The Nightmare Game_Slayers

by S. R. Witt

  A voice, low and gruff, followed the gunshot’s echo. “You know the rules, assholes. You know what happens if you break them, too.”

  All of the masked figures hissed, and their suited leader squinted as if in pain. Ripples passed across the smooth surface of his face, like a stone skipped over a pond. For a moment, Chase saw something pale beneath the man’s flesh, something that reminded her of broken and discarded bones at the bottom of a well. “You were lucky, this time,” he said, all traces of good humor vanishing from his voice. “You won’t be so lucky the next time we see you.”

  The businessman turned away from Chase and Paxton and walked toward the lawman who’d fired the gun. They nodded as they passed one another, like a pair of opposing lawyers acknowledging one another before a case they both knew was going to be long and brutal.

  Chase recognized the approaching officer as the same one who’d pulled them over on their way into town. Of course, she thought to herself, they’ve probably only got the one.

  “Put away the knife,” she hissed at Paxton, who dutifully made the weapon vanish back into the hiding place under the wheelchair’s armrest. “Don’t say a goddamn thing unless he asks you a direct question.”

  “Yes, mother,” Paxton said, a surly edge creeping into his voice. They usually got along fine, but there was something about this town that was fraying their nerves and adding friction to the edges of the relationship where there normally was none. Chase thought of offering a snappy comeback of her own, but instead reached forward and squeezed her hand on Paxton’s shoulder to remind him they were on the same team.

  The sheriff stopped a few yards away from them and tilted his chin. With a start, Chase realized the weapon he’d fired was still clutched in his right hand, dangling by his side.

  “We just want to go,” Chase said. It was the truth, maybe not all of it, but enough of it. She wanted to be away from this place, away from the freaks in the black masks and away from the sheriff. “We weren’t doing anything wrong.”

  The sheriff smirked at that and twisted his lips back under cover of his unruly mustache. “No? If I search your brother’s wheelchair, I’m not going to find any nasty little toys the two of you shouldn’t be playing with, will I?”

  Paxton tensed, but Chase forced herself to stay loose and calm. He might have seen the knife, but there was no way the sheriff could know about the shotgun or the pistol hidden in the secret pouch in the back of Paxton’s chair. He was bluffing, trying to draw them out and make them reveal more than he knew. Chase wasn’t taking the bait.

  “We were just trying to get back to our van when they attacked us. I don’t even know who they are. Or why they wanted us to leave town.”

  The sheriff raised his eyebrows at that. “Leave town you say? Surely they know that’s not in the cards. Not for a few days, anyway.”

  Chase didn’t like the sound of that, but she didn’t know what to say. So she just repeated her earlier request. “Can we go?”

  “I ain’t holding you,” the officer responded. A thin smirk flattened his lower lip against the bulk of his mustache. His eyes narrowed to razor slits couched in puffy pouches of fat and broken blood vessels.

  As Chase wheeled Paxton around in a tight circle and headed for the van, she kept waiting for a bullet to find her spine. The policeman hated her, she could see that now, and he was going to end her if she didn’t get out of his territory in a hurry. Chase was just about to let out a sigh of relief that he hadn’t decided to kill her right there in the parking lot when the officer’s words froze her in her tracks.

  “You don’t know what you’ve walked into, girl,” he said, his voice low and grave, “but you better learn quick. The Nightmare Game has already started, and you’re playing whether you want to or not. I don’t know what your mommy and daddy told you about this place, but I hope it was enough. I can stop the Sleepers from hurting you while the sun is in the sky, but once the moon comes out, there’re no promises what will happen.”

  Chase’s anger got the best of her. She released Paxton’s wheelchair and spun toward the cop on one booted heel. She jabbed her finger at the lawman and the buckles and spikes on her leather jacket jangled against one another. “I’m not playing your game. And I don’t need your protection. Those fuckers show up again, their next stop is the inside of a morgue.”

