The Fox was first published by The Literary Hatchet in August 2016.
The Fox
Fortunetellers had never been my thing, but a bright purple tent propped up in the middle of a market proved too hard an invitation to resist.
“Madame Eleştiri’s House of Destiny,” Amy proclaimed. “It looks more like a travelling drag show…”
“Sounds like it too,” I added.
Amy smirked up at me before cautiously sidling up to the entrance. “Are you going in first?” she asked, glancing back towards me. “Or am I?”
“Wouldn’t have thought it would be your scene…”
“It’s not, but I can see by your face that you’re dying to go in!”
I nodded noncommittally, which Amy took as endorsement enough to pull back the heavy curtain that acted as an entrance.
“After you, sir,” she said mockingly, before bowing deeply in my direction.
The moment I stepped inside the tent, the stench of incense assaulted me. I didn’t even have to turn around to realise that Amy had made it inside – the sound of her spontaneous asthma attack let me know she was right behind me. Whilst I hadn’t frequented many of these kinds of places, I knew the sight that greeted me was pretty standard fare. A little table in the middle of the room with a chair either side of it, one empty, the other occupied by an old woman in an ostentatious headdress that was probably meant to look mysterious – but came off more as camp. Then, of course, came the obligatory crystal ball slap-bang in the centre of the table, with the eponymous Madame Eleştiri’s already waving her hands around it like she was trying to swat a particularly tricky mosquito.
“You have come,” the fortuneteller finally said. “Welcome, children.”
“I’m thirty-two,” Amy replied, flatly.
“Amy!” I said, giving her hand a quick yank. “Don’t be rude…”
Amy shrugged and then moved over to the side of the tent like a petulant child.
“The boy has sense,” Eleştiri said calmly, “he wishes to know his destiny.”
“Yeah, I bet ‘the boy’ does,” Amy spat out, a little too viciously for my liking.
“You cannot avoid your destiny,” Eleştiri replied, even more placid than before.
“Look, love, even if you could see the future in that prop ball of yours, what’d be the point?” Amy thrust her finger like a dagger, stepping forward with every new word. “We’d just have to accept what’d be coming to us!”
“You fear what you do not understand,” Eleştiri replied, her voice finally taking on a hint of irritation.
Amy glanced over at me, her brow furrowing into a look of abject disdain. “Come on, Andy, are you really going to take life advice from a woman who only speaks in clichés?”
I opened my mouth to reply, but Amy just rolled her eyes and stormed out of the tent before I was able to so much as breathe.
“She leaves because she fears what surrounds her,” Eleştiri mumbled as if speaking to someone inside her crystal ball.
“Well I don’t,” I said sharply. “She can wait outside for a minute.”
I pulled the chair opposite Eleştiri from under the table and made myself as comfortable as possible. There was a moment of silence as the old woman slowly looked up from her crystal ball and smiled softly at me.
“Good choice, Andrew.” Eleştiri gently unfurled my hand and began to run her leathery fingers across my palm – as if they were dancing to some unheard tune. “Beware the fox,” she said, sullenly.
I pulled my hand away and looked the woman up and down. “Is that it? What does it even mean?”
“I tell you what the spirits tell me, nothing more.”
I nodded half-heartedly and moved to stand up, casually placing a handful of coins down on the table. Eleştiri smiled again and quickly scooped the coins into a little velvet bag, before giving me what seemed like a bow of respect.
Honestly, I still had a mouthful of questions but Amy was definitely right… The old woman did seem to only speak in clichés and her answers would probably have made me even more uncomfortable than I was already feeling. So as soon as I realised Eleştiri wasn’t going to say anything else, I just turned and left the tent...
The brightness of the afternoon sun stung my eyes a little as I stepped outside. No matter the quality of the actual psychic inside – that tent’s walls were thick enough to make daylight feel like a distant memory.
To my surprise, Amy had actually waited for me and even threw her lit cigarette to the floor at my arrival – rubbing the butt firmly into the ground. She rarely stopped smoking for anyone.
“How was your little ‘reading’, then?” she asked, smirking all the while.
“Beware the fox,” I replied, doing my best to avoid eye contact with her – I knew if I dared look up from the floor, she would only see how right she’d been about the whole thing.
“Right, brilliant, just what I’d expected. Complete garbage.”
“Maybe, but you were still really rude in there.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Amy spat out. “Was I impolite to the mad crone?”
