Mr. Fox and Other Feral Tales

by Norman Partridge

  I nodded, thinking of all the exterior shots in the film. Most of them were fog-shrouded scenes. It would have been hard to tell under the best of circumstances who portrayed Count Orlak or his female lead in the those scenes, let alone decide by watching a blurry VCR print on a tiny TV screen.

  "You doubt my story," Mr. Vincent whispered, rising from his chair.

  "No, I believe you," I said, much too quickly.

  He opened the closet and took out a large black box. "I've wanted to show this to you since we first met. I'm still not sure that you should see it, but now I realize that you must."

  Smiling, Mr. Vincent removed the lid. At first I thought the box held a small black animal with gleaming red eyes and fur as shiny as a seal's. Then the smell hit me, a bittersweet aroma that reminded me of marinated meat. The apartment seemed to grow colder then, and all at once a hundred different scents filled the air, a cloak of musty perfumes that had my head throbbing in an Instant.

  Mr. Vincent's gnarled fingers dipped under the thing, and he scooped it out of the box as carefully as a mime might scoop up a shadow. The red eyes twinkled as he threw the thing over his shoulders.

  "We only had one of these," he said, flaring the cape to show off its dead-white lining. "The story was that it once belonged to a genuine Prussian count. The lining is of the finest silk, and these are genuine rubies set in the collar. Carfax complained that the silly things scraped his neck and gave him a rash, but that was charitable compared to Erin McCague's opinion of the cape. She claimed that it smelled worse than a beggar's boot."

  I was hardly listening. The odor of mud and rain drifted from my hot chocolate. I set the cup on its saucer and massaged my temples, fighting off a headache.

  "I believe you," I whispered.

  "Janice dear, you're shivering." He slipped the cape over me and tucked it in like a blanket.

  I closed my eyes. The clock ticked too loudly, too slowly. A hundred scents swirled through the room: rosemary and mud and rain and others that I couldn't identify. Then came the raw odor of blood, strong and heavy, and I fought against the stench and the feel of smooth silk and sharp jewels and the icy breath that whispered against my neck.

  I was sick the next day. My muscles ached and I had a fever — the sure signs of a flu bug coming on, according to Mom. Dad was out on a construction job and Mom couldn't afford to miss work, so I was on my own. At least I would have been if Mom hadn't asked Mr. Vincent to look in on me.

  He brought me tea and toast and blackberry jam, which he claimed was the perfect cure for practically everything. I couldn't eat much, and the tea didn't even warm me.

  "I've got just the thing," he said, taking away the toast and jam. "Don't worry, Janice. We'll get you warm."

  I must have drifted off then, because the bright blue sky outside my window had turned steely gray by the time that I awoke, coughing and hardly able to breathe. I felt as if a great weight lay on my chest, and I fought through a drowsy haze, certain that something awful would happen if I didn't wake up. I wanted to throw off my heavy blankets but couldn't move my arms. A scream froze in my windpipe and wouldn't go any further. Suddenly the horrid stench of blood and rainwater and mud washed over me, and I glanced down and saw my sheets and blankets laying in a tangled pile on the floor.

  But something was covering me, something warm and silky-smooth. Something that whispered a sickening lullaby, trying to push me back into sleep. My eyes widened and the thing rippled like a black wave, inching over my chin, covering my mouth.

  The cape!

  A ruby scraped my nose as the cape crawled past my forehead, and in the blackvelvet darkness I could see a dozen red glowing eyes. Then the cape — the thing — pressed down hard. A held breath whuffed out of me and I started to lose consciousness. My fingers curled into fists, but my hands couldn't move. The black velvet wrapped around them like tight gloves and trapped them against the bed.

  Suddenly, the thing didn't feel like velvet or silk anymore. I remembered the time that Maggie and Rob and I visited an aquarium on the coast, the way Rob had teased us until we touched a bat ray in one of the petting tanks. In bright flashes I remembered the cool, rippling water, and then the cold, leathery feel of the animal as it silently glided beneath my fingertips.

