Graham Masterton: The Manitou

Mary shrugged. "Dr. Ridgeway sent it to you. "

Dr. Hughes stood up. In his overcoat, he looked like Charlie Chaplin in The Gold Rush. He waved the file around in exasperation, and it knocked over his single Valentine's card, which he knew had been sent by his mother.

"Oh… Okay. I'll have a look at it later. I'm going down to see Dr. McEvoy. He has a patient he wants me to look at."

"Will you be long, Dr. Hughes?" asked Mary. "You have a meeting at four-thirty."

Dr. Hughes stared at her wearily, as though he was wondering who she was.

"Long? No, I don't think so. Just as long as it takes."

He stepped out of his office into the neon-lit corridor. The Sisters of Jerusalem was an expensive private hospital, and never smelled of anything as functional as carbolic and chloroform. The corridors were carpeted in thick red plush, and there were fresh-cut flowers at every corner. It was more like the kind of hotel where middle-aged executives take their secretaries for a weekend of strenuous sin.

Dr. Hughes called an elevator and sank to the fifteenth floor. He stared at himself in the elevator mirror, and he considered he was looking more sick than some of his patients. Perhaps he would take a vacation. His mother had always liked Florida, or maybe they could visit his sister in San Diego.

He went through two sets of swing doors, and into Dr. McEvoy's office. Dr. McEvoy was a short, heavy-built man whose white coats were always far too tight under his arms. He looked like a surgical sausage. His face was big and moonlike and speckled, with a snub little Irish nose. He had once played football for the hospital team, until he had fractured his kneecap in a violent tackle. Nowadays, he walked with a slightly over-dramatized limp.

"Glad you came down," he smiled. "This really is very peculiar, and I know you're the world's greatest expert."

"Hardly," said Dr. Hughes. "But thanks for the compliment."

Dr. McEvoy stuck his finger in his ear and screwed it around with great thoughtfulness and care. 'The X-rays will be here in five or ten minutes. Meanwhile. I can't think what else I can do."

"Can you show me the patient?" asked Dr. Hughes.

"Of course. She's in my waiting room. I should take your overcoat off if I were you. She might think I brought you in off the street."

Dr. Hughes hung up his shapeless black coat, and then followed Dr. McEvoy through to the brightly lit waiting room. There were armchairs and magazines and flowers, and a fish tank full of bright tropical fish. Through the venetian blinds, Dr. Hughes could see the odd metallic radiance of the afternoon snow.

In a corner of the room, reading a copy of Sunset, was a slim dark-haired girl. She had a squarish, delicate face — a bit like an imp, thought Dr. Hughes. She was wearing a plain coffee-colored dress that made her cheeks look rather sallow. The only clue to her nervousness was an ashtray crammed with cigarette butts, and a haze of smoke in the air.

"Miss Tandy," said Dr. McEvoy, "this is Dr. Hughes. Dr. Hughes is an expert on conditions of your kind, and he would just like to take a look at you and ask you a few questions."

Miss Tandy laid aside her magazine and smiled. "Sure," she said, in a distinctive New England accent. Good family, thought Dr. Hughes. He didn't have to guess if she was wealthy or not. You just didn't seek treatment at the Sisters of Jerusalem Hospital unless you had more cash than you could raise off the floor.

"Lean forward," said Dr. Hughes. Miss Tandy bent over, and Dr. Hughes lifted the hair at the back of her neck.

Right in the hollow of her neck was a smooth round bulge, about the size and shape of a glass paperweight. Dr. Hughes ran his fingers over it, and it seemed to have the normal texture of a benign fibrous growth.

"How long have you had this?" he asked.

"Two or three days," said Miss Tandy. "I made an appointment as soon as it started to grow. I was frightened it was — well, cancer or something."

Dr. Hughes looked across at Dr. McEvoy and frowned.

"Two or three days? Are you sure?"

"Exactly," said Miss Tandy. "Today is Friday, isn't it? Well, I first felt it when I woke up on Tuesday morning."

Dr. Hughes squeezed the tumor gently in his hand. It was firm, and hard, but he couldn't detect any movement.

"Does that hurt?" he asked.

"There's a kind of a prickling sensation. But that's about all."

Dr. McEvoy said: "She felt the same thing when I squeezed it."

Dr. Hughes let Miss Tandy's hair fall back, and told her she could sit up straight again. He pulled up an armchair, and found a tatty scrap of paper in his pocket, and started to jot down a few notes as he talked to her.

"How big was the tumor when you first noticed it?"

"Very small. About the size of a butter-bean, I guess."

"Did it grow all the time, or only at special times?"

"It only seems to grow at night. I mean, every morning I wake up and it's bigger."

Dr. Hughes made a detailed squiggle on his piece of paper.

"Can you feel it normally? I mean, can you feel it now?"

"It doesn't seem to be any worse than any other kind of bump. But sometimes I get the feeling that it's shifting. "

The girl's eyes were dark, and there was more fear in them than her voice was giving away.

"Well," she said slowly. "It's almost like somebody trying to get comfortable in bed. You know — sort of shifting around, and then lying still."

"How often does this happen?"

She looked worried. She could sense the bafflement in Dr. Hughes, and that worried her.

"I don't know. Maybe four or five times a day."

Dr. Hughes made some more notes and chewed his lip.

"Miss Tandy, have you noticed any changes in your own personal condition of health over the past few days — since you've had this tumor?"

"Only a little tiredness. I guess I don't sleep too well at night. But I haven't lost any weight or anything like that."

"Hmm." Dr. Hughes wrote some more and looked for a while at what he'd written. "How much do you smoke?"

"Usually only half a pack a day. I'm not a great smoker. I'm just nervous right now, I guess."

Dr. McEvoy said: "She had a chest X-ray not long ago. She had a clean bill of health."

Dr. Hughes said: "Miss Tandy, do you live alone? Where do you live?"

"I'm staying with my aunt on

Eighty-second Street

I'm working for a record company, as a personal assistant. I wanted to find an apartment of my own, but my parents thought it would be a good idea if I lived with my aunt for a while. She's sixty-two. She's a wonderful old lady. We get along together just fine."

Dr. Hughes lowered his head. "Don't get me wrong when I ask this, Miss Tandy, but I think you'll understand why I have to. Is your aunt in a good state of health, and is the apartment clean? There's no health risk there, like cockroaches or blocked drains or food dirt?"

Miss Tandy almost grinned, for the first time since Dr. Hughes had seen her. "My aunt is a wealthy woman, Dr. Hughes. She has a full-time cleaner, and a maid to help with the cooking and entertaining."

Dr. Hughes nodded. "Okay, we'll leave it like that for now. Let's go and chase up those X-rays, Dr. McEvoy."

They went back into Dr. McEvoy's office and sat down. Dr. McEvoy took out a stick of chewing gum and bent it between his teeth.

"What do you make of it, Dr. Hughes?"

Dr. Hughes sighed. "At the moment, I don't make anything at all. This bump came up in two or three days and I've never come across a tumor that did that before. Then there's this sensation of movement. Have you felt it move yourself?"

"Sure," said Dr. McEvoy. "Just a slight shifting, like there was something under there."