“You didn’t have to be disrespectful…”
“Righto, I’ll remember in future that just batting my eyelashes in a mysterious way is enough to drive you wild! If only I’d known before how easy you were to charm…”
I didn’t even try to reply to that, there was never any point battling with Amy when she’d decided she was in the right. Maybe Eleştiri had a point after all; people who get this angry about something are usually afraid of it…
“So...” Amy broke the silence. “Are we going to look ‘round the rest of the bazaar, Andy? Or should we just head on home, now that you’ve had your little date?”
“It’s only here for the day, better make the most of it.”
“Fab,” Amy said, clapping her hands together. “Let’s see what other wonders this creepy little carny set-up has to offer!”
We explored the bazaar for about an hour but almost nothing stood out to us. It was mainly just cheap plastic tat for sale, peppered with the occasional sweet stall or drinks stand. That was until something caught both our eyes at exactly the same moment… There – on the stall table in front of us – stood a little carved fox, its teeth all individually detailed, each one ending in a sickeningly sharp point.
Without missing a beat, Amy dashed over to it and lifted it right up to my face. “Hello there, Mister Hall!” she declared, thrusting the fox incredibly close to my eyes. “I’m here to eat your soul!”
“That’s not funny!” I shouted, knocking the thing out of her hand and down to the ground below.
The stall owner looked up from his magazine and started yelling at us in broken English. I dived my hand into my pocket to pay for the damn thing, whilst Amy laughed uncontrollably.
“Are you actually kidding me?” Amy snorted. “You’re buying it?!”
“I have to, we damaged it,” I replied, directing myself at the stallholder.
“No we didn’t!” Amy lifted the wooden sculpture up from the ground and rubbed it with her coat before placing it gently back down onto the stall again. “See? Good as new!”
The storeowner shook his head disapprovingly, and so I still handed over the money.
“You’re a coward, Andy."
“We damaged his goods.” I picked up the horrible little fox and placed it into my jacket pocket. “Not paying for it would be an insult.”
The stall owner smiled respectfully and counted the money in his hand before placing it somewhere under the table. I nodded to him and he returned the gesture before glaring at Amy. I think the look of sheer hatred she shot back at him sent chills down both ours spines…
“What about the curse?” Amy asked as we walked away from the stall.
“You said it yourself, just a cliché, right?”
“Right.”
Nightfall was fast approaching and it was becoming apparent that the marketplace was actually pretty poorly lit. Most of the stalls had their own little lamps but the majority of them were starting to pack their goods away – and their light sources along with them.
“Perfect time to head home,” Amy said airily.
“Quick drink first?” I indicated a vague direction in the distance.
Amy nodded and winked at me, probably guessing I had no idea where I’d be taking us. We both knew the city well enough, or at least the part we actually lived in. This market wasn’t well advertised or in the particularly nice part of town, but what else was there to do on a Sunday?
We’d been walking for a while when Amy stopped suddenly – dead in her tracks. “I know somewhere close to here.”
“But what about the place I was taking us?” I asked, trying hard to suppress a smirk.
“We both know you were just wandering around, hoping to find somewhere.” Amy patted my head patronisingly. “Don’t worry yourself about it, I actually know a real place, come on!”
With that, Amy took my hand and scurried off into a narrow alleyway between two sets of buildings. The further we ventured down, the darker the world seemed to become – the sound of traffic grew increasingly distance until it faded into a whisper. I turned around to see how far we’d come and there was no sign of the streetlights that lit the road which we’d started in. By the time I turned back around to Amy, I could see that she’d taken to lightening our way with her phone screen.
“Are you serious, do you really know a place?” I asked, slowly edging closer towards her.
“I do, I just thought it was closer than this.” Amy’s brow furrowed noticeably, but it was pretty obvious she was trying to hide her concern. “I thought this path would take us one street down…”
“It feels like it’s taking us to China!”
“Yeah…” Amy stood still and took a long breath out. “I know.”
Part of me wanted to tell Amy that it felt like we were being followed, but I knew after the debacle with the so-called psychic, that she’d probably fly off the handle at the suggestion. Thinking better of it, I said instead: “Shall we just head back the way we came?”
“No!” Amy blurted out, grabbing on to my jacket sleeve in the process.
“Okay, shall we can carry on, then?”
“Yeah, sorry, I think that’s best.” She took a second and seemed to calm herself. “It’s just we’ve come so far already, that’s all…”
“I guess you’re right.” I forced a smile at her but she didn’t seem to acknowledge it. She still seemed focused on something in the distance behind us. “You feel it, too?”
“What? No.”
“How did you know what I was talking about, then?”
Amy’s eyes widened as she’d realised she’d been rattled. “Okay… I admit it, I’ve felt it for about five minutes now.” She quickly glanced back around behind us and her voice dropped to a whisper, “I thought it was just me… I didn’t want to seem paranoid.”
