Red Fox (12 page)

I suddenly felt a flooding
of warmth towards him. “You aren’t going crazy Mr. Lancaster. We
won’t leave until we figure this whole thing out.”

“
Please, call me Will. And
thank you. It helps to hear that.”

“
So, Will, what have you
been seeing? And when did it start?” Dex prompted. “And do you mind
if I get my video camera?”

I had totally forgotten
about the filming. Somehow it just felt wrong at this moment. Will,
however, just lifted his hand and nodded. “It’s fine. I
understand.”

Dex left and quickly came
back with his small camcorder in hand and some papers. Much less
intrusive than the big number he had filmed me with before. He
walked over to Will and plunked the papers in front of
him.

“
Just need you to sign this.
Basically that you don’t object to being on camera…unless you do,
which may make things a little trickier.”

Will nodded and signed them
after a slight hesitation.

Dex smiled. “Perfect. We’ll
see if we can get Bird and the others to sign off on them tomorrow
as well. I’d like to interview them.”

See, this is why Dex was in
charge. I had no idea about these waivers and whatnot.

Will looked skeptical. “I
don’t know if Shan or Miguel will sign them but you’re welcome to
try.”

“
I got the feeling Miguel
won’t be singing that,” I said.

“
Oh, you met Miguel
already?”

“
Yeah,” Dex said as he sat
down across from me and flipped on the camera. “Charming
fellow.”

Will cleared his throat a
few times. “He’s not easy to get along with but he works hard and
he’s easy to afford. In better times, I wouldn’t have him here but,
well, we don’t have much choice. He’s also had a tough life. It’s
hard to judge him.”

Strange, it was easy for me
to judge him. I gave Dex a quick look across the table but he was
fiddling with the camera.

“
And what is Shan’s deal?”
Dex asked carefully without looking up.

“
Shan?” Will sounded
surprised. “Shan’s a good man. He’s been a friend of the family for
many, many years. Grew up with Sarah, in town. Smart as whip.
Doesn’t say much but he’s easy to get along with. He gets the job
done.”

“
OK,” Dex raised up the
camera and pressed play. The red button stopped flashing.
Thankfully, he turned the camera to Will and not to me.

Dex asked him a few
questions, mainly about the working logistics of the ranch. How
many sheep they had, if they had cattle, when they first started
farming, how the economic climate has changed things, the
government, the decline of Red Fox, etc. By the time the set-up
questions were done, Will had relaxed considerably and I felt
pretty empathetic for the guy. I thought I had it bad; I thought
times were tough where I lived but seeing this grown man almost get
weepy over the decline of his livelihood was something else. Being
a native man, in this area of the country wasn’t easy and all the
added turmoil was just the piss icing on a cake made of
crap.

Dex got down to business.
He aimed the camera my way, which made me flinch considerably. My
looks had certainly not improved since the last time I looked in
the mirror, but I couldn’t be vain about it.

“
Start asking questions,” he
urged. “About what’s been going on…here…lately.”

You know, I had all day to
prepare for what we were doing but somehow it never crossed my
mind. Was it procrastination or just lack of attention? I hated how
my bad habits were catching up with me.

I took a deep breath and
put my faith in Dex’s editing skills. I turned to Will and put on
my “investigative reporter” face.

“
Tell me, Will, when did
you first notice anything unusual happening?”

He sighed reluctantly
before saying, “It was a few weeks ago. I was lying in bed and
heard something growling. I thought it was a dream at first but the
more I listened, the louder it got. It was coming from the door. I
didn’t know what to think. I didn’t want to get up but if Sarah was
down the hall, she might need my protection. I grabbed my old
baseball bat and opened the door. The growling stopped. There was
nothing there. I didn’t want to wake up Sarah if I didn’t need to
but the next day she said she heard growling too. She also thought
it was a dream. Then Bird came over and told us a few sheep had
been…ripped to pieces. Three of them, up on the ridge. Heads,
legs…all separated. But the sheep hadn’t been eaten at all. It’s
like whoever did this, did it for fun.”

His story gave me the
creeps. Didn’t help that the house suddenly felt so large and
dark.

“
Who do you think did
it?”

“
Obviously coyotes did. Or
wolves, though they are rare in this area. But it just doesn’t make
sense. They would have eaten the sheep. Especially before winter.
Now is the time to fatten up.”

“
You don’t think young
punks or kids from town did it? People can be pretty fucked up when
it comes to animals,” I said, remembering a bunch of cat-killings
we had in our neighborhood a few years ago.

He shook his head. “No. I
know the kids in this town sometimes don’t have anything better to
do, but they would never do anything like that.”

“
You don’t have any enemies
that would want to hurt the ranch?”

He shook his head. I
believed him. He was a hard man to dislike.

“
What about Sarah?” Dex
asked carefully.

Will managed a smile. “Who
would want to hurt a blind woman?”

I resisted the urge to
exchange a sarcastic glance with Dex. This was on camera, after
all.

Will continued on, “Also, a
few days ago a bunch of kids were roaming the hills above here.
Doing what, I don’t know. Sometimes they go looking for Navajo
artifacts to sell. They said they were attacked by a pair of
foxes.”

“
Foxes?” I repeated. Cute
little foxes?

“
That’s what they say. I
think they meant to say coyotes but even that is strange. Coyotes
never attack people, unless it’s an infant and alone. Never heard
anything like that before. I’m sure if you go to the pub, maybe not
tonight but tomorrow night, you’ll find them. Ask
around.”

“
So, people and sheep have
been attacked by canines, basically? And you heard one in the
house…”

“
And saw one in the
house.”

“
Right…” I didn’t really
want to be staying in the house anymore.

