Sourmouth (10 page)

After a brief fit of romance Riley stood up and walked
over to the mirror, “Now that we’ve agreed on that, let’s agree on what to do
next. I mean, this has got to come down to science. So, let’s experiment. What
happens if I touch it? What happens if we splash it with water or burn it with
fire? What happens if we shatter the glass?”

Violet waved her hands in the air to signal her
disagreement, “Let’s wait one minute there Bill Nye. How about we leave
something like that to experts? If we’re going to be getting famous off this
thing, I assume we’ll need to tell somebody. Why not let someone qualified do
the testing? I think that we should find out more about it. Let’s track down
the woman who rented us the place and ask her about it”.

He stood firmly in place as he contemplated.

Part of him wanted to start experimenting on it like a
schoolboy with a magnifying glass on an ant hill, but the other part of him
knew that his wife had a good point, as she often did.

“Let’s do it your way. We’ll head into town, go back
to the diner and see if she’s there. If not we’ll ask around. If we can’t track
her down we call in the news crews and hope that this isn’t another of Capone’s
vaults. Deal?”

He put out his hand in front of him.

As cheesy as she found his arrangement, Violet stood
up and went to shake his hand.

But before she could seal the deal Riley charged
forward and tackled her back onto the bed in a heap of laugher.

#

It was a longer ride back down to the Red Wolf’s
Choice than it was up.

On the way down they had millions of racing thoughts
whizzing through their heads that seemed to make the trip that much longer.
Well, what made it longer were the thoughts and the repeated Tom Waits that
blasted through their speakers. One second they’d be excited about the prospect
of the supernatural and the next they’d be nervous. Neither one of them was
even sure if they wanted the figure in the mirror to be real or not. What would
it mean to the world if it was? What would happen to their society when there
was a reveal of another realm other than their own? There were a lot of
questions in play with answers that they might not have been able to grasp even
if they had them.

Riley put the old beater in park in the front of the
diner. The sky was a shade of light grey with clouds that seemed to drift in
and out of existence. There was the slightest bit of rainfall attacking the
windshield of their car, as if was the first time it was trying to patter down
and didn’t want to put much effort into the assault. Through the windows of the
restaurant the duo could see that the weather had amassed a small platoon
inside. They rationalized that they all had to be visitors to the island as the
born-and-raised folks from Vancouver surely were steadfast enough to survive a
light drizzle.

Upon making their way into the diner they were met
with a small chuckle from the waitress, “I see that my charming
demeanour
yesterday has brought you in for more?”

The smile on Helen’s face was a tad different than the
previous day, almost genuine in nature. Riley supposed that she didn’t get a
whole lot of people who treated her like a person instead of a smiling machine,
and ironically that’s what made her smile the most.

“You say that like the food wasn’t delicious, too,”
Violet jested with a slight touch on the arm that only women could get away
with to one another without accusations of being creepy.

The little white haired woman craned her head to the
side towards the kitchen and back to the couple, “Are you kidding me? I have
seen grease traps with less oil in them than the salad here. But hey, there’s
no accounting for taste. If this pleases your tongue I’m happy to serve it to
you. Any place that you want to sit?”

Riley looked at his wife and cocked an eyebrow up as
if to ask her the same question.

They hadn’t actually planned on eating when they got
to the eatery. In fact they hadn’t bothered to find a way to eat since the
night before when they last were in the diner. Food wasn’t exactly a top
priority given their circumstances.

Violet answered for the both of them, “By the window
would be great. I’d like to see if this pathetic water show actually gets
better”.

Helen grinned again as she grabbed two menus and led
the way over to another small booth almost identical to their last one.

Upon sitting down the couple got the chance to look
around. Everyone seemed to be
travellers
as they had
theorized. The patrons consisted of small families and couples, all carrying
around bags and cameras. But it was quickly evident that the one person they
were looking for didn’t seem to be there.

“Shit,” Riley bluntly put it as he opened the menu to
the first page.

“She’s not here,” Violet stated obviously, double
checking the restaurant to make sure they didn’t miss the old woman behind one
of the plumper customers.

“Double shit,” Riley replied.

“What?” his wife asked.

He turned his menu around and pointed to something low
on the page, “The best sounding thing on here is for kids only. I want the
Little Wolf’s Brekkie”.

