The Mural

by Michael Mallory

  “I made it a math problem for you,” the voice said from inside the stall. “‘How many times will six go into eleven?’ But you failed, didn’t you? You wouldn’t let six go into eleven at all. All you let me do is touch you. Juanita Cordero, now she let me give her math lessons. You remember Juanita, don’t you?”

  Dani choked back a sob. Juanita Cordero was a name she had not heard in more than twenty years, but she remembered Juanita, who had been a special-ed student at the school. One day she simply snapped and attacked another student, hurting him badly. The rumor at the time was that the other kid had exposed himself to her on the playground, but not everyone believed that. No matter what really happened, Juanita was gone from the school almost overnight, having been transferred to a special institute better equipped to deal with special kids.

  “Retards is what you kids used to call people like her,” Maurison said, “but not me. I called her pure honey.”

  “Bastard!” Dani screamed. “You piece of filth! Do you know I was actually glad when I read that you died!” She stopped for a moment, and then continued: “You are dead, Mr. Maurison, you’re not really here.”

  The door to the stall started to swing inward. “Oh, I’m dead, all right, my little tulip, but I am here.”

  Dani Lindstrom shrieked at the sight of the gray, rotting thing that shambled out of the stall. As the corpse of her former teacher advanced, she inched backwards and soon hit the entry door. Spinning around, she pulled on the handle, but the door wouldn’t open.

  Dani felt something on her shoulder, something that smelled like rotting meat, and she turned back around. It was face to face with her now. Even though the thing had no lips, it spoke perfectly clearly: “You never gave me the answer to my math problem back then, but now we’re back together. We can make up for lost time.” With a bony, maggoty hand, the corpse of Eugene Maurison undid his zipper, letting out a pale, gray, decomposing six-inch battering ram. Dani screamed again and pushed against the corpse as hard as she could, propelling it backwards. What was left of Mr. Maurison went down onto the filthy floor, and Dani turned back and pulled on the handle of the door again, this time as though her life depended on it. The handle ripped off in her hands, leaving a hole in the door.

  The corpse was starting to get up again, using the sink basin to try and pull itself up to its feet. Panicked, Dani ran to it and kicked the dead creature in its head as hard as she could, caving in its temple. Maurison’s corpse did not scream in pain as much as frustration, but the move was enough to send it rolling toward the wall.

  Dani charged the door and threw herself against it as hard as he could. The door gave way and she found herself literally flying through the air outside of the public toilet before crashing down onto the concrete walkway on her right shoulder and rolling. She came to rest on grass, and cried out in pain, clutching her shoulder. There was blood seeping through her blouse and reaching in to touch it, it felt hot and raw, but it didn’t seem to be broken. But Christ Almighty, how it hurt! Dani managed to get up to her feet and now felt like she was going to be sick. She’d just have to do it on the grass since there was no way she was going back in the public toilet and using one of the bowls. After a minute or so, though, the feeling went away. Then she heard a man’s voice: “Hey, lady, you okay?”

  She recoiled at the sound, fearing it was once again her long dead assailant, but the voice was instead coming from a complete stranger. He was a bearded, middle-aged man in an outback hat, jeans and a vest—a not uncommon look for the village. “Do I need to call someone for you?”

  “Thank you,” she gasped. “Please call someone from the police. Chief Creeley or Deputy Dorgan, if they’re there.”

  “Lady, you’re bleedin’ pretty bad, you need an ambulance too?” the man asked.

  “I’ll let one of them decide,” she replied, “but I was attacked in that public toilet.”

  “In that what?” the man said, pulling out his cell phone.

  “In that public—” Dani looked over at the building she had just burst out of.

  It was not a public toilet.

  Its signage declared it to be Linder’s Gallery. What’s more, there was no door on the side through which she had escaped, broken or otherwise. “Oh, my god,” she said, sinking down to the ground.

  “Yeah, send somebody out to Main and Quarry,” the man was saying into the phone, “there’s a woman here who’s been hurt. She says she was attacked, but she’s not makin’ the most sense. Yeah, I’ll stay here.”

