Sourmouth (19 page)

             
“Animal-man? Like the yeti?” Bill quipped.

             
“Yeah, even for two guys who spend their time trying to make hydras that’s a
little farfetched of a tale,” Stanley added.

             
“No. More like
Sourmouth
,” Riley said hoping for a
more serious reaction.

             
And a serious reaction was what he got from Bill, whose face almost turned pale.

             
“You know what that is, don’t you?” Violet asked when she noticed the physical
response.

             
The man nodded as he took a mouthful from his flask.

             
Stanley looked at his friend as eagerly as the
Tylers
did, clearly not knowing anything about what they were inquiring about.

“It’s big, skinny, long claws, yellow eyes. As far as
we can tell it’s stuck in the mirror. But we don’t want to stick around
ourselves to disprove that theory,” Violet explained.

“We’re leaving. We’re finding out what we can while
we’re here and then getting off the island to somewhere safer,” Riley continued.

Bill raised his hand to silence the couple from
speaking.

             
“I’m sorry that I need to ask this before we even bother continuing but...are
you fucking with me? Is this some sort of joke that someone asked you to do?”
Bill asked with a face firm, years of tired jokes had taken its toll on his
gullibility.

             
“We’re deadly fucking serious,” Riley replied.

             
Bill seemed uncomfortable as he stood, first standing straight and then leaning
forward before slinking back like his spine was in pain. He would take a drink
from his flask, motion his mouth to speak and then decide to take another sip
instead. If it could be believed, Stanley was even more agitated by the
procrastination than the
Tylers
were.

             
“I don’t know anything about your mirror quandary. All I can tell you is the
back story from what I was told when I was a kid. I can share what my father
told me, about how
Sourmouth
came into existence. Of
course it’s all word of mouth; my father was a bigger drunk than I am”.

             
“We’ll take anything at this point,” Violet clarified in case the man thought
about leaving any of the trivial details out.

             
“Are you seriously going to pretend that what they are saying is a real thing?”
Stanley asked concerned. It wasn’t apparent whether he was doubting their
story’s validity or choosing to pretend that it couldn’t be true because he
couldn’t accept it.

             
“What do you already know about him?” Bill questioned, opting not to answer his
friend’s query.

             
“Not much. The woman at the museum told us a bit about the Squamish legend on
how the world was created and the Wolf Star’s involvement. Or lack of
involvement. And how that didn’t sit very well with it,” Riley replied with his
own arms crossed.

             
Bill nodded, apparently happy that he didn’t have to explain every aspect of
the story from start to finish. Or perhaps the nod was in recognition that
someone else on the island at least had something right for a
change.   

“Good ole
Sourmouth
,” Bill
started, “My daddy used to tell me a tale about him when I was a young lad. And
if you already know about the Wolf Star then you know that he was extremely
upset at the injustice that had been done to him. Extremely being an
understatement. But what you don’t know is that he had a change of heart”.

“What brought about this change? From what we were
told, he was pretty damn upset,” Violet asked.

“There was a time that the Wolf Star was consumed by
the idea of vengeance, overtaken by his need to punish his former friends in
the big black sky and all of those who lived below it. But you see, the Wolf
Star was intelligent. He was far too wise to allow himself to be overcome with
jealousy and anger over what had been done in the past, way back in the storm
of creation. You need to realize that for a godly being, the passing of time is
barely acknowledged. It’s a concept that we invented to organize our own lives
and to put our deaths into perspective. We live for whatever many years and
achieve whatever amount of things and to us that’s important. It’s imperative
to have something to put on our epitaph for everyone left behind. But to the
gods our world moves so slowly, so insignificantly. Their achievements aren’t
the same as ours. They look at the world and think about leaving a legacy that
will last forever as extension of their selves. So as you’d expect, the Wolf
Star was hurt and insulted by what had occurred. But eventually, within his
infinite timeline he learned that he didn’t want to be a god of fear and war.
He wanted the respect that he had lost after being ejected from the creation of
the world. So the Wolf Star decided that he would get that respect by being the
formidable protector that his skills always were meant to allow”.

“So you’re telling me that
Sourmouth
was a good...god?” Riley asked unsurely and slightly off-put by his own wording.

Bill made a face like he had eaten something that
disagreed with him and continued on like a question had never been asked.

“There was a man, a Squamish named
Eslahan
.
He was a villager on this island so many, many years ago, a gatherer in a small
tribe. He lived with his wife in a lesser hut on the outskirts of the tribe, a
wife who had a sickness and two young children who he was trying to teach the
ways of their people. One day,
Eslahan
took his
children out for a trip into the woods, to find berries and other fruit to take
home. It was a normal day as far as he could tell. The sun was blazing, the
birds were chirping and the rodents scurrying. He was enjoying spending time
with his little ones as they were enjoying learning from their father. And then
they heard it, off in the distance, the growls”.

“A wolf?” Violet asked.

