Hollow Tree

by Ian Neligh

  Jon turned down the volume and pushed the television back on the desk. Listening to the hum of the bottom floor’s refrigeration, he wondered if the body the police had brought in was this Randall Davis.

  By his own admission Jon wasn’t much of a “news guy.” He didn’t watch television and almost never, with the exception of when he needed the help-wanted section, bought a newspaper. What he had heard about Randall Davis consisted of scraps and shreds of information gained during his time passing through his dorm’s dayroom, which had a television on all the time.

  Randall Davis was some kind of mass murderer. One who killed hikers and campers with a logging axe.

  Jon looked around the interior of the mortuary; everything was so still. Without meaning to, he began to imagine Randall Davis rotting away in a plastic bag, looking up at him through the floor.

  He shook his head, clearing his mind of the visions. The last thing he needed to do was imagine something unpleasant like that while working in a mortuary. What he needed to do was make sure the checklist was properly seen to. He started to read what was next when the humming in the floor rattled and came to a stop, filling the building with silence. After all the ambient sounds it seemed to fill his ears like he’d dunked his head underwater.

  Then came a light clicking. He listened and cocked his head to one side. Tentative at first, then regular, like the second hand on a clock. Jon frowned, trying to discover its source. The clicking became a tapping from the window next to the security desk. Jon turned to his right and saw a woman in the dark, grinning at him on the other side of the glass.

  Four

  “I just wanted to talk,” Sara said, standing in the doorway. “That’s all, won’t take a minute, I promise.”

  Why couldn’t she just leave him alone? After breaking up with him, she now seemed intent on harassing him. Yet, not very deep below his surface he knew he had to find out why she had ended their relationship. He needed to know worse than anything. Jon glanced at his watch. He was due for his first perimeter check.

  “Okay, I’ve got to walk around the building anyway. Let’s make it fast.” Jon stepped outside and closed, then locked, the big door behind him. He started walking and she kept pace. As they passed the parking lot, he saw the bright orange of a cigarette being smoked in her Volkswagen. There were two silhouettes inside.

  She’d dragged them along, too. Jon swore under his breath.

  “You brought Erik and Lindsey?” he asked, stopping.

  “Yeah, so?” Sara was so used to having her entourage, she didn’t think twice about bringing them with her and then leaving them in the car. That’s just the way she was. She needed her court, just as Erik and Lindsey needed their queen.

  Jon had never cared for either of them. In Sara’s extended social family they were the most similar to groupies—and in his opinion offered the least in personality, with Erik’s silent jealousy over a girl he’d never get and Lindsey’s attempts to clone herself into a broken version of Sara.

  “Fine,” he said, continuing his patrol along the side of the building. He took out his flashlight and pushed down on the oversized button until it clicked into place. A sphere of white light appeared on the grass in front of him.

  “So,” he said, cutting to the chase. “Why’d you break up with me?”

  He felt his heart, thick with rejection, beat five times in his chest before she answered.

  “Jon, it’s just…” she said, looking for the right words.

  He began to wonder if this was just going to be a more formal version of her breaking up with him, as if once weren’t enough. “We’re just not the same kind of people.”

  The saliva in his mouth tasted bitter, like venom. He wanted to spit it out. His heart was still beating, but he’d lost count.

  “Is that what you drove all the way to my new job to tell me?” he asked, shining a light on the garage entrance to the cold room. A large padlock hung from a chain securing the door’s D-shaped handle to a metal ring embedded in the oil-stained cement. He remembered Randall Davis, and it felt like the air became colder.

  “How do you like it, your new job?” she asked, then continued without waiting for an answer. “I heard you got a job as a security guard. That’s why I came up here.”

  Jon forgot about the cold room. “What do you mean?”

  Sara smirked, her short black hair flickering in a gust of breeze. “Come on, Jon, this”—she motioned to his uniform like it was infectious—“this whole thing. I sent the e-mail because I thought I knew you better than I do, I guess. But this? After the bar thing? This is some kind of misplaced way to impress me, isn’t it? As some kind of like—cop?”

