As he pulls open the front door, he notices that the switch that keeps it from locking is flipped. He's
been in the house all night with an unlocked door. Even though there's no sign of anyone else here,
this worries him. He can't let it lock when he leaves, though, or he'll never be able to get back inside.
He steps out into the low sunshine, pulling it closed behind him, hoping it at least looks locked.
The street is the same as yesterday. Or whenever that was, probably yesterday. He waits and
watches. Absolutely nothing changes, so he walks down the steps, down the path where he – Where
he what? Woke up? Was reborn? Died? He hurries past the spot and reaches the small gate to the
sidewalk. He stops there.
It's still quiet. Still empty. Still a place stopped in time.
He tries to remember more of the neighborhood. To his right is the train station, where there was
nothing much more than the station building itself. But to his left is the way to the High Street, where
there used to be a supermarket. There had been clothes shops there, too, he thinks. Nothing fancy, but
better than what he's wearing.
Left it is, then.
Left.
He doesn't move. Neither does the world.
It's either go left or stay inside and starve, he thinks.
For a moment, the second choice seems the more tempting.
"Screw it," he says. "You're already dead. What's the worst that can happen?"
He goes left.
He hunches his shoulders as he walks, shoving his hands into the pockets of the jacket, even though
they're uncomfortably high. Whose jacket was this? He doesn't think he saw his dad ever wear one
like this, but then again, who remembers clothes when you're that young?
He looks around furtively as he walks, turning often to make sure nothing's following him. He
reaches the street leading up into town. Aside from the huge sinkhole across the middle of it – ablaze
with a weed forest of its own – it's the same as everywhere else. Cars on deflated tires, covered in
dust, houses with paint peeling off, and no signs of life anywhere.
He stops at the edge of the sinkhole. It looks like a water pipe ruptured somewhere and the ground
opened up like you saw sometimes on the news, usually with journalists in helicopters hovering over,
saying nothing much for very long spaces of time.
There are no cars down in it and none stopped along the edge either, so it must have happened long
after the traffic ceased.
Unless the traffic never started, he thinks. Unless this place didn't exist until I –
"Stop it," he says. "Just stop it."
He has a fleeting, almost casual thought, about how there is so much plant life in this place, all
these weeds and ridiculous grasses, all growing completely out of control and unchecked, like down
here in this really quite huge hole.
So you'd think there'd be –
And before he can even think the word animals, he sees the fox.
And before he can even think the word animals, he sees the fox.
It's frozen there, down at the bottom, tucked in amongst the weeds, its eyes bright and surprised in the
morning sun.
A fox.
A real, live, living fox.
It blinks at him, alert, but not quite afraid, not yet.
"What the hell?" Seth whispers.
There's a small bark, and three baby foxes – pups? No, kits, he remembers – climb playfully over
their mother, before freezing, too, when they see Seth standing there above them.
They wait and watch, looking ready to run, ready to respond to whatever Seth does next. Seth
wonders what he'll do next, too. Wonders also at the reddish brown faces and the bright staring eyes
of the creatures. Wonders what they mean.
It's a long time before he moves away from the sinkhole, but the fox and her kits never stop staring
at him, even as he heads back up the street.
Foxes, he thinks. Actual foxes.
At the very moment he thought about them.
Almost as if he'd called them into being himself.
He hurries up toward the High Street now, his head still down, eyes glancing around even more
suspiciously. Every moment, he expects something to come jumping out of the bushes, out of the
unkempt lawns or weedy cracks in the pavement.
But nothing does.
He feels himself tiring again, quickly, too quickly, and when he reaches the High Street, he almost
collapses on a nearby bench, panting from the effort of walking up a short hill.
It makes him angry. He spent three years on the cross-country team at Boswell High, the hobby and
habit of running having been picked up from his mother, something that should have brought them
closer together but had somehow not. Granted, he wasn't a particularly serious competitor, Boswell
regularly got beaten quite badly, but still. There's no way he should be out of breath walking up one
stupid road.
He looks around. The High Street is really just a long, skinny town square, blocked off at each end
by metal posts. His mother would shop here with him and Owen when every square inch was covered
in stalls selling sugared almonds and popcorn; homemade candles and bracelets that were meant to
cure arthritis; ethnic clocks and paintings even toddler Owen thought were ugly.
There's nothing here now. It's a vast, empty space, with the now-familiar proliferation of weeds
and abandoned-looking buildings lining either side, just like any other street.
Seth waits a moment before getting up from the bench.
He didn't create the fox. He didn't. It was just hidden there in the weeds, and he saw it, that was
all. He's thought of plenty of things since he's been here, his parents and Owen, Gudmund and H and
Monica, even his uncle when he saw the painting over the hearth, and none of them had suddenly
appeared.
There were wild plants, and this seemed for all intents and purposes to be England, so why
wouldn't there be foxes? Foxes were English. He remembers seeing them when he lived here, sloping
across the street with their oddly adult air of detachment. So of course, there'd be foxes. Why not?
But foxes had to eat. Seth's eyes pore over the trees that grow from brick boxes up the High Street,
looking for birds, maybe, or squirrels or rats. They must be there. If one fox was here, there had to be
more animals, more something.
Didn't there? If he just didn't actually create –
"Hey," he says, stopping this line of thought but feeling unsatisfied.
"Hey," he says again, not sure why he's saying it, wanting to say it once more.
And louder this time.
"Hey!" he says, standing up.
"HEY!"
He shouts it again and again, his fists clenched, his throat raking from the effort. He keeps
screaming until he's hoarse, until his voice actually breaks.
It's only then that he realizes his face is wet from more crying.
"Hey," he says, whispering it now.
No one answers.
Not a bird or a squirrel or the fox or her kits.
No one answers from any quarter.
He's alone.
He swallows against the pain in his throat and goes to see what he can find.