In the outskirts of a city, specifically in an suburban area of a country which name doesn`t matter rumours were spreading of a modernized house, where a woman lived about 30 to 35 years old and who was dedicated to painting.
It was told that she lived alone separated from the rest of the world and her paintings were never exhibited, although she by herself was convinced of a bright future and only her most intimate friends had ever got the chance to see her works of art with their own eyes.
The real name of that woman was never known. Everybody knew her by a strange pseudonym: the spirit of the gray deer. If you ever strolled by her house during the night you could observe the silhouette of two big, green and fluorescent eyes evoking the antlers of a ruminant animal.
Some people said that this woman lost in her world, had bought a piece of land to grow a number of tiny animals though avoiding to end up in a total and absolute madness.
Some scared neighbours said that this was again one of her incomprehensible work art of and realized only to draw attention to herself.
But nobody really dared to observe it with attention. Until today.
Up to now this was all the data that I had gathered during my investigation.
But the facts weren`t really fitting.
Although her art had never been sold, right now I was holding an original piece in my hands.
It seemed it had been left in some corner of the auctioneers and nobody of the staff knew exactly how it finally reappeared.
With some fine brush-strokes the title said “Harmaa Deer” - gray deer.
My name is Enikki Virtanen, I study journalism and my hobby for art auctions I inherited from my dead uncle dead 4 years ago.
This is what I tell to the majority of wealthy people who ask themselves: - What is a young guy like this doing here.
Well without thinking too much about it I ended up falling in love with this painting.
The drawing is quite simple showing a cartoon of a man dressed like rich entrepreneur, behind the American flag with a monotonous background in emerald green.
But what definitively caught my attention was a frightening mask of a rooster which the person on the painting was wearing as his head.
I felt the intense frustration that this face was mocking not only of me but of all the guests in that room.
During the auction I was informed this picture was denominated “The Joker Cock”, the rooster joker.
In this very moment I understood that this was all a game. I needed to get my hands on more painting of Harmaa Deer to solve the secret of the ghost.
Therefore I got ready to take the car to follow up the few clues that my investigation had drawn up so far, with the excuse to find something useful for my article.
Porvoo, was the town next to her house, and about 50 km from the capital.
[….], somewhat later I stood in front of her supposed house.
Truly it was as modern as I had read gray stone walls and wood, and some plants, the typical single-family house, without any mystery.
Although it seemed to be abandoned, not by the state of the house in itself, but because during the day time it seemed to be uninhabited.
Immediately I recognized the small work shop where the so called crazy woman of the deer’s worked in her spiteful works of art, the like I had under my arm in that moment.
To be polite I preferred to knock at her door and to present myself as an expert interesting in art, that by chance dad come across her paintings.
I would only need a short interview some pictures to understand everything.
Nobody opened. But when I turned the knob I was able to enter without problems. It was not necessary to turn on lights to see that in the background were two wooden doors being the entry to the hall where the clarity was sufficient to see.
The corridor was full of closets where there were nothing else but hundreds of shoes.
I entered the next door on the left, it seemed to be a storage room with a collection of ancient articulated dolls, all of them seemed to belong to the same collection.
While I strolled along I saw one doll that surprised me. It had empty eyes. But paying further attention to it I noticed that there was something inside. By removing the head I discovered a burned card with a deer on it.
There had to be more cards around the house, and I continued looking.
My investigation was fortunate until arriving at the hall.
I thought I was all by myself in the house, when a strange skin touched my leg, and the surprise made me turn.
It was only an inoffensive iguana of some size, which directed to me its terrarium, where for my surprise I found another card between the plants.
This card was not burned, it was in a perfect state and I recognized the same rooster as in my picture.
Later on I already had searched carefully the kitchen, the dining room and the bath.
Then I found myself in front of the photocopier in the second floor.
By the fact that only had two cards in my possession I knew that this it was not the place to keep searching.
The cards only made me aware of how far I really was to my objective.
The burned card told me I was close, and the one with the rooster that was I far away.
It was then clear to me that I had to go directly to the work shop.
I opened the door and I entered when somebody gave a hit on the neck and I fell unconscious.
Later when I opened my eyes again I deduced that something covered my face, since my vision was little.
It felt as I was wearing some kind of mask. My hands were tied. It could not shout, and somebody was looking at me.
- Enkki Virtanen, that’s how you are called, aren`t you.
“What you did you do with my paint if I may ask you? “
I could not see anything. Finally the voice removed the mask and let me answer.
It was a person wearing a deer mask.
Nest to me hundreds of paintings always the same object, deer and roosters with suit. –
“Why do you always paint the same objects? Look I am journalist and I wanted to make an article on your work. The “Joker Cock” has made an impression to me….”
- I was interrupted.
“They are not finished yet and cannot be put on the market! But now I will finish them and my name will be famous and known! My only work of art that I have carried out in my whole life!”
- After a pause she continued.
- “Listen carefully. It will be called:” The rooster’s ashes”. “
“You are crazy let me go right now and nobody will ever know what happened.”
She put my mask on again, a rooster.
That woman wanted to assassinate me to finish her work.
But what stupidity was this. Through the holes in the mask I saw she was igniting some matches and leaving them in different places in the work shop.
She seemed to mean it.
I tried to move and to escape, but she turned to hit me again and I started to feel death getting closer to me.
When waking up again suddenly firemen, ambulance and the police appeared on the scene. Somebody seemed to have called them.
Once the fire was controlled I realized what was left of the women’s supposed “work of art”: rests of my rooster mask and the mask of Harmaa Deer that was lost its brown colour and had vanished to a greyish colour.
Inside the mask was a burned card with a deer dressed like a king. With the signature of the artist.
Various weeks later, I was sitting in front of the television, when the news told a story about a crazy women who jumped into the river and never appeared again.
But the women had left an enormous “happening”, world-wide known as the “rooster’s ashes” of the late artist “Harma Deer”.
