The White Fox

by James Bartholomeusz

  Jack’s mouth seemed to crack with dryness. He managed to force the words out after a few seconds. “Hi, can I see if I can visit a patient, please?”

  “I’ll need your name and the patient’s.”

  “Jack Lawson, and the patient is Alex Steele.”

  There was a tapping sound of a keyboard and a mouse clicking.

  He suddenly felt very aware of himself—the feel of the chair, the brushing of his clothes, the silence of all else but the background noise from the phone, and the vibrations of his quickening heartbeat. He didn’t dare move in case he lost the signal.

  “I’m sorry, but we don’t have anyone by that name on file. Is there anything else I can help you with?”

  “No, don’t worry … Thanks.” Jack hung up and let out the breath he’d been holding. He felt very hot. He ducked over to the window, creaking it open. The cold air was like icy water on his skin, and he gulped it down. He had known it couldn’t have been real. And yet, through his insistence on trying, he seemed to have lost his friend all over again.

  Chapter IV

  excavation

  In another Victorian building many miles away, a phone clicked onto its hook. Gaby glanced up at the others.

  “Jack?” Vince asked.

  Gaby nodded. Her face was flushed, and she looked a little scared.

  Charles looked up from his game of chess, his finger poised on a white pawn.

  They were in the mansion’s expansive and extremely run-down kitchen. Brass pots and pans were hung above the rusty black stove, and cupboards, most with missing handles, lined the walls. The Regency wallpaper, categorized as classical rococo or baroque by the battalion of property developers expelled from the site upon their arrival, was peeling and completely gone in some places. The ceiling was only partially plastered. The wooden floorboards were loose and uneven, giving the room the bizarre atmosphere of a Lewis Carroll novel. A silver minibar looked extremely out of place next to the flaking water pump.

  “Well, if I’m honest, I’m surprised it took him this long,” said Charles, leaving the chessboard and rolling over in his wheelchair. “Those business cards weren’t one of your cleverest ideas, Vincent.” He winced as a loose floorboard creaked and a wheel slipped into the groove, jolting him.

  Vince grunted something that sounded like “Don’t call me Vincent.”

  “I’ve been researching this,” Gaby said, “and we don’t seem to be putting on a very realistic image anyway. We’re listed as ‘abandoned mansion,’ ‘site of historical interest,’ and ‘asylum’ by the three companies that have kept our details, and none of our supposed patients are available to visit. No one’s ever heard of our establishment. We have no address, e-mail, fax, or website. And it doesn’t help that the locals are convinced this place is haunted. We slipped up badly with those business cards—that cipher was only meant to be used as a last resort. I’m just not sure how much longer we can keep this up.”

  There was a loud creak and a bang.

  They all turned towards the door.

  There was another creak and bang. There was a pause and the sounds of retreating footsteps. Then running.

  The swollen door crashed open against the wall, and Linda staggered in. “Can we please keep that door open? I’m bloody sick of this place. I’ve stayed in mansions, and that hovel in the mountains was better than this place.”

  Everyone looked away.

  Charles replied, “It’s only until the Cult are rooted out. That shouldn’t be long now.”

  “That’s bad, not good,” said Linda. “I still think we need a plan B. We have no idea what they’re up to, and it doesn’t hurt to be over prepared.”

  “We do have a plan B. Alex is on standby to pull him out if the going gets tough.” Gaby glanced from Charles to Linda. The latter looked disdainful.

  Linda muttered something under her breath.

  Vince glowered at her from his corner, apparently judging whether it was worth pursuing the argument. “I’m going for a smoke.” He left the room.

  “Linda,” Charles said, “if this is going to work, you have to trust Alex.”

  “But he’s just … dangerous.”

  “And so are you when you want to be.” He wheeled over to Linda and placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. He smiled, though she did not return it. “He has had an unfortunate past, but give him a chance, won’t you?”

  “Besides,” put in Gaby, “what’s the worst that can happen?”

