Sourmouth (9 page)

Riley walked passed her and over to the bed where he
sat down and stared at her.

She shrugged, “I don’t know. I couldn’t really
tell...it was...dark. While I was waiting for you to come back I thought I
spotted something in the mirror just standing there watching me”.

Riley’s mouth pursed, “But what exactly did you see? A
person?”

Violet shook her head, unmoving from her position
standing in front of the mirror, “No. At least I don’t think so. It looked like
more than a man. It was like something out of a horror movie. It had no face,
like a mannequin. And it was huge and gangly”.

Riley then had the audacity to chuckle, which
infuriated Violet to no end.

It was one thing not to believe her, but it was
another thing entirely to laugh, which was an insult that she couldn’t let pass.

“Is there something funny about this? I know what I
saw!” she yelled, which wasn’t quite the truth as she still wasn’t sure if she
had really seen anything.

Riley put up his palms in mock surrender, “Alright.
Relax. Can you blame me that I’m a bit hesitant to believe that there was a
monster in the mirror?”

“I never said that there was a monster in the mirror.
I saw a thing. I don’t know what it was. You’re supposed to believe me when I
tell you something, you’re my fucking husband!” Violet roared.

His face scrunched up as if he smelled something foul,
“What was that? No, that’s not how things work. I don’t have to automatically
believe whatever you decide to say”.

“And where were you? You went to throw that book away
and then you just disappeared,” she said without replying to his response on
the previous topic.

Riley dramatically laid out on the bed with his arms
outstretched, “I was...looking at the book”.

Violet stormed forward and kicked her husband in his
exposed shin, “The fuck you say?”

He shot up and reached down to rub his pained leg, “I
was curious. I’m sorry. I wanted to take another look at it before I put it
back”.

Violet gave his leg another short kick which got a
sharp yap in response, “That’s not a sufficient answer. You got all worked up
at me about how we shouldn’t have read the book and that we needed to put it
back and never look at it again and yet there you go fucking hiding out and
reading it in some dingy fucking attic while your wife is attacked by shadow
rapists”.

He laughed again, “Shadow rapists?”

“You don’t know. You don’t know what I’ve been
through. You don’t know my story...” she said with a half-hearted laugh.

She barely had enough energy to talk let alone argue
with him. All she wanted to do was sleep.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have walked off. I should have
come back right away and left that damned book to the mold in the attic,” Riley
apologized, “Forgive me?”

Violet huffed and walked forward, her bushed body in
between her husband’s knees as he sat upright on the bed.

He reached out and grabbed her by the wrists with both
of his hands, pulling her in closer so he could rest his head on her stomach,
“I’ll take this as a ‘yes’ then?”

He looked upwards to his wife, who was staring almost
absentmindedly to the pictures of Jesus on the wall.

“Let’s just get some rest,” she said, “Tomorrow we can
try to act like a normal couple, a couple that isn’t stalked by shadow rapists”.

Violet allowed herself to tumble gently downward onto
her husband in a sleepy mess, as the rest of the night rolled into the morning
with little more occurring than the calls of the waking wildlife outside of
their secret mountain hideaway. 

Chapter 5

Riley was the first to wake up at just past seven in
the morning. The sunlight bore through the window and bounced off of the
mirror, resting on his pillow and warming up his face to an almost
uncomfortable degree. Violet was still fast asleep, her mouth agape against the
pillow underneath her head. With a groan that was more fitting of a man his
senior he stood up and made his way to the bathroom.

The hallway outside of the master bedroom was far less
creepy with the sun shining through the windows than it was in the dark the
night before. It still looked like it belonged to a family of deranged
hillbillies, but at least during the day it was past tense, as in it no longer
was inhabited by deranged toothless serial killers. But what wasn’t improved
was the bathroom which was still as grimy as it was the night before. It was a
weird thought, but Riley figured that he could probably piss on the floor and
it would improve the overall hygiene of the room. 

But so as not to get yelled at by his wife for being
an animal he chose to expel himself into the toilet, which looked like it
hadn’t been flushed in decades.

“And here goes...my go...” he sleepily uttered to
himself as he flicked the homemade knob on the toilet.

Nothing.

But then a distant creak followed by a more consistent
squeak and then the success of flushing water. But the triumph of the running
toilet wasn’t followed up upon as the sink didn’t seem to be connected to a
water pipe. Riley made a mental note that he’d need to grab bottled water in
town later on so that they could wash their hands like human beings.

Riley made his way back into the bedroom and readied
himself to get back into bed. That’s when he saw it.

Out of his peripheral vision he saw a figure
surrounded by an almost heavenly light. It was a figure that seemed to be
standing quietly in the mirror just as his wife had described the night before.
He contemplated yelling to wake her up but rationalized that he might startle
the thing away without ever having gotten to look at it properly himself.
Despite the nervousness that was growing inside of him, his curiosity to find
out whatever this thing was took priority.

He turned cautiously to face the mirror, which was
shining brightly underneath the gaze of the sun. The figure stood in the middle
of the frame with the light resting on the surface but doing nothing to help
clear the darkness that seemed to be hiding it. Riley stood in awe of the
thing, impressed by its size and shape. To him it looked like the living
skeleton of a basketball player if they had played sports in the days of
cavemen.

