The Mural

by Michael Mallory

  “I believe my own eyes,” Dorgan growled, leveling both barrels straight into Jack’s face. Behind them, Elley started laughing.

  “For Christ’s sake, listen to me!” Jack hollered, slowly rising, his hands held defensively in front of him. “I taped the mural with my camcorder. That’s what was on the tape. I don’t know what the mural has shown you or what it’s saying that we did, but it’s a lie! The mural is part of Legion!” Jack stopped then, having suddenly realized just what it was that had been seeded in the Officer’s brain. “This has something to do with your son, doesn’t it?”

  “You know goddamned well it does! You killed him, you and the girl! But killing him in a normal way wasn’t enough, was it? Just taking the life of a developmentally disabled kid wasn’t a high enough kick for you, was it? You had to...to...Christ.”

  Dorgan looked like he was going to break down and cry.

  “Listen to me, Carl,” Jack said. “You’re a good cop. You have to use reason and logic to do your job. Why on earth would any of us want to hurt your son? What would be our motive?”

  “You’re sick, that’s why,” Dorgan said, but his voice was weakening.

  “Okay, fine, let’s use that hypothesis, Dani and I are demented psycho killers. Why would we be so stupid as to videotape ourselves committing the crime? Even if we did, why would we send you the tape? Not only the tape, but the camcorder?”

  “Some criminals want to get caught.”

  From the floor, Elley said: “And you have caught them, officer. They are maniacs. Look what they’ve done to me? Nobody can help your boy now, but you can help me. Free me so I can get away from here, and then you can do whatever you want to them. Or kill them first, I don’t care.”

  Dorgan’s eyes narrowed, but he made no move to remove her cuffs.

  “Carl, reason this through,” Jack said. “How did you get this tape? Was it delivered? Was there a drop of wet paint on it? And did it tell you where to find us?”

  “Damn,” Carl Dorgan said, lowering his shotgun. “Goddammit to hell.”

  “Thank god,” Jack panted. “I know all this is hard to accept, but you have to believe us. It’s the mural that’s doing this, or what’s in the mural.”

  “Don’t fall for his lies, officer!” Elley shouted. “How can a painting do anything to anyone? They’re the ones doing this!”

  “Carl, what did that tape show you?” Jack pleaded.

  Carl Dorgan looked twenty years older than when he had stepped inside the building. “It showed you and the girl throwing acid all over my boy until he was....”

  Elley looked momentarily startled, and then shouted: “Yes! You see? The proof of their guilt is right outside! Three jugs filled with acid, the same stuff they used on Kevin! They were planning to use it on me, too, until you came in.”

  Wearing an inscrutable expression on his weathered face, Carl Dorgan stepped to her and knelt down. He unlocked the cuffs.

  “Thank you,” Elley panted, sitting up. “Now arrest them.”

  “No,” Dorgan said, pointing the shotgun barrels at her head. “Not until you tell me how you knew my boy’s name was Kevin.”

  “I heard Jack say it,” Elley replied quickly.

  “Carl, I never knew your son’s name,” Jack said. “You never told it to me. When you showed me his picture, all you said was my youngest.”

  “You’re not going to believe him, are you?” Elley cried.

  “I am,” Dorgan said, “because he’s right. I never told him my boy’s name.” Then he dropped the shotgun again. “Jesus Lord, what have I done?”

  “It’s okay, Carl, no one’s hurt,” Jack said. “You didn’t do anything bad.”

  “The hell I didn’t. Those jugs out there....”

  “They really are filled with acid, Carl. We’re going to burn that thing off the wall and end this nightmare once and for all.”

  “No you won’t,” Dorgan said, looking again like he was about to cry. “I broke ’em.”

  Creeley moaned.

  “Hell, I saw those bottles in that goddamned videotape. I saw what the acid did to my boy. At least I thought I did. When I saw those jugs sitting there, I threw ’em against the trees and watched the stuff sizzle down.”

  “All three jugs, Carl?” Jack asked.

  “There was more than three. I found ’em in a couple different places—”

  “Oh, god,” Dani moaned. “The reserves, too.”

