Sourmouth (7 page)

He slowly inched his way out of bed so not to wake his
wife, figuring it would be a while before he could clear his mind and calm his
nerves enough to get some proper shut eye. It was miraculous that either of
them was able to sleep at all. But after the day that they had, death would
have come had they not gotten some rest sooner rather than later. Riley
examined through one of his bags on the floor by the doorway and looked at his
stowaway watch; it read 3:44 in the morning.

With the quietest grunt he could manage he lifted
himself up to his feet and out of the room and into the hallway. Without the light
radiating from the living room lamps on the ground floor, the second floor
hallway was nothing more than a wall of darkness. The faint light that was
seeping
in from the window was just enough to cast a beam
into the hallway, resting in front of the rocking chair before the stairs. The
button eyes on the doll seemed to glow in the dark even though they still
basked in the shadows. Riley couldn’t quite put a finger on why but the toy
made him even more uncomfortable than he was before. Perhaps before he woke he
was dreaming about being mauled by killer dolls.

Riley walked to the end of the hall and picked up the
toy with a tight grip.

“You are a creepy little thing, aren’t you?”

He contemplated putting it back into its seat almost
apologetically for having disturbed its slumber, but after a moment he thought
better of it. He wanted it out of his sight and out of mind so he didn’t have
to keep thinking about it all week every time he got up to use the toilet.
Riley turned around and walked over to the room that was arguably even creepier
with the paintings on the walls with the intent of hiding the thing from the
rest of the world and most importantly himself.

When the door was opened he was surprised to find that
the light was still on. He could have sworn that they had turned off the lamp
before they went to bed.

“Did you put this on?” he asked the doll with a raised
eyebrow.

It didn’t respond.

“Fine, keep your secrets,” he said as he tossed the
toy against the wall.

As if in response a loud hiss of wind came down from
above.

Slightly taken aback Riley looked up at the entryway
to the attic and the gaps that seeped air. He had the sinking feeling in the
pit of his stomach that he wasn’t alone in that cramped room. He didn’t
consider himself a paranoid man, but for some reason he felt that he wasn’t
safe. It took a few seconds of staid deliberation before Riley decided to take
a look in the attic. As uncomfortable as he might have currently felt, he
didn’t suddenly believe in the monsters of the dark.

He reached upwards and gently tugged the cord that
hung from the ceiling downward, which opened the attic door with a whimper and
a falling cloud of dust. There didn’t seem to be any way to climb up such as a
hanging ladder. Nor was there any sort of light source to break into the dark,
as the floor lamp wasn’t nearly strong enough to reach the attic. Riley cursed
himself for not bringing along his cell phone, which could have provided enough
brightness to let him explore without fear of slamming his skull into a support
beam. But then just as he was having second thoughts he remembered the
collection of junk that rested underneath the bed. He bent down and grabbed one
of the candles and box of matches. With a few failed strikes he had himself a
colonial era flashlight.

With his free hand Riley grabbed onto the ledge above
and stepped onto the bed, using it like a foot ladder. He poked his head into
the attic and waved the candle in front him, but even with the flickering flame
the attic was too dark to see very far. He could only make out approximately
two feet in front of him, which only revealed a few crumbling cardboard boxes
and pink insulation resting on the flooring.

“What the hell am I doing?” he asked himself as he
rested the candle on the ground surface where it wouldn’t set any of those
fluffy pads around him alight.

With more struggle than he had expected Riley heaved
his out of shape body up and into the attic proper, resting his tired behind on
the ledge with his feet dangling into the room below.

“Reminder for later, I need to eat more vegetables and
less ice cream,” he muttered to himself as he lifted the candle back into the
air to find his way.

It was one carefully laid step after another as he
explored the cavernous room, cautious not to fall through a rotten floorboard
or step on any rusty nails. With every inch further from the safety of the
light below, Riley realized that he wasn’t sure if he was disappointed or
pleased that he wasn’t discovering anything in his foray into oblivion. While
he was curious as to what else that the strange house might hold, his nerves
weren’t exactly ready to find anything truly horrific. The creepy doll was
enough to alarm him, his heart probably wouldn’t survive finding a human
skeleton.

His luck soon changed when he spotted something on the
edge of his peripheral vision, something small and dark low to the ground
resting against a structural partition mostly hidden from view. With a deep breath
Riley bent down and inspected it closer. The object was rectangular, about the
size of a VHS tape, covered in what appeared to be a black garbage bag and
wrapped in razor wire.

With wary fingers Riley grabbed onto a part of the
wire that wouldn’t splice him open and picked up the object that seemed to
weigh less than its appearance suggested. A small shake revealed nothing in
terms of its contents. Turning it at all angles in the light helped just as
much. It was then that he heard a shuffling sound from somewhere behind him,
quiet and low as if not to gain his attention. Riley’s mind raced as to
possibilities. It most certainly was some sort of vermin that had woken up by
his presence, or even a sleeping bat.

Surely it couldn’t be anything more dangerous. And yet
his pulse quickened and his breath became shallow as he debated turning around
into the dark. What if it wasn’t a small, furry critter? What if it was
something far more sinister?

“What on Earth are you doing up here?” asked the voice
raspy and weak, much to the instant relief of Riley.

He turned around and spotted the head of Violet barely
sticking up from the hole to the tiny room below, her face contorted in the way
that only the sleep deprived are able to manage.

“Um. I’m not really sure. Exploring I guess” he said
as he stood up with the object still in hand and began his trek back to the
world of the normal people who don’t hang around in peculiar attics.

