Complete blackness. The windows were boarded up. I fumbled blindly for the door locks and found them, deadbolt and key slot and handle. It seemed to take an eternity, and all the while I expected the great weight of the monster outside to smash against the heavy timbers, break through...
Nothing happened. The muffled sound of the driving rain was the only companion of my panic.
That done I began searching for light switches in the logical places, found them almost a full minute after I had secured the door. Archaic bulbs buzzed to flickering life and I finally beheld the interior of the cottage.
It was spartan, the furniture crude and clearly crafted by unskilled paws. Here a chair before a blackened hearth with crooked legs, there a sofa whose cushions were lumpy and reeked of old sweat and an infestation of dust mites. At the center of it all, in bizarre modern protest, was a large flatscreen television whose pedestal was a rotting tree stump.
I looked up, beheld a chandelier made from a bald tire and more buzzing bulbs. It hung from rusting chains that clinked softly as it swayed, though within that place there was no wind.
The worst of it was the walls. The timbers had been carved with what seemed to be a million tiny ciphers, words perhaps of a language I knew not, and each and every one of them had been filled in with something dark red...a paste or a paint or...or-
No. Not that.
I turned from my disturbing study of those and was surprised by a large mirror hanging in the foyer. Swathes of its surface were dark with the ravages of time, streaked and dirty with neglect, yet the glimpse I caught of my face was crystal clear.
The fox that looked back was the picture of hell. The green eyes were haunted. The vulpine contours were hollow, almost cadaverous. One ear was half gone, and upon his muzzle was a broken snarl, the right lip curled, the left the misery of a mourner. I tried to change that expression and realized that the right side of my face was paralyzed.
Slowly, as if in a dream, I raised a paw, pointed a finger, half of me not believing that could truly be me. The image did the same, and as I met my own eyes a chill passed through me, a coldness so deep and terrible I felt as if I were dead already and looking at my own ghost.
A rage filled me, hot and inexplicable and red, red, red. My fist met the face of my reflection and the mirror shattered in a spectacular starburst of cracks. The frame fell from the wall with a thunderous crash and came apart and then glass was everywhere, sharp and asparkle.
"Don't look at me like that," I whispered down to the destruction I had wrought, hackles up. I licked at my knuckles. They were slick with blood.
You need to go upstairs, fox, the shell whispered. You need to remember, and then you need to get me back. We had almost finished things. You sacrificed so much for her. You did. Once you're you again you'll know why.
"Why the fuck can't you just tell me?" I seethed. "Why so fucking cryptic. Show me!"
You forbade it. Go. Upstairs. You must. Believe it or not this game is your creation. You made the rules and now it must play out.
I stared down at the broken mirror, the thousand ugly reflections of myself, the rage flooding out of me. The familiarity of fear and uncertainty returned. And what about that thing out there? Why hadn't it even tried to break in?
I didn't know. Yet I knew where I had to go. I glanced at the stairs. They were shrouded in shadow, rickety and badly hewn. One step, then the next and the next. Destiny is a journey, no matter how dark. The longest of journeys began with but one, as the Chinese proverb goes, and so-