by Cyle James
Instantly, the mirror shattered. Thousands of shards of glass exploded outwards towards the group, covering the ground with its shiny remnants. All that remained in the wooden frame was the empty backboard. The only thing that reflected from the glass on the ground was the ceiling and the shocked faces of the group standing above it.
“What the fuck just happened?” yelled Violet as she stepped forward, crunching the glass underneath her shoes.
It wasn’t rhetorical, but the guys treated it just the same.
The mirror had broken, and Sourmouth was gone.
“Should I repeat the question until someone tries to come up with an answer?”
“How am I supposed to know?” Riley replied angrily as he walked over to the pile of bits and pieces, shoving them around with his foot.
“I think I made a grave mistake,” Tsitusem muttered as he knelt down and looked at what was left of the mirror.
“If you know something you better start talking,” she said as she walked over and ripped Tusem’s phone from his hand.
“Um...I don’t know for sure...but I think it was the photograph”.
“What do you mean ‘it was the photograph’?”
“That broke the mirror,” Tusem clarified with wide eyes.
“Why would it break the mirror?” asked Riley.
“It is just a theory, but have you ever heard of that old legend about photographs stealing your soul?”
“Yeah...”
“I think Sourmouth has heard of it, too”.
“Guys, we didn’t even get a picture. We just have a bunch of blurry glass falling,” Violet groaned as she clicked through the smartphone.
Riley stood up and stormed his way to his wife’s side, looking over her shoulder at the less-than-stellar picture that was taken.
“What do we do now?” he asked as he contemplated whipping the phone against the wall across the room.
Tsitusem was still kneeling over the glass shards and hardly paying the couple any attention.
“Tusem,” Violet repeated her husband.
He snapped back to them with a look of nervousness as if everything that was happening had just finally hit him.
“I think you need to leave,” he said without volunteering an explanation.
“What do you mean ‘leave’?” Violet asked him as she and her husband loomed over the man.
He stood up to face the couple, “You should get off of the island completely. Not to go and get a news crew, that idea is dead. If there’s nothing here to show them then there’s no point in trying to convince anyone”.
“There’s nothing here to show them? Why can’t we just find Sourmouth in another surface like in the bathroom or one of the windows downstairs?” Violet asked, her nerves shot and her body gradually increasing in the amount that it was shaking.
“I don’t think that it’s going to be returning anytime soon. I think I fucked up,” he declared, his eyes sending blaring alarms to the Tylers that they should be taking his warnings seriously.
“So run away as far as we can go? Is that back to America? Should we be taking a flight overseas?” Riley asked, unsure of how screwed they actually were.
Tsitusem tried to answer but it only came out in stammers. He stopped and took a few moments to regain his composure before continuing.
“I think that Sourmouth isn’t stuck in his reflections anymore. You said that you think that Sourmouth is ‘bound’ to you. I am worried about what a free Sourmouth might be capable of doing in a situation like this. Further might be better. Get to the docks. Get to the Vancouver airport and get far, far away from here”.
The Tylers looked at each other, the fright unmistakably draped across their faces.
“What are you going to do?” Violet asked the student, her feet almost ready to move her out the door as she spoke.
He made a large shrugging motion and just shook his head.
“I don’t know. I guess I’ll stay back here. I mean, it isn’t after me. I can explore the house. I can make a trip to a few of the reservations and ask around about the legend. Basically, I’ll be your watchtower”.
“Ok. Ok. Let’s say that we leave. What next? When can we go home? Or even feel comfortable that we’re not going to have our guts torn out?” Riley inquired fully knowing that the young man wouldn’t have definitive answers. But damn it if answers weren’t deserved in trade for sending them running so abruptly.
“Take my phone with you. It has my home number saved in the contacts. You can call me for updates when I get back to the city. Or I’ll call you when I have something important. Other than that, I don’t have any answers for you”.
Violet nodded and pulled on her husband’s arm as a hint to get moving. She realized that they weren’t going to get any further than that and time was crucial.
Riley resisted her pull enough to turn back to Tusem, extending his hand towards the student.
“Things haven’t exactly going swimmingly tonight, but I thank you for trying. And I am sorry that we’ve put you in this situation”.
Tsitusem laughed with a small croak in his throat, “I am sorry, too...I wish I could have known more before I tried helping...”
And with a quick handshake they parted, with Tusem remaining in the master bedroom and the Tylers sprinting down the steps and out of the doors of Poyam’s house for hopefully the last time.
Chapter 16
The weather had turned from being an impending storm to being a raging tempest while they were huddled together in the dilapidated house. It was amazing that they hadn’t noticed the roaring winds and the downfall of freezing rain that threatened to blow the house into the lake. But despite the looming flood, Sourmouth was the greater concern. What was a possibly dangerous experiment suddenly become an oncoming train veering off of the tracks. And the Tylers didn’t know which direction to run to get away from it.
The scramble out of the front door was halted only briefly by the need to grab their jackets to shield themselves from the rain. It was on the porch that they smelled it. The air carried the putrid scent of rotten meat that sickened them to their very cores. It was an unexpected assault on their senses that begged them to throw up on their feet.
