A Dead Ringer for A Black Fox Part Three

All of them took a step closer to me as if I did not hear.  Though, hear them I did.

“We have no bells to ring,” they said again and stepped closer.

They were then so close beside me that I could see freckles on their faces.  I too could feel the combined essence of their coldness.

“We have no bells to ring,” the ghost children uttered a third time.

I shut my eyes and clenching my jaw, I placed my hands tightly over each ear.  I heard them still as they continued to shuffle toward me.

“We have no bells to ring,” they said for the final time.

I opened my eyes and they were gone.  It was to me an enigma more than just two bizarre occurrences that I was visited by the spirits of Mister Blankenship and six children.  It was then that I seriously contemplated sending for a coach the next morning to take me back to Richmond, in lieu of the full payment to stay until spring.  I was faced with a true conundrum.  If I left, I would have faced a probable marred reputation and ridicule if I dared to reveal the true reason for my wish to leave.  Even had I left and kept the spiritual visitations to myself I would have possibly ruined my career.

I thought of it all night, for I could not sleep.  I dared not.  By the next morning, I was weary from the lack of proper rest and had changed my mind about leaving.  In the days to come, I found that I could no longer blame on drink the seeing of Blankenship’s ghost. I had not touched the bottle of whiskey since that cold winter’s night when I too saw the ghost children.  Hesitantly, I resumed my duties.  I thought to myself that I was on the verge of madness or that I had already been engulfed by it and was far too mad to realize it.

By the first week of February, sun shone brightly for a few days and warmed the ground considerably.  On the last morning of that sunny spell, the sun went away in the afternoon and was replaced by storm clouds.  It rained hard for the rest of the day and did not let up until just after sundown.  A very thick fog then hung about the place as would an uninvited guest.

I slept until my restful slumber was interrupted sometime in the night, for I did not bother to look at the face of my G. Wellington pocket timepiece.  The disturbance began with a series of low, guttural growls that I remember hearing as I dreamt, though, I do not recall the dream.  The sound began to get louder.  A creak on a loose step of the stairs stirred me fully awake, for I knew it to be a step around the middle of the staircase.  The origin of the growling was getting closer to the bedroom door.

I sat up in bed, sleepy eyes now wide with anticipation.  I stood quietly, eased across the room, and picked up a candleholder with a burning candle standing upright in its middle.  I also grasped onto a poker before I made my way to the bedroom door and I noticed that there was a faint mist in the air.  Looking down, I watched as a fog rolled in through the crack at the bottom of the door.  I, of course, had opened no doors on the first floor, so I wondered how fog, as well as the growling culprit of whom I was sure of the identity of, could have gotten into the house.

I turned the doorknob slowly with my free hand, but pulled the door open quickly.  Inadvertently, I had invited a rather thick wall of fog into the bedroom.  Raising the poker high, I eased onto the landing, barely able to see the top of the staircase peeking through the fog in the circle of the candle’s light.

“Ho there!” I cried out.  It was a warning call to my rather frequent outside visitor, the black fox, for I was sure it was he that growled inside the house.  On the edge of the landing I peered down the foggy staircase.

Halfway down, two red eyes glinted, catching the light of my candle in its gaze.  I could make out a dark muzzle under the eyes.  It was indeed the black fox.  It lowered its head but kept its eyes locked on mine.  It made another sound, but it was not a guttural growl as before, it was instead more of a shy yelp.  It turned its head back toward the bottom floor, then it looked at me once more.  Call me a madman if you like, but I do believe it wanted me to follow just as a dog would.  The fox turned and trotted back down the stairs, disappearing into the fog.  Cautiously, I followed.

On the first floor landing I looked around for the black fox.  I saw that the fog was not as thick to my right in the parlor, but to my left, the way of the kitchen, the fog was so invasive that I could only see perhaps three feet in front of me.  Near the floor, the bushy, black tail of the fox swished from one side to the other before it was swallowed up by the roiling, white mist.

I followed the fox into the fog-filled kitchen and felt a great cold, continuous draft to my left where the door to the cellar stood.  I felt for that door in the murky darkness.  I felt nothing inside the door frame until I moved my hand to the far right and it was there that I felt the door.  It was wide open.  I had noticed before that the latch on the door was old, barely hanging in its place.  Replacing it seemed to be something that Mister Blankenship never bothered with.  If need be, a small child could easily have pulled it open from the kitchen side or pushed it open from the cellar side.