  The sheriff stared at Chase with eyes so old and tired she felt the weight of their years settling around her shoulders like a noose. “That guy who just left? He owns most of this county and about a billion other places on the outside. If your daddy hadn’t run off and abandoned his responsibilities after the last Game, that asshole and his fancy buddies wouldn’t have had a chance in hell of getting a foothold in Crucible.

  “But your old man walked off the job, and so their money’s the only thing keeping this shithole from taking one last spin around the drain and vanishing into Satan’s asshole. They want to call the shots, and they’re willing to push the rules a bit to get what they want.”

  The sheriff spat on the ground and holstered his pistol. “If you think I’m the bad guy, girl, you’re not thinking. I’m just one of the little people trying to survive while the powers that be fight it out over the scraps of this shitty, broken world. I’m doing my part. You should think about doing yours before it’s too late.”

  Chase watched the cop leave, a burning ball of rage and confusion chewing through her guts.

  Chapter Ten

  Decisions

  Chase didn’t wait for Paxton to haul himself out of his chair and into the van’s driver seat. As soon as she unlocked the driver’s door and wrenched it open, she hooked her hands under her brother’s armpits and hoisted him into position.

  “Hey!” Paxton snapped, irritated at his sister’s manhandling of him. “I’m not a fucking baby for you to sling around, all right?”

  Chase glanced down the shadowed passage between the trailers. The cop’s car was parked across its end, and she felt his eyes locked on her even at this distance. There was something wrong in this little town, something that ran deeper than Chase understood. There was a poison in the veins of every person in Crucible, and if she didn’t get herself and her brother out of here soon, it would infect them as well.

  If it hadn’t already.

  “I’m sorry, but we need to get the hell out of here.” Chase didn’t say another word as she folded up his chair and carried it around to the back of the van.

  The sheriff’s cruiser sped away, spitting up a rooster tail of gravel and broken asphalt that pinged off the trailers like a summer hailstorm squall. Chase jerked at the sound, then glared over her shoulder at the departing police officer.

  Fuming, she stormed around the side of the van and climbed into the passenger’s seat. “What the fuck is wrong with this place?”

  Paxton nodded vigorously and eased the van out of its parking space and between the trailers flanking it. “Did you see that guy’s leg?”

  Chase drummed her fingers on her knees. “Yeah, I saw it. Prosthetic maybe?”

  Paxton shuddered. “And their faces?”

  “I’m out of explanations, bro,” Chase said. She leaned back in the bucket seat and crossed her feet ahead of her in the van’s footwell. “I don’t know what to say.”

  Paxton didn’t say anything as they drove down the town’s main street. “Feel like checking out the library?”

  Chase raised one eyebrow. “Need to do some light reading?”

  Paxton laughed as he pulled into one of the few parking spaces in front of the run-down old building. “No, but that motel clerk said something about the old Harrow place. Maybe there’s something in the newspaper about it? Something about our family?”

  Chase kneaded her eyeballs with the palms of her hands, pressing until sparklers of light danced through the blackness in her skull. The pressure helped to drive back the blossoming headache, but only a little. “Probably can’t hurt. Maybe we can find out more about the Nightmare Game. Find som
e way to get out of it.”

  Paxton nodded and reached out and put his hand on Chase’s shoulder. “I don’t want you to take that guy’s deal, okay? We’re in this together. I’m not going to cut and run on you.”

  Chase cupped her hand over her brother’s. “Maybe if I hadn’t—maybe if Austin had turned out differently, none of this would have happened. Maybe mom and dad wouldn’t have had to come here to try and stop the game.”

  Paxton rolled his eyes. “You were five years old, Chase. Five. You can’t keep beating yourself up for saving us all from those guys when you were in fucking kindergarten.”

  Chase wrestled with what to tell her brother. She wasn’t ashamed of the murders, those men had had their deaths coming as soon as they stepped into her home. She didn’t know what they were looking for, but her parents had told her they were bad men who’d come to hurt them. The murders were righteous, there was no getting around that.

