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

I put together a table of salad and cold meats and we ate the food without the same fervour as we might if it had been warm outside. Soup or something hot on toast seemed the more suitable meal. Bolstered by fuel, however ill-fitting, I felt freshly determined to make something of the day, especially as the leaden sky was breaking up and patches of blue were appearing. I chased the girls into their boots and wrapped Lucy warm before getting her into the sling that I’d positioned around my shoulders. Every time I secured her there, and then stood up, I was shocked by how heavy she was getting. It would be hard work — my back would be damp, my shoulders sore by the time we finished our walk — but I would be rewarded by being able to nuzzle her head and feel the strong grip of her tiny fingers upon my own.

I loaded the stove with a couple more logs in the hope that the fire would keep going until we got back and then we were out in the fresh air, shocked by the cutting attack of it. It was like jumping into icy water. Lucy giggled as she snatched at gasps the wind was trying to steal back from her mouth. Megan went on ahead as we made our way down to where the narrow path that ran alongside a stark, weather-blackened fence (now concealed by a good foot of snow) led to a pond and a play area. You could just make out the shapes through the trees, maybe half a mile away. I’d brought along a few plastic bags and a towel to clear away the snow and dry off the seating areas, knowing that Megan would want to have a go on the swings and the slide. Kit fell into step by my side and clutched at me. Already the deep cold had stiffened her hands. She suffers from Raynaud’s phenomenon, which causes her fingers and toes to become discoloured and inflexible in cold weather. In serious cases it can bring about gangrene, but luckily, Kit’s symptoms ran only to a paling of the skin and a little numbness.

She lifted her head to smile at Lucy and a fan of her brown hair fell from the hem of her woollen hat, sweeping across her sight to isolate her eye so that it seemed strangely dislocated from her. There was a lack of colour to her eye, shaded as she was both from the growing light, and that small, protective curtain of hair. It was more like a black hole, unresponsive, lifeless. For a brief second, I was looking into the face of a person I did not know at all, despite ten years of marriage. The jolt that I got from that was disguised by our unsure tramping over uneven ground, and when she shifted her gaze and her smile to favour me, she was Kit again — filled with vim and the combative teasing I found so alluring — and the moment was gone.

The smell of woodsmoke drifted down from the tent.

“How are your fingers?” I asked.

“Like a bundle of sticks,” she said. “If we get low on kindling later, just ask me and I’ll snap a couple off for you.”

I winced, but she was smiling. “I’ll be fine,” she said. “It’s not as if we’re on our way to have a crack at the north face of the Eiger, is it?”

We watched Megan enter the circular paddock that contained all the playground rides. Emptiness was developing a theme with me; with her hood up, and for as long as she didn’t turn around (her legs and feet, in white stockings and Wellington boots were lost to the background), you might almost believe her coat was being animated by the wind and nothing else. It was an observation I’d normally have shared with Kit, but coming so soon after the illusion of her eye, I wasn’t confident I could keep the edge from my voice. Anyway, Lucy had spotted the rides too by now and she was reaching out to them, making little cooing noises in her throat.

I called out to Megan to wait while I dusted off the snow with the towels — Lucy jiggling around and yelling in the carrier as I did so — and then suggested using the bin bags as makeshift sacks to sit in once she’d climbed to the top of the slide. Holding on to Lucy as I pushed her on the swing, I could see Kit huddled into her coat as she watched Megan repeat the journey from the bottom to the top to the bottom again, each trip accompanied by her laughter, which was distorted within the rustling of the bin bag.

And then, as Lucy was beginning to get upset by the cold her motion was creating, Megan’s clockwork descent failed to occur. I could just see the tips of her boots sticking out from the metal guard flanking the slide’s top deck. “What’s up, Meg?” I called, as I lifted Lucy from the swing and began the arduous task of strapping her back into her pouch. “Have you frozen up there?”

Kit strode to the slide and reached out her arms. “What is it, chick?”

Megan was crying. Now that we’d spotted something wrong, the tears came harder, her upset suddenly more audible. “Thuh-thuh-puh, poor chu-chicken,” she was saying, over and over. I went up the ladder and coaxed her down the slide to her mum. Kit held her while she stuttered and hitched. She was worried the fox, or whatever it had been, would come back for the rest of them, once the farmer had rounded them up.

I stood up and banged my head on the slide roof. Biting down hard on the stream of swear words queuing to be aired, I turned around and saw a red stain in the snow, about six feet shy of the water’s edge. Jesus , I thought. What now?

“Wait here,” I called to Kit, jumping to the ground. Entwined with Megan, she gave me a look as if to say, Where do you think I’m going to go? I tramped out of the paddock and south, my eyes fixed on that patch of red. I found myself thinking: please let it just be blood .

It was a fox, lying on its flank, nose pointing towards the pond, legs arranged as if in mid-trot. It had recently died, I guessed, although with the drop in temperature and the lack of flies, it was difficult to tell. Its eye stared in accusation but whatever had killed it was no longer in evidence. Poison , I thought, but would that be likely on a farm where children were given free rein? I thought it might have been shot, but there was no blood, no sign of ballistics. Which didn’t mean it hadn’t happened, of course. The cold had got inside me, despite the fleece-lined jacket; despite the insane baby-heat of Lucy.

I was going to leave it but a voice in my head told me to wait. Turn it over. Make sure .

It was preposterous. Twenty-five years had gone by. It was time to walk away; I didn’t need Lucy spending any more time with a dead animal. What if it was diseased, for Christ’s sake? But in spite of myself I pressed my boot into the stiff curve of its gut and toed it over. The bright green of the grass it revealed was as much a shock as finding its other eye absent. I stalked back to Kit and Megan. Megan had rallied somewhat, perhaps persuaded that there were going to be no more chicken murders, but truth be told, I was feeling a little ragged and emotional. A dead body is a dead body, no matter what species. Never nice to see. At least, that’s what I was choosing to blame my quickening breath and sweaty palms upon. It was an excuse, at least, to call time on our little expedition and we hurried back to the tent where the wood in the stove was burning ferociously. I warmed up some milk from the cool chest and made hot chocolate.

I finished mine first and started pulling my boots back on.

“What now?” Kit said.

“It’s my turn to break the news to the farmer. He needs to know his charming little couple of acres is turning into a slaughterhouse.”

“It’s just a dead fox,” she whispered.

“It could have been poisoned,” I said. “I don’t like the idea of our kids skipping gaily through the daisies and kicking up lethal pellets in their wake. Or it could have died from some nasty ailment. What if it’s contagious?”