The Mural

by Michael Mallory

  “Have I what? Oh, good lord! Good lord! The message you wouldn’t tell me about, it claimed I had herpes, right?”

  “Yes, and I know it’s all lies, but—”

  Looking like she wanted to laugh but could not manage it, Dani related the story of how she rejected the advances of Randy Mount at the radio station but claiming she had the disease. “For the record, Jack, no, I do not have herpes, or any other venereal disease, though god only knows how far that rumor has spread by now. Radio is a surprisingly small world. I’m sure Laurie Mosgionne herself is dining on it wherever possible.”

  “Who?”

  “Laurie Mosgionne, this little backstabber from the K-God station, the one who set me up for the fall.”

  Jack regarded her with an odd expression. Then he grabbed the tiny pad of paper on the motel nightstand, and pulled a pen from his pocket. “Could you write down her name?”

  “Why?”

  “Do you remember what it said in that journal?”

  “Oh, god, you don’t think....” Dani took the pen and pad and quickly wrote Laurie’s name, and then handed it back to Jack, who took only a few seconds to perfectly anagram it into Our Name Is Legion.

  Dani shuddered.

  The remained silent (and fully clothed) for a few moments, and then Dani said: “Jack, I’ve just had an idea. Your talking about herpes gave me the thought. What if this...this whatever...is some kind of virus, a brain virus, or maybe a spirit or soul virus, that’s spread by the mural?”

  “How?”

  “By touching the paint. I remember getting a smudge of paint on my finger from your pen, right before I left to go do my gig. You told me you touched the paint, too. So far Robynn and Althea have been spared—”

  “Because they haven’t touched the paint,” Jack finished for her.

  As Jack was attempting to wrap that idea around his head, his thoughts were shattered by the cry of “Daddeee!” Leaping up from the bed, he saw Robynn running into the room from the hallway. “What’s wrong, punkin?” he asked.

  “I can’t find Nick’lodeon on the TV!”

  Althea came in right behind her. “The reception on that television is pretty poor for any of the channels,” she added.

  Jack sighed. How blessed it must be to have the biggest problem in your life not being able to watch SpongeBob. “Well, punkin, we’ll check this TV and if it works better, we’ll just trade rooms, okay?”

  “’Kay.”

  While Robynn was checking out the television (which worked perfectly fine, Nickelodeon and all), Jack’s cell phone rang and he grabbed it immediately. It was Rob Creeley, who told him to brace himself. “Has Elley been found?” he asked.

  “Not yet,” the policeman said, “but she left a problem for you at home.” Creeley related how a gas company employee had detected a rank smell coming from their Westwood home when he had gone by to check the meter. The man tried to get in to check it out but received no answer at the door. Knowing the methane odor was not simply a gas leak, he got the police involved. The cops broke in to find the body of Blaise Micelli.

  Jack decided then and there that he had to put Robynn somewhere safe. He thought about asking Creeley and his wife to watch her, but Creeley was already involved too deeply in all of this; in fact, Elley had already assaulted him once. Elley was either mad or had somehow been overtaken by the evil of Legion, or both. Either way she was lethal.

  Even though he had kept his voice low while talking on the phone to Creeley, so as not to upset Robynn, Althea had overheard him. As soon as he had hung up she gestured for him to come out into the hallway. Seeing that Robynn was happily engrossed in Dora the Explorer, with Dani keeping an eye on her, he slipped out.

  “Maybe I can help,” Althea said quietly.

  “Do you really know what the problem is?” Jack asked.

  “I watched your face turn pale and heard enough to know you’re worried about Robynn and need to send her somewhere out of harm’s way. My grandson might be able to watch her. Timmy, he’s the one who sent me the journal. He lives in Portland.”

  “Does he have other kids?”

  “No, he’s not even married, but whenever we have family get-togethers, it always seems like Uncle Tim is the most popular amongst my great-grandchildren. More importantly, he’s a good boy...I mean, a good man. He’s completely trustworthy.”