Violet was the first to see them. She was the first to respond with a deafening scream.
Laid out in front of the house in a showcase of blood and bone were the carcasses of almost two dozen eviscerated animals. Sporadically arranged in a circular spread were deer, rabbits, squirrels and birds. All of them long-dead and apparently gutted from the stomach, their intestines oozing onto the muddy ground from gaping holes in their bodies. Large chunks of meat lay about interspersed with half-chewed-on paws and an assortment of various teeth.
Tsitusem burst out of the doorway and approached from behind, rushing to come to the couple’s aid should he be able to. But it was the young man that reacted the worst to the scene. Immediately, the combination of the rancid meat-smell mixed with the visual evidence of a horrific slaughter took its toll, forcing him to vomit violently over the banister of the porch into the bushes below.
Riley was the first to step forward, his feet barely touching the ground as he walked lightly towards the animals. The thing he noticed before anything else was that the path of bodies seemed to follow along the way directly to their car. It was the world’s most horrifying trail of breadcrumbs that strongly suggested that the Tylers should immediately take their leave. The second thing was that the rain seemed to flood the open cavities in the bodies, causing what was left of the blood inside to spill outwards until it dyed the mud a dark crimson.
“What the hell is all this?” Tusem yelled from behind his hands on the porch as he attempted to mask some of the smells.
Riley looked down at one of the deer carrion, its flesh liquefying and filled with flesh flies and maggots. “It’s a message”.
Violet stepped off of the porch and started towards her husband, hoping to make it to the car without vomiting herself.
She contemplated closing her eyes to avoid looking but didn’t want to risk tripping and landing face first in something’s ribcage.
“I think you need to leave,” Riley yelled to the student just as his wife made it to his side.
Through a hacking cough Tusem responded, “No, I think I will stay. Nothing has changed for me despite this...show. The creature is still focused on you, not me. I will be fine”.
It might have been that he couldn’t regain his composure as he stood outside amongst the bloody wreckage, but Tsitusem’s face told the tale that even the student didn’t quite believe what he was saying.
Riley nodded to Tusem a second goodbye as he urgently pulled his wife along to the car.
The car itself was yet another demonstration of the seriousness that they were neck deep in, as it had recently been decorated by four long slash marks along the side of the passenger door. About an inch wide each and almost two inches deep the cuts tore through the fibreglass hull and into the frame. With little more than a secondary glance Riley almost yanked the doors off their hinges as he rushed to get his wife and himself to safety.
Riley kicked the gas pedal down and the car jumped forward, its wheels throwing the mud born from the rain into the air behind them. They sped down the mountain roads a bit too perilously, sending them sliding across their seats and against the car doors. The trees whizzed past, a sign of ground being gained. The rain bounced off of the windshield as if the speeding car was trying to retaliate against the storm.
#
What was normally a tedious slog went by like the trip had been played on fast-forward. The Tylers’ vehicle swerved around the bend to the Bowen Island docks where a line of cars sat in a row towards the entry gate. From the agitation on the faces of the drivers it was clear that they had either been there for a while or were going to be. That wasn’t news that the Tylers wanted to hear as they looked over the raging waves of the water before them.
They pulled up behind a grey compact and turned off the engine. Without needing to share words the couple both stepped out of the car. They were shocked by the savagery of the increasing downpour that drenched their clothing in seconds, sending a chill over their already shaking bodies. The duo approached the ticket counter where a solemn-looking middle-aged man sat with his arms crossed in a baggy winter coat with a fur lined hood. His eyebrows were grey and thick enough to keep falling water or burning sun from ever falling into his eyes.
Riley tapped with his knuckles on the window hard enough jolt the man to his feet to slide open the Plexiglas.
“Can I help you?” the man asked with the annoyance clear in his voice as he eyed the couple thoughtfully.
“We need to get two tickets to the city,” Riley answered with insistence, his eyes red with exhaustion.
The man exaggeratedly leaned in his chair and looked over the couple’s shoulders to the lineup of cars building behind them. He returned to his seat with a dry smile.
“You see those cars behind you?”
“Is that rhetorical?”
“It depends on whether or not you can see them”.
“I can fucking see them; what about it?” Riley asked irately, his fists clenching against the counter in front of him.
“That’s the line of people that also want to get to Vancouver. But they aren’t going anywhere which means you aren’t going anywhere,” the man stated.
Violet leaned in against her husband to talk through the window.
“Can you tell us why no one is going anywhere?”
“Do you see that storm above us?” the ticket man asked as he looked through his eyebrows to the sky.
The Tylers could feel the rain bouncing off of their backs as they stood, neither bothering to turn around to give the man the pleasure.
“Yeah...we see the storm,” Violet answered before her husband could blow a gasket.
“The boat is stuck at the docks in Vancouver. It isn’t safe for it to be travelling in this weather for risk of being capsized. They’re expecting lightning too, and it’s hazardous to make the trip as it is. So we’re turning back everyone until the conditions ease up”.
Riley was biting his bottom lip so hard that he was expecting a torrent of blood to come gushing out.
“Do you know if we’d be able to rent or charter a boat?” Violet asked as politely as she could manage, hoping for an alternative option of escape.
