The Nightmare Game_Slayers

by S. R. Witt

  Chapter Sixteen

  The Talisman

  Chase kneeled before her unconscious father and wept bitter tears as the black candle sizzled and sputtered on the wall next to her. She didn't know how long she’d stayed there, how much time had passed since she’d stumbled into this cursed basement, but it didn’t matter. Even if she was willing to play the Nightmare Game, she was still trapped.

  And then, in the distance, the metallic snap of a lock echoed through the basement. The sound dragged Chase up from the depths of her despair, and she bolted to her feet.

  Her phone jangled in her pocket, and the sound was so loud in the closed space of the tomb, it hurt Chase’s ears. She fished the phone from the front pocket of her jeans and desperately jabbed at the answer button. “Who is this?”

  “I'm going to guess you found your daddy,” the rough voice from the far end of the line said. “Shame a warrior like him went and turned traitor. Didn’t work out so well for him, did it?”

  “I’ll fucking kill you,” Chase said, recognizing the police officer’s voice. The rage built inside her with every breath she took, lacing her voice with a deadly steel core. “I’ll fucking destroy you, and this town, for what you did to my family.”

  The cop laughed, his voice high and braying with humor. “Take your shot, girl. The basement’s unlocked. Come on up and see the moonrise. It’ll be real pretty tonight.”

  Chase staggered out of the tomb, her breath pumping like a bellows, her legs half-numb from kneeling on the cold stone floor for so long. She kept the phone pressed to her ear, unwilling to let her connection to the outside world lapse. “You better run, motherfucker. If you’re still around when I get up the stairs, you’re going to die. Slow and hard.”

  Chase staggered out of the hallway, and into the empty basement. The boxes were gone. The straps of leather hanging from the ceiling had vanished. Even the body of the beast she’d killed was missing. A single bare bulb hung from the ceiling, its pale incandescence taunting Chase’s memory of a room hung with human hides.

  Her boots pounded the wooden steps as Chase raced to freedom. At the top of the stairs, she hesitated, afraid to put her hand on the knob and find it locked. But when she finally twisted the handle, the door sprang open, spilling her out into the hallway where she’d last seen Paxton.

  “Where’s my brother, asshole?” she snarled into the phone.

  “He’s safe, for now,” the officer responded slyly. “Let’s just say he’s an insurance policy against you acting up. People tell me you can be quite a handful.”

  “You have no fucking idea,” Chase said as she stormed down the hallway, rounded the corner, and headed for the front door.

  “Slow down, girl. You think I’m stupid enough to hang around after I let you out of that basement?” The policeman laughed. “I’m long gone, and so is your brother. But I’m not all bad. I left you the keys to your van and something else on the kitchen counter. Sneak a peek, why don’t you?”

  Chase made her way to the kitchen and saw the keys to the Dodge sitting on the tiled countertop next to a manila envelope. She tore open the yellow flap and dumped the contents onto the counter.

  A single silver disc, its surface inscribed with three concentric circles around which other circles orbited, was attached to a thick chain. The talisman’s surface was marred by rows of divots lined with thin barbed hooks. “What is this bullshit?”

  The policeman snorted with disdain. “The Nightmare Game is an ancient and sacred ritual, girl. Denigrating it won’t get you any closer to your freedom. That is a Slayer’s Talisman. Traditionally, your daddy would have given this to you, but, well, he hasn’t been playing by the rules. See those marks around the rim? If you want to win, you need to fill those with the soul tokens from the Chosen Victims.”

  “What does that even mean?” Chase snapped. She felt like the world was spinning out of control around her. Nothing made any sense anymore.

  Chase pinched the phone between her ear and her shoulder. She wasn’t going to get many more answers from the police officer, so she wanted to make them good. The disc was heavy in her hand when she lifted it up, and it seemed to throb with a low, slow heartbeat of its own. A warmth spread from the talisman to her hand, filling her with a twisted sense of belonging and comfort.