  And just as the bat ray of memory glided away, the cape-thing in my bedroom did the same. It swirled through the gray light and wrapped itself around Mr. Vincent's shoulders.

  He looked fifty years younger. His nose was straight and his jaw strong, his hair slicked back and jet-black. But his skin was the color of a raw oyster, a sickening blue-white.

  He smiled down at me. "Warm enough now, Janice dear?" he asked.

  I gasped. "You're...it's impossible!"

  "It's not what you think, Janice." He laughed and bared his false teeth. "No fangs. I'm afraid."

  He took my hand, bent the fist-fingers straight and wiped them across his cheek. His skin was cold and slippery. My fingers came away smeared with greasepaint, leaving behind four pink lines on his cheek.

  Makeup. Maybe it was all a trick.

  But his fingers were straight and strong. And his features had changed.

  "It takes time," he said. "Especially after I kept it hidden away all these years, avoiding every kind of temptation—theatres and museums and art galleries, anyplace creative people might congregate, I thought I could just let it die in that box. I thought I could outlive it. And then I met you, and I realized how empty my life had become without the passions I once enjoyed. I knew that you could give me another chance at stardom.

  "I told you how creative people attract their own kind. Like magnets, remember?" He stroked the cape as if it were a treasured pet. "My dear, you are one of the strongest magnets that we've ever met. You're almost as powerful as Vincent Carfax." He rubbed the greasepaint across his cheek, whitening the flesh. "Unfortunately, you're not quite strong enough."

  Mr. Vincent turned to the door, the cape whipping at his heels. "Robert," he called, his voice icy and commanding. "You can come up now."

  "No!" The word came out of my mouth in a weak whisper.

  Mr. Vincent glared at me, his eyes gleaming ruby red.

  Instantly, my throat tightened. I could barely breathe.

  Rob stepped through the door.

  His face was oyster-white, and his hair was slicked back. He wore a tuxedo and a pair of fangs. "You've been holding out on me, Jan," he said. "You never told me that you had a movie star living in your garage."

  Mr. Vincent grinned. "I hope you don't mind, Janice," he said. "I phoned Robert earlier in the day and offered to give him a few pointers concerning makeup. And I did think that it was about time that you two got together again." Mr. Vincent winked at Rob. "She's told me quite a lot about you, young man."

  Rob smiled. "Would you mind taking that picture now?"

  Mr. Vincent nodded and took Rob's camera. "One moment...I almost forgot the most important accessory," he said.

  I wanted to scream a warning, but my jaws were locked tight. Mr. Vincent slipped the cape over Rob's shoulders. Rob sagged under the weight, and then he straightened and bared his fangs.

  The camera flashed.

  "One more?" Mr. Vincent asked. "Of both of you?"

  Rob came around the bed. "Don't worry," he whispered, bending over me as if he were about to bite my neck. "Maggie will understand. It'll be okay, you'll see."

  The cape glided over my shoulder. Rob kissed me, and at that moment I felt the warmth drain out of his lips.

  The camera flashed again.

  "Jan," Rob whispered. "Jan, I don't feel right...."

  Rob slipped to the floor. My windpipe opened and I gasped a deep breath. The cape glided across the room and poured itself over Aaron Vincent's shoulders. He took a handful of Kleenex from my nightstand and removed his makeup. His skin was now firm and unwrinkled.

  "I'm sorry, Janice," he said, straightening the cape. "Really I am, but we were so empty.''

  It mus
t have been weird for the ambulance driver. I'll bet that he'd never made an emergency run to a cemetery before.

  It's been two weeks since Maggie and I had our little confrontation, and the doctor says that my head is mending pretty well. In another week I should be able to go home, if there aren't any complications. Mom thinks that's great. She says the house is much too empty without me and Mr. Vincent. Dad agrees with half of that — he says that we're lucky Mr. Vincent didn't steal the family silver, disappearing into the night the way he did. He can't understand what kind of guy would run out on a couple of sick teenagers.

  I can't explain it to him.

