The Nightmare Game Read Online Free

the room, it had
struck me as being warm and cozy, a sharp contrast with the personality that
occupied it, leading me to think now that the ambiance was more for her own
creature comforts rather than to make her clients relaxed. Either that, or just
being a vacation renter, I wasn’t a big enough customer for her to bother with
manners. If she treated all the people that vacationed at her properties the
same way she did me, I doubted she got a lot of repeat business. Looking around
again, for I had nothing else to do, I studied the room a little more. The
carpet was oriental, an expensive one at that, and seemed to be large enough to
fit wall-to-wall. Thick, lush and densely woven, it was interestingly decorated
with multicolored snakes flicking long, red tongues. They wrapped themselves
around each other and the other decorative elements in the rug, interlocking
into an intricate, detailed design that looked almost Oriental, but in a sort
of pattern I had never seen before, not even in my old college art history
classes. When my eyes traveled up from the rug, I saw that the wallpaper’s
background, a very pale dusty pink, was color-coordinated with Rochere’s suit du jour . I had images of her closet holding nothing
but identical dusty pink suits hanging all in a row next to identical
lace-trimmed white blouses. I snickered softly under my breath at that thought,
which brought me a harsh, disciplinarian throat-clearing from Madame Rochere. Well , I thought, at least
she knows I’m still here . Looking over at the wallpaper again, I noticed
it was also overlaid with a pattern that seemed to be based on a not-quite
oriental design. Intricate white flowers, all tightly interlacing with their
trailing green stems and leaves, danced in vertical patterns with tiny white
hummingbirds. A few old paintings that seemed to be of Indian origin dotted the
walls in heavy frames, helping to make up for a lack of windows in the room. It
amazed me that, with all these things put together, the decor didn’t look
overly fussy, but the designs, paintings and frames were so beautiful and
tasteful that somehow they just worked together. Of course it helped, I
guessed, that the furniture’s feel was just the opposite and served to balance
the room. Heavy and dark, almost black, it had a massive, authoritative feel to
it that spoke against the flourishes of the carpet and walls. Antiques,
obviously, and good ones at that, the furniture had a very masculine feeling;
but it was the masculinity of another century, the nineteenth perhaps, weighty
but not above a few curves and little adornment. It had that flawless satiny
finish that spoke of being always freshly polished and very well cared for.
There were few knick-knacks around this room, unlike the entrance, which had many;
but they were large and important-looking pieces. Despite their expensive look,
however, their scale implied they’d been designed for a garden rather than an
interior room. Rochere’s desk was of the same design as the rest of the
furniture except that its front was oddly embellished with a relief carving of
two ornamental snakes wrapping around each other, a very fitting design for
her, I thought. It was topped with writing implements and books that, while
modern, were reminiscent of an earlier age because, like everything else here,
they were conspicuously expensive. This woman was obviously very rich with not
a hint of new money and her office made sure that everyone who came in knew it.
While I noticed a computer in the front office, there was none in here, the
normally allotted space on her desk was occupied by an overly large vase filled
with a huge bouquet of fresh cut flowers. The overstuffed visitors’ chair in
which I was sitting had an intricately carved wooden “crown” at its head and
soft, fat upholstered arms that ended in hands of ornate animal claws arising
from the carved wood arms of the chair’s decorative frame that began near the
floor. It was,