  No one answered her. Even with Vince gone, there was the implicit recognition of everyone in the room of just how bad things could get.

  “Anyway, does anyone want a cup of tea?”

  A shower of plaster cascaded down from a crack in the ceiling and landed in the open kettle.

  Linda grimaced.

  Jack had to walk to school on his own on Monday morning; Lucy had got a lift in. As he passed by her road and stepped onto the pavement bordering the orchard, he began wondering (or continued wondering, since nothing else had occupied his thoughts for the last twenty-four hours) about the significance of the phone call. Yeats, however good a poet he might have been, had lost all meaning for Jack since Saturday. He had spent the night lying awake, contemplating it, and Sunday had not been much better. Alex’s situation was something of an enigma.

  He glanced at his watch. Through the scratched glass surface the hands pointed to eight thirty. He still had quite a bit of time before registration at nine and no one to talk to. Shouldering his bag, he turned into the orchard, slipping down the hill into the valley. He was hit by a wave of ultra-fresh scent, something so blissfully different to the synthetic clean of school and the orphanage and the routine industry of the rest of the town. The grass was soaked with dew under his feet, quickly seeping through to his too-large polyester school trousers. He made his way over to the rough-hewn dirt track that wound around the first few trees, past where he and Lucy had been sitting on Saturday night, and continued.

  Yes, Alex’s predicament was extremely strange. Around eighteen months ago, he had just disappeared. There had been only a brief good-bye, just the casual “see you tomorrow” sort, and then he hadn’t come back. For a while speculation had been rife about what might have happened to him and not all amongst the younger generation. Alex, to those who had known him, had been a quiet, relaxed, collected sixth former, and although his grades weren’t fantastic, he had earned the respect of most of the staff and students.

  When the gossip had almost died away completely, the head teacher reported that Alex had taken an extended leave of absence. This only told people that he wasn’t dead, and although the head teacher had been pestered constantly, she apparently didn’t know any more of the story than anyone else. It had surfaced a few weeks ago—from, according to Lucy, a fairly reliable source—that Alex was now boxed up in Apollo Hill. Jack had initially taken it to be someone’s idea of a funny joke and dismissed it immediately. He had forgotten about it completely until finding the business card.

  Jack found a drier spot and sat down, leaning his schoolbag against the tree next to him. Breathing in slowly, he enjoyed the cool feel of the morning. A couple of birds called to one another somewhere over his head. The trees forming the edge of the wood were apple, their oval leaves brushing lightly against each other. The sky was a drab greyish white, but dark clouds sweeping across the horizon promised rain soon. For as long as he could remember, this was where he’d come whenever he wanted to get away—either from the teachers’ disapproval or the noise and bustle of the orphanage. Still, there was nothing like a Monday morning to set a damper on things.

  Things had been different, he reflected, looking up at the basalt sky. He and Alex went way back, and Jack suspected that he was the only one who had the right inkling about what might have happened to Alex.

  Alex had arrived at the orphanage when Jack was eight. To begin with, he was like Jack, an outcast, and that was how they’d got to know each other. At school, Alex, being several years
older than Jack, would stick up for him in front of the other children, and that deterred bullying to some extent, even if it only meant they left Jack alone and made no effort to get to know him. Jack, being much more academic than Alex, would often help with his homework. It could have been more of a rivalry than a relationship, and they had had their rough moments, but the two of them had remained the closest of friends.

  The other orphans treated both of them as outsiders, but where Alex found friends seemingly wherever he looked at school, Jack only encountered enmity. However, where someone else might have abandoned the less popular companion, Alex stayed as close to Jack as ever. That was the great thing about Alex; you could always count on him to make the right choices.

  Yet there was something more than a simple orphan story. Most of them at the orphanage knew each other’s predicaments, and it was treated as normal to have had a house fire or a car crash. (There was even someone whose parents had been caught up in a roadside bomb whilst working for a charitable organization in the Middle East.) Alex’s story was never told, and Jack doubted whether any of the staff knew much more than he did. He had found anything that alluded to Alex’s history only once, when one of the orphans had succeeded in getting to him. All that had been known then was that he had not been an orphan from birth; his loss had been relatively recent and this was the latest in a string of care homes.

