Sourmouth (24 page)

She had been doing her best to avoid using the toilet
in the house since they arrived, opting to find ones to use while they were out
and about in town. But her time had run out and nature was calling. Upon second
viewing of the conditions within the bathroom Violet had to curse at her own
bodily functions for having the foolish need to urinate.

Violet sat down onto the cold seat and rested her
hands together in front of her. She couldn’t tell what it was coming from but
she could feel an indistinct chilly breeze drifting up from the floor,
worsening her already creeping tremors.

             
“I hate this house,” she said as she tore a handful of paper from the roll and
cleaned herself off.

             
Violet stood and pulled up her pants in one motion, pivoting on one foot and
casually swinging her weight with the other so that she came front first to the
sink. Instantly, she recoiled backwards with a shattering shriek.

Standing in the bathroom mirror was the reflection of
Sourmouth
basking in the unflatteringly dim lights. He was
watching her intently with his piercing, enraged yellow eyes as bright red
blood dripped from its still ripping mouth. It no longer looked to be grinning.
Now it was growling.  

             
By the time that Riley came bursting into the room Violet was already halfway
collapsing to the floor, her body sliding down the wall as she tried to keep
herself from falling completely. In his rush to arrive it took a few moments
for Riley to take in the scene. He quickly noticed that his wife was in tears,
sobbing into her hands. The next thing that caught his attention was the
movement in his periphery. To his side Riley saw
Sourmouth
moving in to lean against the glass face first with its chin angled and pointed
towards the sky. It seemed entirely calm as it rested its thick skull; its eyes
the only things on it that were moving as it switched its absolute focus from
one Tyler to the other. Its expression was distorted against the mirror, the
skin of its muzzle folding in on itself as it breathed, leaving a long trail of
heat vapor against the cold glass.

             
Riley clenched his fist and contemplated hitting the mirror. The only thing he
wanted in that moment was to make his wife feel safe. But as fast as the urge
arose did he realize that he had no earthly idea as to what might happen if he
broke the glass. And quickly his fist released.

             
“...Riley...” she said from the floor where she sat, her knees pressed against
her chest.

             
He gingerly turned away from the mirror and bent down to console his wife.

             
Immediately she wrapped her arms around his neck and almost pulled him down to
the floor alongside her, with her original plan being that he might be able to
lift her to her feet. It took a few tries for her husband to get the leverage
to pull her into an almost self-supporting standing position, but eventually
she found her footing to stand. It took all of the strength she could muster to
glance over at the mirror to see
Sourmouth
. As if it
was complacent in its taunting of her, its face was still held up by the glass,
unmoving as it stood inspecting them with almost childlike wonder. She didn’t
know where the desire came from but its execution was almost instantaneous.
Violet leaned forward in her husband’s arms and hocked a ball of spit at the
mirror, landing on what would be
Sourmouth’s
temple.

             
The animal grunted. Its throat convulsing with force as the sound echoed
throughout the bathroom. It pulled back its head, rubbing its face against the
surface as it backed up, smearing the glass in tracks of slobber and plasma
from its cavernous mouth. As it retreated
Sourmouth
emitted haunting snapping noises as its mouth shuttered with incredible force,
its
long lashing tongue licking the air as the creature
faded from view.

             
The
Tylers
held onto each other in near complete
silence save for their
laboured
breathing. Neither
dared to do anything that might bring the creature back.

             
Finally after a minute of long agonizing inaction, Riley ignored his wife’s
attempts at ceasing his movement to hesitantly reach outwards as he noticed
something that he needed to investigate. With great caution he gently touched
his fingertips to the smudges of grime that were streaked against the surface
of the mirror. Turning his hand around revealed that his fingers were now
specked with a thick red substance...
Sourmouth’s
blood had somehow seeped through. 

Chapter 13

It was yet another restless night filled with lack of
sleep as both of the
Tylers
spent another evening in
their cramped rental car thinking about what had happened in the evening.
Neither even tried to sleep other than closing their eyes to stop the strained
burning that they were feeling from being awake for so long. Immediately after
Sourmouth
had disappeared the
Tylers
escaped from their house and took shelter in the vehicle, trying not to pay
attention to any of the reflective surfaces should it be able to follow them
there. And while they were physically more comfortable than the night before
having already experienced what it was like to try and sleep in the car,
mentally they knew that they weren’t going to get a lick of relaxation. Both of
their minds were frantic with possibilities as to what was happening to them.

             
“Do you think the house is haunted?” Violet asked.

Riley looked over his shoulder to the backseat of his
car, noticing that his wife’s expression was void of anything remotely
readable.

             
“Haunted?”

             
“Yeah, haunted”.

             
“As in, like, ghosts?” he asked for clarification.

             
“Yes. No. Maybe. We have no idea what
Sourmouth
actually is. How can it do what it does?”

             
Finally Violet turned her gaze to her husband only briefly before looking away
again.

             
“Your explanation is that it’s a ghost?”

             
“That was one of my trains of thought”.

             
“And if I were to want to get on another railroad?”

             
“It’s some sort of punishment,” she answered as she diverted her mental trip.

             
“
Sourmouth
is punishment? To us? Punishment for what?”

             
“For everything we’ve ever done wrong in our lives. For the fact that people
nowadays are horrible and don’t care about anyone but ourselves. And even when
we are only focused on our insignificant little lives all we do is fight. You
struggle to care about us, and I nearly cheated on you. Maybe we deserve this.
Its divine intervention for throwing our lives away and we just don’t like how
it’s playing out”.

