The Nightmare Game Read online

  THE NIGHTMARE GAME

  by

  S. Suzanne Martin

  Kindle Edition

  Copyright ©2011 by S. Suzanne Martin

  Revised, 2012

  Reformatted, September 2013

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, by photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations used in the context of reviews. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or by any other means without the permission of the author is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized printed or electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights and respect for her hard work is appreciated. This book is a work of fiction and all characters and sports teams are fictitious; any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Kindle Edition License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  While great care has gone into this book and its editing, I am only human, except in the eyes of my pets, Tango and Delta, to whom I am faithful servant. If you find any mistakes, please call them to my attention at [email protected] so that I can make corrections for future editions. Thanks.

  Cover by S. Suzanne Martin

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS:

  My sincerest thanks to: Judy Gundel, Cathy Minerva, Cherry Rains, and the best English teacher I ever had, Mr. Tommy Armour.

  A very special thanks to my sister, Margaret Martin. Without your excellent editing help, this book would not have been possible. You’re a wonderful sister and I’m lucky to have you.

  This book is dedicated to our beloved parents, the late Luise and Berlin Martin. There’s not a day that goes by that Margaret and I don’t miss you.

  PART ONE – INVOLVEMENT

  CHAPTER ONE

  It was in a dream that I first saw him, that summer of my thirty-ninth year, the summer of the recurring dream. It was always the same, that dream, never veering, never changing in the slightest. Always, the handsome man walked past me, down the foggy, tree-lined boulevard, stopping to turn and smile at me before he began to walk away. His sleek brown hair hung just below his shoulders and swung with a movement that matched the grace of his gait. I could hear the sound of his footsteps and the clank of his walking stick on the cobbled street as he walked, but I could not hear my own steps at all. I heard only my own breath, loud but irregular, and my heart, beating so hard I wondered that I could hear anything else. He stopped again, but this time when he smiled, he beckoned me to draw near. As I walked toward him slowly, I trembled, for with his pale skin and dark hair and eyes, he was the most strikingly beautiful man I had ever seen in my entire life. He held out one of his white-gloved hands, inviting me to come even closer, while in the other he held a walking stick, upon which the intricately carved crystalline head of a dragon was set. As I approached him, I noticed how exquisitely perfect his features and complexion were. I reached out my hand. He took hold of it and still smiling, began to talk to me. But as his mouth moved to speak, no words emanated from it. Instead a soft music began to flow from the mouth of the dragon, beautiful, uplifting, soulful, and then, from behind me, came a horrible shrieking that had surely been spawned in the very pit of hell.

  That was the dream. It ended here, always, at exactly the same point every single time, never allowing me to finish it in order to discover its conclusion. Each and every time without fail, it left me drained and depleted, as if I had not slept one wink the entire night. At first I dealt with the exhaustion as best I could, for upon awakening the shrieking inevitably turned out to be nothing more ominous than my alarm clock, signaling once again that it was time to get up and go to work at a job which had become nothing more than a drudge and a paycheck long ago. But as time progressed and the nights turned into days and the days turned into weeks and then months, the dream haunted my sleep as it appeared, unasked, unwelcome, unwanted. It jangled my nerves more and more every time, becoming increasingly frequent and progressively disconcerting. This dream began to torment me in earnest when it intruded into my coveted weekends, my precious free time that belonged to me alone, to catch up on my sleep, to spend as I wished, doing what I wished. I would have welcomed this lovely man and the foggy boulevard upon which he walked had I ever been allowed to finish the dream and hear what he wanted to tell me. But I was not.

  On weekends, the shrieking of the alarm clock was replaced a myriad of rude and jolting interruptions, designed, it seemed, for no other purpose than to rouse me from the dream. At first came the telephone, clamoring away due to a wrong number, a telemarketer, or even no voice whatsoever at the other end of the line. When I began turning off the phone’s ringer, that sound was replaced by a host of other noises that seemed expressly designed to awaken me, everything from the sirens of ambulances, police and fire vehicles to the shrill barking of every single dog in the neighborhood going crazy at the exact same time. These Saturday and Sunday interruptions only ever happened whenever I had the dream. Sleep deprivation and its companion, exhaustion, lured my increasingly paranoid brain into believing these events had conspired for the sole intention of preventing me from completing it. Tired and depleted, I’d always curse as I crawled out of bed. “Damn!” my first words of the day would inevitably be. “Why can’t this dream ever finish itself?”

  These memories dominated my mind as I later sat seated in an airplane headed for New Orleans, occupying my time sifting through the events of the last few months, events which were overshadowed by that recurring dream. Until then, I’d been relatively comfortable with my life. Not exactly happy, mind you, but adequately content. Then, about six months ago for no known reason, I began to descend into a severe malaise that I chalked up to a mid-life crisis. Then the dream began. It seemed innocent enough at first, because it wasn’t a nightmare. However, its constant recurrence combined with its refusal to finish soon turned it into one, deepening my despondency. Along with the dream came a new fascination with New Orleans, which I attributed to a case of homesickness, of wanting to go to a place I remembered from my youth. After all, I’d grown up in a small town not too far north of the city.