The man scrunched up his face as he thought, his eyebrows twitching with every breath.
“You could,” he answered.
“...We could?” repeated Violet as if she didn’t understand.
“You could. But it depends on whether you can find anyone willing to risk the trip”.
Riley rested his palms on the counter and leaned his body in so that his head was nearly through the window and into the booth.
“And where could we find these people that might be able to help?” he asked through gritted teeth.
“How should I know? I only sell tickets”.
The man abruptly stood up and began closing the windowpane.
Riley had to pull his torso back to avoid getting his head stuck between the sills. In anger, he punched the plastic glass which shook under the impact but never came close to breaking. The ticket man barely reacted as he took his seat again, passively staring at the counter in front of him.
The Tylers turned away, their faces barraged by the rain as they headed back towards their car. The couple passed all of the other cars with drivers who merely looked slightly annoyed by the inconvenience of having to wait to return home. Evidently, they weren’t in the same dire straits the Tylers were.
“What do we do now?” Violet asked with her voice sombre and deflated.
Her husband didn’t know how to answer. He was pondering stepping out of the vehicle and screaming for anyone to help who could build them a raft.
“Maybe we should go back to the house,” replied Riley, falling back to the one place on the island that at least felt familiar.
“The house? Why?”
“We can’t get to the city tonight. We should get back to Tusem on grounds that we know. And in the morning when the storm breaks we get on the boat and get the hell out of here once and for all”.
“I don’t want to go back to that place,” she responded with her eyes hung low.
“What choice do we have?”
“We could always just stay here. Sit in a line all night with these other idiots”.
"I don't know how smart that is. We have no idea if we're safe here. This thing seems to go where it pleases," he theorized.
"You think that it could find us here? We're a long way from the house".
"Who says it has anything to do with distance? Up until now it seemed to be able to travel wherever it wanted as long as it was in a reflective surface, right? Well, now that it's free, who knows what it's capable of? Reflective surfaces could just be fancy doors for this fucking monster. All of these cars that we're surrounded by? It could come out of any one of them for all we know".
She shook her head dismissively, "It's not going to try and kill us in front of all of these people".
"And you know that how? It's an animal. A hungry tiger will charge through a village and pull people from their houses if it's hungry. Who's to say what this thing would do? We could be putting everyone in danger just sitting here".
"Then what the hell do you want to do?"
"We should go back to the house. And get Tusem. We're stuck here for the night anyway. Maybe we can convince him to stay with us. We can find a place without reflections. Or maybe just keep moving. Break all of the glass in this shit car so the creature can't travel and we just never stop driving".
His wife silently nodded. She knew he was right, but that didn’t mean that she was required to like the answer. She reached out and grabbed her husband by the hand. She gave him a small squeeze before letting him go to turn the car on.
Slowly the Tylers reversed out of the docks and
headed back up the mountain. This time they drove much slower than they did on the way down. For some odd reason, the couple wasn’t as eager to return to Killarney Lake as they were to get away from it.
Chapter 17
The Tylers pulled up beside the mailbox about thirty feet from Poyam’s porch. Through the rain-dotted windshield they eyed the field of carcasses leading to the decrepit house. It was extremely dark out in the storm, making it difficult for them to see more than five feet in front of them. For obvious reasons, the couple felt apprehensive about exiting the safety of their seats. After a few minutes of nervous anticipation the couple finally departed, heading towards the house in a rushed but smooth manner. Occasionally in their hurry they would accidentally kick one of the skulls on the ground, sending it sloshing through the sludge. Or they would step on a leg bone with an audible crunch that was drowned out by the pitter-patter of rain. In the shelter of the overhang, they quickly stripped themselves of their cold and wet jackets, dropping their attire onto the railings to be picked up again when they left, knowing that the clothing wouldn’t get any drier in the dampness of the old house. Violet took the lead and opened the front door, which strangely Tusem had left unlocked when he went back inside.
In the house, they were instantly battered with a ghastly stench similar to the one that they had experienced outside not too long before. It crept up their noses like tiny insects, crawling and carrying the foul odour. The living room was basked in the faint light from the one lamp that sat innocently on the end table near the reading room, illuminating just as much as they needed but nowhere near enough. More sinister was what was illuminated on the floor by the foot of the couch.
On the barren hardwood laid a corpse, pale and stiffening with the onset of rigor mortis. Dark red blood pooled around the quickly bloating body, thick from coagulation and stinking like dirty pennies. The clothing on the cadaver was tattered, wet and glistening with gore. The man’s face was torn deeply with shreds of skin dangling off the bone in ribbons, his hands still weakly clutching at his cheeks from trying to hold the remains of his face together during the last moments of his life. His throat had been torn outwards with protruding tendons limply dangling against the side of his neck, leaving a macabre bouquet of sorts for the Tylers to find. The man’s torso had been heavily mauled, too. His chest cavity had been crushed downward with splinters of his ribs jutting out in all directions as what remained of his organs messily lay within their broken cage, half eaten and regurgitated. The shining watch that sat on the man’s wrist, specked in blood, told blatantly that this mutilated corpse was none other than Tsitusem.