  I haven't minded the hospital. Seeing other people with problems makes mine seem as if it's not so important or unusual. Cancer, AIDS, heart attacks — they're all awful things. What happened to me is just a little weirder. Not that I've told anyone what really happened. I'm content to let the doctors think that I've got a rare disease that makes people age prematurely. That's what they've decided, anyway. They think Rob had it too, of course, even though the odds of two cases turning up in close proximity are more than a billion to one. But that's the kind of thing that excites doctors. Believe me, it brings the specialists out of the woodwork. Just yesterday I had a visit from a contagious disease expert who asked a lot of questions about my "relationship" with Rob, and I'm sure that my answers disappointed her. Anyway, she told me to keep fighting, and that's exactly what I'm going to do.

  But just because I haven't said much doesn't mean that I have any answers myself. Personally, I think that I was attacked by a vampire; I just can't decide if the vampire was Mr. Vincent or his cape. Maybe it was both. Maybe it's like the old question about the chicken and the egg.

  I've reread all the Vincent Carfax biographies, and I can't find a mention of an Aaron Vincent anywhere. I can't find any stories about a cape that once belonged to a Prussian count, either. I have found some mention of a Vincent Carfax stand-in named Rudolph Schatten, a name that sounds like it might have belonged to a Prussian, but who knows if that's important information or just an interesting coincidence.

  One thing is for sure. I've had strange feelings while looking at the old photos in those books. I feel Vincent Carfax's strength when I stare into his eyes. I think it's the magnetic attraction that Aaron Vincent talked about. And there's one publicity picture of Carfax and Erin McCague that really chills me. He's holding her, wrapping the cape around her body. She looks terrified. I can feel her terror.

  Erin McCague never had a chance to say what frightened her. For her, the end came too quickly. I can only wonder what Vincent Carfax said while he was dying in that Hollywood hospital. Maybe he realized the truth. Maybe that's why the details of his death never came out.

  I know it sounds weird, but it's really not as strange as all that stuff about garlic and native soil and stakes through the heart. And it isn't like one minute I was a healthy teenager and the next minute I was a prematurely little old lady. Weeks passed between the day of the attack and the first day that I missed school.

  They were wonderful weeks for Rob and me. We enjoyed each other as never before, just being together. We didn't worry about what other people said. We didn't even have a chance to notice that every drop of creativity had drained out of us.

  And then, one day, Rob didn't come to school. He never came to school again. Pretty soon I wasn't going, either. But we still talked on the phone, right up until the end.

  We never talked about Aaron Vincent, but I think that Rob knew.

  Today Mom brought me the new People magazine. I didn't want to open it, because it smelled of mud and rain and blood. Finally I did. I flipped the pages, and then they seemed to flip themselves, and finally I was staring at a picture of a vampire wearing a velvet cape dotted with rubies. The caption identified the man as an unknown actor who was starring in Vampyre IV.

  Instantly, I knew that it was him.

  More than fifty years ago, he killed a woman named Erin McCague and a man named Vincent Carfax. He stole their souls and he stole their names, becoming Aaron Vincent.

  Today he looks like a very young Vincent Carfax, but that isn't the name listed in the caption. The name isn't Aaron Vincent, either.

  It's Robert Janus.

  I guess Mr. Vincent thinks that's funny.

  The 3” x 5” Secret to Good Outlines

  “¡Cuidado!" is the first weird western I published. It was written for an anthology edited by Bob Garcia called Chilled to the Bone. That book was produced by a gaming company as a tie-in with one of their products, and the editorial guidelines went like this:

  [Chilled to the Bone] is being published by Mayfair Games to heighten awareness of their role-playing game...This book is intended to be a stand-alone anthology of short horror fiction. The only connection with the game series is that it takes for granted a secret society is trying to save humanity from supernatural evil. This society, named the Societas Argenti Viae Eternitata (The Eternal Society of the Silver Way, a.k.a. S.A.V.E.), is spread too thinly across the globe to act directly against evil and can only warn people about occult dangers.

  The single unifying aspect of the stories in [Chilled to the Bone] will be the society's oral or written warning to the protagonist that something evil is about to happen. Sometimes, the warnings appear by messenger, others arrive by post, some show up in electronic mail, and every now and then, the danger is so great that a message is delivered by more arcane means. It's up to each protagonist to succeed or fail by his/her own wits. In all cases, people are told only to...Beware!

