A small part of Main Street had been cleared away for an art contest. On the street, metal and plywood scaffolds had been erected as make-shift shelves to display the sculptures that people had made for the Harvest Festival. Some of them were obviously made by children who had participated in the earlier crafts classes—these were the clay lumps with ridiculous nubs sticking out of them as imitation antlers. Some of those childish sculptures were good enough that an observer could sort of make it out as perhaps a deer or a moose or maybe a person with antlers. Others were hopeless blobs. Other sculptures were made by some amateur artists in town—these were, unfortunately, no better than the children’s. However, these artists made no bones about their creations. They would unabashedly run up to the part of the scaffold that held their sculptures and regale their friends and family with comments about how hard it was to get it just right.
The photographer for the New Halis magazine, Hot Tread, took some pictures of these amateur sculptures, but she knew that the editors for the magazine would prefer photos of the more professionally done creations. Those were the ones that would catch a readers eye and perhaps induce them to buy the magazine. So Mel concentrated on the works that were placed at the very last scaffolds, the ones that showed definitively that there was some talent behind the hands that sculpted them.
These sculptures were of creatures, strange ones to say the least, that no one could actually put a finger on and say, this is what it is. Were these creatures the familiar four legged ones that you would see in the woods, or were they straight out of someone’s fevered imaginations? Mel thought it was probably the latter. To her relief, none of these grotesque sculptures with antlers really looked familiar. They didn’t look like the thing that had attacked them the night before—they weren’t real representations of the Horned One.
“You should try this.”
Mel put her camera down and turned toward her reporter partner who was holding out a Styrofoam bowl of steaming chili. Her stomach growled eagerly. She dropped the camera into her tote bag and took hold of the bowl. After the strange incident at the horn silver mine, they had driven straight back to the center of Gavot and had plunged back into the seemingly benign celebrations of the Harvest Festival. It had been noon when they arrived back on Main Street, but with that incident still fresh in their minds, they had not been in the mood for lunch at that time. It had been several hours since then and Mel had managed to chase away most of that unidentifiable fear with some determined concentration on her work, but now her stomach was catching up with her.
Stuart took a bite of his chili and tapped the spoon against his bowl as he gazed at the sculptures on display. “Ugly things, aren’t they?”
“Don’t say that within hearing of any of the artists,” Mel replied, “Or you’d be lynched by bruised egos.”
“Torn by the mob, eh?” He examined some of the sculptures. There were tiny paper plaques taped to the bottom of each sculpture with the title of the creation and the name of the artist printed in pencil. Seeing no familiar name, he finally straightened up and turned his attention back to his lunch. “I wonder what all this here is for. Is it just for people to look at?”
“I talked to someone a little earlier who helped put some of these up on the scaffolds,” said Mel. “Apparently they’re for an art contest—the theme is supposed to be “Inspiration for the Horned King”—you can see they all have horns. Of some sort or another.”
“Hm.”
“There’s a voting booth over there,” she said, pointing her spoon ahead of them, indicating a white tent where a few volunteers wearing puffy blue coats were sitting at a cloth covered table filled with paper ballots and ballot boxes. “You can vote for your favorite sculpture. Voting is going to close in about two hours and then the votes are going to be counted. The winner of the art contest is going to be announced later tonight at the bonfire they’re holding at Derry Pond, as well as the winner to the Horned King competitions.”
“Did you find out what the winner was going to get?”
She shrugged. “I think it was some gift certificate of some kind to a restaurant or business around here.”
“I’d be more impressed if the gift certificate was for something expensive.”
“Well, judging from most of the entries, I don’t think anybody really put that much effort into the contest to really warrant anything really expensive.”
Stuart walked along the scaffold, scanning a few more sculptures. “Hey, look at this one.”
“What?” She peered at the round lump that he was pointing at. “That really looks ugly. Sort of like some of those fat pagan fertility goddesses that archaeologists dig up from time to time.”
“Right, but look here.” He indicated the paper plaque. “Lloyd Fenster.”
“So? This piece of junk just indicates that this guy is not an artist. In any sense of the word.”
