The Foxes of Spetchley Park

by John McLean

A sample from Issue One · Just under 3,000 words (the upper end of our range)

The turn onto Froxmere Road had been George Croft’s choke point for seven years. Three pints for courage at The Old Chequers, then the walk down Church Road. If he could make it past the turn, he could make it home.

A door slammed as George passed the village shop. His body betrayed him; a spasm carved deep into him by three years in the trenches. Fifteen. He had been fifteen when he lied his way into the war. It had not made a man of him. It had burnt the boy out of him and left an open void where a slamming door could shatter all but his feeble will to live.

His head snapped down, chin tucking into his chest. His shoulders hunched and his body curled inward, bracing for a blast, not a closing door. His heart thumped against his ribs: run, hide, survive. The breath froze in his lungs.

For a dizzying second, the present vanished, replaced by the chemical tang of gas, the shriek of a shell, the suck of mud.

INCOMING. GET DOWN. / It’s just a door, George. / The smell of his own shit in the trench. / Breathe. / Tom’s eyes, wide and empty. / You’re home. It’s 1926.

He forced his eyes open, unclenched his jaw. The world seeped back in, wrong and too quiet. You are in Worcestershire. The only thing in the air is barley dust.

From her window, Old Mrs. Moresley watched George’s performance with weary familiarity. The Croft boy having one of his turns was as much a part of the evening as the church bell. She shook her head. “Pathetic,” she muttered. But this time was different. His knees buckled. He fell onto all fours. A low, wretched sob escaped him: a raw, animalistic sound of pure shame. Tears streamed down onto his clenched fists. Mrs. Moresley’s cheeks burned. Ashamed to have taken pleasure in watching, she averted her gaze.

In a nearby garden, a small child pointed, “Mummy, what’s wrong with that man?”

His mother followed his gaze. She saw George broken on the ground. Her face softened. She put a hand on her son’s shoulder and turned him gently away. “Nothing, darling. He’s all right. Leave him be.” She knew it was a lie, but some wounds were too naked to look at.

Crowle had sent ninety-six men to the Great War. Eighteen still slept in the Belgian mud. Lucky George, they called him in the pub. They did not understand. Luck was a millstone; a promise made to Tom Davies in the Spetchley stable loft, two stupid boys playing at being men before they knew what it meant. “Tell her I was brave, George.” You promised him you would tell his mother he died clean. A hero. Not like it really was: clawing at the mud, begging for his mother, screaming for a God who wasn’t there.

George pushed himself up from the gravel. He wiped his face with the back of his hand, the grit sticking to his tear-soaked skin. His mother’s voice echoed in his head. “Pull yourself together, George.” An eerie silence filled the air, broken only by the unsteady sound of his breath. The skin between his shoulder blades prickled. He was being watched.

Through blurred eyes, he looked down the road towards the grass trail that led up to the church. No one was there.

He blinked.

There, in the centre of the trail as if it owned it, sat a fox.

Its coat was not the right colour. Not russet, but a matte, depthless black, like a hole cut in the evening light. It did not twitch, did not sniff the air. It focused on him, as deliberate as a gun being raised.

The fox’s head tilted. Not in curiosity, but in assessment. It was the cold, calculating tilt of a predator deciding on a method. Spetchley. You told him you’d tell her. You never did. Madness, or a message? He could no longer tell the difference. The fox blinked, slow and baleful, then traced the hedgerow to the end of Bredicot Lane and slipped into the thick grove.

George stood frozen for a full minute, but the rat from the trenches gnawed at his chest. An unkept promise.

A last, desperate voice, the one that had brought him home from Belgium, screamed inside him. This is not right. Go home. Lock the door.

He closed his eyes. He could smell the trench, feel Tom’s grip on his sleeve. The promise was older than the soldier, deeper than fear. It demanded to be kept. The fox had merely been the messenger.

The promise demanded to be kept.

He took a step. Not left, towards home.

Forwards.

Towards Bredicot Lane. Towards Spetchley. Towards the end of the lie.

✦ ✦ ✦

— continued in Issue One —

© 2026 The Black Fox Review · Published by Matatabi Press (Japan Publisher Reg. 910554)

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