Lee Goldberg - Ring of Knives

Dindren's fingers now shook too much to steeple. They clutched each other like abandoned twins in a fairy tale, fighting off hypothermia. They were raw and chafed, with nails chewed to the quick.

What else? Well, Dindren had traded in his suit and tie for soiled pink scrubs with a repeating daisy pattern. His thick, wheat-colored hair was no longer gelled into a banker's part; it was lank and oily and fell to his shoulders, and had been razor cut in a rough approximation of the style Jennifer Aniston had popularized more than a decade earlier. Also like Jennifer Aniston, he had breasts, and (like her nemesis), lush, bee-stung lips. Unlike Jennifer Anniston (or her nemesis), he had an Adam's apple, a five-day shadow, thin gray teeth that leaned inward, and one eye so consumed with pinkeye that the pupil seemed to be floating in a sea of blood.

And he shook all over.

"Charmed," he said, producing a hand, "I'm sure ."

Matt took his hand and shook it (cool, damp, and as limp as a sock), making a mental note to get some antibacterial soap at the first opportunity. Afterwards, as casually as he could, he wiped his palm on his pants leg.

Dindren noticed, but the insult only fed his drag act. Sitting on his mattress, ankles crossed demurely, he wrapped his arms around his shins and gently propped his chin on his kneecap at a winsome angle.

"And to what do I owe the pleasure?"

That red peeper made Matt's skin crawl. And-what the fuck ? Was Dindren male or female? He couldn't tell. Shifted nervously from foot to foot, saying, "Ah, you don't know me-that is, we haven't met before-but I had written ahead to the administration to arrange a visit with a former patient of yours, Jesse Weston? It was really important that I meet with him. But when I arrived-this afternoon, actually-I was told that he'd been transferred. So I asked Maloria if she'd arrange it so I could… ah… speak with you."

At the mention of Weston's name, Dindren's unbloodied eye went all hazy. When Matt had finished, Dindren pursed his thick, chapped lips. "Jesse, Jesse," he said, rocking gently.

And that was about it.

"They said he'd gone away sometime in the last few weeks," Matt prompted.

A slow nod. "'Gone away.' Yes." Cheeks sucked inward in a wry pout. "You could say that, couldn't you?"

"I guess what I'd like to know is, where exactly did he go away to ? Is he near here? Or out of state?"

"Hmm. You could say he returned to his former state."

"His former…" Matt tried to remember where Weston was from.

"Never you mind." Dindren's bloodred orb rolled Matt's way and settled on him with a barely suppressed tremble. "I'd like to help, but I try not to discuss my patients' pathologies with strangers." His jittery hands clasped together and pressed against his cheek like a 1920s pinup. "You wouldn't happen to have any Necco Wafers, would you?"

"Um, not… on me." Matt's head throbbed. He'd come all this way for this?

"I like the chocolate ones the best."

"Who doesn't? Look, Doc…" Matt hunkered down in a crouch in front of him, his knees cracking loudly. "I don't have much time."

"Would you like some of mine? I have quite a bit to spare."

"No. What I really need are some answers."

"What I really need are Necco Wafers."

Matt felt his face prickle with heat. The guy was clearly messing with him. But could he help it? He was ill, after all. Matt held out two hands in mock surrender, gave him an encouraging smile. "Whatta you say we drop the Necco thing, okay?"

Dindren's lips peeled back to reveal the gray, leaning teeth. Huskily: "Whatta you say we make out?"

Before he could tell them not to, Matt's hands snapped forward and grabbed Dindren by the shoulders of his pink daisy scrubs and gave him a shake, trying desperately to break through to him. "Help me, goddammit! Help me or I'll-"

Dindren jerked back, sprawling. His scrubs fell open at the shoulder, where Matt's hands had pulled the laces free.

Matt stopped, sunk heavily onto one knee, staring. Unable to take his eyes off Dindren's left breast. Silenced not only by his shame of exposing it, and the surprise that it was actually real, but by disbelief at the sight of the raw half-moons that covered it.

"Are those…" He couldn't process what he was seeing. "Are those bite marks ?"

Dindren, panting, pushed himself upright. Eyes bright, he roughly pulled the flap of his scrubs back up and attempted to conceal the fresh red crescents.

"See anything you like?"

Matt fought off a wave of nausea-barely. "What… What the hell is going on in this place?"

"Little of this. Little of that." Dindren was shaking harder, grinning in a tight gray rictus. Whispered: "Let's just say that-to paraphrase the Immortal Bard-'something is rotten in the state of Carthage.'"

Matt vaguely remembered the line-or something like it-from Hamlet , which he'd had to read in high school. But what caught his attention was the word rotten . He made the connection.

"Rotting Jack."

The words electrified Dindren, who scrambled backward in a panicky crab walk to the padded wall. He flattened against it, eyes wide. "What did you say?"

"Rotting Jack. Jesse Weston's profile in the Encyclopedia of Psychopathology described how Weston had suffered from a delusion: he believed there was a guy named Rotting Jack that only he could see, and whose touch could cause lesions and madness."

"Yes."

"And you said just a minute ago that Weston had returned to his 'former state.' Meaning, after years of treatment, the delusion returned."

"Yes."

"And let me guess-that's when the administrators starting disappearing, and you went off the deep end, and the night shift began using the residents as chew toys."

Dindren's jaw worked. For the first time, the mask of saucy dissipation began to slip, revealing a look of active interest in Matt, an interest bordering on hope.

"What do you know," he said slowly-and without any hint of a British accent-"about Rotting Jack?"

So Matt told him his own story, told him about Mr. Dark, the leering, ghostly presence he'd glimpsed in dreams while his wife, Janey, had died of cancer. Told him about how he'd been trapped beneath an avalanche for three months and how afterwards he'd felt the phantom's presence more acutely. How afterwards, he'd been able to actually see and smell evil and madness in the faces of his friends, in the form of physical decay and rot. Told him about the massacre his best friend had caused at the sawmill, and what he'd had to do to stop it… and how he'd wandered since then, pursuing-and being pursued by-the mysterious Mr. Dark.

There was a long pause when he'd finished. Rocking back and forth, Dindren ran his tongue along the upper ridge of his gray, leaning teeth. Stared down at the trash on the isolation-room floor, the Twix wrapper, the bent lollipop stick.

"I see," he said finally. "And so you're-what?-in self-imposed exile until you discover the truth about his nature-and yours?"

"You might say that. But if you were able to diagnose Jesse Weston, it sounds like you could save me the effort, if you wanted to."

Dindren stopped rocking. But he didn't look up. "What are you asking?"

"I'm asking if you think I've got what Jesse Weston had."

As still as a statue. "In a word," he said quietly, "yes."

Matt's heart started to pound, even though he'd come to the same conclusion.

"So my next question is, I guess, am I…" He had trouble even forming the words. "That is, was Jesse Weston actually crazy?"

A sly half smile. "And by extension…"

"Yeah. By extension, am I? And is Mr. Dark-or Rotting Jack- real ?" A long pause, while Dindren continued to study the floor. "Or don't you know?"