Ellen Datlow - The Best Horror of the Year. Volume 6

I heard, as I was fussing with the tent ties, the slide of grass against something more substantial than wind. I got myself back inside, feeling under scrutiny, feeling the skin on my back tighten. I picked my way to the bedroom where the walls were heaving like bellows, and Kit was a pale shape on the bed, uncertain, ill-defined, something being dissolved. I lay next to her and, risking her anger at being woken up by my cold body, held on to her. She moaned, and shifted away slightly, but did not stir. I listened to the snuffling and scuffling around the fringes of the tent and I wished I had tied down the knots in the flap more tightly.

I dream of russet flames flickering over white, and black slashes through amber. Do you keep secrets from your wife? I do … Christ, I do …

When I woke up, the bed next to me was empty. The wind had died down and there was a familiarity to the silence; it seemed settled, steeled somehow. There was a note on the dining table: Gone to see if there are any eggs for breakfast. Can you get a fire going? Need coffee! I swept open the tent flap and was shocked by what I saw. Snow everywhere; a good couple of inches of it. I was struck by the bizarre notion that the blustery weather had been pinned down by it, like something nasty swept under a rug. It was so expansive, so unbroken, I had to shield my eyes to be able to see anything within it. I stood and rubbed my arms, wishing I’d brought an extra sweater and trying to understand what exactly was “glamorous” about “glamping.”

My wife was on maternity leave from her job as a primary school teacher, but I work in academic publishing (lots of dry articles, punctuated by occasionally fascinating pieces on art or literature or history) and a slew of deadlines over the summer meant we’d been unable to get away for any kind of family break until the autumn half term. A “staycation” in a tent — albeit a very upmarket one — near the New Forest had not been my idea of a holiday. I was angling more for a week in a bustling city that also had some nice beaches — Barcelona, say, or Tunis — but Kit had demanded something flight-free. I was trying to understand how it was that we’d ended up on a posh camping trip to Siberia when I spotted the girls, a couple of hundred yards away, hunched over the chicken coop. Something wasn’t right about their shape. I saw Kit trying to move Megan away from the chicken-wire fence; Lucy lolling around in the carrier strapped to Mum’s shoulders. I saw Kit’s face as she turned back towards the tent, a white oval, but at this distance I could see the concern stitched into it. I knew my wife, and her postures of defence. I hurriedly pulled on my jogging bottoms and ran barefoot down the hill, wondering how far it was to the nearest hospital. But Kit would have started to move, wouldn’t she? She’d be calling out to me, or hurrying the girls down to the house, where we had parked the car.

Megan was trying to push past her mother and now I was able to breathe more easily. Kit was just trying to shield Lucy from what was inside the coop. Or rather, what wasn’t. The chicken-wire had been torn open. All four chickens were gone. No feathers, no signs of a fight whatsoever. Just one spot of blood on the ramp leading into what Megan had been referring to as the “chook-chook’s bunga-oh.”

“Kit?” I called out.

“Can you take Megan back up to the tent?” Kit’s voice was taut, flustered.

I took Megan by the hand and gently drew her away. I was thinking about foxes, but they didn’t kill and eat things on the spot, did they? Didn’t they take them away to eat? And didn’t they just take one? Four chickens, there had been. I’d counted them with the girls on our arrival. Foxes didn’t hunt in packs.

“I’m going down to the house,” Kit said. “To let them know.” She moved away with Lucy when she was sure Megan was no longer able to see the blood. Megan didn’t understand what the big deal was and, to be honest, neither did I.

“I know the chickens is being deaded,” she said. “I could see the blood comed out.”

“We don’t know what happened,” I said. “There was only a little bit of blood. Maybe one of the chickens had a nosebleed. Or a beakbleed.”

“Or maybe it was hurted by something that wanted to eat it all up.”

“You could be right,” I said. “Sometimes, in the countryside, there are animals that want to eat other animals.”

“Then why did it eat all of the chickens?”

“Maybe it was hungry. Really starving hungry. Or maybe the chickens escaped. Maybe whatever it was got scared away. The farmer might find them later.”

We walked back to the tent and I persuaded Megan to stop talking about the chickens and do something else until Kit and Lucy returned. “Look,” I said, “you brought a big pile of books. Read something. Or draw a picture.”

I cajoled a small fire out of the kindling and newspaper and was waiting for the right time to add one of the halved logs when Kit and Lucy pushed through the tent flap, dragging the cold with them. The baby’s smell was in it; sharpened, cleaned. I went over and kissed her velvet head as she goggled at me from the carrier. She was gumming at one of Kit’s knuckles — she was probably cutting a tooth — and Kit used her free hand to flick at the strands of brown hair that fell across her vision, something she often did, even when it was too short to hinder her sight, when she was annoyed or nervous.

“The farmer’s utterly perplexed. He said they’ve not had a fox problem here for years. He’s out of his head with worry. Says it’s not good for business.”

“Us, he means. Paying guests.”

“I suppose so. At least it shows he’s concerned.”

“Will he do anything about it though?”

Kit sat down and started unclipping Lucy, her fingers spooling with drool. “What can he do? It’s nature. We don’t get free eggs in the morning, that’s all.”

“But it just gives carte blanche to any meat-eating animal out there to come and attack our holiday site. Bears. Tigers. Velociraptors.”

“Oh, you’re making light of the situation. That’s good, I suppose. Is Daddy being silly? Is he?”

I had to turn away because I didn’t want her to see the sweat building up on my face. I had done it with my own hands and I had smiled while doing it. Fourteen then, just. Old enough to know better, I suppose. And now, over forty, I couldn’t think about it without feeling horribly nauseous. The child is father to the man . Well, yeah, maybe. The child is also a hideous, bastard stranger.

I concentrated on the fire while Kit changed Lucy and Megan showed us the picture she’d drawn of the chicken coop, which was little more than a mass of red felt tip. We had breakfast and while Megan cleaned up the dishes, I eyed the edge of the field, wondering what we were supposed to do now. The planned cycle ride looked unlikely; I doubted these secluded roads had ever encountered anything as exotic as a council gritter. Similarly, the fields, which had appeared so inviting on the day of our arrival, were now forlorn and desolate. I knew from bitter experience that there was nothing so dispiriting as a forced march across wintry countryside. It was to the blanket box that I turned; inside, on top of the extra bedclothes, were a number of stacked, worn cardboard boxes. Board games and jigsaw puzzles. The puzzles were serious affairs; I couldn’t see Megan sustaining her interest in completing a picture of the Swiss Alps from ten thousand pieces. The board games were hardly better. Players’ tokens and dice were missing; the lack of instruction manuals meant some games were impenetrable. But we bumbled through it all until lunch. Megan seemed happy enough just playing with some of the plastic tokens.