Sourmouth (15 page)

   “Could they have been wrong about what
did it? Could it have been some sort of other animal?”

             
“Not so much. The island simply doesn’t have any predators other than the
occasional large bird of prey. Hunters killed off everything that was a danger
long time ago. And animals don’t have any reason to attempt the swim over from
the mainland. So the only things that kill over here are the hunters acting
like tough guys when the deer population gets too big. Of course, common sense
doesn’t come so common in some folks. The hunting party back then searched the
island for days and couldn’t find so much as a paw print in the mud or a half-eaten
carcass”.

             
Riley straightened up in his seat, “Then whatever did it got away. No
explanation?”

             
Samuel chuckled in a way that should only come from the belly of someone much
heavier than him, “There were tons of explanations, each one crazier than the
last one. The conspiracy theorists had a blast coming up with ideas. I’ve heard
that someone on the island had a pet attack-animal that they hid when the
search started and that they could just release it the next time someone annoys
them. I’ve heard that the animal got away from the island by stowing away on a
boat back to Vancouver. I’ve heard from the natives that it was some sort of
vengeful spirit that did the killing. And I’m pretty sure someone suggested a
bending bullet. It was all a bunch of hogwash from a bunch of idiots”. 

             
The
Tylers
seemed to lose their ability to speak for
a second as they got hung up on trying to sort out all of the information. Both
of them seeing things could have been a bad case of the heebie-jeebies. Finding
the book with an old legend scrawled in it could have been some sort of prank.
The story about the stars could have just been another old native legend meant
for fires and marshmallows. But a gruesome death in the same house where the
book was found possibly being attributed to a gigantic wolf? It was beginning
to become impossible to simply regard the spirit as a piece of fiction. If it
was, it was engrained in the very DNA of Bowen Island.

“Hun, do you not like your Nanaimo?” Diana asked
quizzically pointing at Riley’s second helping of dessert that remained
untouched in his hand.

Riley looked down at it, realizing for the first time
he hadn’t actually taken a bite.

He slowly placed the dessert bar on the coffee table
in front of him, “Sorry. I seem to have lost my appetite”.

Chapter 8

             
It was becoming an unfortunate habit, the quiet ride along the scenic routes of
the island. Quiet of course with the exception of the Waits tape that played
every time they turned on the engine, which currently crooned out More Than
Rain. Neither of the
Tylers
really wanted to talk
much about the situation they were in. They didn’t talk partly because there
wasn’t much to be said and perhaps subconsciously not to aggravate the spirit
in case it turned out to be real, which was an increasingly possible situation. 

             
When they returned to the house it was still early in the night and they were
already spent. After properly unloading their groceries into what could hardly
be considered a kitchen they took turns taking showers with some of their bottled
water reserve so that they didn’t start attracting flies. After their
underwhelming hygiene routine they both crashed onto the couch in the living
room with aching everything. The duo spent a long while just sitting
comfortably and thinking. Occasionally they would each look around the living
room for evidence of some of the horror that took place in the house and would
unsurprisingly find nothing new. They would especially focus their gaze at the
ceiling towards the master bedroom, thinking about all of the blood that was
spilled up there in the not-too-distant past. And more often than not their
eyes would travel back down towards the basement, to envision the horrors that
occurred there that could rival anything that might have happened upstairs.

             
“Does it need to be said?” Riley asked randomly.

             
“What?”

             
“I guess it does...”

             
“Babe, my head is still back in the fake Texans’ place. I can’t guess that
you’re thinking,” Violet answered bitterly.

             
“This was a bad idea. That’s all. Just thinking that we could have had a normal
vacation in Aruba like other adults”.

             
“We still can. We can just leave this all behind us like something we saw on TV
once upon a time”.

             
“And what? Just forget all of this? Can you do that still given how much we
know and how far we’ve come? I don’t really want to have needless memories of
child molestation and death by animal”.

             
She shrugged, “I don’t know. I think so. I guess. I mean, what’s the other
option? We keep digging into what’s going on until we find ourselves too deep
to crawl out?”

             
“I’m not liking what we’re finding out here. I could have especially been left
in the dark about what happened in this forsaken house. But I won’t lie and say
it’s not interesting to me. I’m not going to lie and say that I don’t want to
find out what’s going to happen next. How many people can say that they’ve ever
encountered something like this? Something possibly supernatural. It would be a
shame to just let it pass us by”.

             
“Pass us by?”

             
“Yeah. Pass us by. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity. Remember the talk
of our fame and fortune just sitting there to be taken? We could just pretend
that there’s nothing going on here and move on with our lives. We could just
stay away from that bedroom and that fucking mirror altogether. But eventually,
someone else would find it and they’d do everything that we’re doing. But maybe
they’d see it through...”

             
“If I were to even contemplate still exploring all this, where do we even
begin? We don’t exactly have any more leads to go on.
Poyam
has blown away in the wind, and the Calgary couple don’t know much more than
local history. What next?”

             
It was Riley’s turn to shrug, “I don’t know. I don’t know. We could always do
like we promised and take the book back to Anna and see if that tells her
anything new”.

             
“I don’t even want to touch that book if we can avoid it. But short of running
through the streets screaming that name out I doubt we’re going to find anyone
else that can tell us anything about it”.

