THE RING

Jun 14, 2009 Features / Columnists, The Creative Corner

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By Michael Jordan
The incident that brought back his fears happened on one of those crazy days on the three-to-twelve shift, when everything seemed to be going wrong. Two minibus smash-ups on the East Coast, a drowning at the Kitty seawall, a teen who had shattered his legs after falling from a genip tree…
As usual, the night-shift staff was spread thin, with only himself and a pretty but scatterbrained trainee nurse on the Accident Ward.
He was just about to take a break in the rest-room when Dr. Charles entered the ward. Maxwell sighed. He was in no mood to listen to the doctor’s usual gossip about the latest occurrences at the hospital.
“I see we got we hands full tonight,” the doctor said as Maxwell rose for them to commence their rounds on the ward.

Maxwell shrugged. “Well, is weekend, you know.”
“True, and is not only here. A&E trying to save a girl and she lover who drink malathion, ICU got the Duncan Street shooting victim—I hear they use AKs—and a rasta who get chop up in the Bay…” the doctor paused, then snapped his fingers. “Oh, I nearly forget. Pediatrics got a weird case. A little girl come in this morning. Listlessness. Weight loss. Low blood count. It look like a simple case of acute anaemia, except—” He broke off as they stopped near the lad with the shattered legs. The patient was asleep, but tossed restlessly. Maxwell and the doctor examined the boy’s chart.

“What was I telling you about?” The doctor asked as they moved on.
“The baby girl,” Maxwell promised, intrigued, despite himself.
“Oh yes. It seemed like an acute case of anaemia, except that the clinic card showed that the symptoms developed suddenly. Within three days, in fact. But the strangest part is that the child seemed terrified about something. She waking up trembling and crying. Something scare that little child out of her wits.”
After the doctor left, Maxwell walked back slowly to the rest-room. A sudden wave of depression enveloped him. He hated Paediatrics. The sight of sick children always upset him; made him think of his son. But for some reason that he couldn’t quite fathom, the doctor’s story bit deeper, nudging at, he sensed, some half-buried and disquieting memory.
That night, when the shift ended and he went home, Maxwell dreamed…
He was standing in his lamp-shadowed room, pulling at the ring on Sandra’s hand. And now, distinctly, he heard harsh laughter nearby, and a female voice whispered mockingly.

“Till death do us part, Maxwell Lewis! Like marriage…like marriage, till death do us part…”
And suddenly he was floating in some strange room. Floating, looking down at two men dressed in clothing from some long-past era. They stood near a bed. And on it lay a half-nude, writhing woman.
Her features were contorted in agony. Her breasts were splotched with blood. She was moaning something that he didn’t quite catch.
But now he was standing besides the men, and he could see…smell the sweat coursing down her face. Her eyes were brown, almost red, and he could swear he had seen them somewhere before. Strands of her loose, long, tangled hair brushed his face, light as cobwebs.
He could hear what she was saying now.
“I can’t…stop the fire…I can’t stop…”
The men were pinning her down, but her arms would slip free, to wave in some crazy, intricate, secret dance as she writhed on the bed.
A ring glinted on her hand.

Maxwell awoke in his bed, breathing harshly. From somewhere outside, he could hear a baby crying…screaming actually. And coming from his bed, was the same tormented cry he’d heard in his dream.
Stifling a yelp of fear, he scrambled upright, groping for the nearby switch.
Light flooded the room. He stared at Sandra. Like the woman in his dream, she was half-nude…sweaty. Her head tossed as she whimpered: “…can’t do it…I can’t do it…”
He shook her gently. She opened her eyes a moment, cuddled up to him, and then fell asleep again.
Part of his mind registered the fact that the baby’s harsh crying had stopped.
But he remained awake for a long time, staring at Sandra, remembering her tossing and whimpering like the woman in his dream…
The moodiness that had ebbed and flowed in her recently, like some restless tide, was evident next day as they sat at the breakfast table. She sat at the table with hunched shoulders. She picked at her food, but scolded Wayne for playing with his. Maxwell watched her nibble half-heartedly at a piece of toasted bread, then drop it into her plate. She raised a hand to her head and massaged her right temple.
He reached out and squeezed her arm. “Headache?”
She nodded.

He could have let it go at that, but instead found himself saying: “Sandra, the dreams start again?”
She stared at him in surprise.
“You was talking in your sleep last night,” he explained, wising he had kept his mouth shut.
“Sandra…you dream about…the woman?”
He felt her tense. She sighed. “I don’t know. I can’t remember. Was another flying dream though. She stared down at the table, frowning in an effort to recall.
“I was floating somewhere over Alberttown…then I was in somebody house…I sure I know that place! —and like somebody was dragging me to a room, but I was crying because I didn’t want to go. Then you wake me up.”
There was silence for awhile, then she burst out: “But I don’t understand why I should dream ‘bout she now.”
He stared at her, and then shifted his eyes away. “Maybe you need more time to forget. He squeezed her hand. Sandra, I sorry—”
Gently, she pulled her hand away. And I forgive you.
He sat in the living room after she’d left; guilt and self-anger washing over him.
After taking the ring off her hand, he’d told Sandra what he suspected about the old woman. She knew about the manicole broom. She knew about the blood that was found in the woman’s stomach. She knew about his dreams…Wayne’s, everything.

No, not everything. He hadn’t told her that he suspected that the ring was some repository of evil that could somehow taint its wearer. He knew his woman, and instinct told him that there would be no forgiveness if he told her— that his rash act had almost cursed her into undergoing some hideous transformation.
Now, out of the blue, this new ‘flying dream.’ And his…so weird. He gave an involuntary shiver as he remembered the dream-woman’s agony-filled tossing, her hair brushing his face.
And he found himself thinking about that white scar that remained on Sandra’s finger, where the ring that had almost refused to come off had scratched her one month ago.
Was it possible that—?
“No way,” he muttered to himself, but still seeing that scar, that troubling scar…
(To be continued)

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