The amulet’s powers were stifled by the dampening
field in the witch’s realm. Do you remember that I told you that her potions
interact with an individual’s person DNA?”

“Yes.”

“The truth you obtained from the essence
temporarily over-rode the evil one’s interference. However, the essence
contains enormous amounts of genetic information, so much of it, coming in far
too fast, that it confused the weakened amulet. The essence gave it too much
conflicting and contradictory information to have to sift through. Under those
circumstances, the amulet simply did not have the power to make your immunity
permanent at that time.

“But even though it threw off the amulet’s
calculations at first, it couldn’t stop it. It slowly started building a
resistance to the water not long afterwards. While it was an immunity which
would have stayed with you the rest of your life, her dimension slowed the
talisman down so considerably that it might not have figured things out in time
to save itself. You were ready to join her cult and she would have had you go
through her transformation ceremony early the very next morning. We were
enormously lucky that Geoffrey interfered and jogged your memory prematurely,
because without him, her plan might actually have worked. He was only supposed
to keep you away from the mirror, but his own sense of self-importance would
not allow what was, in his mind, such a lowly, unimportant task.”

“How is she able to inhibit the necklace’s powers
so well in her dimension?”

“Always remember, Ashley, that black magic is the
only weapon at her disposal that she can use against the amulet. She’s a master
of it, but uses it only when absolutely necessary because it exacts such a high
price from her. It works incredibly well in her dimension, far better than it does
in this one, although that doesn’t keep her from trying to use it here as well.
It was she who had built the hoodoo circle in the yard which contained your
work badge, meant to keep you from returning here. She’s expert in all manner
of the black arts and knows that, regardless of where she is, it is the magics
with local roots that work best and are the strongest. It’s the only way she
can fight you as long as you’re wearing the amulet. She finds using the black
arts loathsome, so she only bothers with them against those I’ve called.”

“Was the water black magic?”

“Normally, it’s usually just a result of her
ancient technology. But, like the poison she fed you at The Crypt, she enhanced
it using the black arts to make it work against you while you were at the
mansion.