  “Feels nice, doesn’t it?” the police officer teased, his voice husky with a perverse desire. “I remember that, from way back. It’ll feel even better when you take your first victim. When their soul rushes into that talisman, it’s like nothing you’ve ever felt. It’ll change you, girl. Make you into what you always shoulda been.”

  “What is this? The hillbilly Purge?” Chase wanted to drop the talisman, but she couldn’t. Even her bottomless rage wasn’t a match for the desire to hold the thing, to keep it near to her at all times. There was something so very wrong with it, but she didn’t care.

  It filled a hole in her soul she’d never known she had.

  It belonged to her.

  A slow slurping noise rattled through the phone’s speaker, and Chase imagined the police officer tilting his head back and taking a gulp of beer straight from the bottle. “Close, girl. But, no, this is something different. Something sacred. The Red God is hungry, and it demands to be fed in return for its protection. This ritual takes care of that and gives Crucible a champion to defend it. Something you’d know all about if your self-righteous daddy hadn’t packed up his shit and run for the hills. He hurt us bad, girl.”

  “You know what, fuck this,” Chase said. “I’m about to drive this van out of here, away from your shitty little town, until I find civilization. And then I’m going to talk to some actual police officers about my tortured father and my missing mom and brother, and we’re going to come back here and burn this shithole of a town to the ground.”

  “Oh, there’s no running from this, baby girl,” the sheriff said. “I’m going to explain how the rest of this night is going to go down. Listen close, because it’s almost sundown and we won’t have time to chat like this again.”

  Chase started to interrupt the lawman, but he cut her off. “You’re one of the Slayers. There are six others like you, playing the Nightmare Game and hunting the Sacred Martyrs. You have until dawn to find and claim their tokens. The first Slayer to get all five and bring them to the Temple of Bone will get to make the sacrifice that keeps us all safe for another year. That Slayer is the victor, and will be rewarded for what he has done in the Red God’s name.”

  “And what kind of fabulous prizes are we talking about here, Don Pardo?” Chase snarled. “Cruises to the Caribbean? Jet skis? A brand-new car?”

  “If you win, you get to live.”

  “And if I lose?”

  The sheriff chuckled. “It’s not going to matter what happens to you if you lose. You’ll be gone, like dust in the wind.”

  Chase squeezed her phone until it cracked. “How am I supposed to find these martyrs?”

  “You already know the answer. Same way as you found the house. Look to the skies.” The officer drank from his beer again. “It’s almost sundown, girl. Put on the pretty necklace and get ready to play the game.”

  “You’re a lunatic,” Chase said. “You’re all fucking crazy.”

  “That’s not far off the mark, girl, but it doesn’t matter. The whole world’s gone to hell, you just happen to be one of the few who gets to see just how far it’s fallen up close and personal.” The sheriff took another sloppy drink. “If it’s any consolation, your daddy’s family’s won this thing more often than not. Maybe his blood will get you through this in one piece.”

  “Yeah,” Chase said. “I’m going to have a lot more of your blood on me before this is over.”

  The phone went dead in Chase’s hand, and she shoved it into her pocket. She held the talisman up closer to look at it, and a sick fascination crept over her. There was something about it, something forbidden and alluring that she couldn’t deny.

  Chase lifted the talisman�
��s chain over her neck and let it fall into place over her chest.

  As the disc came to rest on her sternum, a brilliant green light flashed through Chase’s mind, a spear of ice blasted through her chest, and her world came apart at the seams.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The Waking Dead

  Chase woke to the sound of screams ringing around her. She was lying flat on her back on the floor, a burning ache in the center of her chest, and a throbbing lump at the base of her skull where it had smacked against the tiles when she’d fallen. She felt like she'd been used as a punching bag by the world's angriest boxer. “What the fuck now?” Chase asked as she dragged her bruised and battered body off the floor.

  The screams grew louder, roaring around the outside of the house. Lights flashed through the wispy, mildewed drapes hanging over the windows. Creatures growled and barked, adding a primal undertone to the screaming.

