Skulk

by Rosie Best

  So this was good. I’d learned something. And perhaps the Skulk and the Horde could reconcile, in time.

  I just had to keep telling myself that.

  A scuttling noise sent me leaping to my paws, swaying madly in a rising cloud of brick dust, and a second later a wriggling rat’s nose appeared around the corner of the central column.

  “Oi, Skulk girl,” said the rat. I shied away, crouching to run – or to spring and sink my teeth into its mangy little neck.

  That’s hardly going to help Horde-Skulk relations, is it?

  Save it for Victoria.

  “I’m going!” I growled at the rat. “Give me a minute, for God’s sake.”

  “Shh, do you want them to hear you?” the rat hissed, clambering up over the step and into view, fixing me with a glittering black stare. It was large and brown, and male. It was the other one that’d been behind me, with Orion and the female that called me honey.

  This one hadn’t spoken.

  “I just want to give you a message,” he said.

  “From Amanda?”

  “In a way.” He sniffed at the air, glancing up and down the stairs, and then took a couple of steps closer. “The Horde and the Skulk have been at war for decades and it’s ridiculous. You don’t know what the Skulk did. I don’t even know, nor does Amanda or Ryan.”

  “So this is like... you offering a truce?”

  “If you like,” said the rat. “I’m offering you information. You want it, or not?”

  I nodded.

  “The blue stone’s not ours, ours is black. That’s all I can tell you about that.”

  “Fine,” I rasped, glad of the confirmation, though I felt far from fine.

  “You been to the Cluster and the Rabble yet?”

  “I’ve been to the Cluster. Four of them are dead – for days, at least. And I have no idea where the new ones are, or if they even know.”

  The rat hesitated, blinking his black eyes at me. He washed his ears. “That’s... unfortunate.”

  I just looked at him blearily. Unfortunate. Right. My whole life is unfortunate right now.

  “But I can tell you where to find the Rabble.”

  “I already know,” I muttered. “They meet in Kew Gardens, right?”

  “Well yeah, but you don’t wanna go up the Gardens at this time of night. You won’t find anything. You want to go round their leader’s house. She’ll talk to you.”

  I felt a yawn crawling up my throat and tried to strangle it. “What time is it, anyway?”

  “Nearly four,” said the rat.

  “And the Rabble leader will let a strange fox into her house at 4am?”

  “I think so. She’s a bit like that.” There was a scrabbling sound. I tensed, and the rat sat up on its haunches like a meerkat and peered down the stairs. “They’re coming up. I said I had to get off home. Let’s not be here, eh? You want Susanne Dirden, 42 Pacific Road, Acton. Got it? Repeat it to me.”

  “Susanne Dirden, 42 Pacific Road, Acton. 42 Pacific Road.”

  “Right,” said the rat, and vanished up the stairs like a mangy, furry rocket. I gathered my strength – though it felt like it was about enough to fill a small teacup – and scrambled after him.

  This time, the feeling of twisted déjà-vu kicked in when I was still a long way from my destination. Here I was, passing through Acton in fox form, at 4am, again. It was like the world was mocking me by sending me back here. How long had it been since that first night, when the night had opened up in front of me, promising freedom, a wide open world where I’d never have to answer to anyone? It couldn’t have been long, but when I tried to think back, I realised I couldn’t even think what day it was today.

  Last time I was here, the night had been full of excitement and adventure, and I’d been full of nervous energy, looking forward to seeing E3’s masterpiece. I hadn’t been cold. Now, that deep bone-chill was catching up to me, curling around my joints, pulling my muscles tight so I couldn’t even bring myself to move quickly to work up some heat.

  I trudged past Batman with Rainbow, hardly looking at it, and didn’t even think about trying to go back to the Arabian Dragons. I just had to get this done. If I survived tonight, I’d find some clothes and I’d find the time and I would go back to the dragons. I would.

  Pacific Road was a very ordinary street lined with terraced houses with cramped, hedged front gardens. I could smell ordinary cats and dogs, leaving their domesticated scent in a complex chessboard of overlapping territories, and a couple of other, sharper scents, mostly around the bins. Other foxes. Real foxes. I hoped I didn’t meet any tonight. I wasn’t up to defending my territory. I was starting to think about curling up at the bottom of a random garden and sleeping till morning. But something bitter and steely was creeping into my spine, overcoming even the exhaustion and the trauma.

