In the dark cavern of the mouth it was difficult to see anything at first. After a few moments his eyes adjusted and he could see the thick row of teeth on either side, the vault of the throat and the fat, pink flap of skin that was the tongue.
‘Ahh!’ he said. ‘I think we have found our problem.’ For there, right in the middle of the hippo’s tongue, sat the largest and most repulsive boil he had ever seen. It was as big as a billiard ball, greenish-yellow and filled to bursting with a horrid pus.
‘Ugh,’ Truff said to himself. ‘How disgusting. But we know how to deal with those!’ And taking out the spoon he got up, patting Albert affectionately on the head and saying, ‘Don’t worry, old thing. We’ll soon have you as right as rain.’
As he went out to fetch the equipment he would need to deal with this little problem, something caught his eye. He stopped in the middle of the dining room, looking up.
‘MRS N!’ he bellowed at the top of his voice. The poor housekeeper came bustling in a few seconds later, trembling. She looked at him imploringly.
‘What – is – that?’ he asked, pointing up at the chandelier. Steadying her glasses, Mrs N peered up, but her eyesight simply wasn’t good enough. She shrugged.
‘I believe it is a mop!’
Her eyes widened as if to say, so there it is!
‘Fetch the stepladder and take it down at once, for God’s sake!’ barked the colonel. ‘It makes the house look like a madman’s.’ And he went off to find the first-aid cabinet.
Back in the conservatory a few minutes later, Truff held a needle over a candle and peered over his spectacles as he administered it to the hippo’s mouth.
Perhaps Albert felt no pain, or perhaps he was distracted by the spectacle of Mrs N atop a stepladder silently tangling with the chandelier in the next room. Certainly he was well behaved as Albert prodded the red tip of the boil with his needle.
‘It’s a tough little brute,’ Truff muttered, holding the point of the needle over the candle again before trying afresh. The main body of the carbuncle seemed to be made of a soft, liquid jelly but at its top it had hardened into a crimson button. Heating the needle to red hot for the third time, Truff plunged down hard through the centre of the pustule.
‘There’s a good boy,’ he muttered, stroking the hippo’s head. ‘It’s for your own good.’ He had expected a moan or a shriek or some kind of reaction, but none came. Still holding the needle, he peered into the animal’s mouth to see if his surgery was working. And, slowly, it began to. The outer skin of the boil became a fainter yellow and seemed to pulse slightly. Then Truff noticed some little veins that ran up the side of the boil, which he hadn’t seen before. As he watched, they became more pronounced, and began to throb visibly, as though the enormous pustule was a living thing. And all the while the hole made by the pin yawned wider until it quivered, and the skin fell back in folds. Yellow liquid began to pour out from it, on to the pink tissue of the hippopotamus’s tongue. Shakily holding the pin in mid-air, Truff started back in horror, and pulled the wooden spoon from the creature’s mouth so it could fall shut. He saw little bubbles blistering on the metal surface of the pin as the sickly yellow liquid dripped down it.
Albert’s eyes stared up at him, as placid and calm as ever. It was as if he was somehow numbed to the pain. As Truff wondered at this, the first wisp of the smell from the boil’s liquid reached him. He leaped backwards, his hand over his nose. Nothing in the terror and death of all the battlefields he’d seen, in all the appalling acts of barbarism he had encountered in the furthest corners of the world could compare to the horror of this smell. He felt faint as he reached the conservatory door and pushed it open. Slamming it shut behind him, he sat on the floor and leaned against it, breathing cold air in deep, welcome gulps.
This was worse than he could have imagined. Whatever could it be? He must act quickly.
Dr Christopher Gibson stepped between the many puddles of Mayhew Street in a merry mood. He was almost skipping. This was to be his third call of the morning, and so long as it furnished his usual fee of six shillings (and it surely would) he could retire for the day, have a spot of lunch and spend the afternoon over an agreeable game of draughts with his good friend Mr Milner, the well-known chef.
