Chapter Ten

“They’re all werewolves! For God sakes, why won’t you listen to me!” Nancy pleaded to the men in white.

At this moment, her pleas were well past the point of being ignored. It was her insistence that was solidifying her fate. “Go there! Please, you will see!”

From behind the one way glass Doctor Giddon observed the new patient with curiosity. He would never know this woman, but in the time Riverview had left to remain open, Doctor Giddon hoped he could cure this new arrival. What interested him most in this odd woman were her origins. Nancy Betmin claimed to have escaped from New Haven, but her claims of what she escaped were far more interesting.

The local police had brought her in after she tried telling her story in an effort to break open the secrets in the quaint little town. Nancy was offered a rest in the hospital where it was quickly determined Riverview would be a more appropriate home. In the short time she had been in observation her story had not changed, but her mental state appeared to be on the decline.

“Miss, we’re not going to hurt you but we must put this coat on you for your own protection,” The large orderly assured.

“I’m not fucking crazy!” The woman screamed, signaling the orderlies to forcibly place the straight jacket on her. She bawled and fought, but lost the battle rapidly.

“She’s all yours, Doc!” The orderly shouted once Nancy was safely secured in the harness.

“Fine, I’ll be right in,” Doctor Giddon replied through the intercom. “Sam, I know what you’re thinking, but I don’t believe in coincidences.”

Kimbel said, “Eddie, I’m not judging. If you want to interview her then go for it, but what do you hope to learn? We’ve seen hysterics before…this is no different. We’ll probably find she’s a schizophrenic and after some medications, she’ll be fine. You’re not giving her ramblings any serious considerations, are you?”

Edward shrugged. “I don’t know what I believe. I see it in her eyes, she believes what she says. The fact she comes from the town where the new hospital will be, the same town as Marta Foster…I just must do this.”

Edward Giddon entered the padded room and found Nancy rolling in the corner continuing to cry and shout. The doctor plopped himself down on the floor with only a clip board and pen in hand. Nancy wasn’t aware of his presence until he spoke.

“Nancy,” he said softly.

Her shouting ceased and her cries became only muffled sobs. She rolled to her side to see the Doctor sitting cross-legged, giving her a simple smile.

“What the fuck do you want?” Nancy barked.

“The same thing you want I imagine, to find the truth.”

“I tried the truth, look where it got me.”

Giddon nodded. “Nancy my name is Doctor Giddon; I want to hear your story. In your own words, can you tell me what happened?” he asked with emotion.

“Why the fuck should I? I told the police everything, they acted like they believed me and instead I was committed! If I tell my story, you might never let me go!”

“I promise to listen to what you have to say. You have to admit though, if you hadn’t seen what you claim to have seen, you might be a bit reluctant to believe it too, right? So my job is to help you either explain what you saw to help your mind better cope with the world around you, or possibly find a medical intervention.”

“What if I’m not lying?”

“I don’t think you’re lying. I think you believe what you say.” The doctor stopped for a moment, choosing his words so as to not inflame that agitated patient. “It can be difficult for people like me. What you have seen should not exist, but maybe it does. If you ran into a room and said the President of the United States was outside, we probably would all run to have a look. He exists, so therefore there is less doubt in our minds. When you say you were held captive by werewolves, a mythical creature as far as I know, then I have to take a step back and see how we arrived here. If I or anyone could explain or interpret what you have seen, or even find a medical reason for you to make it all go away, wouldn’t you accept that too?”

“What if I can prove to you my story is true, then what?” Nancy questioned, her eyes bulging as though she suffered from cerebral edema.

The doctor tried to assess her rational thinking. “Then I suppose I might need some medical intervention. Nancy, I’m not saying what you claim happened in fact didn’t happen, but if we assigned a likelihood to your story—say on a scale from one to ten—what do you think the average person would assign to it?

Nancy huffed in her spot looking at the padded roof. “Zero…I’m not retarded. I know how it sounds but I can tell you where to look to prove my story is true!”

“The coal mine?”

“Yes!” Nancy shouted. “Go there and you will find the place they call-Special Handling. Thousands have died. People are kept there until they are needed for food, then they come.”

“Werewolves?”

“Yeah…only they come in human form when they want food. For awhile, we didn’t know why we were being held. We never saw them as werewolves, then a few months ago—well actually I don’t know when it was—you lose track of time underground, but we hadn’t been there very long. There was a loud explosion and these people showed up, they called themselves Guardians. They told us to stay on the lower levels. It all happened fast but one of the prisoners ran up to level one, and then we heard animals fighting and yelping. Hours later we found out the truth, they were werewolves. The prisoner who went to level one was one of them. We all thought it was coming to an end after that.” Nancy sulked.