  A few weeks ago, after a truly horrible fortieth birthday, my best friend Carolyne took me out for dinner after work to celebrate and came through for me once again. It was on that night that our plans began to emerge for our long weekend getaway.

  “C’mon, Ashley,” Carolyne chided me later that evening, after a few more glasses of wine. “You need a real vacation. You owe yourself one. Why not get out of town? It’s been ages since you’ve been. At least go visit your family.”

  “I’ve only got a few days left this year and besides, my family’s not even going to be home. Remember, I told you about the cruise they’re getting ready to take. They’ll be gone a whole month.”

  “And you didn’t want to go?”

  “Yes, I wanted to go. My sister Jan even offered to pay my way.”

  “And you still decided not to?”

  “Carolyne, you know I don’t even get that much vacation. Besides, my company would never let me take that much time off all at once
.”

  “Okay then, let’s you and I take a short trip. Where do you want to go?”

  No sooner had the words escaped her lips than I blurted out, “New Orleans. Let’s go to New Orleans!”

  “Ashley, you’ve been obsessing about New Orleans for some time now. Any particular reason?”

  “No, not really. I can’t explain it. It just a strong urge. It almost feels like it’s been calling me.”

  “Great! Let’s go. I hear that the Quarter’s made a big comeback.”

  “I’d really love that, but only if I can afford it, only if we can find a real bargain. With all my recent expenses, I haven’t been this broke in years.”

  “I’m sure we can find a great deal. Let’s start looking tomorrow.”

  Clicking our glasses in a toast, Carolyne said, “All right, then. New Orleans, here we come!”

  So perhaps I couldn’t go with my family on their cruise, but Carolyne and I could make our own fun for a few days. I knew that any trip that we took together would be a blast.

  We looked around for some great deals the next day, but by late morning, I still didn’t see a price with which I could be comfortable, realizing that I should have taken the vacation before I bought my house or put a little less money into the down payment.

  It was that same afternoon, however, that the e-mails and faxes began to arrive, ads for a townhouse apartment at incredibly low rates, almost as if it were the answer to my prayers. It was as if somebody out there knew how strapped for cash I was at the moment and how badly I needed to get away. The townhouse was an older building, not in pristine condition and had obviously seen better days, but for the price, it was pretty much what I expected. Besides, I’d always wanted to stay in a house in the French Quarter that had an old-style courtyard. It didn’t matter to me that it was just a little run-down. After all, we only needed it for four days and we weren’t actually aiming to spend that much time there anyway with all the activities that we had planned. It was mainly just a place to hang our hats and sleep.

  It was with excitement that I was counting down the days until our New Orleans holiday. I’d packed and arranged for my next door neighbor to feed my two cats, Samson and Delilah, while I was gone. Last night I was ready, waiting eagerly for morning to arrive, until Carolyne lowered the boom about not being able to go. Her vacation had been postponed because something had suddenly come up at the office and her boss needed her there this afternoon and all of next week, but she felt so bad about this new development that she would gladly drive me to the airport early this morning. Carolyne had enough free time coming up to be able to postpone the trip, but for me it was use-or-lose-it time for my vacation. If I didn’t take it now, I’d just lose the time altogether. Since our busy season was just around the corner, it would be quite a while until I could get away again. I needed badly to get away. Now. The stress in my life was starting to show. My fair skin was beginning to look blotchy, my straight light brown hair was becoming limp and my blue-gray eyes were overly anxious, holding a timid, fearful and tense expression these days. I wasn’t really looking forward to traveling alone, but with all the expenses I’d had recently, this trip was all I could afford.

  I tried to cheer myself up, taking out the slip of paper on which I’d written the apartment’s contact information. Miss Rochere, that was whom I needed to see. She had the key to the place. Her office was pretty close to the townhouse. When Carolyne and I had planned this trip, I was excited about staying in a townhome with a courtyard. That had been a dream of mine my entire life. But now I truly wished I were staying in a hotel, where other people would be around me. I was getting a bad feeling about this trip now. “Don’t be silly, Ashley,” I told myself. “You’re just worried about getting lonely.”

