by Cyle James
The Tylers sat back in the living room, staring at the cuckoo clock that they had just noticed no longer worked. They hadn’t had the nerve to go upstairs yet, finding solace in their mutual company from the safety of the couch. In their laps sat fruit and sandwiches wrapped in cellophane that they had purchased from the grocery store on the way up. They sat and ate, thinking individually about what their plan of approach would be.
“What do you think would happen if we showed Sourmouth its book?” Violet questioned amusedly.
“It might implode or something. Like travelling back in time and meeting yourself”.
“If I wrote down your name in a book and you read it, would you implode?”
He took a big bite of some BBQ pork that hung off of his bun, “I’m not a mystical wolf man”.
“Point taken”.
“Why? What were you thinking of doing?”
She shook her head, her eyes trying to pierce through her husband’s calm and cool façade. She knew that he was hoping for a stupid answer so he could make fun of her about it and was just pretending to want to know for any other reason.
“No real reason. Just asking what you thought”.
“You’re lying,” he laughed with a mouthful of bread.
“I’m not. I’m not a liar,” she answered.
“You’re lying about that, too”.
“Can we change the subject?”
“Don’t you want to figure out what we’re doing next?”
“Yes, I do, which is why I want to change the subject to something that’s beneficial to the situation,” she replied.
“I think this is beneficial to the situation”.
Riley picked off a slice of tomato off of his bun and flicked it at his wife. The rubbery fruit slapped against her arm and slid down onto the couch.
She eyed him with feigned intensity.
“What are you, twelve?” she laughed.
“If I am, the things that you’ve done to my body would put you in prison for a really long time. You pervert".
Violet reached over and tried to smack her husband, coming into contact with his arms as he shielded himself.
“Damn it, Violet...hasn’t this house seen enough abuse...?”
As soon as he said it he instantly regretted it.
Violet’s face morphed into a shocked cringe before she began laughing until her stomach began to hurt. In all of her commotion on the couch the collection of food in her lap fell to the ground in a squelchy thud.
“Stop it! I’m going to hell now and you’re laughing it up,” Riley said with a shit eating grin.
“You’re a sick man, Mr. Tyler”.
Riley turned in his spot and got onto his knees facing his wife.
“What?” Violet asked, her face red from amusement.
Riley gradually crawled forward and found his way between her legs, his hands on both sides of her body as he pushed her back into a supine position with his weight. Slowly he leaned in, his lips pressing against hers.
She began to press back, her hand on the back of her husband’s head as they embraced. Violet snickered as she flicked her tongue over his before gently biting his bottom lip.
He ran his hand through the bangs of her hair, his fingers parting the strands as he looked her in the eyes. Riley pressed himself against her, his erection aching through his pants against her inner thigh.
“Baby...” she began in a whisper.
“Hmm,” he moaned in response as he ran a hand over the top of her breasts, the palm feeling the sharpness of her nipples as he rubbed by.
“You know that I’d love to get off with you...”
Riley let out an agonized groan, pulling himself back slightly to look at his wife more fully.
“But?” he said, clearly slightly irritated.
Violet pushed off of the sofa cushions, sitting up in a position that was more suitable for the talk that they inevitably were about to have.
“I don’t know if I want to do it here”.
“Do what here?” he asked, sitting back on his side of the couch.
“Have sex. Fuck. I don’t want to do it in this house, especially after what happened last time”.
Her face was visibly anxious as she fiddled with a piece of tape on the side of the backrest.
Riley couldn’t tell if she was only upset at the idea of having sex in the house or if she was more upset that she was having to talk about not wanting to have sex with him.
“I’m sorry. I know that this isn’t the most romantic getaway that you could have imagined. But the other night you seemed fully capable of having a dirty rendezvous with me up in the master bedroom of horrors. I didn’t think that you’d have any issues with it now,” he expounded, honestly trying to let her know he wasn’t angry and just puzzled by her response.
“That was before Sourmouth decided to play peeping tom. It was bad enough that we’re in some sort of hell-house where god knows what happened. But add the fact that we’ve got a possible killing machine living in the mirror upstairs and my libido kind of disappears”.
Riley slunk down as far as the material of the couch would allow; his body ready to meld onto it until he became one with the frame.
“I don’t like it...but I understand your decision”.
“You do?” she asked in a way that made her husband feel bad for even being frustrated.
“Of course I do. I get why you don’t want to. But that doesn’t mean that I’m not disappointed. I look at you and it’s all I can manage not to just start humping your leg. It’s going to hurt when I’m shot down, even if it’s for a valid reason,” Riley rationalized.
Violet reached out and grabbed him by the hand, pulling his dead weight closer to her until he was resting his head on the top of her chest.
“I’m thankful for the sentiment here. But placing my face against your breasts is just going to have the opposite effect. I think you’re just being a cock tease now”.
Violet laughed and gave her husband a tap on the temple with her finger tips before trying to crush him with the hardest hug she could manage.