“After you’d made fun of me, you mean?”
“Yeah… Sorry, Andy.”
“It’s okay.” I returned the patronising pat she had given me earlier. “Let’s just get out of this creepy alleyway first, yeah?”
We walked a little further down the way when suddenly I heard the crash of something behind us.
“What the hell was that?” Amy cried, flashing her phone light towards the source.
“Sounded like a dustbin falling over?” I replied, trying to sound as calm as I could.
We both stood silent for a second, waiting to see if whatever it was would get any closer to us. I grasped Amy’s hand which seemed to surprise her – as she let out a muffled squeaking sound – before realising it was just me, as opposed to some spooky assailant.
“There’s nothing there, is there?” Amy whispered, almost as if to herself.
I shook my head in response, but I don’t think she noticed.
Just then – another crash – this time coming from somewhere in front of us.
“Come on!” Amy shouted as she pulled me along the rest of the alleyway. Her phone light was barely illuminating anything as we ran, all I could see was the occasional glimpse of the side of a building or a manhole cover – the rest was pure darkness.
“Where are we running to?” I spluttered out.
“Anywhere but here!”
Just as some lights were becoming visible in the distance, we could see a strange figure just a little way in front of us. We both stood perfectly still at the same moment – like a couple of deer caught in headlights. Whatever it was seemed as motionless as we were, and looked to be watching us intently.
“It’s standing on something…” Amy mumbled to me.
Sure enough, whatever it was seemed to be standing on top of something else, but it was too dark to make out anything but vague shapes.
“Flash your light at it…” I suggested to Amy.
“What if it attacks us?”
“I think it would have already done that by now.”
A second passed before Amy lifted up her phone light to reveal the bright eyes of a small fox standing on top of a slighter larger dustbin. The fox immediately dashed away taking the dustbin down on its side along with it. A third crash ensued.
“A fox…seriously?” Amy sighed audibly.
“So that’s what was stalking us?”
“Seems unlikely, but I’m willing to accept that rather than anything creepier.” Amy stretched her shoulders and then tapped me on the arm. “But I’m not willing to stand around to see if anything worse comes, let’s move!”
So Amy led me down the final part of the path and towards the lights in the distance. As the path finally got a little brighter, Amy switched her phone off and pointed at a building to our left.
“Looks like the back end of a pub, right?” she suggested before indicating the plethora of people with drinks in their hands – congregated around a door lit up with string lights.
“But there’s no signage…”
“Of course, we’re not on the street, Andy,” Amy said, sounding just a little exasperated. “We’re in an alleyway, this is probably the back entrance.”
“I’d be happy to have a drink with the devil at this point.”
“Well by the looks of this place…you may just get your wish.”
As we entered through the backdoor, I think we could both tell this place was a total dive. A single shade-less bulb kept the place in a constant state of perpetual twilight, and just about every piece of furniture looked like it’d survived a bomb blast before being shipped over here.
“The backdoor really seems an appropriate place to have come through now, doesn’t it?” Amy whispered in my ear.
I nodded and led her over to a small booth by an incredibly dirty window. Part of me wanted to leave immediately, but after everything we’d been through just to get here...that just seemed too defeatist an idea.
I glanced over to the bar. “I’ll get the first rou–" I stopped myself. "The only round. What do you want, Amy?”
Amy shook her head and then flashed a forced smile. “Nothing, I’m fine. Just feeling a little sick after everything that’s happened.” She held her hand gently to her head in a slightly dramatic fashion. “Can we go, Andy? I’ve got a headache, I feel rough.”
“Are you kidding?” I reached over to hold Amy’s hand. “We just got here, and we came so far!”
“I know, it’s just…please?”
“Just take a look at the drinks list, have one, it’ll make you feel better.”
“Andy…”
“Just one!” I flicked my hand up towards the menu above the bar, it was relatively clean compared to everything else in here, but still quite difficult to read.
Amy looked at me before casting her eyes up to the menu. “Please…”
“She really got to you, huh?” I said quietly.
“It’s just weird, the statue, the fox in the alley…and now we’re in this place.” Amy quickly glanced out of the window. “I just want to go home, this doesn’t feel right.”
It didn’t sit right with me either, and it was really jarring seeing how much Amy had changed since the start of the day. She was meant to be the confident one who laughed in the face of danger. It’s not even as though our roles had totally reversed – as I think I was just as unsettled as she was.
“Andy,” Amy whispered to me as she leaned across the table. “Are they…are those men doing a drug deal?”
