The Mouth of the Dark

by Tim Waggoner

  Nicola had continued eating while Jayce talked, and she’d almost finished her pad Thai, whereas he’d barely touched his curry. She put her plastic fork on her foam plate and pushed it aside. Jayce didn’t bother taking another bite of his food. He wasn’t really hungry.

  “If I were in your position,” Nicola said, “I’d do the same thing, I think. I don’t have children, and I’ve never been married – praise Oblivion – but I wouldn’t feel right standing around and doing nothing when someone I loved might be in danger.”

  Jayce felt a rush of gratitude toward her for understanding. Odd that a complete stranger would have more sympathy for what he was doing than Emory’s mother, but when it came to her emotional make-up, Mackenzie wasn’t exactly normal, was she?

  “Have you had any luck so far?”

  “No. I spoke to her apartment manager again early last night, but he had no idea where she might have gone. Or if she’d gone at all. I asked him to let me into her apartment so I could take a look around and see if I could find something that might give me a clue where to look for her, but he refused. I might resemble Emory and I might really be her father, but did I have any proof? The question shocked me. I realized that I didn’t have any concrete evidence that I was Emory’s father. What proof does any parent have of their relationship to their child, beyond a birth certificate? There’s no such thing as a parent ID card. I gave up trying to convince the man and headed for CrazyQwik. I don’t really know my way around the Cannery, and I walked around a while before I found it. I might’ve gone past it a half dozen times before I finally saw it.” He shrugged. “I guess I was too upset and wasn’t thinking straight.”

  “Maybe it didn’t want you to see it until it was ready.” She went on before Jayce could ask what she meant. “What’s the name of the apartment complex where Emory lives?”

  “Springhill Apartments.”

  She didn’t react to the name, so Jayce had no idea if she was familiar with the place.

  “What about the manager? Was there anything about him that struck you as out of the ordinary?”

  Jayce frowned. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  She waved the question aside. “Tell me about Emory. What’s she like?”

  He started to answer, but then he paused. No one had ever asked him to talk about the kind of person his daughter was. It should’ve been simple enough. After all, he was her father. He kept thinking of what she looked like, but he knew that wasn’t what Nicola wanted to hear. Besides, she’d seen the picture of Emory on the flier last night. Nicola was asking for something much deeper than a mere catalogue of his daughter’s physical features. But he had no idea where to begin.

  “She’s stubborn,” he said, then smiled. “That sounds negative, doesn’t it? Maybe I should say strong-willed. She was like that when she was a baby. If she wasn’t tired, she refused to go to bed. If she wasn’t hungry, she wouldn’t eat. She didn’t make a big fuss or anything. Didn’t cry, didn’t pout. But you couldn’t get her to do anything she didn’t want to do. It had to be her idea, and no one else’s.”

  “I don’t want to upset you, but she sounds like the kind of person who, if she wanted to take a break from her usual routine for a couple weeks – or even longer – might not tell anyone. Especially not the people she was taking a break from.”

  He didn’t appreciate the last bit Nicola said, but as much as he wanted to, he couldn’t argue with it.

  “I thought of that,” he admitted. “But I can’t escape the feeling that something bad has happened to her. I suppose you can call it father’s intuition.” He broke off then, his attention caught by a new customer entering the restaurant.

  The man was in his thirties, wore a gray suit with a dark red tie, and he carried a metal briefcase. All of that was ordinary enough, but what struck Jayce as odd was what he wore on his hands: a pair of bright green rubber gloves that went from his fingers to his elbows. They looked like industrial gloves of some kind, the sort of thing people who worked with dangerous chemicals might wear to protect themselves. The man didn’t walk up to the counter to order, though. Instead, he ignored the woman at the register, grabbed a handful of spicy Thai sauce packets from a serving container next to her, and then walked to an empty table. He put the sauce packets on the table, pulled out a chair, put his briefcase on it, and then pulled out another chair for himself. He sat and began removing napkins from the table dispenser with his gloved fingers. As he removed each one, he placed it carefully on the table and neatly laid the next one atop it. He continued this process until he’d emptied the dispenser and all the napkins lay in an orderly pile before him. He then took the sauce packets and opened them one at a time. Jayce couldn’t figure out how the man managed to tear the packets while wearing those gloves. How could he get a grip on the plastic with his fingers covered by thick rubber? But he had no difficulty. As each packet was opened, he squeezed its contents onto the pile of napkins. He placed each empty packet carefully on the table next to the napkins, and when he was finished, the napkins were a red-soaked mess. No one else in the restaurant paid any attention to the man. As near as Jayce could tell, they were completely unaware of his presence.