  Recognizing those growls sent a jolt of pure adrenaline racing through Chase’s bloodstream. She pushed away from the counter and crept into the dining room. Crouching next to a window, Chase peeled back the edge of the curtains and peered into the darkness.

  Shadowy figures flitted through the shadows at the edge of the property. Their tailored suits faded into the shadows, flickering in and out of the fading sunlight as they passed between the trees. The same black masks Chase had seen at the truck stop earlier that day obscured their faces, but she had no doubt the cacophony of screams was coming from their covered mouths.

  Sleepers, a dark voice whispered to Chase, slaughter them before they can do the same to you.

  The screams clawed at Chase’s ears and raked at her sanity, forcing her away from the window. She lurched back into the safety of the house's darkness and clutched her chest. A burning weight had settled over her heart, making it difficult to breathe, difficult even to think. What had happened? What was wrong with her?

  She’d draped the talisman around her neck, and then…

  Chase rushed back to the kitchen, expecting to find the silver disc lying on the floor. But it wasn’t there. She reached under her shirt and found a thin, circular ridge under the skin covering her sternum. Chase traced the raised line with her fingertips, a growing dread gathering inside her.

  Touching the talisman hidden beneath her skin did something to Chase’s head. A portion of her brain she'd never realized existed before opened, spreading her awareness wide like the petals of an exotic flower. Chase’s vision shifted, twisting wide to reveal a glowing series of green concentric circles in the air before her. Dark runes danced around the perimeters of the circles, resolving themselves into glowing golden orbs and black sunken divots.

  “Mind, Body, Spirit,” she read as the runes snapped into focus around the three large spheres on the talisman’s outer ring. Small runes glowed within each of the spheres, and Chase understood they were numbers: a four glowed inside the Body circle, five inside the Spirit, and three inside the Mind.

  Despite the horror of her situation, Chase was fascinated by what the talisman showed her. She recognized it as a character sheet of sorts, the kind of thing she’d expect to see in a video game or in a rulebook for a role-playing game. The black magic bullshit she’d been dealing with since she arrived in Crucible was terrifying, but this was almost familiar to her. It broke her place in this insane new world down into simple terms she could understand.

  Chase was a little surprised to know that her Spirit was ranked higher than her Body, but she supposed that made sense. Rage and willpower had gotten her through most of her life, and her memory of what she’d read in the murder manual told her those were sub-attributes tied to Spirit.

  What the hell am I thinking, she thought. This is my life, not a game.

  Only, it was. The Nightmare Game. Slayers, Sleepers, and Martyrs.

  She chewed on her lip for a moment and then blew out an angry sigh.

  She wasn't going to figure out anything hiding in this house. If she wanted answers, she needed to get away from these freaks, and into the van. Chase drew her knife and flicked the blade open. She wished she had a gun, even a pistol, but she’d have to make do with what she had on hand.

  Chase burst through the front door, knife clenched in her left hand, keys in her right. The van’s ignition key jutted from between the knuckles of her middle and ring finger, a makeshift talon that would also stabilize the key so it couldn’t slip and slide out of her grasp when she tried to unlock the van’s door.

  The screaming maniacs reacted to Chase’s exit from the house instantly. They emerged from the tree line on the far side of the property, heads tilted back, pouring their howls into the night sky. Chase ignored them, focusing on the van, hoping she could reach it before the Sleepers reached her. Her boots crunched on the gravel, every step sounding like a mouthful of popcorn.

  Screaming in Chase's left ear warned her seconds before one of the Sleepers charged into her. With an alarmed shout, Chase ducked back and let the attacker's long knife whip through the space she’d just vacated. The masked man screamed again, throwing his head back as he howled in rage. A yellow aura blazed around the man as he threw himself at Chase, his knife’s blade hissing through the air in front of her face.

  Chase twisted around the man’s left side and slashed her hooked knife in a savage arc as she passed him. The claw-like extraction tip of her weapon hooked behind the Sleeper’s trachea and ripped through it with a sound like a fistful of bubble wrap being crushed. The man’s scream became a strangled burbling and blood poured in a sheet from the wound.

