Scary Stories for Young Foxes

by Christian McKay Heidicker

  “Mia, please answer me!”

  As the half-moon fell behind the trees, Mia’s mom began to sob. Her mom couldn’t smell her. Couldn’t hear her. She thought Mia was nothing more than skin and pencil etchings.

  After a long silence, her mom scratched at the door one last time. “I love you, Mia.”

  And Mia could do nothing except lie and listen as her mom said a tearful, howling goodbye, and then hopped off into the night.

  Mia’s heart beat too slow to break.

  * * *

  That night, Mia had a watercolor nightmare.

  She stood in the Eavey Wood on her hind paws, holding a nest of peaches and centipedes. She was looking for her siblings so she could feed them. A yelp echoed through the wood as Roa sprinted through the brambles, trying to escape the gooey-eyed Miss Vix.

  Mia wanted to help her brother, but her paws wouldn’t move. Even her whiskers refused to twitch. All she could do was stand and watch as Roa ran for his life, her teeth bared in a frozen smile.

  TEN

  “WHAT A LOVELY MORNING!” Miss Potter said, bursting into the room the next day.

  Mia lay in her cage. Her head was still woozy from the sleeping cloth, but it was her broken heart that kept her from getting up. Her mom had left her for dead.

  “I was thinking, Little Miss,” Miss Potter said, whisking around the room, collecting her pencil and paper. “Because we have to start over again, this might be the perfect opportunity to really get the story right. To return to the good old days when my books were urgent and frightening and sold like hotcakes.”

  Mia didn’t budge. Maybe her mom had been right to leave her. Mia may have saved herself a few days by peeing on those pictures, but she still couldn’t open the front door.

  Miss Potter grabbed the silver claw and sharpened a pencil. “We’ll get back to ‘once upon a time’ and ‘happily ever after.’ Why, this latest project has the potential to be even more popular than Peter…”

  Her face crumpled. She dropped the pencil and the silver claw and then hid in her hands. Her body shuddered with sobs, and she collapsed into a chair. Mia was so startled she sat upright.

  Miss Potter recovered with a sniff. Her eyes glistened as she spun a circle of silver around her finger. “Who am I kidding? I gave up on happily ever after when my Mr. Warne died…” Her breath caught. “Oh, Norman.”

  She dabbed at her face, smearing the blueberry tint from her eyes and smudging the red on her lips. Mia smelled the woman’s salty tears and wondered if she, too, had lost her den.

  Miss Potter ran her finger along Mia’s cage. “Perhaps you miss someone too, hmm?” She sniffed. “That fox I caught before you? Some would say that’s a ridiculous notion—that animals don’t have feelings. And yet…”

  Miss Vix had warned Mia and her siblings that meeting eyes with another animal would result in a fight, be it with a sibling or a badger. But staring into Miss Potter’s eyes made Mia’s heart thump with something other than fear. This human seemed as sad as she was.

  Keeping Mia’s gaze, Miss Potter slowly slid her fingers through the silver sticks of the cage. Mia’s paw lifted to move, but then came to rest again. The woman’s fingers glided on either side of Mia’s ear and then softly came together. The touch sent a trickle of warmth from her ear right to the hairless tip of her tail.

  “Perhaps I’ll make you my pet,” Miss Potter whispered. “Would you like that? We could keep each other company during the long nights.”

  Mia delicately parted her teeth and gave the woman’s fingers a lick. Her skin tasted of milk.

  Miss Potter smiled sadly. “I think I know something that will cheer us both up.”

  She lifted the latch and opened the cage. Mia’s ears perked. Was Miss Potter going to let her go? Mia’s mom might still be nearby. She could still catch her apple scent. Her paws kneaded the cage, uncertain of whether to jump out or not.

  Miss Potter went to her bedroom and then returned … with a white cloth. Mia pressed into the back of her cage, whimpering.

  “No need for that, Little Miss,” Miss Potter said. “It’s just a bonnet. Do you know what a bonnet is?”

  Mia didn’t. The rabbit had never mentioned it. She didn’t dare sniff at the thing, in case it stole her breath again.

