Hollow Tree

by Ian Neligh

  One

  Mrs. Gamsbey stood in the sitting room, peering between heavy red curtains at the poor weather outside, trying to pierce the fog with her gaze like the beam of a lighthouse.

  Breath appeared in great blooms on the front window as her stare drifted through the whirls and eddies of fog. She turned her eyes up the dirt road leading to the inn. There was still no carriage. Frustrated, she fought back a snarl and took a sip from her cooling cup of tea. She wished the damned physician would show up already.

  Mrs. Gamsbey turned and let the heavy curtain fall back into place, then walked by a jowly man reading a newspaper.

  “I must be daft,” she said over her shoulder, deciding to acknowledge him at the last moment. “Mr. Smacer, I have looked out the window a hundred times already.”

  Pausing for a moment to make out her meaning, he nodded his head, giving the statement time to fall into place like a ponderous puzzle piece.

  “Well, they are still waiting for that doctor. It’s good of you to keep an eye out for them,” Smacer replied under his heavy mustache, his deep voice following her into the kitchen as she walked past.

  “Suppose it is,” she mumbled, pouring another cup of tea and not believing it for a second.

  The comfortable house was located a full day’s ride from London. Considered quaint by its vacationing patrons, the establishment was owned and operated by the widow, Mrs. Gamsbey.

  Receiving regulars on holiday from the larger city for most of thirty years, a wealthy banker from Bristol had originally owned the building and used it on occasion to entertain his close friends and business associates.

  Two floors in height, the exterior was constructed of stone. The interior of the top floor contained one hallway, decorated in popular cloverleaf wallpaper. Four rooms sat on either side, with one small window at the far end overlooking the rear entrance to the stables.

  The front door led to a foyer, which doubled as a sitting room and provided an appealing vantage point of the rather neglected garden at the front of the building. The house’s male occupants generally sat in this room to partake of their pipes after meals. It led in turn to a small library, a kitchen, assorted pantries, and a cellar.

  “A shame she’s taken ill on holiday,” Mr. Smacer grumbled. His eyes lolled back over the print of the paper.

  Mrs. Gamsbey came back into the room with her new cup of tea.

  “What was that now, Mr. Smacer?” she asked, pulling on her reserves of civility as she walked by him again on the way to the window.

  They both stopped and looked up as the tall and gaunt Mr. Anderson came walking down the creaky stairs from the second floor.

  “Afternoon, Mr. Anderson,” Mrs. Gamsbey said before going back to looking out the window.

  Anderson nodded imperceptibly, walking to the other window and peering out.

  “Well? What news? Any sign of this damned doctor yet?”

  “Not as such,” Mrs. Gamsbey said. “But he’s bound to be here just about any moment now.”

  As if disgusted with the window, Anderson turned on his heel, shuddering, and walked to the old leather chair opposite Mr. Smacer, then sat.

  “Who in their right mind brings a sick girl to a place where other people are trying to holiday?” he asked, peering up at the ceiling. “Those constant moans—you would think she would just hurry up and die already.”

  “Mr. Anderson,” Mrs. Gamsbey scolded from across the gray room, “the young sir has been coming here for just as long as the rest of you, and he’s allowed to let the lady get some fresh air if she’s feeling ill.” Although she said it, and the words hung in the air, they didn’t hold any feeling for her.

  Seeing Mrs. Gamsbey’s sentiment for what it was, Anderson grunted and leaned back in his chair. Anderson knew the old woman was only concerned with how much money she was going to get out of her troubles. Anderson should have stayed in town; he had plenty of work to do without his new clerical duties. Unable to remain still, he stood up, mumbled something, and walked back to the window overlooking the gloom. Seeing that Anderson had taken up her post, Mrs. Gamsbey turned back to the kitchen.

  “I’ll have to put up some light here soon,” she reminded herself out loud.

  Anderson hissed back over his shoulder, “You may want to wait on that, at least until your new guest has been accommodated.”

  “Oh, he’s here?” asked Mr. Smacer, neatly folding his paper.

