Skulk (2 page)

As the fox leapt down from the bin to the ground it stumbled, and I realised there was a patch of darkness on its flank, black against the halo of backlit orange fur. Something glistened on the ground.

It was blood.

The fox turned towards me, took a couple of unsteady steps, and collapsed, panting. It turned its black eyes on me, and then closed them and let out a pathetic whine. The thing in its mouth tumbled out onto the grass.

I should have left the fox alone. But I couldn’t just let it die where it lay – even though I had no idea what I could do. As I inched towards the animal I could see that there was lots of blood, caked around a deep gash along its side.

Maybe the kind thing to do would be to try to put it out of its misery. But could I kill it in cold blood, even to end its suffering? How would I do it? Bludgeon it with a cricket bat from the Kit Shed?

Tears pricked my eyes and I blinked them away. “Well that’s not going to help,” I whispered.

I was about six feet away, crouching in the dewy grass, when the fox stirred. I froze, not wanting to scare it, as if it didn’t have bigger problems than a paint-splattered human right now.

Its legs spasmed. It hunched down and then threw its head back. Its fur rippled along its length, like the ground during an earthquake. Its eyes opened.

A scream curled up and died in the back of my throat, and I twitched away, falling back onto my elbows.

They were human eyes. Bloodshot, but human, with white whites and grey-green irises. I whimpered, trying to crawl away, but found myself up against the Kit Shed, watching through my hands as the fox writhed and hissed and grew. A paw reached out, and then dirty fingers were clutching at the grass. Hair shrank back into naked skin and sprouted on top of the head. Leg joints popped and clicked as they twisted into elbows. The tail was gone, the ears were gone, the snout was gone; the teeth bared at me were blunt and square.

He was naked. And a man. And blood was streaming from the stretched wound in his side.

He looked at me, with those human eyes, red-rimmed and desperate. He made a deep, rattling, bubbling sound in his throat.

“No,” he groaned, and his head drooped, his elbows bent. He toppled to the ground on his good side. Deep red blood trickled across his pale chest like a theatre curtain coming down.
Exeunt Omnes.
“Oh God. Please,” he mouthed.

My skin crawled across my flesh like it was trying to run away, whether the rest of me was coming or not – but I couldn’t move. I couldn’t think. Naked man. Fox. Blood. Blood, everywhere.

Except then there was a thought, absurd and sudden:

He’s human now.

My hands slid into my pockets, numb and slippery fingers grasping.
Keys. Mace. Oystercard.

Phone.

999.

“Ambulance please.” It was someone else’s voice, hoarse and squeaky.

The man-fox – the fox-man – his head rose and his eyes widened. Shock? A tear trickled down his face and he suddenly reached around, a trembling hand swishing through the pool of dew and blood. It closed on something and he cradled it to his chest.

“He’s… I think he’s been stabbed. His side. Kensington College for Girls. Kensington Square. Round the back in the garden.” The voice – not mine, surely I’d be stammering – fell silent. My hand fell into my lap. The phone felt heavy as I slipped it back into my pocket.

“Girl,” he whispered. “Please.”

He held out his hand. There was something lying in the palm, small and softly rounded. It was a stone. That was what the fox had had in its mouth. Not prey, but a stone.

“Please,” he said again. “The fog.”

There was no fog. The night sky had been cloudy, but the air was clear.

“Take it.” His gaze focused and flickered to the stone.

For a moment I still didn’t move or speak. Then I think I shook my head, and swallowed.

“I called an ambulance.”

“No,” he breathed. “You... have to take it away... from here...” The strain of uttering a full sentence looked devastating and his head drooped again, his mouth hanging open. A thin line of pink-tinged saliva dripped from it onto the grass. “Take.” He managed to raise his head just enough to look me in the eye. More tears were fighting their way down his face. He said nothing else, but that look did something to me.

I tipped onto my knees and shuffled towards him.

“Do – Do you have–?” the absurdity of choosing whether to say
children
or
cubs
made me stop.

“Nnn... nn...” he couldn’t form the word but I think he shook his head.

