Jon couldn’t fall back asleep for the moment. She was too excited and anxious about the idea. Ironically by wanting to see if she could go back to that place, she found herself unable to do it. Not that she was so excited about hanging out with Sarah, but it might also be the only social activity that was safe to her at the moment. A pity she couldn’t take Karyn with her. She looked over at Karyn’s soft orange fur and gently ground her face into it as they rested together on the grass. Whether that was real or a product of her own imagination, as for the Earthly remains of Sarah McMillan in their own world, surely by now, there would be a city-wide hunt for them. She wasn’t sure if that Freddy had gotten a good look at herself, but surely he had gotten a clear view of Karyn, and the town would be mad on a desperate hunt to kill the fox that had attacked and killed a high-school girl and the head cheerleader at that. Yes siree right at that moment the town could even be forming an angry mob with torches and pitchforks and signs with foxes set in red circles with a slash through it, like the ghostbusters logo but with a fox instead of a ghost. Jon could only imagine the public outrage that was brewing right then. Maybe it was even turning into a statewide or even nationwide fox hunt. Jon and Karyn were surely by then public enemy #1. Or, enemies #1 and 2.
Meanwhile:
Freddy was in panic at first but had calmed down for now. But he knew what must have happened and he knew what he had to do. Clearly a serial killer had broken in, brutally slashed Sarah to death with a knife, and had made a clear getaway through the window, while Freddy had missed him by just moments. It was just like the sort of thing that had been done by one of the famous serial killers he had just been reading about, what was his name. But one of his victims was a boy and the boy’s mother had been initially convicted of the crime instead, Tommy Sells! That was him. It was just like that. Obviously Freddy couldn’t call the police and tell them he had just found Sarah’s body and some supposed killer had gotten in through the window and back out again, with the only evidence the broken window, they’d never believe it, and Freddy would be 100% the suspect and found guilty. Maybe if the killer had left fingerprints, but probably not, he had been ready to break a window after all, so the killer was probably wearing gloves.
And so the plan was simple. At 2 am he would bury her body. He had a shovel ready and everything. He knew just the place too. There were some woods just a few blocks away. Basically a little forest. He would put her body in the trunk of his car and bring her over there. It would be perfect. Hopefully. As long as no one saw him carrying the body to and from the car. But that’s why he would wait until 2 am after all.
Jon did manage to get back to sleep after all, and sure enough, found herself back at that white expanse, with Sarah and the older man who was unfortunately not her grandfather.
There were so many things Jon wanted to ask both of them. Who was the man and how long had he been there? How long had Sarah experienced there, and how long had it been since Jon’s first visit, that is, to try to figure out how time passed here compared to the normal world. If any of this was even real. Maybe it was still all a dream after all. And did the man know anything about how a living being was able to visit this place in their dreams by swallowing the stone or did he still only know it was where the dead go if they made a wish, and what other mysteries he might know about the stone or her grandfather.
Unfortunately Jon couldn’t ask any of these things because she still couldn’t talk. So for now, the 3 of them played a few games of chess. Jon didn’t have that much difficulty moving the pieces with her paws at least.
“So, how have you been doing Jon?” Sarah asked as they began their first game.
Jon whined in response.
“I’m sorry, Jon. I wish I could help you. But I guess, I fucked everything up.”
“Mehhh,” Jon whimpered.
“I guess, since you’re still a vixen after all this time, you got together with Karyn. Do you have fox babies together? God that’s so weird to think about, that you’re probably a mom fox now. What that must be like, especially for you. I’m glad I didn’t destroy your mind though,” Sarah groaned as Jon took her queen. “Damn it you’re crushing me even harder than him!”
The old man who was watching their game laughed at that.
There were so many things Jon wanted to say. Starting with that not nearly as much time had passed for her as for Sarah. How long might Jon be here from a night’s sleep though? If an hour in the real world was years here, it could be a very, very, long night. But then why had her first visit to this place been so short? Maybe the difference in rate at which time passes wasn’t constant, like it passed in bursts?
