The Mural

by Michael Mallory

  In spite of himself, Randy Mount’s little man was stiffening again, rising like that flagpole on Iwo Jima.

  Dr. William T. LeFavre turned away. “I’m going to be ill,” he groaned.

  “It was her!” Mount cried, pointing a finger at the prone figure of Dani. “It’s all her fault! She brought Satan into this station, and he...he...pray with me, pastor.”

  “Get out of my sight,” LeFavre said, his face ashen.

  Randy Mount thought it best not to press the issue. He threw his clothes back on as quickly as he could and ran toward the door, trying to maintain as much distance between him and his former boss as he could. Once Mount was gone, Missy LeFavre asked, “What should we do about her, Bill?”

  “Get her cleaned up and throw her clothes over top of her,” he replied, weakly. “I’ll call for an ambulance and...oh...oh...God...I’m going to....” Dr. William T. LeFavre rushed for the studio bathroom and made it inside just in time to vomit. After rinsing his mouth in the sink, he lurched back out, sweating profusely.

  “My heavens, Bill, you look terrible,” Missy said. “Sit down.”

  “Lord, save me,” LeFavre moaned, clutching his chest and falling to the floor of the radio station.

  “Bill!” Missy cried, rushing to him.

  Dani Lindstrom, meanwhile, opened her eyes and found herself lying on the floor of KSOG, feeling chilled. She quickly realized why: she was naked. “What the hell!” she cried.

  “You!” Missy screamed. “You witch! Look what you’ve done to Bill!”

  Dani felt something slimily sticky on her belly, and for a terrible moment, she thought it was paint. But touching it, she realized what it was, and moaned, “Oh, god, no!” Desperately pulling her clothes on, she said, “What happened to me?”

  “Don’t try to be cute,” Missy replied with hatred. “We came in and found you and Randy on the floor.”

  “Oh, Jesus....”

  “Stop it! Don’t you dare take His name in vain now, after everything else!” Turning back to her husband, Missy LeFavre moaned, “Oh, God, oh Bill, honey, oh...look what you’ve done to him, you whore!” She raced to the telephone and dialed 911.

  Dani ran into the bathroom and began to sob. What had she done? What in god’s name had she done? What was wrong with her? Memories—scattered, dreamlike memories—of her on air performance flitted through her mind, and she prayed it was a nightmare, that it had never really happened.

  But it did happen, a voice, not her own, said inside her mind. Just like the fact that she was drenched with semen meant that something had happened between her and Mount, though she could not remember any details. The fact that it was her midriff that had been come on, and not her crotch or legs, indicated the sick bastard had masturbated on her. She cleaned herself as best she could with paper towels.

  When she finally summoned up the courage to leave the bathroom, Dani saw a team of paramedics arrive with a gurney, onto which they hoisted the still, gray form of Dr. William T. LeFavre. “Is he...?” she managed to utter.

  “He’s had a coronary,” Missy replied, her voice hard, her face streaked with runs of mascara. “He’s alive, but only barely. No thanks to you.”

  “Missy, I...I don’t....”

  The paramedics began wheeling LaFevre away. “I have to go with my husband,” Missy told Dani.

  “I know saying I’m truly sorry is nowhere near adequate—”

  “You’re right, it isn’t. I never want to see you again, Miss Lindstrom. May God forgive me for saying this, but I don’t care if you die in the streets.” Then, along with the paramedics wheeling the prone figure of William T. LeFavre, Missy LeFavre left the building, leaving Dani alone in the offices.

  How had her life become so thoroughly ruined in less than a week? Walking numbly to where her purse was, Dani picked it up and staggered out of the building. All she wanted now was to get out of this city and back to safety; relative safety, at any rate. No, that was bullshit. What she wanted was to get back to Jack Hayden, who was the only remotely sane element of her existence at present. And if anything happened to Jack...Dani did not want to consider anything happening to Jack. She just needed to get back to him.