Violet pursed her lips and stared at her husband
blankly, “You’re an idiot. You know that, right?”

He tried to stifle a smirk, “I don’t know what you’re
talking about. This thing has a pancake, bacon and it’s covered in tiny
marshmallows with warm peanut butter drizzled on top. This has to be the most
amazing thing I’ve ever heard of”.

She made a face like she was about to throw up, most
of which was amplified to make fun of her so-called man, “That’s disgusting. I
can’t believe someone thought it was a good idea to combine those things”.

Finally he had to start laughing, “I don’t know why
you’re hating on this. This all legitimately sounds amazing to me”.

Violet just shook her head and smiled.

Her father would have screamed at her for marrying a
man who dipped chips into his ice cream let alone actively wanted to consume
whatever it was you’d call that disastrous mash-up.

After a minute of Violet scanning the menu herself she
finally broke the quiet, “How do you want to go about this?”

He looked up from the menu that he had been so
enraptured with, “I figured we could order something off this plastic and paper
thing and eat whatever comes out of the kitchen”.

Her head turned to the side, “Seriously”.

He huffed, “I’m just trying to lighten the mood. I
know what you meant. If we want to find the old coot the waitress is as good a
lead as any”.

Violet looked over to the woman with shifty eyes like
she was a sleuth tracking a mob boss, “You ask her”.

Riley’s face was buried back in the menu, “Why me? She
likes you more than she likes me. You ask her about the old woman”.

She huffed in agitation as she knew he had a point.
Violet watched Helen walk around serving other customers their muck before
heading back over to the couple’s table.

“So what can I get you lovely folks?” Helen asked with
a smile that had diminished since its last appearance after having dealt with
the other customers.

“Can I ask...?” Violet started before her husband
interrupted with his order.

“Would it be possible if I got an adult version of the
Little Wolf’s Brekkie?” he decided with a shitting eating beam across his face.

The waitress released a high pitched laugh that
crinkled up her nose, “You’re as bad as my grandchild. If you really want to
eat that stuff I can tell the cook to make two orders and throw them on the
same plate”.

Riley just nodded like a kid confirming what he wanted
for Christmas with Santa.

Helen turned her bright eyes back to Violet with a
smile that conveyed sympathy for what she had to put up with, “And I hope you’d
like something different?”

Violet pointed at something on the menu, “I’ll take
this thing. And I’d like to ask you a question on the side”.

Helen wrote the order down on her little pad with a
pen that seemed to have a small white ribbon dangling off the end, “Before you
even have to ask I’ll tell you right now that the meat is real but it’s been
sitting frozen in the cook’s fridge for like a year. So when the plate arrives
and you wonder about its origins you already know the answer”.

Violet cringed as she second guessed her order of
Canadian Bangers and Mash, “No. Um, I was going to ask about the woman we spoke
to yesterday”.

Helen’s face lit up as she remembered, “Oh yes, you
rented
Poyam’s
old place. I almost forgot all about
that. How is the house?”

“It can definitely be described as a house. But that’s
about the only good thing we can say about it. And that’s what we were looking
to speak to her about,” Riley said.

“Buyers’ remorse?” the waitress asked.

He made a hand motion that suggested “so-so”.

“If I can answer your questions I will. What do you
want to know?” Helen asked as she placed her pen in the crease of her ear and
crossed her arms as if to brace for the hard hitting inquiry.

“Well,” Violet started, “Who actually is she? And
where can we find her today?”

Riley piped up, “And is she a witch?”

Violet reached over and slapped her significant other
on the arm.

Helen squinted downward at the couple trying to figure
if they were taking her for a ride, “
Poyam
has been a
mainstay on this island for decades. I vaguely recall her being here when I was
a kid. But as far as I know she doesn’t actually live on this island anymore, I
assume she comes over from the city. Why she still comes over, I’ve got no
idea”.

Violet let out an involuntary groan, “I’m guessing
that we’re not going to be finding her by chance then just loitering about down
the street?”

Helen shook her head as she took the pen in her hand
and started twirling it in her fingers, clinking it off her many rings, “Not
unless you feel really lucky, she’s probably off of the island right now. Why
do you ask? Is the place that uninhabitable that you can’t manage more than a
day?”

Riley made another “so-so” hand signal.