“I woke up and you weren’t there. I figured you were
in the bathroom, but after a while of you not coming back I got worried,”
Violet said as he stood above her trying to figure out a safe way to get down.

“What would you be worried about?” he asked, handing
her the mystery item without any sort of explanation or warning.

Riley blew out the candle and proceeded to hop back
down into the room, using the cot as a safety net.

“I don’t know. I...I was having a bad dream. And I
guess it got to me a bit,” she said, flipping over the package to try to figure
out what she was just handed.

“I found that up there. Didn’t get a good look if
there was anything else...thought I heard a bat. But I figure it will be easier
to look around there again during the day with the sun shining through the
cracks” he explained as he tried to pry it back from her hands.

Violet playfully yanked it away, exiting the room and
heading back to the master bedroom, “I’m assuming that we’re opening it? It
feels like Christmas with the Manson family”.

“Of course we’re opening it,” he said as he trailed
along, turning on the lamp by the door, “Where would my sense of adventure be
if we didn’t?”

Violet chuckled as she plopped down on the bed, trying
to find a way to get the wire off without cutting herself, “Sense of adventure,
huh? Where has that been for the past couple years?”

Riley chose to ignore the slight, as it likely wasn’t
meant to really offend despite its stinging effect. Instead he chose to focus
on the package and the secret that it held inside.

The wire was tied tightly on one side, untouched for
so long the metal almost seemed to have been fused together. It took a few
minutes of prying and a layer or two of epidermis from his thumbs before it
came unconnected. Slowly he
unravelled
the line until
the wire fell loosely to the floor, leaving nothing but the object in a slack
plastic bag.

Riley paused with a sly grin to look at his wife, who
had an expression of delight that he hadn’t seen on her face in a long while.
Her eyes tired from the lack of sleep and yet wide eyed in anticipation. He was
amused that all it took to make her that happy was some junk that he found in a
stranger’s attic. He was even more amused that he almost had forgotten how nice
it felt to see her like that.

With a quick pull the garbage bag tore with a squeak,
revealing a small notebook no bigger than the average wallet. It was remarkable
how it looked a lot bigger when it was padded by the puffed up bag. The book
was auburn and grey in
colour
, and seemed to be made
out of some unknown texture that prompted a comparison of broken rock and
petrified bark. The book was held closed by a strayed twine string wrapped
around it and tied tightly on the back.

“That’s it? All this fanfare for a journal?” Violet
asked, the expression of joy stricken from her face and replaced with one that
was all too familiar to her husband.

He shrugged, “What did you expect? A bar of gold? It
probably belongs to the kid that lived here. Maybe as the baby got older it got
all teenager-like and full of angst, the kid wrote a bunch of its melodramatic
demon poetry and hid it where the parental figure couldn’t find it. Hell, maybe
the kid is the one who lived in that room. The kid grew up and got into a
goth
phase, drawing figures on the wall and masturbating to
nu-metal”.

Violet huffed, “Your insane rationale isn’t wanted at
this particular juncture, Riley”.

He took that as her not-so-subtle hint that he should
stop talking and proceed with opening up the book. Yet he found himself
hesitating. Suddenly he felt that pull on his stomach as if it was being jerked
from all sides. It was the same feeling he got before he found himself in the
attic. Riley suddenly felt like they were in danger.

“Maybe this isn’t a good idea,” he said with a
thousand yard stare, his fingers gripped tightly on the book to ensure it
suddenly didn’t fall open.

“What are you talking about? What happened to Mr.
Adventure? It’s a book. Let’s just open the damn thing and be done with the
mystery so we can go back to sleep,” Violet said with annoyance while looking
at her husband as if he just started speaking in tongues.

“I know. I know. It’s a bit of a quick 180. But I’m
just getting this feeling that we shouldn’t be doing this. Let’s just toss it
back up there and forget about it?” he said, posing the last bit as a question
instead of the statement it should have been.

Violet leaned forward and placed her hand gently on
his leg, “Hun. You’re holding a book. It’s not even a particularly well-made
book. Nobody is going to pop out of the closet room and kill us to get it back.
You’re freaking out over nothing”.

He smiled uncomfortably, “I never said anything about
anyone killing us. It seems like you’ve got a few ideas running around in your
head, too”.

It was Violet’s turn to smile uncomfortably as she
peered down to the journal, “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a bit nervous
right now. But I also just had a pretty freaky nightmare that I woke from, so
you’ll have to excuse me if the haunted looking house and the strange journal
have me a little jumpy. I do know that none of that actually matters. The house
isn’t haunted and the journal is going to be nothing but ‘dear diary’ entries.
But it is the possibilities that have my stomach all aflutter”.

Riley didn’t say it aloud, but as he grasped the book
and braced himself to open it all he could think about was the fact that he was
willing to do almost anything to make Violet flutter like she once did for him.

Without another word and a pathetic notion of wanting
to appease his spouse he cracked it open, turning the stiff cover to the first
page. The paper bound to the book seemed to be old and almost brittle, as if it
had been wet and dried out repeatedly. It was tan in
colour
with streaks of light black ink running down the pages in multiple places.

Neither of them could quite make out what was in front
of them. It mostly looked like some sort of black blob, roughly humanoid in
shape similar to what might be found on a Rorschach test. It had been carefully
painted in a vaguely
watercolour
style but without
any
colour
; it was devoid of any distinguishable
features amongst the mass of ink. Across it in thinly painted red lines was a
seemingly random assortment of shapes and letters, none of which looked
remotely like English. Turning to the second page was more of the same, words
in the mystery language with what appeared to be a close-up of a monster-like
face which seemed to be growling out from its paper prison.