  “I appreciate the offer, Althea, but I’m a little hesitant about turning Robynn over to someone I’ve never met.”

  “Then you’ll meet him. He included his cell phone number in the package and said I can call him at any time.”

  Jack sighed. “I don’t know, it seems like an awful lot to ask of someone.”

  “Well, it probably is, but if I know Timmy, he’ll come,” she replied. “See, we have something that he’s always on the lookout for—a story.”

  “It’s a story all right, but would a newspaperman really believe it? Would anyone?”

  “Why don’t we find out?” Althea went back into the room and got envelope in which the journal had arrived, and from it pulled a note. Adjusting her glasses she read its contents then returned to Jack. “Should I call him from the room phone, or can I borrow that cellular thing of yours?”

  * * * * * * *

  Tim Kinchloe was trying to come up with a synonym for foreboding when his phone rang. Picking up the call, he said: “Leader and Press, Kinchloe.”

  “Hi, Timmy, it’s Noni again.”

  He sat up, alert. “Noni, hi. Is everything okay? Did you get your package?”

  “I did, and thank you so much. But now I have an even bigger favor to ask you. I need you to come down to San Simeon.”

  Tim had wanted to go down to her yesterday, but she had rejected the idea. Now she wanted him to drop everything and head down. Something was seriously awry. “Noni, please tell me the truth. Are you all right?”

  “Yes, Timmy, yes, I am all right, but I need your help. I have friends down here and one of them has a little girl, who’s just the sweetest little thing imaginable, but we need someone to take care of her.”

  “And your friend can’t because...?”

  “I’ll explain when you get here. At least I’ll try. You may not believe it when you hear it, but it’s quite a story.”

  “Does it have to do with that journal?”

  “Yes.”

  “Noni, this is really....” He lowered his voice so no one in the newsroom around him would hear. “It’s insane is what it is, but I need to tell somebody. When I went to get the journal, the guy who wrote it, your friend, Howard, he, well, he—”

  “Did he speak to you?” Althea said, so matter-of-factly that it took Tim’s breath.

  “He left a message for me in that book.”

  “Oh, that makes sense, dear. You’re a writer, so it stands to reason he’d write to you.”

  Yeah...that makes all the sense in the world, Tim thought.

  “It’s okay, Timmy, he’s on our side.”

  “Our side of what, Noni?”

  “I’ll try to explain it when you get here.”

  Tim Kinchloe sighed. “I’ll get there as soon as I can, Noni.”

  “Please hurry. We don’t have a lot of time.”

  She was gone even before he could say anything else. Nothing he had heard in the last two days sounded as ominous as that fatigued We don’t have a lot of time. If he was going to get there within the day—and from the sound of her voice, he needed to—he was going to have to fly, then rent a car in California. He was also going to have to explain to Crazy Madonna why he would be out for at least Monday. It had better be good, too.

  Hundreds of miles away Althea handed the cell phone back to Jack. “I’m glad I don’t carry one of those things,” she said. “I’d never be able to figure it out.”

  “I’m sure you’d find a way,” Jack said, smiling at her. What worried him as he walked back into the motel room was finding a way to tell Robynn that he was, in essence, going to abandon her
for awhile. It was probably going to be the hardest thing he’d ever done, but it had to be done. Robynn was ultimately the only that mattered, really mattered, to him. She had to be safe, no matter what. “Hey, punkin, can I talk to you?” he said, sliding down onto the floor so that he was on her level.

  “Can it wait for a c’mercial?” she asked, and Jack agreed. It was the least he could do. When the commercial came, he asked her to sit next to him and put his arm around her. “Punkin, I’m going to ask you do to something that’s going to be really hard, but really brave. And I think it’s really necessary, okay?”

  “’Kay, daddy.”

  “Robynn, I need to go do something, and I can’t bring you along with me. So I’m going to let you stay with a nice man named Uncle Tim.”

  “But I don’t want to,” she whimpered. “I want to stay with you.”

  “I know, I know, punkin, and I wish you could, but you can’t. I’m sorry.”

