“Norman!” His arms busy helping Eleanor out of her wheelchair, there was little Sam could do to prevent Norman from wandering off.
“He’ll be fine,” Rachel told him. “He always heads for that bench when we come out here.” She reigned in her impatience at Sam’s distressed tone, reminding herself this was the first outing the new orderly had assisted with.
“But the water—“
“He won’t go farther than the bench.” Rachel’s eyes shifted to watch Norman, just as they always did when they picnicked in the yard so far from the hospital. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she held a reserved caution about Norman’s trip to the bench at the water’s edge, but her reasons were much different. “That’s where it happened, you know,” she whispered to Sam. True to her prediction, Norman stopped at the bench and sat. With the knowledge that he was safe, she allowed herself to look away again.
Once standing, Eleanor went limp against Sam, her indication that she didn’t want to walk today. He sat her back in her chair and applied the brakes and approached Rachel. The four patients consisted of varying mental illnesses, most either unable or unwilling to speak, and one muttering garbled nonsensical statements almost constantly. Truthfully, he didn’t need to lower his voice, but did so anyway, out of respect for whatever minds they had left. “It?”
Rachel nodded. “That very spot.”
“I’m new here, remember? I don’t know what happened to any of these people.” It saddened him to think of them as nothing more than a shell.
“Five years ago, next month. I probably shouldn’t know about it either, but I’ve always had a special interest in his case, and I stole a peek at his file. He first visited Dr. Mason six months before that, when he was lucid, but troubled over his wife, then he began to deteriorate. The notes consist of rantings of a crazed mind, then a complete mental breakdown, which left him how he is today.”
“Rantings?” His gaze drifted to Norman, peaceful and quiet, staring at the serene waters of Amethyst Lake. He couldn’t imagine Norman’s voice – he’d never heard him speak.
“That’s how Dr. Mason referred to his mutterings, the same that would come from someone slowly losing his mind. He spoke of a ring that he bought at a flea market. The man who sold it to him said it would bring him good luck.” Rachel handed a paper plate with a cut up hot-dog and a dab of potato salad to a woman slowly rocking back and forth. “It seemed that the seller was right, because that very day he bumped into Helen.”
“His wife,” Sam realized.
Rachel nodded again. “After four short months, they were married. Norman gave her the ring as her wedding band, and that’s when the trouble started.
“Helen began getting physically ill more and more often. At first, it seemed like just a cold, or the stomach flu, but after some time passed, Norman got worried and took her to the doctor. They ran blood tests, allergy tests, took a urine sample to test for drugs, and ran a battery of other tests. Eventually, her doctor came to the conclusion that nothing was physically wrong with her. He suggested stress might be the culprit and sent her to Dr. Mason. Depression was blamed and medication was prescribed.”
Despite Rachel’s somber tone, Sam chuckled. “Isn’t that just like doctors? Everything is depression requiring meds. I swear, they should install Prozac salt-licks on the corners of city blocks.”
“Sometimes meds help, but they didn’t in Helen’s case. Her condition worsened over the next three months, until she began to sleepwalk and later, practically stopped sleeping at night altogether.”
“Insomnia?”
“One could look at it that way, to some degree. Except that in Helen’s case, she never seemed fatigued, but rather more energized than ever. Poor Norman was at his wit’s end, and then stranger things began happening.
“He awakened one night to find Helen standing near the window, staring at him, and swore up and down that she was salivating.”
“Drooling?”
“No.” Rachel stared at Sam with dread in her eyes. “Salivating. Like she hungered for him.”
By her tone, he knew she didn’t mean any sort of sexual desire, either.
“On another occasion, when he’d gone to his bedroom to go to bed, he found her laying quite still, flat on her back, breathing rapidly,” Rachel recalled.
“That’s not too strange.”
Amusement sparkled in her expression at the naďve young orderly. “Except that he told her later that the ring on her finger was glowing.”
“The point when he started to crack?”
Rachel ignored his remark and continued. “At that point, Norman realized the ring had to be at fault for all the problems. After all, these events only began to transpire after the wedding ceremony, when he placed it on her finger. He decided then and there that it wasn’t lucky, but cursed, and it had to come off. They’d had months of pain and suffering on all counts ever since she put it on.
“He pulled and tugged, and it wouldn’t budge. The next day, he told her he wanted to buy her a gorgeous new diamond ring. She argued at first; she loved the one she had because of it’s uniqueness and it was the reason they’d met in the first place, but finally gave in. After numerous attempts to remove it, they went to have the ring cut off.