Sure enough, as I followed Amy’s line of sight it was clear that two men were sidling up to each other and discussing something heatedly. The taller of the two guys was flashing a bag of something to his probable customer, whilst his eyes kept scanning across the room methodically. The shorter of the men was starting to look agitated and jumpy, constantly checking something in his pocket and glancing over his shoulder. It didn’t make for a pretty sight.
“That’s it, Andy,” Amy declared as she moved to stand up. “We’re going!”
I didn’t want to object, but I felt this might be my only chance to prove to Amy that I wasn’t the pushover she thought I was. I reached out for her arm to try and persuade her to stay.
Without warning, Amy suddenly turned to me with a look of barely controlled rage. “If you’re not coming, Andy, then I’ll go alone!”
At that very moment the deal on the other side of the room seemed to turn sour and the shorter man from before pulled out what he’d been concealing in his pocket – a knife so long it verged on being a sword.
Before any of us knew what was happening – the shorter man stabbed the dealer with a single, swift motion. Not a second passed before he turned around and looked at all of us – a murderous glint in his eyes mixed with a heady dose of fear – like a cornered dog.
I tried reaching out for Amy but she and everyone else were already running for the front door. I moved to stand up and escape with her but she was already too far in front of me. A large man – clearly too drunk to have spotted the danger before – jumped up from his chair by the door and pushed Amy clean out of the way. I watched in horror as she fell limply to the floor, her head crashing against the back of one the booth chairs. The crack was so loud it was clear above the shouts and screams of the other patrons.
I raced over and was able to hold on to her as more people fled the pub. I just cradled her in my arms, gently caressing her hair and whispering reassurances her that help would come soon.
“Wallet, mate.”
I looked up to see the short man from before, his knife pointed directly at me. There was now a calmness washing across his face, as if he’d done this a hundred times before – like this was the easy part of the crime.
I’d gone past caring at this point, I shifted my weight to grab my wallet but made sure to keep Amy supported and comfortable. As I pulled my wallet out and threw it at him, that hideous little fox statue came out with it – my house keys lodged between a couple of its sickening teeth.
“You’ve seen my face, mate,” the man said as he reached down to collect his haul. “You say anything to the pigs, and I’ll find you.”
I nodded absently, keeping myself focused on supporting Amy until help arrived.
“I’ve got everything I need right here, cards, details – all I need to know about you,” the man spat out, I glanced up to see a vicious smirk spread across his face. “The police come after me, I come after you.”
I said nothing to the coward and he seemed irritated by my passivity, I refused to show him any hint of fear – I could sense he’d strike for the smallest reason.
“Oh, Kentish Road?” I flicked my eyes upwards again to see he was looking at my driver's licence. “I know it well, bet you’ve got a pretty home…”
“If you don’t go now,” I said without thinking, my voice rising with indignation, “they’re going to find you without anyone’s help!”
I don’t know how it worked, but it did. After nodding to himself a couple of times and scanning the room quickly for something, the man pocketed my house keys and wallet before bolting out the backdoor. He left the vile little fox behind.
As soon as the backdoor swung shut, the barman poked his head out from behind the bar and let me know he was going to call an ambulance and the police. I was just amazed the short guy hadn’t spotted him on his way out.
“Is she still breathing?” the barman asked.
“Yes, it’s a little erratic, but she is,” I replied, calming myself a little at the realisation that she looked as peaceful as she did. “I think she can still hear us…”
“She took a nasty fall…”
“You saw that?”
“Just before I nipped behind the bar… Yeah.”
We didn’t talk much more after that, I just carried on whispering to Amy whilst the barman went to check on the victim who’d been stabbed. It turned out that he’d already died.
The ambulance finally arrived and the paramedics began assessing Amy’s condition. I don’t know if I was in shock, but all of their words seemed to wash over me like I was floating out at sea. The barman dealt with the police for me, and they said they’d take my statement later. I didn’t want to give them anything, not after the threat that guy had given me. He knew where I lived now; I’d never be able to rest easy until he was safely behind bars… I kept thinking about my wallet and keys, wishing I hadn’t given them up so easily – that I hadn’t given him that power over me. But I couldn’t let myself keep worrying about any of that now – Amy had to remain my only concern.
One of the paramedics asked me if I’d like to travel with them and of course I accepted the offer. They checked me over as we got in the ambulance to make sure I hadn’t been hurt without realising it. I assured them I was fine and that seemed enough to convince them – Amy was their primary concern, too.
As we drove away from the pub, my eyes drifted away from Amy and towards the back windows of the ambulance. My heart sank to unfathomable depths as I caught sight of something in the distance, and I had to summon up all my strength not to collapse then and there. Amy needed their help now – I couldn’t go fainting on them.
