Of All The Wants And Hungers by Samuel Snoek-Brown

There had been gossip lately among the neighbors that a pair of foxes were living in an abandoned lot. Lock up your cats, they said.

I’d seen one of the foxes on a walk a while ago, the slender red face peering from under a bush down near the railroad tracks. It seemed friendly enough, or maybe I would say cautious. Not menacing, anyway, and small enough that most of the neighborhood’s bruiser cats could handle the fox in a fight. Those bright eyes in the undergrowth seemed almost timid, at a distance. 

But then, sure enough, Gene’s cat went missing. And Gene’s cat was one of those bruisers, a big tabby who ruled his block and went where he pleased, including into neighbors’ homes if they left their dog flaps unmonitored.

Whatever got it was no fox, Gene insisted.

His husband, Clint, suggested it might be a coyote.

They live in the woods on the edge of the neighborhood, Clint said. I’ve seen them from the trails. Seen them less since they started that new development, but that’s what happens, you encroach on our last wild spaces and the wild starts encroaching back.

Did you call animal control? I said. 

They said to try to scare off any wild thing we see, Clint said. And, you know, lock up your cats.

Gene began to cry.

Soon, except for a few of the bigger dogs, loud and bursting with energy, barking like bouncers outside a rowdy bar, all the other pets disappeared too, not to coyotes but tucked away safely indoors. And things were quiet for a while, except for those loud dogs. But then, almost a month after Gene’s cat disappeared, one of those big dogs died.

John Markson, a few blocks over, came home from a graveyard shift and found him in the backyard, crumpled on the back steps. The door was scarred with bloody gouges; the dog had try to claw his way into the house, but he hadn’t made it. His throat was torn open, and so was his stomach. There wasn’t much else. Whatever had gotten him, it had hollowed out that dog like a deflated skin leftover from a baked potato. 

Markson is a sheriff’s deputy, so this time every service in town came out. Animal control collected what was left of the body. EMTs wrapped Markson in a blanket and treated him for shock. Police knocked on the doors of anyone else with a big dog, searching for which one had gotten loose. But all those dogs were accounted for. And after that, all those dogs were kept inside as well.

The next night, the howling began.

Told you, Clint said. Coyotes.

I’ve lived here for fifty-three years, Muriel said. She lived next door to Clint and Gene and liked to chain smoke on her front porch. She rarely butted into conversations, but the missing animals had gotten everyone talking. She padded over in her slippers and leaned on Clint and Gene’s new fence. Moved here when most of this was still woods and pasture. One of my first neighbors kept horses, we were that wild back then. I’ve seen coyotes, mangy little shits, and I’ve heard them, too. That howl was no goddamn coyote.

Well what, then?

I think it’s Toby, Muriel said.

Toby was new, moved in just over a month before, and no one knew much about him. He kept late hours, but then, so did Deputy Markson. He never really spoke to anyone but then, usually Muriel didn’t either. And he’d let his lawn grow wild since moving in, but so did I. Yard work is such a hassle and I mostly let nature take care of itself. My backyard was a jungle of tall weeds and scrubby bushes, long tentacles of blackberry brambles reaching out of the overgrown laurels. 

To me, the few times I’d seen Toby in an evening, he seemed almost timid. His eyes, watching the sun slip behind the rooftops, reminded me of that fox I’d seen down by the railroad tracks. He seemed almost scared of venturing out, getting to know anyone. 

And the way he leaves his yard like that? Muriel continued. She turned and ashed her cigarette on her side of the fence, rubbing it into a gray streak on the sidewalk with her slipper. Real serial killer behavior, you ask me.

I think he’s depressed, Gene said. When he was moving in, I helped him bring a few boxes from his truck to his front porch. I didn’t get all the details, but I think his girlfriend died recently, some kind of accident. He moved here to get away from that heartache.

You said you took boxes to his porch, Muriel said. He didn’t let you inside his house?

No, Gene said.

Serial killer, Muriel said.

Well how about I just stroll next door, Clint said, and walk right on into your house, Muriel?

You set one foot inside my front door and I will be a killer, I can promise you that. She dropped her cigarette and ground it out and headed back to her porch to shake another smoke from her pack.

And that was that. Things quieted down over the next few weeks, and people fell back into their routines. Some of the bigger dogs returned to their yards. Muriel smoked on her porch. Once in a while, I spotted Toby leaning against his front window or standing in his open front door, watching the sunset. Each time I saw him, his face looked a little more relaxed. Until last week, when I spotted him studying the evening horizon like he’d just heard gunshots and was trying to figure out where they were coming from. Then he saw me, and I waved but he slammed his door. And then I stopped seeing him.

Until last night.

The wind was up, one of those violent autumn storms that always knocks over my recycle bin. All night I kept hearing thuds of small branches and pine cones against the roof. I tried watching a loud movie but then the power cut out and I was trapped there in the dark, with no sound to dampen the drumming of the pinecones.

I got a flashlight and opened a book. This was a rare pleasure. I’d gotten so used to just binging online shows or playing games on my phone, and it felt nice to sit down with a real book. And with the flashlight, I felt like crawling into bed and tenting the blanket, the way I used to when I stayed up too late reading comic books as a kid. So I folded the book over my index finger and got up and headed for the stairs when I heard a tremendous thud against the side of the house.