  Jon was at a loss for words, and he half laughed, then shook his head. How could she possibly believe he got a job as a security officer to impress her?

  “Well, it’s misplaced, anyway,” she said.

  Jon found his voice buried under a layer of humiliation. “Are you kidding me? I didn’t get this job to impress you because of a brain-damaged jock that spends more time drooling than making complete sentences,” he said. He was getting mad.

  “Hey,” she said. “His name is George. He’s a physical science major and a nice guy.”

  And there it was. The last and final dangling piece of the puzzle of why she’d left him fell into place with a thud. She’d found somebody better suited for her royal court.

  They were back at the parking lot. Erik and Lindsey were outside the car, talking under a light pole. Jon turned and faced Sara. She was still so pretty. He thought he would loathe her, be angry at the very least. But he still wanted her. Disgusted, he cleared his throat. “Look, Sara, it’s fine. It’s all fine. We’re over, I get that. But this,” he said, motioning to the giant building behind him, “is my job, and I didn’t get it to impress you—I got it for the money. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to get back to doing actual work.”

  Her eyebrows furrowed. “So you’re okay then?” she asked, looking for a brief moment almost disappointed.

  “Yes, I’m okay, thank you,” he said.

  “Well—” She stared then shook her head. “I forgot what I was going to say, I hate when that happens.”

  “Me too,” he said, looking over her shoulder at the dark horizon.

  She nodded. “It’ll come back to me.” She then headed back to the car. Lindsey rushed up to Sara and began whispering, stealing furtive glances over at Jon. Erik, with his long blond bangs and perpetually open mouth, stared at Jon. Then he sneered.

  Jon shook his head. “Not a snowball’s chance in hell,” he told him. Erik feigned a confused look, but Jon had no more time for him. Or any of them.

  He unlocked the front door, pulled it open, and slipped inside, securing the deadbolt behind him. The mortuary was just as he’d left it.

  Five

  Jon watched out of the corner of his eye as they drove away down the single strip of road, back into town.

  He still couldn’t believe Sara thought he’d taken this job to impress her or prove his manliness—or whatever it was she was insinuating. The realization that she’d ended up with the asshole from the bar didn’t make him mad so much as it just depressed him.

  “Fuck it,” he said to the empty building and wished for some reason he hadn’t. He refused to believe he’d picked this job as some kind of subconscious need to prove something to himself or Sara.

  An hour passed and then another. He did his interior checks and the night grew thick with hours. It was almost midnight, and he was again watching the little black-andwhite television when his eyes started to grow heavy. He hadn’t meant to, but he was asleep before he knew it. He started dreaming of a football player in a bar sliding glasses of beer to him. They kept spilling; it was getting on his sleeves. Jon knew the guy was doing it to antagonize him.

  Jon turned his back and went over to the elevator next to the men’s bathroom and hit the “Up” button. He wanted to leave the bar, and he was tired of being har
assed. As he waited, he heard the elevator’s hum as it powered up the shaft to reach him. It sounded like it had earlier that afternoon when he was getting the tour from Carl. Then the ding of the opening doors.

  Jon woke with a start, his heart pounding. The sound of the mortuary’s elevator echoed in his ears. He got up on shaky legs, then sat down again. Had he really heard it? It had been so real, he could have sworn the elevator door’s opening chime was still ringing in the building when he woke up. Pulse throbbing in his head, he strained to listen but heard nothing.

  Jon got up again and decided, after listening for a long minute, that it wouldn’t hurt to check the first-floor elevator to see that it was still closed and the wood panel still in place. He walked along the tiled floor to the back of the building, past the offices, and through the first red-carpeted room. He told himself again and again it was ridiculous, and yet he had to know. With great force of will, he refused to imagine how the elevator could be made to operate from the bottom floor.