  Her car was the only one remaining in the station parking lot, and she took small satisfaction in seeing that no one had slashed her tires. She got in and started to drive away from this catastrophe, but had not even made it to the I-5 on ramp before her cell phone started to ring.

  Please let it be Jack, she thought, pulling it from her purse, on the passenger seat. “Hello, this is Dani,” she said into the phone.

  “Well this is Lillian!” her agent shouted. “What the fuck did you think you were doing back there?”

  “You certainly found out quickly.”

  “A listener called me. But don’t change the subject! I want to know what you thought you were doing, and I want to know now!”

  Dani sighed. “Lillian, I have no idea what happened. It was like it wasn’t me talking, like I was listening to someone else, but the words were coming out of my mouth. I can’t explain it.” The Devil made me do it, she thought grimly.

  “That’s it?”

  “I just don’t know what happened to me back there. Look, Lillian, a lot of strange things have been happening to me. Maybe it’s the divorce, I don’t know, but I think I need some time off. No more gigs for a while, all right?”

  “You’re kidding, right? You’re joking me.”

  “I’m serious, Lillian. I need some time to figure things out.”

  “Honey, from now on, you’ve got nothing but time! After what you did to me tonight, do you really think I’d line up another gig for you, ever?”

  Dani Lindstrom had never been fired before, and the realization that it was happening now was like swallowing ice whole. “Lillian, what are you going to do if I’m gone?”

  “Not your problem.”

  “But who are you going to replace me on such short—” Dani stopped speaking, because one ray of understanding had suddenly filtered through the darkness. “Lillian, you said that a listener called you about my set, right?”

  “So what?”

  “How did they know that you were the right person to call? How did they even find you?”

  “Who cares? She knew, that’s all.”

  She. Dani felt dead, unable to believe how completely she had been set up. “Her name was Laurie Mosgionne, wasn’t it?”

  “Laurie Moss,” Lillian confirmed. “Since she’s already got an in with the station she thinks she can clean up your little Titanic voyage to the point where they won’t sue me.”

  “Why would they sue you? This was my fault, not yours.”

  “Because you don’t have any fucking money and I do! That’s the way lawsuits work, sweetie. And speaking of money, you still owe me twenty-one hundred.”

  “I’ll pay you back, Lillian,” Dani said. “I don’t know how, but I will.”

  “Yeah, well I’m not holding my breath. Goddamn, sweetie, after everything I’ve done for you, you ratfuck me like this.”

  Dani could not hold back the sob. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Goodbye and good luck.”

  “Don’t hang up, Lillian, there’s something else I want to tell you. Watch your back.”

  “Now you’re threatening me?”

  “No, I’m trying to warn you about Laurie Mosgionne. Just watch your back.”

  The line went dead.

  Dani held onto the phone for a mile or two before dropping it back in her purse. Her urge to cry had gone away, and it was not being replaced by a wave of indignation; not at Lillian, not even at Laurie Mosgionne, but at herself. What a total idiot she had been! She had not merely helped her replacement push her down and stomp all over her, she had fitted her with the proper cleats. Dani tried to imagine how Laurie had played it. Had the girl run to Randy Mount after Dani had confessed to her in the sandwich shop that she was anticipating problems with him, and told him that
Dani was waiting for a move? God, had she gone so far as to somehow drug her at lunch so that she would later lose her mind on the air?

  If the Devil really had been in that radio station, making both her and Mount destroy themselves, he was wearing a dress and blushing on cue.

  * * * * * * *

  Robynn Hayden knew enough about dreams to know when she was having one, and she was having one now. She was with a group of her friends in her school, playing out on the playground, and that man suddenly appeared, the bad man who had taken her for a long car ride, promising to take her to Daddy but never doing it. In the dream she was scared, maybe even more scared than she had really been on the car ride. But then somebody else appeared. It was man who smiled a lot. He came to Robin, who was now alone, all her friends having disappeared, knelt down and said: “Hi, honey, my name’s Howard.”

  “I’m Robynn.”

  “I know.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I just do.”