  The man gazed upon the mess he’d created with undisguised hunger, bordering on lust. Then he picked up the napkins and began eating them. He started slowly at first, but he gained speed with each mouthful until by the end he was jamming napkins into his mouth as fast as he could, sauce smearing his face and splattering onto his suit.

  Still no one seemed to notice.

  When the man finished, his gloves were coated with sauce. Jayce thought he might remove them then, that perhaps he’d worn them to keep his hands clean during his disgusting meal. Although why he’d worry about getting his hands messy when he didn’t seem to care about his face and clothes, Jayce had no idea. But he kept his gloves on, and he made no attempt to clean the sauce from them. Nor did he wipe the sauce from his face. How could he? He’d eaten all his napkins.

  The man stood and picked up his briefcase. Jayce had stared at him the entire time he ate, but the man had paid no attention to him. But now he looked toward Jayce, and the two men locked gazes. There was nothing especially intimidating about the man’s eyes. No hint of anger, no sign of madness, no trace of emotion whatsoever. Finally, he gave Jayce a nod and headed for the exit. As he left the restaurant, he left a smear of sauce on the door handle.

  “Thank you. Come again!” the woman behind the counter called after him.

  Jayce turned to Nicola, but before he could ask her if she’d seen the same thing he had, she spoke.

  “I’ve seen him around. Don’t know his name. He always has that case with him. I wonder what’s in it.”

  Jayce frowned. “You saw what he ate, right?”

  “Of course I did. Believe me, it’s not the worst thing I’ve seen someone eat. But what interests me is that you saw it. You’ve got the Eye.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “You see things that most people don’t.” She nodded toward the table splattered with Thai sauce and littered with empty packets. “Like our friend with the green gloves.”

  “I’ve never seen anything like him before. Same for those kids in the alley last night.”

  She frowned. “Really? I mean, it was obvious you didn’t know how to handle dog-eaters, but you’re saying you’re not used to seeing.…” She paused, as if trying to find the right way to put it. “Weird things?” she finished.

  He was going to say he wasn’t, but then he thought of seeing the gray-hued feet outside the restroom stall when he was thirteen.

  “Not usually.”

  She looked at him a moment before shrugging. “Maybe you’re a late bloomer. Or maybe there’s another reason. It doesn’t matter. What’s important is that it might just help you find your daughter.”

  She reached into h
er purse, removed a business card from a plastic holder, found a pen, and wrote something on the back of the card. She then put her pen away and handed the card to Jayce. He read what she’d written.

  11:00 pm. 1407 Mercantile Drive.

  “Meet me there tonight,” she said, “and we’ll see what we can do about finding Emory.”

  Without waiting for his reply, she stood, smiled at him, and then walked out of the restaurant. He turned and watched through the front window as she got into her car, pulled out of the parking lot, and headed down the road, presumably on her way to the next doctor’s office on her list for the day.

  He turned away from the window, looked down at the back of Nicola’s card once more, and then looked at the sauce splatter the man with the green gloves had left on the surface of his table. He had no idea what was going on, but if there was any chance that Nicola could help him, then he’d meet her tonight. But he couldn’t help wondering what the hell he was getting himself into.

  * * *

  Because Jayce’s back was to the window, he didn’t notice a red pickup truck with license plates that read OHIO PIG drive slowly past the restaurant. Nor did he see the man behind the wheel glare at his back before driving away.