Just above the door to the pub stood a large sign swaying in the breeze. A sickeningly saccharine painting of a canine was staring back at me intently from it – with the golden words emblazoned below – The Fox.
“Madame Eleştiri’s House of Destiny,” Amy proclaimed. “It looks more like a travelling drag show…”
“Sounds like it too,” I added.
Amy smirked up at me before cautiously sidling up to the entrance. “Are you going in first?” she asked, glancing back towards me. “Or am I?”
“Wouldn’t have thought it would be your scene…”
“It’s not, but I can see by your face that you’re dying to go in!”
I nodded noncommittally, which Amy took as endorsement enough to pull back the heavy curtain that acted as an entrance.
“After you, sir,” she said mockingly, before bowing deeply in my direction.
The moment I stepped inside the tent, the stench of incense assaulted me. I didn’t even have to turn around to realise that Amy had made it inside – the sound of her spontaneous asthma attack let me know she was right behind me. Whilst I hadn’t frequented many of these kinds of places, I knew the sight that greeted me was pretty standard fare. A little table in the middle of the room with a chair either side of it, one empty, the other occupied by an old woman in an ostentatious headdress that was probably meant to look mysterious – but came off more as camp. Then, of course, came the obligatory crystal ball slap-bang in the centre of the table, with the eponymous Madame Eleştiri’s already waving her hands around it like she was trying to swat a particularly tricky mosquito.
“You have come,” the fortuneteller finally said. “Welcome, children.”
“I’m thirty-two,” Amy replied, flatly.
“Amy!” I said, giving her hand a quick yank. “Don’t be rude…”
Amy shrugged and then moved over to the side of the tent like a petulant child.
“The boy has sense,” Eleştiri said calmly, “he wishes to know his destiny.”
“Yeah, I bet ‘the boy’ does,” Amy spat out, a little too viciously for my liking.
“You cannot avoid your destiny,” Eleştiri replied, even more placid than before.
“Look, love, even if you could see the future in that prop ball of yours, what’d be the point?” Amy thrust her finger like a dagger, stepping forward with every new word. “We’d just have to accept what’d be coming to us!”
“You fear what you do not understand,” Eleştiri replied, her voice finally taking on a hint of irritation.
Amy glanced over at me, her brow furrowing into a look of abject disdain. “Come on, Andy, are you really going to take life advice from a woman who only speaks in clichés?”
I opened my mouth to reply, but Amy just rolled her eyes and stormed out of the tent before I was able to so much as breathe.
“She leaves because she fears what surrounds her,” Eleştiri mumbled as if speaking to someone inside her crystal ball.
“Well I don’t,” I said sharply. “She can wait outside for a minute.”
I pulled the chair opposite Eleştiri from under the table and made myself as comfortable as possible. There was a moment of silence as the old woman slowly looked up from her crystal ball and smiled softly at me.
“Good choice, Andrew.” Eleştiri gently unfurled my hand and began to run her leathery fingers across my palm – as if they were dancing to some unheard tune. “Beware the fox,” she said, sullenly.
I pulled my hand away and looked the woman up and down. “Is that it? What does it even mean?”
“I tell you what the spirits tell me, nothing more.”
I nodded half-heartedly and moved to stand up, casually placing a handful of coins down on the table. Eleştiri smiled again and quickly scooped the coins into a little velvet bag, before giving me what seemed like a bow of respect.
Honestly, I still had a mouthful of questions but Amy was definitely right… The old woman did seem to only speak in clichés and her answers would probably have made me even more uncomfortable than I was already feeling. So as soon as I realised Eleştiri wasn’t going to say anything else, I just turned and left the tent...
The brightness of the afternoon sun stung my eyes a little as I stepped outside. No matter the quality of the actual psychic inside – that tent’s walls were thick enough to make daylight feel like a distant memory.
To my surprise, Amy had actually waited for me and even threw her lit cigarette to the floor at my arrival – rubbing the butt firmly into the ground. She rarely stopped smoking for anyone.
“How was your little ‘reading’, then?” she asked, smirking all the while.
“Beware the fox,” I replied, doing my best to avoid eye contact with her – I knew if I dared look up from the floor, she would only see how right she’d been about the whole thing.
“Right, brilliant, just what I’d expected. Complete garbage.”
“Maybe, but you were still really rude in there.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Amy spat out. “Was I impolite to the mad crone?”
“You didn’t have to be disrespectful…”
“Righto, I’ll remember in future that just batting my eyelashes in a mysterious way is enough to drive you wild! If only I’d known before how easy you were to charm…”
I didn’t even try to reply to that, there was never any point battling with Amy when she’d decided she was in the right. Maybe Eleştiri had a point after all; people who get this angry about something are usually afraid of it…
“So...” Amy broke the silence. “Are we going to look ‘round the rest of the bazaar, Andy? Or should we just head on home, now that you’ve had your little date?”
