Wildwood (8 page)

They came through the grass as he did, many of them, on either side, but they left no tracks behind them. Some danced, some skulked and some slithered along barely cresting the grass. They were the same colour as the moonlight on the dappled foliage and it was hard to make them out; my peripheral vision caught the flicker of their movements easily enough but the poor light made them difficult to focus on if I looked directly. I thought some were doglike, some hunched and muscular as buffalo, some slender as gibbons. My eyes itched as I strained to pick them out against the silvery froth of the meadow and through the gaps between the clumps of beech leaves. I could only be certain of glimpses: the scimitar curve of a horn, the flick of an angled ear, the green glint of a pupilless eye. Only Swampy himself seemed to be truly solid. They were absolutely silent, not even the grass whispering as they passed.

I’m dreaming this, I told myself.

As they reached the edge of the long weeds and slipped out onto the shorter grass I lost sight of most of them behind the banks of beech leaves, though I was certain that one was a bear with a ruff of grizzled fur. It lifted its blunt muzzle to the air and sniffed and grunted before lumbering onwards, out of sight.

There’ve been no bears in England for centuries.

The man with the red ’locks seemed in less of a rush than his companions, or perhaps it was only his own crude materiality that caused him to lag behind. One shadowy form dawdled to stay with him, dancing around him in circles that left no trail of bruised grass. She was easier to see as she came close to him, as if he loaned her some focus: a naked girl, whip thin, with wild hair down to her shoulders and something
twiggy
protruding from that hair over her temples. I thought it might be a tiara until I realised it was branched horns she wore on her head, like the horns of a roebuck. He laughed and brushed her face with his fingertips. She twirled for him, head thrown back, blocking his progress with her slim body, twining her arms about his neck then turning her back to bump her arse against his groin. The invitation was unmistakable and he put his hands about her waist. She wriggled up against him, arching her back and grinding her bum into his crotch, writhing her head back against his shoulder. What man could resist that sort of offer?

I felt warmth flicker into renewed life in my own sex. They were up to their hips in grass and I couldn’t see any detail, but from the set of their bodies it was clear enough what was going on. He braced his thighs and took what was being offered to him, hoisting her hips so that he could sheathe himself in her from behind. I squirmed on my branch. She arched forwards and he had to lean back to balance her, his hands gripping hard on her hips, his thighs working with deliberation. She made a noise like the yawn of a cat and writhed her bum in ecstatic circles. I drank in the sight with furtive, guilty fascination: the shimmy of her tiny breasts, the gape of her lips, the smooth hollow between his hip and thigh, the hunch of his strong shoulders as he pumped into her.

Bereft of those baggy clothes he was a lot more toned than I’d given him credit for. Good, strong arms, I thought. He was almost beautiful.

She was bent right forwards now, nearly double, her arse thrust high under the moon. I’d never hope to be so lithe myself. It gave me a good view of his naked torso though, and the sheen on his taut belly as he thrust. He shifted one hand from her hip to clap it against her bum cheek, clearly relishing the sound of skin on skin.

Dirty boy, I breathed. My pubic mound was pressed against the unyielding branch and leaking onto the bark. This voyeurism was entirely new to me, and the fact that spying on them was making me hot filled me with delicious shame. I could actually hear both of them panting. I watched each thrust and imagined what it might feel like as he quickened towards his goal, his movements jagged and frantic until he groaned and lurched, grabbing her tight, his muscles locked.

He was one of those blokes who really show it when they come. I like that so much in a man.

Then she changed. I didn’t see the moment of transformation; I only know that when she lifted her head next there was nothing human about it. It was the head of a hind on the long neck of a deer, her fur as white as her skin had seemed only a moment before. Her velvet-tipped antlers tossed skittishly. For a moment he froze – as shocked, I assumed, as me. I forgot how to breathe. She kicked and bucked and danced out of his grasp so that he staggered and nearly keeled over, skipping around him in ever-widening circles, and from one spring to another I couldn’t tell if it was a deer or a woman tossing her antlered head and laughing at him in great silvery peals.

I shut my eyes and pressed my forehead to the tree, clinging to its solidity.