  Within three minutes Carl Dorgan pulled up and hurried over to Dani, who was still seated on the ground. “Can you get to your feet, ma’am,” he asked. Dani nodded and with Dorgan’s help, and a lot pain, rose. Turning to the passerby in the hat, the Officer asked, “You see what happened to her?”

  “No sir, I just saw her laying there yelling. It was almost like she wasn’t there, then a second later, she was.”

  Dorgan only nodded and thanked the man, telling him he could go on his way now. Walking slowly, he helped Dani to the police car. A few other pedestrians stopped to watch what was going on, but quickly dispersed when it appeared to be nothing.

  “Where are we going?” Dani asked.

  “To the station,” Dorgan replied. “Before he took off this morning, the chief told me something might happen involving you and Hayden, so I’ve kind of been expecting it.”

  “Where is Jack? I have to find him?”

  “First thing we need to do is get you safe and get you some medical treatment if you need it, and then I’ll find him.”

  Dani’s shoulder radiated white hot pain as she got into the police car, but she managed to keep from whimpering. She had no doubt that things were going to get worse before they got better, so there was no sense giving to anything in now.

  * * * * * * *

  Jack heard a clock from somewhere out in the village strike four.

  The interior of the Saddleback Inn looked different this time. There were no neon signs, and the place looked newer, less rundown, a little bit more like the Western saloons that Jack used to see on television and the movies. There was sawdust on the floors and no refrigerators behind the bar, just an old ice box. The beer taps were unidentified as well, indicating that it didn’t really matter what brand you chose, beer was beer was beer. It had only taken a second for Jack to feel like a fool after rushing through the door and racing to the spot where he had seen his daughter screaming through the window, because Robynn was not there.

  Of course Robynn was not there. Had Legion not been pushing his buttons so skillfully, he might have rationalized that there was no way she could be there. But he was here, here inside the Saddleback Inn, wondering what was going to get thrown at him this time.

  The place appeared to be deserted; no one bellied up to the bar, no one was at one of the round tables, and no one was behind the bar. It was though the place was waiting for him to make the first move before it came to life, and how it wanted him to make the move was evident: lining the entire length of the bar itself were pint glasses of ale, their heads frothing over the tops of the glasses seductively. An inviting malty smell filled the bar, and Jack actually began to salivate.

  “No, no, no!” he shouted, shoving the full pint glasses off of the bar. He would not take a drink. He would not.

  Jack forced himself to turn around and was about to go back out when he heard a voice softly calling his name. It seemed to come from the behind the bar. Looking over, Jack noticed for the first time the painting of the woman up on the wall. It was a different one that the painting he had seen during his earlier “visit” to the Saddleback, but no less provocative. If anything, this one was worse, since it looked like a Vargas painting from an old Playboy magazine, a skillfully rendered picture of a half nude woman who was thrusting her crotch forward like a business card. When Jack’s gaze moved up to the face, he gave an involuntary start.

  It was the face of a woman about twenty-five years old, but it was a ve
ry familiar one, right down to the scar on the lip. The face in the painting moved. It winked at him. The scarred lip stretched into a leering smile. The woman’s vagina thrust forward toward him. “Put it there, Daddy,” she cooed. “Let’s get dirty together.”

  Instead of being sickened or outraged, Jack felt strangely confident. This time the demonic force that was trying to get to him had gone too far. Taking a deep breath, he slowly turned around from the bar and in a loud, commanding voice, shouted: “You were better off trying to convince me that she was in danger, you know. You’ve overplayed your hand, Igee. You’re demonstrating the fact that you can miscalculate. Not a smart idea.” Jack stopped speaking for a moment to see if there would be any kind of response. There was not. “By the way, that painting doesn’t look anything like her,” Jack went on. “If you’re the one who painted it, maybe you should go back to coloring books.”