And like that they sat for nearly fifteen minutes without finding the need to talk. It wasn’t until they noticed it getting even darker outside did they bother to even move.
Violet got up from the couch, leaving her husband lying on his stomach across the cushions. She stepped over to the window near the grand ole clock and pulled back the dusty curtain. Violet stood leaned against the pane staring off into the heart of the trees, trees that were quickly disappearing in the approaching dark as if overtaken by a sea of black.
“Did you ever notice that it gets dark faster here?”
“It is winter. Winter in Canada,” said Riley as he picked up trash off of the floor and placed it in the empty grocery bag.
“It just seems crazy to me that the day feels like it goes by so fast. You can barely get anything done before its night again and you’re expected to get ready and start the day over again”.
“Who is expecting you to do anything? We can stay up all night frolicking and eating junk food”.
“We don’t have any junk food, do we?” she asked.
“We could always make a run back to the store. Though I’m 90% sure that it closed at like 7 o’clock”.
“It’s the only place to get rations on this island and it closes its doors just after dinner? I mean, it’s nice that they have the decency to wait until most people get off work and have time to drop by if they need anything. But they couldn’t extend those hours a bit for convenience’s sake? Do they close on Sundays for people to visit Church too? It’s not the 1970s; get hip with the times already”.
“We could probably still make it if we rushed. We could get some graham crackers, chocolate and marshmallows and make s’mores. We could just pull kindling off the walls and make a fire, this place is practically firewood anyway,” Riley proposed.
“I don’t think mommy and daddy would care for us burning down the ho
use on a school night”.
“Mommy and daddy?”
“Sour and Mouth upstairs. Real quick with the belt they are when they’re disturbed,” she said as she pointed upwards to the ceiling.
It was the first time that Riley had thought about whether the creature was sentient on its own. How did it behave when they weren’t there? Did it even exist outside of their presence?
Still looking upwards he asked “Do you think that it’s up there right now? Just waiting for us to stroll into the room to try and scare us like the guy in a mask hiding in the dark in the haunted house ride?”
Violet laughed nervously, “Somehow I don’t think it plans things very well. I don’t think the wolf-man is a forward-thinker”.
Riley sucked his top lip and released it with a pop.
“We should go up”.
“I was kind of hoping for some time to get my nerves together,” Violet confessed, looking at the stairs like they were an insurmountable obstacle that she wasn’t ready to overcome.
“You can take some time. I don’t think my curiosity can wait much longer”.
“Have you just been sitting here waiting for me to say that we should go up?”
He raised an eyebrow, “Or thinking of a way to get up there on my own”.
Violet closed her arms tightly around her, suddenly feeling a chill in the air.
“You don’t need to come up with me,” Riley reassured her, noticing how uncomfortable she seemed suddenly.
He stepped forward and placed his hands on her, one on her shoulder and the other on her side. Riley meant it sincerely but couldn’t help but feel like he was trying to convince a child that there wasn’t a boogeyman in the closet, when in fact the boogeyman lived inside of the mirror.
“I want to go up with you. I need to go up with you,” she said as she visibly braced herself for what was to come.
“I don’t want to make you do anything you’re not ready for. If you want to wait, it isn’t going anywhere.”
Violet extended her arm and placed her hand on her husband’s chest.
“If I’m allowed to back out now I’ll never get the courage to do it in the future because I’ll know I could always back out. Don’t enable that”.
Riley nodded as he grabbed his wife by the hand and turned towards the stairs. With a deep breath they started forward, one step after another like there wasn’t a single reason not to stay exactly where they were.
Somehow the Tylers had expected something to change. What they expected to change they were unsure of the more they thought about it. But despite their unknown wishes everything upstairs was exactly the same as they had left it: the creaky rocking chair absent its stuffed master that lay on the floor in Poyam’s room, the decrepit bathroom otherwise known as the Center for Disease Control’s field office and the horror show master bedroom that they currently stood in waiting for the sky to start falling. But after an all too quiet ten minutes they would have been satisfied with even a little rain.
“Do you think it’s not home?” Riley asked rhetorically as he carefully observed the empty mirror that sat as lifeless as every other mirror in the world just like it.
“Maybe we caught it at a bad time? We should leave a note,” Violet proposed with a half-hearted giggle.
“Just stick a note to the mirror, text face on the surface asking for it to please get back to us at its earliest convenience?”
She nodded, “It’s the neighbourly thing to do. After all we are renting out its home”.
“Maybe we should start having sex. It seems to get off on that,” he suggested with a lecherous grin, eyeing the bed behind them.
“Or maybe it really hates it. There probably isn’t a Mrs. Sourmouth out there, right? You’re taunting it with its carnal desires that it can’t fulfill”.
“...It isn’t like I can fulfill mine either...” he muttered under his breath before Violet backhanded him across the chest.
Still rubbing the sore spot Riley cautiously approached the mirror, scrutinizing every inch of it as he got closer. As far as he could tell nothing had changed. The only difference being the absence of the daunting figure in the shadows that had previously been so eager to make its presence known.
