The Hollows--A Novel

by Jess Montgomery

  Lily sighs ruefully. If they go through her rucksack—see the bloody rags, the hooded cape, the compass—they’ll truly think she is insane. It’s a crazy collection, after all. And what do all these pieces mean? If they are connected—how so?

  Now Lily closes her eyes, tries to think of something pleasant. Hildy’s sorghum cookies. The goldenrods by the corner of the Stanehart Hollow Friends Meeting House.

  Instead, images rush in from the asylum corridors, where she’d been hurried along by the orderlies, stumbling on her swollen, protesting feet. Through the main corridor, on either side, were dining halls—one for the male residents and another for the female. They turned down another corridor, to the right, into the women’s wing. Here, the doors opened to residents’ rooms, many with two twin beds. In some rooms, residents sat quietly, either reading or gazing out the window. In the hall, a few of the women sat on hard wooden benches or curled up on the floor. One sat with her hands bound with twine behind her back; maybe the scratches on her face and arms had been self-inflicted and the staff was trying to help her. Some of the women were dressed in regular clothes; others wore the thin nightgown and robe that the old woman had worn. Lily noted that all had on slippers or shoes.

  Lily wonders: Where had the woman’s shoes gone? Had she kicked them off, for some reason, on the road beside the cemetery? Is that why her scent trail had started there?

  Lily is too weary to consider possible answers, and another image arises from her walk down that corridor: a naked woman, skinny arms wrapped around too-thin legs pulled up to her body, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. A young, harried nurse, trying to get the woman to put on a robe, gently telling her she should eat something, that she could bring her some applesauce at least.

  One of the orderlies pulling Lily along had chuckled at the sight. The resident looked up, her hair a greasy rat’s nest, her face gaunt and skeletal, her eyes hollow and lost. Anorexia nervosa, Lily’d thought. Their eyes met, but Lily knew that the woman didn’t really see her. Lily might as well have been a ghost.

  Now Lily feels her heart lurch—she’s jealous, she realizes with a jolt, of that woman. What would it be to forget all pain? All loss?

  Her eyes prickle as she recollects how harsh she’d been earlier with Hildy, then with Marvena. What do you know of how hard it’s been? She’d even been unnecessarily brusque with the Quaker woman. This morning, she realizes, isn’t the exception. Despair had gripped her heart since Daniel’s death, never letting go, at times speaking for her, infusing every moment.

  An image of her children comes to her. She does not want to lose them to amnesia—or to despair. She shudders at the very notion of doing so—

  Lily startles awake, finds herself curled up on the bench. How long has she been in here? It feels like five minutes. It feels like an hour. It feels like days.

  The door squeaks as it opens. The turning of the door key must have stirred her. Lily sits up quickly, stiffens her spine. In the doorway stand Chief Warren and another man in a well-appointed suit.

  With an amused grin, the chief says, “Yes, sir, this woman is indeed the sheriff of Bronwyn County. Lily Ross.”

  * * *

  “Sheriff Ross, I must apologize. My nurse assumed—”

  “I don’t require an apology.” Lily looks across the wide oak desk at Dr. Harkins—the director of the asylum, who had accompanied Chief Warren to the holding cell.

  The wing chair in which she sits is, she admits to herself, a relief after the long day. But she won’t let herself entirely relax. She has her revolver back in her holster, her rucksack (and all the contents—she’d checked) in her lap, and Sadie beside her on the floor, napping and snoring, her breath heavy, blubbery sighs. At first, the nurse had looked askance at Lily’s insistence that the hound be brought to her in the doctor’s well-appointed office—large enough to be a library, with a fireplace, settees, bookcases. But horrified by Lily’s rough treatment, Dr. Harkins readily agreed.

  Chief Warren, sitting next to Lily, chuckles. She resists giving him a hard look. Wonder how well he’d be holding up, after a long trek and a stint in a smelly cell?

  The nurse who had earlier whistled for the orderlies at Lily’s crazy proclamation of sheriffhood comes in, carrying a tray filled with cups of coffee. The nurse’s hands shake so hard that the cups rattle. She is, Lily thinks, probably fearful for her job, knows that if Lily wanted she could get the nurse in trouble.

