Jack stepped forward tentatively. He’d read somewhere that foxes were scared of humans and any sudden movement would make them run away.
The fox did not move. It continued staring at him through those pupil-less white eyes.
Jack waved wildly.
No response.
Hugging the fence, he edged around the animal and kept walking.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
Jack spun around. The fox was facing him once more, but there was no one else there.
“They’ll be coming soon.”
Jack started again, but again no one was within eyesight. The fox was still staring at him. Slowly, he approached it. “Was that you?”
“Who else?” It inclined its head slightly.
Jack staggered backwards in shock. No one else was about … but it couldn’t be a talking fox. Most people learnt to leave talking animals with melon-sized eyes, along with people spontaneously breaking into song, in Disney cartoons from the age of about two.
“What?” the fox asked, examining its paws and looking itself up and down. “What did I get wrong?”
“Well, generally, foxes don’t speak,” Jack replied breathlessly.
“I’m not speaking,” the fox said.
Jack listened for a moment, but as soon as he did he became distracted from what the creature was saying. He did not seem to be hearing the noise. It was as if it were talking directly into his brain, rather than going through his ears first.
“Okay, okay,” Jack said, trying to straighten it out in his head, “so you can talk. What are you? What are you doing here?”
“What I am is of little importance. And there’s no time to explain … Hold out your hand.”
Wondering where sarcasm had entered the equation, Jack hesitantly held out his hand, palm up. The fox’s eyes flared with white light for a second, and something dropped into Jack’s hand. He lifted it into the sunlight for a closer look. It was some sort of crystal shard, about the size of a bean pod, and completely clear. It sparkled on the edges in the golden rays, and as he looked closer, Jack could just make out a tiny star symbol carved in gold into one of the sides.
Jack looked up, his mouth forming the words to ask what it was. But there was no sign of the fox creature. He glanced around and in front of him again, but there was no glint of white. He stood for a moment, his brain turning over what he had just seen. He studied the pendant in his hand, then slipped it around his neck, making sure to hide it under his shirt. He wasn’t really sure why—and it sounded crazy in his mind—but if the fox had needed him to take it so badly, then it couldn’t do any harm to keep it. He wondered whether it had been some kind of animatronics with a microphone. But then he hadn’t exactly heard the thing speak. It had been inside his head, and it was absurd to think of a mental microphone.
He set off again and emerged out of the other side of the alley onto the pavement beside a road. It was deserted. The sun had sunk behind the houses across from him, the silhouetted shadows casting cliffs of darkness on either side of him and all down the street. The pink-orange sunset was receding, and encroaching from behind was the infinite veil of deep blue, tinted amber from the light pollution. A few downstairs lights glimmered, and a cat meowed in a garden somewhere to the left. Adjusting his bag on his shoulder, he followed the road on the leafy side, the pendant bobbing slightly against his chest.
On the other side of town, where the houses were built high and close together, darkness was falling fast. The twilight amber blue was giving way to the third and final stage of the evening—the absolute sheet that was the night sky. The temperature had dropped like a hawk, and out of the condensation fog had begun to rise. Immaterial yet solid, it swept over the streets, snaking between the buildings and through gardens, covering everything in an opaque veil. A cat shrieked and darted inside. The tendrils slithered up the steps behind it.
Dr. Orpheus strode down the road, his long frock coat pulled tight around his body. The fog was rising higher, and now thin sheets of it hung at head height and beyond, so he could barely see his feet in front of him. The buildings were only faint outlines, and the occasional light here and there did nothing to penetrate the pallid gloom. The sound of his footsteps was completely masked, which meant that so were anyone else’s.
He reached a bridge and stopped. It was a small, curved one, the kind in any village built around a stream. Now, in the dense darkness, he thought, it was the kind that a troll might live under in a fairy tale. But of course, this was no fairy tale. He pulled his coat a little tighter and glanced around.
