you inspected each building, right?”
“I haven’t found the commercial area of the town yet, but the residential structures can’t even be called buildings anymore.”
“Shit. Those are what Emac was most hoping to rehabilitate.”
Emac was Egon McMenamin, the director of expansion for Resort Partners, and the man who was responsible for Jack’s firm being brought in on the project. That nickname was what McMenamin insisted with forced joviality that all his acquaintances call him. If Jack’s parents had been so sadistic as to saddle him with a name like Egon, he’d probably be insisting on a pseudonym too.
“These are wood structures, Marc, and they don’t look like they were made very well to begin with. They’ve been exposed to the elements for more than seventy years, so you can’t expect them to hold up. Emac has to understand that.”
“That kind of attitude is not being helpful, Jack.”
Jack closed his eyes, feeling a headache coming on. “I’m not giving you attitude, Marc, I’m giving you the truth. I’m standing here looking at unsafe, unsound ruins. I wish I could change that fact, but I can’t.”
“Well, then, Jacko, I guess you’d better start thinking about how you’re going to break the news to Emac.”
“How I’m going to break the news?” Jack said, a little more sharply than he had intended.
“You’re the one who’s seeing the conditions of these buildings, not me. You’re the one with the first-hand knowledge.”
Right, and if someone has to take a hit for telling the truth, it’s certainly not going to be Mr. MBA, which within the company stood for Marcus Broarty, Asshole. “All right,” Jack sighed. Right now, all he really wanted was to get Broarty out of his ear. “Maybe I’ll find something more encouraging closer to the business district.”
“That’s the spirit. I want to hear good news when you call back, as I’m sure Emac does. I don’t have to tell you that this is a big client for us. We can’t screw it up. Bye, Jack.” The line cut off.
Jack exhaled loudly. “If a man contemplates killing his boss in a forest, and no one is around to hear it, can he still be charged with criminal intent?” he asked the woods. Slipping the phone back in his shirt pocket, Jack trudged on to find if anything at all was left of the tiny commercial area of Wood City. He could see nothing ahead of him that could be construed as shops or office buildings. In fact, a quarter-mile or so up from the last house foundation, the road appeared to stop at a small grove of uncut trees and brush. The mist now seemed to be heavier, wetter, and Jack lifted up the collar of his jacket in a futile attempt to keep the cold air from going straight down his neck.
Leaving the identifiable path, Jack began hiking through the brush, squeezing through the tangle wherever he could. I should have brought a frigging machete, he thought. It was hard, tiring work, particularly in the chill and dampness, and Jack was on the verge of giving up and going back, at least for the day, when he saw it.
Through the foliage he could make out a high, square, official looking stone building, looming out of the green like a lost Incan temple. As he fought his way to it, traces of the old road once more became visible beneath his feet. According to the surveyor’s map, there should have been eight structures in the downtown district, though he could only see this one. The closer he came to it, though, the more visible the ruins of the others became; they were mostly foundation blocks poking up out of the ground every here and there like a wino’s smile.
Apparently, every other building except this one had been constructed of wood, like the houses, which meant they suffered the same fate, though the skeletal remains of iron playground apparatus identified one of them as a school. The stone building, which had managed to defy the decades of neglect and punishing weather, was identifiable by the carving in the granite lintel above the arched front door: City Hall. The doors themselves were gone, and the portal in which they had once hung gaped blackly like a cave entrance.
Retrieving his recorder as he walked around the structure, Jack Hayden said into the mike: “City hall building appears to be largely intact, with no visible cracks in exterior walls. Windows and doors are gone, not surprisingly, though as near as I can tell through visual inspection, the foundation looks sound.” Clicking the pause button, Jack trained the beam of his flashlight into the opening and, taking careful steps, walked into the dark building.
The interior was a complete mess. The floor was covered with layers of dirt and chunks of plaster that had fallen from the ceiling. A ruined chandelier hung down like a forgotten criminal’s body from a gibbet. Amidst the rubble were fragments of broken furniture and partitions, which once defined offices in the building. Some of the interior walls had fallen away to reveal the outer stone layer while others still retained traces of wood paneling.
After making as thorough an inspection as was possible under the circumstances, Jack switched his recording back on and said: “Interior of city hall in an extreme state of distress, but cannot see anything that indicates structural instability. With enough people dedicated to the effort, and enough cleanser, this building probably could be rehabilitated for use again.” But Jesus, he thought, I’d hate to be responsible for cleaning this place up.
Clicking off the recorder, Jack set the flashlight down on a heap of plaster chips and pulled out his camera, checking it against the light bema to make certain it was set for flash. Pointing it at one side wall, he clicked the button and waited until the flash went off, then checked the screen to see if anything had been captured. It had: the picture showed the stained, moldy paneling quite clearly. He took a few more shots from different angles and then turned to the other wall the floor and the ceiling. Last to be shot was the back wall, which oddly appeared to be made of poured concrete. Training the camera on it he clicked the button and peered through the viewfinder as the flash went off.
What Jack Hayden saw in that lightning second through the camera made him jump back and cry out, involuntarily. Tripping on a pile of rubble, he fell backwards, landing hard on his backside. He did not even notice the pain, however. He was still too shaken.
He had seen a face in the momentary flash. A human face, looking back at him.
Struggling to his feet, Jack rushed back to the open door, his heart pounding, and cried, “Who’s in there?”
There was no answer.
“If you’re there, show yourself. I’m not going to do anything to you.”
No one responded.
Jack called out again, and then began to wonder if his imagination had not gotten the better of him. There was one way to find out. He pulled up the last shot he had taken. Staring into the small screen, tilting it back and forth to catch the best light, Jack Hayden once more saw the face, though this time it was clear that it was not the face of a living being. Its stylization revealed it for what it was. “Oh, good god,” he laughed.
Moving back into the dark building, he picked up his flashlight and held it up to the wall. The face he had seen was a painting, though it was not inside of a frame. It seemed to be painted directly onto the wall. As he approached it, he could see that it was the face of a woman, one that stared out from behind a curtain of gray, and for the first time Jack realized that the wall was not made of concrete, but plaster that had been painted over with heavy gray paint. A chunk of the ceiling sat on the floor directly in front of it, and Jack guessed that it had fallen in just the right place as to shave away the paint on the way down. With his fingernail he chipped away
