It was so sudden and startling that it froze me in my seat. Staring into the blackness, I leaned forward and switched off the engine, listening as silence hummed in my ears. Then a dog barked. Except — like that smell — it wasn't quite that; it was different, a quicker, sharper yip. And then another barking voice joined in, and then another and another, and for the next twenty-five minutes it didn't stop: the helpless, desperate baying of terrified animals pacing back and forth in their runs. It went on and on; cries of pain and fear and lamentation that made my skin crawl with horror. But what had happened? And what could I do?
Maybe I could have, should have, done something; but I didn't. I just sat there and waited.
Then headlights swept down the lane.
The Scirocco. As it paused at the end of the drive, I had a glimpse of two shadowy figures inside, one of whom was the red-haired man from the camp. Then the car turned and headed back toward the highway.
I watched till their lights finally winked out in the distance.
Half of me, I admit, wanted to follow them, but I couldn't— I felt bad enough as it was and to have driven away from that pitiful howling would have left too much on my conscience. So I started the Ford and moved up the road. As I turned into the drive, stones popped under the tires and trees flashed silver in the glare of my headlights. For fifty yards the lane was black as a tunnel, but then it curved around in a crescent and a lawn gleamed like black ice. I could see the house then, and every light in the place seemed to be on. It was a small bungalow, not much more than a cottage, the roof slanting steeply over a small front porch. Bright fans of light spread out from two windows, but everything else was in shadow. As my headlights came around, I could see that the space between the porch and the ground was filled in with white-painted lattice. Shovels and rakes were leaning against this; a wheelbarrow, filled with dead leaves, stood just at the end of the drive.
I stopped the Ford but kept the engine running and then blew the horn a couple of times.
The crying and barking grew even louder, but no one came out of the house.
Very reluctantly, I stepped out of the car, then waited a moment, one hand on the top of the door and one foot inside. For a moment, I stared at the house over the roof of the car, reached in and blew the horn again, but still no one came. Beneath the grisly howling of the dogs — or whatever they were — night sounds whispered and cool air traced my cheek. The musky odor I'd smelled before was now very strong, but I still couldn't decide what it was. Closing the car door softly, I stepped around the hood, paused again, then went straight up to the porch. There was a metal storm door. I knocked and it shook with a rattle, but by now I was sure that no one was coming, so I eased it open, and then I saw that it was slightly ajar and I just pushed it ahead of me.
Standing on the threshold, I looked into a small, brightly lit room. A cottage room. It was crammed with the sort of old furniture that collects in such places, a clumsy sofa, a white wicker chair, a heavy square armchair from the fifties, floor lamps with tasseled shades.
But this wasn't what I looked at; not then.
Directly in front of me, on the other side of the room, was an arch leading into the kitchen beyond, and in the middle of this space, lashed into a straight-backed chair with a rope, was an old man — but pulled over his head, like a sack, was the head and shoulders of a fox: a white fox, whose lips were pulled back, grinning in death. The other half of its body was lying beside the chair, its guts bulging out of it in a bluish-pink mess, with the ax that had been used to sever the neck driven into the floor just beside it. Blood was everywhere. The room stank of it; it was matted like paint in the fox's fur, it glistened around the legs of the chair, great black stains had soaked into the carpet.
I sucked in a breath — but a breath whose stench made me choke it off in my windpipe. I wouldn't say that I'm squeamish, but God only knows why I didn't pass out at the sight of all this. Maybe, after Detroit, I was ready for anything. Or maybe the cruelty of the scene twisted the horror I felt into anger. In any case, my shoes skidding in gore, I crossed the room to the old man. He was alive. With a convulsive jerk, I flung the fox's head away, and for the first time he must have known I was there, for he started to struggle, almost overbalancing the chair. I caught him. He was shaking with fear, and as I reached around behind him to get at the ropes, he started to whimper, "They were going to kill them all, just like that. They said they'd kill them all one after the other…"
I coughed. If I coughed, I might not have to be sick. My hands, slick with blood, tugged at the ropes.
The old man kept whimpering; the foxes kept howling.
"It's okay," I finally said, getting him free. "It's okay.
They're not going to kill anyone now, Mr. Berri. You're all right. Listen: I'm a friend. Do you understand that? I'm a friend."
I took him by the shoulder and eased him a little away from me.
"I was a friend of Harry's," I said. "Harry Brightman's."
At last something flickered into his eyes.
"Poor Harry," he whispered. "Things never end like you think."
12
As Berri later said, it wasn't as bad as it looked — but that made it quite bad enough.
They'd slapped him around, bloodied his nose, and the business with the fox's head had put him into shock; but he was more frightened than hurt. I laid him on his bed, covered him with a blanket, brought him water. He began to pull himself back together again pretty quickly, and then, I sensed, felt a little embarrassed. Unreasonable, but also understandable: he was a proud old man, as I soon discovered, and couldn't have relished being seen by a stranger in such a state. In any case, once I was sure he didn't need a doctor, I left him alone and went back into the kitchen. There, looking through the arch, I gawked at the horror of the living room.
The sight was nearly indescribable; the disgust it aroused almost beyond expression.
Once upon a time, it must have been a cozy room, and its odd, jumbled furniture — flea-market items, gifts from friends, made that myself — gave it a rough, homey quality. But now it was like the inside of an abattoir. Blood glistened on the shiny brocade of that heavy old armchair; it was sprayed on the walls; a bookcase made a dam for a red, thickening stream. The remains of the fox were lumps of meat in this grisly stew. The head was the worst. Raggedly hacked away at the neck, its face grimaced in agony, the enormous yellow eyes still bulging with the pain they had felt. They'd also cut open its belly, and the guts were spilled around the legs of the chair. It was hard not to gag; but this was, I knew, a horror I couldn't ask Berri to face, so I stepped as carefully as I could through the carnage and found a shovel outside on the porch. With this, I pushed the gore into a bloody puddle in the middle of the carpet, then picked it up like a sling and dumped it into the wheel-barrow. Obscenity — there's nothing you can do except bury it. Trying not to look at what was directly under my nose, and cutting off each breath before it got to my windpipe, I grabbed up the handles and trundled the barrow around the side of the house. I was looking for a garbage can, an old carton, anything. But behind the house, stretching down one side of the yard, was a long strip of garden and so I humped my way across ruts and over old cucumber hills to the end of it. There, with the foxes' pitiful howling as a graveside lament — it had never ceased — I scooped out a hole and tipped everything in. Finally, having covered it all up, I flung the shovel into the night.
At last I could breathe again. Wandering a little away from the garden, I let the night cool me and looked around in the darkness. There was no moon, but it must have been shining somewhere, for the sky had a soft, pewter sheen. To my left, at the back of the house, was a muddy jumble of sawhorses, boards, a bale of old snow fence. Stretching in front of me, and away to my right, a dozen old apple trees twisted their shadows against the glow of the sky. The kennels — cages, pens, whatever you called them — lay just beyond this. They were made entirely of wire, and were lifted up off the ground on log pilings. Here was the source of that thick, musky odor I'd smelled, and the crying which, even now, still prickled the hairs on the back of my neck. Foxes: perhaps two dozen of them. I watched them as they paced back and forth, dim gray shadows, flitting like bats. With the blood of their own kind so thick on the air, they moved with the panic that only exhaustion can still. But all at once — I suppose a breeze brought them my scent — they fell silent and the emptiness of the night, like a crystal globe, dropped around me. I didn't move. And then I held my breath, almost in awe, as a dozen golden eyes glowed in the dark. For an instant, they froze me in my tracks. Then one voice began crying, a second joined in, and soon they were all howling again.