Trapped and in danger from all sides, things look bleak for Nicole and Alex against the armies of the undead. But as Jonathan Rennie of Biggart Baillie picks up the penultimate Chapter of the story, all may not be as it has seemed...  

The lace ribbons lacerated her wrists as Nicole’s ghoulishly kinky captors salivated at the prospect of converting her into one of their legion of undead. As the freaks cackled and cavorted, they seemed intent on prolonging her torture and assumed the burden of their roles with growing conviction:
“Eenie, meanie, minie, mo, I’m gonna eat you from the toe” screeched Sareelo.

“Fee fi fo fum, I smell the blood of banking scum” leered the rather unimaginative Monster Man.

Ordinarily, such childlike rhyming would have tickled Nicole but the reverberations of the sickos chanting in the fetid basement made her retch. The darkness heightened her primeval fears. The flickering candle light turned the scene into a slow motion nightmare as the pain seared her flesh and pinpricked her eyeballs.

The tormenting mob was upon her and Nicole’s mind taunted and twisted her misery as she faced up to being the mistress of her own pathetic demise in this putrid vault. The personal ad in the Evening News had triggered a catastrophic orgy of terror. Her fatal error was becoming increasingly evident as Jacobson, Marlow, Monster Man and the other assorted twisted freaks continued to push the boundaries of their agreed Code.

Two days after being laid off, Nicole had posted her fateful message online, giggling as she glugged the final dregs from a cheap Hungarian Monarchine chardonnay: ”Redundant banker seeks like-minded role playing fantasists to re-create Hollywood epic with a vampish twist. GSOH essential.”

Back then, Nicole had needed excitement and fast. Teenage kicks, even. There was no disguising the fact that the daily ashtanga yoga and weekly ‘stitch and bitch’ sessions had not indulged her desire for a more imaginative, stimulating existence. Now she had the chance for a fresh beginning and to re-write her own existence - that would teach her parents who had always advised her that “banking is as safe as houses.”

How funny to think of that now.

Perhaps ambition or naivety had fogged Nicole’s decision making but surely she did not deserve to be ritualistically tortured in a dank dungeon? All rational thought processes had been subverted and flipped upside down but that was the risk thrill that she had sought, only the risks had accelerated exponentially.

At the first role play session at her flat, there had only been Alex Bairnston, Jim Jacobson and Mark Low. Each participant was allocated a role at the start of the evening. Intended as a social experiment, Nicole had never imagined in her craziest night delusions that these Joe Publics would morph into their roles and assume the sketchy identities proposed. The exaggerated personas represented half truths and wishful thinking in equal measure:
Alex - scriptwriter; historian; part Indiana Jones, part monocled eccentric.
Jacobson - thuggish vamp loving bad guy, fondness for monkish cloaks and Gregorian chants.

Marlow - private dick; drives an Aston Martin for discrete surveillance, campinologist.
Mark Low had insisted that he be given the pseudonym of Marlow as he loved film noir and Bogart’s laconic delivery as the private dick.

There would have to be a Relic, of course, and whilst Nicole had teased with the idea of using her ancient childhood charm bracelet, the old key to her parents But n’ Ben in Banffshire would suffice for now. It all felt a little ‘novus ordo seclorum’ to quote the dollar bill but then this was just the start of her imaginative journey and in the absence of hallucinatory stimulants this was good, clean fun, or so she had envisaged.

Alex had assumed leadership for formulating the rules of the game, the rather grandly titled Code. The first rule of fright club was Nicole’s and went slightly against the vampire genre – ‘no sexual relationships between participants.’ 

Not normally so puritanically prudish, Nicole had repulsed at the reptilian sheen on Jacobson’s moon crusted face, his slithering manner and disregard for personal hygiene. His cruelness exaggerated the electrifying tension that Nicole sizzled with as she considered what might lie ahead. Her intuition was to prove sagely founded...     


Clarinda’s was where the merry mayhem had digressed into vile murderous intent. Jacobson had wanted the next script session to be in Jenny Ha’s Lounge Bar rather than a dainty wee tea shop. After all, he reasoned, this was supposed to be a social experiment and where else should that continue but in a pub?

Jacobson availed himself of several nips of Speyside before storming the tea shop and confronting Nicole and Alex over their insistence that his character wear the Gregorian habit and should only come out to play under cover of darkness.

“Ya sanctimonious pair are at it...rules, my arse, ya can keep yer cloaks and daggers as far as I’m concerned ya saddos... I’m the slayer now and yer gonna get it”

 Marlow’s headbutt had been an over reaction and the mayhem that erupted proved that they were all competing for the central role as the script disintegrated and side-winded out of control. The cast multiplied as quickly as the fancy dress shops of the Grassmarket emptied and more wannabe nightcrawlers seized upon the idea of a marauding thriller in the septic underbelly of Edinburgh’s old town.

The most disturbing aspect was the zeal for violence and bloodlust which they all seemed to share and how that magnified as the collective expanded across the city. Nicole flinched as the memories invaded and flooded her already tortured mindset. The game was not yet ended and she steeled herself to conquer the nightmare. 

As the peal of a muted Evening song echoed in the basement, she suspected she was located in the crypt under St Giles cathedral and with a whispered prayer she squirmed the pistol into her still tied hand and twisted it towards Jacobson: ”Right, you pseudo-psycho lowlife fantasists,” she grinned. ”Suck on this...”