  One of the remaining pints of ale on the bar suddenly flew off and shattered against the wall, sending amber liquid and glass shards all over. Clearly, he had struck a nerve with the monster. Feeling strangely satisfied, Jack nonetheless realized it was time to leave. He made a run for the door and dashed through, praying that he would reemerge onto the main drag of present-day Glenowen.

  No such luck.

  Now Jack was in what appeared to be late a nineteenth- or early twentieth-century version of the town. Standing only a few yards away from him in front of the place was a man in old-fashioned clothing with his head under a black cloth that backed and antique camera. The man’s left hand held a mortarboard heaped with powder. Before Jack could say, or even think to say, anything, the flash went off, startling and momentarily blinding him. He heard a man’s voice say: “Like to have a shot of you, for future reference. Never know when it might come in handy.”

  “Who are you?” Jack asked.

  The man said something that Jack could only make out as filled Oregon, which made no sense. “Don’t worry, sir, I’m a friend, here to reassure you that what you’re doing needs doing,” he went on. “I can’t help you none, not anymore, but we’re with you.” The last thing Jack heard was a very indistinct it’s up to you now.

  Jack Hayden realized his eyes were shut. When he finally opened them, present-day Glenowen was back, and all traces of the Saddleback Inn were gone. He was standing in front of the same shop he had been found leaning against earlier. Taking a quick survey of his clothes, he was relieved to find that he was still dressed and nothing was exposed. His next thought was to look around for Dani, whom he left rather abruptly standing in front of the Saddleback, but she was nowhere to be seen. Was that the prime objective of his being yanked into the past and tormented, to separate him from Dani? They really must be getting desperate.

  “Jack Hayden?” a voice called out, and Jack looked up to see Carl Dorgan walking briskly toward him. “You all right, Jack?”

  “Yeah, yeah I’m fine.”

  “Good. Miss Lindstrom’s up at the station. She said you kind of got away from her. I’ll take you to her.”

  Even though the Glenowen police station was well within walking distance, as was everything else in the village, Dorgan led Jack to his police car and they drove the short distance.

  “Thanks for finding me, Carl,” Jack said.

  “Chief asked me to keep tabs on you,” Dorgan answered, clicking on the blinker to turn and pull into the designated reserved parking space near the stationhouse trailer.

  “How much do you know about what’s been happening?” Jack asked.

  Dorgan shut off the ignition but stayed in the car. “No details,” he said, “but there’s kind of a history of things happening around here. Why, I don’t know, but there is. My grandfather used to talk about some strange people and problems way back when. He used to complain about a group of people he always called ‘Legionnaires.’”

  Jack Hayden suddenly grew cold, but he said nothing, letting the policeman continue.

  “When I was a kid,” Dorgan went on, “I’d get visions of guys in foreign legion hats running around creating mischief, but I don’t think that’s what he meant. I think they were a lot more dangerous than that, kind of like the KKK. One time Granddad said he had to run from a mob of ’em like a jackrabbit running from a coyote, and barely got away with his skin still attached. Course, you have to understand that Granddad did always have a tendency to make a good story better, for whatever that’s worth. He should have been down south making movies, instead of being a small town photographer.”

  Once inside the police station Jack went to Dani, who was leaning against a wall, and tried to embrace her, but backed off after she winced from the pain. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “I managed to hurt my shoulder,” she said, gingerly putting her arms around him. “I had another experience, Jack. This one was almost as bad as the one at Wood City.”

  She was hesitant to relate her experience in front of Dorgan until Jack assured her that it was all right. After hearing what she had gone through, whether hallucination or not, Jack realized he had gotten off easy this time. He told of entering the bar and seeing the painting, but how he had managed to keep it from getting to him. He considered adding the part about the photographer, which Jack now realized was the solution to the mystery of how his image ended up in a century-old picture. But neither Dani nor Dorgan knew about that picture, so he kept it to himself. But then something else struck him. “Carl, didn’t you say your grandfather was a photographer?”

  “Yeah. Had a shop in the village.”

  “Was his name Phil, by any chance?”

