The Mouth of the Dark

by Tim Waggoner

  “Want to try a drag?”

  Jayce’s gorge rose and he felt hot bile at the back of his throat.

  “No thanks.”

  The man shrugged and returned the cigarette to his mouth. Smoke started coiling from his eye sockets once more.

  “You’ve got a scent about you that I can’t identify,” the doorman said, “but there’s something wrong about it. Seriously wrong. Dead leaves, rot, sour-yellow moonlight.… If I didn’t know better, I’d say it—” He broke off, paused, and spoke a name then, saying it so softly that Jayce wasn’t sure he heard it right. It sounded like he’d said the Harvest Man.

  Before Jayce could ask the doorman what he meant, he heard the sound of heels clacking on the sidewalk behind him. He turned and saw Nicola approaching. She looked like she was dressed for a night on the town. She wore a little black dress – emphasis on the little – pearl earrings, gold chain necklace, and a gold bracelet on her left wrist. She had on full makeup – red lipstick, eyeliner, and light green eyeshadow, and she carried a small black purse cradled against her side. She looked great, and for a moment all Jayce could do was stare at her. Despite the fact she wasn’t wearing a coat, she didn’t appear to be bothered by the night’s chill.

  “You’re early,” she said.

  He smiled back. He felt as if he should compliment her on how she looked, but that seemed absurd. They weren’t meeting for a date.

  She looked past him to the man Jayce had begun to think of as Shit-Smoker.

  “How’s it going, Trevor?”

  By this point the man’s cigarette had burned almost all the way down. He took a last drag, dropped the butt to the sidewalk, and crushed it with a boot. The cigarette might have been extinguished, but its stomach-churning stench lingered like a toxic cloud.

  “Same as usual. This guy says he’s a friend of yours. Is that true?”

  She stepped closer to Jayce and slipped her hand under his arm.

  “Oh, yes. We go way back.”

  She looked at Jayce and gave him a wink. Jayce smiled again but otherwise didn’t reply. She faced Trevor once more.

  “Is there a problem?” she asked.

  “He wants to go in, but he smells wrong.”

  “I’ll vouch for him. That should be good enough, shouldn’t it?”

  Trevor looked doubtful. He pulled another cigarette and a packet of matches from his shirt pocket, lit the cigarette, tossed the dead match away, and put the rest back in his pocket.

  He shook his head, cigarette clamped tight in his mouth, but he said, “Okay, you can go inside. Just don’t start any trouble, okay?”

  Jayce started to protest, but Nicola tightened her hand on his arm. He got the message and kept his mouth shut. And then she and Jayce stepped through a cloud of screaming skin flakes and foul-smelling smoke and entered the building.

  Chapter Seven

  They entered an empty lobby that looked as if it hadn’t been used since the Sixties. The tiled floor had a bland design – black swirls and streaks of gray – and the furniture was blocky and covered with stiff-looking orange fabric. There was a reception desk inside made from heavy dark wood, with a leather-covered office chair behind it. The surface of the desk was clear of equipment – no phone and certainly no computer. There was a large fake plant in a brown plastic pot sitting on the floor next to the desk, with flat fronds colored an unconvincing artificial green. A clock hung on the lime-green wall behind the desk, a minimalist thing with the numbers represented by gold-colored metal line segments and the thin hour and minute hands made of the same material. There was no second hand. The time was 11:05.

  The thing that struck Jayce as most strange about the lobby wasn’t its anachronistic look but the fact that everything appeared brand new, and there wasn’t a speck of dust anywhere.

  “What is this place?” he asked. “Some kind of office building?”

  “Once,” Nicola said. “The top two floors aren’t used much anymore.” She paused, then added, “Not by anything you’d want to meet, that is. We’re going downstairs. That’s where all the action is.”

  She led him across the lobby, her heels clacking on the tiles, toward a lone elevator, the door painted a lackluster taupe.

  “Why does this place have a blind doorman?” he asked.