Dr. Orpheus never heard the man coming. He was only aware of him when he reached the other side of the bridge, by which point he was sure he had already been seen. The figure was shady, but he seemed to be wearing an old-fashioned black cloak, the hood completely concealing his face. Being unable to see his feet gave it a spectral look. Dr. Orpheus forced his mind away from such thoughts. He was a man of science and rationalism, and no Homo sapien dressed in the style of the popular subculture popularly referred to as goth was going to scare him.
The figure made to move. He did not speak.
Orpheus stood his ground. The seconds moved agonizingly on.
The figure did not even turn its head. The blackness of the hood stayed firmly fixed upon him.
Orpheus’s hand twitched in his pocket. “Well? What do you want?”
The figure remained silent.
Orpheus could not control himself. “I’ve given you all the information I have,” he said, not entirely successful in keeping the pleading out of his voice. “I don’t have anything more. I’ve told you where the girl lives, and I’ve got no idea what happened to the boy. Now, where’s my wife?”
The figure still did nothing.
“Where is she?”
“She is in use.”
“What do you mean? We had a deal. I want her back.”
“You cannot have her back.”
“But you said—”
“We became bored waiting for our plans to ripen. She provided … entertainment for us.”
Orpheus’s nostrils flared and he grunted in anger. Rage seethed out of him in flecks of spittle, and he made ready to jump at the man. But he steadied himself. He could hear a slight sweeping sound. He looked down. On the apex of the bridge, in the gap between himself and the figure, something was changing. The fog, though not discernibly moving, seemed to tense, as if put under some spatial pressure. Below, shadows began to collect, flowing inwards like dark fluid from all around. Then, slowly, something began to rise out of it. A hulking figure clinging low to the ground, its rough silhouette just visible below the fog.
Orpheus stumbled backwards, his jaw slackening and his eyes widening. From what he could see, the shadow was moving, weaving hypnotically from side to side as if waiting to strike. It reminded him of biology documentaries about the hunting patterns of wolves. Except this was much, much worse.
“You made a promise,” he shouted, gazing up at the figure.
The cloak was still hanging motionlessly, watching him intently. “We do not make pacts with the Mass Ignorant.”
The shadow tautened suddenly. Orpheus stood stock-still. Then he turned and tried to run. He could hear the shadow lurching behind him. He reached the nearest lamppost and slipped on the wet tarmac. He rolled over, shielding his face, but couldn’t help seeing what was looming over him, its eyes glowing a deep, bloody crimson in the dark.
He screamed.
The shadow leapt at him.
Jack heard the scream.
It echoed over the rooftops, absorbed by every corner and gap. He froze, standing outside a disused pub. The windows were boarded up, and graffiti had been scrawled onto the wood. The sign, a faded painting of a woman in ghostly Victorian dress, creaked in the low wind. Jack’s feet were submerged in a sluggish tide of murky grey fog, flowing down from the hill to submerge the town. The houses were now just dim shapes in the gloom. The lampposts, plac
ed every ten meters, only served to illuminate the sheets of dismal mist. The last echoes of the scream died away.
Then the lights went out.
The darkness slithered down the hill. One by one, coming closer and closer, the faint orangey lamps flickered and died. Behind it, an impenetrable wall of pure black. Jack did not pause. He began walking quickly, trying to keep ahead of the slowly growing mass. The sheets of fog parted as he moved forward. He crossed from the pavement into the middle of the road, where it was the lightest. There were no cars around, and he would be completely incapacitated if he walked into a wall or a lamppost.
On the edge of his brain, his nerves started gnashing. He knew there was nothing that could hurt him out here. This was a civilized suburban area, not a medieval forest. And yet … he remembered going on a trip in primary school to look at a forest in autumn. At the end of the day, it was getting dark, and he’d lost the group. He’d only been separated for ten minutes, but, in the deepening gloom, that had been enough to lose his nerve completely.
