The Nightmare Game (48 page)

“Lights!” he demanded and the lights obeyed,
illuminating a short hallway dominated by a very large set of carved, black
double doors.

“Is that where you were going?” he barked,
pointing me toward them. “Is it? Answer me! Is it?”

“I don’t know! I don’t know where I was going!
I’ve never been up here before! Geoffrey, please let me go,” I pleaded. “You’re
hurting me!”

“You deserve to be hurt, you filthy little
traitor. Do you know why you can’t go in there?” He was beginning to lose his
practiced transcontinental accent, slipping between that and a more natural
Southern country accent instead.

“No,” I was crying. “I don’t.”

“Because you’re not invited and you know that. You
were specifically told that you’re not allowed up here yet. And if you’re not
allowed on this floor, you’re certainly not allowed in Arrosha’s gateway. I
don’t know exactly what you’re up to, but it doesn’t matter. You won’t get
close to our gateway. I won’t let you.”

“What gateway?

“Don’t pretend you don’t know.”

“I’m not pretending! I don’t know! What are you
talking about Geoffrey? I wasn’t trying to get to Arrosha’s gateway. I don’t
even know what a gateway is. Nobody’s told me. How the heck am I supposed to
know?”

“Oh, aren’t you just little miss innocent. You may
have Ben fooled, that trusting sap, but you don’t fool me. But even he didn’t
give you permission to come here, did he? You know more than you’re letting on
and snooping around in the middle of the night like this just proves it. Why
are you here? What’s your real reason for being at this mansion? You might as
well confess. I knew you were up to no good from the start.”

“I told you already! A voice was calling me up
here!”

“Okay, be that way. If you refuse to talk, I’ll
just have to pull it out of you. But rest assured, my dear, that before this
day passes, I’ll make sure that you’re exposed for what you really are and
punished for it.

“You don’t belong here with us,” his badgering
continued. “How dare you try to join our ranks? We can’t even trust you enough
to turn our backs on you. You’re actions tonight have proven that.

“You’re nothing but trash. You always were and
it’s all you’ll ever be. You’re not worthy of being a child of Arrosha. I’ll
make sure that you’re never allowed up here again because that temple in
there,” he said, pointing to the large double doors, “is sacred. It’s certainly
not meant for the foul likes of you.”

“Why do you hate me so much, Geoffrey?”

“Because I know that not on the level, that you’re
trying to infiltrate us. You pretend to be one of us and the only reason you’re
here is to destroy us.”

“That’s not true! I don’t know what you’re talking
about!”

“Well, why don’t we find out, then?” He opened a
small, unassuming door on the opposite side of the hall, one that appeared to
lead into nothing more than a closet. He flung me so roughly into the dark room
that I fell onto the sharp, hard edge of an object, then landed on the floor,
bruised. As I rubbed my painful thigh, Geoffrey pulled a chain and turned on
the ceiling lamp, which illuminated a room that looked like an attic stuffed
with old furniture, lamps and lots of empty picture frames.

“This is the storage room. It contains all of the
stuff that Arrosha thinks isn’t good enough to display in her mansion. This is
the only place here you belong.”

I blinked up at Geoffrey, now just a silhouette
looming above me in front of the glaring light. With one hand, I shielded my
eyes, tearing with pain and anger and asked, “Why are you being so mean to me?
Why don’t you like me?”

“Why don’t you like me? Why don’t you like me?” he
mimicked meanly. “I’ll tell you why I don’t like you, you little bitch, it’s
because I know who you are!”

“What are you talking about?”

“Quit the innocent act, you lousy traitor. It’s
not working with me. It never did.”

“Geoff, I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“Oh, you don’t know, do you? Well, let me fill you
in then. I’ll tell you what you are; you’re like all the other rejects in this
room, you don’t belong.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re not good enough for us. You’re not
good enough for Arrosha. Oh, I knew it before I laid eyes on you. You’re not
like the rest of us and you never will be. You may have Ben fooled, you may
have the others fooled, but you sure don’t have me fooled.”

“I still don’t understand,” I said, hurt and
confused.

