Red Fox (13 page)

I knelt down beside Dex and
put my hand on his shoulder, just as another rock came crashing
through at the spot where Will had just been.

“
Jesus Christ!” I yelled
and gripped Dex’s shoulder instinctively. “Are you OK?”

He nodded and took his arms
off his head. His eyes were wide, panicked. I’m sure I looked the
same.

“
What now?” I
said.

“
We go outside,” he said.
Determination settled on his jaw.

“
What?”

He stayed crouched and
grabbed my arm and shuffled us quickly out of the kitchen. Once in
the dining room, we looked up the stairs. Neither Will or Sarah
were there.

“
We can’t go outside,” I
hissed. “That’s where the rocks are coming from you
moron.”

“
Are they?” he
asked.

I didn’t even know how to
respond to that. “What about Will and Sarah?”

“
They’ll be fine, we need
to get this on camera.”

And with that, Dex was off
and running out the front door, pulling me along with him. The
outside air was like stepping into a freezer. Gone was the
sweltering heat and blinding light of day. Now it was dark as hell
and cold as the depths of a cave.

We ran a few feet away from
the house and looked around us frantically. Shoes would have
helped. A flashlight would have even better. I could still hear
rocks hitting the side of the house but so far no more glass being
broken.

“
Run over there!” Dex yelled
and gestured the camera to the side of the house where the kitchen
was.

“
Are you fucking kidding
me!? You go over there!”

“
You’re
the host!” he growled. Oh man, not this again. Last time we got
into this dilemma I was practically dragged up the stairs of a
lighthouse. “Man up!” he added. “I’ll be beside you the whole time,
I just need to get
you
on camera.”

I shook my head but knew he
was right. Why did I sign up for this?

I walked slowly over to the
side of the house. I felt no urgency to surprise whatever the
hell
it
was.

As we inched closer, I told
him to turn on the camera light. Night vision didn’t help me in
anyway.

The light flicked on and my
path was illuminated, albeit poorly. My vision was filled with
grain, but I could make out the kitchen window, its broken glass
glistening, a faint light from the dining room shining through. A
rock or two still bounced off the window. Dex moved the light to
the origin of the rocks – my heart caught in my throat at what it
might reveal – but there was nothing there. It was like the rocks
were being thrown out of thin air. It was just…darkness.

“
What’s going on?” a voice
snaked out from behind me.

I yelped and we both spun
around. Dex aimed the light showing Miguel a few feet behind us,
wearing pajamas and holding a shotgun.

“
Jesus!” I couldn’t help
but swear again. I was a bit relieved it wasn’t some ghost but I
can’t say Miguel with a gun made me feel any less
scared.

“
What the hell is going on?”
he snarled. “I hear all these screams, glass breaking.”

“
I was hoping you could
tell us,” Dex said, filming him now.

“
Get that thing out of my
face, I’m not telling you anything. Where is Will?”

“
Right here,” I heard Will
say. He came out from around the front of the house, huffing and
puffing. “Sarah’s OK, I think it stopped.”

It
had
stopped. Probably didn’t help
that we were all standing right at the rock epicenter.

“
What is it this time?”
Miguel said. “I told you you’d never last a day here. I never
screamed at some rocks.”

“
You would this time, they
came through the darn window,” Will said pointing at the broken
window. “How am I going to replace that?”

“
Dumb teenagers,” Miguel
said. “We should set up video to catch them.”

“
That’s kind of what this
is,” Dex said.

“
You think they are
teenagers? No person could have done this,” I said forcefully,
annoyed at Miguel’s assumptions. Wouldn’t last a day? Go fuck
yourself.

“
She’s right,” Will agreed.
“Miguel, I’ve never seen it so bad.”

“
You’re all loco. That’s
what you are. Go to bed,” he snarled and started to walk back
across the yard. “I’ll fix your window in the morning.”

Morning. The term never
sounded so foreign to me. How the hell were we going to get through
till morning?

Somehow though, we were on
our way. After Miguel slinked off, we decided it might be time for
us to all turn in. Will insisted in doing the dishes and cleaning
up in the kitchen and I have to say I wasn’t one to protest. After
what we just witnessed, the kitchen was the last place we wanted to
be. I told Will to make sure to lock all the doors a million times
too. I don’t know how he wasn’t going mental with all this crazy
crap going on. I was already feeling frayed.

On the way down the upper
hallway, Dex and I inched past Sarah’s room, careful not to be too
loud. Apparently she had heard the rocks too but wasn’t scared,
least not more than normal. Either she was a liar or very good at
hiding things from her husband. There was no way in hell that she
could just shrug off what just happened as a normal
occurrence.

Once inside our room, I
locked the door, turned on all the lights available and shut the
blinds. The darkness outside was unnerving, even from a second
story window.

Somehow with all the
scariness and commotion, I had forgotten how awkward bedtime was
going to be. Seemed like fear erased all sorts of non-issues like
that one. In the bathroom, I got changed into PJ pants and a baggy
concert tee (Mr. Bungle) and quickly washed my face and brushed my
teeth. I didn’t like being alone, even with Dex outside the door. I
did run the taps while I did my business, but the walls were too
thin for any real privacy.

When I was done, Dex was
already in bed and scribbling into a notebook. He was shirtless.
Despite what you’d think, I hoped he was wearing pants of some sort
underneath the covers.

He looked up at me and
smiled. “So this is your sleeping attire. Classy.”

“
I hope your sleeping attire
consists of undergarments of some sort,” I replied dryly, getting
into my side of the bed.