When I looked up next he was alone, hands braced on his thighs, his head hanging. The meadow lay silent once more except for the distant call of the owl. I lay flat on my branch, hearing my heart hammering under my ribs and feeling my mind whirl around and around inside my empty skull like a moth trapped in a lampshade.

It seemed a long time before he moved, but as he stepped out onto the coarse sward of the cut lawn I glimpsed his cock for the first time. It drooped now in a pale elegant curve, spent but still engorged, and I couldn’t help wondering what he’d
look
like close up. I swivelled on my perch, trying to keep him in sight as he passed from one window in my tree canopy to another. He moved with an easy grace. I liked that too.

But I didn’t like what happened next. He stopped abruptly and bent to pick up something from the ground. Whatever it was, it was small enough to fit in his hand and dark in colour. Only when he lifted it in both hands up to his eyeline did I realise that he’d found my knickers.

I went cold. He stretched them across his hands, examining them. They were my after-work panties, bright aquamarine and a bit lacy, not the ones I’d sweated into all day, but there was still something horribly humiliating about having a strange man handle my most intimate clothing. They would carry the perfume of my sex, the proof of a whole evening’s horny anticipation of the pleasure awaiting me as soon as it grew dark and I was sure I would be alone. Outrage flared in my breast, sending a blush roaring up my cheeks.

He looked around him carefully.

I knew I was being hypocritical. Hadn’t I shed those knickers so that I could climb a tree naked and have a wank? Hadn’t I fantasised about being used mercilessly by a man I really didn’t like that much? Wasn’t my pussy wet and swollen with my own unsated longings after watching this man fuck someone else? Who the hell was I to condemn him?

He spun slowly on the spot, searching the landscape. His gaze lingered for a long time on the lights of my cottage, the only lamps in sight. Almost absently his hand drifted up towards his face.

I realised that the real reason I was angry was that I was afraid. It would only have to occur to him to come under the beech canopy and look up, and then he would see the ropes hanging from the low branches and me stuck up here like a big featherless pigeon, unable to hide or escape.

He was stroking his cock with his other hand, I realised. Again, almost absently, his gaze on the shadowy landscape, his mind far away. My mouth went dry. Was he thinking of me? He had no idea those were mine, did he? He couldn’t know I was living on site? The thought made me squirm inwardly. Then he turned his face to my tree as if looking straight at me, and my heart gave a great kick of fear under my breastbone.

Then he strode away, headed I don’t know where – the same direction as his shadowy friends, anyway. He took my panties with him. I put my hot face to the beech bark and cursed myself for a fool.

The moon drifted behind a cloud. Descending as quietly as I could I abandoned my ropes and ran back towards the house still wearing my harness, my clothes balled up in my hands. My heart raced to a beat faster than my bare footfalls.

Partway there something big and solid loomed out of the night. I stopped in my tracks, embarrassment turning to real nervousness. It moved with a lumbering heaviness. There was a loud snort of breath and I quivered, then a waft of distinctly bovine aroma reached my nostrils. A cow? I wondered, feeling the first gush of relief. What’s a cow doing here?

Then the moon came out again and my relief shrivelled away. It wasn’t a cow. It wasn’t even a bull, though it had the thick forward-swept crescent horns, because it stood on two legs and had the body of a muscular man, as heavyset as a wrestler. I couldn’t make out much detail. Against the grass he just looked very dark, but the whites of his eyes flashed. He must have stood a good seven foot tall, and he was between me and the house. He took a shambling step forwards, swinging his head from side to side. A great thick semi-erect pizzle hung against a scrotal sac that looked as big as my two bunched fists.

‘Oh God,’ I said, shrinking away, dropping my clothes.

He struck a fist into an open palm either in threat or anticipation, and took another few paces forwards. I could hear the hard noise his hooves made on the ground. My guts seemed to turn to mush, my legs to rolls of wet newspaper. The tip of his cock bobbed, rising.

Then someone grabbed my belt and yanked me roughly backwards. I nearly fell over. I flailed about a bit, but the back of my hand only slapped warm flesh and I couldn’t stop him unhooking the battery torch from my flank with his free hand. Then he released me. With a snap yellow light sprang across the night, aimed straight at the bull-man.

‘Look!’

