Chapter 34: Welcome to Your Nightmare

By the time I arrived the next night, the plan had changed. Apparently, his lordship had decided he wanted to play a little before getting down to serious work. Either that, or he had decided to fuck with me by making me hurt the people I had been protecting.

"I have decided to begin with another subject," Hightower informed me when I arrived. "Bring Samantha Watkins here."

"My Lord, I..."

Pain lanced through me once more as he asked, "Are you questioning me?"

"No, my lord!" I cried.

The pain cut off, and he said, "I didn't think so. You know, this environment is so much more conducive to this sort of thing. I barely have to think of something, and it happens. Now, do as I commanded and bring Samantha Watkins!"

"Yes my Lord," I said.

The elevator chimed, and he took me with him to open it. He stood to one side as the doors opened. Samantha knelt inside, waiting, but obviously very anxious at finding herself suddenly in the elevator with no blindfold and no time to disrobe.

As soon as the doors parted, she began speaking, "Forgive me my Lord, I don't know how I got here, and there wasn't time, and ... Jimmy!"

She jumped to her feet and into my arms. "Oh my God, Jimmy, I thought..."

"You thought what, my child?" Bastion asked, stepping into view.

"Lord Hightower," she said, pulling away and staring back and forth between us.

"Oh no," she said, her hand coming up to her mouth and her voice beginning to shake. "Oh God, no ... This can't ... this can't be happening."

She backed completely up against the now closed elevator doors before she stopped. Tears were starting to form in her eyes, and while her mouth still moved, no sound came out. Suddenly she launched herself at me, hands twisted into claws.

"You promised!" she screamed as she scratched at me.

As before, I was far too fast and strong for her, capturing her hands and twisting her around, so I could hold her still without injuring her.

"I know, Sam; I'm sorry."

Bastion was chuckling to himself. Then he stepped forward, extending a hand to touch Samantha's cheek. "There, there, child, everything will be just fine. Soon this will all be just a bad memory, and soon after that, you will be happy in your service, finally able to accept your rightful place in God's kingdom."

"I'm sorry, Sam," I whispered. "Truly I am, but..."

"Master?" a new voice intruded.

About time!

"Yes, Amber?" I answered.

"Amber?" Bastion asked, confused. "Who is Amber? What is going on?"

"Jamie says we've got everything we need."

"Jamie? Who is Jamie?" Hightower demanded. "Who are you talking to? Answer me!"

I lost the next part because I was busy talking to Samantha.

"It's okay, Sam. Everything is going to be fine now. I'm sorry I had to frighten you like that, but I think you'll forgive me in a moment." I kissed the back of her head, releasing my hold on her and moving to stand beside her.

"Thank you, Amber," I called into the empty air. "Inform everyone that I will be along shortly. Tell them I'll be bringing Samantha with me."

I turned to face Hightower, who was practically breathing fire by now.

"To answer your question, Amber and Jamie are two very special people in my life. They've been monitoring this little drama from outside the bubble, waiting to see if I would be able to get you to show me where all the blackmail material was hidden, and how to get to it. Now that you've done that, we've got just about all we need from you. So, while it's been a real hoot, I've had just about all of you I can take."

"You will pay for this with your life!" He screamed. "Burn!"

I stared at him calmly for a moment before stepping forward and punching him in the face so hard that he actually flew back onto the couch. Yeah, it was childish and cartoony – and it never would have worked if it hadn't been a dream – but feeling his nose break under my fist was extremely satisfying.

"Not a very quick learner, are you, Christian?" I asked, holding Samantha's hand and drawing her with me as I moved toward him.

He was really in no condition to answer, so I just kept going. "But then – thanks to your little gimmick – I guess you haven't really had to be. I, on the other hand, have been forced to grow up way too fast this last year, and that means I've had to learn even faster. Here comes a little trick I learned a while back ... Watch closely, I don't want you to miss it."

As I had been speaking, the wall of the bubble had been moving slowly towards us, and the entire environment shrinking as it moved. The edges were now visible, and as Christian Wallace, a.k.a. Elliott Bastion, a.k.a. Lord Hightower, looked around, I could see fear blossoming in his eyes.

"This is what we call a bubble. It's a completely enclosed, isolated, and controlled environment – a separate reality, really. In here, nothing is real. Take these last three nights, for instance; did you notice how quickly the days seemed to pass, in contrast to the nights? Can you remember anything else you did during that time? What did you do during the day?"

I could see him struggling to recall any kind of detail at all. I just smiled and shook my head.