  Lily knows how hard it is to be a working woman, so Lily smiles as she takes a cup. One small sip sets her empty stomach to churning, but she nods in approval.

  As the nurse leaves, the chief says, “I’d like to make this meeting brief, if possible, as I have other duties to attend to.”

  Meeting. As if this were all pre-planned. But the word jolts the realization that she’s actually supposed to be meeting at this moment with several shopkeepers in Kinship—all men—who want to give her advice on her campaign and her talking points in the upcoming debate. Lily sighs. She’ll have to reschedule. And then she thinks—no. If that elderly, frail woman had trekked all the way from here to Moonvale, surely she can figure out her own talking points without a group of men explaining to her what to say.

  Now Lily says, “I am here to inquire about a patient I tracked here.”

  Chief Warren clears his throat. “This is out of your jurisdiction, Sheriff.”

  “Not when the patient was found in my jurisdiction.”

  Harkins frowns. “What are you talking about? There must be a mistake.”

  “The woman was found, barefoot, other than rags around her feet. Wearing a gown like the other patients. My tracking hound traced her scent to the road by the cemetery. Perhaps she was a cottage resident. She is older, in her late seventies. Maybe eighties. Gray-white hair. Thin.” The slight weight of the woman, as Lily lifted her from the ground, carried her up the slope, rushes back to her. “Too thin.”

  The doctor sighs. “That describes too many of our female patients. Unfortunately, they tend toward senile dementia, and when that happens they stop eating enough, and sometimes wander off, trying to get home. Usually someone in town finds them, returns them. Sometimes families take them back in.” His voice takes a woeful turn. “We have more than a thousand acres of land, and we serve fifteen counties, and—”

  “I’m not here to get an education on your management and facility problems,” Lily says.

  “Very well,” Harkins says. “If you’ll bring her back, we’ll look at getting her moved from the cottage to a more secure room in the main building.”

  “I’ll send someone to collect her from your little jailhouse,” Warren says.

  Lily puts her cup down on the desk, too hard, letting coffee slosh. Looks from one arrogant man to the other. “The woman was found dead in my county. Her remains are currently in the funeral home in Kinship. She apparently fell from the Moonvale Hollow Tunnel onto an oncoming freight train. There is cause to think she may have been pushed. Murdered.”

  The doctor goes pale. “There must be some mistake. You say she’s an old woman … your hound must be wrong, or if she’s from here, how did she get that far—”

  “One step at a time.” Lily allows herself a small smile at using Marvena’s phrase. “She wasn’t wearing shoes, it hasn’t rained for a few days along the path we traced, and I’ve been assured that Sadie here”—Lily gives the hound a gentle scratch between the ears—“is one of the best tracking hounds in my county. The woman was wearing one of the same blue gowns I saw on your female residents as I was walked”—she hopes the pointed emphasis makes clear that she really means “dragged”—“to your holding cell. So either my hound’s nose tracked the path that your resident took from here, or the hound is wrong—which would mean that she got to where she died by another means.”

  Lily lets the silence carry the implication—that a staff member might have helped the old woman escape for some reason.

  The doctor shakes his head. “No, n
o, this can’t be right; we are very secure here—”

  “You were saying occasionally residents do wander away, and how overworked you are. How many patients are here?” Lily asks.

  “About thirteen hundred.”

  “About? You don’t know, exactly?”

  “Now, now, Sheriff Ross, no need to get testy,” Warren says.

  Lily gives him a hard glare. “Testy” is a euphemism for “hysterical.”

  “If I had a family member or loved one here, I’d want to know that you know exactly how many people there are—after all, you’ve numbered them.”

  Dr. Harkins sighs. “If you’re referring to the cemetery, yes, the stones are numbered. The asylum bought a slew of headstones years ago, pre-engraved with the numbers, and yes, our residents do each get a number. We’ve had thousands of patients come through over the years. We track as efficiently as possible. There are only a few residents, dating back to a few years after the Civil War, whose names are lost to memory.”

  Lily nods. “Fair enough. Do you allow your residents to keep personal items?”