  I told myself that everything would be okay, that it was just for four days. Even by myself, a long weekend in New Orleans should be fun. At least I didn’t have to go into work and besides, it’s not like I’d be visiting a place that I’ve never been before. Finally my excitement began to return. Hey, I was no stranger to New Orleans. Growing up in a nearby parish less than a two hour drive away, I took occasional bus day trips there with family or friends as a child and older adolescent. I knew the city a little, albeit not much and very superficially. I had wanted to move to there after college, but when I couldn’t find a job in my field, I realized it was simply not meant to be and I moved instead to Austin. So unlike any other city in which I’d ever found myself, New Orleans held a mystery and a romance to which I could not wait to return. It had been far too long since I’d visited her and just thinking about this old familiarity perked me up now. Alone or not, I was looking forward to seeing the Crescent City again. I was finally anticipating all the tours that I’d always wanted to take, of the Quarter and the Garden District, tours of the plantation and bayou country outside the city as well. I would make the most of this trip. And who knows, I heard Carolyne’s voice chirping inside my head, “You might just meet the man of your dreams on this trip.” The man of my dreams. Now wouldn’t that be something?

  Despite my recent protests to the contrary, I was ready for it, too, more ready than ever to meet the right guy, the one who was supposed to be for me. It was weird, I knew, but ever since my earliest teens, I’d always had a strong feeling that he was out there somewhere and that he wanted to meet me as much as I wanted to meet him. I was certain that we’d recognize each other the moment we met. I’d waited patiently and looked everywhere for him, but he just never showed up. Looking back at all of the men I had ever dated, and there were many, there was not one who resembled him in the slightest. Even though the years passed, I could never completely shake the feeling that the other half of my soul was out there waiting, longing for me. Mostly on hot, humid nights when I had trouble sleeping, I could still, even now, physically feel him out there, calling me, thirsting for me, making my insides ache for him in that sweet, delicious, painful way of his. Eventually, I started giving up entirely on the idea that he would ever show up. Cruel fate had caused us to stand each other up and my loneliness became even worse. It was a fact I’d come to accept gracefully until the dreams stirred up my old feelings for him, feelings that were now almost unbearable. Increasingly strong carnal cravings for the imaginary young man from the foggy boulevard gnawed at me daily, intense yearnings and hot, humid desires. Why did he haunt me so?

  I snapped myself out of my thoughts, realizing that I’d once more become so immersed in them that I’d gone off into my own little world again. Before I drifted off into a doze, I forced myself to come to my senses and I stretched, yawned and opened my eyes. But instead of sitting in my airplane seat, I was standing again on the now too-familiar foggy boulevard. The trim figure of the dream man was walking in front of me, away from me. What was it about him that attracted me so irresistibly, so fiercely to him? For the first time since it began, I realized in my dream that it was a dream, and so, also for the first time, I took a deliberate action; I ran up to him and tapped his shoulder. He turned around and smiled and I saw him more clearly than I ever had in any dream before. His warm brown and gold eyes were not only seeing me, they were seeing right through me, into my heart, melting my flesh inside. We locked eyes and in that moment we knew each other thoroughly. I knew I was in love with him and would be forever. He was the one, the one for whom I had waited my entire life, the one for whom I had longed until my insides ached and churned, melted and re-formed and then melted again over and over, year after year. He was the one that had never shown up and here he was now, so beautiful and so perfect, his love pouring into me as mine poured into him. But instead of lifting up his cane for me to hear the crystalline dragon’s song, as he always had in these dreams, he took my hand and drew me near to him. He looked at me with great urgency, opened his mouth to speak and this time the words came pouring out of his mouth, “Ladies and gentlemen, we are now arriving in New Orleans and approaching the Louis Armstrong Airport. Please give all cups to your flight a
ttendant. Make sure your trays are in the upright position and your seatbelts are fastened. Please remain seated after we’ve landed and until we have arrived at the gate. The temperature is a humid 94 degrees in the Crescent City and no rain is expected this weekend, but a cold front should be coming in later today. We hope you enjoyed your flight and thank you for flying with us.”

  I awoke for real now and with great grogginess, I complied.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I gathered together my belongings and muddled my way off the plane. Still half in a daze, I wandered down to the luggage area, retrieved my suitcase and went outside to catch a cab. The taxis and transport buses were, as always, waiting for arriving passengers to take them to their destinations. An energetic, smiling black man, long and lean in both face and body, hurried up to me from the taxicab that was first in line.

  “Need a ride, ma’am?”

  “Thanks, yes, I do,” I told him almost automatically. I still felt a little tired and wooly-headed from the latest dream interruption from the plane, as I always did. The heaviness of the increased air pressure that came from arriving into a city below sea level wasn’t helping either.

  “Here, let me get those,” he said, grabbing my suitcase in one hand, my carry-on in the other before tossing them both into his cab’s trunk.

  I climbed into the back seat of the taxi as he started his meter.

  “Where to, ma’am?”

  “I’m not quite sure, actually.” The grogginess served to force an address I had memorized right out of my brain. “I just know it’s in the Quarter. Just a minute.” I pulled the slip of paper that Carolyne had given me out of my purse and handed it to him. “I need to go here.” He read it quickly and handed it back to me.

  “Oh, that’s easy, I’ll getcha there quick.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You movin’ to our fair city?” He asked as we pulled out onto Airline Highway.