When he reached number 143, he turned in through the gate and rapped on Colonel Truff’s door. He stood back, twirling his umbrella and humming a military march of which he was fond, wondering whether he would have partridge for lunch, or a cutlet of veal. When the door opened and he was admitted, he dropped his umbrella into the stand and said, as he always did, ‘Well, now. What seems to be the problem?’
Instantly he knew that this was not one of his ordinary calls. Colonel Truff, who he had known as a schoolboy fifty years before, and had heard of as a famous military hero and a great example to all young soldiers, stood before him pale and panicked and almost unable to speak.
‘My dear friend,’ said the doctor. ‘Whatever is the matter?’
‘Come with me,’ said Truff, ushering him through the house. ‘I have something awful to confess.’ He showed the doctor into the drawing room, which looked out into the conservatory.
‘What is it?’ demanded the doctor. ‘Out with it. It can’t be that bad if you are walking and talking!’
‘There.’ Truff pointed. ‘I smuggled this creature into the country against the law. It was my fondest dream to own such an animal, and to care for it. It was foolish of me – so very foolish! – and now I’m paying the price.’
The doctor began to make astonished noises, but the colonel went on, determined to get his story out. ‘Something has gone wrong. Whether it is a condition that has lain dormant in the animal since it was removed from its native land, or some horrible reaction to our environment, I don’t know.’
‘Good lord!’ whispered Gibson, standing close to the glass. Albert’s condition had deteriorated gravely, even in the last few hours. He seemed thinner, and somehow almost pale through his thick grey hide. Resting on his knees, he hadn’t the strength to lift his chin higher than a few inches off the floor, and his eyes, now quite red and watery, stared upward. Worst of all, a greenish-yellow foam dripped from his mouth, spattering on to the floor in globules as thick as cake mixture.
‘But, my friend,’ whispered Gibson, ‘you need the advice of a veterinary surgeon, not a doctor like me.’
‘I know!’ cried Truff in great distress. ‘But I’m afraid they’ll take him away, and then the newspapers will find out! I can never let that happen! And, dear friend, perhaps his condition has some similarity with a human ailment, which you might easily cure?’
It didn’t look like anything the doctor had ever seen before, in humans or anything else. But reluctantly he gave in to the colonel’s begging that he might be spared the public embarrassment of being exposed, and he agreed to have a quick look at the hippopotamus. Colonel Truff thanked him with all his heart, explained the history of Albert’s symptoms, and gave him a handkerchief to hold over his mouth while he went near the beast.
Doctor Gibson had now completely forgotten his lunch, his game of draughts and his friend Mr Milner. He stepped forward with great trepidation, carefully keeping the hanky over his mouth and nose, and heard the conservatory door click shut behind him and the key turn in the lock. Even through the handkerchief the smell nearly made him sick, and each detail he saw mystified and disgusted him further. The animal seemed to be sweating, or at least water was running down its skin in streams. Its legs trembled and a soft keening sound, which he realized was the wheezing of huge weakened lungs, came from its nostrils. When Doctor Gibson touched the vivid yellow froth that bubbled from its mouth, he pulled his hand back, stared at it in amazement and began to scream uncontrollably.
Here we had better leave the doctor to the privacy of his unpleasant fate. Colonel Truff watched for as long as he could, ignoring the doctor’s pleas – to be let out, at first, and then, a few minutes later, to be put out of his misery by any means. The
n he went and sat in another room, and a calm change of emotion came over him as he realized what trouble he had got himself into with his ridiculous scheme. Of course it was a shame to lose Albert, and he would miss Dr Gibson’s company at the billiards table, but he could not allow any of this to get out. He had some difficult decisions to make. Eventually there was silence from the next room, and Truff returned to the conservatory door to take in the haunting sight. The disease continued to advance more and more quickly and fed on the doctor with terrifying speed. After his death it took less than an hour to consume him. By then Albert was dead too, and had crumpled to half his original size.
Mrs N came back from her daily visit to the market a little after two o’clock and found the colonel in an armchair in front of the conservatory doors, drinking a large whisky to steady his nerves.
‘Mrs N,’ he said solemnly. ‘I’m afraid we have rather a mess to clean up.’