Riley reached out and gave the surface of the mirror a tap with his fingernail.
There wasn’t a response.
He reached out and lifted the frame outwards from the wall, looking behind it to the wall.
But there was nothing hidden.
“Maybe we need to say its name three times?” Violet speculated out loud from behind her husband.
He turned towards her with a chuckle, “It’s not Bloody Mary”.
“Don’t look at me like that! Legends come from somewhere right? We’ve got this thing living in the mirror that allegedly can kill. That sounds like a certain urban legend to me”.
Riley turned back towards the mirror with a puff. As stupid as he thought the idea was he regrettably didn’t have any better ideas.
“Bloody Mary...” he joked.
“....Sourmouth...” Violet stated in a way that sounded like a very annoyed order for it to appear.
“Sourmouth,” he corrected in a more docile tone.
As he stood in front of the mirror Riley felt a sudden sense of unease. He remembered feeling something similar as a kid in elementary school playing the game in his friend’sbathroom. And while nothing ever happened then, Riley couldn’t help but wonder if he was just saying the wrong name all along.
“...Sourmouth,” he repeated, his voice heavier under his breath on his second turn.
And still nothing came of it.
For a moment Riley second guessed saying the name the third time. The legend of Bloody Mary said that she would come to life and killed whoever dared to say her name. And if somehow she and Sourmouth shared more than the mirror in common then the Tylers would find themselves in more trouble than they were prepared for.
Riley took the deepest breath that his lungs could hold as he closed his eyes.
“...Sour-”
“Boo!” screamed Violet from behind as she jabbed her finger tips into her husband’s spine.
Riley jumped to the side and almost hit his wife in the nose out of instinctive reflex.
“Damn it, Violet!” he yelled at her, his fists clenched angrily in a ball.
She clutched at her stomach as she doubled over in a fit, laughing hysterically at her husband.
“My lord, I thought that I was a wimp. But it turns out that I’m married to the cowardly lion!”
“It’s not funny,” he said, relaxing slightly, staring at the still uninhabited mirror.
“If you did it to me you’d find it a laugh riot”.
Riley thought about it for a moment before realizing that he totally would have. And it was hard to stay angry at her knowing that she was doing her best to cope by trying to ease some of the tension.
“If you’re done playing around, can I continue?” he asked, his voice betraying that he was mostly over it already.
“Don’t bother. Trying to call out Sourmouth like we’re going to get in a schoolyard fight is stupid. Trying to call it out like this is even more stupid. Let’s try something that doesn’t make me feel like a fool just for making an attempt” she decided conclusively.
“Fine,” he started, “What do you suggest?”
“I came up with the Bloody Mary thing even if it was a wash. You come up with something,” she said, sitting back on the bed with her legs crossed almost as casually as if she was waiting on tea. The only tell that she was still afraid was the slight shaking of her legs as they pressed tightly together. As hard as she tried to appear calm for her husband as much as herself, she couldn’t find a way to relax her nerves.
“But that was a joke. It doesn’t count”.
“Just because it was a joke doesn’t mean that it can’t count as my turn”.
Riley sucked on his teeth and placed his hands on his hips, trying to come
up with their next move.
“I’ll bark at it,” he declared as if nothing else could top his decision.
Violet exhaled and jumped to her feet, “You somehow topped me”.
“Topped you? I’m serious. I’m going to howl at this son of a bitch until he knows that this is my yard,” Riley laughed as he watched Violet exit the room.
“Don’t leave me here!” he called out, his chuckle following the wake of his wife.
Slowly he turned back towards the mirror with the sudden sensation that he was being watched. But still the mirror sat empty aside from his own modest-looking reflection staring back at him. Riley walked up to the mirror again, tentatively placing his fingers against the glass as if he expected them to fall into it. While they didn’t pass through, surprisingly the surface felt hot to the touch, as if there was a low set burner behind the glass. He recoiled slowly, rubbing his fingertips together like he was trying to get off a bit of grease.
“What on Earth are you doing?” Violet asked as she re-entered the room, the book held in her hand.
“Trying to burn myself. The damn mirror is strangely hot”.
She scoffed, stepping up beside her husband and prying open the book.
“Things keep getting weirder,” she said with her eyes in the pages.
“And yet we want to throw lemons at the hornet’s nest”.
“Lemons?”
“Yeah, have you ever tried to throw a handful of noodles?”
Violet just shook her head at her husband, the man that couldn’t take a brain tumor seriously. She flipped through the book, page after page, touching the corners ever so slightly and only enough to turn them over. She had always been fascinated by languages but absolutely no good with them. As she pondered the writing scribbled across the pages she wished more than anything that she could know what they meant.
“What is it that we’re doing with the book?” he asked as he rocked back and forth on the heels of his feet, trying to hold back his desire to keep running his hands over the tepid glass.
“I’ve got no idea. Even if I could understand what this all says, I could just be reading it a bed time story”.