  “Maybe you’re right, I don’t know anymore.” Chase sighed and looked out the window. “Let’s just try to find mom and dad. Then we can get the hell out of this mess of a town before the shit hits the fan.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Rules of The Nightmare Game: Signs of the Hunt

  Though the Sacred Martyrs are willing to perish for the sake of the Red God’s protection, self-sacrifice is a betrayal of the life they have been given. A martyr must strive to live, even as the Slayers close in for the kill.

  And, yet, the Red God does not wish for the dark hunt to become a punishment for the martyrs. Each of their souls are marked by one of the Signs of the Hunt, a great glowing circle that hangs in the sky for all Slayers to see. No matter the weather or position of the sun or moon, the Signs of the Hunt shall be visible to the Slayers at any distance.

  These signs shall fade when the Slayer is within sight of one of the Sacred Martyrs, unless the Slayer wears his mask. A masked Slayer can see a trail to the nearest Martyr at all times.

  The Red God may also reveal to the Slayers any signs or symbols He chooses. It is well known that the Red God’s spirit ignites a red sign above the Temple of Bones when the time of the sacrifice is drawn near.

  Surely it is a sign of our Lord’s favor that he gifts his chosen with such unmistakable signals of his love and devotion to our continued survival.

  —Alexander Shibley, 1743, from The Great Game of the Gods

  Chapter Twelve

  The Librarian

  The library was a single story cube of peeling paint and dry-rotted wood with a patchwork roof of wrinkled composite shingles and naked tarpaper. “I guess they don’t put a lot of stock in book learning around these parts,” Chase said with a smile.

  “At least they’ve got ramps,” Paxton pointed out and rolled his chair up them and to the door.

  The interior wasn’t much nicer than the exterior. The dropped tile ceiling had more water stains showing on the rectangular panels than not. The recessed lighting flickered and buzzed, and more than half of the tubes were dead and black in their housings. The shelves were old and sagged under the weight of the books haphazardly stacked upon them.

  “Can I help you?” asked a young woman in a modest skirt and plain blouse. She was taller than Chase but softer, and her thick glasses made her eyes watery and bulbous, like a sheep’s.

  “We’re doing some research,” Paxton offered, “kind of a genealogical thing, I guess you could say.”

  The woman frowned for a moment. The gesture made her look much younger than Chase had first thought. She wasn’t in her thirties, but much closer to twenty. “We don’t get a lot of researchers around these parts,” she said with a bashful grin. “What in particular were you looking for?”

  Chase crossed her arms over her chest and let her brother do the talking. Paxton was better at it, and he’d become very good at putting people at ease over the years. “We’re trying to find out some information about the old Harrow place. Have you heard of it?”

  For a moment, Chase felt a strange connection to the librarian. A thread of tension ran between them, and Chase found herself simultaneously afraid of and enraged by the soft young woman.

  When their eyes met, Chase saw that the librarian’s face was obscured by some sort of mask. Her features were stiff and plasticky, like a doll smeared with heavy makeup.

  And then, almost as quickly as the image had appeared, it was gone. Chase dragged her eyes away from the librarian, who looked away from Chase to focus on Paxton.

  “I’ve heard of it, but just in passing. There may be mention of it in the newspaper?” She was flustered and pointedly avoided Chase’s gaze. “It’s in the basement, the microfiche that is, but we have an elevator.”

  The librarian led them toward the back of the library, then abruptly stopped and turned on one heel. She offered her hand to Paxton, saying, “I’m so sorry, where are my manners. My name is Sarah, I’m the town librarian. Pretty much by default, I guess. Nobody else really wanted the job. Not a lot of readers in Crucible.”

  She shook Paxton’s hand firmly, then reached for Chase’s. There was a moment’s hesitation as Chase steeled herself for some new vision or burst of light, but when she took Sarah’s hand, she found it warm and inviting. They shook hands, and then Sarah resumed the guided tour. “It’s just over here.”

