The Tattooed Heart (Messenger of Fear 2)

But proving her guilt was not the duty I was there to perform. I was not searching for guilt, I was searching for fear.

It is like what I suppose a hallucination must be. Images rose to me, floated by, twirled away, as if I were swimming underwater and these memories were bubbles drifting up from some scuba diver below me. Some passed quickly, too quickly to really see. Others lingered long enough for me to see patterns and events, to feel secondhand emotion, to appreciate scenes of beauty or moments of hilarity.

Bad people do not have only bad memories. There were many interesting, joyful, exciting memories floating by. But fears are different. If normal memories are shimmering bubbles, fears are like those deepest of sea creatures that come in fantastic, otherworldly shapes and must create their own sullen and sickly light.

It was these that I followed down, chasing them as they tried to evade me. I caught them each in turn: the fear of failure, the fear of amputated limbs, the fear of losing her voice. But one terror slipped my grasp again and again until, at last, I had it.

It was prosaic, really, nothing terribly original. But as I rose back through the layers of Nicolet’s mind, I saw memories that confirmed that this fear had a powerful hold on Nicolet.

I blinked and was out. Messenger waited patiently. Nicolet cursed a blue streak and Oliver was clearly looking for an exit, any exit, hoping that we were too distracted to notice him.

Haarm was watching me intently, curious I guess. And, as earlier, I could not help feeling that something about him was more off than previously. I did not know Haarm well, but he had from the start exuded a cocky self-confidence. Now he seemed wary. Was this just a result of me refusing his advances? Or had Messenger or perhaps even Daniel had a little talk with him?

“What is Nicolet’s doom?” Messenger asked.

“Her greatest fear is pretty common,” I reported. “Nicolet is terrified of flying.”

Nicolet confirmed this by blanching. Her abuse and endless shouts for Mr. Joshua stopped as suddenly as if I had thrown a switch.

“So, what are you going to do, force me onto a plane? Security will stop you. No way. Uh-uh. No way. No. Way.”

I resisted the urge to answer, Way. But honestly, I was wondering how it would be done.

Messenger finally lost patience with her renewed yammering, raised a hand, and while she continued to move her mouth and tongue, no sound came from her.

“Oliver Benbury,” Messenger said. “You have chosen to play. And so, in Isthil’s name, I call upon the Master of the Game.”

17

I STEELED MYSELF FOR WHAT WAS TO COME. I wondered if the time would ever come when I would not dread the approach of the Master of the Game.

The foul yellow mist, that harbinger of supernatural terror, rose now. But it came in a way unlike any previous appearance. I stared in fascination as the hundreds of still-life people in the audience opened their mouths wide. It was an eerie thing, no question, to see men and women, young and old, each insensate, oblivious, and unseeing, open their jaws to the point where I heard jawbones crack.

From these open mouths, and from nostrils as well, rose the yellow mist, as if these orifices were pipes. The mist first drifted then streamed and finally seemed to blast like steam, until it concealed all those distorted faces and circled around us on the stage. The purple lights still shone down on us and where the light touched the mist, took o

n the color of excrement.

I had seen the Master of the Game in several guises, and I expected some new nightmare shape. But the Game Master is endlessly inventive, and capable of becoming corporeal in many shapes.

This time he was no maze of doomed humans, no nest of snakes formed into human shape. He emerged from the mist and he was not a he. The Master of the Game came in the shape not of a fantastical monster, but of a girl.

It was Graciella who stepped slowly into view. Graciella. I saw the recognition in the eyes of the two accused. I saw concern, but not abject terror.

Until this embodiment of Graciella began to change.

She approached as she was in real life, but with each lessening of the distance between us I saw details that defied the overall impression of a young girl. It first became apparent in the way her flesh seemed to undulate, as though her bones did not quite provide the rigidity her body needed. As though she were a sort of water balloon, a sack, a plastic bag in the shape of a girl but containing a sluggish liquid. This suggestion of a viscous fluid just beneath her skin became ever more real as the flesh grew first translucent, and then ever more transparent.

Her arms. Her legs. Her neck and face. Sheets of clear plastic film over some seething corruption beneath.

“No, no, no,” Oliver cried. “That’s not . . . This is all just special effects, hah hah, you almost got me, almost!” And that shrill verbal denial lasted until the Master of the Game had stepped all the way clear of the mist and stood bathed in the stage lights and Oliver could see, as I could see, that what lay pulsating beneath the fragile flesh was not muscle or bone or blood.

Have you ever seen a scanning electron microscope picture of disease organisms? Bacteria and viruses, proliferating amoebas, voracious worms, and the clanking spidery creatures called mites? They say there are something like five pounds of bacteria and other parasites alive in and on the human body. This body, this accusatory vision of Graciella, was a hundred pounds more, all magnified to visibility. She was nothing here but the filth of human existence, all roiling madly beneath a surface that threatened to burst open from the pressure like rotting fruit.

And then, unable to look away, unable to save myself from the full horror, I saw that these creatures of disease, these invaders, were feasting on a million tiny Graciellas, burrowing into microscopic iterations of her, writhing in silent agony as spirochetes corkscrewed their way into her.

Later I would wonder at the artistry of the Game Master, at the vibrant but sadistic imagination he brought to his duty. But seeing this creature, seeing this embodiment of disease and corruption, I could only wish that I might somehow stop the images from imprinting themselves on my memory. Later I could achieve a shaky objectivity, but not now, not now.

Still muted, Nicolet screamed in silent terror. She screamed until her face was red and bathed in sweat. She screamed until I thought her eyes would be forced from their sockets.