Sourmouth

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Sourmouth Page 6

by Cyle James


  “Or girl,” he begrudgingly conceded.

  “Hey, what’s that?” Violet asked as she stopped him on another page.

  It was a separated sheet situated in the crease of the middle of the book and looked to have been torn out at some point and reinserted. It showed the same shadowy figure as the previous pages and on the wall in the attic room, but this time it was more roughly etched with rapid scratching motions instead of smoother drawings as before. It had the same red lettering as the other pages, but had a more recent addition of blue ink overtop from what looked like it came from an old fountain pen. Riley found himself spellbound as he gripped the bizarre book between his fingers as he took a deep breath before uttering the word written, “Sourmouth...”

  The effect was almost instantaneous. They both had suddenly unexplainable pits in their stomachs that seemed to turn and twist fiercely. The hair was raised on their arms and on the nape of their necks as if it were trying to escape on its own accord. To make the swift sickness even worse, the couple were immediately overcome with a chill down to their very bones as if they had been stuck outside in the woods overnight without so much as their skin to keep them warm.

  “Fucking hell...” Violet mumbled to herself as she ran her hands down her goose-bump-covered arms in effort to regain the feeling in her nerves.

  Riley slammed the book shut and tossed it to the ground. It unexpectedly felt incredibly heavy, as if it had been weighted by a bag of stones since he had first picked it up. He stared down at the journal as if it had personally given him offence. Rationally, it wasn’t possible that the thing could cause anything to happen beyond a paper cut. And yet he couldn’t explain why the book made him angry. And in turn not being able to explain it made him even angrier.

  “I’m going to throw this fucking thing back into the attic where it belongs and we’re not going to think about it anymore. I don’t want you going up there. And I don’t want you exploring the rest of the house. We’re going to go to bed and we’re going to wake up and have a nice fucking vacation,” he commanded in a tone that Violet wasn’t sure she had ever heard him use.

  With his elbows rested on his knees and his head held down towards the book, Riley cut her a stern steely eyed glance that seemed to be trying to warn her in silence. Maybe it was that she was still trying to regain her composure from feeling nauseous, but for the first time in their relationship she was slightly scared of her husband.

  “Yeah...sorry,” she answered, not quite sure what she was apologizing for but felt the need to say it just the same. She felt a bit guilty for having goaded him so strongly into opening the book after he started having reservations. But aside from getting the creeps nothing actually was wrong. As far as she figured her husband was upset at her for no real reason.

  “Let’s get some sleep,” she agreed, knowing full well she’d probably be wide awake into the morning.

  Riley picked up the book with both hands as if to protect it from someone trying to take it from him and burst to his feet.

  Violet watched as he left the room silently to go and return it to its original resting place. It was only when she was alone did she realize how unsafe she suddenly felt. She knew that it was an irrational feeling, that it was just the combination of the nightmare and the frightening house that was playing havoc on her tired mind. But no matter how much she willed it away she couldn’t shake the sense of unease that had overcome her.

  Seconds ticked by and then minutes as she waited for her husband to return. She couldn’t hear him from within the master bedroom. Violet couldn’t tell if he was in the other room, if he was in the attic or even in the bathroom. All she knew was that she was alone and increasingly scared.

  “Riley!” she called out in a surprisingly shaky voice that startled her.

  Her call got no response.

  “Riley!” she repeated with a bit more power behind her tone.

  But still she got no reply.

  Violet started pacing the room. She was suddenly aware of every action she made. She noticed that her breath was shallow and quickly paced and that her feet felt numb as they brushed against the cold wood floor. She had unknowingly started to hug herself with her hands to try to keep herself calm. She couldn’t stop herself from thinking about it all, like when you realize that you can’t get your tongue to sit right in your mouth or that you need to force yourself to blink. While the hyper awareness was annoying to think about, it was all a nice diversion from feeling so scared.

  And that’s when she saw it. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a dark figure hidden in shadow. Violet was instantly gripped with terror and found herself unable to move. Her feet felt like they were frozen still on blocks of ice and that she’d need to rip herself free if she were to try to run. She desperately wanted to call out to her husband, in part to ensure that it wasn’t him that she was seeing and in part to have someone to save her if it wasn’t.

  With a mouth as arid as the world’s driest desert she tried to swallow and breathe and for the longest moment she wasn’t sure she knew how. Violet found that the very air seemed to get stuck in her throat like needles and choke her. If the mystery figure didn’t kill her, the fear almost certainly would.

  Violet tensed up and tried to force herself to turn towards the shadow that stalked from behind her. If the thing in the unknown hadn’t already attacked then certainly it couldn’t have been dangerous. So she thought. It must be fine to turn and face whatever it was that was watching her so intently.

  With more courage than she ever thought she would have Violet found the she was slowly swiveling on the balls of her feet. Without thinking about it she was in a position similar to that of someone readying to run at top speed despite the fact that her feet would probably fail her before she left the starting line.

  When her eyes began to focus she was both simultaneously relieved and confused. It wasn’t some dark figure hiding in the corner of the room; it was a dark figure facing back at her from within the full length mirror situated on the wall opposite the bed.