  The elevator rumbled after the librarian pressed the call button. One of the doors was slightly askew, and Chase tried not to imagine all the ways it could malfunction. At least they were only going to the basement, which couldn’t have been more than ten feet down.

  “The archives only go back about forty years. We ran out of money to scan any more papers, and the town won’t let me take grants from the Iniquitas people.” She blew out a frustrated sigh and gestured in exasperation to the small world outside the library’s windows. “It’s not like the business isn’t already here. Taking their money won’t bring it any closer.”

  Chase raised an eyebrow at that and feigned ignorance about the kind of people who ran businesses around Crucible. If Iniquitas belonged to the asshole between the trailers, she couldn’t blame the town for turning down his money. “Business?”

  Sarah bobbed her head excitedly as the elevator chimed and the door slid open. She braced the door open with one arm and gestured for them to embark before her. She slid in behind Chase and let the door close. “Yes, the Iniquitas Group. They’re some sort of mining consortium. They specialize in rare earth metals. I guess, anyway. That’s what they told me the first and only time they gave the library a grant.”

  The elevator descended for three seconds, stopped with a bump, and then the doors opened onto an ill-lit basement stacked floor to ceiling with moldering shelves. “That grant paid for the last thirty years of microfiche papers,” Sarah said. “If the town elders would let me accept another round of funding, we could probably move it all to computers. Boy, that’d get you in and out of here in a flash,” she said with a smile and snapped her fingers. Chase put her hands on Paxton’s wheelchair and guided him over the uneven concrete floor to the microfiche machine enshrined on a shiny metal desk in one corner of the basement. Sarah gave them a brief tutorial on how to operate the machine, where to find the cartridges, and then pointed them toward the index. “I’m not sure exactly what you’re looking for, but it seems like it was about seven years ago this October when there was a big fuss out of the old Harrow place. You might want to start there.”

  With that, she turned away from them and headed back to the elevator. “Don’t hesitate to ask if you have any questions,” she said. “There’s a phone right there next to the microfiche. If you pick it up, it will ring upstairs, and I can answer any questions you might have.”

  Chase raised an eyebrow at Paxton, who offered her a shrug. They said nothing until the librarian was gone and then got to work. “She seems nice enough,” Paxton said.

  Chase sucked some air through her teeth and scratched her chin. “Maybe too nice? I think she’s the first person in this town that d
idn’t try to run us off.”

  Paxton pressed his eyes against the viewport on the microfiche machine. “And the motel clerk.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Chase said. “I’d forgotten about her. I was too busy keeping you from getting your ass kicked to notice how friendly she was.”

  “Aha,” Paxton said. “According to this index, the cartridge with the story the librarian was talking about should be over on the third rack, fourth from the floor.”

  “Oh, so now I’m your microfiche pack mule?” Chase asked as she made her way to the appropriate cabinet. They were all relatively new, and the microfiche cartridges inside looked untouched. She found the one labeled October 2009 and brought it to her brother. “Here you go.”

  Chase slotted the compact cartridge into the hole on the side of the machine, and it fell into place with a heavy clunk. Paxton rotated the dial and adjusted the focus, spinning through the pages faster and faster. “How many people you think die in a town this size every year?”

  Chase found another chair in the corner and pulled it over next to the desk. “I don’t know. There can’t be more than a couple hundred people living here. So, what? Two or three deaths every year?”

  Paxton let out a long, low whistle. “In 2009, on October 30th, seven people died. All of them were in their late teens, early twenties. There’s no article about how they died, just obituaries. And those all end with the same phrase, ‘Lost to the dreams of the sleeping.’ What the hell does that mean?”

  Chase grumbled and nudged her brother. “I get it, it’s a scary place full of dead people. See if you can find anything about our,” she caught herself, “about the Harrow place.”

  “Ah, here it is.” Paxton pushed back from the viewport after a few moments. He wheeled out of her way and gestured for Chase to take his place. “I don’t think you’re going to like what it says, though.”