They unlocked the back doors of the conservatory from the outside and left them open overnight to allow the fumes to dissipate in the rainy air.
Then Mrs N led Truff to an old shed he had never noticed at the back of the garden and, once inside, pointed out several shovels and two empty barrels.
‘An admirable suggestion,’ said Truff.
Mrs N shrugged modestly.
The following morning, after breakfast and an extra cup of tea to fortify themselves, Colonel Truff and the loyal Mrs N set about clearing things up as best they could.
They put on masks that she had prepared before bed the previous evening, which fitted over their mouths and noses and protected them from the ungodly smell with lavender and rosemary.
Even so, the scene which awaited them was decidedly unpleasant. They would struggle to put it from their minds for a long time to come. By now, both Albert and the doctor had been devoured so completely that all that remained besides a thick greyish-green sludge, which reached up to the ankles, was the occasional bone, lump of flesh or tuft of hair.
At first Mrs N held the barrel at an angle and Truff scooped the sludge in. Then when it got quite full, they stood it up and used buckets. Each of them wore thick old leather boots left over from the colonel’s foreign military campaigns, which they could feel getting warm and soft as the diseased liquid ate away at them while the day wore on.
When they had filled one barrel, they started on the second. This was at about lunchtime, but neither of them could bear the idea of eating. They scooped and splattered the lumpy mixture in until Mrs N’s face was bright red, and the colonel’s back creaked like an old staircase. Had she been in the habit of saying anything at all, Mrs N might have remarked that she would give up her Sunday treat of a bowl of custard from now on. If his back had not ached quite so much, the colonel might have mentioned that he would think twice before ordering a Béarnaise sauce with his steaks in future. Instead, they both toiled on in silence.
At last, the floor was almost clear, except for some smudges and smears around the edges that could be cleaned up with a mop later. They had two barrels filled nearly to the brim, and Mrs N held them still while the colonel hammered the lids in place.
It took an hour’s running up and down the high street before Truff found a wagon for hire. He brought it back to the house and with help from the wagon’s owner loaded the barrels on to the back in a few minutes.
In spite of his strict instructions, Mrs N insisted on getting up on to the cart with him. Unable to find any way of making her stay at home, he held the umbrella over both their heads as they set off through the wet streets, pulling it down to hide their faces as the wagon splashed muddy water over people they knew. The sun was still up at late afternoon, but the overcast Tumblewater sky looked like night and the gas lamps cast their strange lime-coloured glow through the rain as the wagon rolled along.
Soon they were on the main thoroughfare, jostling for position among the grocers’ carts and four-horse coaches. Swinging left and right to overtake slow coaches and dodge the odd pedestrian, both the colonel and Mrs N cast worried looks back at the barrels as they rolled heavily across the boards and smashed against each other with a sound like thunder. Yet not a drop of the poisonous liquid leaked, and eventually they passed through the borders of the city and the two of them began to relax a little.
It was a little under an hour into their journey when the waggoner pointed upward and, lowering his umbrella, Truff found himself looking with astonishment into a brilliant blue sky.
It was wonderful, as the journey went on, what the breeze of a crisp autumn day did for the nerves. They waved happily at the unattended cows in the fields, breathed the sweet rich air of the countryside, and even began to find the cart’s violent jerking on the uneven roads quite soothing.
‘This is the place you want,’ muttered the waggoner, once they had travelled a good few miles into the countryside. Turning off the main road, he drove them down a thin track with tall hedges on either side, which led for a mile or so up to a pretty little wood on top of a hill.
Mrs N looked at Truff questioningly, so he asked the waggoner, ‘You are sure this place is never visited by anyone? That it is quite deserted?’
‘These hundred years or more,’ the man replied without looking round. ‘My family’s from nearby and the belief is that this place is cursed or haunted or something. Don’t you worry,’ he said as the wagon reached the top of the hill and the beginning of the wood. ‘They stay away in droves.’