  “See?” Miss Potter said, poking her fingers through two slits in the cloth. “These are for your ears. Now hold still…”

  She pressed the cloth close, and Mia turned her nose away, a growl building in her throat.

  “Oh, come now,” Miss Potter said. “You and I are getting along so well. Besides, it gets drafty in this old house at night. This will keep the warmth in. And you’ll look quite handsome!”

  The cloth came closer still, nearly reaching Mia’s muzzle. Thoughts overwhelmed her. Miss Potter had changed her mind. She would clamp the cloth over Mia’s nose, and Mia’s legs would kick and kick until they fell limp and never kicked again. Then Miss Potter would scoop out her insides and replace her eyes with stones, and she’d wake up in a watercolor nightmare, where she’d never see her mom or her real siblings again.

  “That’s it,” Miss Potter said, pressing the cloth closer.

  Mia lashed, her fangs tearing through Miss Potter’s delicate skin.

  “EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”

  The woman stumbled backward, blood streaming down her arm. Mia leapt out of the cage and sprinted to the front door, scratching at it, trying to get it to open.

  “Mom! Mom!” she cried. “I’m here! I’m alive! Come back!”

  Mia sensed something behind her ears and ducked, right before Miss Potter could grab her. She slipped through the woman’s skirts and ran into the kitchen. Mia saw the brown jar on the counter. Before Miss Potter could reach it, Mia leapt, knocking the jar with her paws, sending it shattering across the floor.

  The scent flooded the house, making Mia’s head heavy, her paws start to drag. A hand seized her by the ears. She was yanked painfully upward, yowling over and over again until she was hurled back into her cage. The latch snapped shut.

  Miss Potter hacked and coughed and waved her hand as she mopped up the spilled liquid. When the last of it was down the sink, she looked at the blood streaming down her arm. She turned and stared at Mia. The woman wore a new face now. Her skin twisted on her skull. The red on her lips was smeared. Her hair hung like dead weeds.

  “I see,” Miss Potter said in a dark voice. She went to her desk and grabbed Little Miss’s surviving pages, smearing them with blood. “I should never have trusted a predator. Nasty, nasty things.” She grabbed a match. “I refuse to lead my young readers astray.”

  She lit the match and touched its flame to the pages, making them crackle and burn bright. The pictures of Little Miss curled and blackened and then ended in ash. Miss Potter tossed the burning pages into the sink and opened the front door.

  “I’ll be back with more ether,” she said, and then slammed the door shut.

  Mia whimpered. She could still taste the woman’s blood on her teeth.

  ELEVEN

  THE SKY WAS still blue when the moon rose pale and full in the window.

  Now that Mia’s pages were burned, where would she end up? She imagined her empty skin wandering lonely through the forest, searching for her mom. The skin had no eyes to see. It had no tongue to call out. When the skin remembered that it didn’t have a heart to care whether it found its mom or not, it fell to the ground and never got up again.

  Mia stared through the top of her cage at Mr. Tod.

  “How do I get out of here?” she whispered.

  The fox’s eyes glowed with dusk. Mia followed his gaze to the rack where Miss Potter hung her extra skins. What could Mia do with that? She looked back to the fox, and her heart skipped a beat. Had his muzzle turned? Or were the shadows playing tricks? Mr. Tod’s eyes seemed to be pointed slightly to the left now. She followed his gaze to the stove.

  “What are you trying to show me?” she asked, looking from the skin tree to
the stove.

  Mia remembered Miss Potter squawking like a bird after she’d accidentally dropped the match on the floor. The woman may have been able to make fire, but she still feared it. And when the flame leapt where it didn’t belong, she had opened the door to let the smoke out …

  Mia’s whiskers ticked up.

  “Thank you,” she whispered to the fox.

  She licked open the latch.

  * * *

  The front door creaked open, and Miss Potter stepped inside, closing it behind her.

  “They were out of ether,” she said. “We’ll have to do this the unpleasant way, I suppose.”

  Mia drew her muzzle back into the shadows under the skin tree. Her back was nestled beneath its arched roots. She waited.

