Sourmouth

by Cyle James

  “Shit,” Riley said, realizing that they didn’t have anything to take down the boy’s number.

  “Sorry. We don’t have our cellphones here,” Violet explained without skipping a beat.

  “Ha. And here we are talking about how we aren’t ready for the new age of technology,” Stanley joshed as he slapped his friend’s shoulder from behind. Stanley strolled over to another small desk and pulled up a piece of paper and a pen, both covered in drips of unidentified animal.

  Riley took the pieces and held them out eagerly in front of himself, looking like he was ready to jot down the scoop that he really needed to become a true reporter at the paper.

  Bill read out Tsitusem’s number which Riley wrote down and double checked before hiding it away in his back pocket.

  “One last question,” Violet said.

  “Shoot”.

  “What’s your recommendation? Should we stay or go?” Violet posed plainly as she stood up behind her husband, almost symbolically staring at the exit.

  Bill looked at the bottom of his now empty flask, his face clearly wondering where the rest of his drink went.

  “My instinct says that I should tell you to run. But as an old man spending his days playing with dead animals and sitting in unfortunate little bars with other lowlifes, my heart says that you should stay. My heart says that you should chase that thing down to the ends of the Earth until you feel like you can’t do anything more. My heart wants me to tell you not to end up like me, wondering why you’ve never done anything remarkable in your whole damn life”.

  Bill quietly walked back over to his table and gingerly took his seat, his hands shaking as he reached in between a collection of jars to pull out another small bottle of whisky to replenish his supply.

  “If you’ll please excuse me and see yourselves out,” Bill started. “I need to get myself another drink”.

  Chapter 11

  By the time that they left the Skin N Bones the weather had begun to change. The sunny skies were overcast with dirty looking clouds, darkening the horizon and threatening with rain. The air was no longer a chilly fall breeze but a stiff battering of cold wind.

  The Tylers sat on the hood of the car just outside of the shop, chewing on what was left of their collection of granola bars. Neither of them bothering to talk as they both mulled over the decision before them.

  “Have we come to the same conclusion?” Riley asked.

  “How should I know unless you tell me what you’re thinking?” she answered through chunks of oat that rolled around her mouth.

  “I think...that we should stay on the island. I think that we should stay until we have a genuine reason to run away”.

  Violet turned against the wind, holding her hair against the side of her head in the wind.

  “I agree”.

  “Holy shit, have we finally decided on the same thing at the same time?”

  Violet nodded with a nervous leer.

  “I’m afraid of what we might find if we continue with this. But I’m also afraid of leaving it behind and being that psycho telling people that they once saw Bigfoot,” she said.

  “Like Bill said, the chase. The desire to not regret missing what could be an adventure of a lifetime”.

  “Exactly”.

  “I was thinking of ‘Sourmouth’. Is it weird that I’m starting to get attached to this fucking thing? Like an annoying pet that you’re saddled with when a relative dies. You’ve had interactions with the thing during family get-togethers and you feel like you’ve got an obligation to make sure it doesn’t starve, but you don’t actually want it or like it. That’s sort of how I’m feeling about ‘Sourmouth’ if that makes sense”.

  “You’re a strange little man,” Violet said, as she threw an empty bar wrapper at her husband, but the wind stopped it not halfway before its target and blew it in the other direction.

  He laughed, “Does that not make sense?”

  “From everything we’ve heard, ‘Sourmouth’ would be an extremely dangerous house pet”.

  “It’s the dog that your crazy old grandmother keeps tied up in the backyard because it keeps attacking the neighbourhood children. I never said it was a cuddly little fuzz ball”.

  Violet shivered in the coolness, “Speaking of attacking. We never really talked about the story that the old man told us”.

  “Which old man specifically? This island is worse than Florida for old people,” Riley asked.

  “The old man of the old couple by the lake,” she clarified.

  “Oh yes, that Calgarian. What did you want to talk about?”

  “He said that Poyam’s father was killed by an animal, right in their house. What did the job most likely was that thing Sourmouth, the thing that currently lives in our mirror. The question that I can’t help but be asking and I don’t see us getting an answer to is how it got to him. Was it just chance that Sourmouth chose him of all people? And if it was Sourmouth, at what point did it become something that could slaughter a man?”

  Riley nodded, standing up and stretching out his legs, “And of course what about Poyam? How did she survive when the creature was just down the hall? Why didn’t it turn around and kill her? Poyam’s room had to be passed first for the animal when it came up the stairs and had to be passed again on the way down”.

  “More than that...how was she involved in the incident?”

  “Involved?”

  “Think about it. Who on this planet had more reason to want her father dead? After hearing about the abuse that she suffered, I wanted the prick dead too. It’s impossible to know whether it was drawn before or after the attack, but she had all of that quote-unquote art on her walls about the giant wolf. And then there was the book we found above her room with its name written in it. So if she did all that she certainly knew about the animal. I wonder how much she knew about it before her father became a chew toy”.

  “You think that Poyam definitely did the drawings?”

  “Who else would?”

  “A friend?”