“I think it’s kind of cool that you’re a super duper smart fox though,” Sarah said wistfully as Jon checkmated her. “That you’re in that cute little body, and yet. I. I hope you have lots and lots of little foxes who are as smart as you. That sounds kind of fun, I hope. It kind of, makes me happy, and a little less ashamed of what I did, thinking they exist because of it.” At first Sarah didn’t even realize it was checkmate, but astonishment worked its way into her face. Jon smiled her foxy smile and laughed “heh heh heh heh” in a foxy voice. She had done it by moving a knight out of the way of a rook, both of which were checking Sarah’s king, and even though Sarah had pieces that could take either the rook or the knight, she couldn’t take them both in a single move, nor could she move her king to any square that wasn’t attacked by either the knight or rook.
Jon wanted to tell Sarah that almost no time at all had passed for her and it was still even the same day as the day Sarah died. What other methods of communication were available to her? She wondered if she could write. But there didn’t seem to be any paper or much of anything in this place. Where had the chess set come from? Why chess? Was there anything they could do to get more stuff?
Jon then played a game against the man.
“You’ll have to excuse me,” he said, “for not knowing much about your situation. “Sarah has had a lot of time to tell me about these things, but has only said that she didn’t want to talk about it. So I take it she turned you into a fox?”
Jon nodded yes.
“You were her boyfriend before?”
Jon shook her head no.
“But a human male.”
Jon indicated yes.
“I’m afraid that the effects of wishes are permanent, even here. And we look the way we looked, fortunately, not when we died, but a few minutes before we died. But I expect you’re going to be a female fox forever.”
Again, if only Jon could explain a few things. She tried to say something.
“It must be torture, being trapped like that,”
Jon shook her head no. She rather liked it, to be honest. She kind of wouldn’t mind getting to have some of those fox kits together with Karyn actually.
“I was an archaeologist, long, long ago,” he said. “I was studying the Incan civilization. It wasn’t a very old civilization when it was brought to its knees by Hernan Cortes and the rest of the conquistadors. And the artifact, it wasn’t created, or magically imbued, or prepared by them. It is far older than that. Before the Inca, it was owned by the Mayans. And they didn’t make it either. The accounts I found, were it was a meteorite that they found. But it contains something. Something that isn’t supposed to exist in this universe. A single point where something went horribly wrong with the universe, shortly after the beginning of time itself.”
“Mehhh,” Jon said in rapt attention. But if he's an archaeologist from recent times in the normal world, in that case, between the two of them, they should already know about the time difference, because he should have already been in this afterlife world for decades or centuries or millennia by the time Sarah arrived and then after talking, they should know that much less time had passed on Earth in all the time he had been here after he died but before Sarah arrived. Perhaps that meant the difference in rate that time passed was irregular and went in bursts after all?
“I had a physicist friend of mine who was going to be coming to look at it, when I was murdered. By the treacherous Dr. Merlin.”
Jon’s mouth fell wide at the mention of her own last name. Did he mean grandpa? Did her grandfather murder this man to steal the stone?
“But my physicist friend, said he thought it somehow contained a singularity. Like the core of a black hole. But without the black hole. A naked singularity he said. A tiny microscopic black hole that couldn’t be a black hole, because it was spinning too fast, spinning faster than the speed of light. A place in the universe where all the rules break down, and anything can happen, literally anything.”
The game proceeded without another word, until it ended in a draw.
And then, once again, Jon’s vision tunneled back as if she was being yanked out of this universe in some unknown direction at the speed of light.
Jon and Karyn both had woken up. The sound of a car approaching from off the paved road to the edge of the woods had woken them up. Both of their hearts beat even faster than the heightened heartrate of a fox (relative to when they were human at least) and their blood flowed cold as they clung to the shadows from their quick hiding spot when they saw the young man who had gotten out of the car, rest a shovel against a tree, and then open the trunk of the car, and pick up what was clearly a body wrapped in a bloody sheet.