  “That’s right, Phil Dorgan. How did you know?”

  The man with the camera had not said filled Oregon...he’d said Phil Dorgan. “I guess you could say he told me,” Jack replied.

  Carl Dorgan started to shake his head, as though trying to dislodge an idea. Finally he said, “I don’t pretend to understand all of this, I’m just trying to carry out my orders.”

  The door of the police station suddenly swung open and Rob Creeley entered. “Good, everybody’s here,” he said, surveying the crowd. “I was worried we’d all get split up somehow.”

  “They tried,” Dani said, shivering. “They tried like hell.”

  “I’ve got the stuff we talked about earlier out in my truck,” Creeley said. “When do you want to do this?”

  “Sooner is better than later,” Jack said. Then, turning to Dani, he added: “But if you’re not up for it, you can stay here.”

  “I’m going,” she said. “I owe this bastard something.”

  “You need me to come along, chief?” Dorgan asked.

  “No, Carl, you stay here,” Creeley responded. “If we need you, I’ll be sure to call you, though. Okay, Jack, Dani, let’s go.”

  They got up and started for the door, but before they had left, the station phone rang. Everyone instinctively stopped as Carl Dorgan picked it up. Then covering the mouthpiece, he said: “It’s all right, it’s just the missus.” He added: “It’s the Legionnaires you’re going to go fight, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, Carl, it is,” Jack said.

  As the three of them left the station, Dorgan turned his attention back to the phone and said, “Okay, hon, what’s up?”

  * * * * * * *

  Jack, Dani, and Creeley strode out to the policeman’s truck, which was much larger than Jack’s and looked like it had actually been used to haul a small payload or two in its time. Lined up against the side of the truck bed, held fast by hooked bungee cords, were six glass gallon bottles each filled with a clear liquid. “Is that the acid?” Jack asked.

  “That’s it,” Creeley said. “Had to give them a mighty fancy story to get it all, but there it is. I guess we’d better do this before one of us gets cold feet. We should all be able to sit comfortably in the cab.”

  “Cree, maybe I should ride in the back and keep and eye on the bottles,” Jack said. “I’d hate to have one fall over and break on the way.”

  Creele
y looked skeptical at first, but finally relented. “Well, all right, but if one does happen to break or start leaking, you stay the hell away from the contents and start pounding on the top of the cab, and I’ll pull over. Okay?”

  “Got it.”

  Creeley and Dani got inside the cab while Jack climbed into the back. As they pulled away and headed down Main Street, the glass bottles rocked and jiggled noisily, making Jack wonder if riding back here wasn’t a stupid idea. But it was too late to worry about that now.

  He began to tense up as they came got to the turnoff onto the dirt road that would take them to Wood City, probably for the last time. That tension might have been what saved him from injury when he suddenly lurched forward as the truck swerved onto the shoulder and screeched to a halt. “Hey!” Jack cried, bracing himself with his hands. “What are you doing, Cree?”

  “Jack, look, in front,” the policeman’s voice called. Rising over the cab, Jack saw a vehicle stopped by the road, right across from the turnoff to the forest road leading to Wood City. It was a battered old station wagon.

  “What about it?” Jack shouted, getting the message a second later. “Oh, god,” he groaned, remembering that the last time Elley had been sighted, she was getting into a strange vehicle.

  An old station-wagon.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  As soon as the traffic allowed Creeley to make a left turn, he steered the truck into the woods. But immediately Jack Hayden saw that things were different. The trees were thicker, the roadway all but overgrown. “What the hell?” he heard Creeley say.

  The truck was only able to penetrate the woods by about fifty feet, and then the road appeared to end. Jack jumped out of the back and looked at the trees and brush. “It was here, Cree,” he said. “The damned road was here!”

  “I know,” the policeman replied getting out of the truck, “but it’s not here now. Where the hell’d it go?”

  Dani got out of the truck, too, and examined the near-solid wall of vegetation that now obstructed their path. “It looks like these trees have been here forever,” she said, her voice shaking. “How can that be?”