by Tim Waggoner
tim waggoner
The Mouth of the Dark
FLAME TREE PRESS
London & New York
Prologue
It’s dark, the air hot, thick, and heavy. She’s naked, skin coated with a layer of slime that makes her itch all over. She wants to scratch – God, how she wants to – but she can’t move. She’s held fast, like an insect trapped in tree sap, her back, arms, and legs pressed into some kind of sticky substance, leaving only her head free. She faces downward, head hanging. She’s too weak to lift it, and since she can’t see anything, why bother?
She’s not alone. She can hear others breathing. Sometimes she hears them moan softly, but she never hears them speak. She figures they’re not strong enough to talk. She knows she isn’t. She senses that they’re stuck in the same whatever-it-is as she, but she has no real way of knowing. They just feel close to her.
There are still others here, wherever here is. These others are not constrained, and they move around freely. They aren’t here often, coming and going as they please, and they never speak. At least, she’s never heard them do so. They move almost silently, but she’s been hanging here long enough that she’s learned to detect the subtle sounds that they make. The rustle of cloth, the soft padding of rubber-soled shoes.… Most times they go past her without stopping, and she’s very grateful when this happens. Other times they do stop, and then.…
She doesn’t like to think about what happens then.
She sleeps much of the time. At least, she thinks she does. How can she tell when it’s always dark and quiet and time has no meaning? She can’t remember the last time she ate or drank. She’s not hungry or thirsty, though. She thinks the slime that coats her flesh might be feeding her somehow, but it’s only a guess. It could just as easily be killing her. How would she know?
Time passes – she doesn’t know how much – and eventually she hears the distinct rustle of cloth. Although it’s pitch-black, she closes her eyes, the way a very young child might do in the hope that if she can’t see anything then she can’t be seen either. She wills the Other to pass her by. She doesn’t bother praying. She may not know much about this dark place, but she knows this much: prayers don’t work here.
The rustling grows louder, closer, and then it stops. She hears faint breathing – shallow and even – and she senses a presence close by. She squeezes her eyes shut tighter, as if by doing so she can banish the Other standing beneath her. She struggles to speak, to say No, please don’t, but the most she can do is let out a near-silent exhalation of breath as she mouths the words. It doesn’t matter. Even if she could scream the words, she knows her plea would be ignored.
She hears another rustle of cloth and feels something cold and hard press against her bare abdomen. It’s rounded and solid, metal of some kind, she thinks. She imagines it’s the end of some kind of staff. She can feel weight behind it, as if someone’s pressing it against her flesh. The slime retreats from the spot where the metal touches, as if to make sure not to interfere with what is to come next. Or maybe it fears the metal’s touch as much as she does.
The metal begins to grow warmer the longer it’s pressed against her, and the heat quickly becomes uncomfortable, then painful, then agonizing, until finally it becomes excruciating. There’s light, too, and she can see it blaze even through her closed lids. Tears pour from her eyes and she grits her teeth so hard she wouldn’t be surprised if they shattered. It’s at this point that she always wishes she will pass out from the pain, but she never does. She thinks it’s because the Others don’t want her to.
Then, when it feels as if the metal is molten-hot and will burn a hole all the way through her to the spine, the rod is removed, and she hears the Other step back several feet. Even though the metal is no longer in contact with her body, her abdomen still burns. She feels the warmth inside her now, feeding on her, growing stronger, becoming…something. Her abdomen swells rapidly, as if she’s experiencing a hyper-fast pregnancy. Her flesh grows tighter, harder, until finally it splits down the middle and something slides out of her with a wet sucking sound. It hits the floor with a heavy smack and just lies there.
The pain is beyond anything she’s ever felt before being brought to this place, beyond anything she’s ever imagined was possible for a human body to experience, let alone endure. She hopes the pain will kill her this time. At least then she won’t have to go through this anymore. But then the Other steps forward and touches the staff to her abdomen again. This time the metal’s touch is cool and soothing, and she feels the terrible injury that’s been done to her start to heal.