I turned my head and saw, picked out in the circle of the torch beam, an old tree stump covered in ivy. Two jagged branches crowned it, making horns of a sort. A rotten branch jutted out of the leaves about halfway up its length. The ivy shivered a little in the breeze.

Had it only been a trick of the moonlight then, adding animation to a dead object? I turned back and saw my counter-culture chevalier holding out the flashlight at arm’s length as if it were a rapier. He grabbed my hand and clapped it to the plastic cylinder. ‘They don’t do well under artificial light.’

The moment he let go of the torch it drooped in my grasp and the beam wobbled away across the grass. The great black bulk of the ivied stump stirred to life and shook its horns, lurching forwards.

‘No!’ He grabbed me and redirected the torch on its target. It was only a tree stump once more. I braced my arm, and only when I was sure of my aim turned to look at my rescuer. I had no idea what to say. My inner voice was howling in protest. He glared at me and I stared back in agony. Two of us, completely naked under the moonlight, except for the straps of the harness that neatly framed my pubic area and were far
more
sluttish than mere bare flesh. Oh, and that small scrap of cloth wrapped about his right hand.

The memory of his touch seemed to set my skin on fire. He was still close enough to touch me again, anywhere. His expression was unreadable under the moonlight and I didn’t dare turn the torch on him. For a long long moment we just stood looking at one another. The black patch on his shoulder was matched by another on his opposite hip, I registered dimly, but my brain had stopped working properly.

‘Keep the torch on it,’ he said at last, harshly. ‘All the way back home.’

I nodded like an idiot.

‘Then turn the lights on. Keep them on at night until the dark of the moon. He’ll have lost your trail by then.’

I nodded again. I didn’t want to be the one to walk away and leave him staring – not at my naked arse. ‘Thanks.’

He shook his head. ‘You make a habit of running around naked at night, do you?’

‘Hey.’ My head was so stuffed full of shock after this evening that it felt like it was going to explode. ‘You can talk – you and Bambi.’ I was rewarded by wince of surprise and – perhaps – dismay. He exhaled slowly.

‘Listen to me. You have to be careful here.’

‘I was careful.’ That came out sounding sulky. ‘Well, I thought I was.’

‘It’s the wood,’ he continued, ignoring me. ‘It gets under your skin. It affects your judgement.’

‘The
wood
?’

‘It can open up … doors. In your head. Doors to old dark places. You’ll understand what I mean if you’re around for long. Be careful, that’s all.’

I gaped. After everything I’d just seen, was he implying that the real problem here was
myself
? ‘Right,’ I said. I think he
caught
my oh-my-God-they’re-all-nutters-what-do-I-do-now tone.

‘OK. Just remember,’ he said, retreating into the dark.

So I sidled all the way back to the cottage, holding the wavering and increasingly diffuse beam on a harmless deadwood stump as if my very life depended on it.

Michael Deverick rang first thing next morning.

‘How did it go yesterday?’

I was eating toast and marmalade in my kitchen and still trying to work out what had happened last night. My mind was numb. ‘Uh … sorry?’

‘The wood. Did you make a start on the wood?’

I blinked heavily. ‘Yeah. Um, yeah … sort of. I walked through to the bridle path.’ I wasn’t going to admit getting lost. ‘It’s not easy terrain.’

‘You went in?’ His voice was sharp. ‘How far?’

‘A mile or so. To the path. I could do with picking up an OS map, you know …’

‘But you got in?’ I couldn’t work out why he was repeating himself, or why he sounded so agitated. ‘What happened?’

What happened? I thought about the holly wolves and my voice dried up. ‘Uh. I, uh, met this bloke,’ I admitted grudgingly. ‘He didn’t seem very pleased about you buying the estate. He was quite –’ I hesitated:
threatening
was too strong a word to admit to ‘– unfriendly. He warned me off out of the woods.’

There was a silence on the line.

‘Uh, you still there?’

‘What was his name?’ My employer’s voice was gravelly.

‘I don’t know, sorry. He was tall … coppery hair … looked like he’d been sleeping rough, maybe. Looked like a New Age Traveller.’ I heard an exhalation of breath.

‘I’m coming to pick you up. You’re at the cottage, are you?’