  There came the hiss of gas, the strike of a match, and a whoosh of flames. Next came the waterfall filling the pot. Then the sharpening of the silver claw—shink shink shink!

  Mia peeked beneath the coats as Miss Potter approached her cage. The woman gasped when she found it empty.

  “Little Miss?” Miss Potter said. Her steps grew more careful. “Little Miss!”

  As soon as Miss Potter’s toes were pointed away, Mia aimed her nose toward the firelit stove and pushed up on her hind legs, pressing her back into the arched roots of the skin tree.

  The rack barely budged.

  Miss Potter huffed. “Where has that little devil got off to?”

  Mia pressed up again. The rack lifted momentarily, and the skins swayed toward the stove, but then the whole thing rocked back, painfully squishing her tail. Mia stifled a yelp.

  “Come out, come out, wherever you are,” Miss Potter sang, brandishing the silver claw and circling the room.

  The skin tree teetered back and forth. When it tipped toward the stove again, Mia pushed up with everything she had, and the tree finally toppled, its skins falling with it. The top of the tree knocked the pot from the stove, and the skins landed on the flames. They started to smoke.

  “My coats!” Miss Potter screamed. She ran and swept the smoldering skins off the stove, stomping out the fire.

  A great cloud of smoke billowed to the ceiling, darkening the room. It stung Mia’s eyes and tickled her lungs, but the smell filled her with hope.

  The fire extinguished, Miss Potter ran, coughing, toward the front door. Mia followed like a shadow, careful to keep clear of the silver claw in the woman’s hand. When the door flew open, Mia shot under the woman’s skirts and between her feet toward freedom. Her tail brushed Miss Potter’s ankle, and the woman screamed. A toe struck Mia’s muzzle. A heel stabbed her tail. Everything became a tangle of legs and skirts and shrieks.

  Mia managed to slip out into the open but found she was still inside. Her nose was no longer pointed toward the door.

  “Rrraaaa!” Miss Potter screamed.

  There came a whistling through the air, and Mia bounded away just before the silver claw could slice off her ear. She slipped into the first shadow she could find and cowered.

  “Where did you go?” Miss Potter hissed.

  In the shadows, Mia caught her breath. She’d been so close. But now Miss Potter was between her and the door. If she tried to escape, the woman would swing the silver claw, and that would be that for Mia.

  “I believe that little devil purposefully set my kitchen on fire!” Miss Potter stalked around the room, snarling to herself. “Now, where is she?”

  Mia watched the woman’s heels stab around the room. She hoped with every beat of her heart for a clear path to the open door. Miss Potter kicked furniture, flipped over chairs, and whipped a tablecloth to the floor, huffing, searching. Mia cowered as Miss Potter bent at the hips with a grunt, peering under the sink, the table, the cabinet.

  “Aha!” she said, crouching near the bookcase. “Found you!”

  She seized the tail that stuck out from the shadows and gave it a tug. Before Miss Potter realized she was pulling on Mr. Tod’s tail, Mia bounded toward the open door. But just as she was about to leap outside, her nose smooshed against something soft, something invisible, and it bounced her backward.

  Mia stared in shock. There was nothing in the doorway. But she couldn’t pass through it. Had Miss Potter already trapped her in a story? Had Mia struck the border of the page?

  “Thank goodness,” Miss Potter said, tossing Mr. Tod aside. “The screen caught you.”

  Screen? Mia squinted at the entrance, and she saw the silver sticks, as tiny as hairs, making squares the size of bugs’ eyes. Her heart sank. Miss Vix had warned her. For all of Mia’s trickery, humans were cleverer by a landslide.

  A sharp heel stomped on Mia’s tail. Her yelp was cut short when a rope slipped around her throat, jerking her upward until she dangled before the naked face of Miss Potter.

  “Monstrous thing,” the woman spat.

  Mia’s eyes watered. Her legs twitched helplessly. She couldn’t breathe.

  Miss Potter kicked open the screen and hauled Mia, dangling by her neck, outside.

  “I never should have trusted a fox,” the woman said.

  She tossed the rope’s end around a stick that stuck out from the den’s side, just like the one that held the rabbit’s skin.

