The Mural

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

  Copyright © 2012 by Michael Mallory

  Published by Wildside Press LLC

  www.wildsidebooks.com

  PROLOGUE

  SEVENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO

  The town had sprung up out of the ground like a bush.

  City hall, market, school, restaurant, auto garage, and houses all stood on a plot of Colonel Henry Jackson Breen’s land that only two years before had shown nothing but trees and bramble. More trees surrounded the buildings and those trees, as well as the soon-to-be-built lumber mill they would supply, were the reason for the fledgling town’s existence.

  Breen’s mill; Breen’s town. Soon Breen’s workers would come here to operate the mill and live in the town, which had been christened “Wood City.” They would arrive on the just-completed highway that hugged the coastline and overlooked the Pacific, and he hoped Old Man Hearst up on his goddamned mountaintop just a few miles away would choke on his silver spoon every time he saw the signs of industry that he wasn’t any part of, and never would be, damn the man.

  Stepping out of a battered Buick sedan that had been purchased specifically for his visits to Wood City, having concluded that there was little purpose in pummeling his Duisenberg town car on the rough washboard road that accessed the site, Breen surveyed the brick and wood buildings. Most of the civic section had been completed, though there was still a good deal of work to do on the residential sections. But since the level of construction on the houses would be far cheaper, it would move quickly. People could start to move in even before the running water hook-ups were complete.

  It was Sunday, which was why the town was devoid of workmen. It was a cooler, crisper day than Colonel Breen had expected, though he knew well enough how the fog and wet mist could settle over the coast, and Wood City was only a few miles inland. Shivering, he pulled the fur color of his overcoat tighter around his neck, jammed his hat down further. Leaving his sense of satisfaction trailing behind him, like so much cigar smoke, he made his way straight to the city hall building. His visit today was a surprise one, which is why he had come up here alone. He had to find out for himself what that Bolshevik painter from Roosevelt’s damnable public art program was up to (or, rather, Rosenfeld’s, since the bastard in the White House was rumored to be a secret Jew intent on carrying out an international cabalistic agenda).

  Breen could not even remember the painter’s name, but he knew the type: temperamental, argumentative, with a tendency to use his talent—real or imagined—like a weapon, pulling it against a “lesser mortal” like a dueling saber. Worst of all, all reports from his staff indicated that he was one of those born with a misplaced sense of entitlement, as though the world owed him a free lunch.

  Breen had not even wanted the damned mural in the first place. He had seen examples of this so-called art and had hated it. It was nothing more than unrealistic, distorted figures that looked as though they belonged on the walls of some ancient tomb in Egypt rather than in a modern American building. It had been one of Breen’s subordinates who had encouraged him to take advantage of the program, since it was, in effect, free to him. But even at that price it was no bargain, since the “artist” was stalling, refusing to show up for work for days at a time, insisting that he could not create while hampered by a timeline.

  Well, by god, there was a timeline, and it would damned well be met! No force on Heaven or earth was going to prevent Colonel Henry Jackson Breen from dedicating Wood City on schedule, at the first of the month. If the damnable mural was not finished, then the wall would be painted over and the lazy Communist hired to create it could be thrown into the ocean, for all Breen cared.

  There was a light on inside, indicating the rotter was there. All of the town’s public buildings had already been wired for electricity, and all of the workmen had been using floods to finish their interior work. The front door was unlocked, another sign someone was here, since Breen had personally ordered that all buildings were to be locked once the day’s work had been completed (though he himself held a key to every building in the town, even the houses).

  “Hullo!” Breen called out, stepping inside. For some reason, the floods had been turned toward the entrance, leaving the rest of the interior in the shadows. “Is anyone in here?” He received only silence in return. “I said, is anyone in here?”

  The smells of drying plaster and paint permeated the interior, barely overriding another earthy, slightly foul odor, like decay. From somewhere inside the building came a sound, almost like a voice, but not quite. Could an animal have gotten in from the woods? Could the damnable thing have come inside and died?