Geoffrey crouched down and stared at me. I blinked
and tried to focus, to study his face for a clue for what I had done to deserve
this tirade, but it was difficult, since he was little more than a silhouette
of afterimages against the strong light.

“Arrosha told me you might turn up. She’s warned
me lots of times that a stranger might arrive at our door. She’s been expecting
you for a long, long time. Nobody ever showed up before now. You’re the first.”

“What did she tell you to do then?” I spat out in
anger, regretting the question the second it left my mouth. I should have known
better than to challenge him. Besides, I really didn’t want to know the answer.

“Absolutely nothing,” he replied. “Just to keep an
eye on you.” Geoffrey had calmed down now, but his deliberate, hard, coldness
was more threatening than his angry outburst had been before. “She told me just
to watch, to listen, to ask the others what you’d said, what you’d done, and to
keep her informed.”

“She told you to spy on me? Well, you haven’t done
a very good job of it, have you?” I knew better than to bait him, but now I
despised Geoffrey so much that I couldn’t help myself. “Let’s face it, I’ve
barely seen you since I got here.”

“Hey, why should I bother wasting my time when
I’ve got Ben doing all of my leg work? He tells me everything.” He leaned in so
closely that I could feel his breath upon my hair. “Everything.”

“But if you were just supposed to be watching me,
why are you confronting me now? Why are you being so hateful?”

“Because I know what you are and I want to punish
you for it. How dare you threaten our group, our way of life!” After this
outburst, his manner once again became coldly calculating. “Besides, let’s just
say that I wanted to take a more active role in helping Arrosha. I felt it was
time for me to take on more leadership.”

“Leadership? So you want Ben’s position?”

“Why? So I can preside over ritual? Pour water
from the sacred challis and all that crap? Don’t be ridiculous. Get real. Ben
might be satisfied with it, but his position is meaningless to me. I don’t need
Ben’s place. I don’t want Ben’s place. I couldn’t care less about presiding
over worship and ceremonies. He can have it and he can keep it, for all I care.

“You don’t get the pecking order around here,
missy. Ben’s only a figurehead. I’m the one that Arrosha turns to, confides in.
I’m the one she comes to when she needs something done. I’m the one she grants
special privileges to. Ben might be the leader of the group because he’s the
oldest and the original member, but when all is said and done, I’m her
favorite.

“For years I was happy just to watch and wait for
the interloper Arrosha said would come. I was happy just to keep my eyes and
ears open. But as of late, I’ve become more, well, let’s just say, independent minded.
I realized that I wanted to be able to do more than that for Arrosha. I wanted
to help her more, to become more important to her.”

“Ambitious, aren’t you?” I replied.

“You could say that. Instead of being satisfied
with doing just the bare minimum that she had asked of me, I wanted to give her
my all, I wanted to go that extra mile for her, I wanted to make myself
completely indispensable to her.”

“Why? What’s the point? You have everything you
could possibly ask for already. Quite literally, in fact.”

“You think that this is all there is to it? You
think this is the point of our entire lives, just to play and have fun? Do you
have any idea of how boring that can get after only a few decades?”

“No, Geoffrey,” I said flatly. “It’s still new to
me, so I really don’t.”

“Oh, it will get boring. Trust me,” he replied.
“Give it another twenty or thirty years and it will.”

“So what more do you want?”

“I want something bigger than all of this,” he
motioning with his arm as if to the entire estate. “I’m tired of cowering in
the bushes like some frightened dog. I’m tired of waiting.”

“What are you waiting for?”

“The moment, Ash, when Arrosha is ready to take
this show on the road. And when it comes, it’s gonna be huge. Arrosha has told
me that she just has to overcome one big obstacle and then we are going public
big time and the world is gonna know all about us.”

“Ben said he hoped for pubic exposure, but he was
just speculating.”

“Ben’s got good instincts, but he really doesn’t
know. I told you that I’m the one that Arrosha confides in. Yesiree, baby, the
way I figure it, we are going to be the biggest non-governmental,
non-tax-paying corporation this world has ever seen.”

“The wealth you have now will seem small in
comparison, I’m sure,” I said, mustering as much sarcasm in my voice that my
fear would allow.