“It’s only here for the day, better make the most of it.”
“Fab,” Amy said, clapping her hands together. “Let’s see what other wonders this creepy little carny set-up has to offer!”
We explored the bazaar for about an hour but almost nothing stood out to us. It was mainly just cheap plastic tat for sale, peppered with the occasional sweet stall or drinks stand. That was until something caught both our eyes at exactly the same moment… There – on the stall table in front of us – stood a little carved fox, its teeth all individually detailed, each one ending in a sickeningly sharp point.
Without missing a beat, Amy dashed over to it and lifted it right up to my face. “Hello there, Mister Hall!” she declared, thrusting the fox incredibly close to my eyes. “I’m here to eat your soul!”
“That’s not funny!” I shouted, knocking the thing out of her hand and down to the ground below.
The stall owner looked up from his magazine and started yelling at us in broken English. I dived my hand into my pocket to pay for the damn thing, whilst Amy laughed uncontrollably.
“Are you actually kidding me?” Amy snorted. “You’re buying it?!”
“I have to, we damaged it,” I replied, directing myself at the stallholder.
“No we didn’t!” Amy lifted the wooden sculpture up from the ground and rubbed it with her coat before placing it gently back down onto the stall again. “See? Good as new!”
The storeowner shook his head disapprovingly, and so I still handed over the money.
“You’re a coward, Andy."
“We damaged his goods.” I picked up the horrible little fox and placed it into my jacket pocket. “Not paying for it would be an insult.”
The stall owner smiled respectfully and counted the money in his hand before placing it somewhere under the table. I nodded to him and he returned the gesture before glaring at Amy. I think the look of sheer hatred she shot back at him sent chills down both ours spines…
“What about the curse?” Amy asked as we walked away from the stall.
“You said it yourself, just a cliché, right?”
“Right.”
Nightfall was fast approaching and it was becoming apparent that the marketplace was actually pretty poorly lit. Most of the stalls had their own little lamps but the majority of them were starting to pack their goods away – and their light sources along with them.
“Perfect time to head home,” Amy said airily.
“Quick drink first?” I indicated a vague direction in the distance.
Amy nodded and winked at me, probably guessing I had no idea where I’d be taking us. We both knew the city well enough, or at least the part we actually lived in. This market wasn’t well advertised or in the particularly nice part of town, but what else was there to do on a Sunday?
We’d been walking for a while when Amy stopped suddenly – dead in her tracks. “I know somewhere close to here.”
“But what about the place I was taking us?” I asked, trying hard to suppress a smirk.
“We both know you were just wandering around, hoping to find somewhere.” Amy patted my head patronisingly. “Don’t worry yourself about it, I actually know a real place, come on!”
With that, Amy took my hand and scurried off into a narrow alleyway between two sets of buildings. The further we ventured down, the darker the world seemed to become – the sound of traffic grew increasingly distance until it faded into a whisper. I turned around to see how far we’d come and there was no sign of the streetlights that lit the road which we’d started in. By the time I turned back around to Amy, I could see that she’d taken to lightening our way with her phone screen.
“Are you serious, do you really know a place?” I asked, slowly edging closer towards her.
“I do, I just thought it was closer than this.” Amy’s brow furrowed noticeably, but it was pretty obvious she was trying to hide her concern. “I thought this path would take us one street down…”
“It feels like it’s taking us to China!”
“Yeah…” Amy stood still and took a long breath out. “I know.”
Part of me wanted to tell Amy that it felt like we were being followed, but I knew after the debacle with the so-called psychic, that she’d probably fly off the handle at the suggestion. Thinking better of it, I said instead: “Shall we just head back the way we came?”
“No!” Amy blurted out, grabbing on to my jacket sleeve in the process.
“Okay, shall we can carry on, then?”
“Yeah, sorry, I think that’s best.” She took a second and seemed to calm herself. “It’s just we’ve come so far already, that’s all…”
“I guess you’re right.” I forced a smile at her but she didn’t seem to acknowledge it. She still seemed focused on something in the distance behind us. “You feel it, too?”
“What? No.”
“How did you know what I was talking about, then?”
Amy’s eyes widened as she’d realised she’d been rattled. “Okay… I admit it, I’ve felt it for about five minutes now.” She quickly glanced back around behind us and her voice dropped to a whisper, “I thought it was just me… I didn’t want to seem paranoid.”
“After you’d made fun of me, you mean?”
“Yeah… Sorry, Andy.”
