Free The Nightmare Game by S. Suzanne Martin Page B

had just been through. I took a few deep breaths
and tried to gather my thoughts.
     The scenery helped me put my uneasiness aside for
a moment, allowing me to analyze this insane scenario rationally, from all
angles. The events happening my life at the moment were incredibly unreal.
Unreal? Hell, why mince words? This whole mess was a freaking nightmare, wasn’t
it, reaching out to grab me, trying to pull me into itself. Fear tried to take
hold, but I managed to calm myself. Whatever it was, I couldn’t afford think of
it in such extreme terms. I couldn’t give it the “nightmare” label. I knew I’d
just freak out if I did and I had to keep some kind of control in a situation
in which I seemed to have absolutely no control whatsoever. There simply had to
be a rational explanation for it all, there just had to be. I couldn’t take
anything that had happened today on face value; the implications were just too
terrifying.
    Besides, things like this just didn’t happen in
real life. There just had to be another answer, one that made sense. None of
this madness could be real. It went against all reason. People just didn’t go
on vacation and find themselves in the middle of some outlandish occult game,
did they? Of course not. But it seemed to be happening to me, didn’t it?
Nothing since my arrival in the Big Easy had made any sense, especially not the
episode at the realtor’s office. The amazing disappearing people were none too
normal, either. Who were those two anyway, the leaflet guy and the woman at the
apartment? What did he say her name was, Virginia? The way they disappeared so
quickly, could they have been ghosts? I’d heard that New Orleans had its fair
share of ghosts, but I’d never heard of ghosts being quite so solid or quite so
verbal. There had to be a logical explanation.
    Were those two merely illusionists using nothing
more exotic than misdirection and magician’s tricks to pull some sort of scam?
That didn’t make any sense, though, since scam artists stole things from you,
they didn’t give you unsolicited jewelry and then disappear. I touched the
necklace. It was real. I didn’t know much about jewelry, but this was no
dime-store trinket, that was for sure. And what about the occurrence at the tea
room, was that real, too? It must have been because I’d never heard of a
fortune teller chasing off a customer like that, let alone before getting paid.
All three people were scared away by something of which I wasn’t aware,
something that was off my radar. Had they really been frightened or was that
also just an act? Maybe the whole lot of them were connected, sucking me into
some type of elaborate scam. But what would they have to gain? Maybe the
necklace was hot and my only purpose was to get it out of the city; but the
leaflet guy warned me not to leave the city, so that couldn’t possibly be it.
Maybe I was supposed to get the necklace out of the apartment so that someone
else could rob me of it later. That made more sense, in which case I should go
straight to the police. However, that didn’t explain the card reader. Even if
her prediction turned out to be a load of hooey, the fear that provoked her to
kick me out of the tea room was very real. Besides, she didn’t know who I was;
she hadn’t approached me, I had approached her. Even with that glitch, though,
the logic that the fortune-teller and the others were con artists sounded much
more sensible.
    Despite having come to a somewhat reasonable
conclusion, I still wasn’t satisfied. The whole damn thing continued to dog me.
My erstwhile explanation did not ring true in my gut. No matter how hard I
tried to convince myself into thinking that my world was normal and I was just
being upset by a gang of con artists, it didn’t feel right. I couldn’t shake
off or explain the hallucinations that I’d had in the realtor’s office; they
had been just too incredibly concrete. Maybe I’d been drugged. Unless I’d been
hit by a dart