  He didn’t want to get to the last room and see the elevator, but his legs continued their march forward. When at last Jon arrived, he flushed with relief. The panel was still secured. The elevator was not there. It had never been on after all. He moved to turn away and head back to the security desk. This little jaunt to the back of the building could count as one of his routine checks, he figured. Then he heard the elevator. Really heard it. It rattled down past him to the bottom floor. It was returning to its starting point.

  Fear ran though Jon like a bolt of energy, giving him goose bumps, making his breath catch in his throat and his knees weak. For a moment Jon couldn’t move. Had someone ridden the elevator to the top floor? It was impossible. Impossible. The bottom floor was locked from both the inside and outside. He’d seen the padlock with his own eyes.

  Coming up with a million reasons how this could have happened, Jon half jogged, half walked back to the front of the building. He was honestly terrified. He decided he would just take a quick peek upstairs, make sure nothing was out of the ordinary. There wouldn’t be anyone, but he had to check—didn’t he?

  He moved from dark room to dark room and came out into the main foyer. Someone was standing under the chandelier.

  “Jesus,” Jon swore, stepping back.

  Carl stood in front of him, and he did not look happy.

  “Where were you?”

  “I heard a noise, I was checking—” Jon said.

  Carl was still in his security uniform. His uniform shirt was unbuttoned, revealing the white shirt beneath. He smelled of alcohol.

  “Thought I’d look in on you, see if you were sleeping,” Carl said. “Were you?”

  “The elevator, the elevator was running,” Jon said

  Carl shook his head. “Bullshit, ain’t no one here. I unlocked the front door just now,” Carl said.

  “Heard it,” Jon said, feeling like he couldn’t catch his breath. He stepped away from Carl and looked up to the second-floor railing.

  “For fuck’s sake,” Carl said, going up to the security desk and taking his belt and flashlight out from a drawer. He wrapped the band around his gut and belted it tight.

  “Let’s take a look, huh? Then I want you to tell me about our policy regarding watching television on the job,” Carl said, heading for the stairs.

  Jon followed Carl to the second floor and down to the double doors. His legs felt like they’d lost all of their strength. The old security officer took out his flashlight and clicked it on. Without ceremony, he swung open one of the doors with one hand and aimed his light inside with the other. The beam danced around the gurneys, instruments, and closed elevator.

  “Annnd—there’s fuck all,” Carl said, turning to Jon. “I’ll tell you what, we’ll go downstairs and take a peek at the security monitors. If there’s anyone running around outside screwing with things, that’ll show them clear as day.”

  Carl let the door swing shut, and behind it stood the decomposed body of Randall Davis. His eyes were no longer black, but globes of burning fire. With a quick motion, he brought a scalpel across Carl’s throat. The force of the blow turned the security guard halfway around toward Jon. Blood sprayed in his face. Screaming, choking, Jon took several steps back and felt the railing go under his knees as he fell over the balcony backward.

  Black-and-white tiles and a chandelier spun around and around as he fell. Jon hit the ground and his head bounced off the chessboard and everything went black.

  Six

  When Jon woke, the world was spinning and his head felt as if it had been split in two. Coughing, he opened his eyes and stared up at the second-floor railing. What had just happened? He scanned the second floor and didn’t see anything. Maybe it wasn’t real, maybe—

  His eyes caught movement to his right. It was Randall Davis, who was now at the bottom of the stairs and walking toward him like a man on broken stilts.

  “No,” Jon said, trying to get up and failing.

  The thing stopped and looked at the fire extinguisher box on the wall next to the closet under the stairs. A black-andgreen skeletal hand let the scalpel clatter to the floor and punched through the glass, pulling free the fire axe. It turned to Jon and, with what few facial muscles it had left, grinned. Like a wooden puppet on strings, the corpse shuffled and flowed across the tiles to Jon, axe held high.