“It’s okay.” I returned the patronising pat she had given me earlier. “Let’s just get out of this creepy alleyway first, yeah?”
We walked a little further down the way when suddenly I heard the crash of something behind us.
“What the hell was that?” Amy cried, flashing her phone light towards the source.
“Sounded like a dustbin falling over?” I replied, trying to sound as calm as I could.
We both stood silent for a second, waiting to see if whatever it was would get any closer to us. I grasped Amy’s hand which seemed to surprise her – as she let out a muffled squeaking sound – before realising it was just me, as opposed to some spooky assailant.
“There’s nothing there, is there?” Amy whispered, almost as if to herself.
I shook my head in response, but I don’t think she noticed.
Just then – another crash – this time coming from somewhere in front of us.
“Come on!” Amy shouted as she pulled me along the rest of the alleyway. Her phone light was barely illuminating anything as we ran, all I could see was the occasional glimpse of the side of a building or a manhole cover – the rest was pure darkness.
“Where are we running to?” I spluttered out.
“Anywhere but here!”
Just as some lights were becoming visible in the distance, we could see a strange figure just a little way in front of us. We both stood perfectly still at the same moment – like a couple of deer caught in headlights. Whatever it was seemed as motionless as we were, and looked to be watching us intently.
“It’s standing on something…” Amy mumbled to me.
Sure enough, whatever it was seemed to be standing on top of something else, but it was too dark to make out anything but vague shapes.
“Flash your light at it…” I suggested to Amy.
“What if it attacks us?”
“I think it would have already done that by now.”
A second passed before Amy lifted up her phone light to reveal the bright eyes of a small fox standing on top of a slighter larger dustbin. The fox immediately dashed away taking the dustbin down on its side along with it. A third crash ensued.
“A fox…seriously?” Amy sighed audibly.
“So that’s what was stalking us?”
“Seems unlikely, but I’m willing to accept that rather than anything creepier.” Amy stretched her shoulders and then tapped me on the arm. “But I’m not willing to stand around to see if anything worse comes, let’s move!”
So Amy led me down the final part of the path and towards the lights in the distance. As the path finally got a little brighter, Amy switched her phone off and pointed at a building to our left.
“Looks like the back end of a pub, right?” she suggested before indicating the plethora of people with drinks in their hands – congregated around a door lit up with string lights.
“But there’s no signage…”
“Of course, we’re not on the street, Andy,” Amy said, sounding just a little exasperated. “We’re in an alleyway, this is probably the back entrance.”
“I’d be happy to have a drink with the devil at this point.”
“Well by the looks of this place…you may just get your wish.”
As we entered through the backdoor, I think we could both tell this place was a total dive. A single shade-less bulb kept the place in a constant state of perpetual twilight, and just about every piece of furniture looked like it’d survived a bomb blast before being shipped over here.
“The backdoor really seems an appropriate place to have come through now, doesn’t it?” Amy whispered in my ear.
I nodded and led her over to a small booth by an incredibly dirty window. Part of me wanted to leave immediately, but after everything we’d been through just to get here...that just seemed too defeatist an idea.
I glanced over to the bar. “I’ll get the first rou–" I stopped myself. "The only round. What do you want, Amy?”
Amy shook her head and then flashed a forced smile. “Nothing, I’m fine. Just feeling a little sick after everything that’s happened.” She held her hand gently to her head in a slightly dramatic fashion. “Can we go, Andy? I’ve got a headache, I feel rough.”
“Are you kidding?” I reached over to hold Amy’s hand. “We just got here, and we came so far!”
“I know, it’s just…please?”
“Just take a look at the drinks list, have one, it’ll make you feel better.”
“Andy…”
“Just one!” I flicked my hand up towards the menu above the bar, it was relatively clean compared to everything else in here, but still quite difficult to read.
Amy looked at me before casting her eyes up to the menu. “Please…”
“She really got to you, huh?” I said quietly.
“It’s just weird, the statue, the fox in the alley…and now we’re in this place.” Amy quickly glanced out of the window. “I just want to go home, this doesn’t feel right.”
It didn’t sit right with me either, and it was really jarring seeing how much Amy had changed since the start of the day. She was meant to be the confident one who laughed in the face of danger. It’s not even as though our roles had totally reversed – as I think I was just as unsettled as she was.
“Andy,” Amy whispered to me as she leaned across the table. “Are they…are those men doing a drug deal?”
Sure enough, as I followed Amy’s line of sight it was clear that two men were sidling up to each other and discussing something heatedly. The taller of the two guys was flashing a bag of something to his probable customer, whilst his eyes kept scanning across the room methodically. The shorter of the men was starting to look agitated and jumpy, constantly checking something in his pocket and glancing over his shoulder. It didn’t make for a pretty sight.