  “Damn it, chief, I....” Now Deputy Carl Dorgan did break down in tears.

  “I’ve always felt a man’s tears were a sign of weakness,” said a voice that filled the entire building. All of them looked around for the source of the voice, but it was Dani who first discovered it.

  “My god, the mural’s alive!” she cried.

  All of the painted figures now seemed to be moving, or at least pulsating, as though they were live figures trying to hold their poses and not doing a very good job of it. In the very middle, though, was the figure of a man who, even though rendered in pigment in a stylized art fashion, was moving like a character in an animated cartoon. His dark hair was bushed up on top and his eyes were black pits. In one hand was a paintbrush and in the other a palette.

  “Louis Norman Igee,” Jack said, and the figure smiled and bowed.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  “It’s just one more illusion,” Jack said, watching the figures in the mural writhe and move. “Like all the others.”

  “There you’re quite wrong,” Igee said. “In the confines of my life’s work, I’m as real as I’ve ever been.”

  “Right, I remember now. Howard’s journal theorized that your spirit entered the mural, even as your body burnt to a crisp on this floor. And if that’s so, that means you can’t leave the mural, either, except as an illusion. You’re stuck there.”

  “But my powers remain formidable, I think you’ll agree.”

  “Your supernatural powers, arguably. But your artistic powers are dog crap.”

  There was a momentary flash of anger from Igee, revealed by his skin tone’s sudden flush, but then it passed. “A good try, Mr. Hayden, but that sort of thing will no longer work. You see, I believe in learning from my enemies, and what I have learned from you is that you will try to goad me. You think it is the only power you have over me. I, on the other hand, have many, many powers over you. It is my power that has kept this mural alive all these years. I confess that I did not plan it that way. It was through Lenore that I first discovered the possibilities, but I am not displeased with the results.

  “Who’s Lenore?” Jack asked.

  “Really, Mr. Hayden,” Igee said. “Surely you remember Lenore Imaginous...my muse.” Igee’s painted image smoothly glided across the mural until he came to the figure of a woman. She had red hair and features that Jack did indeed know well. It was the woman from the Saddleback Inn and the photograph in his motel bathroom. It was the face he had first seen in a flash through the lens of his digital camera several days and a seeming lifetime ago.

  The painted form of Lenore Imaginous winked at Jack and smiled.

  “She was the first to actually enter the mural. Others followed. Many others. And there will be many more to come.”

  “Jack, I think Cree’s in trouble,” Dani suddenly shouted. Without any warning, Dorgan tossed the shotgun to Jack, who managed barely to catch it, and raced to the prone figure of Rob Creeley.

  “He’s lost a lot of blood,” Dorgan said, putting an old, soiled handkerchief over his gut wound. “We gotta get him out of here.”

  “Quite out of the question,” Igee stated.

  Dorgan stood up with surprising speed and forcefulness and began walking toward the mural. “Goddammit to hell, I’m sick and tired of this!” he shouted. “I’ve taken orders on behalf of my flag, and I’ve taken orders from commanding officers who didn’t have the brains God gave a mule, and to my eternal shame, I even started to take orders from a goddamned videotape. But I’ve never taken orders from a painted
pissant on a goddamn wall, and I’m not about to start now! So shove your opinions up your ass!” Turning his back on the mural, he went back to Creeley and started to pull him to his feet. “Let’s get you the hell out of this nuthouse,” he said.

  “No, Carl, leave me be,” Creeley moaned, and Dorgan set him down again. Keeping his voice quiet, the chief went on: “Go out there and find Jack’s girl. She’s out there somewhere. Don’t worry about me.” Dorgan turned back to the mural, and saw Igee laugh.

  “Go ahead, go get the brat,” he said. “Bring her in her. You might as well all be together for the final defeat.”

  “Screw you,” Jack said. “I’m not conceding anything.”

  “Oh, of course not,” Elley said. “You never concede to anything, not your dead-end job, not your personal failure, not your drinking. You’ve always lived in Jackland, haven’t you? A place where there is no problems that can’t be solved with a twelve pack and a promise to do better, someday.”

