The Mouth of the Dark

by Tim Waggoner

  When Valerie doesn’t respond, he adds, “She’ll stay with us the whole time. We won’t be alone.” This is a lie. The plan is for her to drop Bryan and Jayce off at the mall and pick them up after the movie’s over. But there’s no way Jayce will tell this to his mother. She would freak out at the idea of him running around the mall without adult supervision.

  His mother takes her attention from the TV, reluctantly, he thinks, and looks at him. Her expression is stern, and there’s anger in her gaze. But there’s something else there too, something he can’t name. Something hidden. Secret.

  “What have I told you?”

  He knows she’s not referring to their current conversation. This is a question she’s asked him many times before, and he knows how he’s supposed to answer. He sighs and gives the required response.

  “The world is a dangerous place.”

  Some of the anger drains from her gaze, and her expression softens the tiniest bit.

  “And because it is, we have to be careful. You’re the most precious thing in the world to me. I couldn’t stand it if something bad happened to you.”

  You couldn’t stand it if something good happened to me, either, he thinks.

  Her expression softens even further and she smiles.

  “Now come give your mother a kiss.”

  He’s suddenly struck by how frail she is. Skin and bones mostly, and more of the latter than the former. She’s a living skeleton, and although he’s only thirteen, he realizes he probably outweighs her. If he decided to walk out the door right now, there’s nothing she could do to stop him physically. If she tried to grab hold of his arm, he could easily shrug off her grip. And if she persisted, he could shove her away, even hit her if he wanted. As thin and weak as she is, what could she do about it? Nothing. But despite his realization that the power dynamic between them has shifted in a profound and not altogether understandable way, he walks to her, bends down, and gently kisses her cheek. Her skin is cold and parchment-dry against his lips, and he has to suppress a shudder of revulsion.

  When he draws back, she says, “Go on and play now,” and then she returns her attention to the TV. Colonel Klink yells, “Hogan!”

  He turns away, walks to his room and closes the door. They live in a one-story house, and he puts on his sneakers, grabs some money from the Jaws bank on his dresser, opens his sole window, pushes out the screen, and climbs through. He props the screen against the outside wall, and pulls his window down almost all the way, leaving it cracked just enough so he can get back in again later. His ten-speed leans against the wall close to his room. He leaves it here for occasions like this, when he has to get out of the house or else he’ll go crazy. Valerie can spend hours in front of the TV, barely moving a muscle, and when she settles in for a weekend of marathon TV watching, Jayce knows he can escape and return without her knowing he’s been gone. Much like the POWs in Stalag 13, coming and going as they please in order to carry out their plans to sabotage the Third Reich. He imagines Colonel Klink yelling his name.

  Jayce!

  He walks his bike halfway down the block before hopping onto it and pedaling. He rolls down the sidewalk, the early June day warm, sun shining, wind blowing in his face. He’s free, for a little while, at least, and he loves it.

  * * *

  He rides to Bryan’s house, but by the time he gets there no one answers the door, and he realizes Bryan and his mom have already left. He’s disappointed and angry at his mom. Too angry to just give up and return home. The mall isn’t that far away, and he decides to ride there. Even if he doesn’t get there in time to see the movie, just going to the mall will feel like a triumph.

  He has to ride on the road most of the way because there aren’t any sidewalks here. Cars rush past him, some of the drivers honking their horns at him in irritation. One man yells through his open passenger window. “Get off the road, you dumbass!” Jayce just laughs.

  His mother would be horrified at what he’s doing. The speed limit is only thirty-five mph, but most of the vehicles are traveling faster, and they pass within a few feet of him. All it would take is for one to come a little too close and him to drift a little to the left, and he’d be hit. He wonders what it would feel like. He imagines a jarring thump, a dizzying whirl of images as he’s spun around, the sound of crumpling metal, the impact of hitting asphalt and sliding. And then the pain would register, and depending on how badly he was hurt, he might cry out, might even scream. Would there be blood, too? Probably. Maybe even a lot of it. He wonders how Valerie would react once she found out what had happened to him. The thought is so compelling that for a moment he’s tempted to turn his handlebars to the left and veer into traffic. But he doesn’t, and he eventually arrives at the mall in one piece.

  He doesn’t have a bike chain, so he parks his ten-speed behind some shrubs next to one of the mall entrances. The shrubs aren’t tall enough to hide his bike completely, so there’s still a chance that someone might steal it, but he’ll just have to take that risk.

  Once inside the mall, he hurries to the movie theater and sure enough, he’s fifteen minutes late for Star Wars. He considers going in anyway, but he doesn’t want to miss any of it. He decides to wander around for a while and come back in time for the next showing. Seeing the movie alone won’t be as much fun as seeing it with Bryan, but it’ll still be good.

  For the next half hour he walks through the mall, not going into any of the stores, just looking at the people passing by and thinking to himself that this is what ordinary people do. They go places, see and do things, be around each other. They live life, and he wonders why his mother can’t do the same. Sadness and anger well up inside him, the combination so strong and overwhelming that he feels as if he might start crying. The thought of bursting into tears in the middle of the mall, of everyone looking at him and wondering what’s wrong, of some adult or other coming forward to ask if he needs help, is intolerable.

