The Nightmare Game (73 page)

The expression on Max’s misshapen face changed. It
went from being the submissive, fearful face of an abuse victim to one so
guarded that I could not read it at all. His was now a perfect poker face,
completely inscrutable, but his eyes were truly awake for the first time since
I’d met him. He began to meander away from me casually, still holding up the
necklace.

“Have I really been your good boy, Arrosha? Have I
really been your good dog?” he asked, still nonchalantly and absentmindedly
shuffling away from me. He seemed so apparently lost in thought that he was not
paying attention to his movements.

“Of course you are, Max. Keep helping me with this
one, help me destroy her, and I promise you that I will make you the most
beautiful youth that has ever existed in the flesh.

“Wow,” he said, less enthusiastically than I would
have expected, all the while still wandering very slowly and aimlessly away
from me. Then he stopped. “That sounds like a lot of fun.”

“It’ll be more than fun, Max. You’ll be wealthier
than you can imagine. And I’ll make you charming as well. There’s not a woman
out there that you won’t be able to have.”

“You mean, you’ll bring back Gizelle?”

“I can’t bring Gizelle back. You know that. She’s
dead. But I can make a perfect ringer for her. I’ll make any woman you want
look just like her, walk just like her, talk just like her. I’ll change another
woman to be just like her for you, Max. She’ll be someone that will make you
forget all about her. She’ll be even better than Gizelle.”

“Better than Gizelle?”

“Yes, Max, she’ll be exquisite. I promise you.”

“That sounds ... interesting.” He cocked his head
to one side and stabilized his stance. He glanced at the necklace he held in
his left hand. “My queen,” he said flatly, “the talisman feels like it’s
getting ready to vanish.”

“Yes,” she answered. “It’s beginning to fade. Such
a shame that I don’t have a power field strong enough to hold it. Then I
wouldn’t have to worry about it anymore. As it is, I’ll slowly have to drain
Edmond’s stasis chamber for a few decades and wait for him to die before I can
discount that amulet as an issue. Pity, isn’t it?”

“Yes, my queen. It really is. Which is why I think
I’d better do
this
right now!”

On the word “this”, Max, despite his deformities,
pitched the amulet and its chain toward the stasis chamber with the swiftness,
sureness and power of the professional baseball player that he once was. Time
seemed to stand still.

A shocked Arrosha wore a look upon her face that
relayed that she could not believe that Max was still capable of betraying her
so. I knew that not only had she thought that Max was completely broken in
spirit, she thought she had deformed him to a point past which he would be
capable of such a pitch. The amulet flew through the air until it began to lose
momentum and started to fall. At that point, Arrosha smiled and I thought all
was lost. However, by then it had reached a point of no return as a magnetism
grabbed it through the stasis field, not allowing it to stop, not allowing it
to fall. As the amulet was absorbed by the chamber, the chain broke off and hit
the ground, metal on metal causing an audible “clink”. Arrosha was speechless,
fear now in her eyes as she visibly, silently, mouthed “how?”.

“You thought you’d deformed me so much that I
couldn’t do that, didn’t you?” Max said angrily, finding his voice. “But like
you said, it’s not somethin’ you haven’t done before. You’ve deformed me this
bad too many times. And I practiced every time you did, when you weren’t paying
attention to me and that was most of the time, you evil witch.

“I played along with it, every time makin’ you
think that I was a lot worse off than I was. You see, you could deform me, but
you couldn’t take away my talent. I’ve got talent and I always will! You hear
that, you bitch? I’ve got talent!” Max screamed at her, years and years of
pent-up anger and hatred now released.

Time seemed to start again, but with a different
aspect, for everything appeared to be in slow motion. At first, Arrosha was as
a deer caught in the headlights, stunned beyond reaction. When she came back to
awareness, it was in fury. Screaming that she was going to kill Max, she waved
her arm violently and the table that held the instruments set aside for my
torture flew towards him, but he managed to dodge it. Arrosha’s aim was off,
due either to her rage or, more likely, the amulet’s activation. She shrieked
that while he may have killed her, she would still destroy him first, that he
would not live long enough to enjoy his victory. He ran away from her, toward
the stasis chamber, desperately hoping she could not attack him there because
of the amulets, both contained now within the chamber.