  “How ’bout Noni? Can I stay with her?”

  Althea’s head dropped down and she shook it sadly, knowingly.

  “No, Robynn, I’m sorry.”

  “Dani?” Her voice was a mouse’s now.

  “Robynn, punkin, I need to send you away.”

  “I don’t wanna leave you and Noni and Dani!” the girl blubbered out, and Jack could not help but notice that she made no mention of her mother.

  “I know, Robynn, but I have to.”

  “Noooooooooo!” She launched herself at him and nearly cut off his wind with her arms.

  It always pained Jack to see his daughter crying, not pain in the metaphoric spiritual sense, but real, physical pain. His stomach felt like he had been punched, and his legs had a numb wobbly feeling to them. It particularly pained him to know that she was hurting even more by his words.

  “Robynn, I don’t want to be away from you,” Jack said, hugging her back, “but I’m afraid we have no choice.”

  “How c-c-come?”

  “Noni and Dani and I all have to go someplace and do something that wouldn’t be safe for you. I’m really, really sorry, but we need you to stay with Noni’s grandson while we’re gone.”

  “I won’t!” Robynn cried, stamping her foot. “You just want to go off and drink beer!” Then she rushed back into the bathroom, slamming the door behind her. Jack stood there, stunned. This was the first time Robynn had ever, ever, acknowledged that she even noticed Jack’s drinking.

  It was also the moment Jack Hayden vowed he would never take another drink again.

  “Do you want me to go to her?” Althea asked.

  “Not yet,” Jack said, forcing the words out. “Let her cool down first.” He gazed up at his friends, two women whom he had only known for a short time, but whom had he had grown to love and trust above practically all others. “Anyone else here wonder why us?” he asked, weakly.

  “Why us what?” Dani asked.

  “Why are we the ones who are being thrown into all this? Why are we the ones having the dreams and getting visits from Howard? I mean, I understand it in your instance, Althea, since Howard had a connection with this Igee, as well as with you, but why the rest of us? Why Robynn? Why were we chosen?”

  “Perhaps it’s because we know the difference between right and wrong,” Althea offered. “Maybe I’m just a foolish old woman, but I look around at the things that are happening today, not just here, not simply to us, but everywhere, all over the world. Wars, intolerance, poverty, some people facing starvation while others sit on inconceivable wealth...this is what things were like when I was a young woman. Back then we thought we were fighting assorted demagogues, including a horrible little man who looked like Charlie Chaplin. But it was this Legion then, just like now. It’s back, and we can see it while others can’t. Or maybe the others can, but they accept it, which is even worse. But that’s why us. Whether we like it or not, we’re part of our own legion, a legion for good. We just don’t know what to call ourselves. Oh, heavens, I have to lie down.” Althea Kinchloe stretched out on the bed and closed her eyes.

  Neither Jack nor Dani said anything, in part because Althea seemed exhausted and they did not want to disturb her rest. Had it been convenient, Jack simply would have left and gone into the other room, but there was still Robynn to contend with. She remained in the bathroom with the door closed, and he could hear the sounds of soft, weary sobbing coming from the inside. She would probably cry herself to sleep and then he could go in and get her.

  It was Dani who broke the stillness of the room by walking toward him and holding out her arms, in an unmistakable invitation, which Jack accepted. They stood in the middle of the room, holding each other, not really knowing what the embrace meant, but understanding that their shared warmth and energy was in some sense revitalizing them both. It was not a romantic exchange, it was a human one. They continued to hold each other until a soft voice broke their embrace. “He was wrong,” Althea Kinchloe said weakly.

  Jack rushed to her. “What’s that, Althea? Do you need something?”

  She looked at him and smiled. “I need you to know that that man, that horrible man, is capable of making mistakes. He told me when I would die, but he was wrong. It’s a day early. I’ve beat him. Remember that, dear, he can make mistakes.” Still smiling, she closed her eyes.

  Leaping up, Jack said, “We have to get a doctor.” He ran to the room phone.