  Mia stopped struggling as the lights in her eyes began to fade. Her last thought before everything went dark was that she didn’t even get to say goodbye to her siblings.

  SOMEWHERE IN THE Antler Wood, leaves rattled without wind.

  The little one shifted her paws, making sure her skin was still on tight.

  No such thing as stealing eyes, she told herself. No such thing as tree-tall things with no fur. No such thing as watercolor nightmares.

  “Wait,” the beta said. “Is Mia okay? She didn’t … die, did she?”

  “Patience,” the storyteller said.

  The little one was really starting to hate that word.

  “Hey…,” the third kit said to the fifth. “Your fur’s pretty soft. I wonder if Miss Potter will come humming for you tonight?”

  A shiver whipped the fifth kit, Mars, right up to his paws.

  “I’m hungry,” he said. He curled his tongue, trying a yawn. “I mean sleepy. G’night!”

  He waddled toward home. The third one grinned and stepped on a branch, snapping it. The sound startled Mars, who sprinted, leapt over a log, and then belly flopped in a bed of lilies.

  The alpha chuckled. “Good one.”

  Four little foxes.

  “We’re ready for the next part,” the beta said.

  “More than ready,” the third said.

  The little one wanted to follow Mars, all the way home. But she had to find out what happened to Mia. She just had to. She lay on her paws so they wouldn’t be tempted to run.

  “We return to the Boulder Fields,” the storyteller said. “To the forest’s edge, where Uly has been sitting, waiting for his mother to come and collect him…”

  CREEEAAAK THUMP! CREEEAAAK THUMP!

  ONE

  ULY WASN’T EATEN in his first hour in the forest. Nor in his second.

  He sat only a few tails into the trees, foreleg folded under his chest, trying to remain inconspicuous. He watched as the rocky shadow of the Great Boulder slid from one side of the canopy to the other, certain that at any moment, his mom was going to poke her nose into the forest, having chased Mr. Scratch away. She loved Uly too much to leave him all alone.

  She would come for him. Any moment now …

  * * *

  With night came a steady wind that lashed the trees and shifted the moonlight. The shadows began to play tricks on Uly’s eyes. The leaves overhead became the ruffled wings of bats. The bush to his right was the bristled back of a bear. And to his left was a tree of moaning faces.

  Uly covered his eyes with his good forepaw. It didn’t help. He could still hear the rustling trees, still see terrifying images on the backs of his eyelids. He decided it was probably a good idea not to wait for his mom any longer and instead to exit the forest as quickly as
foxingly possible. He hopped toward the mouth of the wood, where he’d entered.

  But then a hooting turned him left. A bone snap spun him right. And a sound like slopping entrails swung him around again. Suddenly, Uly didn’t know which way was straight ahead. The branches of the forest pointed every direction, making him feel cross-eyed. Everything was shadows and more shadows.

  “Mom?” he whispered.

  He swiveled his ears, listening for the familiar sounds of the Boulder Fields, but all he heard was the creaking of trees. He sniffed for familiar scents, but the air was barky and strangled. He wanted to howl for his mom to come and save him, but the forest was filled with ears and bellies, searching for a snack.

  Uly sniffed out a nook in the roots of a tree, where nothing could sneak up behind him, and he wrapped his tail around himself.

  Ever since he could remember, Uly’s sisters had told him he wouldn’t survive kithood. He couldn’t jump. Couldn’t hunt. He couldn’t even clean himself without falling over.

  He could almost hear them now, whispering in the dark forest.

  Don’t worry, Ewwly.

  Once you’re dead, you can still make friends.

  The centipedes’ll twine through your nostrils

  And out your ears.

  The spiders will make webby homes across your rib cage

  And your eye sockets.

  And then the Shrouded Fox will come for you

  And steal you away to the Underwood.

  And that’s where you’ll live

  Forever.

  TWO

  A GROAN STARTLED Uly awake.

  He tumbled out of the hairy roots with a yelp, certain he was about to be plucked up by a branchy claw and devoured by the tree with many faces. When nothing grabbed him, he blinked open his eyes. Patches of golden light writhed on the forest floor.

  Morning had come. He hadn’t been so sure it would.