I should start by saying that I did not care for my younger sister Helen. She had been raised by my father to be loud and rude and selfish, and heedless of the feelings of others. Even so, she was my sister, and we endured each other as siblings often do. After our father abandoned us and I took a house on the other side of the lake, she would visit every Sunday for dinner and tell me of the goings-on in the nearby village, the fits of temper and petty dramas and not-so-secret affairs. I avoided the village. I kept to myself. I had no interest in these people and their little lives, but I let her tell her stories. They were no different from the serials on the radio that we overheard as children when our parents thought we were snug in our beds. She took great delight in telling them, acting out their conversations, the way that Father had delighted in telling us stories from the war, the men he killed, the women and girls he had raped, the children he likely sired. He and his men kept a collection of fingers, taken from the hands of the living before they became the hands of the dead. He grinned as he told these grisly tales, soup dribbling from his lips to his chin. We had brothers and sisters out there, children of women who had suffered in shame. The thought of all this disgusted me, but I kept my silence, as our mother kept hers. Besides, what was there to say about crimes so long in the past.
Helen and our father were cut from the same cloth, just as I took after our mother. She had vanished first, years earlier, leaving her things and leaving us, her brutish husband and her two children, to head off to a new life, or perhaps an old one—back to her family in Budapest, I always assumed. Then ten years of just the three of us: my father and Helen and me. And then he disappeared as well. A few months of half-hearted searching from the local constabulary, with patronising reassurances that he would return. I quietly hoped he wouldn’t, and he never did. Helen stayed in the old house, with the radio and rose-patterned wing chair and mother’s piano, and I moved to my little cottage with the vines of roses and violets painted along the ceiling edge and the wood fires that coughed smoke into the house whenever birds tried to nest in the flue.
One Sunday in midwinter, after a few evenings of gentle snow that had frosted the pines and crusted along the edge of the lake, Helen confided a curious thing between bites of the roast that I had prepared. “I heard cries from outside the house last night,” she said. “I looked out the window and in the moonlight I saw a fox, black as the night, not twenty feet from the door. If it weren’t for the snow, I would never have seen it. It stood there, staring at me, then it turned and trotted back toward the lake.” She fiddled with the green silk scarf around her neck threaded through with whispers of gold. It had been mother’s. “I should never have worn this, now I’m afraid I’m going to soil it.”
“You could always leave it here with me,” I replied. “You know I’ll take better care of it.” She smiled smugly and sipped from her wine glass. I shrugged, lifted a spoonful of peas from my plate. “Are you sure it was a fox?” I asked. “Not a lost dog from one of the farms?” Foxes were rare in our part of the country, and black ones even more so. I had never seen one myself.
“I know what I saw,” she said, slicing off another forkful of beef, the red juice pooling on her plate next to the potatoes. “Besides, we know all the dogs from the farms around here, and they know us. Do you think it was a sign from Father?” While never a religious man, our father had been fiercely superstitious like his father before him, attributing every bad turn in his life to witchery and the evil eye. Our mother’s departure was the work of the devil, or so he always believed.
“A sign, after all these years?” I replied. “I doubt it. Don’t go near it though. ‘If a creature comes to you after dark, feed but never follow,’ that’s what Mother always said. Toss it a carrot and it will be on its way.” As children we were told many tales of woodland spirits that made mischief in the guise of forest creatures. We grew older and heard darker tales of souls who were wronged in life and who used such means to return for revenge. Our father never shared in these stories. I think they frightened him.
“I’ll chase it off with a broom, thank you, and keep my carrots to myself.” She swallowed the morsel of beef and washed it down with wine. “I suppose you think it’s a message from her.”
“From Mother? Don’t be silly,” I said. But I wondered, just for a moment: who else might it be?
Two nights later, I was heating myself a cup of bone broth to warm me while I sewed, when I heard a shriek and a yowl from just outside the door. It was like a child being skinned alive. ‘What in God’s name,’ I sighed, then set down the ladle, moved the pot off the fire, and peered out into the darkness. At the end of the walk, in the clear white light of the waning moon, I saw a small slender animal, etched out of coal, with gleaming gold eyes. The black fox. He clenched something wet and raggedy in his mouth.