  “Why do you think?” Nicola countered.

  He thought of how Trevor had inhaled through his nostrils when Jayce had approached him. You’ve got a scent about you that I can’t identify, but there’s something wrong about it. Seriously wrong.

  The answer came to him then. “Because he can smell trouble.”

  Nicola grinned. “Exactly!”

  Is that what Trevor had scented on him? Trouble? If so, it hadn’t been enough for him to forbid Jayce entry, not with Nicola as his escort. He thought about telling Nicola what Trevor had said and asking her who or what the Harvest Man was, but it didn’t feel like the right time. Besides, he was here because Nicola had offered to help him find Emory, and he should be focusing on his daughter, not on what some weird guy who exhaled through his eye sockets had said.

  They reached the elevator and Nicola pressed the down button. In response, a loud metallic grinding sound came from behind the door, and Jayce could feel the tiles vibrate beneath his feet. He imagined ancient machinery straining in the walls, rotors spinning, fraying cables rising and lowering. It took a while, but the elevator juddered to a halt on the first floor, a ding sounding to announce its arrival, and the door slid slowly open to reveal the car was empty. Nicola stepped in, pulling Jayce with her. She pushed a button labeled Lower Level, the door closed, and the elevator started to descend with ratcheting, grinding, and clanking sounds.

  “Whoever keeps the place clean doesn’t know dick about maintaining elevator equipment,” Jayce said. He glanced at Nicola. She looked good in her black dress. Real good.

  “I feel underdressed standing next to you,” he said.

  “Don’t worry. There isn’t a dress code.”

  As the elevator continued its tortuous descent, Jayce detected a high-pitched sound. He felt more than heard it, and it set his teeth on edge.

  “Do you hear that? It’s like some kind of electronic whine.”

  She nodded. “It takes some getting used to.”

  The elevator came to a halt, and the door opened with another ding.

  “We’re here,” Nicola said. She took Jayce’s arm once more and led him out of the elevator.

  The building’s lower level was a large open space with stone columns placed at regular intervals for support. The floor was concrete, marred with dark stains that Jayce didn’t want to think about too much. The ceiling lights gave off a dim red glow that barely illuminated the place, making everything shadowy and sinister. There was a bar on one side and a raised stage against the opposite wall. There was an open space in front of the stage, for dancing presumably, and while there were people on it, they stood talking in pairs or small groups. There were tables and chairs, most of them occupied, but despite the number of people present, it wasn’t noisy. The people spoke in hushed tones, their voices joining to create a sound not unlike a strong, steady wind. But floating above this was another sound, the high-pitched tone Jayce had detected earlier. It was more intense in here, so piercing that it felt like someone had implanted a metal wire in his brain and was running a current through it. It was impossible to determine where the sound originated; it seemed to be coming from all around them. But some instinct pulled his gaze toward the stage where a naked woman sat cross-legged, wisps of white hair clinging to her otherwise bald head. To say she was old would’ve been a gross understatement. She was little more than a thin layer of bark-like skin stretched tight over a skeleton. She looked like a scarecrow made of old cloth and sticks, Jayce thought, and given everything he’d experienced in the last day, he wouldn’t have been surprised if she
were. Her eyes were closed, her mouth wide open, revealing gums through which only a few gray nubs of teeth protruded.

  “I think she’s supposed to be some kind of entertainment,” Nicola said. “She’s always here, sitting just like that, and she never takes a break.”

  “So she’s making that sound?”

  Nicola nodded. “The first few times I came here, I ended up with a terrible headache by the time I left. Come on. Let’s get some drinks.”

  She took his arm once again and steered him over to the bar. They threaded between tables as they made their way, and Jayce looked at the people they passed. Most of them appeared normal enough at first glance, but there was a handful of people whose physical appearance was so dramatically distorted that Jayce wasn’t sure they qualified as human. These folk sat by themselves at tables where the shadows were thickest. Jayce couldn’t make out much more than their general outlines, but their limbs were mismatched – different lengths and thicknesses – shoulders uneven, heads too big or too small. He felt a deep sense of wrongness coming from them, one that only partially had to do with their physical appearance. It was a psychic impression, as if their presence alone was a violation of reality.