The older man shook his head, “Wolves.
Eslahan
picked up his children and ran back to their home,
dropping everything they had brought with them. When they arrived they found a
pack of wolves surrounding their hut. It was only seconds that they were there,
but it felt like a lifetime to
Eslahan
, as he got
close enough to spot what was left of his wife’s lifeless body on the ground in
their home, ripped into shreds by the hungry animals. Gripped with madness,
Eslahan
attacked the wolves with his bare hands, intending
to rip their heads from their bodies as they had done to his wife. But he was
quickly taken down by the pack, his legs bitten into from every angle until he
was left helplessly bleeding on the ground. It was only then that he remembered
his children, who were both terrified and crying for their father not twenty
feet from where they were born and raised...and where they would soon die.
Eslahan
tried to call out for help, his village within
shouting distance from his home. But as the scream grew from his throat, the
wolves lashed out violently to halt his noises. In fear of angering them
further
Eslahan
remained quiet, save for his pained
weeping. The boy was taken first. A wolf leaped from his side and gripped his
throat in its jaws. Landing on top of him on the ground, it was only a few
seconds of fear before the wolf snapped his neck like a twig, ending what was
the worst moment in the boy’s young life”.

Bill made a grand gesturing motion with his hands as
if he were breaking a large branch of his own, his flair for the dramatic clear
in the both the story and in style as he sacrificed drink by spilling it over
the ground as he acted out.

“The little girl however remained, quivering in fear
unlike anything anyone had ever seen. She was barely old enough to understand
what was about to happen to her, and yet, that made it so much worse. She cried
out for her daddy, who did his best to hold his head up high enough to look her
in the eyes, his body weak from the loss of blood. It was a small blessing that
at least they were able to share one final moment together before she was
pounced upon, her frail little body crumbling underneath a tide of muscle and
fur”.

Bill made a slow, falling motion of his upright hand,
nearly tipping out his drink entirely.

“Within seconds her screams were silenced as her
throat was ripped out.
Eslahan
wailed out in agony,
crying to the stars for allowing his family to be taken so cruelly. It was that
echoing, earth-shattering cry that was finally noticed by the Wolf Star, who
responded in a rage. The Wolf Star blamed
Eslahan
for
being weak, for not being able to take care of his own family. But most
importantly, he condemned his wolves for behaving without
honour
.
As repentance, the Wolf Star permeated
Eslahan
with
his own life force, which healed and strengthened the man beyond anything that
this Earth had seen before.
Eslahan
become part-man
and part-wolf and more than either could ever be on their own. The newly
reinvigorated beast set forth immediately to destroy the pack that killed his
family, tearing out their throats with his teeth as they did to his kin. As the
story is told,
Eslahan
, whom you know as
Sourmouth
, continues to stalk this island to correct the
injustices that he sees. The problem is that after all of these years living as
an animal, as a man with the powers of a god...
Eslahan
has gone irreversibly insane. It’s said that the beast no longer can tell
friend from foe, right from wrong, and that what he sees as unjust no longer
follows the rules of man”.

             
The silence could virtually be felt in the air. The radio sang and the wind
whistled in the trees outside. But none of the four were saying anything beyond
their heavy breathing.

Riley thought about what he had heard. It certainly
was intricate. Bill was a natural at story telling. But not much was actually
learned that could possibly help their situation.

Violet was lost in thought, trying to decide whether
or not she believed that any of the story was actually true.

             
“Did your father ever tell you anything about whether
Sourmouth
was dangerous? Now I mean,” Riley asked as he finished the last of his beer.

             
“Dangerous how? Dangerous like a bee sting or dangerous like a beheading?”

             
“I want to know if we are in danger. I want to know whether we need to escape
as fast as we can or whether we can stick around investigating this thing”.

             
Bill’s shoulders rose and fell, his mustache twitching with his facial
contortions.

             
“Again...it depends on whether or not you believe in the story an old drunk
tells. I don’t pretend to know that I’m telling you the absolute truth. I’m
just telling you what my father told me, for what good his word was”.

             
“Did he tell you that story with as much blood in it?” Stanley asked.

             
Bill turned to his friend, “He told it with much more”.

             
“Is there anything else you could tell us? Anything at all,” Violet inquired
with her best doe eyes. 

             
“Me? No. I’m fresh out of stories. But I might know someone who can”.

             
“Who’s that?”

             
“He’s a student at the University of B.C studying some sort of biology. He’s
the grandson of an old friend of mine. Goes by the name of
Tsitusem
.
He likes to hang around the cultural
centres
on the
island and in the city. He’s got himself a personal project where he’s
attempting to preserve Squamish history on paper and in internet. Of course he
doesn’t get very far, a lot of the old guys like us don’t like having our
stories being written down; goes against tradition. But
Tsitusem
is trying to drag us into the 21
^st
century whether we like it or not. I’m sure that he’s
heard something or other about what you’re looking into”. 

             
“We’d love to get in touch with him if we can,” said Violet.

             
Bill nodded and reached into his pocket, pulling out his old-timey flip
cellphone.

             
“Shit,” Riley said, realizing that they didn’t have anything to take down the
boy’s number.

             
“Sorry. We don’t have our cellphones here,” Violet explained without skipping a
beat.

             
“Ha. And here we are talking about how we aren’t ready for the new age of
technology,” Stanley joshed as he slapped his friend’s shoulder from behind.
Stanley strolled over to another small desk and pulled up a piece of paper and
a pen, both covered in drips of unidentified animal.

             
Riley took the pieces and held them out eagerly in front of himself, looking
like he was ready to jot down the scoop that he really needed to become a true
reporter at the paper.

             
Bill read out
Tsitusem’s
number which Riley wrote
down and double checked before hiding it away in his back pocket.