  He walks – not runs – to the nearest restroom. It’s empty, thank God, but he goes into a stall anyway, in case someone comes in. The toilet lid is up and he can see the bowl is filled with urine and a large mass of sodden toilet paper. It’s gross and he considers flushing it, but with that much toilet paper in it, he’s afraid it will overflow. So he puts the lid down, sits on top of it, and lets the tears come. He cries quietly, not wanting to make any noise, and he grabs handfuls of toilet tissue to wipe the tears and blow his nose. He feels so defeated. He might have physically escaped his house, but he hasn’t escaped his mother. Wherever he goes, he carries her with him, and he’s afraid it will always be so. Now he wishes he had turned his bike into traffic earlier. Death is the only real escape possible to him, unless Valerie finds a way to follow him into the darkness. He wouldn’t put it past her.

  After a time his sorrow fades, as does his anger, leaving him feeling empty and spent. Screw the movie. He’s not in the mood for it now. He might as well go home and sneak back into his room. He hopes Valerie hasn’t noticed his absence. The last thing he wants right now is to have to deal with her yelling at him for daring to leave the safety of their home. He stands and reaches for the stall door, but before he can open it, he hears the outer door’s hinges squeak as someone enters the restroom.

  The door thumps shut, and he listens for footsteps but hears none. Did whoever it was change his mind about coming in? Maybe he decided he didn’t have to go that bad, or maybe he realized he had somewhere he needed to be right away and couldn’t afford to take the time to hit the restroom. Jayce is about to open the stall door when he senses he’s not alone. A tingle on the back of his neck, a tightening of his stomach muscles, a sharpening of all his senses.… All of these things scream at him that someone else is in the restroom. More, that this someone else is now on the other side of the stall door. He still hasn’t heard whoever it is make so much as a whisper of a noise, but when he looks down at the floor he sees a pair of bar
e feet standing there, framed between the floor and the bottom edge of the stall door, and he has to clap his hand over his mouth to keep from crying out.

  The feet are mottled gray, the bottoms calloused and dry, skin cracking around the edges. The toenails are overlong, black and sharp, almost claws. The man wears jeans, the cuffs frayed and ragged. A smell hits Jayce then, so strong it overpowers the stink of urine coming from the toilet bowl. It’s the smell of autumn leaves on a crisp moonlit night. But beneath that is another smell, one of freshly overturned soil and the musty stink of old rot. A sense of wrongness strikes Jayce then, a feeling that he’s in the presence of something that cannot be real but somehow is. His anger, sadness, and frustration over the state of his life are wiped away, obliterated into nothingness by a deep-seated atavistic terror of the thing standing on the other side of the stall door. If he wasn’t trapped in the stall, he would run as fast and as far as he could to escape. But he is trapped, and there’s nowhere to go and nothing he can do except sit there and hope that whatever the thing outside is, it will lose interest in him and go away. He wants that to happen so badly that, even though he was not brought up to believe in a deity, he prays to whatever god or gods might exist for deliverance.

  Jayce hears a soft sound, then. It reminds him of a winter wind blowing against his bedroom window at night. Cold, desolate, and lonely. It takes him a moment to realize that what he’s hearing are words, but they’re being spoken so softly and in such a strange cadence that he cannot decipher their meaning. For all he knows, they might be nonsensical muttering, but he detects a pattern to the sounds, as if the same words are being repeated over and over. It’s a message, he thinks. He doesn’t know why he believes this. He just does.

  The stall door is locked from the inside, but it’s not much of a lock, a small metal bar that slides into place. No protection at all, really. An adult would be able to break it and force the door open with minimal effort. And even if the flimsy lock managed to hold, whoever – whatever – is outside could climb under or over the stall door. The safety the lock offers is only illusory, Jayce realizes, and for the first time in his young life, he understands that flimsy locks, thin doors, and breakable windows are all that stand between people and the awful things of the world, and that these so-called protections are nothing of the sort. They’re all illusions. Lies. Ultimately no more effective at keeping the dark things at bay than the air which surrounds us. He thinks he might go mad then, and maybe he does, a little.

  Then the lock slides back of its own volition with a soft snick that to his ears sounds loud as a shotgun blast. His pulse, already racing, picks up speed, and he wonders if it’s possible for a thirteen-year-old to have a heart attack, and if so, if he’s having one now.

  There’s a creak as the door opens a few inches. He feels an impulse to rush forward and attempt to hold the door shut, but he’s frozen, unable to move or breathe, unable to do anything more than watch as the door continues to open and listen to the trip-hammer beat of his heart pounding in his ears. Then, with a sudden swift motion, the stall door is pushed all the way open, and he sees…he sees.…

  * * *

  He’s standing at his front door, body slick with sweat, breathing hard. He glances to the side, sees his ten-speed lying in the grass, rear tire spinning slowly. He has no memory of how he got here. He assumes he rode home, but he doesn’t know for certain. He remembers being trapped in the bathroom stall, remembers the horrible whispering thing standing on the other side of the door, remembers it opening…and then nothing.