  Something caught Jack’s attention out of the corner of his eye. He glanced to his left. Farther round the hill, the orange tape could be seen more clearly, and it looked as if the excavation had begun. A mound of sodden brown earth was piled next to the cordoned-off area, some slipping down the slope onto the grass.

  More of the black-cloaked people were crowding around the area, looking down into whatever was being dug up. They were all hooded like the others, but by the movements of their heads, they appeared to be conversing quietly. Jack watched them for a moment and realized they seemed to be arguing. There was something a little unnerving about a group of people dressed in complete black in pure daylight. He had been to Camden Market only once and had found the alternative culture slightly intimidating, but this was different somehow. Again, he got the impression that his eyes were registering something his brain was telling him he didn’t want to see.

  One of them straightened up and turned to look directly at him.

  Jack turned away quickly. After a pause, he snatched another glance back. The figure was still gazing at him, and now more of them were staring in his direction. He was acutely aware that there was no one else in sight except him, not even any cars passing on the stretch of road above him. Standing and wiping grass from his trousers, he seized his schoolbag and clambered up the slope. They didn’t appear at all friendly, and he didn’t want to be around when they came looking for him.

  “Who was he?” the woman hissed as they moved back under cover of the trees.

  “Just some kid,” the man replied in his thuggish voice. “He won’t know what he saw.”

  “You’re sure?” put in a third.

  “He’d better be,” said a fourth disembodied voice close by, “or it’s his head on the line.”

  The group stopped suddenly and stood back. They had only just avoided walking into another black-cloaked figure, sitting with one foot up on a tree stump. Under the thick tree cover, it was a lot darker. Other scatterings of colorless light here and there betrayed the time of day; all else was gnarled, grey trunks and scraggly grass.

  “Archbishop, when can we do it?”

  “Tonight.”

  There was a sharp intake of breath all around, and more figures stepped out of the shadows.

  “You’re sure we’re ready? Can it be done on such short notice?”

  “If my source is correct, the Shard will be arriving today. If all goes to plan, and we have picked our hostage correctly”—he eyed one of the figures to his right—”we shall be gone before sunrise tomorrow. Not that there will be anything to leave behind, of course.”

  There were some snorts of amusement around the circle.

  “I’m glad,” said one of the women. “I can’t wait to get off this archaic dung heap.” She spat on the ground before her, the white bubbles saturating the fallen, bone-dry leaves.

  “We all want to be on our way as soon as possible,” acknowledged the figure, “but we must proceed with the utmost caution. I don’t have to remind you what awaits us if we squander this opportunity.”

  There was a slight rustle.

  Instantly, all of them turned to the direction of the noise.

  There was a pause. Then another movement in the trees.

  At superhuman speed, the leading figure extended his arm and let loose a bolt of black lightning from his gloved fingertip.

  Something tumbled from one of the trees onto the forest floor.

  He glided over and rolled it with his boot. “Just a bird,” he said disdainfully. “Come. We will make camp on the hilltop.” He marched up the hill, followed one by one by the other black cloaks. The last one did a single sweep of the area, then followed.

  Unseen by any of them, an ivory-white fox was lying inside a hollow tree trunk, its pearly tail squashed flat against the wood. The isabelline gleam that it usually held was dimmed to nothing, so that now it looked like a slightly strangely colored scavenger. Clawing at the end, it wriggled out of the organic tube and shook the leaves and dirt off its fur. Its tail bobbing with the movement, it stalked through the trees, beyond the tree line, and onto the edge of the orchard. As it passed the orange tape, it paused to gaze intently at the large stone circle that had been uncovered.

  The tape fluttered noisily in the wind. There was a slight rustle, and a breeze whipped up, not out of the air but from the depths of the pit. The grass around the edge wilted and blackened.