  Anderson’s voice was sharp like a whip as he responded, “Yes, indeed—how terribly apt you are, Mr. Smacer.”

  Mr. Smacer’s great face turned red as he stood and prepared himself to meet the doctor from London. Mrs. Gamsbey, ignoring the two, walked to the front door and heaved it open. Cold wind kissed her face and, for a heartbeat, stole her breath.

  She spied the outline of a coach coming up the road. Careful not to slip on the ground, she made her way across the frozen yard.

  The coach came to a stop, its horses breathing out clouds in the frigid air like twin locomotives.

  The driver signaled the carriage’s occupant with a single knock on the side, and, like a magic trick, the door popped open.

  Two

  Mrs. Gamsbey saw the profile of a man with sharp features sitting inside the dark cab. He stayed for a moment, doing nothing, then turned to face her.

  The left side of his face wore a scar that ran over a cloudy white eye down its length like the molten steel of a blacksmith’s works. Neatly dressed all in black, he stepped out. In his right hand he carried a doctor’s bag, and in his left a silver-handled cane, nestled between arm and long coat.

  Under a top hat, the doctor had a monocle clasped to his good eye.

  “Madam,” he said with a German accent.

  “Governor,” she replied, looking at the large driver as he got down from the bench. Even if he’d not been shrouded under thick driving garments, she could see the man was a giant, like someone found in a circus.

  “Please allow me to introduce myself,” said the doctor, drawing her attention back. “My name is Herr Handenfitch, and this,” he said, motioning toward the giant, “is my personal assistant and driver, Mr. Rollister.”

  The large man with healthy sideburns unceremoniously grunted and began to look to the horses, which he nearly dwarfed.

  “I am Mrs. Gamsbey and this is Tabson’s Abbey.” She motioned absently behind her to the giant house. Using the social triage she had developed as a young woman, she decided that she did not like his sort. Not at all.

  “I presume you are the doctor Mr. Whitley sent for?” She didn’t try hard to conceal her sudden dislike. His pale left eye was devoid of emotion and stared at her like the moon in the sky.

  “Ja. Do you have a place where I can have my horses attended to?”

  Mrs. Gamsbey seemed to snap out of her stupor.

  “The back of the inn is a converted carriage house, and the left side still accommodates for most. And if you follow me, Doctor”—she turned back to the house—“I will show you to a nice cup of tea and your patient.”

  She motioned for him to follow, thankful to get out of the cold and already tired of talking to the doctor. Despite his polished manners and well-cut clothing, the scar gave the man a devilish look, of which she could not approve.

  Handenfitch looked to his driver, who in turn nodded. The doctor followed the woman like a wraith.

  She turned and waited at the door. For an instant she was struck with a wild sense of foreboding, the way one is when teetering on a stairway, unsure if one is about to tumble backward. She had an impulse to turn the man away, send him back into the night. She hesitated a second too long, and he reached and crossed the building’s threshold.

  Three

  She took hold of the door, shutting it
quickly as he walked into the room. Her queer thoughts now gone like snow before a fire, Mrs. Gamsbey introduced the doctor to Anderson and Smacer, who both nodded and shook his hand.

  “Well, I’ve got to set up some light in here, then I’ll be happy to show you up, Doctor,” Mrs. Gamsbey muttered, more to herself than to the doctor. He nodded all the same, took the hat from his head, and carefully placed his doctor’s bag next to the door. Ghostly vapors of cold moisture evaporated down from his coat. His black hair was immaculately slicked back and shone in the dim light.

  Smacer nodded approvingly at the doctor as Mrs. Gamsbey left the room.

  “Well, Doctor, how was your trip? I daresay everything went well?”

  Handenfitch turned to face the two men in the room.

  “Indeed, well, thank you.”

  Mr. Anderson quickly noted that the doctor had yet to remove his wet outer garments. Frowning, he got up and moved back into the shadows of the room. The doctor waited by the door as the house began to fill with warm yellow light. He nodded to Mrs. Gamsbey as she reentered the room and lit more of the oil lamps. After leaving again, she returned with a cup of tea and handed it to the doctor. He smelled it, smiled, and handed it to Mr. Smacer.