  “Jack, wait,” Dani said, listening at the bathroom door. “Robynn’s talking to someone.”

  “To herself,” Jack said, starting to dial the front desk.

  “No, I can hear two voices!”

  Putting the receiver down, Jack ran to the bathroom door and listened. He heard Robynn’s voice, and then heard the response from the other voice. One he recognized. He looked back at Althea, who was lying on the bed silent as death, but still smiling. “She’s dead,” he said.

  “You haven’t checked for a pulse.”

  “I don’t need to. I know she’s dead because I just heard her voice in the bathroom, breaking the news to Robynn.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Jack and Dani said nothing. Finally, Dani crept over and checked for a pulse, finding none. She carefully laid her arm back over her body. A look of peace had settled on her face.

  All of a sudden Jack missed her terribly, this woman he had met only a few days earlier. But he understood that she had fulfilled her role in this bizarre drama, and that it was the proper time for her to exit. Her function, he believed, was to give them the important news that Igee could make mistakes.

  The bathroom door opened and Robynn walked out. Jack rushed to her and hugged her, and she hugged back. “Daddy,” she said in a whimpery voice, “Noni’s dead.”

  “Yes, punkin, Noni’s dead.”

  “She told me so. In the bathroom.”

  “I know she did, honey.”

  “She was a ghost.”

  “I know.”

  “I thought ghosts were s’posed to be scary.”

  “Some are, but Noni isn’t,” Jack said, looking deep into his daughter’s eyes. “Just like her friend Howard isn’t. They’re good ghosts, I guess.”

  “I love Noni.”

  “So do I, Robynn.”

  “But she told me I had to do what you said, and that I needed to go with Uncle Tim.”

  “I’m glad she told you that, punkin,” Jack said. “She knew Uncle Tim better than any of us, and she wouldn’t have asked you to go with him if she thought there would be any problem with it.”

  “But I don’t want to go.”

  “I know, and it hurts me to have to send you away. But my biggest job as a dad is to keep you safe, and sometimes I have to make hard decisions to do that.” He hugged her like a dying man clutches a life preserver. “Robynn, do you want to see Noni?” he asked her.

  “You mean see her dead?”

  Jack nodded.

  “Okay.”

  Jack led her to the bed and Robynn stood beside it, studying the body of the old wom
an. Any emotions she was having were unreadable on her face. “She’s somewhere more fun, isn’t she?” she asked.

  “Yes, I think she is.”

  Robynn wrinkled her nose. “She doesn’t smell very good.”

  “I know, punkin. That’s one of the things that happens when you die. But we’re going to take care of that. Do you think you could go with Dani over to the other room?”

  “Okay.”

  The two left to go next door while Jack contemplated his next move. He should, of course, call the front desk to let them know immediately, but he knew that their first move would be to call the closest police station, so he decided to cut out the middle man and go straight to Creeley himself. He’d let the desk clerk know afterwards. Pulling out his cell phone he punched in Creeley’s number and waited. It was ringing an inordinately long time, and for a moment he was afraid that Creeley was unavailable, which seemed odd for a policeman. Finally the line picked up, but instead of the policeman’s voice saying hello, all Jack heard was an empty silence.

  “Hi, Cree? Are you there?”

  “There’s no Creeley here, Jack,” a man’s voice said.

  “That you, Carl?”

  The response was a laugh, one that made the skin on the back of his neck bubble. Suddenly Jack knew who it was.

  “Elley says hello, and she can’t wait to see you,” the voice of Louis Norman Igee said. “You and that split-faced little bitch you claim to have fathered. But we know the truth, don’t we?”

  “Fuck you,” Jack said.

  Igee laughed. “In your dreams...someday. But we were talking of Robynn. You can try and hide her but it won’t work. Elley will find her, and why not? She’s her mother, after all. She brought her into this world, so who better to—”

  “Shut up!” Jack roared. That drew only more laughter.

  Don’t let him get to you, Jack ordered himself. He’s trying to rattle you; don’t give in. Remember what Althea said: he can make mistakes.