  Jon found his feet, fought with his balance, then fell to one knee. He could hear the wet creaking of the thing getting closer. He felt like he was going to black out again. Groaning through clenched teeth, he forced himself to stand. It was closer now, and in its black corruption he saw that the thing’s teeth were still bone white. Not thinking, only acting, Jon turned and started to run for the viewing room’s elevator. It was then he discovered his foot wasn’t working. The pain was intense. Stifling a scream, he limped into the hallway, afraid to turn around and see how close the corpse was now. It felt like he was moving so slowly. Half-hopping and half-dragging his foot, he moved past the dark, empty rooms. The only sound he could hear now was his own wheezing breath.

  He reached the wooden paneling hiding the elevator and searched for the latch that opened it. His fingers were wet with blood that he wasn’t sure was his own. The room was carpeted, so he couldn’t hear the dead man, but he knew it was closer. He found the wood panel. Jon depressed the wooden tab, and the panel fell away, revealing the metal doors of the elevator. He hit the open button and waited for a second as it turned on and began to rise.

  Jon turned. There wasn’t anything but empty chairs. The elevator arrived, its doors opening. Refusing to take his eyes off the dark room, Jon stepped back into the elevator and punched the bottom-floor button. After a long second, the doors began to close. As they did Randall Davis lurched into the room. His burning eyes like two red stars in a night sky. The doors shut, and the elevator began to descend.

  The elevator opened again in the cold room and Jon stumbled out, looked around, and spotted a chair, which he put in the elevator door’s path so it couldn’t shut. Stubborn, it opened and closed, opened and closed. Like a mouth trying to chew.

  Jon knew he had to get out of the building, he had to escape from this place. He went to the garage doors and remembered they were locked on both sides. Turning, he saw the door to the stairs, with its little window to the fluorescent-lit stairwell beyond. He could make it up the stairs to the second floor and make a go for the exit. Jon hesitated. But what if the thing was already in the stairwell? Coming down for him—or waiting around the landing to the next floor?

  Jon waited with his heart hammering away. He still felt dizzy. It felt like he couldn’t breathe enough to keep from fainting. Swallowing, he looked through the window at the stairs. Nothing, just the subtle flickering of the fluorescents on the stairs.

  He was going to do it. He’d make a run for it. Jon pushed on the door handle just as Randall Davis came around the corner onto the landing, the axe high in the air like a scorpion’s tail. Jon limped back to the elevator and y
anked out the chair, sending it skittering across the floor. He got inside and hit the main-floor button as many times as he could as the door to the stairs opened.

  The big elevator doors closed again, and it began to rise. Then something happened; it shuddered and came to a stop. They had told him it might break, and it had just broken. He looked around his new space. There was no way out, and it was stuck between floors. It took a long moment for Jon to realize he was safe. Fighting the urge to vomit, he backed into a corner and sat down.

  He heard himself chuckle the way someone will hear laughing at a party in another house. He had ended up getting stuck in the elevator for the evening after all. He sat there and lost track of time. Maybe an hour, maybe two. More than once he felt like he was about to fall asleep, then he’d remember the thing walking the hallways with an axe —and he would come awake again, shivering. He checked his phone to see if it had a signal and it didn’t.

  His brain was on the verge of letting him consider what was happening when the elevator groaned. Jon stood up, eyes wide, and looked around. It groaned again and with a lurch began moving upward. Jon hit the button for the second floor, praying it wouldn’t stop on the main floor. There was no telling where the thing was—where it was hiding with its axe.

  The elevator did stop, however, and the big doors slid open with a light chime, inviting anyone in who wanted to go to the next floor. Jon stood in the back and waited, looking out on the dark room. The doors began to shut and finally closed, the elevator jerking up and moving him to the third floor. The third floor.

  That’s where Carl died. Where his throat was opened with a scalpel. Jon readied himself as the doors opened a second time. And when they did, letting everyone know the elevator had arrived with a chime, all he could see were bodies on gurneys. There was no one else in the room.