  * * *

  Since Jayce had called off work, he went directly home after leaving About Thaime. Mackenzie got the house in the divorce, and he’d moved into a one-bedroom apartment not far from the office where he worked. When he’d been looking for a new place to live, he’d been half-tempted to move into Springhill Apartments so he could be close to Emory, but he’d wisely decided against it. He didn’t want to cramp Emory’s style, and he didn’t want her to think her father was overly needy – even if at that time in his life he was. Now he wished he had moved there. Maybe he would’ve been able to forge a closer relationship with his daughter. If he had, maybe he’d know more about her life and he’d have a better idea of where to look for her. Or maybe she wouldn’t have gone missing in the first place.

  Once inside his apartment, he went to the kitchen to take some pain meds. His head wasn’t hurting too bad, but his hand was throbbing like a sonofabitch. He took four ibuprofen with water, and then went into his bedroom, where his laptop and printer rested atop an old card table positioned in one corner. He booted up his computer, turned on the printer, and printed more Emory fliers, more to have something to do than for any other reason. While they were printing, he logged onto the Internet and looked up the address Nicola had given him, but he didn’t find any references to it. He entered the address into a direction-finding website, but he again came up empty. He supposed he shouldn’t be surprised. It was just one more bit of weirdness to add to what was becoming a rather lengthy list.

  He considered taking a nap, but he wasn’t tired, and naps tended to make him feel groggy when he woke up. He couldn’t bring himself to plunk his ass down in front of the TV and zone out while he waited for nighttime, though. His mind was buzzing with everything that had happened since last night, and his divorced, middle-aged bachelor pad felt smaller, shabbier, and more confining than usual.

  As he waited for the fliers to finish printing, he thought about what Nicola had said at the restaurant. You’ve got the Eye. If he did, he sure as hell could do without it. He liked living in a world where he knew nothing about teenagers who devoured stray dogs and men who ate napkins while wearing green rubber gloves. A memory tickled at the back of his mind then, but he couldn’t recall any specific details about it. Couldn’t – or didn’t want to? He forced himself to concentrate, and slowly some details returned to him. It had happened when Emory was a child, when he and Mackenzie took her someplace special. The zoo or maybe the circus. Animals were involved, he was sure about that. His color printer was old and had seen plenty of use in its time, and it took a while for it to print each flier. The printer still had a ways to go, and on impulse, he took his phone from his pocket and called Mackenzie.

  The phone rang on the other end a number of times, and he thought the call was going to go through to voicemail, but then Mackenzie answered.

  “Hello, Jayce. What do you want?”

  For a long time when he’d called after the divorce, she’d sounded exasperated. But these days, she just sounded bored.

  “Just checking to see if you’ve heard from Emory.”

  “We’ve been over this before. If I hear from her, I’ll let you know. Immediately.”

  Her tone was that of a frustrated teacher repeating something for a particularly inattentive – and not particularly bright – student.

  “That’s not really an answer,” he said.

  She sighed. “I don’t have time for this right now. I was in the middle of something when you called.”

  Mackenzie’s new husband, a high-end real estate agent, made plenty of money, and she didn’t need to work these days. What did she have to do that was so important? Count all their money and stack it in neat, even piles?

  He hurried on before she could say goodbye and disconnect. “Do you remember the time we took Emory to the—” Which was it? He took a guess. “Zoo?”

  Mackenzie didn’t answer right away, and he wondered if she’d disconnected without him realizing it. But then she answered.

  “We took her to the zoo a number of times.”

  “I’m talking about the time when the strange thing happened.” He fought to dredge up more details. “When Emory saw something.”

  “I really don’t have time for this, Jayce. I’m sure Emory will get in contact with one or both of us soon.”

  She disconnected before he could say anything else, and without saying goodbye.