  “She didn’t have friends as far as we know, especially ones that would come over to the house,” Violet pointed out as she stood up to follow her husband as he paced around the car.

  “Alright. So she drew Sourmouth. What does that say to you?”

  “That maybe she set the wolf on him. Why else would she be drawing the thing?”

  “If I suffered what she did and saw my father torn to shreds by some wild animal I think I would snap, too. Scribbles on the wall are a rather innocent form of therapy if you ask me. It doesn’t at all suggest that she caused it to happen,” Riley stated.

  Violet wrapped her arms in on themselves to keep in the warmth from her body.

  “You think that she drew that afterwards? I have a hard time picturing a 40 year old woman sitting on the ground and drawing on the wall. I find it a lot easier to picture her as a young girl, hearing the legends from the other kids around the lake and trying to will the thing into existence”.

  Riley finally decided that it was time to go and opened the driver’s seat door, “The woman at the museum did talk about that calling into being stuff. Maybe she did find out about Sourmouth and over time, over many years she found out more and more about it. And eventually knew enough to...what? Control it?”

  Violet made a low squeaking to voice her hesitation, “It seems as plausible as anything else, doesn’t it?”

  “Suppose,” he admitted.

  “If we decided that that was the case...what’s the next step?” she asked as she got into the passenger’s seat.

  “Are we deciding that that is what happened?” he asked with a laugh.

  “I am. I don’t know about you”.

  Riley leaned over to his wife and put his arm around her shoulder, pulling her into a kiss.

  “I think that if knowing about it is how you control it, then we need to find out more about it. We should give this Tsitusem a call and see if he knows anything else. We need to find out more
than fireplace stories and old wives tales”.

  Violet hung her arms around her husband, “Have you ever thought about how lazy the person was who named it the ‘fireplace’?”

  “That’s what you’re thinking about now? Can you not concentrate on anything?” he laughed.

  “Think about it. Somebody looked at it and went ‘it’s a place with fire’ and just named it that. How uninventive is the English language? Couldn’t they have come up with a new word, like ‘kitchen’ or ‘tree’?”

  “Graveyard. Streetlight,” Riley pointed out.

  “Shut up,” Violet responded plainly as she slinked back in her seat with her eyes closed.

  “Let’s find a payphone and give this guy a call,” Riley said, looking out the window as if he was just going to spot one off in the foliage ahead.

  “I’m going to leave that conversation to you,” she said as she continued to rest her eyes.

  “Why do I automatically have to do it?”

  “I don’t have very good luck. And so far we’ve had some great luck in finding people who don’t think we’re absolutely insane. It’s probably better not to push it and just have you do it”.

  “It’s not luck. We’re researching a piece of local cultural history. The people we talk to are locals. There’s no luck in that, its common sense”.

  “’Researching’? Since when is bumbling around the island hoping to find someone to help us ‘research’? Don’t make us sound fancy,” Violet teased.

  “Just glaze over the fact that I’m right and you should be the one making the call”.

  “Hey! I’ll give you that it might not be my luck as to why I shouldn’t have to make the call. But that doesn’t mean that I should have to either”.

  “Whatever. Doesn’t matter. Point is that we’ve got another lead and we’re going to follow it,” Riley chuckled as he fished the car keys out of his pocket.

  “Agreed. The question is what are we doing afterwards?”

  “I think we should experiment,” Riley stated as he switched on the engine with a choking stutter.

  Violet giggled, teasing her husband, “Oh you. I don’t think that this island has sex stores to buy those sorts of toys”.

  “You know what I mean. I’ll call this guy and see what he knows and afterwards we need to go back to Poyam’s and figure out a way to interact with Sourmouth. To let it know that even though we’re staying in Poyam’s father’s room we’re not actually its enemies”.

  “And how do you want to go about that? Though, I do like the idea of you barking at the mirror trying to talk to the thing one mutt to the other”.

  Riley pulled the car from the Skin N Bones’ driveway and back onto the path to the main road, not even bothering to look behind him due to the lack of traffic in the woods.

  “We need to try something new because right now we’re just having staring contests. I’d like to be on its good side rather than end up filleted because it’s gotten annoyed at us” he said as they drove along towards the island main street.

  “If you do get skinned you should know that I’d probably miss you a bit,” Violet kidded as she leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes.

  “...That’s a consolation, I suppose...”

  #

  The Tylers stopped at the grocery store again, remembering that it had a phone booth at the front of the building near the ATM. Violet took the time to do some additional shopping since they had quickly run out of their previous food supply, her choices restricted by the lack of much in terms of amenities at the house by the lake.

  With his wife playing chef, Riley was left alone to phone the number that Bill had provided and hope for the best. After a few long rings the call was finally answered, the voice on the other end soft and rather feminine, the words well-articulated and obviously educated.

  “This is Tsitusem, to whom am I speaking?”

  “Hi. You don’t know me, but my name is Riley, Riley Tyler. I was given your name by Bill”.

  “Nice to speak with you, Mr. Tyler. But may I ask which Bill this might be? That’s a pretty standard name”.