He stood still, listening for anything that might be coming his way. The faint fluttering of autumnal leaves in the wind. The engine of a solitary car rumbling in the distance. Other than that, complete silence.
Then there was another scream. Jack whipped around. Silhouetted against the deep sky was the hill around which the town was built. At its very peak, the topmost trees bent in gnarled shapes against the horizon. Something howled. It was like a wolf, yet at the same time it had a grinding, shrieking edge that no animal on Earth could have ever produced. It was followed by another and another and a fourth, all entering into the horrific nocturnal chorus. It was the sound of a hunt beginning.
Jack ran. He fumbled in his bag as he went, pulling out a small metal torch he had been given as a mass-produced Christmas present. He turned the end frantically, and it flickered on, shedding a sparse beam of light into the fog below. He sprinted down a side road, between parked cars and lightless houses. His footsteps were covered by the fog, but the juddering of the torch betrayed his movement. Blood pounded in his ears, and he kept glancing over his shoulder to check that nothing was behind him.
At a crossroads, he ground to a halt, breathing heavily and bent over. This was stupid, he told himself. He was running from nothing.
Then another howl rent the air like a knife.
It came from his left, down the shadowy road into the dark. He didn’t dare shine his torch there. Forcing himself on again, he dashed down the right path, not daring to look back. He reached a corner and continued, and the road narrowed. There were no houses here. He could hear growling and the rough grunt and guttural noises of some inhuman pounding after him. He willed himself even faster. The torchlight jerked ahead of him in time with his gasps.
Then, out of the mist, a brick wall loomed. He skidded and fell, the torch dropping out of his hand and shattering on the concrete. He steadied himself and looked around wildly. It was a dead end, and he was trapped.
The creature was nearing him, its slobbering growls becoming ever louder.
An arm grabbed him roughly. He twisted and cried out, but a hand gripped his face and clamped over his mouth. He struggled, but he was being pulled backwards into the dark. Into an alcove in the wall out of direct sight of the road.
Chapter VI
the demon
Jack tried to kick his captor, but he held firm. The hand around his mouth tightened, and the elbow dug into his ribs. His breath caught in his throat, and he couldn’t cry out, or even turn his head. Meanwhile, the creature was drawing closer.
A shadow passed across the narrow gap that was his window out of the alcove. In the almost absolute darkness and cloaked by the mist, it was virtually invisible. Out of the black chasm, irregular rasps of sucking air were the only sound. Terrified to move, Jack frantically scanned the obsidian wall before him, but it was completely impassable; the thing could have been anywhere. Then a gap in the clouds slid across the moon, and its rays penetrated the fog. The silvery light glinted off the rain-washed gutters and tiles of the surrounding roofs, and the darkness was compressed into the ground. The shadow became visible.
If Jack could have screamed, his vocal cords would have snapped.
The thing that was emerging out of the depths was absolutely hideous. It vaguely resembled a wolf or hyena but was much bigger—the size of a small horse. How it had remained hidden under the fog was inexplicable. Its fur was a ragged, discolored greyish brown, which in places looked as if it had been ripped out to expose rotting, gory flesh underneath. In other places, spikes the size of carving knives tore through the surface, like curved bone, but stained with the innards of its victims. The head was either encased inside something like a pig’s skull—or maybe it was a pig’s skull—he couldn’t tell.
The eyes, though, were the most petrifying. It had no eyeballs but instead ghostly will-o’-the-wisp orbs that hovered within the deep black of the sockets, shining crimson and darting all over, mercilessly raking the area. The rasps came from its bare nostrils, sweeping in and out of bone rather than flesh. The stench—a blackened, scorched smell like a meteoric eruption—was enough to make bile rise in Jack’s throat.
“Don’t move a muscle,” a voice hissed in his ear.
Too stricken to do anything else, Jack complied.
