Nush rubbed her arms, not because she was cold, as the opposite was true. She was sweating her ass off and was regretting her choice of sexy underwear. She’d picked the satin thong as much as a statement of intent, rather than the off-chance Michael wanted to show her more than his large country pile. No, she looked around at the clearing peppered with the graves of dolls, the shoes dangling from the branches of a tree and the broken-down London bus and tried to think of it as Michael had: yokel charm, characterful rural tradition, fairy tale. There was something of the fairy tale about this place. The way the woods were thick and ancient. She knew there couldn’t be many places, if any, left like this in the British Isles. There was also a C. S. Lewisness to the telephone in the tree. How was it possible to maintain the wires and power supply as the tree grew around it? Left exposed to the elements, wouldn’t the wooden phone casing rot? And the buried dolls, well that was grim with both one and two Ms at the end of the word.
Not for the first time she felt watched from the dense canopy and undergrowth beyond the clearing. At least in England there was nothing that could harm her, no wolves or bears, definitely no big cats, unless you believed the stories about dubious sightings of big cats around the moors and dales. Lions, tigers and bears, oh my! She thought and tsked at the idea. Still, the dilapidated bus was worth checking out. It wasn’t far from the phone. She’d be able to see Michael when he turned up, and then there would be some walls between her and the outside world. Maybe a seat too; she was bloody knackered.
Nush picked her way through the miniature graves, ignoring the sprigs of limbs or a partially uncovered face that protruded from some. When she reached the bus, it hulked above her, the lower branches of trees at the edge of the clearing caressing its roof. Standing at the back of the bus, the ivy was thick, a rich, dark green covering the back windows and creeping inside the hop on and off opening. Nush took hold of the pole once used by commuters to mount and dismount this dead beast. It was cool to the touch, colder than the oppressive heat of the woodland’s interior.
She cleared her throat, and realised she was about to call, Hello. Silly! No one else was here. Couldn’t be. Michael would have said if someone lived nearby, or they would have made themselves known by now if they happened to have been wondering through the forest. They wouldn’t hide and watch her. That would be ridiculous, wouldn’t it?
One foot on the step up, Nush reflexively reached for the phone in her handbag to numb her thoughts with the perpetual scroll of countless humans performing to an unseen audience curated by soulless algorithms. The phone glowed in her palm. Its screen saver was a group selfie with two friends on a night out: Kate and Suzy. No service at the top of the screen.
‘You silly moo,’ she scolded herself, returning the phone.
The bus shifted perceptibly as she mounted the back step and peered inside. There was row upon row of seats either side of the aisle. The light had a tenebrous, underwater quality, filtered as it was through dirty windows. She glanced up the corkscrew staircase to the second level. It showed nothing except the ceiling, no snaggle toothed, boss-eyed cannibals salivated over the balustrade, blunt knife and spoon in hands. Please, dad-cum-brother-cum-cousin, could I eat her right eyeball while she watches with the left? Nope, none of that. Though the empty space could neither outright confirm nor deny the truth of it.
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Nush walked down the aisle, her hand hopping from seat back to seat back, where the metal handle, both back rest and balance aid, looped. She went slowly, checking each seat, for what she couldn’t say. Some had rips in their fabric, showing through dingy yellow foam stuffing. Mostly, they were in reasonable condition. Grimy and faded, yes, but largely in one piece. Just before the driver’s seat was another staircase. Nush gave it a pass, and instead opted for establishing whether a chronic inbred flesh-eater wasn’t about to put this old rig into gear.
‘Guess that would make me a takeaway,’ Nush said out loud. The driver’s seat was empty. ‘Bollocking-hell, now I’m making crap jokes to feel better.’
With an empty ticket and coin dispenser perched on top, the stable-like door to the driver’s seat was open. Never having sat in command of a London bus, Nush was suddenly possessed by the urge to do so. She eased inside and took the weight off her feet. The seat was a little stiff from the combination of lack of use, age, and being out in the open, but it did the job. Her aching feet practically sighed in relief. All the dials and switches were dusty and cataracted with age. The large wheel was sturdy in her grip, bestowing a much-needed sense of control. A few tendrils of ivy hung down over the front and side windows, but nothing compared to the dense thatch at the back of the bus. Nush could peer through these, like a beaded curtain at a soho peepshow. She could see farther into the woods to what the bus obscured at the far side of the clearing.
There was a grassy pathway cleaving through the woods. Through the ivy and the murky glass, it was difficult to make out anything with clarity, but she was sure there was a tree distinct from the others. Huge, maybe an oak. Nush was a city girl and didn’t know trees, but oaks were distinctive, iconically English and besides, her parents had once taken her to see the Major Oak in Sherwood Forest when she was a kid. She’d not found it at all impressive, held up as it was by scaffolding because of lightning strike and arson attempts. Plus, the fence around it meant you couldn’t get anywhere near it. The trunk, as wide as this bus, however, had hollowed out over its great lifespan. And she remembered the guide saying that it couldn’t have been Robin Hood’s Major Oak because it would have been a sapling at the time, but it was a pagan and druidic tradition to use trees as spiritual meeting places. As one old tree died, another great oak or yew tree in the forest would have taken its place.
Nush squeaked her palm down the windshield glass to get a better view. On her right, the inert foliage of jutting branches suddenly moved. In her peripheral vision, a mass rose and turned in her direction. She froze only able to move her eyes, an animal instinct keeping her movements to a minimum. Two phosphorous pinpricks stared through the side window at her, eyes set far apart on an equine shaped head, out of which sprang not branches but the antlers of a giant stag. Like hunks of mouldy flesh, the antlers’ velvet covering hung off in ragged patches.
Nush trembled, her breath stuttering too loudly. If she didn’t move, maybe the deer, or whatever it was, would disappear.
The thing snorted, its breath steaming the window, obscuring its glowing eyes.
Stags don’t have glowing eyes; stags don’t have glowing eyes; stags don’t have glowing eyes, Nush thought, a mental paralysis preventing her from moving on. She could hear its heavy breathing, smell its thick musk. Her stillness seemed to be working. The stag turned away, and as it did, it rose to its full, impossible, terrifying height. The underside of his belly was at her eye level, which must have been at least six feet from the ground. That would mean the saddle of his back was somewhere around the level of the floor above, and its head and antlers over the roof of the double decker bus. No stag was that big. Not even moose in America. They had moose, right? Or was it Canada. Oh, who fucking, bollocking, shagging well cares! She squeezed her eyes shut, gripped the wheel, held her breath. By the sound of it, the thing moved off. Branches snapped under its hooves. Undergrowth tore against its flank and whipped back against the bus.
Nush remained statue-still, hiding in the swirling darkness behind her eyelids. She couldn’t hear the stag-thing anymore but kept her eyes closed, until there came a slow and deliberate triple knock on the windscreen in front of her. She wasn’t for opening her eyes or moving in anyway, but another triplet of knocks came at the glass, each separated by a pause. Confused and afraid and with no other options, she peeked open one eyelid.