  “Maybe I have, Elley,” Jack said, glaring at her, unable to stop his tears. “Maybe I am a loser who’s taken the easy way out whenever possible and drunk too much and pissed away the years that I could have used to make a success of myself. Maybe everything you’ve ever said about me is true. But this isn’t about me.”

  “Oh, but it is,” Igee’s figure said, “It is about you now, particularly how you are about to lose everything.” Igee smiled and at once, all of the painted forms from the mural, even the animals, turned their heads and looked straight at Jack. Broarty’s painted image looked at him with a particularly violent hatred, and behind Broarty, staring into his soul, was Lenore. Slowly they turned their gaze to Dani and then Dorgan and Creeley, as though surveying the room around them. “It’s Judgment Day, ladies and gentlemen,” Igee said with a laugh, and in unison, all the figures—men, women, children, those close to the imaginary proscenium of the painting, and those far away on the horizon line, began to move, to shamble, to enlarge, to come closer.

  “Carl,” Creeley said, “go find the girl, but don’t bring her in here. Take her away.”

  “But—”

  “That’s an order, deputy.”

  “Don’t bother, officer,” Igee’s figure said. “The truth is the girl is dead.”

  “No,” Jack tried to say.

  “Oh, yes. Thanks to her mother.”

  Jack looked at Elley with black hatred. He took a step toward her and raised Dorgan’s shotgun, holding every intention of blowing her brains out, but Elley looked at him and slowly shook her head. She did not do it with a smirk or any other indication of arrogance. She did it the way they used to silently communicate in the better days of their marriage. Jack stopped and examined her face, and saw her mouth, I didn’t. He stepped back, and as he did, Dorgan wrenched the shotgun out of his hands.

  “I’ll do it,” Dorgan said. “If someone’s got to go down for murder, it’ll be me.”

  “Carl—” Jack began.

  “No, this is all my fault! If I hadn’t broken those five goddamn jugs that girl would still be alive, and this would be over by now!” He leveled the shotgun at Elley.

  “Carl, wait!” Creeley shouted so loudly that a jet of blood spurted from his midriff. “How many jugs did you break?”

  “All of ’em. Five.”

  “Jesus!” Jack cried. “Carl, there were six jugs! One’s still out there. And so is Robynn. There’s still hope!”

  “I told you, the girl is dead,” Igee said.

  Jack’s eyes locked on Elley’s. “I don’t believe it.”

  “Then tell them,” Igee instructed her.

  Elley looked back and forth from Jack to Igee, then bowed her head. “I know what you wanted me to do,” she said, finally, “but I’m still her mother, for god’s sake. I didn’t kill her. I left her tied up in one of the houses to keep her out of the way.”

  Hot anger flared from Louis Norman Igee’s painted face, which was looking at Elley. “I told you to kill her!” he roared. “You deliberately disobeyed my orders!”

  “She’s my child,” Elley moaned. “She’s not yours to kill!”

  “But you are,” Igee said.

  “Elley,” Jack said, starting toward her, but coming to a halt when the arms of the figures closest to the front of the painting broke through the surface of the mural. They were now emerging from the wall, dripping wet with colors. “Good god....”

  “Carl, get out of here!” Creeley shouted again. “Find the acid and find the girl!” He felt weak from the exertion. This time Dorgan sprinted for the front entrance, but the heavy brass doors refused to open for him. He pulled on them as hard as he could, and then tried pushing, but they held fast. “Can’t get it open!” he said.

  “Use the window,” Creeley ordered. Dorgan took up his rifle and trained it on the window in front of the building, then fired and blew to atoms. He found it was just large enough to let him through, and after carefully hoisting himself up so as not to cut himself on the glass shards, he leapt through.

  “He won’t get far,” Igee commented, but his face showed displeasure at the escape.

  The first row of figures were now completely through the surface of the mural and were freestanding on the floor, drizzling red paint on the marble surface that was indistinguishable from the blood seeping out of Rob Creeley. Jack and Dani backed up until they were next to Creeley. “We can all get out through the window,” Jack said. “We’ll carry you.”