“That’s it, Andy,” Amy declared as she moved to stand up. “We’re going!”
I didn’t want to object, but I felt this might be my only chance to prove to Amy that I wasn’t the pushover she thought I was. I reached out for her arm to try and persuade her to stay.
Without warning, Amy suddenly turned to me with a look of barely controlled rage. “If you’re not coming, Andy, then I’ll go alone!”
At that very moment the deal on the other side of the room seemed to turn sour and the shorter man from before pulled out what he’d been concealing in his pocket – a knife so long it verged on being a sword.
Before any of us knew what was happening – the shorter man stabbed the dealer with a single, swift motion. Not a second passed before he turned around and looked at all of us – a murderous glint in his eyes mixed with a heady dose of fear – like a cornered dog.
I tried reaching out for Amy but she and everyone else were already running for the front door. I moved to stand up and escape with her but she was already too far in front of me. A large man – clearly too drunk to have spotted the danger before – jumped up from his chair by the door and pushed Amy clean out of the way. I watched in horror as she fell limply to the floor, her head crashing against the back of one the booth chairs. The crack was so loud it was clear above the shouts and screams of the other patrons.
I raced over and was able to hold on to her as more people fled the pub. I just cradled her in my arms, gently caressing her hair and whispering reassurances her that help would come soon.
“Wallet, mate.”
I looked up to see the short man from before, his knife pointed directly at me. There was now a calmness washing across his face, as if he’d done this a hundred times before – like this was the easy part of the crime.
I’d gone past caring at this point, I shifted my weight to grab my wallet but made sure to keep Amy supported and comfortable. As I pulled my wallet out and threw it at him, that hideous little fox statue came out with it – my house keys lodged between a couple of its sickening teeth.
“You’ve seen my face, mate,” the man said as he reached down to collect his haul. “You say anything to the pigs, and I’ll find you.”
I nodded absently, keeping myself focused on supporting Amy until help arrived.
“I’ve got everything I need right here, cards, details – all I need to know about you,” the man spat out, I glanced up to see a vicious smirk spread across his face. “The police come after me, I come after you.”
I said nothing to the coward and he seemed irritated by my passivity, I refused to show him any hint of fear – I could sense he’d strike for the smallest reason.
“Oh, Kentish Road?” I flicked my eyes upwards again to see he was looking at my driver's licence. “I know it well, bet you’ve got a pretty home…”
“If you don’t go now,” I said without thinking, my voice rising with indignation, “they’re going to find you without anyone’s help!”
I don’t know how it worked, but it did. After nodding to himself a couple of times and scanning the room quickly for something, the man pocketed my house keys and wallet before bolting out the backdoor. He left the vile little fox behind.
As soon as the backdoor swung shut, the barman poked his head out from behind the bar and let me know he was going to call an ambulance and the police. I was just amazed the short guy hadn’t spotted him on his way out.
“Is she still breathing?” the barman asked.
“Yes, it’s a little erratic, but she is,” I replied, calming myself a little at the realisation that she looked as peaceful as she did. “I think she can still hear us…”
“She took a nasty fall…”
“You saw that?”
“Just before I nipped behind the bar… Yeah.”
We didn’t talk much more after that, I just carried on whispering to Amy whilst the barman went to check on the victim who’d been stabbed. It turned out that he’d already died.
The ambulance finally arrived and the paramedics began assessing Amy’s condition. I don’t know if I was in shock, but all of their words seemed to wash over me like I was floating out at sea. The barman dealt with the police for me, and they said they’d take my statement later. I didn’t want to give them anything, not after the threat that guy had given me. He knew where I lived now; I’d never be able to rest easy until he was safely behind bars… I kept thinking about my wallet and keys, wishing I hadn’t given them up so easily – that I hadn’t given him that power over me. But I couldn’t let myself keep worrying about any of that now – Amy had to remain my only concern.
One of the paramedics asked me if I’d like to travel with them and of course I accepted the offer. They checked me over as we got in the ambulance to make sure I hadn’t been hurt without realising it. I assured them I was fine and that seemed enough to convince them – Amy was their primary concern, too.
As we drove away from the pub, my eyes drifted away from Amy and towards the back windows of the ambulance. My heart sank to unfathomable depths as I caught sight of something in the distance, and I had to summon up all my strength not to collapse then and there. Amy needed their help now – I couldn’t go fainting on them.
Just above the door to the pub stood a large sign swaying in the breeze. A sickeningly saccharine painting of a canine was staring back at me intently from it – with the golden words emblazoned below – The Fox.