  He swung one of the floods around and washed the side wall of the building in a bright, white glow. Breen looked around but could see no one. “Well, let’s have a look at what the genius hath wrought,” he muttered to himself, repositioning the light so that it faced the back wall, and the mural. At his initial glance, it looked to be complete: a massive painting crammed with imagery and overpopulated with figures, like all other Socialist art. At second glance, though, Colonel Henry Jackson Breen saw it for what it really was. It was not the expected depiction of American business and industry; rather it was a monstrous tapestry made up of scenes of misery, degradation, and horror.

  In one scene rows of women, their faces twisted into expressions of agony, sewed on ancient Singer machines in what was clearly a depiction of a sweat shop. The cloth on which they worked was a rich crimson, which contrasted with the more muted pastel colors of the scene, drawing the eye to it. The ghastliest touch, however, was the fact that all of the women’s fingers were literally worn away, revealing white bone underneath.

  Next to it was a scene in a machine shop, with agonized looking men struggling against what appeared to be a mechanical monster that literally rent their limbs from their bodies.

  Overtop was a panorama of agriculture, with terror-stricken looking farmers plowing a grave yard, the loose earth beginning to reveal its contents.

  At one side was the depiction of a meat packing plant, showing miserable, blood-splattered drudges cutting up living animals whose faces bore horrific expressions of pain. Below was the depiction of a man grinning dementedly while sodomizing a headless sheep.

  This is a vision that could only come from Hell itself! Breen thought, feeling his gorge rising even faster than his anger. Still, he continued to look.

  The painted scene of an automobile factory depicted corpses on the assembly line, and thrusting from it, in a horrifying realistic simulation of three-dimensional art, was the remnant of a faulty car that the dead workers had created, overturned and burning on a road, with a family of four trapped inside, their flesh blackened from the fire, all shrieking in terror and anguish. Breen could almost hear the screams.

  Next to it was a scene in a department store, but instead of merchandize such as clothing or toys or books, the shelves were stocked with body parts, including a display of severed human genitals.

  This was a goddamned abomination! Breen attempted to dismiss the mural as a sickening practical joke, but too much work had been on done on it to make that explanation credible. The only explanation was that the “artist” was a raving lunatic!

  Breen had already made the decision to obliterate the mural before looking at the last section. When he did gaze upon it, it caused his blood to rise to the point where there was a pounding in his ears.

  It depicted a lumber mill, well populated by workers, but instead of the dead, hopelessly pain-stricken expressions seen on every other figure in the painting, the men shown here were clearly insane. Each one beamed out of the painting with wild eyes and hideous grins as they manned the huge saws, which were not being used to rip tree logs into lumber, but rather dismember peop
le and turn bodies into carrion.

  Breen pulled his handkerchief from his pocket and held it tightly over his mouth. Once the wave of nausea had passed, he used it to mop his sweating face. That undetectable foul odor was becoming stronger now and was intermingling with another smell, an acrid one like that of a freshly-struck match. He had to get out of this place.

  He heard another noise, and it seemed to come from directly in front of him. Don’t look at it! Breen ordered himself, but he was powerless to stop. As if not under his own power, his head slowly rose and he faced the mural again. He heard a shout of terror, unaware that it came from his own throat.

  Every face in the painting was now staring directly at him, their agony intensified a thousand times by the fact that their wide, pain-informed eyes burned straight into his.

  Breen felt the fingers of his left hand go numb and heavy. The numbness spread up his arm and then stabbed him like a dagger under his armpit. He began to reel, his eyes wandering all over the mural. Finally, though, they came to light on one particular spot, which he would swear had not been there before: it was the scene of the dead farmer plowing the graveyard. There were two distinct bodies, half-emerged from the loose soil. A futile cry escaped his lips as he recognized the faces.

  But nobody knows this, he thought, madly. Nobody alive knows.

  The figures in the painting were two men he had known years ago, rivals in business. Both of them had been dead for decades, which Breen knew for a fact, because it was he who had them killed. That was twenty years ago....

  Then as Breen watched, the two figures slowly, painfully turned their painted heads until they stared straight at him. They shook their heads and smiled. The lips of one dead face formed the words, Hello, Breen, so clearly that the colonel actually heard them.