No, she thinks. Please, let me bleed out.…
When the repair is complete, the Other removes the staff or rod or whatever it is and walks away, off to tend to another of the trapped. The thing that fell out of her is left behind, and after a while it begins to move, making moist sounds as sticky limbs slide against each other. Finally, it stands, and she can hear the wet sounds of its bare feet moving as it readjusts its weight, struggling to remain standing. It comes closer to her, puts its lips to her ear, and whispers its first words.
“Hello, Mother.”
Chapter One
“Have you seen this woman?”
Jayce Lewis held out a flier with a color photo of Emory on it, one of a stack that he carried under his arm. Then, realizing how clichéd and impersonal the question sounded, he added, “She’s my daughter, and she used to work here. She’s…missing.”
He hated using the word missing. As if she’d merely been misplaced. But it was better than abducted, and infinitely better than dead.
The man behind the CrazyQwik convenience store counter was in his early forties, Jayce guessed. About a decade younger than him. His hair was slate-gray and he wore it pulled back in a ponytail. He was clean-shaven, without a hint of stubble, despite the lateness of the hour. He was thin – unhealthily so – and his skin had a sickly cast. The man – Virgil according to his nametag – didn’t take the flier from Jayce. Instead, he leaned over the counter to get a closer look at it. He gave off a strange scent, an acrid-sweet odor, like rotting flowers, and Jayce wondered if the guy was ill. He smelled like he was being eaten away from the inside. Jayce tried to keep the disgust he felt from showing on his face as he drew his head back and turned it slightly to the side to avoid the worst of the smell. It didn’t help, though. The odor was too strong.
Virgil stared at Emory’s photo for several moments, not blinking the entire time, as if he was focusing all his concentration on it, absorbing every detail and committing it to memory.
“The picture’s a couple years old,” Jayce said. It was, in fact, Emory’s senior high school picture, and it had been taken about two years ago. It was the most recent photo of her that he had. In it, she wore a white blouse and posed with one arm across a blue velvet platform, chin resting lightly on her other hand. Her brown hair was long and straight, and she wore minimal makeup that highlighted her features without being obvious about it. Her mouth was quirked up at one side in a half smile, and there was a mischievous glint in her eyes that said, I know something you don’t. She was beautiful, and this picture made her look even more so. Jayce wished he had a more ordinary, plain photo of her, though. He had the feeling that Virgil was staring so intently at her picture because of how she looked, not because the man gave a rat’s ass about helping him find her.
This was the first time Jayce had been in CrazyQwik. He’d never seen one before, so he assumed it was a local store and not part of a chain. The store stocked the usual types of products – snacks, drinks, cigarettes, magazines, and the like – but there were odd differences, too. There was a small s
ection for what looked like taxidermy supplies labeled Necromantia, and a section called Ferricles that displayed twisted pieces of rust-covered scrap metal. What anyone would want with those, Jayce had no idea. The coolers in the rear of the store contained another oddity. Inside were clay jars, lids sealed with wax, none of them the exact same size and shape. There were markings carved onto their surfaces, symbols that made no sense to Jayce, and he figured they must indicate the jars’ contents. Jayce wasn’t the only customer in CrazyQwik that evening. A woman stood in front of the cooler, a contemplative look on her face, as if she was trying to decide which jar to select. She made no move to open the cooler door, though. Instead, she took a step back, as if to get a broader perspective on the problem.
Jayce guessed her to be in her mid-to-late thirties, although it was difficult to tell her age from the way she was dressed. She wore all black – a long-sleeved blouse, glasses, skirt, leggings, and knee-high boots with thick rubber soles. She wore large silver hoop earrings that had gossamer-thin filaments inside that shimmered in the light and made him think of dew-covered spider silk. It was a strange effect, but beautiful. The woman was short, five feet tall, maybe an inch or two shorter. Her long black hair was thick and full of body, and it looked slightly mussed, like she’d just gotten out of bed. She wasn’t typically pretty, but she was striking. Her features were sharp, and she exuded a relaxed confidence that Jayce found attractive and more than a little intimidating.