I dropped my book and grabbed the flashlight with both fists, like a baseball bat. 

That was no pinecone on the roof. Something had hit the house. I remembered a couple years ago I’d had my trees trimmed and the crew, getting sloppy as they neared the end of their work, lost control of one big limb and it slammed into my bedroom wall. This sounded like that. Something big, right into the side of the house.

I slipped on a pair of shoes and headed for the back door to inspect the damage, but then something slammed into the house again. Slammed into the back door.

I wasn’t thinking straight. I was still thinking about the tree limbs, the damage to my house, what the insurance might cover. So I just threw open the door and in the sweep of my flashlight beam I saw a shape round the corner of the house, bounding deeper into the overgrown back yard.

It was just a flash, moving fast and nimble, seeming almost to bend around the corner of the house. I didn’t see nearly enough to tell what it had been. But it had left deep gashes in my yard, black streaks of mud where its feet had ripped away the grass as it ran. 

I thought about Gene’s missing cat. I thought about that big dog hollowed out on Deputy Markson’s porch. 

I should have retreated inside, locked the doors. I should have turned out the flashlight and hidden under the blankets on my bed upstairs. I should have called the police.

But what would I tell them? I heard something hit my house—during a wind storm? I’d seen a shape? I couldn’t even describe what kind of shape. For all I knew it was a racoon that had gotten blown out of a tree. For all I knew it was that fox, lost and scared in the storm. For all I knew it was Toby, alone and sad and looking for someone to help him ride out the weather.

I aimed the flashlight into the yard. The power was out all over the neighborhood and the cloud overhead were thick; I’d never it this dark before. No streetlamps, no porchlights, no strings of bulbs hanging from backyard pergolas. Just my narrow white beam aimed at this gash in my grass, then at the next gash, then the next, following them around the corner of the house. 

I swept the whole little wilderness behind my house, the light making tall weeds appear and disappear in the darkness as the wind whipped them about. The laurels whispered to each other. The pine boughs groaned. A few pinecones bounced off the roof and landed behind me.

Then, the wind settled. Suddenly, everything went calm. High overhead, the clouds were still racing, obscuring the moonlight, but down here we’d entered a momentary hush.

I swept the house with the light and found two sets of deep gouges in my siding. So it had been a tree branch. But then I scanned the ground and saw nothing but the thick weeds and grasses. No limb anywhere. And those gouges—each set was in parallel, four deep rips in the paint and the wood and then, a few feet over, another four all in a row.

I thought of Deputy Markson’s dog, clawing at his back door, desperate to get inside. Desperate to get away from whatever was in the yard with him.

What was in the yard with me?

I shone the flashlight into the laurels and bushes along the back fence. I didn’t know what I was looking for. Didn’t know how I’d understand it if I saw it. But then, tucked deep in the brush, behind the blackberry brambles, I saw . . . something.

I couldn’t tell what it was. The brambles cast weird slices of shadow over it, but it was also like the thing itself was a shadow. Some hulking dark hole that sucked up all the light.

I stared into that shadow for what felt like a long time. I moved the flashlight around, trying to cast the light from different angles. After all that wind, now, in the calm, the yard was eerily quiet. If it had growled, or snarled, or even breathed heavily, I would have been less scared because at least then I’d know for certain it was even there. But the shadow was completely silent. Just the hulking shape of it in the corner of the back yard, and then, with one well-aimed angle from the flashlight, the two dim coals of its red eyes.

Then they were gone.

I moved the flashlight, trying to find the angle again, and for one stupid moment, I put a foot forward, not to get closer but just to change positions as I aimed the flashlight, but I did get closer and this time, I heard the growl. Low and lumbering. Almost musical, like a knife edge dragged slowly over the thick metal coil of a bass guitar string. 

I dropped the flashlight. It disappeared into the high grass, the light down there dim and wavering like it was underwater. The wind was rising again. The trees began to shimmy, the blackberry brambles swayed. Or were they parting, like a curtain? Was the shape emerging from its shadow? Was it putting its great clawed paw forward?

A block over, one of those big dogs started barking. I jerked my head toward it, my heart hammering, my feet planted in the muddy earth like roots. The wind blew harder. Then the trees and brambles did part and a huge gray wolf, the size of my sofa, stepped into the yard. It moved slowly, one paw in front of the other, stalking toward me. Then it stopped, and it stood up on its long hind legs, its huge arrow of a head towering over me by at least a foot. Its thick chest was massive but its abdomen barely existed, so as this creature loomed over me, I knew it was hungry.

I heard that growl again, somehow lower now but also somehow louder. I locked eyes, thinking maybe if I could stare it down it might not attack. I’d read that worked for bears, but I couldn’t remember which bears. Those red eyes stared back at me, not so much leering as, maybe, thinking. The wolf curled it black lip over its shining teeth, then raised one sinewy arm, its claws spread wide. The wolf paused. Its red eyes looked sad. 

Somewhere a street or two over, that big dog barked again. The wolf, like me, turned its head, then it dropped to all fours and bounded away, leaping clear over my tall fence and into the alley behind my garage. The wind blew harder. High overhead, the racing clouds cleared from the sky and revealed the bright white moon. In the distance, I heard more frenzied barking, a sharp yelp, and then, as I came unstuck and raced back to the house, my flashlight forgotten in the weeds, the full moonlight guiding my way, I heard a long, mournful howl.