There was no visible path through the trees, but the horses somehow squeezed between them with a rush and rustle of leaves on every side, as though they were passing through a storm. Truff and Mrs N huddled close together, looking up through the branches where they could see slivers of an early moon, and dreading the tree trunks which flew either side of them smashing into the wagon and splitting open one of the barrels. And yet, within a few minutes, they were coming out on the other side and down a scratchy field of yellowing grass. Everything on this side of the hill seemed to be poorer, malnourished, starved by the sun. Strangely, even the air seemed emptier and it was only after a minute or so that Truff noticed they couldn’t see or hear any wild animals at all. Not even a single bird darted across the sky.
But the waggoner did not slow as they rode down over the bumpy surface. He kept right on with their frightening descent towards the bottom of the empty valley, where some trees straggled together in a bunch. Except, Truff saw, it was not just trees. As they came closer, a substantial dwelling became visible, almost hidden between the branches.
The waggoner pulled up short with a sudden jolt. The whole cart lurched with the weight of the barrels rumbling forward and slamming against the back of their seats. Mrs N was almost propelled into a patch of mud below them, but Truff caught the back of the bonnet tied round her neck and she jerked back with much coughing and spluttering.
‘You asked for the most godforsaken spot in the land,’ mumbled the waggoner. ‘This is it.’ And he refused to move further, sitting grimly and clutching his reins as the other two got down and rolled the barrels off the wagon.
It was not only the most secluded spot Truff had ever seen, it was also, he thought, one of the strangest and most uncanny. As he looked closer, the entire overgrown copse revealed itself as a network of buildings that must once have been a farm. There was something about the silence and the way the evening light shone on the trees and the deserted buildings that made it feel primordial, as though it had stood in this place since time began. Some of the buildings leant towards each other as though frozen in a secret conversation, the windows and doorways like empty eyes and mouths.
The farmhouse, which he had seen first, was overhung by a lopsided greying willow like a shaggy haircut, and poison ivy spread over every visible inch of wall like a network of bulging veins. Briars and weeds sprouted at its every corner; wild flowers nestled in its broken windows, growing in curls around the spikes of broken glass. And all around in the thick, twisting undergrowth the relics of ancient farm tools stuc
k out, covered with nests and webs and weeds.
Shivering, Truff pushed back brambles and waded through bracken to a small clearing between the derelict buildings. He pulled the hammer from his belt and said, ‘This is the place.’ Mrs N, pale and tired from their recent exertions, was standing a few yards outside the thicket peering in. When she saw him waving, she nodded briefly and began to roll the first barrel towards him.
When it was safely through, he held the head of the barrel facing the centre of the clearing, and brought the hammer down hard on the lid. He kept his face turned away to avoid being splattered with the diseased liquid, so he had to blindly hit the barrel six or seven times before he heard the splintering crack he was waiting for. Immediately the hole began to gurgle softly and a pool formed around the barrel. Truff retreated quickly.
The second barrel was easier. The lid split in half first time and its contents, now rotted to a thick dark gravy, flowed out over the clearing in a smooth wave.
Leaves and twigs crackled as the mixture covered them, and wisps of a strange pale gas hung above the sludge. Having watched for a second, Truff and Mrs N battled back through the branches and ran to the cart in fright, the colonel calling to their driver to leave at once. Within seconds they were off at a gallop. Although he said nothing, the waggoner made his feelings about the place known with his whip to the horses’ behinds, and they moved almost as fast up the barren hill as they had down it.
As the lightened wagon rose up the hill towards the little wood, Colonel Truff placed an affectionate arm round Mrs N’s shoulders.
‘We make quite a team, you and I!’ he said. She slapped his hand away.
‘You misunderstand my meaning,’ he protested, rather stiffly. But she pretended not to hear, and stared off in the opposite direction, her nose in the air.
Ignoring her, Truff turned and looked back with considerable relief as he felt the strange place retreat behind him. It was awful to think of poor Doctor Gibson and dear Albert’s remains being dumped in such an anonymous pit. But then a stronger feeling surged in his stomach. This horror, this terrifying disease which he had feared would devour him and his life, was gone. No one would ever know. He was safe, his reputation was intact and cool blue night was falling over this forgotten place.
Grisly Tales from Tumblewater Page 10