“Damn right, it will,” he continued, so caught up
in his own lusts, his own visions, that even while he was looking straight at
me, I doubted he saw me. He envisioned only that world which lay before him in his
mind’s eye. “But it’s not about the wealth, not really. It’s about the power.
Can you imagine the power I’ll have if I play my cards right and really make an
impression on Arrosha at this pivotal point in the project? Sure, she’ll put
Ben up as her front-man. He’s always been ear-marked for that job. He’s the
warm and fuzzy one that people like, that people will listen to. Let him be the
head guru, let him get the love and admiration. What do I care? I want real
power. I want to be Arrosha’s right-hand man and I want nothing less.”

“So you just want to do her dirty work?”

“That’s not my primary motive, just a perk of the
job. What I want is to be her real second in command, her grand vizier, you
might say.”

“Good for you, Geoffrey, But what has this got to
do with me? Why did you bring me here?”

“Why?” he said, snapping out of his grand vision,
his rage returning. “Because I figure that those the stranger she warned me
about must be the form her enemy will take and since you’re the only one that
showed up, that must mean that you’re the obstacle that needs to be taken out.
So, in answer to your question, my dear, the reason I brought you up here was
to kill you.”

Panic rose up in me. I was alone in an attic with
a madman about to murder me and there was no one to rescue me because nobody
else in the house even knew I was here.

“Geoffrey, please.” I said, trying to remain as
outwardly calm as I possibly could. “It’s always possible that you could be
wrong, at least about my being the obstacle. Maybe she told you to keep an eye
on me for another reason.”

“No, I have proof that you are the obstacle.”

“What proof?”

“Don’t worry, I’ll show it to you before I kill
you. It’ll be my pleasure.”

My mind went into overdrive as I tried to think
fast. “No, Geoff, wait. Even if you do have proof, think about it, think it
through. Arrosha is a goddess, right?”

“Of course she is.”

“Well, then, don’t you think that if she wanted me
dead that she would have killed me herself when I first got here? Don’t you
think she would have done it already?”

“Of course she would have if she’d wanted to get
her hands dirty with the likes of you! But she is a deity, divine and pure.
Doing the dirty work, as you so aptly named it, is my job and you need to know
that I’m quite capable of it. I’m more than just another sheep. I can think and
act for myself, I can do more than just follow orders. I am worthy beyond all
doubts of the highest post that Arrosha will have to offer!”

He reached over and picked up a sturdy rope from a
table, one I’m sure that he had set there in ready just for me. “There are many
ways that I could kill you, Ashley, but only a few that are appropriate for a
traitor such as yourself. I don’t want to make a mess, though, or wake the
others, so with that restriction in mind, I’ll just have to strangle the evil
out of you.”

“No, Geoffrey, no!” I pleaded hard now, my heart
pounding, my body shaking. “You can’t kill me, you can’t murder me, here,
alone, you just can’t!”

“And why not?” he said, coming toward me with the
rope, snapping it so that I could see its strength.

“Because,” I cried, “The others will wonder what
happened to me.”

“No they won’t. They’ll find you up here tomorrow,
where you’ve hanged yourself.”

“Geoffrey, don’t do it!” my mind raced for
survival, searched for words that could reach him in his madness. “You might
ruin Arrosha’s plan!”

This caught his attention and he slowly lowered
his hands, letting the rope go slack. “Go on,” he said, interested.

“Because, maybe, well maybe she didn’t do it when
I arrived here because, well, maybe,” I stuttered, trying to flesh out the
nugget of an excuse that had popped into my brain only a moment earlier.

“Spit it out!” Geoffrey commanded.

“Maybe she didn’t give you the order to kill me
because she’s not ready yet,” I said, realizing that this argument might not
save me in the long run but it could buy me some time.

“What do you mean?” he asked, suspiciously.

“What I mean is, well, what if, let’s just say
what if,” I said, forcing myself to sound as rational as possible while
realizing that my situation was the equivalent of dancing in a minefield,
“maybe there’s something else that got to be done first before Arrosha can kill
me.”

“She can kill you any time she wants to and
without ever lifting a finger!” he shouted, tensing the rope again, insulted.