  “Thank you, madam, may we see the patient now?”

  Without another word, Mrs. Gamsbey was already heading up the stairs with her matches for the rest of the house lights.

  “Just follow me, Doctor, and I’ll show you to both her room as well as your own.”

  “Do not worry on my account. I will not be staying,” Handenfitch said.

  Silver cane in one hand and physician’s bag in the other, he followed her up.

  “It’s the last on the right there,” she said as the two reached the top. A low moan could be heard. Mrs. Gamsbey motioned to the door.

  “Please let me know if you need anything,” she finished, eager to put distance between them.

  Thanking her, the doctor went down the narrow hallway to the room and knocked.

  Four

  Waiting outside, Handenfitch could hear the deep tones of a man talking and then muffled footsteps as he walked across the room to the door. The handle clicked and turned, and the door opened. Inside stood a frightened young man. Sweat beading his forehead, he looked at the doctor confusedly for a moment. Then, blinking in realization, he said, “Yes, of course.” He moved aside, letting the doctor into the room. “You must be Dr. Handenfitch. I’m James Whitley. My physician, Dr. Voight, recommended you when I spoke of her condition. I understand you are his physician?”

  Handenfitch nodded, not wanting to waste his time with the distraction of speech. He let every detail of the room fill his thoughts. The girl lay on top of a rumpled sheet, gripping the sides of the bed in agony, still dressed in her riding clothes. The room had a book (something of love poetry, he mused) on the table to the right of the bed, beneath a closed window.

  Her luggage (he assumed, by the light floral decoration imprinted on the lower right-hand side of the front piece) sat next to a small closet, which from his line of sight held an indeterminable object.

  The young man continued talking as the two approached her. He blocked out the young man’s ramblings, except for only the most important bits. He found her (Emily), lying on a cheap wooden frame and feather mattress. Above her in the cracked white ceiling was an old heating vent leading to the building’s main fireplace.

  The doctor did his best to smile and nod at something the young man had said—but at best he knew it must look like a strangler’s sneer. Dealing with social niceties nauseated the doctor. He checked her pulse with his middle- and forefingers (erratic, fast then slow), then turned her head carefully to the other side and checked the pulse again (were there two heartbeats?) as he scanned the side of her neck. Twisting and writhing in the bed like a sapling ravaged by the wind, she pulled and strained away from him. Her black hair was plastered to her forehead with sweat. The young man’s voice resurfaced in his mind, “… and so it seemed only to get worse—”

  Interrupting, Handenfitch looked up at the boy. “Mr. Whitley, how long has she been like this?”

  Opening then closing his mouth, the young man tried to think. “I’d say about seven days, Doctor.”

  “About seven days? Or for certain seven days? I’m in a field that relies on only factual information. Like a clock, I need the proper gears to tick, tick, tick—not hastily composed assumptions, which at best would distract, and at worst cost life.”

  The doctor turned back and peered at the girl’s lolling eyes. They were clouded a milky white.

  The young man cleared his throat and said in a shaky voice, “Seven, Doctor.”

  The doctor nodded thoughtfully and stepped back from the bed, taking in the whole scene in front of him. “Right, and were you with her when she was in India?”

  “I’m sorry, Doctor?”

  “You may well soon be if you don’t answer the question. Time is one thing we don’t have. Were you or were you not with her when she traveled to India?”

  “N-No, Doctor, but you are correct she did travel abroad.”

  “And how long has she been back?”

  “A month at the most.”

  “How long have you been with her since she’s been back?”

  “Seven days, Doctor. I came to her apartment and she was already like this. My physician said that you would know what to do.”

  Handenfitch pulled back the covers of the bed, nodding thoughtfully (decapitation might prove difficult) and revealing her frail body contorted in spasms.

  The young man gasped. “What’s wrong with her?”