For some reason the amulets did not repel her as
the necklace had earlier, so she followed him near to the chamber. Max cowered,
for he had not counted upon this new development. Now no longer trusting her
supernatural aim, she picked up the table, its instruments dropping to the
floor, and raged towards Max, holding up the heavy table as a weapon with a
strength that belied her delicate form.

“The amulet hasn’t reappeared yet,” she shrieked
her gloat after him. “I suppose we were wrong all of these years. Apparently,
the bulk of their power cannot reach me out here. The stasis field must be
protecting me from both of the amulets. That’s bad news for you, Max. You
betrayed me and you’ve outlived your usefulness to me as a pet. I’ll kill you,
Max. I swear I’ll kill you!”

With a force, she lowered the table, striking out
with it at Max, landing only a glancing blow to his right leg. Despite her smug
threats, she was definitely off her game. Max screamed and started running away
from her again, slowed down and limping. Within seconds she had gained on him,
raising the table once more, this time with cold deliberation, this time to
land the death blow.

 As Max and Arrosha fought, I watched them, my
attention split between their activities and the events unfolding in the stasis
chamber underneath its clear crystal cover. While Edmond had not moved,
unbeknownst to Arrosha yet, other incidents were taking place. Both the
headpiece of the cane and the amulet, now free of the necklace, had come alive.
The little amulet dragon nestled itself next to its mate, which had left its
own confines of the cane. The two merged into one dragon with two heads. This
new creature began to grow larger and larger, bursting out of the stasis
chamber and breaking the chamber’s clear cover into a thousand pieces. Emerging
as a beautiful, winged creature, it flew gracefully about the room, continuing
to grow larger and larger until it outsized a blue whale.

Once it left the stasis chamber, Arrosha took
notice. She stopped attacking Max and lowered the table, finally dropping it to
the ground while the graceful two-headed creature zeroed in upon her. Screaming
“No! No!”, she cringed as the creature made of living crystal hovered over her
in the air, flapping its huge wings. One of the heads opened its mouth and
began to sing a beautiful melody without words. While everyone else in the room
was calmed by the music, Arrosha was paralyzed, cringing, covering her ears as
she screamed in agony. It was then that the second head of the creature joined
in harmony with the first. The voices sounded not as if they came from two, but
seemed to be originating from the many throats of a chorus. So complex was the
music, so beautiful, celestial and sweet that it sounded like the song of a
choir of angels.

Arrosha, still screaming, now began to convulse,
straightening up into an unnatural position in these convulsions before
freezing there. As the song continued, getting sweeter and more beautiful with
each note, she slowly turned into a crystal statue. The two-headed dragon
settled to the floor, stopped singing and became inanimate again. As those of
us remaining looked on, it shrank down to its original size before dividing
once again and returning to its original state as two amulets.

With Arrosha now destroyed, the landscape of the
room began to change. The metal walls and floor became nothing but a cave
filled with skeletons, most so old that they immediately crumbled into dust
while others lost their cohesion as skeletons, simply falling to the ground as
individual bones in a clatter. The chains holding what was left of the group
disappeared, allowing them to rush over as fast as they could to help to free
me. While my arms were now liberated, the ground that had come up to trap my
legs was still there, but it was now as brittle as dry mud and crumbled even
more easily. The hardest part of working myself free was dealing with the
extreme stiffness, soreness and exhaustion which now suddenly consumed my
entire body. With the sudden appearance of these symptoms, I now realized for
the very first time just how much the necklace amulet protected me and kept me
going.

We all hugged, ecstatic to be unbound, but we were
left wondering how to get out and get back to the real world. As the others
began to look around for an exit, Ben and I rushed over to what was left of the
stasis chamber in order to rescue Edmond and drag him out of his long-time
prison.

Max looked around as well, just as amazed at the
change in the surroundings, but only for a minute, for he had something else on
his mind. He walked over to the crystal statue that was now Arrosha and began
to scream at it.

“You lousy bitch,” he yelled. “Did you think I
liked being your ‘good dog’? There’s not a dog alive that would want to belong
to you! Besides, witch, I’m a man, you insane hag, not a dog.

“What did you think? That you would make me one of
your pretty boys? I was handsome, you sow, damn handsome before you got your
filthy hands on me. I never wanted to be pretty. I never wanted to be
beautiful. I looked like a man, damn you, not some young boy. I just wanted to
look like myself again.

