Read Online Sourmouth by Cyle James - Free Book Online

explained as he tried to pry it back from her hands.
    Violet playfully yanked it away, exiting the room and
heading back to the master bedroom, “I’m assuming that we’re opening it? It
feels like Christmas with the Manson family”.
    “Of course we’re opening it,” he said as he trailed
along, turning on the lamp by the door, “Where would my sense of adventure be
if we didn’t?”
    Violet chuckled as she plopped down on the bed, trying
to find a way to get the wire off without cutting herself, “Sense of adventure,
huh? Where has that been for the past couple years?”
    Riley chose to ignore the slight, as it likely wasn’t
meant to really offend despite its stinging effect. Instead he chose to focus
on the package and the secret that it held inside.
    The wire was tied tightly on one side, untouched for
so long the metal almost seemed to have been fused together. It took a few
minutes of prying and a layer or two of epidermis from his thumbs before it
came unconnected. Slowly he unravelled the line until
the wire fell loosely to the floor, leaving nothing but the object in a slack
plastic bag.
    Riley paused with a sly grin to look at his wife, who
had an expression of delight that he hadn’t seen on her face in a long while.
Her eyes tired from the lack of sleep and yet wide eyed in anticipation. He was
amused that all it took to make her that happy was some junk that he found in a
stranger’s attic. He was even more amused that he almost had forgotten how nice
it felt to see her like that.
    With a quick pull the garbage bag tore with a squeak,
revealing a small notebook no bigger than the average wallet. It was remarkable
how it looked a lot bigger when it was padded by the puffed up bag. The book
was auburn and grey in colour , and seemed to be made
out of some unknown texture that prompted a comparison of broken rock and
petrified bark. The book was held closed by a strayed twine string wrapped
around it and tied tightly on the back.
    “That’s it? All this fanfare for a journal?” Violet
asked, the expression of joy stricken from her face and replaced with one that
was all too familiar to her husband.
    He shrugged, “What did you expect? A bar of gold? It
probably belongs to the kid that lived here. Maybe as the baby got older it got
all teenager-like and full of angst, the kid wrote a bunch of its melodramatic
demon poetry and hid it where the parental figure couldn’t find it. Hell, maybe
the kid is the one who lived in that room. The kid grew up and got into a goth phase, drawing figures on the wall and masturbating to
nu-metal”.
    Violet huffed, “Your insane rationale isn’t wanted at
this particular juncture, Riley”.
    He took that as her not-so-subtle hint that he should
stop talking and proceed with opening up the book. Yet he found himself
hesitating. Suddenly he felt that pull on his stomach as if it was being jerked
from all sides. It was the same feeling he got before he found himself in the
attic. Riley suddenly felt like they were in danger.
    “Maybe this isn’t a good idea,” he said with a
thousand yard stare, his fingers gripped tightly on the book to ensure it
suddenly didn’t fall open.
    “What are you talking about? What happened to Mr.
Adventure? It’s a book. Let’s just open the damn thing and be done with the
mystery so we can go back to sleep,” Violet said with annoyance while looking
at her husband as if he just started speaking in tongues.
    “I know. I know. It’s a bit of a quick 180. But I’m
just getting this feeling that we shouldn’t be doing this. Let’s just toss it
back up there and forget about it?” he said, posing the last bit as a question
instead of the statement it should have been.
    Violet leaned forward and placed her hand gently on
his leg, “Hun. You’re holding a book. It’s not even a particularly well-made
book. Nobody is going to pop out of the closet room and kill us to get it back.
You’re freaking out over nothing”.
    He smiled