I hesitated, then moved to the door and opened it. The fox did not stir.
“Hello there,” I said. “I’m told you’ve been to see my sister. What brings you here?”
He sat himself down on the snow and waited, staring at me expectantly.
“Oh, how silly of me,” I said, more to myself than to him, then hurried to the larder and brought out a large yellow parsnip that had started to soften. “Here you go,” I said and tossed the parsnip to the fox. He dropped the ragged thing from his mouth and caught the parsnip firmly, then turned and ran from the house, out towards the lake.
It was a blustery night, gusts of wind tossing sprays of snow hither and thither. I threw on my coat and stepped outside, careful to prop the door open so that it couldn’t slam shut behind me. I scurried out to see what the fox had dropped, prepared to find a rabbit or a pheasant. Instead, I was surprised to see my mother’s green silk scarf that Helen had worn to dinner. ‘She must have lost it on her way back home,’ I thought. It was just like her to care so little for something that I could love. I brought it inside and laid it out flat on a large clean cloth. It didn’t look too much the worse for wear. There was a small spot of blood along the edge, she had stained it during our dinner after all. I sighed and dabbed at it with a few drops of salted water, smoothed it out and folded the cloth over it, then poured my cup of broth and sat down for the evening, embroidery in hand. Not even an hour passed before I could barely keep my eyes open. I doused the fire, dimmed the lights, and bundled myself into bed.
I awoke to a morning crisp and clear, the sun shining brightly off a new dusting of snow. I peeked out the front window to find the fox’s tracks gone. Had it been a dream? I looked at the cloth on my table, tugged at the folds. The scarf was nestled inside, dry and undamaged, the spot of blood now faded to a dusty pink. It was real, so the fox must have been real as well. I thought to call my sister about her carelessness with the scarf, but decided I could chide her at our next meal instead.
The day itself passed without event. I had several altar cloths from the village church that required repair to the fabric and decoration. Two of them had been made by my mother, I recognized her handiwork as soon as I saw them. The priest had sent some vestments that also required mending. I cut up some lamb sausage and tossed it in a pot for stew with a few potatoes, carrots, and leek, then perched myself down by the fire to start my work. By the time I finished, the sun had crept down past the horizon’s edge, casting a fiery red on the wisps of cloud in the west. I set aside my work and went about preparing my meal. The moment I sat down to eat, the scream of the fox once again pierced the silence, startling and unsettling me. It was closer than the night before, its screech like that of a baby being torn limb from limb. I poked my head into the larder, found a pair of beets tinged with powdery mould, then opened the door. The fox indeed was closer, halfway up the walk. Once again it held something in its mouth, something that caught the light and glittered.
“Hello again,” I said. “What’s that you have there?” I held up the beets by their greens so that he could see them. “Perhaps you’d like to trade?”
He seated himself like an obedient dog, then moved its muzzle to the ground and dropped the shiny trinket on the snow. ‘He’s bringing me gifts,’ I thought. ‘Like a crow would. Very strange behaviour for a fox.’
“What a clever lad,” I said, and tossed him the beets. He let them land nearby, then nudged them up against each other, picked them up by their stalks and ran off with them swinging from his mouth, hurtling back towards the water as if I might give chase.
I approached the spot where he had sat and saw a woman’s ring nestled in the snow, a finely wrought band of buttery gold set with a large orange topaz. My mother’s ring, one of her favourites that I hadn’t seen for years. Not since before she left us. “What does this mean?” I shouted after the fox. “Where is my mother? Where is my sister?” I almost ran after it, out into the dark and down to the water’s edge, when I heard my mother’s voice in my ear.
Feed but never follow.
I stepped back inside my little cottage, picked up the telephone and dialled my sister’s number. The line rang and rang but no one answered. It was far too late for me to try to walk to her house, and the weather too uncertain. I decided she was already asleep. I calmed myself, sat down and ate my stew and wiped the bowl clean with a piece of crusty bread. I set the dishes aside and went to bed early, my mother’s ring under my pillow. I barely slept. Whenever I closed my eyes, I imagined the black fox waiting outside my door—watching, listening. Hungering for something more than parsnips and beets.