  The doctor took two steps away from the bed. “I suggest you step away as well.”

  The young man, now angry, turned on him as her moans became screams. “I asked you what’s wrong with her!”

  The doctor reached into the black recesses of his coat and found the pistol’s grip. Without warning, her screaming reached a deafening level, then, quick like a blown-out candle, she was silent.

  They both looked at her as she lurched forward into a sitting position. Her haunted face exploded into a mask of total demonic fury. Heaving with the intensity of the change, her mouth tore at its seams under the pressure of dozens of bone-white teeth.

  “Jesus,” moaned the young man, tripping backward onto the floor. Handenfitch agreed.

  The doctor then pulled a revolver out of his jacket, pointed the weapon, and pulled the heavy trigger. With a thunderclap, the Enfield kicked up as its massive caliber thudded into her forehead, blowing it to pieces.

  The headless body fell back in a bloom of destruction.

  Unnoticed, the young man passed out with a thud on the floor behind the doctor, who walked to the window. With a controlled calm, he slid it up.

  “Rollister,” he said.

  “Sir,” came the gruff voice.

  “It could be a contagion—no one leaves.”

  “Sir,” came the acknowledgment from the darkness.

  The doctor tossed his cane out the window, which Rollister came from the shadows to catch, using it to bar the back door.

  After he slid the window shut, Handenfitch turned to the young man, chuckling.

  “What a terrible mess,” the doctor said. Mrs. Gamsbey, watching from the hallway, ran away shrieking.

  Looking at the young man with a side glance, the doctor said, “I think it's fair to conclude that this is not a safe place to be right now. I’ll send someone up to fetch you.”

  The other man mumbled something incoherent. The doctor, pressed for time, stopped in the doorway.

  “Really it’s probably best if…”

  From the first floor came a muffled yelling. Handenfitch ran out into the hallway and to the top of the stairs. There, he saw Rollister standing at the front door and the lean Mr. Anderson picking himself up from an Oriental rug.

  Rollister looked up as Handenfitch got to the top of the stairs. “Sorry, sir, but he wasn’t inclined to liste
n. Had to give him a knock.”

  Anderson’s face turned red with anger and fear. Mrs. Gamsbey met Handenfitch’s gaze. “He murdered her!” she shrieked, pointing one long finger at the doctor like a poisoned spear.

  “What in bloody hell is going on?” screamed Anderson.

  “Sorry, everyone,” Handenfitch apologized coming down the stairs. “You see, we have something of a situation —”

  “I’ll say we do! If that brute doesn’t step aside—” Anderson sputtered before being interrupted as he had interrupted.

  “A situation,” the doctor repeated. “It appears the young woman had contracted a rare disease that, up until now, was only found in part of India. Our only goals here are containment and elimination.”

  “He shot her in the head,” Mrs. Gamsbey said. “He killed her.”

  “You’re mad,” Anderson sputtered some more, looking at the doctor.

  “We need the police,” Mrs. Gamsbey agreed.

  “We certainly do not want this spreading into the local population. Once we’re sure, the three of you, including young James upstairs, may take your leave. Burning the house down will be the easiest solution.”

  “What?!” cried Mrs. Gamsbey in terror, just as Anderson took a small pistol from an inside jacket pocket where he kept his account book and snuff.

  “This is all madness, and I’ll have no part in it!” Turning on Rollister, with spittle spraying from his mouth, he shrieked, “Move aside!”

  “Your gob,” Rollister said, not budging, “shut it.”

  Gritting his teeth, Anderson fired the weapon into the mass standing in the doorway.

  Rollister didn’t yield. Not an inch. A faint trail of smoke drifted from the bullet hole in his right breast pocket.

  “Why look, it’s a woman’s caliber,” the big man growled though clenched teeth.

  Anderson stepped away, his eyes wide. The doctor moved in front of the two. “I think that’s quite enough of the melodramatics for now. I should think by the end of this evening we will have our fill. Plus you should save your bullets; you may have need of them.”

  On cue, they all heard the sounds of a man screaming upstairs.