The Mural. Michael Mallory

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 people 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 СКАЧАТЬ