“If werewolves were keeping you captive why was one a prisoner?” he asked, hoping to open up a hole in the story.

“I don’t know. I never knew her and no one got a chance to ask. Maybe she survived their attack. Don’t people become werewolves if they get bitten or scratched? I just don’t know how it happened, but it did. She left through the hatch though; she is one of them.”

“So, you never saw this woman or anyone else as a werewolf, you’re only speculating then…so it’s possible there’s another explanation,” Doctor Giddon stated, hoping he had made one point on the road to wellness.

“Those Guardian people, the young ones all dressed in black military gear told us some of the story. I knew they were holding back. They said an explosion had sealed us in and something very dangerous was on A1. We could hear inhuman sounds from above and animal fighting. Later when the noise stopped, that was when I got my first look at things. The female prisoner and captors were naked when they came down to A2; that was the first time I saw Darwin.”

“Who’s Darwin?”

“The young one, Darwin, promised to let us go. He seemed like he was the leader. We were trapped, but they said they knew of another way to escape. But they double-crossed us. They shut us in and left us to die—at least that’s how it felt.”

The doctor asked logically, “once you knew where the exit was, did you try to open the hatch again?”

“Yeah! You think I’m making this shit up? The stone block was too heavy. I think people tried lifting that block until they died. We were all weak, I know that didn’t help. When they closed the hatch it fell on some guy’s arm and cut it right off. He fell down the ladder and died. Nobody paid any attention, it just started a panic. The monsters were strong, they were able to move the hatch, but we couldn’t.” She closed her eyes at the memory.

Doctor Giddon remained silent watching as Nancy began to recount her time. Fresh tears began to roll down her cheeks through her sealed eyelids as the movie played out in her mind.

Nancy gave a jerk and sobbed. “We were alone in the dark…thousands of us gathering at the base of the ladder. The hatch was too heavy for us. We couldn’t move it—it was panic. The screaming, the clawing. We turned into animals ourselves. I know people died there from our own selfishness. The lights in the mine began to fail not long after they sealed us in. I’m not sure how long the lights lasted but we could see we were going to be trapped in the dark. People like me, near the back of the group away from the hatch realized that being stuck at that end of the mine in the dark would mean death. It was too far from the food, so we turned back. We were the lucky ones. I can only imagine how many died of dehydration in the dark, unable to find their way back after the lights went out.”

“Then what happened?”

“The echo in the chambers started from the terrified down below. So many people didn’t make it back to camp before the lights went out. It sounded like hell for days, like being at a baseball game and everyone is screaming all at once, except inside a hollow tube. The people in camp screamed and the ones down below begged for death. It was awful listening to people waiting to die only a few hundred yards from life. We couldn’t help them. It was darker than the darkest night. No ambient light, no fire, not even a flashlight. We were blind. It was hard to walk around blind, but on the upper levels we knew the layout and could function. On level four it was a foreign land. It would be easy to get turned around down there.” Nancy convinced herself.

Doctor Giddon refocused his questioning. “After the screams stopped, when did they come back?”

“It took a long time for the screams to stop. One by one they puffed out. Then I woke up to silence one day. I thought I was dead but there was a person holding on to my arm and they were warm. But the screaming was gone. I was so happy to have nothing in my ear but the sound of my own breath. I was more than happy, I was ecstatic to be rid of the noise. I had prayed it would end; I would have given anything to make it stop. I guess my prayer was answered. The screamers died and I got my silence. I bet that cost me my soul Doc!” Nancy chuckled while drooling a bit.

Doctor Giddon remained silent taking a moment to wipe the slick from Nancy’s mouth.

“I’d never smelt death before. It’s such a unique smell. It overwhelms you. I thought I knew death from my time in the mine. It was a little while after the screaming ended that the smell arrived. Rotting corpses from the people below. I don’t think I could even describe the smell. It crept and grew; warm and moist–even though it was cold in the mine. I guess it was like having meat rotting in the garbage, but even that isn’t really close. You never forget it though. With death in the air and nothing but blackness to entertain you, you keep drifting back to the smell. Avoiding it, embracing it, dissecting it and for a time, loving it,” Nancy admitted beginning to drift back to the mine.

“Then they came back?” Doctor Giddon asked.

Nancy was still thinking about the death smell as though she was in a form of shock. She had heard the question but was unable to answer. “I wanted to be death,” she mumbled.