  He tucked his phone back into his pants pocket. He’d been married to Mackenzie for fifteen years, and he could tell when she was uncomfortable discussing a subject. Her words became clipped, she spoke more rapidly, and she bailed on the conversation as soon as she could. He’d definitely touched a nerve, but he hadn’t—

  His headache had lingered in the background while he spoke with Mackenzie, but now it came roaring back to life, far worse than before. He gritted his teeth and squeezed his eyes shut. He grabbed hold of the sides of his head as if he feared it might explode and was desperately trying to keep it from doing so. His skull felt like one of those boxes magicians put their assistants in and then inserted one sword after another. Each blade of pain was more agonizing than the last, and he fell to his knees, rolled onto the floor, and curled up in a ball of utter misery. What the fuck was wrong with him? Had the doctor who’d examined him at the ER screwed up and not realized how seriously he’d been hurt last night, when the back of his head collided with the alley wall? Maybe his brain had been injured to the point where it was bleeding, and the blood had built up inside and now, trapped by his skull, it had nowhere to go. Maybe instead of exploding, his head would implode, the pressure squeezing his brain into tapioca. But then the pain – all of it – vanished. The sudden relief caught him off guard, so much so that he drew in a surprised gasp.

  And then he remembered.

  * * *

  “Look, Daddy! There’s a jaff!”

  Emory, five years old, points to an enclosure where a pair of giraffes stand motionless, and Jayce wonders if the heat’s too much for them. It’s July, and the sunlight beats down with almost physical force. There’s weight with the heat, making each step, each movement an effort. Not for Emory, though. She seems immune to the heat, full of energy and excited by each new animal she encounters. He’s envious of her. All he wants to do is leave, get in the car, crank the AC as high as it will go, and head home and jump in an ice-cold shower.

  “It’s giraffe, dear.”

  Mackenzie draws out the word – juh-raaaafff – to make sure Emory hears the difference from the way she pronounced it. Mackenzie is thirty-three, but she looks ten years younger. She’s slender, muscles toned from regular exercise, and she moves with easy, confide
nt grace. She wears her straight brown hair in a ponytail to keep it off her neck, and although she’s slathered herself in sunscreen – and made sure Jayce and Emory did too – her skin has red blotches here and there. Mackenzie and the sun do not get along. Her white Put-in-Bay T-shirt, shorts, and flip-flops are supposed to help her deal with the heat, but she still looks as miserable as Jayce feels. Despite how obviously uncomfortable she is – or maybe, in a strange way, because of it – he finds her heartachingly beautiful at this moment. He thinks he’s the luckiest man alive, and he breaks out in a wide grin. Mackenzie notices, frowns slightly, and cocks her head to the side, as if asking what he’s smiling about. But then Emory starts running toward the giraffe enclosure and the both of them hurry to catch up to her.

  Jayce, like Mackenzie, is wearing a T-shirt and shorts. His shirt says Do You Know What Time It Is? It’s the slogan for the insurance company he works for. He likes the slogan because it’s provocative and a little enigmatic. When he wears the shirt, sometimes people ask him what the slogan means, which gives him the opportunity to talk to them about their insurance needs and give them one of his cards. He’s not an overly aggressive salesperson, but he believes in taking advantage when an opportunity presents itself.

  Emory stands at the edge of the ‘jaff’ enclosure. There’s a metal fence with a thick, rounded railing on top. It’s taller than Emory, and when Jayce and Mackenzie get there, she turns to Jayce and holds up her arms. Jayce smiles and picks her up so she can have a better view. Her skin is dry but she’s hot as a miniature oven, and it doesn’t take long for the added heat to make him feel nauseous. He doesn’t put her down, though. He’s a daddy, and daddies tough it out.

  A moat of sorts surrounds the enclosure. Empty of water, but it’s effective at keeping distance between the animals and the people who come to stare at them. The ground within is simple packed earth, but there are fake rock formations that Jayce supposes are designed to make the enclosure appear more wild, but they just look stupid to him. The giraffes gaze at them, standing motionless, not so much as twitching an ear. They could be museum replicas of giraffes, formed of plastic, metal, and wire beneath their artificial spotted hides.