  Robynn looked over at the bad man, who was still glaring at her. “He scares me.”

  “I know, honey. There are some people who can really be scary sometimes. But he can’t hurt you any more, okay.”

  “Okay.”

  “In fact, I’ll make him gone.” The man named Howard pointed to the bad man, and he vanished. “There, he can’t bother you any more. You know, Noni tells me that people call you punkin. Can I do that?”

  “You know Noni?” Robynn said.

  “I knew her very well, a long, long time ago.”

  “I love Noni.”

  “So do I, punkin. That’s why I’m here. There are a few things I need to tell Noni. Can I tell them to you?”

  “I guess so. But why don’t you tell them to her?”

  “Well, punkin, it’s because she’s not asleep right now, and I need to tell someone in a hurry.”

  “Ohhh. Okay.”

  “And you’re such a big girl,” Howard went on, “that I know if I tell you, you’ll give her the message.”

  * * * * * * *

  Dani Lindstrom awoke in the motel room, having only vaguely remembered getting back to the Tide Pool Inn in the middle of the night and checking in. She remembered even less about the drive. It was all like a faded dream. It was now a little after eight in the morning and she felt shockingly refreshed, despite getting only a few hours’ sleep. She thought she still had one change of clothes in her bag, which was still in her car. Hunting down her car keys, she left the room and headed out to the parking lot. She was nearly to the front door when a young voice behind her squealed: “Hi, Dani!” She turned around to see Robynn Hayden.

  “Hi, Robynn,” she said, kneeling down to greet the girl. Robynn did not throw her arms around Dani, but she looked like she might want to. “How have you been.”

  “Well, I’m kinda getting a little bored,” the girl said. “Daddy won’t even let me go to the swimming pool.”

  “Really? Well, I’m sure he has a good reason for that.”

  “He does,” Jack said, coming down the hallway toward the lobby with Althea, who smiled warmly to her. Dani didn’t rush up to him and take him in a desperate embrace, but she wanted to. “In fact, punkin,” Jack went on, to Robynn, “I really don’t want you coming out here in the hallway unless I’m with you.”

  “I’m not a baby anymore, you know,” the girl protested.

  Jack ruffled her hair as he passed, and then walked up to Dani. “I got your note. But I didn’t expect to see you back here so soon.”

  “Plans changed,” she said. “I got in early this morning. I just got up.”

  “What time did you get in?” Jack asked with sudden intensity.

  “It was three o’clock or so. I’m not a hundred percent sure, to be honest. Last night is a little blurry.”

  Jack turned to the old woman. “Althea, would you mind taking Robynn into the restaurant? I’ll be in soon. I need to talk to Dani first.”

  Once they had gone, Dani asked Jack what was wrong.

  “Come with me,” Jack said, leading her back to his room. Inside, Jack sat her down on the bed. “You didn’t by any chance come into this room last night, did you?” he asked.

  “No, of course not,” she responded. “How could I? I don’t have a key. Oh, wait, I do still have one, don’t I? You know, if I had remembered that at three this morning I would probably would have just let myself in and saved a few bucks. But I didn’t. Why?”

  Jack went and got his laptop from the nightstand drawer and turned it on. He fumbled with the buttons until one particular picture came up. As Dani looked at it her mouth fell open. It was a shot of the motel room’s bathroom mirror. She could see Jack holding the camera and its flash reflected in the glass. But the primary subject of the picture was the writing on the mirror’s surface. It appeared to be done in a thick red substance, maybe lipstick. It read: Your ded and you dont know it you muverfuckers.

  “My god,” Dani uttered. “I don’t understand.”

  “This was written on the bathroom mirror this morning,” he said. “I went to clean it off, but then thought maybe I’d better take a picture of it, which loaded onto my laptop. I probably should have taped it on the camcorder, but it’s still in the truck and I didn’t want to leave Robynn to run out and get it. The reason I asked if you had come in the room last night is because I wanted to believe that somebody had come into the room and done this. That at least would be a natural explanation, unlike the others.”

  “What are the others, Jack?”