“Nancy! Stay with me,” he directed, raising his voice enough to startle her back to talking.

“The smell is death’s phone call. It reminds us that we all have an appointment with him sooner or later.” She grinned at her interviewer.

“Did they come back down the ladder for you?” he again asked, forcing the topic.

“No,” she replied. “They managed to reopen the main entrance. We didn’t even know they had made it in. The lights came back on, that’s how we knew. The light blinded us, too! It was so hard to open our eyes after seeing nothing but darkness for so long. Once the lights were on, it was business as usual. The withdrawals commenced almost right away.”

“Withdrawals?” he asked to clarify.

Nancy nodded. “That’s how it was before. They would come and blow a siren, and then a representative from our camp would surface on level one and be told what they wanted. Tara Bollen had been our rep, but she left with them through the hatch. When they came back and the signal was given for us to send someone to level one, a man volunteered. Men and women had been separated before-but now we lived together. When the lights were off the men would rape us. You couldn’t see who it was. A woman ten feet away, I’m not sure if it was ten feet but it was close, sounded close-she was raped in front of me. I screamed and shouted, I threw rocks but the sound down there confused you. Such savages. When the lights came back…it became gang rape.”

Nancy drifted momentarily from topic before regaining her train of thought. “This man came back a short time later and told us that Tara was up top and wanted twenty adults and ten children. Nothing had changed,” she said, depressed.

“Tell me about this Darwin?”

Nancy sighed and went on. “Just before I got away, everyone’s will to live had more or less been extinguished. People were no longer selected to be handed over to the wolves, people begged for it. I went hoping to die; I could only be gang raped so many times and that’s when he selected me; when I escaped in the woods. He chose me to be the one to entertain him. He gave me ten minutes to run as fast as I could. He had friends with him; three other prisoners went with me. We were blindfolded and driven out into the woods and released. Everyone scattered, but I was the fastest. I could hear him and his goons changing and then killing the other people that had been with me. I made it to McCarran Park. I thought about places to hide but I knew they were animals so I knew their sense of smell would be good. I saw an outhouse and thought that would be a good place to hide; a strong odor to cover my own. I went to the lake and then the river to eliminate my trail and to wash me off. I took a chance and I got out of the water and ran back to the outhouse. I hid inside the shit all night, but it worked. I heard this guy Darwin talking with a woman. They changed and fucked by the picnic area, I could hear them.”

The doctor became excited as he found a hole in Nancy’s story. “I thought Darwin was already a werewolf when he was chasing you in the woods?”

“He was! When he was with the woman it was hours later…I guess he changed back into a human! How the fuck should I know. I heard them change!” Nancy barked.

“So, you never actually saw a werewolf?”

“I killed one. Darwin sent one to find me. He was some young guy named Robbie. I saw him begin to change in front of me.”

“What did you see?”

“I knew he was following me for a day or so, it was as though he didn’t want it to be a secret. He cornered me in a barn just before the highway. I quickly looked around for something I could fight him with but there wasn’t much. I decided to tip over a jerry-can of gasoline. I hoped the puddle would be enough to catch Robbie standing in. I made a quick Molotov cocktail with a jar that was on the work bench and I soaked a rag in contact cement. Robbie entered the barn all smug like he had found his prize. I lit the rag and told him to back off. He just laughed at me and said he was immortal and that he couldn’t die. He approached me and I saw his nails grow into claws. He growled under his breath and his eyes changed-they were so colorful. He smiled and his teeth grew. His body began to expand; I could see he was getting bigger. I smashed the jar in the gas puddle and the barn went up. Robbie ran around howling and changing but he was caught in the flames and was burning quickly. I ran out of the barn and saw his flaming body running towards a pond. He collapsed near it.”

“How do you know he was dead?”

“His body exploded and the fire turned blue. When I went to check, he was gone and there was nothing but a pile of ash left.”

“What about silver?”

“Doctor, I’m not an expert in werewolves. I’m just telling you what I did, what I saw, and what worked.”

“I understand, Nancy,” Doctor Giddon replied continuing to sense the sincerity in his patient’s story. “I was only curious.”

“Do you believe me?” Nancy asked, now calmer and beginning to relax in her jacket.

“I want to believe you. It’s a fantastic story, but even you must realize that it’s a hard one to swallow. How could thousands of people disappear, and no one noticed?” Doctor Giddon posed further, testing her rational thinking.