“The saw wouldn’t cut it. It didn’t even scratch the surface. It was then that Norman began to believe the ring had a will of its own purpose.”
“Hello, Frodo,” Sam joked tastlessly.
“That’s not funny,” Rachel chastised him.
He apologized. “Please, continue.”
“Helen sort of felt the same way, except that it was a positive thing. She began to believe that it was destiny for her to wear the ring, that perhaps it was even hers in a past life, and it refused to be separated from her again. As much as she loved the ring, she was happy it was hers to keep on.”
Sam considered Norman again. “So, how did he get like that?”
“After coming to their separate conclusions, Norman told a colleague about his strange ideas and the odd events that happened at night from time to time. The friend knew that Helen had seen Dr. Mason before and called him to tell of his concern for Norman’s mental health.
“The doctor had his nurse call them and make an appointment, requesting it as a follow-up visit, camouflaged as wanting to know if Helen was improving. During the visit, he commented on the extraordinary ring, for he’d never seen one so unusual.
“His plan worked and before long, they opened up about their thoughts on the ring. Norman continued to see Dr. Mason, and told him of the awful things that he would awaken to find sometimes.”
“Like the salivating?”
“That, and that not only was she not sleeping and still had energy, she seemed to be getting younger again. And horrible things, too, like discovering her one night in the kitchen shoveling raw hamburger into her mouth, like she couldn’t get enough of it.”
A shiver ran down Sam’s spine. “Sounds charming.”
“Indeed.”
“Did they ever find out what was wrong with her?”
“Norman did. Right in the very spot he’s sitting. It’s truly amazing he doesn’t go into hysterics while near that bench,” she remarked. “The doctor never believed him, and I don’t think that helped with his sanity. Somewhere deep in his psyche, he probably still wonders…
“He finally decided that his wife needed help and plans were set in motion to commit her here to Kaskade Hospital, but she wasn’t aware of it. Norman didn’t know how often he’d get to see her once she came here, so the night before he was to bring her, he took her out to a nice dinner and a walk along these shores. At that bench, they stopped, and he took her in his arms, lovingly embracing her. Only when he pulled away, it wasn’t his wife in his arms.
“Much too late, he realized that the times she exhibited such strange behavior were on the nights of the full moon.”
Sam interrupted with a chuckle. “Lycanthropy?”
Rachel stared coldly at him. “She didn’t believe she was a werewolf. She was one.
“In the misty moonlight of that night, Norman stared into the eyes of the snarling beast she’d become, and she attacked him.”
Sam’s eyes grew wide with disbelief. He wasn’t sure if he should be surprised that he was hearing it, or that Rachel seemed to believe it. “If that’s true, how’d he survive?”
“She still clung to a shred of humanity and her love for him kept her from killing him. He watched, horrified, as she clawed up that tree over there in a fit of anger, and then ran into the night.”
Sam glanced to the enormous pine tree that she indicated. The girth of the trunk was probably four feet around, and it easily towered the height of the four stories of the main hospital building.
“The next day, he kept the appointment to meet Dr. Mason here, but only had the story – no wife to commit.” Rachel’s gaze drifted to Norman again and her voice filled with sadness. “Helen knew she had to find somewhere that no one would suspect anything, even if she were ever caught in the act of killing a human being. So, she hid in the forest over the hills for a few months while the reverse aging and other changes took place, then returned and blended in with the community again. Now, she has the ability to change at will, and she watches over Norman. No one even recognizes her.”
Sam grinned. “Now you’re just trying to scare me. How would you know that? It can’t possibly be in Norman’s patient notes. What happened to Helen after she ran off, that is.”
Rachel ignored him and continued. “She’s doomed to live out her fate, whatever it may be, and see the shell of a man that Norman’s become, all because of that cursed ring that made her what she is.”
“It looks like rain. We should head back,” Sam said, changing the subject. The conversation no longer felt appropriate, and he didn’t like the far away gleam in her eye.
“Don’t you want to see the scratches in the tree? That’s what makes me believe the story is all true.” Rachel’s smile lit up her face, chasing the shadows of somberness away.
Sam shrugged. “I guess so, but then we should head back.” He was rather curious about the marks in the trunk. He turned to glance at the patients.
“Oh, they’ll be all right for a moment. Come on, it’ll only take a second.” Rachel took his arm and began to lead him the ten feet to the massive tree trunk. As they reached it, she asked, “Did I tell you what the ring looked like?”
Sam’s gaze fell to the golden Celtic knot that garnished Rachel’s ring finger.
“You’ve figured it out, have you?” she asked, and beneath the shadows of the pine, she lunged at her next victim.