The next morning I phoned my sister again. Still no answer. I called the church and asked if they would be kind enough to send a car for me. They knew I had no vehicle, and it was urgent that I see my sister. An hour later Father Miroslav himself pulled up in a black Ford sedan, helped me into the passenger seat and started off down the gravel road to my parents’ old house. I was so surprised, I assumed he would have asked one of the church workers to attend to me, yet he seemed happy to come out to the lakeside. I asked him to go slowly so that I could see if something looked strange or out of place; however, the fresh-fallen snow and patches of ice made everything seem unfamiliar. The road was sometimes hard to detect, and he struggled to keep us out of the ditch, but eventually we arrived at the driveway that led to the front of the house. I saw no footprints, no sign of anyone entering or leaving. We pulled up in front of the porch and Father Miroslav honked the horn. The house remained silent and still.
“Would you like me to go in with you?” he asked. “I can at least help you up the steps.”
“No, thank you,” I replied. “You stay here where it’s warm. If I need you, I will come for you.” He clasped my hand kindly, and I stepped out of the car into the shrill white sunlight. I shielded my eyes as I walked up to the front door, knocked, waited, knocked again. I turned the knob, gave a little push. It was unlocked. I swung it open carefully, peered inside.
“Helen?” I called. Nothing, not even a sigh.
I stomped the snow off my boots and entered, walked from room to room. I wondered for a moment if I had just missed her, if we somehow passed each other on the narrow road to town, but I could soon tell she had not been in the house for several days. Her bed was made, her nightgown draped over a nearby chair. A window was cracked open, and a swirl of snow collected on the white wooden sill. A stack of supper dishes sat in the sink unwashed. The bathroom was tidy, the shower curtain pulled aside, the towels and facecloths dry to the touch. The lid was closed on mother’s piano. The wing chair had a slim hardcover book half-open, face-down on its seat: a British murder mystery, with a circle of empty chairs on the cover, one knocked down to the ground. My mother’s name was written in the top corner of the title page. I tucked the book into my coat pocket and continued my search. I hoped to find a note, or an appointment marked on a calendar, but no such luck. I did note, however, that Helen’s coat and boots were gone.
I left the house and locked the door with my spare key, then explained the situation to Father Miroslav. He suggested we call the police and ask them to search the area, then wondered himself if she might not have spent a night with a friend or taken an unannounced trip into the city. “I suppose it’s possible,” I told him, though it seemed unlikely. He kindly drove me back to my home, waited till I opened the door and then I waved him on. He waved back and said he’d call me later. I felt foolish involving him in our family issues, but grateful for his assistance. I resolved that I would wait one more day before calling the police, in case Helen had done something spontaneous and uncharacteristic for the first time in her life. As the day wore on I felt a knot of worry tighten inside my chest. I knew the fox would return at nightfall, and I dreaded whatever new gift he would have for me.
I set about making a light lunch for myself; cold salted chicken and buttered biscuits, and by the time I finished eating I was exhausted. I remembered the mystery novel I’d taken from Helen’s chair. I pulled it from the pocket of my coat, looked it over, sat down and started to read it. I was two pages in when I felt the need to rest my eyes. When I opened them again, hours had passed and the room was bone-achingly cold and shrouded in gloom. The wind wailed and battered the windows, shaking them in their frames.
I went to stand and found my legs had tightened and cramped. I moved about the room slowly, switching on lights and fueling the fire, when a screech came so loud and sharp, from just outside the door, that the storm seemed to hold its breath in fright. I wrapped myself in my coat, grabbed the battery torch from the front closet, and threw open the door. There was the black fox, a few feet away, the snow all around him spattered with ruby droplets. In his mouth he held something fleshy and bloody. I held the torch up to see more clearly, then gasped and recoiled. It was a finger, a long slender finger, chewed off at the knuckle.
I couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. I could barely understand what I was seeing. Was it my mother’s finger, or Helen’s? Or was someone else out there on the ice, wounded or worse? I thought of my father and his horrible story about the trophies that he and his men had collected. A sharp icy pain seized my hand, and I glanced down to see that my forefinger was gone. I blinked, and the finger returned. Then the fox turned and ran, ran out into the night, into the snow and down towards the lake.
I screamed. And then, I couldn’t stop myself, I ran after it, trying to keep it in the torch light, following the dribbles of blood bright against the snow, feed but never follow, the wind like knives against my face, I slipped and slid but still I ran, closer and closer to the lake, the spot of light from the torch bobbing wildly, until I reached the water’s edge. The fox tracks stopped, but there was no fox to be seen. I shone the light off to my right where the pine trees stood in silent judgement. I shone it over to the right where dull dry grasses and shapeless bushes crouched together, smothered in snow. I shone it straight ahead and down into the water and, disbelieving what I saw before me, I moved closer and bent forward, aghast.
There was Helen, under the water, in her coat and boots, eyes glassy, mouth agape, hair floating out from behind her head, hands reaching uselessly towards me. Clutching her waist was our long-dead father, eye sockets empty, flesh gnawed away from his face and arms, in the flannel work-shirt and heavy grey overalls he wore when working the fields. Wrapped around them both were the skeletal remains of our vanished mother, draped in tatters of cloth that I remembered as the dress she had worn at my last birthday party. Had they all followed the fox down here? Is this how they met their doom?
I crouched down, looked closer at Helen’s hands, at my father’s, my mother’s: each of them missing a finger from their left hand. Before I could even fully form the question in my mind, a brutal blow landed squarely in the centre of my back and knocked me down into the water, my face fully submerged mere inches away from Helen’s vacant stare. I tried to pull myself up, but whatever clung between my shoulders dug in its claws and refused to move, it pushed me down deeper into the water so that Helen’s useless arms were floating up around my neck and shoulders. The black fox, it had to be. Feed but never follow. I screamed and shouted, bursts of bubbles exploding out of me, and then choked as I breathed in icy water. I twisted and flailed and convulsed but it was hopeless. Bright lights shimmered and dimmed behind my eyes, I croaked out one last tiny sound and then slipped into unconsciousness.
Something struck me across the face, and then struck me again. I howled, gagged, vomited. I felt hard heavy hands push into my chest, felt a rib snap, howled again louder. She’s alive! somebody shouted. Was it Father Miroslav? She’s breathing, she’s moving! I felt someone turn me onto my side and I vomited again, coughed up water and blood and bile. I shivered all over and then couldn’t stop shivering, I couldn’t stop crying. My wet clothes were stripped away and I was wrapped in a coat or a blanket, lifted up off the ground and bundled into a car, red flashing lights, men shouting, frosty blasts of static, sudden lurching movement and then the scream of the siren.
A moment later, or maybe longer, I couldn’t honestly tell you, a voice close to me called out, Something’s happened, she’s bleeding, there’s blood everywhere. Then another voice, older, a few feet away: Don’t stop the car, we’ve got to keep going, turn on the light. The light snapped on, blinding, I winced my eyes shut. I’m looking, I’m looking, I—wait, here it is. She’s missing a finger, something’s chewed off her finger. Someone seized my hand, turned it sharply, wrapped it tight in flannel or wool and clutched it close, afraid to let me go.
I realized then that this was how my father’s victims had come to us across land and sea, how they had hunted us down to our doors. The black fox. It was the substance of their souls, an engine of their rage. And, strange as it sounds, the finger had been a taunt, a lure, a trick of time, an inkling of my fate. They wanted me to feel their fear, to follow, to see what they had done. They wanted a witness to their revenge. I shuddered all over and the grip on my hand tightened. The car dipped and rose with the heaving curving road, the siren wailed mournfully, the men around me murmured and sighed, their words lost to me.
I turned my head away from the light and my breathing slowed and grew heavy. I fell freely into a deep dark chasm of sleep. As I did so, I saw the black fox running in front of me, his mouth bloody, his eyes bright, darting through the snow, dancing across the ice, so close I could almost touch him but always, always, just out of reach.
Originally published in Northen Nights, edited by Michael Kelly.