  I had to keep going. If this was going to go horrifically wrong – if Susanne Dirden was going to have been violently murdered, or not want to listen to me – there was no point trying to put off finding out. I just wanted to know.

  Number 42 had a blue front door and the front garden was full of overgrown bushes. I sniffed carefully around the door, bracing for the increasingly familiar taste of death and blood and doom, but all I got were the scents of mud on the welcome mat, old paint on the door, and a hint of spicy food from within.

  I wondered how I ought to announce my presence. Other than with a full symphonic choir singing Dies Irae and a round of cannon fire, obviously. It would be polite to ring the doorbell. But that would mean turning human and naked in the middle of suburban Acton.

  I might be full of insane bravado, but I still wasn’t up to getting naked in the street.

  I settled for barking, as loud as I could, and scratching at the bricks beside the door, raking my claws over the uneven surface.

  After only a minute or two, light burst overhead. That was quick. Perhaps she was already awake. The window flew open and a head and shoulders appeared, frizzy hair forming a brown halo around a face in shadow.

  So far, so human. But I couldn’t see her expression from down here.

  The figure didn’t speak. I looked up at her and held her gaze, trying to convey that she was the one I wanted purely by acting unnatural and unfoxlike. Was it working? I couldn’t tell. And the staring into the light was starting to give me a headache, although it occurred to me that I was long, long overdue for one. I yapped, scratching again at the ground by the door, trying to look as intelligent as I could – although I wasn’t sure I could manage to look intelligent right now even if I had my human face on.

  For a few seconds, the figure didn’t move. Then it pulled back and the window thudded shut.

  I waited. Should I bark again? Did she think I’d gone?

  No... I heard the soft thumps of feet on carpet. She was coming down. I braced myself to run – in or out, I hadn’t decided yet.

  I heard the metallic clicking of locks being pulled back, and then the door opened. Fingers of warmth crept out onto the chilly street and I looked up at Susanne Dirden: a pair of black ankles in fuzzy blue slippers, worn grey pyjama trousers with stars on them, a brown dressing gown. Her face was still shadowed against the light in the hallway.

  “Hey,” said Susanne. “Are you from the Skulk?”

  I nodded, so hard it made me dizzy.

  “What could possibly bring you here in the middle of the night?” She frowned down at me. “Are – are you all right? You look hurt.”

  Did I? I hung my head, feeling the sting of the rats’ claws across my muzzle and my back. I didn’t realise it showed...

  “But why would you come to… I’m sorry, I’m just a little… Come in, please.” She stood aside and I half-trotted, half-fell over the threshold.

  I got a muzzle full of the spicy food smells, and reeled, drooling. The scents were warm and inviting, lived-in. I could taste ginger and cardamom and a bunch of scents I couldn’t even identify. My stomach rumbled and I let out a small whi
ne.

  “Are you hungry?” said Susanne shutting the door behind me, and putting on the chain. I twitched as it jangled into place.

  “Come into the sitting room and let me get you some clothes, and then we’ll sort you out.”

  My skin crawled. She hadn’t said it with a malicious cackle, but the words we’ll sort you out made me shiver. Who was that “we”? How would they “sort me out”? The door was shut and locked. If I’m screwed, I’m heartily screwed. I glanced about, looking for other ways out of the building. At the end of the hall there was a door into a dark place with a linoleum floor. The kitchen? Maybe there’d be a back way out through there.

  Susanne waved me through a door into a carpeted room that was almost completely taken up by two squashy-looking sofas, a wide wooden coffee table and an enormous plant that was basically a small indoor palm tree. Its fronds brushed the ceiling and trailed over the back of one of the sofas.

  “Wait just a sec,” Susanne said, and vanished. I heard her softly thumping back up the stairs.

  I shook myself, and shifted from paw to paw. With an odd, dispassionate coolness, I registered that my legs were starting to shake and my fur was creeping up and down my spine on a near-constant loop. I didn’t know how much longer I’d be able to stand. If I was going to get “sorted out” it’d better be now. I didn’t know how much longer I’d be able to keep running.