I understood then that the black fox had likely come up from the cellar to push the door open with his muzzle or front paws.  What I did not understand was how the fox came to be in the cellar in the first place.

I held the candle up high through the cloudy, dark space of the door frame and stepped into it.  Down the stairs I again saw the swaying black tail of the fox before it was swallowed up by the fog-laden cellar.   With each step I took down those murky stairs I could feel that the air was much colder than upstairs.  That should not be I thought, for the air outside was not as cold because it had warmed up considerably several days prior and the warmer air had brought with it much rain.  Hence, the fog outside.  I wondered why the cellar air was so much colder even than the air outside.  I knew then that there had to be a hole somewhere to the outside, yet a hole would explain the fog, but not the damnable cold.

I held the candle before me and there came over me a great sense of fear.  Though Mister Duncil had shown me the cellar on my day of arrival, I had not left the bottom of the stairs.  The only real instruction I was given about this vast space was that I was not to touch Blankenship’s wine collection in the racks along the wall.  In fact, he said it would be best if I stayed out of the cellar entirely.  The wine was the sole property of the state he’d said.  I thought it rather stingy myself that I could not have even one bottle, but as I stated earlier, I am not much for drink.  I thought about the positioning of that wine rack and remembered where it stood as I blindly navigated my way through that fog-muddled space.

All around me were crates of various sizes as well as tall and cobby pieces of furniture.  It was as quiet as a tomb save for the soft falls of my bare feet.  The deeper I went, the air grew colder.  I was about halfway through the cellar when I saw the swish of the black fox’s tail cutting through the fog only a few feet before me.  I proceeded another few steps until I came to a halt once more upon hearing the sound of digging.

‘Twas the sound perhaps a dog would make upon digging into the ground for a favored bone and as I saw a dark form low to the floor, I knew it to be the black fox.  It paid me no mind at first as it continued to dig.  I noticed to my left a foxhole dug in the floor that went under the stone wall of the cellar through to the outside.  That explained how both the fog and the fox came to be inside.

I swung the candle around and as I shifted my footing, I stepped on something cold and hard, and yet brittle, for it snapped under my weight.  I looked down and saw what looked to be two small, thin tree limbs sticking up from the earthen floor.  One was mostly straight whilst the one I surmised I stepped on was leaning somewhat with the top half broken and drooping.

Strange it was to see two random tree limbs poking up through topsoil that never saw sunshine.  Something else strange about these tree limbs was that though they were a dingy brown shade, it was evident that they were once white.  I got down on one knee for a closer inspection and set the poker aside.  The fox stepped out of the fog next to me with another of those tree limbs clenched between its teeth and dropped it next to me.  I picked it up and eyed it closely.  I then realized what I was looking at and dropped it to the floor next to the others.

“My God,” I gasped as I came to a revelation.  What I’d first thought were tree limbs, or sprouts even, were actually lower skeletal arm and hand bones of human origin.  Judging by their small sizes, they looked to be the partial remains of children.  In shock, I stood up.

So stunned I was to see such a gruesome sight, I nearly dropped the candleholder.  I gripped it tighter as my hands shook profusely.  I know not how long I stood there, but I did notice that the black fox had disappeared amid the fog.  I heard it rustling around again and as I stepped toward the sound, I nearly stumbled over a bump in the floor.  I looked down and saw a dirt mound in the shape of a small grave.  Four small, skeletal fingers were sticking up from it.

I moved with the candle and saw four more mounds in the dirt floor very close together.  Two of them were partially dug up and again I saw small, skeletal arms that were erect.  The last mound nearly made me lose my balance, for it was uncovered profusely.  There, lying in that shallow hole was a small, dirt-filled skull, neck bones, and scantily clad rib cage of a child.  I then turned and vomited on that dirt floor.

What atrociousness I had just discovered there amongst the fog.  The fox stepped out of the mist with a child’s lower skeletal arm in its mouth.  It dropped it near my feet.

“Good Lord,” I muttered.  “You don’t have to show me anymore my little friend.”

I stumbled toward the steps and there stood six small figures.  The ghost children it was with eyes shimmering through the fog.  I just stared at this sad, otherworldly sight.

“Do you now see?” the eldest ghost of a girl asked.  “We have no bells to ring.”