  Breen’s bladder gave way and the stream of urine coursing down his leg felt like lava against his cold flesh. A white hot spear of pain shot through his chest. There was a similar sharp jab in the side of his head, and the flood illuminating the room seemed to turn pinkish-red. Clutching at his chest, he started to fall and tried to regain his footing, but it was too late. Like one of the trees that had been cut to make him wealthy, he toppled sideways, hitting the stand of the floodlight on the way down, knocking it to the floor, shattering the lamp and throwing the building into total blackness.

  A moment later, writhing on the floor in the darkness of the yet-to-be dedicated city hall, wracked by a greater sense of terror than he had ever known, Colonel Henry Jackson Breen’s heart ceased beating.

  The mural’s work had begun.

  BOOK ONE

  CHAPTER ONE

  TODAY

  Jack Hayden did not believe in miracles, but nothing else could explain his getting cell phone service out here in the middle of the woods. Somewhere amidst all these towering genuine trees there must be a cell tower disguised as a pine. Startled as he was by its ringing, Jack did not bother to answer it. He did not want to talk to Marcus Broarty.

  Jack Hayden rarely wanted to talk to his boss, but out here, in the heart of the misty, piney forest on the central coast of California, he particularly did not want to talk to him. After all, it was supposed to be Broarty who was taking charge of this job, not him. But Broarty had absolutely no idea what he was doing, which meant that he would endlessly pester Jack for up-to-the-second reports about what he was finding in the old California ghost town, which he could parrot it back to the client, giving the illusion of being knowledgeable.

  “Go to hell,” Jack said, and the phone stopped ringing as though it had heard him. If Broarty made an issue about being unable to connect with him, he could always claim he could not get a signal, which, by all rights, he should not be able to.

  Jack continued to trudge through the woods, glad he had worn his old boots, since the earth was moist and wet. He glanced again at the damp surveyor’s map, which really was not much help in locating the ruins of the town. It had taken him long enough to find the turnoff from the highway, which after so many years was virtually imperceptible, particularly at sixty miles an hour. Only by driving along the shoulder of Highway 1 had he managed to spot the entrance to the old service road. Jack had barely been able to squeeze his pickup through the opening. The road beyond was as runnelled and rutted as any he had seen, and it sloped uphill, which prevented the engine from dropping out of first gear. The density and height of the trees created a canopy that all but blocked out the sun, casting an eerie perpetual twilight over the woods. The moss that hung down from the tree branches like sea foam cobwebs only added to the effect. Jack was not expecting the old site to be this desolate, and he prayed he would not meet up with a bear.

  After about ten minutes in first gear, Jack came to an impasse in the road: a large tree had fallen over the rustic path, preventing him from taking the truck in any further. He stepped out of the cab and looked around. The old road seemed to vanish altogether. What’s more, there was no sign in any direction that any kind of village or two once stood here. He could continue on foot, and should continue on foot if he wanted to conscientiously do the job for which he was being paid, but at the moment it looked like a fool’s chase. If Wood City had ever existed, it was now long gone.

  Jack had just taken out his compass to check it against the map, when his cell phone rang again. “Christ,” he muttered. “Okay, you asshole, you win.” Pulling out the phone and flipping it open, he hit the proper button and said, “Yeah, Hayden.”

  “Hi, Daddy!” a voice came back, and Jack smiled broadly.

  “Hey, punkin! How are you? Did you call earlier?”

  “Yeah, but you didn’t answer,” Robynn Hayden replied, with the kind of hurt, accusatory indignation that only a five-year-old could summon.

  “I’m sorry, punkin, but I’m here now,” Jack said. Then he checked his watch. “Hey, aren’t you supposed to be in school.”

  “Mmm-hmm, but I’m sick today.”

  “Oh, no, what’s wrong?”

  “I dunno. I have spots on my back and face. Mom’s taking me to Dr. Ari.”

  “Boy, I’m sorry to hear that. Can I talk to Mom?”

  “Mm-hmm.” Then the line went vacant for a moment, a sign that the phone was being passed. The next voice that came on was that of his wife, Elley.