"Don't strain yourself; you won't find anything. That's because none of it was real. All of this has happened in a single night. Less than seven hours ago, those doors opened, and a screaming throng of your slaves – oops, my bad – your faithful followers, charged in to rip your heart out. Of course, nothing can hurt the great Lord Hightower – master of all he surveys – so, naturally, you defeated them. And, most importantly, you finally captured that annoying little bastard who had dared to set himself against you. It was actually while you were focused on catching me that the final change was made. The moment you caught me – while all your attention was on me and you gloated over your victory – the final bubble was formed, and the whole thing moved out of your dream-space. Fortunately, your own elation distracted you and kept you from noticing that you were being cut off from any contact with your own reality, otherwise you might have fought it. Right up until that moment, there was a chance you could have noticed and fought back. Who knows, you might even have won, but once the bubble was in place and moved, your ass was mine. Like I said, nothing here is real; nothing happens here unless I let it happen, and that includes your little mind-control trick; we left that behind as well.

"Now, I know what you're thinking; you captured me, you controlled me, you made me tell you all about what I can do and who was behind all the various plots and plans." I shook my head again. "Not exactly how it went down. I did actually tell you all that stuff, and it was even true; the problem is that you aren't going to remember any of it in the morning when you wake up.

"Now, I know you're a little confused right now, because everything seemed to work normally, but it only worked that way because I wanted it to. I needed you to believe that you had won and that you were in control. It was the only way you would give me what I wanted. Well, maybe not the only way, but I'm really not fond of torture – although in your case I think I could have made an exception – and I'm fine with how it worked out."

"But I am..." he began to scream something, but I cut him off, his voice suddenly dying in his throat.

"You're what?" I asked. "Lord Hightower the almighty?" An image of the powerful figure he perceived himself as materialized in the air next to us; his face blurred out, his body strong, fit, and lean; his manhood hanging halfway to his knees.

"No," I said, and the image began to change, shrinking slightly, the face coming out from behind the emptiness that had been hiding it, the muscles softening and the body rounding out with fat; the over-sized ego stick between his legs dwindling to a more appropriate size. "The Almighty Lord Hightower is no different than The Great and Powerful Wizard of Oz: A sham, a fake, and a fraud.

"Which of course leaves the question: 'Who are you, really?' Elliott Bastion perhaps: Just a humble priest and shepherd of the lost, nurturing and guiding your flock toward heaven by day – and fucking all their daughters by night?"

"No," I said again, and the image changed even more. "You're just poor, pathetic little Christian Wallace..." The body shrank even further but kept the over-all shape. " ... the pathetic loser who couldn't even get one of his sister's friends to go to his high school prom with him. The worm in man's clothing who, when he discovered he had the power to control people's minds, couldn't think of anything better to do with it than use it for sex. Oh, but then you found out the hard way that the effects didn't last, and the girl of your dreams woke up one day and realized what she had been doing. When you showed up at her house that day, not only did she tell you that you weren't getting laid, but that if you ever so much as looked at her again, she was going to have you arrested for rape. Of course, you tried to use your gift to persuade her to change her mind, but her strongly emotional state blocked you out. By the time you realized that it wasn't working, it was too late, and she now knew how you had gotten her to sleep with you in the first place. Of course, she threatened to expose you, so you killed her."

"That's not true," Bastion protested.

"Oh, but it is true. I know, because I got it from your own memories. Another useful little trick I picked up: You've heard the expression, 'A dream within a dream'? Well, we do that in multiple layers around here. So while this part of your subconscious has been dreaming of lording it over me and making me do your bidding, another part has been taking Jamie on little dream trips down memory lane.

"You know, it really was careless of you to let it happen a second time. Fortunately, by then you had figured out what it took to get the job done, so you quietly sat in your chair and – right in front of the judge – convinced the jury of your innocence. But two women brutally murdered just so you could get laid seemed like a high price even to you, and you told yourself there had to be a better way. And you found it. A little experimentation taught you what it really took to influence and control others: Repetition was the key; you just had to see them on a regular basis, and they would do almost anything. It was even easier if you were just reinforcing their own natural inclinations. So you found a few like-minded individuals – men who thought that women, especially young girls, were only created to service their needs – and the church was born; the perfect venue to build your own little world with no one the wiser as to how it was being done. This time you started slow, learning the ropes as you went. You used fear and intimidation to bolster your gift, convincing the older girls that there was no way out and nowhere to hide. You used them while you started working on the younger ones, carefully training them to be your own private collection of willing sex slaves. You dealt with the older girls as they reached an age where they might logically be expected to move on. Oh yes, I know about all the tragic little accidents you arranged. You used the more rebellious of the girls as object lessons for the rest. Punishing girls like Amanda and Autumn publicly made it that much easier for you to control the rest. You were quite correct in your assumption that the others would do anything to avoid having those things done to them. Somewhere along the way, you found out, as you pointed out earlier, that – just as some were very easily controlled – others seemed to have a natural defense against this kind of manipulation – people like Stephen Hendricks.