  Susanne came back with a pile of neatly-folded clothes in her arms.

  “I’m afraid they’re my son’s,” she said. “I hope they fit. I’ll take them into the bathroom and you can change in private. Then we can talk, OK?”

  I nodded.

  She led me to a door under the stairs, turned on the light and placed the clothes on the floor next to a toilet, a tiny sink and a fluffy white bathroom mat. I walked in, and Susanne closed the door.

  So far, no attacks. No blood, no shouting. I felt like I was walking a razor-sharp wire over a pit of alligators that were on fire, but I was still alive. And that had to be enough for right now.

  I stretched out my neck and my limbs, and tried to push into the change.

  It wouldn’t come.

  Panic shredded my very last nerve and I dropped to my belly on the soft mat, burying my head under my paws, every muscle in my aching body shaking. I wept, my shoulders heaving, curling my fingers over my ears, tears springing to my eyes. My spine curved up, my elbows pressed out. Sharp points of pain stung my face and neck and back, like bad paper cuts. Hair fell over my face and I shivered as my toes pressed out and touched the cool tiled floor.

  Oh. I sniffed and sat up, blinking through the film of tears at my hands, my human hands. I reached out and grabbed a fistful of loo roll and dabbed at my eyes and blew my nose. Oh, thank God.

  I had to get up in stages, curling my shaking legs under me, pulling myself up to perch on the cold wooden loo seat, then gripping the edge of the sink and leaning hard on it as I pushed myself to my feet. I looked at myself in the mirror and blinked at the alien girl who looked back at me.

  Christ, I looked a state. I gaped at my reflection for a bit, wondering when I’d got so many shallow cuts across my face, when my eyes had got so bloodshot and darkly shadowed. And my hair – it was never non-tangled unless I’d spent an hour blitzing it with anti-frizz conditioner, and that was pretty much fine with me, but right now it was elevating tangled to an entirely new level. There ought to be awards for this level of commitment to tangling.

  I scooped up the clothes, praying Susanne’s son wasn’t a skinny ten year-old. But they looked OK, and I suppose she wouldn’t have given them to me if she’d thought they wouldn’t be a good approximation for an average person.

  If I thought pulling on some woman’s knickers and bra didn’t feel right at the Tower, climbing into this boy’s Batman boxers felt one hundred per cent more wrong, even though they fit pretty well. His tracksuit bottoms and faded Foo Fighters T-shirt were soft and comfortably baggy.

  I ran the taps and splashed warm water on my face. The little cuts stung as my fingers ran over them, and turned pink around the edges. I tried to pull my hair out of my face and make myself look, if not presentable, then at least not completely mental.

  It was pretty much a lost cause.

  Then I turned, curling my toes in the soft bathroom rug, and opened the bathroom door.

  The hall was empty.

  I glanced into the kitchen – the light was on now, and I could see a cramped row of counters, piled with pots and pans and spices and recipe books, and a wooden dining table that would’ve seated about six. But Susanne wasn’t there. I guessed she was waiting in the sitting room, and stepped slowly towards the door.

  There were pictures hanging on the walls all along the hall. They mostly seemed to be posters, modern art – and a large, lovingly framed photograph of the Arabian Dragons.

  My heart felt like it swelled about four sizes, and I went into the sitting room with a smile on my face.

  Which froze and died when I saw Susanne standing in front of the coffee table with a hard look in her eyes and a shovel clutched in her hands.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “What,” I breathed. I backed away, my hands shaking violently as I raised them between me and Susanne. I braced myself to go fox again, except maybe I should run for the kitchen and smash a window and then go fox, or perhaps I could get to the front door, except the lock and the chain would slow me down.

  But Susanne was staring at me, at my face and then at my hands.

  And she was lowering the shovel.

  “You’re just a kid,” she muttered. “What do you want?”

  “Help,” I moaned. “I swear, I just, I need help!” Tears hitched my chest and I dragged my hands across my eyes. “The… one of the Horde said I could come. Someone’s after me. She took my parents. Please,” I hiccupped, “just say you’re not with Victoria, please.”