  “The higher-functioning ones, yes,” the doctor says, “and often they wear their own clothes as well. If they cannot harm themselves or others with their personal possessions, they can keep them.” His voice takes on an eager tone. He wants, Lily realizes, to do the best for the patients, but with overcrowding he’s up against an impossible task. “We find familiarity—”

  “I assume you saw the compass in my rucksack when you looked through it.”

  Dr. Harkins frowns. “Well, yes.”

  “I have a few questions about the contents, Sheriff Ross,” Warren says.

  “I took the rags with which her feet were wrapped and the gown from the woman—used those clothes for tracking her here. The hood was found along the path—and believe me, I have plenty of questions about that, too, which I will pursue in my jurisdiction. The person where we found the compass says the initials might be for ‘Rupert Edward Kincaide.’ Does that name have any connection to a female patient here?”

  “I wish I could remember all the names,” the doctor says. “But I must rely on staff and records—”

  “Wait,” Chief Warren says. “I brought in a Thea Kincaide two, maybe three, weeks ago.”

  Lily turns to him. “What do you know of her?”

  “Just that her landlady filed a complaint that the woman was creating a disturbance in the boardinghouse—crying out, walking the halls at night, scaring other residents, and making threats that she would hurt the landlady. So the landlady—”

  “What’s her name?”

  “I don’t remember,” Warren says.

  “But you remember the older woman’s name?”

  Warren chuckles. “She was … memorable. Kept demanding notebooks and pens so she could keep writing her story, as she put it. Claimed her journals and story had been stolen from her. Rattled off a bunch of other last names on the way over here—over and over. Names she’d had all the times she’d been married. Said Kincaide was her maiden name and she’d reclaimed it. Crazy, right?”

  He looks at Dr. Harkins, but the doctor frowns at the use of the term.

  “Nothing about being married numerous times makes a person crazy,” Lily says.

  The chief turns red. “Well, not if—”

  “Even if the person getting married numerous times is a female.” Lily looks back at the doctor. “I will need to see the records for Thea Kincaide.”

  “Finding them may take a while.”

  “How many new residents do you get each month?”

  “As I said, we are facing overcrowding issues, as are asylums all across the country—”

  “Just on average, Doctor.”

  “Perhaps ten.”

  “And your patients are numbered sequentially, yes?”

  Dr. Harkins nods. “True. So if Thea Kincaide came in two or three weeks ago, then we should only have to look through the most recent thirty or so records to find hers. And we do take a photograph of each resident as they are processed in. Let me ring for the nurse.”

  “Please do. I’d like to interview as many of your staff as possible about the missing woman—”

  “I wouldn’t let her do that without a search warrant,” Chief Warren says.

  Dr. Harkins looks startled. “But if it helps find out what happened to our patient—”

  “Without a search warrant limiting her inquiry, she can poke around anywhere.”

  “We have nothing to hide here, but—very well. I’ll see if we can find the patient record, but beyond that—” Dr. Harkins sighs. The man seems so overwhelmed by his position. “That’s the best I can do.”

  * * *

  Fifteen minutes later, Dr. Harkins returns with a file folder, hands it to Lily. She opens it.

  There, in the folder, labeled “5341,” is a single sheet.

  A photograph, black and white, of the resident is stapled to the intake form.

  This is the woman. Petite, striking face. Hair swept up in an elegant twist. Eyes filled with sorrow—and the realization of betrayal. Perhaps that’s too fanciful? No, no, Lily’s not imagining the expression. It’s there.

  On the first line of the intake form, the name: Thea Kincaide.

  Lily scans down the page.

  Comes to the last line: next of kin.

  And stares in shock at the name.

  Mabel Cooper.

  Hildy Cooper’s mother.