“Yes, I see,” I answered as a tear fell from each of my eyes.

“We have no bells to ring,” all the ghost children repeated.

I shut my eyes but for a moment and when I opened them again, they were gone.

Trembling, I made my way halfway up the stairs until I came to an abrupt halt.  The ghost of Blankenship stood in my way, blocking the top step and the doorway to the kitchen.  Startled to see his spirit again I was, but I was not as shocked as before.  I felt great anger toward him then more than fear, for only God knew what he had done to those children I thought at the time.

“You did not answer my bell,” the ghost muttered with a pointed finger.      

“Old bastard, why are you not in Hell?” I asked.  “Where you should be for what you did to those children.”

Blankenship’s ghost looked aghast that I had said such a thing.  Guided by my own exasperation, I suppose, I put fear aside and walked straight through him.  The coldest of chills ran over my body as the ghost became part of the fog.

I never saw the black fox again.  Though, I do hear him from time to time.  I too never saw any of the ghosts again.  However, I may see them again soon enough.  I shall explain, for this is very likely my last testament here on Earth.

The next day I nearly went into town to see the sheriff, but my reservations about receiving my payment in full kept me in that house.  I covered the hole under the cellar’s wall but left everything else alone.  Still shaken, I neglected my duties for several days and found myself searching the whole house like a madman for anymore morbid surprises.

In the library, behind a top shelf dictionary and a world encyclopedia, I found a nearly seamless, square, covered hole in the wall.  A small chamber it was and in it was a book on devil worship, a book on witchcraft, and two journals.  The latter journal was empty, and it is the one in which I have written down my own musings.  I swear every word is true to the best of my knowledge and conveys my honest opinion.

I was never one to scribble my thoughts in a journal, but the things I’ve experienced as of late and the things I saw in Blankenship’s hidden journal have compelled me.  There were drawings and diagrams, descriptions of torture, and a macabre form of bloodletting involving taken children.  Blankenship and certain others of this town, others with money and power, I do believe that they drank the blood of these children in the throes of terror as their young adrenaline was rich to achieve a vigorous inebriation.  Such a ghastly practice described in crude sketches and text that sickens me to the last.  I believe that the six children in Blankenship’s cellar, and possibly more in other parts of the county, were drugged and buried alive.

I remembered what Archibald had said on the first day that I met him: “If they should find out I’ve said something to you, they could –…  Black foxes are a rare sight.  They are a sign of witchery and bad things to come…  This house and its grounds are cursed.”

I waited until the first day of spring to reveal what I’d found, first to Mister Duncil just after I received in hand the rest of my payment.  Feigning shock he did as he accompanied me to the sheriff, who I came to find that along with Duncil and prominent members of the community, allegedly himself participated in Blankenship’s satanic, ritualistic fantasies.

In secret, I was held captive for several days and told to write what I wanted in this journal, for no one else would ever see it or believe it.  I’d already started from the beginning and so I continued.

I came to find that Blankenship had not died of natural old age, he had become a loose-tongued babbler at social gatherings and had to be silenced.  Poisoned he was, but his wish to have a bell above his grave went fulfilled.  I presume the poison ultimately failed and he awoke to ring his bell as he was dying of suffocation or starvation or freezing in his coffin.

Ironically, I have ended up similarly as Blankenship.  Though, I was told that I am in a blank grave in the middle of nowhere.  Cruelly, they have stood me up in a pine box with a crudely cut board to hold me in place and to serve as a desk and barrier should I drop my journal.  I have been given an ink bottle and a quill.  There is a hole in the coffin above my head and it goes clear to the surface of the ground through an iron pipe.  I now write these words only by a bit of sunlight.  For an extra jab of cruelty, they have placed above my grave a bell with the clapper removed and a pull rope coming down to me.  If I pull on it, rather than tootles, the bell only makes teasing, clicking sounds that I can barely hear.

As I said, I can hear the black fox from time to time.  He comes sniffing at my grave and tries to make the bell ring.  I imagine that he is confused as to why he cannot.  I haven’t much strength left.  These will be the last words I write on the matter in the hopes that someday they will be found along with my remains.  Thus, these will be the last words that I know.  The Bible says that we are here but for a fleeting moment, or something along those lines.  ‘Tis a dark world in which we live.        

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Twisted Pulp Magazine Issue #42