  “Oh, my dear.” Susanne dropped the shovel onto the sofa. “I’m so sorry. You have to understand – you turn up here in the middle of the night and of course I had to let you in but you could have been a robber, or anything. You understand, right?”

  I nodded, but I’d started crying and there was no stopping it – the tears seemed to have been lying in wait for me, and now they were pushing and shoving down my cheeks. My lips twisted and my shoulders hunched. I couldn’t see a thing – Susanne could’ve brained me with her shovel and I wouldn’t even have seen it coming. But instead of a cold thunk and then nothingness, I saw a dark blur moving towards me and felt strong, soft arms around my shoulders.

  I melted into the hug and wept all over Susanne’s dressing gown.

  Her voice took on a faint Jamaican lilt as she rubbed my back in firm but gentle circles and made comforting noises of the “oh, shh, there” variety. I wondered, distantly, if she’d mind just how sticky and soggy her dressing gown was getting.

  After a little while she steered me gently towards the sofa and I sank into it, next to the shovel. I’ve sat on antique Chesterfields and £800 duck-down pillows, but right then, collapsing on Susanne’s saggy sofa, with the soft brown leather cracking a little underneath me, was like being cradled in the arms of giant, saggy, cinnamon-smelling angels.

  Susanne disappeared for a couple of seconds and then set a glass of water down on the coffee table and handed me a roll of kitchen towel. I blotted at my nose and eyes, and tried to pull myself together enough to take a drink of water.

  “You must be exhausted,” said Susanne.

  “Uh huh,” I nodded.

  “Is this something we can fix tonight?” she asked. I thought about it. Yet another wave of tears lapped at me. I tried to fight them back, looking up at her through eyelashes that were still wet and clumpy.

  “No,” I managed to squeak.

  “Then I think you should get some sleep,” Susanne said. “I’ll make you up a bed here and we’ll talk about in the morning. How about that?”

  I tried to express just how much I liked t
hat plan, but only came out with a strangled “Aaahh.” I coughed, took a little sip of water, and tried again. “That would be amazing.”

  “You just wait there, I’ll grab some sheets and pillows.”

  She left, quietly taking the shovel with her. I took another sip of water, put it down on the coffee table and then let myself sink sideways, into the soft embrace of the sofa.

  Dear? Oh, dear. Here you go.

  Warmth, and the clean smell of someone else’s laundry. My head lifted, and then lowered onto the coolest, softest cloud in the sky.

  Slosh-clonk. Zzzzip. Rustle.

  I turned over, rubbing my eyes with a balled fist. It wasn’t time to get up yet. Five more minutes. The bed smelled oddly of cinnamon, but that was OK. The room was still dark. A line of moonlight sliced across the room from the open window. It wasn’t open before.

  Mum would be angry if I didn’t shut the window.

  She’d be so angry if I couldn’t stop the bleeding.

  But I didn’t know how. I buried my head in my pillow. The blood was everywhere. It poured in through my bedroom, down the stairs, all over the kitchen. I huddled in to myself and tried to be a mouse. If I stayed quiet, it wouldn’t find me here. It was safe here in the dark. The wardrobe was uncomfortable, but it was safe: nothing else would happen while I was here in the dark.

  I felt a breeze and stirred again. A small shape fluttered through the window, coming down the shaft of moonlight into the room. It hovered over me and then set down briefly with the lightest of touches on my hand. I twitched and it flew away.

  I woke up to the sound of tea happening in another room: a kettle boiled, and there was the distinctive tingting scrape ting of a spoon swirling around a mug.

  The room was full of warm light and the detritus of everyday living. The coffee table was crowded with books, mugs, pieces of paper, remote controls, a large biscuit tin with scenes of children skating on a frozen pond. A glass-framed poster over the mantelpiece glinted in the sunlight, drawing my eye with its striking red-and-black collage of a full moon and the words Take Back the Night, Philadelphia, October 1975. It was printed on crumpled A4 paper with a tear on one corner, but framed with as much care as Mum’s original Rembrandt sketches. Not that Mum would ever do anything as careless as hang the Rembrandts on the wall where just anyone could enjoy them.