“There’s...things about the house that we want to ask
about. Such as its history. Who lived there previously? What happened there?
Things like that,” Violet answered.

The waitress placed her pen back in her ear and
started chewing on the end of her thumbnail as she thought.

“Excuse me? Can I please place an order?” screamed a
man’s soft voice from the back of the diner, his accent clearly placing him
somewhere in the southern states.

Helen turned with a snap and dropped her arms to her
side with her hands in fists, “Can you please chill the fudge out? I’m busy. If
you don’t want to wait for me then you can go and make your own damned food”.

There was a hushed silence in the Red Wolf after the
old woman’s outburst.

Helen turned back to the couple with her now familiar
smile, “Sorry about that”.

Riley’s eyes were popping out of his head, “It’s
totally...fine”.

Helen took the pen once more out of her ear and
started twirling it again, “If you want to know the history of anything on this
island, you should probably make a visit to the Bowen Museum and Archive. There
are a few people that work there that might be able to help you. Though I’ll
warn you, the Squamish people pass down history through their oral traditions.
So everything that isn’t firsthand experience is often...embellished. That
doesn’t mean that it’s not true of course. But from those that I’ve spoken to,
they have a way of dramatizing everything”.

“How do you mean?”

Helen continued, “I once went for dinner with a
Squamish man. He was a real nice young fellow, a fisherman by family trade if I
recall right. At the dinner his father spent half of the evening talking about
how his wife was cooking up a fish that he had caught earlier in the day just
for the occasion. It was a fish that he told took him an hour to reel into the
shore, a fish that must have been five feet long and tried to bite off his hand
when he went to remove the hook from its mouth. He joked that his son should
have brought home a woman with more meat on her bones,
‘cause
he didn’t believe I would be able to eat enough at dinner to make the effort of
catching the fish worthwhile. By the time the wife cooked it up and brought it
out this fish sounded like some mythical giant. It turned out that the damn
fish was less than a foot long cooked. Point is, take things with a bit of
caution when they tell you their tales”.

Violet’s whole face lit up, “This is a great lead.
Even if we need to add a grain of salt or two to whatever we find out. Thanks a
lot. Really”.

Helen did a singular nod as she put the pen back into
her ear for a final time, “Glad to be of service. Good luck on finding out
whatever it is that you’re looking for. Feel free to ask me anything else if
you’ve got a question. I like to think that I know all the ins and outs of this
island, so if you need drugs, prostitutes or weapons just give me a shout”.

Riley practically coughed up a lung with laughter
before lowering both his head and his voice to ask, “Are you being serious?”

In a move that neither of the couple expected Helen
slapped Riley on the back of the head, “No! What’s the matter with you, child?”

And with that slightly shocking bit of casual assault
she walked off to the kitchen to place their order.

Riley turned to his wife with a look of confusion,
“What a weird woman”.

Violet agreed while she tried to suppress her
laughter, “But now we’ve got somewhere to go with this thing”.

“Though now we’ve got to try to convince someone who
runs a museum about some crazy, impossible occurrence in the mirror at an
abandoned house in the woods. I can already predict that this is going to go
great. What are the odds that he’s actually going the listen to us, let alone
believe us?”

Violet shrugged, “What other choice do we have?”

“We could always go to Vancouver and start yelling
Poyam’s
name through the streets. What are the chances that
it’s a common name?” Riley answered.

Violet looked over her menu and second guessed her
meal decision, “Have you thought about what this thing might be? I mean, if
it’s real?”

Riley had started watching across the restaurant to
the man that had yelled for service earlier, it seemed like Helen was
deliberately avoiding his table and he was steaming about it to his equally
red-faced family.

“I don’t have an answer to that question that isn’t
stupid. All I know is that if we’re not careful we’re going to be talked about
through town like the assholes who brag about being abducted by aliens,” he
said as he turned his attention back to his wife.

She leered with all of her teeth pushed to the front
of her mouth, “What if it is aliens? What if this is their way of communicating
with us from across the galaxy?”

Her husband put up his finger to halt her train of
thought as non-serious as it might have been, “But that would mean that these
super intelligent beings can send some sort of trans-dimensional mirror message
but they can’t reach the kinky ceiling sex-mirror in the President’s bedroom.
Or, I guess they’d be aiming for the Prime Minister here. Either way, I don’t
think the aliens would be reaching out to us of all people”.