“And when it comes to Gizelle, you dirty, evil
bitch, you killed her and there was only one Gizelle. Nobody could ever replace
her. Nobody.”

He then walked the few steps over to the
tipped-over instrument table and, with great effort, picked it up. With all of
the strength that years of frustration and swallowed anger gave him, he swung
the table at the statue and everything that was Arrosha shattered into a
million fragments. He was so filled with decades of rage that he could not
stop, and continued swinging blindly. His aim wild, he accidentally swung
toward the stasis chamber, from which Ben and I had just rescued Edmond. I
cried out “No! Max! Be careful!”, but it was too late. He had hit the side of
the already damaged chamber and cracked it. My worst fears were confirmed as
sparks flew from the damaged chamber before it detonated in a huge explosion.

I didn’t remember anything after the explosion
until I came to in a hospital room. I awoke to soft voices and the comings and
goings of hospital staff and visitors. I didn’t realize where I was at first
and for a groggy second, wondered if I was dead. When I tried to move, my left
arm and leg were immobilized. I opened my eyes to see those appendages in
casts. I’d made it out after all. Had everyone else?

“Hello?” I said, not as loudly as I’d intended.
“Hello? Hello!” When no one answered, I pressed the call button for the nurse’s
station.

“Well, well, well,” said a middle-aged nurse.
“Looks like you’re finally up! Let me get a doctor.”

“What happened?”

“Let me get the doctor,” she repeated. “He can
tell you what happened. You’re lucky you regained consciousness now because,
he’s doing rounds on this floor. I’ll let him know you’re up and he’ll be in
here in a few minutes.

I waited for what seemed like an interminably long
time until a youngish doctor showed up at last. He looked like he came from
India, but his accent suggested that he was from New Jersey.

“Hi… Ashley, is it?” he asked, looking at my
chart. “Ashley Adams?”

“Yes,” I said, as he wrote something on my chart.
“How do you know my name?”

“The uncle of one of the gentlemen that was found
with you, an Edmond Montgomery, told us.

“I’m glad to see you’re up. You’re the first one
to regain consciousness of the group of people you came in with yesterday.”

“What happened?” I asked him.

“I was hoping you could tell me. You were found
unconscious with several other unconscious people. You have a few broken bones
and a concussion, nothing life threatening, but you’ll need to take it easy for
awhile. Everyone else is still out. We don’t know more because nobody had any
wallets or purses with them, no IDs, keys or money. The police suspect that
maybe you were all involved in a gang mugging or something like that. Can you
shed any light on anything for us?”

“No, I can’t, I’m afraid. Everything’s just a
blank to me right now.” I lied to him even though my memories had already come
back, at least partially. What was I to tell him? That an insane goddess had
tried to kill me but that Max was able to get to her first? I couldn’t tell him
that because I didn’t want a visit to the hospital’s psychiatric ward.

“That’s not too unusual,” he offered. “It’s not
uncommon for trauma victims not to remember when they first wake up.”

“What kind of trauma?”

“That’s what we’re still trying to figure out, so
I’ll need you to tell us what happened the minute that something comes back to
you. You and your friends were found in the middle of Ursuline Street
yesterday, so I need to tell you that the police are very interested in what
happened to you and the people you were found with.”

“How are they? The people I was found with, that
is. I was with my friends the last I remember.”

“They’re still unconscious. Mr. Montgomery was
somewhat dehydrated and a little emaciated when he was brought in. Do you know
why?”

“No,” I lied. I couldn’t tell him that a crazed
witch was slowly sucking the life out of him while he was being held prisoner
in a stasis chamber, now could I?

“His uncle tells me that he’s an eccentric
millionaire who went missing awhile back. You said he was your friend. Does his
information jive with what you know?”

“Sounds about right to me.” I told him. It seemed
like a reasonable explanation for a man with unkempt hair and long, unmanicured
fingernails that most people would have figured for homeless had it not been
for his clean and expensive, out-of-date clothing.

“As for the others, their injuries were worse than
yours. In fact, we’re quite perplexed by how you were all found together and
yet have different things wrong with you.”

“What do you mean?”

“Most of the others are exhibiting a body trauma
shock similar to that of burn victims, but they have no burns.”

It had to be from their sudden transformation,
when Arrosha had transmogrified them back into their normal bodies. Even she
had said that they weren’t “ready” yet.

“Everyone should be okay except for that one
fellow who was so severely deformed.”