“Yeah, but he calls his masterpiece, ‘The Bead of the Horned One.’”
Mel looked closer at the paper plaque to confirm what Stuart had said. “That’s interesting.”
“Hello. Fancy meeting you here in this crush.”
They turned around to find Albert Smith, the compactly built reporter with a caddy cap from The Callas Post standing beside them looking at some of the sculptures. In one hand, he was holding a small writing pad and a pen.
Stuart nodded. “Afternoon, Al. Since we haven’t seen you around the past day or two, we figured you had finished your story and had wired it back to your editor.”
“Who then printed it up and now that’s why there’s so many people here,” Mel added.
The reporter from The Callas Post laughed. “You two attribute too much talent to my writing. Yes, I did wire a blurb about the Harvest Festival back to my editor so they could print it up in a timely fashion, but I’m also doing a longer piece for the paper. Actually, there’s always a crowd for the Harvest Festival. People around the area know all about it already.”
“Ah,” remarked Stuart.
“Actually, I think it’s really fortuitous that I bumped into you today,” he said. “I was hoping I might have met you at breakfast, but Ida Townsend said that you two already left.” He smiled. “Was there an interesting event scheduled for the festival that I missed?”
“Oh no,” replied Stuart. “Lloyd Fenster, the guy who helped finance the Harvest Festival was giving us a tour of a horn silver mine that he owns a couple miles north of here.”
Al nodded. “Well, I was wondering if we could compare notes. I like to be rather thorough about my stories and I was hoping I could pick your brain. Of course, in return for the favor, you can ask me anything you’d like.”
Stuart agreed. “Sure. Just fire away.”
As the two reporters chatted, Mel stepped away to look at some of the other paper plaques on the sculptures. She wasn’t really sure what she was looking for. Perhaps she was looking for something that might spark and idea of what to do next? After looking at a lopsided thing that looked more like a three-legged stool than a horned animal, she contemplated a figurine—this one was obviously a figurine as it was one of the more better sculpted pieces—that had branching horns on top of its head. On the plaque was the title “Horned King Standing: Inspired by Gavot Cemetery statuary.” Below that were the initials LM.
“Well hello there.”
Mel straightened up at the voice. She turned around to face the painter. “Enjoying the festivities?” she said blandly.
The painter had tied his hair back again, although this time it was braided. His coat was a shiny black. Something expensive, she thought.
“Excellent taste in sculpture design, don’t you think?” he said. He grinned. The painter was just like a former boyfriend of hers, she thought sourly. He was just like a slimy cad who couldn’t wait to get his greasy hands under your clothes.
“I wouldn’t know,” she replied. “I have no taste in this kind of art.”
“Ah, too bad. Although perhaps I could show you the finer aspects of the genre?” He had taken a step closer to her. His cologne tickled her nose. She wanted to sneeze.
“Is that one of your lamer pick up lines?”
He chuckled. “Oh, how witty!”
“Give me a break. Even a four year old child could tell.”
“Really, I could show you the finer aspects.” The painter’s eyes gleamed. “If you’d like, your cute boyfriend could come along too.”
Boyfriend? Did he mean Stuart? Stuart wasn’t her boyfriend. Well, he wasn’t exactly. But never mind what Stuart was. If this guy was intimating what she thought he was… “Is this some sort of personal art gallery tour?”
“Oh, much more,” he promised. And then the painter leaned over to whisper in her ear what he had in mind, in lurid detail.
Mel felt outrage flood hotly into her, making her grind her teeth. Without even an angry outburst or even a personal admonishment to control her temper, she threw her half-eaten chili bowl into the painter’s face and stalked off.
Still with the shock of sudden rejection, the painter stood in the middle of Main Street, next to the scaffolds of bad holiday sculpture, with chili dripping down his nose to splatter on his expensive jacket and the ground. Nearby, a gaggle of teenaged girls laughed at him with their mouths open, not even trying to disguise their amusement of his humiliation. A small child in powder blue overalls stared up at the strange man, not understanding. In the child’s hand was the leash to a puppy terrier. The dog sniffed at the chili dripping on the ground and began lapping it up.