  THE HOLLOWS ASYLUM FOR THE INSANE OFFICIAL USE ONLY

  DATE: August 30, 1926

  IDENTIFICATION:

  NAME: Thea Kincaide AGE: Approx. 75 SEX: Female RACE: Caucasian

  PLACE OF BIRTH: Unknown  HAIR: Gray-white EYES: Blue

  HEIGHT: 5′ 2″  WEIGHT: 103 lbs. INMATE NUMBER: 5341

  CONTACT: Mrs. Maryann Pothoulis (boardinghouse)

  59 Elmwood Avenue, Athens

  NEXT OF KIN: Mrs. Mabel Cooper (cousin) 61 Plum Street, Kinship

  CASE INFORMATION:

  Mrs. Pothoulis contacted the Athens County Sheriff after repeatedly asking Miss Kincaide to refrain from entering other boarders’ rooms. Miss Kincaide would come down to the common room only partially clothed, muttering to herself, and several times screaming at “a large man” or other times “a scary woman” to “get away” and “leave me alone,” but other boarders say these were imagined people, as she was staring into space. On two occasions, once with scissors and another with a paring knife, she tried to stab Mrs. Pothoulis, apparently mistaking her for the “scary woman.” Mrs. Pothoulis reports that Miss Kincaide came to the boardinghouse with two satchels but could not describe her background, other than mentioning her cousin Mrs. Cooper. Mrs. Pothoulis says that Miss Kincaide paid her room rent of $2 a week in a timely fashion, and at first was quiet and kept her room neat, but then seemed to think she was on a luxury oceangoing liner and complained others were not attending to her needs, and asking about ball dances and such.

  Upon admission, Miss Kincaide was generally calm, exhibited a well-educated demeanor and vocabulary, but was disoriented. She is assigned for the time being to Women’s Cabin 3.

  CHAPTER 14

  HILDY

  Wednesday, September 22—6:40 p.m.

  Dinner should have been on the table more than a half hour ago.

  After Missy, her boy, and Margaret Dyer left, Hildy had taken a spare chamber pot into the jailhouse for the sick prisoner. Then Mama had come back, Micah and Caleb Jr. in tow, to get lunch for the prisoners, but Mama still looked so weary that Hildy didn’t have the heart to leave her alone with the task. By the time she’d helped Mama clean up after lunch, it was 2:00. Hildy had returned to her home, planning to clean up herself and drive back over to Rossville.

  She’d leaned back against her headboard for a moment, meaning to only close her eyes to the count of ten … then she’d startled awake to Mother banging on her bedroom door, to the Big Ben clock on her nightstand ticking away at 5:30. For a moment,
Hildy came close to telling her mother about Tom—or to simply leaving after all—but then Mother had one of her coughing fits, looking so pitiful, gasping for air, begging Hildy to fetch some Vogel’s Tonic, and reminding her that tonight Merle will be over for dinner.

  Now, in the kitchen, Hildy wipes her brow as she scrambles eggs. It is too late to make chicken and dumplings and biscuits, which was supposed to be dinner tonight, to show Merle how well she could cook his favorite dish. A plan concocted by Mother—who must sense that Hildy’s interest is wavering, that Merle is getting nervous as well. A plan Hildy had forgotten about, until she’d opened her bedroom door to Mother.

  Hildy instead fries green tomatoes and scrambles eggs. The kitchen is warm and suffocating, and she cranks open the kitchen window.

  The crickets’ long, lonesome chorus sifts in from the dark, stirring an impulse to run out into the yard, even at this late hour. Run to her daddy’s old automobile, start it up, drive away from Kinship, to the dark, cool hills and hollers in the eastern part of the county. To Tom.

  Is he thinking of her tonight? Wishing he’d come after her as she walked away after his hurtful proclamation?

  As the suffocating hot kitchen rebuffs the evening air, Hildy imagines herself making supper instead for Tom, him coming home after a long day in the mine, her greeting him at the door, not caring that he is sweaty and dirty and smells of dank, dark earth, taking his face in her hands, grateful that he is all right, kissing him fully, satisfying another sort of hunger—

  A charred scent snatches her attention back to the moment. The eggs are burning in the cast-iron skillet.

  Distractedly, Hildy reaches for the skillet handle, scorches her hand, yelps.

  She grabs a crocheted potholder, moves the skillet off the heat. As she scrapes burned scrambled eggs into a bowl—her hand already throbbing—she hears Mother’s and Merle’s voices from the dining room, murmuring and low, sodden with propriety, converse to cricket song. Maybe neither had heard her cry out. Or maybe hearing her hadn’t given them pause.