“Max.”

“Is that his name?” he wrote it down on a piece of
paper clipped to his board.

“Yes. How is he doing?”

“Not good. He’s in ICU. He has radiation burns and
his deformities have put him into a life-threatening position. I hope he makes
it.”

“I hope so, too,” I said, realizing that he had
saved the day in the end, that of Edmond’s “called” people, he deserved to reap
the rewards of his efforts far more than I did.

“Can you give us the names of the others, maybe
some additional information about them, when you feel up to it a little more?
All the uncle was able to give me was Edmond’s name and yours. He said he
didn’t know the others.”

“Sure. Later, is that okay?”

“It’s fine. Take your time.”

A nurse then came in to get the doctor. When he
turned around to leave, I asked him, “Doctor, where is Edmond’s uncle?”

“He left to get some lunch. Do you want me to have
him paged on his cell?”

“Yes, please. I’d like to talk with him.” Actually,
I was dying to meet him, this person that claimed to be related to Edmond, this
man who could not possibly be the uncle of a man almost two hundred years old.

After the doctor left, I called in another nurse
and asked her the hospital information. Then I asked her how to phone out. She
told me to dial “9” first and that would patch me to an outside line. I figured
that I’d give Carolyne a call before the uncle came back. I was supposed to be
coming back tonight, so I thought that angry at me or not, she would worry
herself sick if I didn’t show up.

“Ashley,” she said. “What happened to you? I’ve
been trying to call you since last night and nobody answered. I’m so sorry I
was such a bitch the last time we talked. I don’t know what happened.”

“I do,” I told her. “And don’t worry, it wasn’t
your fault.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ll tell you more about it later. I just called
to tell you that I won’t be coming in to Austin tonight. There was an accident
and I’m in the hospital.”

“What? Are you alright? I mean, of course you’re
not alright, you’re in the hospital, but what I mean is, is it anything
serious?”

“No, just a few broken bones, but I should be
okay.”

“Should I call your mom?”

“I’d prefer that you didn’t. They’re still on
their cruise. They would want to cut it short and I don’t want them to. I
should be able to get out of here pretty soon anyway. I’m not hurt that bad, so
just let them enjoy the rest of their vacation. There’s nothing they can do
right now anyway. I’m sure that I’ll be out of the hospital by the time they
come home and I can tell them myself by then. That way they won’t have to worry
so much.

“Anyway, Carolyne, the problem is that I’m locked
out of the apartment we rented here and all of my stuff is still in there,
including my purse. Can you call work for me, let them know what happened and
get them to send the hospital my insurance information? I can’t get to my copy
because it’s still in my purse.”

“Sure. Listen, later on, maybe you can call the
realtor. I’ll call her if you’re not up to it if you want me too. She needs to
know that you’re in the hospital so that she doesn’t throw out your stuff.”

“I can’t. She’s dead.”

“What? You’re joking.”

“No, I’m not. She was killed in the same accident
that I got hurt in.”

“You’ve got to be kidding. What happened?”

“I don’t have time to explain it right now. I’m
waiting for someone, but I promise that I’ll tell you all about it later.”

“You owe me a real story later, then.”

“You’re right, I do. How are Samson and Delilah?”

“They miss you. I’ll tell Mrs. Miller that you’re
in the hospital and that you’ll be gone at least a few more days. If she can’t
feed them, I will. Don’t worry. I’ll take care of everything. I feel so guilty
anyway. If I just could have come with you, this might not have happened.”

“Honestly, Carolyne, I don’t think that would have
made any difference,” was my only answer. I knew it would have just made things
worse if she had been here.

“Speaking of which, you want to hear something
funny?” Carolyne said. “I mean, really freaky weird? The clients said someone
called them last Thursday afternoon to move up our meeting to Friday. My office
says they never called them. I don’t know who rescheduled the meeting, but I
sure would like to know who it was that cost me my vacation.”

“Probably just some practical joke,” I told her,
knowing full well that it was Rochere who wanted Carolyne out of the way. It
was just as well, for the witch would most likely have killed Carolyne
otherwise, just for being in the way. This was not mercy on Rochere’s part,
only convenience.

I looked up and saw an older man peeking in the
door. It must have been Edmond’s “uncle”, so I told Carolyne I had to go,
giving her the information on where I was and how to reach me before I hung up.