Page 27 of Christmas Spirit
“These woods. I was sure it was open countryside, when we came down here yesterday. Fields. There’s no woodland for miles and miles from the Manor, except for a few small patches, and this is more than that. Way more.”
“They’re woods now, which means they were woods yesterday. It tells us one thing, though, and that is we went a lot further than we thought. All those diversions.”
Georgie was right, he supposed, because there was no other explanation.But… No, nobuts. He’d been tired, irritated, and it had been dark. And open fields didn’t turn into thick woodland overnight. But therewasa but, and that was that they were obviously a long way from town.
“What I don’t remember is this driveway being so long. Feels like we’ve been on it for ages and—what the fuck?” Georgie shouted.
Roland slammed on the brakes, the car fishtailing, lurching from one side of the path to the other, the steering wheel defying all his attempts to regain control and straighten up, before shuddering to a stop.
“What—?”
“Did you see that?” Georgie snapped his head around from the side window to Roland and back again.
“What are you talking about?”
“A deer—”
“For Christ’s sake, Georgie. A deer? You see deer every bloody day, we’ve a herd at the Manor.”
“This wasn’t Bambi. It was staring out at us from the wood, and it was massive, with huge antlers. And I mean huge. It was like something you see in those wildlife programmes.” Georgie brought down the window and leaned out. “I can’t see it, now. It must’ve gone deeper into the woods.”
The woods that hadn’t been there yesterday… Roland smacked the thought away. Of course they had been there. It was just his imagination playing tricks, the way Georgie’s imagination was now playing tricks on him. A shiver fell down his spine.
“Close the window, it’s freezing. A giant deer? Who do you think it was? Rudolph? Donner or Blitzen, or Prancer?” Roland snorted a laugh.
“Very funny. But I know what I saw, and it was a big fucker of a reindeer, okay?”
“A reindeer? Was it pulling a sledge?”
Georgie’s lips twitched. “Okay, okay, a deer. Not a reindeer, and no sledge. And before you ask, no, there wasn’t some old bloke dressed in red, either.”
“I think you’ll find theold blokeis normally referred to as Santa.”
“I don’t care if you don’t believe me,” Georgie muttered.
Roland pressed his lips into a thin line.
The way you didn’t believe me about the woods, you mean?
For the second time since they’d left the hotel, Roland started up the engine.
“Maybe it was a reintroduced species of deer,” Georgie said, a few seconds later.
“It could have been, I suppose.”
It wasn’t unfeasible. He’d heard of otters and beavers, and some birds being reintroduced, even wild boar, but that was always somewhere remote, like the Scottish Highlands. But giant deer?
They drove in silence. The driveway seemed to go on forever and Roland kept his eyes glued to the path ahead. It was either that or give way to the lurid, neon-bright images that scratched and clawed at the edges of his brain. Lurid and neon-bright images of Georgie’s undulating body, of his dark, glossy hair falling away from his face as he threw back his head, his back arched, as he let out a—
“Jesus Christ!” Roland yelled, slamming down hard on the brake.
The herd broke from the wood. Deer. Bigger, heavier, more muscular than the ornamental breed in the grounds of Pendleton, streaming across the path and blocking their way.
On the icy, treacherous drive, the car lurched from one side to the other, spinning around, defying all Roland’s attempts to bring it back under control. He pumped the brake hard but the big, heavy 4x4 just spun all the more. The steering wheel jerked from his grip, turning one way then another as though by invisible hands as the car careered off the driveway, picking up speed as it hurtled towards a wall of gnarled trees.
The impact knocked every breath from Roland’s body. His windscreen fractured, his ears filled with Georgie’s cries and, glimpsed in the rearview mirror, a lone stag, huge and heavy, with antlers that seemed to go on forever.
It was statue still, and watching.