  The yellow aura surrounding the man flowed away from him and into Chase’s talisman. In Chase’s mind’s eye, she watched the glow curl into three of the divots in the center of her talisman’s image, and a blazing heat erupted in her chest. It reminded her of the rush of power she’d felt in the basement when she’d killed the dog monster, but this was more focused, more intense. She was dimly aware of the Sleeper’s death scream echoing within her as his soul was trapped in the talisman’s barbed grip.

  Chase shuddered as the ecstasy of her first kill as a Slayer faded away. She clutched her hand over the talisman’s outline against the skin of her chest and forced herself to keep moving. There were too many of the screaming Sleepers closing in on her. If she didn’t reach the van in the next few seconds, they’d swarm her and drag her to the ground. If that happened, no amount of superior training or combat reflexes would keep her alive.

  Another Sleeper rolled out from beneath the van as Chase reached the door. The black-masked woman swung a baling hook at Chase’s knees, trying to rip through her tendons and cripple her.

  Chase stomped down on the Sleeper’s weapon hand, slamming it into the ground and crushing the small bones of her fingers between the baling hook’s handle and the ground. The masked woman’s scream rose to a fever pitch as the skin covering her knuckles split to reveal blackened bones and oozing corruption. Chase drove her other knee into the Sleeper’s face, and felt something crunch and give way to her attack.

  The Sleeper flopped over onto her back and writhed in the dust like a snake with a shattered spine. Chase wanted to extinguish the woman’s yellow aura and claim her soul, but her need to escape and get on with hunting the Sacred Martyrs won out over her desire to destroy the Sleepers.

  Chase jammed the van’s key into the lock on the driver’s side door and wrenched it open. She hooked her left hand, knife still clenched in it, through the steering wheel and pulled herself up toward the driver’s seat.

  Too late, Chase realized she wasn’t alone in the van. A masked figure exploded from the shadows in a rush and drove his foot into her chest. The blow knocked loose her grip on the steering wheel and sent Chase staggering back to the gravel. Her right heel twisted on a rock, and her ankle crumpled beneath her weight. Chase landed hard, bolts of pain streaking up her spine from her tailbone as she fell on her ass.

  Fuck, Chase thought, get up.

  The masked figure from the van hopped down a
nd landed next to her. He drove a boot hard into the side of her right thigh, and she twisted to deflect the worst of the impact. The Sleeper kept coming after her, the tips of his Oxfords stabbing at her as she rolled away. He raised his foot overhead to stomp down on Chase, and she saw her chance.

  Her knife flashed through the night air and bit into the back of the Sleeper’s calf. The blade’s curved extractor tip slashed through the tendons on the back of the Sleeper’s leg and sent blood spraying across the gravel. As his right leg crumpled beneath him, the attacker's left leg twisted in the air and he flopped back onto his shoulders with an agonized screech pouring from his throat.

  The Sleeper rolled, blood spurting from his wound, and roared at Chase. “We’ll destroy you. We'll consume you.”

  He lunged awkwardly toward her, forcing Chase to back away from his outstretched hands. She rolled onto her knees and reared up, knife overhead, ready to slash down and open the man’s back.

  Rough hands closed around Chase's weapon hand and shoulders from behind and dragged her off balance. More of the Sleepers had reached her, and they pulled her toward the woods where even more of them waited.

  Chase twisted her left arm and dragged it down through the hands scrabbling to keep hold of it. The razor-sharp serrated blade slashed through fingers and palms as Chase freed herself, splattering blood down the studded sleeve of her leather jacket.

  Startled, the Sleepers hanging onto her shoulder were too slow to avoid Chase’s crossbody swipe. The blade’s serrated length chewed through cloth and flesh, sending more of the masked attackers screaming back and clutching their wounds.

  Free of her assailants, Chase scrambled to her feet and sprinted for the van. By a miracle, she still had her knife and the keys clutched in her hands. She jumped up on the van’s running board. A quick glance into the back of the van showed her it was empty, and she hoisted herself into the driver’s seat and slammed the door.