Violet watched as Helen made her way out of the
kitchen with two plates in hand, heading towards the
Tylers
’
table.

“That was fast,” Violet said as their food was placed
in front of them.

“Well,” the waitress started with her bottom lip
bitten between her teeth, “To be honest I think the cook had half of the stuff
already prepared. So I hope you don’t mind your food microwaved”.

Riley looked down at his mountain of junk; it seemed
to be that he had been given extra pancakes as his plate carried four pieces
instead of the ordered two, it was adorned with thick slices of
peameal
bacon which was in turn all covered with an
unhealthy dose of drizzled peanut butter.

“This looks fantastic,” Riley said without actually
looking pleased, “But we seem to be missing something crucial...”

Helen cocked her head downward, “Oh? Are we now?” and
with that she reached behind her body and pulled out a full bag of miniature
marshmallows from her apron band.

“Oh, heaven. You’re an angel,” he giggled in the
manliest way he could manage.

Violet wasn’t as lucky as her husband.

Her plate looked like it had been run through a
blender. The mash looked like it was just hash browns that had been crushed
with a fork. The bangers were strips of oddly shaped sausages. All of it was
swathed in an ashen brown mystery sauce. She had been warned that she might end
up with questions, but she hadn’t planned on wondering whether or not it was
edible.

“What is this stuff? Violet asked as she prodded her
food with her fork.

The waitress looked down at the goopy puddles that
were forming on the sides of the plate, “That would be the gravy. Trust me when
I say that it used to be worse. The old recipe was some sort of powdered thing
that had to be mixed into water for like twenty minutes before it could be put
on anything”.

Violet
whinged
, “I think
that I like you less now, Helen”.

Without remotely trying to justify the quality of the
food Helen stepped away from the table in a titter.

“I think that we’re forgetting something, too,” Riley
said as he carefully placed marshmallows on his plate like mines.

“And what might that be? Something more important than
even marshmallows?” his wife asked as she contemplated whether she’d actually try
to eat what was in front of her.

“
Sourmouth
,” he said plainly.

“What do you mean?” she questioned as she caught
herself wincing slightly at the word.

With a mouth full of his terrible concoction he
replied, “This started almost instantaneously after we found that damned book”.

Violet’s eyes darted back and forth in her head as she
frantically tried to remember. She was still pretty much in shock and was
having a difficult time trying to recall details.

             
“I suppose...” she said finally, as if that was enough.

             
“Don’t leave me hanging like an idiot here. Do you think it makes sense? Maybe
the book was possessed or something?”

             
Violet raised her eyebrows in perfect unison as she replied “I don’t know!
That’s as good a theory as aliens. I mean, what do I know about this stuff?”

             
Riley sat and contemplated. The fact was that the
Tylers
didn’t know anything about what they were facing, which was a dangerous way of
approaching any situation let alone one like what they were facing. If they
wanted to attempt to keep control and take advantage of their discovery they
would need to go out on a limb. They had to tell the people at the museum
something if they wanted help. It was just a matter of what degree. How much
could they afford to share without possibly tipping off someone that might see
dollar signs just like they did? Who’s to say that the folks at the museum
wouldn’t just run to the news themselves? Could they get help if they tried to
get away with just figuring out some of the history of the house and its family?

             
“Did you want to go directly to the museum? Or did you...want to sightsee or
something?” he asked sheepishly as he tried to hide his frantic thoughts.

             
“Is sightseeing still even an option? Would you even be able to enjoy yourself
without finding out whether we’re sitting on a piece of history?”

             
He paused mid-chew with a mouthful of ‘mallows, “Probably not. You?”

             
Violet just shook her head.

             
As the decision was made in the silence between them they both couldn’t help
but to break out in nervous laughter.

#

Their minds were so frazzled with possibilities it
wasn’t until they were ten minutes on the road did the
Tylers
realize that they didn’t have directions to the museum. They had to flag down
four different cars to try and get their bearings, but four of those cars were
almost as lost as they were. Just before they were ready to loop back to the
information booth by the ferry they managed to wave down an old black couple
that seemed to know their way around the island. The couple drew a map of
directions in the air with their fingers from the window of their car, which
more or less gave the
Tylers
what they needed to find
the museum when they were able to reverse the image in their heads to actually
be usable.