Virgil finished examining Emory’s picture, and he leaned back and looked at Jayce.
“Don’t know her. Sorry.”
“Like I said, it’s an older picture of her. She worked here for a while, though.” He didn’t say how long because he didn’t know. There was a lot he didn’t know about Emory. Too much.
Virgil shrugged again.
That shrug was starting to piss Jayce off. But he kept his irritation from showing on his face or in his voice. Suppressing his emotions came easily to him. Too easily, according to his ex-wife.
“Who schedules the employees? Is there a manager I can talk to?”
“We don’t have managers per se,” Virgil said. “We don’t really have schedules, either.”
Jayce frowned. “How does that work?”
He gave another goddamned shrug. “It’s hard to explain. Basically, you show up when you want to, work for as long as you want, and then leave.”
Jayce wondered if the man was putting him on.
“How do you get paid?”
“We take money out of the register before we go. Only five percent, though. You can’t take any more. If you do.…” Another shrug.
Jayce was pissed now, but still fought to keep from showing it.
“Look, I don’t mind you messing with me, as long as you tell me the truth about my daughter. So I’ll ask one more time, and please – no joking. Do you know her?”
Before Virgil could respond, a woman’s hand reached out and took the flier from Jayce. The woman in black held a clay jar in her left hand, and the flier in her right as she examined Emory’s picture. There were words on the flier, too, of course. Details about Emory – age, height, weight, the date she went missing, where she was last seen, a contact number for Jayce, and a promise of a reward for information leading to her being found: $5,000. Not much, Jayce supposed, but it was all he had in savings.
“She’s lovely.” The woman gazed at Emory’s face a moment before handing the flier back to Jayce. “I’m sorry.”
He took it from her, unsure what to say. Now that they were face to face, he could see she had bright, almost piercing green eyes, and having them trained on him was exciting and intimidating in equal measure. Like Virgil, she had an odd scent, but unlike his, hers wasn’t unpleasant. She had a faint woody odor, kind of like acorns. A strange choice for a perfume, he thought, but he liked it. It reminded him of being in the woods.
“Have you seen her?” he managed to get out. “She’s been missing for two weeks. Eighteen days, actually. I guess that’s almost three weeks, isn’t it?” Time flew when your daughter vanished off the face of the Earth.
The woman didn’t take the flier from him to give it a second look. She kept her green-eyed gaze fixed on him as she answered.
“No, I haven’t.”
Jayce nodded for lack of any other response. Then he returned his attention to Virgil.
“Can I leave a flier here for you to put up in the window?” He held the flier out, and after a moment’s hesitation, Virgil took it.
“I’ll tape it to the counter,” he said. “Stuff doesn’t last long in the window, a half hour tops, and it’s gone. Just kind of…decays, you know?”
Jayce didn’t know if the man was making another joke or if he was a few letters short of an alphabet. Maybe both, he decided. But he didn’t want the guy to crumple the flier and toss it in the trash after he left, so he smiled and thanked him. He gave the woman a parting smile as well, then turned and headed for the door.
Behind him he heard a soft thump as the woman put her jar on the counter, and then heard voices as she and Virgil began speaking to one another. Were they talking about him? Why else would they be talking so softly? He told himself he was being paranoid, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that they were discussing him – or perhaps Emory.
He tried to put his suspicions out of his mind and focus on the positive. If Virgil made good on his promise to display the flier, there was an excellent chance one or more of the CrazyQwik’s customers would recognize Emory, and maybe – just maybe – someone might have some information about what had happened to her and where she was.