  He sighed and brushed his hair back with his hand. “That word muverfucker, the way it’s spelled, I’ve heard Robynn pronounce it that way before. The mistakes in the spelling and punctuation are those even a very bright five-year-old would make.”

  “You think Robynn wrote that?”

  “No. No I don’t. And least I don’t think I do.”

  “Did you ask her about it?”

  “She was still asleep when I discovered it, and I’d rubbed it off by the time she got up. I didn’t say anything to her about it, and at first I was waiting to see if she made any kind of reference to it.”

  “Would she admit it?”

  “I know my kid,” Jack said. “She’s the kind who’s terrible at lying and at keeping secrets. If she breaks something at home, you can read it on her face. If she’s done something that bothers her, she comes right out with it. So yes, if she had done this, more importantly, if she realized she had done it, she would have said something.”

  Realized she had done it, Dani thought. Just like she had not realized what she was saying on the air last night. Chills formed on her arms.

  “But there’s a bigger problem,” Jack continued. “The letters on the mirror were written in paint, wet red paint. When I wiped them away, I searched all through the bathroom, looking for any trace of either paint or a paintbrush. There were none. After Robynn got up, while she was in the bathroom, I searched the rest of this room, top to bottom. There was nothing. No paint, no paint-covered rag, no brush, nothing. Robynn’s hands were perfectly clean.”

  “So....”

  “So, if Robynn did it, she first had to figure out how to get the paint and the paintbrush, and then afterwards had to figure out how to get rid of it.”

  “Flush them down the toilet?” Dani suggested.

  “Okay, but where did they come from? I don’t think she pulled them out of the toilet.”

  “So if Robynn didn’t write the words, who did?”

  “That’s the question that’s given me a crashing headache,” Jack said. “Who could have come through a locked door, unseen, unheard, gone in there and painted words on the mirror, managing to use a word that I’ve only heard Robynn say? Who else knows my child so well that they could possibly do that? There’s only one other possibility, and I don’t even want to think about that one.”

  “You have to tell me, Jack.”

  He looked at her with ancient, tired eyes. “I wrote it myself. I got the paint and pa
inted the letters on the mirror, then threw the evidence away and forgot all about it.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “Because I’m losing my mind.” Or maybe I go so drunk I blacked out, Jack thought, though he did not remember getting drunk, either.

  “Or maybe something made you do it,” Dani said, softly. “Jack, the reason I’m back today instead of tomorrow was because I got fired for saying things on the air, things I could not control, things that horrified me as I heard them coming back from the feed, but I couldn’t help saying them any more than I can help breathing. It was like I was being controlled by something else.” She rushed to him and threw her arms around him. “What’s happening?” she asked.

  He hugged her tightly. “I don’t know, Dani, I don’t know.”

  “I came back hoping that you would be able to prop me up, but now you’ve got your own problems. At least now I understand why you didn’t want to let Robynn out of your sight, though she really does want to go swimming. She told me.”

  “I know,” he said. “It’s hard on her and she doesn’t understand the situation. It’s worse than you could imagine.”

  Dani broke the embrace and studied Jack. “What aren’t you telling me?” she asked.

  “The real reason I’m keeping Robynn in sight at all times, either my sight, or Althea’s, and now that you’re back, yours, is because of her mother. Elley is out there somewhere. I’m afraid that she’s going to come after Robynn.”

  “You’re afraid of your own wife?”

  “She hasn’t been acting very rationally lately.” Jack picked up his laptop and started to power it down. “Speaking of Robynn, I’d better get to the restaurant. Coming?”

  “Let me get my bag out of the car, and I’ll be there.” Dani started out of the room and then stopped. “Jack,” she said, turning back, “do you think Elley would have heard Robynn use that word? Muverfucker?”

  “Maybe. Why?”

  “Could it have been she who came in here last night and wrote on the mirror?”

  Jack suddenly tensed. God, could it? Could she be here, at the motel? “I have to get to Robynn now,” he said, rushing out of the room.