Read The Nightmare Game for Free Online Page A

your appointment and
besides, you’ve already gone far above and beyond the call of duty. It was very
nice to meet you, Troy, and if I do make it out later, I hope I run into you.”
    “I’ll be out there. If I see you, I’ll buy you a
drink. And it was good to meet you, too, Ashley. Bye, now.”
    “Bye.” What a great guy ,
I thought as I watched him turn and half walk, half bounce off.
    After all of the turbulence, I was now finally
here, ready to start my vacation in earnest. Alone, I walked through the gate
with suspicion, wondering what kind of a deal this would turn out to be.
Gripping my bags, which felt a lot heavier than they had before I’d entered
Rochere’s office, I walked though the high, large gate, wondering what lay
inside. For my first really good surprise of the day, the courtyard on the
other side transformed my apprehensions into delight.
    I found myself standing before a house and
courtyard that embodied the essence, strange beauty and sheer romance of the
French Quarter. Putting down my bags, I closed and locked the heavy gate behind
me. It had been far too many years, I thought, since my last trip to the
Crescent City and I pledged to myself now that I would never again go so long without
a return visit. As I stood motionless, soaking in my surroundings, my heart
sang out, I’m finally home now ; I consciously
had to remind myself that this was just a vacation and that I was here for less
than a week. In front of me and to my right, a small garden containing a
fountain was lush with banana plants, elephant ears, palm trees and bamboo,
alive with the colors of blooming irises, dahlias, crocuses and gladioli.
Flowering Azaleas and split leaf Philodendrons thrived in clusters in huge red
clay pots on the red brick courtyard floor and ivy covered the blank brick wall
of the rear of the house next door. The somewhat tattered three-story
antebellum town home of French design displayed on the web site that Carolyne
and I had investigated just before we rented the apartment had been replaced by
an immaculately maintained structure. Apparently, the owner had done massive
renovation job on the house and the courtyard since the fish-eye photo used on
the internet had been taken. This was all so much nicer than anything I
expected. I could only assume that the building received enough flooding during
Katrina that it needed to be restored and that the courtyard was probably
thrown in for good measure.
    To my left began the main portion of the L-shaped
house, ushered in by a curving staircase that led into the balcony of the its
second story, which actually seemed to be the main floor of the home proper.
White lace-work wrought-iron railings set off the freshly painted dusty pink
walls of the house like confectioner’s icing. The main entrance to this floor
was a set of large French doors that, along with the flanking door-height
windows, were framed on each side by white slatted shutters and topped with
fanlight windows. The third floor, which had a white wood balcony railing, was
largely covered by a sloping garret with small, narrow windows set out from the
roof. The first floor apartment, where I was to be staying, had a porch light
lit even though it was afternoon, probably to point my way. This floor, which
may have originally been a sort of floor-level basement, was set slightly back
underneath the balcony. Unadorned and straight-forward, this section that
contained the apartment area, with its sliding glass door that opened into the
courtyard, looked as if it had been cheaply remodeled into an apartment more
than a few decades ago with no thought to keeping with the style of the
building, for it really did not fit with the rest of the house at all. I
wondered why anyone would do such a nice job of reconstructing the rest of the
building without touching this floor, especially considering that, if flooding
had been the motivating factor, the floor level would have needed it the most.
Past the