  It was then that Riley realized that didn’t know the man’s last name.

  “Bowen Island Bill?” he said, his voice rising at the end of the sentence to an uncomfortable degree.

  “Would this Bill be the gay man that plays with road kill and practically lives in seedy little bars?” he questioned.

  Riley almost wanted to proclaim victory having guessed the man’s sexuality correctly, but figured his stupid desire to be right wasn’t a pressing concern.

  “That would probably be the same one, yes”.

  “What about him? Why would he give you my cellphone number?”

  “My wife and I were speaking to him about some of the local lore and he mentioned that you’d be a great person to have a coffee with on the subject”.

  “You are aware of my project?” Tsitusem asked, his voice giving away that he was intrigued that the topic had come up so unexpectedly.

  “Yes. Yes, we are. And we were hoping that we could sit down with you and find out what you know about Squamish culture and some of the legends in it, preferably as soon as possible”.

  The young man made a sound that was similar to a laugh mixed with a cough.

  “Can I ask you what it is that you’re looking to find out? ‘Lore’ is a very, very extensive subject. And as much as I would hope I could help you, my time is rather pressed and I do not think I would be interested in teaching you hundreds and hundreds of years of our history”.

  “Sorry, I’m not explaining this very well. I’m looking to find out about a specific piece of lore, about a legend that goes by the name of ‘Sourmouth’. Do you know it?” Riley asked, his fingers crossed around the phone handle.

  Tsitusem paused on the other end of the line, making no sound but the sounds of him breathing.

  “I cannot be certain without delving into my notes, but I believe that I have a few pages on it. That ‘Sourmouth’ word is related to the creation myths, correct? I am not mistaken in the association?”

  Riley wanted to tell the boy that he’s the one that should be confirming these sorts of things, but opted to go for the more diplomatic approach.

  “From what we’ve been told, Sourmouth is connected to the Wolf Star. And we were also told that you might have more on it since you’ve been collecting information”.

  “Consider me curious, Mr. Tyler. It is not often I come across someone wanting to know about Squamish history, at least not from an academic standpoint. And certainly not about our fables”.

  Riley smirked into the phone, just as his wife approached with her bag of groceries. His expression told her all about how the conversation was leaning.

  “You’re interested in sitting down with us?” he probed as his wife leaned in as she attempted to listen in on the call.

  “I would be able to find an hour out of my day. Where was it that you said you were situated?” Tsitusem said.

  “We’re staying in a house on Bowen Island, up in the mountains by the lake”.

  “Oh, dear. Well, I am at the university right now, in Vancouver of course. That might make the meeting in person problematic”.

  “I was hoping that you were here already. Bill had said that you frequent the island”.

  “I did once upon a time. I had to spend days there on and off, convincing and interviewing the elders to get what stories they had. But there is little reason for me to make recurring visits now”.

  “Is this something that we could do over the phone then?” Riley asked.

  “If I have a choice I would prefer not to. I have a roommate in my dorm that keeps odd hours. It is difficult to have extended conversations on the phone without waking him. Might I ask how urgently this information is required?”

  Violet leaned towards her husband and whispered into his ear, “Really damn soon”.

  “My wife would like it really damn soon”.

  Tsi
tusem chuckled, “Alright. I certainly cannot meet up tonight. But how about I visit tomorrow during the day? I have to turn in a paper in the morning, but then I’m free. I can take the boat over and meet you somewhere to go over what I have. Does that sound serviceable?”

  “That’s fantastic. Name the time and place and we’ll be there”.

  “There is a restaurant called Artisan Pie Company that I have always been fond of. I can be there for 1PM if that works”.

  “That works just fine. We’ll reserve a table under the Tylers”.

  “I will see you tomorrow then. Goodbye,” Tsitusem said as he abruptly hung up without so much as a hint of subtlety.

  Violet pulled back and gave her husband a polite, soundless golf clap.

  “I’m surprised that it went so well,” Riley admitted.

  “I just hope that he doesn’t end up giving us the same information that we already know. I’d hate to have to sit through him droning on about the stars and whatnot”.

  Riley grabbed the grocery bag from his wife and thumbed through the contents.

  “I already told him that’s the minimum that we already know. I didn’t tell him much else. If he arrives and starts telling us about the family and the wolves we’ll just have to say that we knew that, too”.

  “And admit that he’s come all the way to the island for nothing? No thanks. I’m not a fan of admitting that I’m in the wrong or that I’ve made a bad decision. I’d rather just sit through it and hope that things will improve,” Violet disclosed.

  Riley walked off with the bag and headed towards their car.

  “Now we know why you married me. The joke’s on you though, things will never improve...”

  Chapter 12

  The weather had quickly worsened up by the lake. The temperature seemed to have dropped drastically due to the sun being hidden by the thick clouds, which only amplified how fast the heat vanished. The winding curves of the mountain roads funneled the wind over the lake, rippling the water and rustling the leaves on the trees. The cold air seemed to have convinced the wildlife that winter was ready to fall, as the rodents were out and about scavenging for food to hide away for the frost season.