             
Riley snickered to himself, throwing his head back against the headrest as his
wife continued. 

             
“I don’t know what the animal is. It could be anything. Its very existence
suggests that there’s a lot more to this world than we thought possible, so
even limiting its possibilities to things that we’ve just happened to imagine
is pretty short-sighted. I guess it could be some sort of ghost. Or
poltergeist. Or spirit. Or god. There’s no right or wrong answer here. Not yet
anyway. So it would be nice if you didn’t respond like you’re planning on
having me put into an asylum”.

             
Violet relaxed her head against the window as she stared off into the distance
at the lake. It was odd to her how serene everything could be out there in the
early morning while her world felt so upside down. The dawn rays bounced off
the shimmering water and illuminated the trees, casting long shadows across the
grass as animals scattered about in their daybreak routines. And as soon as she
felt almost comfortable while watching the nature scene unfold she would get a
flash of
Sourmouth
in her head and jolt back to her
senses.

             
Riley sat in the front end passenger seat fiddling with the key to the house
in-between his fingers. He snuck a peek at the rear view mirror so he could
look at his wife without giving her the chance to put on a brave front. By the
looks of her slumped over in the backseat with her knees tucked into her chest
she seemed halfway to her breaking point. Right then and there he contemplated
chucking the key out the window and driving to the docks. Part of him just
wanted to get away from all of it and not put another thought to the
supernatural. As far as he was concerned none of it ever happened. But every
time he thought of running away he felt a twinge in the pit of his stomach. If
Riley was being honest with himself, he didn’t actually want to leave. In all
actuality, he was still fine with it all as scared as he was. It was his wife
who was the mess and it was his love for her that made him want to go. And at
that realization he felt both guilty for wanting to stay and resentful for
feeling like he needed to leave. 

             
“What do you want to do? If you want to leave we still can. Just because we
reached out to
Tsitusem
doesn’t mean we need to go
through with it. We can still leave this place and never look back. Or, did you
want to go and meet the guy and see this through? I’m with you either way, I
just need to know once and for all” he asked plainly as he watched her in the
mirror. As far as he knew he meant it. Even if he didn’t want to leave he would
for her.

             
Violet contemplated for a moment as she watched the water gently lap against
the shore.

             
Perhaps it was years of experience with her husband that put them on the same
wavelength or perhaps it was the fact that she didn’t want to feel like a
failure for the rest of her life if she didn’t go through with it all. But
regardless of the reason, she was having trouble with even picturing herself
anywhere but on Bowen Island.

             
“Drive. We have a meeting to attend,” she choked out as she slumped lower in
her seat to hide from her husband’s judging eyes.

             
Riley nodded as put the car into gear.

#

             
The
Tylers
arrived at the Artisan Pie Company at
least half an hour before they were scheduled to meet their new connection. The
streets were surprisingly bare for mid-day along the main street, which
surprised them given that all of the hotels were supposedly filled up. As they
waited they decided to pass the time in the car by making up back-stories for
the passersby. It was a hobby that they had developed back when they were just
dating. And frankly they could use the distraction.

“The guy in the black baseball cap and his daughter,”
Riley pinpointed like a sergeant calling for the sniper to take the shot.

Violet cast her eyes over the portly man, thick
bearded and clad in red flannel walking with his young blonde-haired daughter
to the coffee shop on the corner.

             
“What makes you think that’s his daughter? What if that man is the fabled
Lumberjack Psychopath? An unruly Canadian lost for decades in the wilderness.
The only way that he’s kept himself sane, at least in his mind, is by
kidnapping little girls to make stew out of,” Violet replied as a part of her
turn.

             
“You’ve got many problems that need years of therapy”.

             
She laughed, “You love me for my problems”.

             
Riley just smiled as he tried to estimate the time in his head.

             
“If he isn’t in the restaurant already he will be soon. We should probably go
inside and check it out,” he said as he opened his side door.

             
Violet hesitated for a moment.

             
Riley wasn’t sure whether she was still wanting to play the game or simply
didn’t want to make the next move into the restaurant. But just before he was
able to speak up she stepped out of the car with determination.

             
To anyone watching from afar, Violet seemed overly enthusiastic about the Pie
Company’s food. She walked in with her head up high with long strides that
conveyed a sense of feigned confidence.

             
Her husband could tell that she was poorly over-compensating for how
uncomfortable she was with everything still. Oddly it was that which impressed
him the most. He was impressed that she was so upset by what had happened the
night before and yet she was trying to continue on in spite of it.

             
The Artisan Pie Company was a unique mix of both old and new world décor that
seemed like a formally hip bar masking itself as a higher-end restaurant. The
walls were plastered with liquored wood that was scuffed and faded. The windows
were nicely stained glass which were then covered in actual stains that seemed
to prevent sunlight from spilling in. The lamps that hung from the ceiling
appeared to be made of brass and run on natural gases. In the center of the
restaurant was a giant statue of a horse that seemed to be from a carnival
carousel and through it a large metal rod that looked to be acting like a
support beam for the roof. All of the tables and chairs were bright white and
looked to have been stolen from a golf course’s bar patio, which completely
clashed with the rest of the place’s style. There were a few large dark wooden
tables about for eating, a jukebox in the corner by the sign for the bathrooms
and a pool table that looked old enough to have existed before the bar ever
did.