“What are you?” he asked himself in a whisper as he
strained his eyes to try to make out the creature’s features.

What Riley wasn’t expecting was a response.

As if the thing were standing directly behind him
Riley could hear an indistinguishable whisper in his ears like something was
trying to give him an answer. And it might have only been his imagination, but
he could have sworn he also felt a breath on the back of his neck.

“What are you?” he asked again, loud enough that he
felt uneasy drawing that much attention to himself.

And again his head was filled with a hushed voice that
he couldn’t make out.

Riley straightened himself up and walked closer to the
mirror with purpose, squinting his eyes in the sunlight that reflected back
onto his face.

“What are you?” he asked aggressively with more
baritone in his voice than he had planned.

This time however instead of the dim whisper from
before, Riley got a faint growl in return followed by a loud, echoing bark of a
dog.

Riley let out an inadvertent yell in shock, stepping
back from the mirror and almost tripping over his feet in surprise.

“What the hell are you doing?” asked his wife from the
bed, her eyes half shut and her hair draped over her face. Even from behind the
bedhead it was easy to tell that she was annoyed that she had been woken up.

Riley turned to look at her and her cranky morning
face.

To his aggravation when he turned back to the mirror
he was greeted by the reflecting sunlight and nothing more.

“Fuck,” he said simply, which encapsulated the
disappointment he felt in himself by looking away. Part of him expected that
the creature would make itself scarce and yet and he allowed himself to become
distracted anyway.

“I saw the fucking thing,” he put it bluntly, “The
thing that you were talking about last night”.

Violet shot up from the bed like it was on fire, “No
way! You’re messing with me, right? You didn’t actually see it”.

Riley shook his head and slapped his thighs awkwardly,
“No, I saw it. It’s fucking real. There’s something in this mirror. And it
talked to me”.

Violet’s eyes bugged out of her head, “No! What did it
say?”

It was Riley’s turn to pause and contemplate as his
wife had done the night before. What did it say? It didn’t really say anything.

“It, um...it whispered at me. And then barked,” he
confessed without much conviction.

The irony of his wife laughing wasn’t lost on either
of them as she questioned his answer, “Honey. I know I’m not an animal expert,
but I’m pretty sure that the standing two-legged thing in the mirror isn’t
going to be chasing the mailman down the street”.

“I’m serious,” he said, “It made animal sounds at me.
Right in my ear, like I was wearing earphones or something”.

Violet stood back with a dumbfounded grin with a hand
on her forehead, “I can’t believe it. I thought I was going insane last night”.

“Clearly if you’re going insane, so am I,” he stated
as he continued to stare at the mirror as if the thing might step back into
view.

“The question now is what
are we
going to do?” asked Violet.

“What do you mean?” he responded.

Violet sat back down on the edge of the bed and
pointed her index finger towards the mirror, “If there is a thing in
there...and that’s still a big if...then we probably shouldn’t be staying here,
right? I mean, we’ve got some sort of supernatural shit going on, in the middle
of the fucking woods. This is the point in the horror movie that the audience
starts yelling at the screen for the dumb college kids to get out. I don’t know
about you but I’ve already had my dumb college kid days”.

Riley chuckled anxiously, “So you want to run? What
happened to your sense of adventure? This might not be anything to worry about.
For all we know this could be some sort of trick. Like, a hidden camera show or
something. We really don’t know anything about that old woman, what’s her name.
This could all be for fun and games and we’re getting recorded for a television
special. If nothing else, I think we may have gotten the biggest find in
history. I don’t even know what it is...a living mirror...another world? Both
ways we’ve got fame and fortune at our finger tips if we play our cards right”.

“If we play our cards right,” she started as she hung
her head down, “maybe we’ll survive the latter of those two scenarios. We don’t
know if this is something dangerous. I think that trying to exploit it is the
last thing we should be doing”.

Riley bound forward with a bit more pep in his step
then his wife was expecting, sitting on the bed beside her, “What do you want
to do then, babe? We can leave, but where are we going to go? Are we going to
sleep in the woods with the actual bears? Or are we going to stay here with
something that’s very likely harmless and have that adventure that you wanted?”

Violet stopped talking and simply sat there looking at
her partner.

Her husband caught her eyes glancing from the mirror
and to the floor and back again. He could see the temptation in her eyes. Riley
knew she was scared, but figured that she’d thank him in the end for pushing
her.

She finally turned away from the mirror and looked him
in the eyes, “I need your word that everything is going to be fine”.

Riley’s heart stopped for a moment. Of all of the
things she could have said. Was he truly sure that it was safe? Or was his
newly found desire for fame, fortune and his wife’s respect overriding his
ability to evaluate the situation? It had literally been minutes since the
possibility that his life might be turned upside down, he couldn’t possibly
have the time to evaluate the situation fully. But he knew the wrong answer
would cost him the opportunity to explore things further. And he knew that they
could always leave if things got too hairy.

“It’s a mirror,” he said sternly, placing a hand on
her knee, “Everything is going to be alright”.

Violet swallowed the last bit of saliva that she
seemed to have left in her mouth, “Then we’ll stay”.

Riley broke out into a large smile, grabbing his wife
on both sides of the head and pulling her into a kiss.