Jayce wasn’t surprised the store – and its employee – was weird. The Cannery was a mix of fast-food joints, hole-in-the-wall restaurants, seedy bars, funky small businesses, and more than a few abandoned and boarded-up buildings. It wasn’t exactly the safest place in Oakmont, and he wouldn’t have ventured into it if it hadn’t been for Emory.
He opened the door, setting off a two-note electronic tone – bee-baw – and stepped out into the night. It was the first week of March, and a light rain fell. It had snowed last week, and several inches remained on the ground. The roads and sidewalks had long since been cleared, though, and Jayce hoped winter was finally on its way out. It had been a hard one, with heavier-than-average snowfall and frigid temperatures, and he wouldn’t be sorry to see it go. And if Emory were out on the streets somewhere, living homeless, at least she wouldn’t have to deal with extreme cold. Then again, if she was on the streets of the Cannery, he supposed the weather would be among the least of her worries.
He wore a leather jacket with a removable lining to provide extra protection from the cold. He had gloves, but he’d left them in his pocket. He didn’t have a hat, hated wearing the damn things. They always mussed his hair and filled it with static. He unzipped his jacket halfway and tucked the fliers inside to protect them from the rain. He held them close to his body and then zipped up the jacket. He’d started at CrazyQwik because Emory had worked there, but he had a lot of fliers, and he was determined to pass them all out before he went home. This evening, frustrated by the police’s lack of interest in Emory’s case – Young girls take off all the time without telling their families, she’ll get in touch when she’s ready – he’d decided to begin searching on his own. He’d gone home after work and started making a missing-person flier on his laptop. It took him a while to get to the point where he was satisfied with it, though. He was an insurance agent, not a graphic designer, but he thought the final result wasn’t half bad. When it was finished, he printed fifty copies and then, after reconsidering, printed fifty more. CrazyQwik had been his first stop, and he was disappointed in how it had turned out. He knew it was foolish, but he’d hoped that he’d learn something important there. Maybe even discover that Emory wasn’t really missing after all.
Emory? Yeah, she hasn’t been in here for a while. S
he moved in with a new boyfriend. Bobby Something. He works at the Harley-Davidson store on the other side of town.
So now that CrazyQwik had turned out to be a bust, he wasn’t certain where to try next. He knew so little of the life his daughter had made for herself since graduating high school, and he had no idea where to continue looking for her. Whatever he did next, he didn’t want to keep standing out here in the rain, even as light as it was. He decided he’d try the businesses on either side of CrazyQwik, a tattoo shop called Stained and a secondhand store called Dregs. He decided on Dregs first. Emory couldn’t have made much money working at CrazyQwik, and there was a good chance she shopped for clothes at Dregs. He turned right and headed for the store.
Traffic cruised by in both directions, not heavy but steady. The sidewalks weren’t crowded, probably due to the rain, but then again, it was a Tuesday night. Things probably picked up around here on the weekends. The buildings were old in the Cannery and set close together, and the street was narrow. There were streetlamps, old-fashioned things that put out weak yellow light that did little to illuminate the neighborhood. Shadows were everywhere, clinging to buildings like a black coating, pooling on the sidewalks and in the gutters like dark water, filling the alleys like something solid.
He heard his mother’s voice then, whispering a warning.
Be careful. The world’s a dangerous place.
How many times had he heard her say that while he was growing up? Thousands, he supposed. But that didn’t make her wrong.
As he passed in front of the alley between CrazyQwik and Dregs, he heard movement. Scuffling, skittering, a growl, a chunk, then a brief sharp whine. He knew better than to stop, knew he should keep going to Dregs, or maybe head straight to his car, go home, and come back tomorrow when it was light out. But he did stop, for reasons that weren’t entirely clear to him, and he turned to face the darkness that filled the alley. He heard new sounds now – wet tearing noises followed by moans of satisfaction. He felt a warning prickle on the back of his neck, accompanied by a surge of cold panic in his chest. He needed to get out of here. Now.