  “Where have you been, Jack. I’ve been trying to get through to you for a half-hour.”

  “Sorry, but it’s pretty astonishing you’re getting through now. I’m in the middle of the forest. So what are these spots all about?”

  “On the phone the doctor thought they were probably nothing more than hives, but I’m taking her in just to make sure. You know how schools are when it comes to red spots.”

  “So you’re taking the day off work?”

  “Half day,” she said. “I had to cancel a morning meeting, but there’s one in the afternoon that I can’t blow off by playing hooky.” While Jack did not consider staying home in order to take care of a sick child to be playing hooky, he held his tongue. “I called Nola and asked her to come by early so I can leave.” Nola was the nanny they had hired at the beginning of the school year to pick Robynn up after kindergarten and take care of her until Elley got home. Elley (whose name was not short for anything, but rather was the phonetic form of L.E., her mother’s initials) had a high-pressure job. She was a senior account executive in a big marketing firm and as such she was far more dedicated to her work than Jack was to his job as a building inspector. She was also paid a great deal more, though that was not a factor in her devotion. Elley was a career woman, one who savored every write-up in a business journal, while Jack viewed work simply as the price for having a life, a home, and a comfortable environment in which to raise a child. For him, five o’clock was quitting time and five-thirty signaled the start of Happy Hour.

  “Do you know how long you’re going to be up there?” Elley asked him.

  “I haven’t even found the place yet, but I’m hoping I’ll be back home by Wednesday at the late
st.”

  “Wednesday?”

  “That’s worst case scenario. I’m shooting for tomorrow.”

  “I’d prefer that.”

  “So would I,” Jack said, silently adding: I think. “Can you put Robynn back on?”

  “Don’t talk too long, I have to get her to the doctor.”

  That emptiness was heard again, and then his daughter’s voice said: “Daddy, can I have a turtle?”

  “A turtle?” Jack laughed. “What put that idea into your head?”

  “There was a show on turtles last night. Did you know they can live a hundred years?”

  “Well, the big ones can, like the ones they have at the zoo, but we’re not getting one of those.”

  “So we can get a small one?”

  “We’ll talk about it when I get home, okay?”

  “Okay. I love you, Daddy.”

  “I love you too, punkin.”

  The line then went dead. With a smile, Jack Hayden replaced the phone in his pocket and forged through the woods until he finally came to what was clearly the continuation of the old road he had lost earlier, illuminated by a shaft of light that bled through the treetops. “All it takes is a beam of pure sunshine to light the way,” he said, thinking more about his daughter’s golden face, which was lovely, despite the prominent crimp on her upper lip, than of the sun itself.

  Jack was encouraged by the fact that Robynn remained unaffected by the scar on her face, which was the result of an operation for a severely cleft palate when she was less than a year old. He hoped it would always be that way, but in his heart he knew that would not be the case. Someday, confronted by the cruelty of other children or society in general, Robynn would be forced to accept the fact that her face was, in the eyes of the world, blemished. The thought of that impending kept him awake some nights. He tried to push it out of his mind now.

  The loud crunching sounds Jack’s steps made as he trudged up the nearly overgrown dirt and gravel road were the only sounds around him. He was beginning to wonder whether or not he would be able to find his way back to his truck when he spotted the ruins of some kind of structure. Jack jogged up to it, his breath now coming in visible spouts. Reaching into his breast pocket, he pulled out the small microcassette on which he recorded all his notes, impressions and figurings, which were then later transcribed onto paper back in the office. He knew from looking at the original plans for the layout Wood City that this building would be residential, and even a cursory examination of this structure told him occupancy would be impossible. “Residential structure number one, single storey,” he said into the tape recorder, “roof missing, chimney collapsed. Doors missing, glass missing, completely out of square and noticeably listing to one side.” Carefully, he crept to the open windows and peered in. “Interior walls open, studs revealed,” he recorded, as he shined a flashlight beam over the walls. “Construction is very cheap. There appears to be more than two feet distance between some of the studs. Overall, the structure looks unsafe for entry. If you’re listening in, Marcus, nobody in their right mind would inhabit this dump.”