Blood bubbled at the corner of his mouth as I reached his outstretched hand. The stone was a gem, I thought – a polished black cabochon with a bright white star in its depths. Surely he wanted it to go to someone?

“Take it where?” I asked. Warm tears stung my cheeks.

“...way,” he whispered.

As I reached out and touched the stone, he fell back, his eyes half-open and empty.

I should have felt something, when he died – a shiver,
something
. But all I felt was the cold surface of the stone in my blood-slippery palm.

I heard sirens.

CHAPTER TWO

The fire escape creaked under me, sounding a hundred times louder than it had on the way down. I paused under Mum and Dad's window with my heartbeat thumping between my ears. I waited for the sound of the wooden frame pulling up, a voice yelling “MARGARET ELIZABETH BANKS!” as if
she
could be summoned into existence to replace the crushing disappointment lurking under the window.

Nothing.

My head swam. I realised, with a sick twist in my throat, that the journey home was a blur of lights and the thump of concrete against my soles. I wasn’t sure when I arrived home. I had no idea how I got back across the gate.

There was a corpse in the school garden. He was lying with his arm stretched out, naked, bleeding. Bled.

I took the rest of the stairs slowly, and only when I’d slipped through my window and locked it behind me did I put my hands into my pockets. Sitting on my bed in the rusty glow of the street lamps outside, bloodstained fingers pulled out keys, mace, phone. A shaky, messy swipe of sticky fingertips, and my recent call log shone through the dim red streaks. 999, Monday, 03.54.

The other thing in my pocket was cold and smooth. I turned it over in my fingers, not pulling it out yet.

I had to wash my hands.

I stumbled into the en suite and jabbed at the light switch with my elbow. In the mirror above the sink I saw my reflection lurch into view. I looked like a zombie. My face was pale and my eyes were bleary.

My hands left more red streaks on the wide white bowl as I leaned over and rested my forehead on the cool mirror. For a hysterical second I thought of leaving the bloody handprints there for Gail the housekeeper to find in the morning. It’d serve her right if they gave her a heart attack.

You love finding things for my mother to freak out about. I’ll give you both something to freak out about.

I put my hand in my pocket and my fingers closed on the smooth stone again. I pulled it out and examined it, turning it over in the harsh light. It fitted comfortably into my palm, about the size of an egg and perfectly oval.

It wasn’t black. As I washed the film of blood away under the tap, the stone shone a deep blue with a bright white six-pointed star right at the centre. It happens sometimes when a gemstone cracks deep inside, at just the right angle to catch the light.

Did that mean this was a giant sapphire? It was polished up, to show off the star, like a gem would be. I remembered seeing one a bit like it before, years ago. I’d spent a day lurking around the display room at Christie’s, waiting for Mum to decide just how much she was willing to spend on a footstool that had once belonged to Oliver Cromwell.

But this was
huge
for a precious stone, and I’d seen some whoppers in my time.

Then again, there wasn’t much point getting incredulous over that when it’d been bequeathed to me by a man who was also a fox.

I let the stone slip into the sink with a ringing
clonk
, and staggered back to sit perched on the edge of the bath, my still-pinkish hands clenched on the porcelain. The shock of the cold surface helped a little. The bath was real, my aching soles and the gleaming tiles were real, the Fortnum & Mason handcream and the streaks of blood and the enormous cabochon sapphire in the sink were all real.

I should’ve known it wasn’t a dream. My dreams were never like this.

Although there was one chilling similarity.

I have to clear this up before Mum sees it.

At least in real life I had some chance of managing it.

I had a shower first, leaving my blood-spattered hoodie and jeans in the bath, where they couldn't stain the plush pinkish carpet. I scrubbed myself and then the sink, not bothering to wrap myself in a towel until I was done. I dripped nakedly on the horrible carpet as I padded to and fro, scooping the clothes into a plastic bag and sluicing down the bath, wishing I could persuade Mum to let me redecorate in a colour that didn't make me feel like I was washing in Candyland.