"Now, if I were a rabid evolutionist, I would have to guess that you weren't the first person to be able to do this kind of thing, and that at some point in the past someone had pulled this kind of shit on some of their ancestors. I think it would be a fascinating subject to research, don't you? What do you think? Could they have been the basis for some of the mythological 'gods' of the past? It would certainly explain a lot. Zeus, for instance, had a reputation for being a real ladies man; legend has it he'd do just about anything to get between a pretty girl's legs; appearing in a variety of forms to seduce the unsuspecting women. Maybe you're descended from him? You'd like that idea, wouldn't you? A direct descendant of the gods of old, come into his own in modern America. Maybe someday we'll invent a time machine and find out, but it won't matter to you; as of this moment nothing matters to you. As of this moment, you no longer matter."

The walls of the bubble were now completely inside the spacious apartment. I stopped them at about a twenty-foot diameter.

"Don't worry, Bastion; you'll be perfectly safe in here. Nothing will happen to you, and no one will bother you. If you focus beyond the bubble, you'll find that you're actually trapped inside yourself – kind of like what you did to Sam and the others with that little kill command you sent out in them. You remember that part, right? Well, I hope you don't mind, but I decided to steal your idea. So while you're here, you're going to 'experience' everything that goes on out there. Only to you it will all seem like a dream because, when you're awake, this part of you will be asleep. When you fall asleep at night, this part of you will wake up with full knowledge of everything that happened during the day. So you'll know everything that is going on from here on out; you just won't be able to control or influence any of it. I've got a few other little tricks in store for you as well, but I don't want to spoil the surprise."

"I will destroy you!" he screamed.

I just chuckled, and, taking Samantha's hand, took us both out through the wall of the bubble and into the elevator. Behind us, Hightower ranted, cursed, and beat at the wall of the bubble. It was amazing how quickly the shiny image of the priest had fallen away when things went wrong.

Samantha was looking a little shell-shocked at the whole thing, so, after the elevator had taken us down a few floors, I stopped it.

"Are you okay?" I asked.

"I don't ... I don't know. Did that really happen? Is it really over? I'm not just dreaming?"

I chuckled and said, "Think about that for a second, Sam."

I waited just long enough for her to realize what she'd said before going on, "Yes, it's a dream, but, at the same time, yes, it really did happen. We've still got a ways to go, but, for all intents and purposes, it's over. Were you surprised to discover that Lord Hightower was really your humble priest, Elliott Bastion?

"Surprised?" she asked. "Try shocked. I don't know why no one figured it out before, though. I mean, I've done Sunday mornings with the Deacons – we all have – I don't know why we never questioned it before."

"You mean how all that could be going on right there in the church without the priest knowing about it?"

"Yeah!" she said emphatically, "and then there's all the other stuff."

"What other stuff?" I asked, curious to see where her mind was going with all this.

"Hello? The penthouse on the eighteenth floor? High-tower? The name: Elliot Bastion? Elliot, elite, above, better, superior ... That's how he thinks of himself, like he's better than the rest of the world, so the world's rules don't apply to him, and he can just make up his own. Bastion: as in 'the last bastion of democracy', a fortified place, like a fortress, or a citadel..."

"Or a tower," I said as comprehension dawned. "Elite Bastion: 'High' 'tower'. You're right; just tweak the spelling, and ... He must have laughed his ass off when he came up with it. He's been his own private joke for years. As for the reason you didn't realize any of it before? That's simple: he told you not to."

"Was all that stuff you said in there true? Did he really kill two women?"

"Yes, he did, and he got away with it. He was acquitted in open court on both charges, and those were just the ones they knew about. There are others as well. He didn't kill them all himself, but they died on his orders. But let's not talk about all the horrible things he's done. For one thing, we'd be here all night listing them, not to mention that it would be depressing as hell."

The elevator moved on, and, when it stopped and the doors opened, I took her hand and pulled her out of the elevator – which was also the wall of the second bubble – into the changing tent, and then, finally, out onto the beach where 'Alice' was waiting for her with open arms.

The basis for Allison's plan to overload Bastion's control of the girls had been good, but, as she was developing it, she realized that he might still be too strong for me to handle in direct conflict.

"Ego is his one weakness," she had said, "but it's also one of his greatest strengths. He truly believes that no one can touch him. That confidence gives him a huge advantage in a direct confrontation because, no matter what you tell yourself, there will always be that shadow of doubt that you can win. It occurred to me that all your recent successes in other areas had blinded us. Most of these new abilities are just tricks – nice tricks, don't get me wrong. While it's not actually teleportation, it's still pretty damn cool to be able to move around the way you can now. The fighting skills and stuff are just things you've learned, but, thinking about it, I realized that these things had distracted you from your true strength."

"Which is?" I asked.

"Dreams," she said. "Jimmy, your greatest strength is the ability to manipulate this environment. You can make him see whatever you want, bring in whoever you want to mess with him."

"Yeah, but he can see through some of the illusion. I can't hide from him here, and, if he knows I'm there, he can still attack me."

"True, but there are different levels to what you can do here. Like I said, I've been giving this a lot of thought, and I realized that we might have really been screwed if you had been able to beat him. Jimmy, even if you beat him, do you really think you're going to be able to get him to tell you where all the blackmail stuff is?"