  “No, Jack, you and Dani get out of here while you can,” the policeman said. “I’d only slow you down. Just leave me here.”

  “Like hell,” Jack said.

  The figures started toward the three of them, but then stopped suddenly, as if reacting to a silent command. In perfect unison, the heads of the figures turned toward the right and set their gazes on Elley. Then they started to shuffle towards her.

  “What are they doing?” Dani cried.

  “They’re going for Elley,” Jack said.

  Seeing the figures coming closer, reaching for her, Elley screamed: “Get them away from me, dammit!”

  “Nobody escapes Judgment Day, my darling,” Igee said.

  Elley screamed as the painted forms bodily picked her up from the floor, drenching her in running colors in the process. “What are you doing to me?”

  “I was going to kill you, I admit it,” Igee said. “But I’ve changed my mind. I’ve decided to give you eternal life in here with me.”

  Elley was now so completely covered with paint from head to foot that she looked no different from the moving figures, but she continued to scream as the figures dragged her back toward the wall. When they got close enough, Igee himself pulled her bodily into the mural. Once there, she no longer screamed and her hands were no longer bound behind her, the handcuffs having melted away like running pigment, but the look of trapped agony and fear on her now-painted face was so extreme that Jack had to turn away.

  The army of figures was now shuffling toward the rest of them slowly, quietly, wetly. “Cree,” Jack said, “we have to get you up and out of here. Help me, Dani.” Dani, however, was too horrified by the sight of the approaching nightmare army to do anything but stand and shake. “Dani!” Jack shouted, but she refused to snap out of it. She’s in shock, he thought.

  Somehow, he had to get them both out.

  Jack lunged for Dani and yanked her out of the way of the first wave of reaching arms, and pushed her against the wall. He’d have to pick her up and shove her head-first through the window, and she would probably come out of it with her mid section cut up like an onion from the glass. But was that really worse that what was going to happen to them if they stayed? Jack picked her up like a baby and had started to lift her to the window, when he heard the voice outside.

  “Anybody still in there?” Carl Dorgan was calling.

  “Yes!” Jack called.

  “Here, take this!” Dorgan said, and Jack saw a jug of acid being thrust toward him.

  Jack quickly set Dani
back down, grabbed the jug and uncapped it. Jack had never really had any experience with sulfuric acid so he was not prepared for the acrid smell, which hit his sinuses like a prizefighter’s jab. Taking a chance, he sloshed a little on the closest figure to him, and watched with satisfaction as it bubbled and melted away. A slight trace of sulfur odor replaced the acid scent.

  Just like the Wicked Witch of the West!

  The other figures stopped, and Jack couldn’t tell if they were repelled by the odor of the liquid, or the realization that it was lethal, or by another unheard command. He took a step closer and sloshed a little more, hitting three figures—two men and a woman—each of which began to bubble.

  The crowd now started backing up. Behind them, the figure of Louis Norman Igee was displaying a cartoonish expression of rage. Jack expected to see painted smoke coming out of his ears, and just the thought of that brought up a laugh from deep within him. But once that was finished, he realized he probably did not have enough acid left to destroy the entire mural. Maybe if he could get the figure of Igee, the rest of the painting would go with him. He splashed a little on each figure in front of him, and before long they were all but stampeding back into the mural! “Cowards!” Igee shouted, but still they fled, pushing past him.

  Jack stood as close to the wall as he dared, given the probable splash back, and got ready to throw the acid on Louis Norman Igee. But before he could, the painted figure with lightning speed reached out and grabbed the figure of Elley and pulled it in front of him.

  “Who’s the coward now?” Jack asked.

  “She dies if you throw that!”

  “She’s dead already,” Jack said.

  “No, she’s not,” Igee said. “I can send her back. Her soul is still intact.”

  “Such as it is.”

  “If you throw that acid, you will be killing your wife, not me.”

  Jack stood there, his mind spinning like a CD that wouldn’t play, his breath short and harsh. Was Igee telling the truth? Would he really be killing Elley? Everything she had done had been done under the control of this monster of Legion. If he could get her back and destroy Igee, then she would be free of him.