Back in the bedroom I stuffed the plastic bag back into the backpack and dived into the recesses of one of the wardrobes where there was a battered, neglected leather trunk. Pink and yellow flowers dotted its surface in crackling acrylic paint –
Flowers
, by Meg Banks, aged six years and four months. Inside, a layer of ballet programmes and school art projects hid a second layer of old diaries and secret, faintly rebellious cartoons.

Below that there was the real hidden compartment, just big enough for a backpack full of aerosol paint and some old clothes.

A secret within a secret. I was proud of how sneaky it was. I knew it’d worked when Mum confronted me with the contents of one of the diaries – standard stuff about how I hated that Gail went through my things – but never mentioned what was in the bottom of the trunk.

I sat on the floor, cradling the sapphire in my hands like a delicate bird’s egg.

And now? I glanced at my watch. It was nearly 5am. I shut my eyes, tiredness sitting heavily across my shoulders, but in the darkness I could still see twisting limbs, fur crawling back inside skin like a thousand microscopic burrowing worms, and the eyes – human eyes in an inhuman face.

And now he was dead.

I had no idea who – no, stranger than that, I had no idea
what
he was. But I didn't want him to be dead. I never managed to ask him if there was anyone in his life, anyone I should be breaking the news to.

After another few silent moments on my knees, turning the stone over in the shaft of light spilling out from the bathroom, I stood up and went to my laptop, to do what I always do when I don't know something. I googled it.

Obviously,
fox shapeshifter
got me nothing remotely fact-based. I read the Wikipedia entry on shapeshifters four times, in case there was something I’d missed, but couldn’t get past the idea of scouring lists of mythical figures for hints about the man I’d just seen fall down and die in my school playground. After that I poked around paranormal research sites for a while, but couldn’t escape the distinct whiff of bullshit.

Frustrated, I clicked away. Habit hooked me and I opened a private browser and rattled off the address for graffitilondon.com. The first topic on the board:
New E3 art, Waterloo Bridge
. My heart lifted a little. E3 was my total hero. He had a genius for colour, composition, positioning,
everything
. I clicked through, hoping someone had taken a picture, though I almost didn’t have to – I trusted, I
knew
, that it was going to be beautiful. I suppose that’s what it’s like to be a fan.

The piece was right on the underside of the bridge, where it passed over the Victoria Embankment. It was a figure of a man with wings, falling through cloud. The photo wasn’t the greatest quality, but I could make out the clean stencil lines on his dark skin and coppery wings, and the splatters of silver and white dripping all around him as he fell.

Unnamed, as usual,
the poster had written underneath the picture.
But E3’s definitely using Icarus symbolism here so I’m calling it Icarus J
.

I scanned down to the comments, expecting a chorus of agreement… and my heart sank.

Nice. but his tag’s not E3. it’s two hearts on top of each other.

It’s two 3s with one reversed, retard.

your wrong its a flower.

my god how arE YOU ALL SO DUMB IT DOESN’T MATTER WHAT HE’S CALLED I <3 HIM.

omg E3 stans r the worst hes a banksy wannabe raghead.

I loved E3’s work, but the mystery over his tag had caused so many flame wars I was surprised the graffitilondon servers hadn’t melted. We all knew how this would go – the volunteer mods would lead the forum in a rousing chorus of Don’t Feed The Trolls, which wouldn’t work, and then they’d spend a couple of hours threatening and then liberally applying the banhammer. They were going to have a busy night and I didn’t envy them one bit.

I shut the browser with a weary sigh and lay down on my bed, wrapped in a towel, holding the stone up above my head and turning it slowly in the mingled blue-and-yellow light from the computer screen and the streetlights outside my window.

I might never know who the fox-man was. I might be left with nothing but a story nobody would believe and a stone I could never show anyone. My stomach twisted urgently, selfishly, at the thought. This couldn’t be it. I wanted to know more.

How did he get the stone? Why was he carrying it with him?

And how did he get to be a fox, anyway? Could he turn back whenever? Maybe he was cursed... maybe it was something he had touched...

I dropped the stone with a little cry. It dropped onto my chest and lay there, heavy, cold and solid.

Of course, if it was cursed, it would’ve changed me already, right?