  My twist on that conceit was pretty simple—I translated the warning into another language. I decided to do "¡Cuidado!" as a weird western, and my story would revolve around the passengers of a stagecoach that had broken down in the middle of nowhere (an old chestnut of a setup for westerns). Anyway, I figured Bob wouldn't be seeing any other stories like that, but I was wrong. When I sat down and read Chilled to the Bone I discovered that not only did the book include two weird westerns, both stories were stagecoach tales![52] Which is a pretty amazing coincidence, if you ask me.

  The plot of "¡Cuidado!" ended up a little bit different than I first intended. Originally, I'd planned to pit my characters against a horde of rampaging undead.[53] I don't remember too much about that version, only that I envisioned it as a riff off the old circle the wagons siege stories I'd been exposed to in dozens of books and movies. I wrote a draft of the story with that plot in mind, shifting viewpoints between three or four central characters as the action ratcheted up. When I hit 6,000 words and the end was nowhere in sight, I realized that I was writing a novelette instead of a short story. And since I didn't figure there'd be much hope of selling one of those to Bob's anthology, I decided to take another tack.

  So I tried again, scaling down my idea. I remembered a tale by Mark Twain that involved a casket with unexpected contents, and I tried to do something with that. Pretty soon a strong mystery angle entered my story, and I was off and running. While "¡Cuidado!" didn't quite become a whodunit, it definitely became a whatdunit.

  The puzzle itself wasn't overly complicated, but it did require outlining. Managing my cast of characters required some careful attention, too. But I've never been the kind of writer who's comfortable thoroughly mapping things out from A—Z. I don't write an outline laying out plot and characters before I sit down to write—the simple fact is I can't do that. It's only through the process of writing that I find out who my characters really are and what they're going to do. Most of the time it's the act of writing itself that reveals the tale I'm telling; I don't know the whole story going in.

  As such, most of my stories are fairly open-ended when I first sit down to work on them. Sometimes I start with a basic idea, sometimes just a character or an image. Whatever my initial inspiration, I need to get in there and bat it around on the page before I can tell if it will add up to anything, which means I'll probably spend more time writing and revising the opening of a story than an
y other part. I'll work on my beginning until I'm sure I have it right. For me, that sets the tone and the direction of the piece.

  Once I get a start I like, I tend to work on a story (or novel) in chunks, planning scenes and set-pieces as I go along, fleshing out characters the same way. In short stories I tend to use section breaks a lot, and I work with those sections the same way I work with chapters in a novel. The process can be thought of as either constructive or reductive. Sometimes, I think of those story chunks the same way workers think about building a house—step by step, layer by layer. First comes the foundation, then the frame, and finally the roof. Other times I see the process as reductive, each story section peeling back to reveal the one beneath, the same way you peel back the layers of an onion until you get to the heart. Using the latter method, the story and the character are revealed to the reader bit by bit, and all the elements of the story (hopefully) reach the proper frission as it finds its conclusion.

  While I may have a firm idea about the beginning and end of a story when I sit down to write it, I rarely have a solid idea of the progression of the piece (i.e. What the hell's going to happen in the middle, Norm?). For me that's sometimes the fun, and often the torture, of writing. Of course, I do make notes on my stories as I go along. I usually have the next few sections of a story (or a few chapters of a novel) firmly in mind as I work my way through. But as I said, I don't outline strictly from A—Z. I use another method—one that came to me in an unexpected way.

  The first library I worked at used due-date cards designed to work with a primitive circulation computer. Each card had a preprinted due date and eight or ten punched holes that could be "read" by the computer to clear the item from the patron's record when the book was returned. Due dates changed once a week, and we had to order enough cards so that we wouldn't run out. That meant we always had a surplus of a couple hundred cards at the end of the week. When we changed to the new due date, those surplus cards from the previous week were useless. We'd ashcan them (yep, computers were primitive, and the idea of recycling paper was nonexistent).