  The front door is unlocked, and he rushes inside, calling for his mother in a voice so high-pitched that it’s almost a shriek. Valerie is still sitting in front of the TV – I Dream of Jeannie is on now – and she rises from her chair as he races into the living room. Before she can ask him what’s wrong, he throws himself against her and wraps his arms around her. She’s so thin and frail that she almost seems to disappear in his arms.

  “You were right,” he sobs. “You were right.”

  He presses his face to her shoulder and weeps, and after a moment she reaches up and pats him gently on the back.

  Chapter Four

  Jayce sat across a table from the black-haired woman, who’d introduced herself as Nicola Castell. The restaurant she’d suggested for lunch wasn’t particularly impressive. It was small, with simple tables and chairs and no real décor to speak of. The color scheme was bland oranges and yellows, the floor tiles were scuffed and cracked, and the ceiling was dotted with water stains. Some kind of traditional Asian music – high-pitched twangy strings that were plucked instead of strummed – played over crackling speakers. The air was overly warm and felt greasy, as if whatever cooking oils were used in the kitchen had completely suffused the place.

  “I know it doesn’t look like much,” Nicola said. “But they serve the best Thai food in town.”

  The restaurant was called About Thaime – a terrible pun as far as Jayce was concerned – and despite its unimpressive appearance, it had a full crowd for lunch. A number of the patrons were Asian, and he took that as a good sign. There were no servers. You ordered your food at the counter, and when it was ready, your name was called and you went to the counter to pick it up. There was a self-serve soda machine for drinks, although most of the diners settled for water. Jayce and Nicola didn’t have long to wait once they’d ordered, and when their names were called, they got their food – pad Thai with chicken for her, Thai curry for him – filled foam cups with water, picked a table, sat down, and started eating. Jayce took a bite of his food and was surprised at how good it was. It had a lot more heat than he usually preferred, but the spiciness only added to the dish’s flavor.

  Nicola smiled. “Told you.”

  They ate in silence for several minutes, and despite the strangeness of the situation – here he was, having lunch with a woman who’d saved him from being killed by a pair of dog-eaters – he was actually enjoying himself.

  After a bit, Nicola said, “Tell me about your daughter.”

  The question took Jayce aback at first. He didn’t know this woman, and although she’d helped him last night, he had no reason to trust her. But she had known about the dog-eaters and more importantly, how to handle them. She knew a side of Oakmont that he’d never suspected existed – a side he wasn’t sure he wanted to know more about. But maybe, just maybe, she might know something that would help lead him to Emory. And so he began talking.

  “She disappeared a couple weeks ago. We don’t know exactly when, since no one reported her missing. She lived alone, and as far as we know, she wasn’t dating anyone.”

  “We?” Nicola asked.

  “Her mother and I. We divorced several years ago, while Emory was still in high school. Emory and Mackenzie talk on the phone several times a week. I try to stay in touch with her too, but we’re not as close as I’d like. We don’t have much in common, and we have a difficult time finding things to talk about.”

  He felt a certain amount of shame admitting this, but there was no sign of judgment on Nicola’s part. Her expression was neutral, and he had the impression that she was simply listening. Encouraged, he went on.

  “I hadn’t heard from Emory for almost a month, and she hadn’t returned any of my calls or responded to the texts I sent. I checked with her mother to see if everything was all right, and Mackenzie told me that she had spoken to Emory recently. I asked her how recently, and she said two weeks, maybe three. It was unlike Emory to remain out of touch that long, but Mackenzie wasn’t concerned. She said it was a natural process, that children become more focused on their own lives as they get older and don’t need as much contact with their parents.”

  “But you didn’t agree with her?”

  “At first I did, or at least I tried to. I’m…more inclined to look at the negative aspects of life than my ex-wife, and because of this, I rely on other people for reality checks. Wh
at Mackenzie said seemed reasonable, but despite that, I decided to go to Emory’s apartment, for no other reason than to assure myself that all was well. I’d helped her move in when she decided to move out of her dorm last year, and even though I hadn’t been there since, I had no trouble finding the place again. She didn’t answer her door when I knocked, so I went to the rental office. According to the apartment manager, not only had he not he seen Emory recently, she owed two months’ rent. I wrote the man a check, and then left. I called Mackenzie to let her know about what I’d learned, but she told me I was being paranoid and Emory would get in touch with us when she was ready. By that point, I feared something bad had happened to Emory, so I went to the police.”

  “And they didn’t take you seriously,” Nicola said.

  Jayce nodded. “Young people take off all the time, they said. They skip out on rent, shack up with some guy, girl, or group somewhere. She’s probably partying too hard and we’ll hear from her when she sobers up enough to remember her name.”

  “So you decided to make some fliers and go looking for her on your own.”

  “That’s right. I had to do something. The first forty-eight hours after someone goes missing are supposed to be the most important, aren’t they? After that, the odds of finding someone –” he didn’t want to say alive, not out loud “– are supposed to go way down. It’s been a lot longer than forty-eight hours since Emory disappeared. I hope the police are right, I really do. I hope that this will turn out to be another case of Dad letting his imagination run away with him, but just in case.…”