  The woman behind the bar was a redhead in her thirties. At least, Jayce guessed she was a redhead because of the freckles on her face. The crimson lights made it difficult to determine her actual hair color. She appeared normal enough at first, but as she mixed a drink, he noticed that she had two extra fingers on each hand, and that all her fingers moved in a flopping, rubbery way, like tentacles. There were several chairs at the bar, each of them taken. The men and women who sat there were like the bartender, appearing generally normal until you took a closer look at them. One man had a left eye larger than his right one, about the size of a softball, and Jayce had to fight to keep from staring at it. Next to him sat a woman whose ears were shaped like a horse’s and covered with light fur. Most of the people in the club dressed normally enough, but some wore suits or dresses that looked like they belonged in a different decade, if not in a different century.

  There was a glassed-in refrigerated cabinet mounted on the wall behind the bar, but instead of displaying bottles of various types of alcohol, they held vessels, several dozen in all, some large, some small, all with the same strange symbols engraved into their surfaces. Jayce checked out the people sitting at the bar, curious to see if any of them held a vessel instead of a glass, but none did.

  The bartender finished making a drink, served it to one of the customers seated at the bar, then turned to Nicola.

  “Hey, Nicola. What’ll it be?” she asked.

  “I’ll have a white wine, Nyla. As for my friend.…”

  “A beer’s fine.”

  Jayce felt the weight of numerous gazes on him as he and Nicola waited for their drinks. He sensed curiosity, suspicion, and hostility, along with a growing sense of menace. It was as if the club’s denizens were sizing him up, trying to determine whether he was predator or prey. From the dark looks and hungry smiles directed his way, it looked like the general consensus had come down on the side of prey. Nyla brought them their drinks, Nicola paid for them, and then led Jayce to an empty table. He tried not to meet anyone’s gaze as they walked. He looked straight ahead and tried to appear casual and relaxed, as if he belonged here. But he walked stiffly and his skin was coated with nervous sweat, and he doubted he could’ve looked more like a stranger if he tried. He thought of the dog-eaters, and he wondered if there were any of them – or things even worse – in here. If so, was he in danger of being attacked? He thought of the stains on the floor, and he wished he’d brought some kind of weapon with him, if only for the illusion of comfort it would’ve provided.

  They sat, and each took a sip of their drink. As Nicola put her glass down on the table, she said, “This place is called Crimson Splendor. It’s a…I suppose gathering spot is the best way to describe it. It’s kind of like a private club for people like me, and – I suspect – like your daughter.”

  There wasn’t much splendor here that he could see.

  “People like you?” he asked.

  “Shadowers. People who can see – and interact with – the darker aspects of existence. You know how a snake grows a new layer of skin and then sheds the old one? Well, reality is the same way. Each nanosecond is sloughed off as a new one takes its place, and all of these dead bits of reality eventually start to pile up, creating a.…” She paused, searching for the right words. “Not a parallel reality, exactly. More like a dark reflection. It’s usually called Shadow, which is as good a name as any, I suppose. It lies alongside ordinary reality, but most people aren’t aware of it. Sometimes they sense it, though. They have a feeling that someone’s watching them, but when they turn around, no one’s there. They experience a chill on the back of their neck for some unknown reason. They catch a glimpse of a figure out of the corner of their eye, a figure which vanishes when they try to look at it straight on. Shadow is tricky. It often resembles the real world so closely that it can be difficult to tell the difference between the two. But there are people who can see Shadow for what it is and move within it.”

  “People with the Eye,” Jayce said.

  “Yes. No one seems to know for sure why some people have the Eye and some don’t. Some say you have to be born with it. Some say you develop it if something from Shadow reaches out and touches you – assuming you survive the encounter, that is.”