“
Well, you’re just going to
have to find out for yourself,” he said with a smirk. I gave him a
look and settled underneath the covers. Now that I was actually in
the bed, it felt immensely small. I couldn’t lie here without
rubbing against his shoulder.

I eyed his chest, now that
I had a closer look at it. The words tattooed across it said, “And
with madness comes the light.”

He caught me looking.
“Admiring my pecs or trying to figure out the tattoo?”

Both.

“
The tattoo,” I said. “What
does it mean?”

“
Song
lyric,” he said, his lips clamping together, signifying not to ask
him anymore. So I didn’t. About
that
tattoo.

“
And the arm? What’s the
fleur de lis for?”

“
I’m French.”

“
I thought you were
Irish.”

“
I’m a mutt. Done with your
questions?”

I shook my head and pulled
my covers up closer. “What’s the point of tattoos if they aren’t a
conversation starter?”

“
We don’t need
conversations starters, kiddo.”

We stared at each other for
a few weird beats. We were too close to each other. I could see the
tiny spirals of ebony in his etched brown irises.

“
This is cozy,” I blurted
out. I turned my face away from his.

“
We could make it cozier,”
he grinned, the bristles on his moustache sticking up. He seemed
quite relaxed considering what had happened earlier and considering
what he had been going through.

“
You’re just begging for a
pillow fight, aren’t you?”

He smiled even broader,
showing his shiny white teeth. “Actually, I was hoping you might
warm up my feet.”

Suddenly his feet
surrounded mine, cold blocks of ice. I nearly screamed but caught
myself. I flinched, my body turned rigid.

“
Get away!” I hissed,
hitting him on the arm.

He just smiled and stuck
them further up my legs, getting under the pajama pant opening. The
coldness jarred me and I had nowhere to go but off the actual bed.
I started laughing and pushing him away.

“
I’m serious,” I said and
shoved him hard.

He turned over on his side,
retracting his feet and grinned up at me. “But you’re so
warm.”

“
I’m a hot-blooded mammal.
You’re a cold-blooded reptile. Do the math.”

“
Reptiles need love
too.”

I paused at that and gave
him a curious look. He was still smiling at me, though his eyes
were full of sarcasm.

I shook my head and then
pulled the covers up over me.

“
I hope you don’t snore,” I
added.

“
I only snore when my feet
are cold.”

I sighed and rolled over,
away from him. He still had the light on for his writing but it
didn’t matter to me. I closed my eyes, drifting off to sleep. All
the joking around had miraculously erased the fear from my body. I
didn’t know if Dex planned it that way, but it worked. Despite
everything that happened earlier, I felt safe knowing that my major
annoyance at the moment was his cold feet

~~

My eyes flickered open.
Something had woken me. I froze and let my eyes adjust to the
darkness. I was still on my side, facing the wall. I wasn’t sure of
the time, or how long I had been asleep, but it must have been the
middle of the night. I listened and heard Dex snoring lightly
beside me. His back was to mine, his butt square against me. Good
thing he was wearing pants after all.

Despite that warmth and
contact, I felt scared. I often did when I woke up for no reason. I
tried to remember the dreams I just had but they were flitting away
from my memory. Something about an owl… Dex…rocks.

The rocks! I remembered
what had happened earlier. Could rocks have woken me up? I listened
again, harder. I couldn’t hear anything hitting the window or the
roof.

Then I felt something brush
up against my foot. My feet were underneath the covers but far away
from Dex’s feet. My heart stopped. I felt icky. I had to roll over
and see what it was but doing so was going to be the toughest, most
terrifying thing ever.

I took a deep breath and
slowly turned over.

I felt the life being
sucked out of me.

There was an animal sitting
at the foot of the bed, just six feet away, on top of my feet. As
they turned over with the rest of me, I felt my toes jabbing up
into his soft bottom.

It was a fox. I couldn’t
see it clearly but I knew that’s what it was. A fox, about the size
of a collie, sitting on its hindquarters, ears creating a pointy
silhouette. It looked right at me. Its eyes were a hazel color but
they didn’t glow like a normal animal. They locked with mine. It
was like looking into the eyes of someone I knew.

Was this for real? Was this
actually happening? I wanted to look at Dex but I couldn’t tear my
eyes away. The more I stared into those knowing, harmful eyes, the
more I felt entranced. My legs and arms were replaced by lead
pipes. I still felt the animal’s weight on my feet, which meant
what I was experiencing was real.

I don’t know if I was
breathing; I didn’t think I was. My heart thumped loudly in my
chest, but even that started to slow. It wasn’t like I was calming
down in any way – in fact I could feel the terror slowly take hold
of my body – but my heart still slowed until the thumps were
further and further apart. My thoughts became sluggish. I needed to
look away from those eyes.

Then the fox shifted onto
its front feet, perfectly positioned between my legs. It moved
closer now and our eye contact had not been broken. I felt like I
was drowning internally, my lungs were without air and I was too
weak to gasp for it. The room started to spin, with the fox still
front and center.

It took a step forward,
mouth open. Was it smiling at me? Its eyes said the opposite. They
said I was dead.

I tried to talk, to scream
but nothing came out. Either I was going to wake up in a second or
something horrifying was about to happen. And I couldn’t do
anything about it.

It took another step, its
tail waving subtly. The eyes narrowed, as if it was glaring at
me.

I felt Dex shift and a
smattering of hope rushed through me. The fox didn’t break its
stare but it paused, its red coat bristling.

Dex stirred again and
rolled over. I couldn’t turn to look at him – the paralysis had
taken hold of my bones –but I prayed for him to open his
eyes.