  The entity in the mirror was tall, taller than the mirror could adequately hold within its boundaries. Its feet from the knees down were obscured and lost to the bottom of the frame, its head rising above Violet’s and near the top of the almost six foot tall mirror. It was lanky in shape, with a body wafer-thin and dangling arms that seemed to hang on the side of its body like foreign life forms unaware of how they should be attached to the torso. Its hands were the size of baseball gloves with long, sharp fingers that waved in unison with one another at its side.

  The mirror copied the room behind Violet as it should have; however her own reflection was concealed by that of the figure. The perfect mimicry of the mirror ruined by the concealing figure, which was unbelievably out-of-focus like the reflection of the sky on an ocean in a storm. Its body was cast in a faint shimmering shadow that didn’t originate from her side of the room, which made it impossible to make out details of the thing. She could just barely make out its basic form in the darkness that it hid in.

  From what Violet could manage to see she thought the sight was too ridiculous to be real in its own right. From what she could gather the thing looked as if it was almost featureless. It stood naked without hair or accessories on its body. As it swayed on its feet to and fro Violet could have sworn that its face was nothing but blank skin. It didn’t have a visible nose or a mouth or even eyes. It had nothing on its face except for the shapes of what should have been there underneath the surface like protruding bone underside of skin.

  A gasp of air escaped Violet’s mouth that she hadn’t been aware she was trapping. As foolish as it was, she carefully scanned the room with her strained and tired eyes to make sure she was actually alone. To her simultaneous comfort and dismay she was indeed on her lonesome, which meant that whatever she was looking at truly was only standing in the mirror.

  With the steps of someone who was trying to remember how to walk she moved forward towards the figure
, who continued to stand patiently within the confines of his glass prison.

  As Violet got closer it began to leisurely react. Its first movement was to cock its head to the side like a bewildered dog. It seemed to be watching her with the eyes that it didn’t seem to have. It was studying her movements and trying to understand her in the same way she wanted to know everything about it. Standing a foot from the mirror Violet stopped, wary of getting any closer in case it was capable of lashing out.

  Against her better judgement she slowly began to reach outward to touch it.

  She jumped backward and yelped as it reached back towards her.

  Her instincts told her to run, to move as fast as her wobbling legs could carry her to safety. But then her head won out as she realized that the thing wasn’t trying to grab her...it was mimicking her movements. Like a true reflection the figure began to copy every action that she took. From the subtle twitches in her shaking hands to the exaggerated twists that her body took as she prepared to take flight.

  “This isn’t fucking real,” she whispered to herself as she tried to steady her nerves.

  With a deep breath and a reinvigorated sense of bravery she stepped forward again. This time she moved with purpose and with a shaky confidence. Once more she put out her hand, inching her index finger towards the mirror. She wanted to touch it. She wanted to validate everything she knew about how the world worked and that the surface of the mirror was actually where it was supposed to be. She wanted to know for sure that whatever it was that she was seeing was real and not a figment of an exhausted imagination. Every inch that she gained so did the creature, moving as cautiously as she was until they were both almost touching one another. Violet clenched her entire body, bracing herself for whatever might come as she attempted to make contact.

  “What are you doing?” a deep voice asked abruptly.

  Violet nearly fell over as she jolted backwards on impulse as if it was the figure in the mirror that spoke to her. She turned to the doorway where Riley stood with his arms crossed, looking grave and a very much irked.

  “Um,” she started, her brain failing to find the words to explain what was going on.

  She turned back towards the mirror and was shocked to find nothing but her own reflection. The faceless thing was gone and all that was left was her utterly shocked surprise and the empty room behind her.

  “There...there was something in there,” she said with as much conviction as someone claiming to have seen Santa Claus after one too many glasses of spiked eggnog.

  “What was in where? Something was in the mirror?” Riley asked incredulously as he re-entered the room.

  He walked up to the mirror and gave it a quick glance before diverting his gaze to his wife and then back to the mirror. Whatever his wife had seen he clearly wasn’t seeing the same.

  “You mean there was something on the mirror? Or behind? Like a bug?” he asked, as he curiously started running his fingers over the frame.

  Violet barely had time to try to warn him before he lifted it from the wall, hanging it perilously on the nail above it.

  “There’s nothing here, Violet,” he said plainly, holding out the mirror from the wall with his hand as if he was proving something.

  Violet carefully stepped forward, her caution looking highly irrational to her husband. As he had said there wasn’t anything hiding behind the mirror. There was no trapdoor or hidden monster. It was just a dirty wall with really ugly wallpaper.

  Riley dropped the mirror back to its resting place with a dull thud that startled his wife’s already shot nerves. Part of her was unsure if what she had seen was actually there at all or if it had all just been her head making her see things.

  Violet looked at her husband unsurely. It wasn’t often that she felt so self-conscious, especially with her husband. She didn’t know what to say next to get him to stop looking at her like she was losing it.

  “What was it that you think that you saw?” he asked with his eyes narrow like that of a gumshoe from a black and white noir film.

  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 fi
tting 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.

 

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