The Mural. Michael Mallory
six miles to his motel, a comfortable, if slightly sterile, place called the Tide Pool Inn, which was on the beachside tourist strip of San Simeon, a couple of miles from the original tiny village that had once serviced William Randolph Hearst and the creation of his legendary palace of opulence high above the ocean.
After bolting down a burger and a few beers in the motel restaurant, Jack returned to his room and set up his laptop on top of the bed. After powering it up, he plugged in his camera in order to download the photos. While waiting for the two digital devices to do their thing, he phoned Elley at her work number.
“How’s the patient?”
“Impatient is more like it,” she replied. “It was hives, just as I suspected, but we had to wait forever before we saw the doctor. Half the day was shot.”
“Well, she probably enjoyed having a surprise morning with her mom.”
“Look, I have to go into a meeting. Is there anything else?”
“I guess not.”
“Okay. Bye.”
“Bye,” Jack said to the disconnected phone line. Turning back to his computer, he saw that the download had been completed. Setting it for a slide show, he watched one picture after another, still somewhat amazed that the lighting was so good, only through flash illumination. When he came to the first picture of the back wall, he laughed all over again at how frightened the sight of the painted face had made him, and gave thanks that Broarty, or anyone else for that matter, had not been there to hear him scream like a girl and fall on his ass. But when the closer pictures of the mural figure’s face came up, he paused the slide show, stopping it to study them carefully. Jack frowned. The face in the photos did not look quite the same as it had when he looked at it in the building. It was still a woman’s face, but the expression now appeared slightly different. The figure’s eyes now seemed to bore into his. It had to be a trick of the light flash, but it was a damned weird one. Even weirder was the fact that even the feature seemed to have subtly changed. They looked a little more refined, a little sharper; certainly different than before.
The picture now changed to the next sequential image in the slide show, and Jack leapt backward off of the bed.
It was a painting of Elley, his wife, staring back at him from his laptop, her eyes wide and insane, her mouth twisted into an evil grin.
“My god!” he panted, covering his eyes, groping his way backward until he collided with the wall. A moment later he felt like a fool. This is stupid, Jack though. There had to be a photo of her already on the memory stick and it just popped up.
Then why did she look so thoroughly evil?
My mind; or else fatigue; or maybe too many beers; or maybe not enough; I don’t know.
Slowly Jack cracked open one eye, then the other, and forced himself to look at the laptop. The woman’s face remained on the screen, but it was not Elley. It was the face in the mural, altered, if at all, only by the combination of the flashlight and the camera flash, being used simultaneously. “God,” Jack muttered. He was a pussy. For the second time that day, he was glad to have been alone in his moment of supreme cowardice.
Going back to the bed, Jack closed the slide show, put the pictures in a file, and as quickly as he could, emailed them to Broarty. Then he powered off the machine and vowed to leave it off for the rest of the night.
It was not even six o’clock yet. Jack had already eaten, and nothing on the television appealed to him. He decided to go down to the motel shop and see if they had a pair of swim trunks in his size (they would probably be exorbitant, but he’d find a way to expense them), and then check out the pool area. Maybe what he needed most right now was to soak his aching butt in some warm water. Maybe it would relax him enough so that he could get a good night’s sleep.
Maybe the vision of his wife as some kind of horror movie creature that his mind had generated, for whatever perverse reason of its own, would not come back.
CHAPTER TWO
The pool area seemed like it was the furthest point possible from his room, forcing Jack to traipse in his swim trunks through every hallway of the motel’s first floor, but the welcoming, warm chlorine smell that greeted him as soon as he passed through the double glass doors leading to the recreation area brushed that concern aside. The Jacuzzi was empty, a situation he quickly remedied. Lowering himself into the hot, steaming, initially stinging water, Jack leaned back, closed his eyes and let it lap up around him. He was getting thirsty again, but was trying to ignore that for fear that more alcohol would bring back the frightening vision of Elley, not drive it away.
He concentrated on other thoughts. This was only Monday (though it seemed like the week should be over already): he could leave first thing tomorrow morning and be back in L.A. by the early afternoon, or he could return to Wood City in the morning, now that he knew exactly where it was, and make a second inspection, just to ensure that there were no structures he had missed. By doing that, he could be on his way by lunchtime and back in town by late afternoon—not soon enough to pick Robynn up from school, but certainly in time for a dinner. Sticking around for another day would also deflect any questions that Marcus Broarty would undoubtedly come up with, all of which would begin with: Since you were already there, and we were paying for you to be there, why didn’t you...? That was Broarty’s way of letting you know what he would have done differently, had he been the type who actually did things instead of talk about them.
Both the soreness in Jack’s backside and the memory of the damp chill that had infiltrated his bones out in the woods were being massaged away by the swirling water. To rid his mind of the image of the pink, piggish face of Marcus Broarty, he closed his eyes and thought instead of Robynn. He missed her terribly whenever he was away, though just the mental picture of her beautiful face brought a smile to his lips.
“Must be awfully good, whatever you’re thinking,” a voice near him said, and Jack opened his eyes.
He saw a woman standing at the edge of the Jacuzzi across from him. She was young—about twenty-eight, he guessed—tanned, blonde, and form-fitted into a satiny blue one-piece. The woman’s freckles were completely disarming. So were her eyes, which were a rich green color. “Sorry,” she said, flashing a perfect smile, “I didn’t mean to startle you. Mind if I join you?”
“No, not at all.”
The woman stepped into the Jacuzzi, her tanned legs melting into the water. “Wow, this is warm.”
“It takes a few seconds to get used to it, but once you do, you won’t want to leave. At least I don’t. I may spend the night in here.”
“I could tell you were having a good time from your expression when I walked up.”
Jack smiled. “Well, it was also because I was thinking about my daughter. She’s back in L.A.”
“What’s her name?”
“Robynn, and I’m Jack. Jack Hayden.” He extended a wet hand to her and she shook it.
“I’m Dani Lindstrom.”
“Danny? Like Danny Glover?”
“D-A-N-I. It’s short for Danica. So, Jack Hayden, what brings you all the way up here from L.A.?”
“Work. I’m a structural engineer and building inspector, and I had to come up to check out an old ghost town a little south of here.”
“Around here? Really? You’re not talking about Glenowen, are you?”
Glenowen, California, was a small, quasi-Victorian village several miles down the highway. “No, this one is called Wood City. It’s the ruins of a company town that was built in the thirties to service a lumber mill that they never got around to opening. I guess if you’ve never heard of the place you’re not from this area, either.”
“I’m from San Diego,” she said. “But I travel a lot. I’m a freelance DJ.”
“For parties?”
“No,