“We thought about that a lot in the mines. Why didn’t anybody come looking for us? It seemed to us that it was a well thought out plan. Whole families were taken. The occasional visitor from out of town was taken and put into the mine too. I think the werewolves controlled the government and emergency services. No investigations were done because they controlled the investigations. I agree with you, how did thousands just disappear? How did those thousands just hand themselves over when they evacuated the town. I was one of them.”

“What do you mean?”

“It was in December, before Christmas. It was a strange day. Something was wrong with our water and the town officials told people to go get a free vaccine. I didn’t, but that’s when they got the first batch of people. Later that day there was some kind of toxic explosion, or so they said, and the town had to be evacuated. We all just mindlessly went to the train station and boarded box cars. No one questioned why there was a train at an abandoned railway line. Someone said that the nursery at the old mine site owned the train, but the story didn’t make much sense. It didn’t matter; we followed the herd like cattle. When we arrived at the mine armed guards were waiting, and it was too late. Our cell phones hadn’t worked most of the day, and there was no way to call for help. They got us. It was too easy for them. You ask how thousands disappear, my answer is, I don’t know-we just did!” Nancy concluded.

“I want you to think back to December. Was there anything else unusual happening in the town during the month?”

“I think the first werewolves were in town at the beginning of the month. Our search and rescue team was attacked by an animal. It was a full moon. Then there were a few animal-like attacks the next night, some kids were mauled in town. It was more or less quiet after that-until the day they took us away.”

“What happened to the search and rescue?”

“They were looking for Darwin. Some rancher found his clothes in the woods and they thought he was out there lost. It was early in the night and this animal massacred a lot of the team within minutes. I know one survived, Dave Cronin, I think he’s a werewolf now.”

“What about Darwin?”

“Darwin was found at home. I heard a rumor that he claimed he had been mugged and that’s why his clothes were out in the woods. Knowing what I know now, he’s one of the first. I think he killed the search team and I think he’s involved heavily in Special Handling.”

“Would you like to go back to New Haven?” Doctor Giddon asked.

“I can’t go back there, they’ll lock me up!”

“I thought you said you would show me where this Special Handling is?” Giddon attempted to confuse.

“I’ll show you on a map! I’m not going anywhere near that town!”

Director Kimbel asked through the intercom, “Doctor, could I see you please?”

“Would you excuse me, Nancy? I’ll be back in a while,” Giddon said as he stood up and made his way to the door.

“I might not be around later Doc; I thought I’d check out the pool,” Nancy joked.

“That’s good Nancy; I like to see a sense of humor in my patients,” Giddon laughed as he exited the padded cell.

“Eddie, have you had enough of her story telling?” Sam Kimbel asked sitting alone in the one way glass booth.

Doctor Giddon summarized, “Does she sound crazy to you? Well spoken, but agitated…her rational thinking seems to be fully functional; if she was raped it could explain the delusional story. Other than the werewolves she seems more than normal to me.”

“Other than the werewolves. Too bad that’s a big part of the story! Listen, I called you back in because I thought you might find this interesting. I met this character named Darwin, his name is Darwin Foster. This guy works for the city of New Haven and I also met Tara Bollen, the mayor. Not that I’m playing into your fantasies!”

“Foster,” Giddon said while scanning his memory. “Any relation to Marta Foster?”

Director Kimbel stopped in his tracks realizing he had overlooked a very important piece of the story. “I’ll have to check the file, but he might very well be.”

“Perhaps you and I should take a drive up to New Haven and pay this Darwin fellow a visit,” Edward Giddon suggested.

“Why?”

“The hospital is moving to New Haven within weeks. Don’t we have a duty to ensure that our patients will be looked after? It could give us a chance to snoop around, maybe get a glimpse of this old coal mine.”

“You do believe her!” Kimbel accused.

“Her answers are coherent. Her rationale seems intact. You have to admit there are some strange things going on here. New Haven offers to take the new Riverview with little concern at the lack of doctors in their town, the Marta connection, the Darwin connection…could be interesting to get their side of things,” Edward offered to his friend.

“Look, I have an appointment in New Haven tomorrow to review the new facility. Why don’t you come along and check out the town. Maybe we can do a bit of digging around and find out more about Nancy. Covertly, no direct questioning. Maybe that will help you with another one on one session with Nancy,” Kimbel suggested.

“Good idea. Maybe we can arrange to meet Dave Cronin. He’s not directly related to Foster and Nancy named him as having been attacked in December. That would be a matter of public record. We could question him on that basis…survivor’s guilt might work.”

“Just don’t embarrass us,” Kimbel pleaded.