The monster slowly turned on the spot, as if following an invisible scent. Jack noticed how all its legs didn’t seem to bend in the right way. It swung like a grotesque scarecrow in the wind, as if it weren’t used to the pull of gravity. The creature turned its back on them, searching the far corner of the wall.
A few moments passed, tautened and lengthened by fear. Jack’s foot, bent into an awkward position, began to ache. Quietly as he could, he slid it backwards along the concrete and stepped straight into a stagnant puddle.
The noise seemed to echo a hundred times longer and louder than usual, as the milliseconds slipped by maliciously.
The monster had moved into the shadow cast by the opposite wall. Its head whipped around to look directly into their hiding place; now all that was visible were those two glimmering crimson lights.
Jack froze, incredibly conscious of the miniscule sounds the ripples of water made under his feet.
The monster turned its haggard form towards them. Jack stared, transfixed, at the will-o’-the-wisps. They stared back, the twin spheres spinning in a hypnotic chthonian whirl, and the taste of bile crept up Jack’s throat another few inches.
He felt a hard push in the small of his back, and he fell forward. His arms constricted, he hit the concrete hard. Simultaneously, there was an earsplitting bang. Jack looked up at the creature that he expected to be looming over him, the twin spheres of light obscuring the silver moon. But it was feet away, weaving drunkenly, staggering on its spiked paws. A dark hole, steaming with silver, had formed between its eye sockets. It lurched away into the fog, and there was the sound of it collapsing somewhere beyond.
Jack looked back at the person behind him. He was standing in the shadow of the alcove, though Jack could tell by his silhouette that he was at least human. That was no guarantee, though. The man’s arm was pointed out, directly at where the creature had been. In his grip, glinting metallically in the moonlight, was a gun.
Jack scrambled to his feet, extremely aware of the gun pointing directly at him. He slowly raised his arms into the air.
The figure did nothing for a moment. Then the gun was lowered into the shadows.
“Who are you?” Jack said, his voice echoing around the enclosed alleyway and alcove.
The figure stepped out of the darkness. Tall, slim, and clothed in worn jeans, a grey hoodie, and a brown jacket was a boy of eighteen or nineteen. He had a pale, knife-shaped face, with dark hair pulled over one side in an angled fringe. His eyes shone emerald green, reflecting the moon.
It was Alex.
Jack stood, frozen on the spot for several seconds.
Alex smirked and waved his hand in front of Jack
’s face.
He blinked. “Alex?”
“Right, you’re not having a seizure. That’s good.”
“Alex,” he cried at quite a high pitch and then remembered himself. He cleared his throat and offered his arm in a more masculine way.
Alex laughed and pulled him into a hug.
Jack, surprised but relieved, patted him on the back. Then they broke apart.
“Where the hell have you been?”
“You sound like Lucy’s mum,” Alex replied half-indignant, half-joking.
Jack couldn’t help smiling.
“It’s a long story. I can’t tell you now. I will, though.”
Jack noticed the gun in his hand again. He turned quickly, just in case the thing was slinking up behind him. He didn’t know where to start. “How did you get a gun? Why have you got a gun? What the hell was that?”
Alex brushed his fringe out of his eyes and bit his lip. “I suppose I can tell you a little. It’s complicated. I’ve been away … working … helping … saving people. I worked with this organization. They stop bad things happening …” He seemed as at a loss as to where to start as Jack was.
“What kind of bad things? What was that?”
Alex breathed out heavily. “This is going to be hard for you to believe—”
“What?”
“That was a demon. They’re … dark creatures. They’re not from this world. This organization I’ve been with, they protect people against demons.”
“Demons?” Jack was about to snort, “They’re not real,” but then he remembered the rotting flesh, the bloodied spikes, the burning, fiery eyes, and the sickening feeling of it just being nearby. Even at the thought of it, the bile began to rise in his throat again. He glanced over his shoulder, but there was no movement from the cloaked darkness. Still, he didn’t want to go anywhere near it. “So … demons?” he gasped weakly.
The White Fox Page 5