  The fox scarpered off down the hill.

  Chapter V

  the fox and the hounds

  Monday was terrible.

  The storm had overtaken Jack on the way to school. Casting itself completely over the town, its arms curling around to embrace it, the clouds had broken loose. Hail had thundered down everywhere, and by the time he reached the reception, he was drenched from head to toe in freezing water. He had to sit through double maths, physics, and French before he could get cleaned up, and even then he couldn’t find a change of clothes. Lucy had had an away netball fixture all day, so he sat at the back on his own in his classes. He spent lunch by himself, sitting in the corner out of the way of the main crowds of full tables. No one even made an attempt to come over and talk to him. The afternoon was hardly better; the titanic struggle of double chemistry awaited him. By the end of it he was extremely downtrodden, still soaked, and very tired.

  For once, he just wanted to get back to the orphanage as quickly as possible. He was considering skipping that evening’s detention, but he almost immediately decided against it. Making Dr. Orpheus angry once was about as wise as taunting a bleeding rhino. Making him angry twice was shooting it in the mouth with a harpoon gun. So, at four o’clock after an extremely dull media studies lesson on the analysis of a news article, he went up to the chemistry department and knocked on Dr. Orpheus’s office door.

  The door opened and a woman answered. “Yes?”

  “I’ve got a detention with Dr. Orpheus tonight. Is he here?”

  The woman looked behind her distractedly. “No. He left this afternoon with an urgent call home.”

  “Why? What happened?”

  “Oh, his wife was sick or something. I assume you can just go home?”

  Jack nodded at her as she closed the door in his face.

  He left the school and headed down the road. The clouds had dissipated around two, typically just as lunch break had finished. The sun was once again a glazed gold, but it was lower in the sky now, hovering over the rooftops of the town. No one was around. All the students had gone home, and the teachers were either running after school activities or in their offices. He was on his own.


  There was a quicker way back to the orphanage, which Jack rarely took because Lucy’s house was down the other route. A car went by as he crossed the road and passed down a side street. A few cars were parked around and about, and on his right a small Methodist church interrupted the regular pattern of terraced houses. He reached a crossroads, and up ahead, surrounded by a high wooden fence, was a private ground. A notice bolted to it proclaimed it to be private property, with the threat of prosecution if trespassed upon. Someone had scribbled their tag in purple over the letters. He didn’t stop to read the notice again. He slipped behind a bollard designed to stop cars and cut down an alley.

  The road continued, and a second alleyway led off to the right, which he turned into. Brown and orange leaves were clustered at each end. On one side, the fence of someone’s house. On the other, high evergreens spread their rough fingers through a wire mesh. Both sides blocked the fading sunlight, casting the path into the purplish-grey shadow of the sunset.

  Jack began down it. Someone, probably in imitation of Banksy, had sprayed hearts in the steadily darkening colors down the fence, each about a meter apart. He passed white, yellow, orange, pink, red.

  There was a rattling behind him. He looked back, but the alley was just as empty as it had been before.

  Turquoise. Green. Blue. Indigo.

  There was a shimmer of light to his left. The last heart was black, then below that a stylized man in a tracksuit and trainers, holding out a lighter. The word ignite was scrawled next to it in white paint.

  There was a flapping noise from above, and a pigeon cleared the treetops. Jack watched it over the rooftop, then dropped his gaze, looking behind him. Still nothing was there. Slowly, he turned back to the front. And jumped.

  A fox was sitting in the middle of the path. It was undoubtedly the same fox he had seen twice in the last three days. It shone out of the dull brown, each miniscule strand of its fur catching the sunlight perfectly, again despite it sitting in shadow. Up close, there were more details that made it seem even less fox-like. It had dark markings around the eyes, but the eyes themselves, far from being beady and black, were pearly and pupil-less. Its tail waved slightly behind it, like a bushy paintbrush, the tips dipped in ebony.