             
“
Sourmouth
,” he said in a way to point out that his
wife wasn’t saying it.

“Is it weird that I’m a bit hesitant to say that
word?” she laughed nervously.

Riley scooted across the couch until he was leaned
against his wife, “I’ve had to think about that question a few times myself.
But I think I’ve come to the point where I’ve been able to rationalize that just
saying the name can’t be the end of the world”.

“Or so you think”.

“Or so I think,” he admitted.

Violet reached over and grabbed her husband’s hand and
gave it a tight squeeze, “I love you,
ya
goofy
mook
. I don’t know if I’d be able to face all this without
you”.

             
“...
Mook
?”

             
“Yeah.
Mook
. Don’t even deny it”.

             
“I can’t deny it; I don’t even know what it means”.

             
“And that’s why you’re a
mook
”.

Riley reached over his wife’s shoulder and grabbed her
by the back of her head. Playfully he pulled her over into a laying position
and jumped on top of her so that she couldn’t sit up. At first she tried to
lazily push him off. But her protests were shortly drowned out by the kiss that
he laid on her. And before long any resistance that she was hoping to put forth
melted away.

“Would it be situation-inappropriate to say that I
want to have sex with you?” he asked with mock concern on his face.

“It would. How dare a husband want to have sex with
his wife on their vacation”
.

“Seriously,” he laughed, “I feel like I should feel
bad about it or something. I feel like I’m trying to have a quickie on the way
to a funeral”.

Violet placed a hand on his cheek and pulled him in
for a kiss, “There’s no reason to feel bad. At all. I think that maybe we
should have a little bit of us time to get our minds off of everything. We
might need to go slowly and work our way up to things though. It’s
been...awhile”.

Riley looked up and at their surroundings, noting the
destroyed couch that they were laying on, “Even here?”

Violet looked at the condition of the sofa too and
grimaced, “Preferably not”.

“There’s not a whole lot of options in this place.
It’s either the couch, the cot in
Poyam’s
room, the
bedroom or the lake”.

“What’s with you and wanting to do things in that
lake? Don’t you know that people pee in that?”

Riley laughed and pressed himself against her leg,
“Why do you think I’m so excited over the idea?”

Violet pushed her husband off with a giggle, “You’re a
pervert”.

He grabbed his wife by the ass as she stood before she
got the chance to twist away from him, “You’ve got no idea. I’m wanted in a
dozen states for the kinky things I’m into”.

He still had her by the waist with his hands as she
faced away towards the stairs. To tease him she would make small motions with
her hips, shaking her behind in his face suggestively as he sat on the couch
mesmerized.

“Oh, yeah? How come I’m only hearing about this now?”
she asked as she bent at the knees, rubbing herself gently against his lap.

Riley reached out and ran his hands up her legs,
resting his fingers in the warmth between her thighs.

“I’ve bribed a lot of people so that I didn’t have to
alert the
neighbours
every time I move”.

She reached back and grabbed his hands to prevent him
from being so touchy, “The customers aren’t allowed to have any contact with
the dancers without their express permission. You don’t want to meet the bouncers,
now do you?”

“You’re a dancer now?” he asked with a salacious lick
of his lip.

Still facing away from him, Violet spread her legs
apart as she bent over at the hips, grabbing her ankles with her hands to give
her husband a prime view.

He made a small
whinge
as if
in pain as he tried to resist touching her again.

“I guess that answers my question”.  

She twirled on the balls of her feet back in his
direction. She pushed apart his knees and lowered herself between them to the
floor.

“Enough of all this, sir, what’s the real plan here?
This couch is disgusting,
Poyam’s
room is creepy and
small and the master bedroom...well...that’s the master bedroom, isn’t it...”

“Yeah, the bedroom isn’t the honeymoon suite, is it?
I’ve been trying my best not to think about all of the nightmares that might
have occurred there. But the fact is that most if not everything we’ve been
told probably did. And the fact is that we’ll need to sleep in there again at
some point in this week if we are playing on staying. I figure what’s the
difference between sleeping in there...and not sleeping?”

Violet lowered her head more gloomily than sexually,
her hair dancing around the swelling in his jeans.

“I kind of forgot about needing to sleep there. My
mind has been so focused on all of what happened in there that it didn’t even
cross my mind that I’d need to go back in. I sincerely don’t know if I’ll be
able to get any rest in there”.

Riley exhaled forcefully and scratched his head as he
struggled to find a way to smooth things over, “People... People die every day
in virtually every place in the world. If a place has existed on this Earth
long enough, someone will have died there, possibly horribly. And probably
horribly, pending the location. I don’t think that we can put too much thought
into what had occurred here or elsewhere, because that’s all in the past.
Right? It’s just a room to us now. It’s an ugly room that sends shivers down
our spines, but it’s still just a room. We’re here to move forward with
everything, aren’t we? How about we help that room move forward with our own
little sex show?”

Violet pinned her hair back as she shook her head and
grinned from ear to ear, “You really want to get laid, don’t you? I’m half
expecting you to start pulling out a tip to shove in my underwear”.

He nodded and licked his lips again, “More than a
little bit. That is if the mood hasn’t been utterly killed yet”.