“
It was right before
Maximus arrived to do the reading. I was sitting in the living room
all night because of the rock throwing-”

“
Rock throwing?”

Dex kicked me under the
table. “He’ll get to it,” he hushed.

I glared at him though the
camera was on Will. Dex motioned for him to continue.

“
And I heard something
creak on the upper step. I called out for Sarah, thinking it was
her. Obviously. Who else would it be? No answer. And from the
living room, I can’t see the stairs. But I heard a snuffling noise.
Then the clack of nails on the floor. Then the shadow of an animal
came around the corner.”

He pointed around the
corner to where the dining room floor met the living room. I
shivered.

“
I couldn’t see it clearly
but it certainly looked like a coyote. It wasn’t all that big but
the hairs on its back were standing up a lot higher than normal. It
was like its coat was about two feet long. I couldn’t see its eyes
either. They didn’t glow. It was just blank. I thought maybe it
didn’t even have eyes, just empty holes. I didn’t know what to do
so I froze. The rock throwing continued all the while too but the
animal didn’t notice. Finally, it went around to the kitchen and
disappeared. Then the noise stopped. I must have sat there for ten
minutes before I gathered enough strength to run up to Sarah and
see if she was all right. She was fine. Asleep.”

“
And the rock
throwing…someone’s just throwing rocks at the house?” I
asked.

“
Yes, the house. Sometimes
the barn. Sometimes the worker’s quarters. I know Miguel has heard
it.”

“
Where do they sleep by the
way? I don’t think I saw it earlier.”

“
There’s a small house
behind the big barn. It’s hidden by some trees, privacy you know.
Nothing fancy but they all get their own rooms. Well, Shan and
Miguel. Bird lives in town.”

I nodded and looked at Dex
for feedback. I had no idea if I was asking everything I should. He
sensed my gaze and brought his eyes off the display screen to meet
mine. Then he paused. His eyes shifted left, fixed on a point past
my shoulder.

I immediately felt afraid.
I opened my mouth to say something but he slowly shook his head,
keeping his eyes on the spot. I turned my head and looked in to the
dark kitchen behind me. I couldn’t make out anything but
shadows.

I looked back at Dex and at
Will. Will had his ear cocked, listening. Dex raised his finger and
motioned for me to stay quiet. He picked up the camera and aimed it
at the kitchen.

I looked again. Still, I
saw nothing. So I listened. And then I heard it. A small tap at the
kitchen window. Followed by another tap. I felt very
uneasy.

It was as if someone stood
outside the window and tapped a single finger on the pane. It was
low, quick and sporadic. It could have almost been a tree branch
bumping in the wind but there was no tree.

RATTLE.

We were surrounded by a
wall of sound, the taps, clattering, rattling of rocks falling on
the roof and flying at the windows. The sound was
deafening.

“
Holy shit!” exclaimed Dex.
He jumped up and ran for the kitchen.

I looked at Will, confused
and scared. “These are the rocks?”

His eyes were wide.
“They’ve never been this loud.”

He got up and went after
Dex. Naturally I couldn’t sit alone at the table while this storm
of sonic violence engulfed the house, so I got up and ran over to
join them in the kitchen.

Dex switched the night
vision on the camera and was aiming it at the window, which was
physically being shaken. You could see stones bouncing off the
glass and ricocheting back into the darkness.

“
This is unbelievable,” Dex
said, barely audible, and beckoned for me to join him by the
window. Though the rocks seemed to be coming harder, being beside
him felt safer than hanging in the kitchen doorway with my back
exposed to the depths of the lonely house, so I scuttled over and
sandwiched myself between the two men.

Up close, you couldn’t see
anything. It was a hailstorm of rocks. But only a few were actually
hitting the window. It seemed like a cloud had opened up above the
house with the roof taking the brunt of it.

“
So this isn’t normal?” I
yelled above the noise.

“
No!” Will shouted back.
“It’s never this bad.”

“
We’ve made it angry by
being here,” Dex said cryptically.

“
It?!” I cried out. What the
fuck was “it?” A rock shower was not the work of a poltergeist.
Opened cupboards were the work of a poltergeist. I didn’t know what
the hell we were dealing with.

“
I think you’re right,” Will
said.

“
This could just be a freaky
science thing,” I tried to reason. “Sometimes frogs fall from the
sky. I read it in a book.”

OK, I was really making
myself sound stupid but it was true. In that Charles
Burlitz’s
World of Strange
Phenomenon
book, there were a ton of cases
where things were sucked up somewhere and fell down somewhere
else.

Dex nudged me in my side
and pointed out at the moon which sat above the black
mountaintops.

“
Clear sky. The falling
frogs, and the corn that fell in Colorado in the 1980’s, was
usually linked to a weather pattern.”

The sound tapered off. The
rocks on the roof became less and less. They ceased to hit the
window. It looked like the stone storm was dying off. I slowly let
out my breath, my ears still listening to the peculiar
sounds.

I turned my head up at
Will, “Is that-”

CRACK!

A huge rock hit the window,
cracking it. I nearly shit myself. We all stepped
backwards.

“
That’s not good,” Will
managed to say. Dex focused the camera on the window, but his eyes
were jetting about nervously.

“
Yeah, maybe we
should-”

BAM! CRASH!

A rock went sailing through
the window right for Dex and I. Without thinking, I leaped to my
left, colliding into Will and felt the flying glass flicker against
my skin.

Will caught me and steadied
me. I saw the rock hit the ground and roll across the kitchen and
against the fridge. Dex was to my right, crouched with the camera
and his hand over his head for cover.

“
We need to get out of
here,” I croaked.

“
I’ll go get Sarah,” Will
said and hurried out of the kitchen.