  Jayce thought of the thing that stood on the other side of the restroom stall. His memory was a blank from the moment he saw the creature’s gray feet to the moment he found himself back home. What had happened to him in between? Whatever it was, had it been responsible for causing him to develop the Eye? And had he, in turn, passed it on to Emory?

  “A lot of people in Shadow – maybe most of them – are like you and me, people who can not only see Shadow, but who find themselves drawn to interacting with it. So much so that some of them become permanent residents.”

  “Are those the ones who look.…” He glanced at the tables closest to them and then lowered his voice. “Different?”

  “Yes. Exposure to Shadow changes you. Sometimes faster, sometimes slower, sometimes in big ways, sometimes in small ones. But it always changes you, one way or another.”

  “You still seem.…”

  “Normal?” she smiled. “Some changes are less obvious than others. And I’m really just a dabbler when it comes to Shadow. It’s like I’m swimming in a vast dark ocean, so I make sure to stay close to shore where the water’s not too deep.”

  He thought about asking how Shadow had changed her, but he decided he didn’t know her well enough to ask that. Besides, maybe he’d be better off not knowing.

  “Shadow is everywhere, but it concentrates more in some places than others,” she said. “Areas like the Cannery – run-down and mostly deserted – are prime places for Shadow to thrive. Entropy’s stronger there, and where there’s entropy, there’s Shadow. Anyway, I brought you here because I figured there was a greater chance you’d believe me about Shadow once you’d experienced Crimson Splendor in all its bizarre glory. You could always tell yourself that what happened last night, while weird, had some kind of logical explanation, but this” – she gestured to take in the people around them – “is a bit harder to rationalize. That’s my hope, anyway.”

  Jayce had to admit that her strategy had been a sound one. He supposed it was possible that all this was some sort of elaborate practical joke, but why would anyone go to such effort and expense? And the deformities he’d seen – if that was even the right word for them – looked absolutely real. He didn’t believe that makeup and special effects could create an illusion this convincing.

  “Do you think that’s what happened to Emory? That she has the Eye and has been…exploring Shadow and got lost in it somehow?”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time something bad h
appened to someone who got too curious about Shadow, believe me.”

  She sounded bitter, and Jayce guessed there was a story behind her words.

  “Shadow is dangerous,” she continued. “And not just because of the people who are changed by it. There are beings native to Shadow, creatures that feed on the decaying cast-offs of reality, like carrion-eaters disposing of a dead animal in the woods.”

  Jayce felt a fist of ice punch him in the gut. “Are you saying you think Emory is dead?”

  “I’m saying there are all kinds of things that can happen to people in Shadow if they aren’t careful – and even if they are – and all of them are bad.”

  “You make it sound like there’s no point in looking for her. If you think it’s so damn hopeless, why did you offer to help me?”

  Nicola smiled and reached across the table and took his hand. The contact startled him, and he almost jerked his hand away. It was the first time since he divorced Mackenzie that a woman had touched him. Had it really been that long?

  “I didn’t say it was hopeless. But if you’re going to start poking around in Shadow looking for her, you need to know what you’re getting into – and you need to be prepared for the possibility that your search may not turn out the way you want.”

  “So she might be dead.” He thought of what he’d found in her apartment – the vessels in her refrigerator, and most of all, the Pink Devil that had raped him. “Or she might be changed.”

  “Yes,” Nicola said.

  They sat in silence for several moments after that. Nicola drank her wine, while Jayce sat, leaving his beer untouched as he processed everything she had told him. Then, when he was ready, he began speaking again.

  “After we had lunch, I couldn’t make myself sit around and wait to meet you here, so I visited Emory’s apartment.” He then proceeded to tell her everything that had happened between their meeting at the restaurant and the moment she’d approached him outside Crimson Splendor. He even told her about his encounter with the Pink Devil, although he edited that account considerably.