"What do you think?" asks Brian. "The house is just what we wanted but what do you think of the location?"
Light slants through the window and throws a rectangular patch on the bare floorboards. The ceiling is high and gives the room a feeling of spaciousness, of freedom though the air inside is stale as if the windows have been shut for a long time. Brian takes off his jacket.
Joe, dark-eyed, dark-haired, swarthy complexion, hinting back perhaps to Mediterranean forebears, Spanish, Italian - Greek even, throws open the French windows and breathes in a great gulp of air. "I like the area," he says.
"It's close to the shops," says Brian. "But - " there is a slight hesitation " - what about out there?" He points out through the tall windows towards the back.
Trees fill in the space round the garden. Trees, tall and leafy, cast a great shade underneath so that it appears that a solid block of green and dark surrounds everything. The leaves do not move. There is a stillness which not even a breath of wind disturbs. No birds sing. The air hangs, hot, heavy and humid.
"It makes everything so private," says Joe. "It's as if we are completely on our own. I like that."
"Uh huh." The sound Brian makes should be one of agreement, but it is tinged with doubt.
"I thought you liked nature," says Joe. "The outdoor life. Away from the city noises. Where you can take a deep breath and not choke on petroleum fumes and diesel particulates."
"It's better when the grass is trimmed," says Brian. "And flowers grow in ordered groups. I'd like to have been a gardener rather than a stockbroker. Well-cut lawns, bedding plants in rows. Neat."
The nettles and rank weeds on the edge of the wood rustle almost as if they have heard and object to such an unnatural taming. Yet there is still no breeze. Perhaps an animal runs through them.
Brian points. "Look at the wildness of the forest out there. It's almost as if, when you turned your back for a moment, it would encroach on the garden, take it back."
Joe laughs. "What is rightfully his," he says.
"His?" asked Brian, a tinge of terror in his voice. "Why did you say 'his'? The forest is an 'it', a thing."
"Brian, you have too much imagination."
"Shall we look elsewhere?" asks Brian. "The estate agent says there are other houses we can view."
"I think this one is right for us," says Joe.
The branch of a tree which overhangs the garden fence nods as if in agreement. Perhaps a squirrel has run along it causing it to sway and dip. Only Joe notices and he feels that he must make a stand if Brian is to be persuaded.
"I'm not sure," says Brian. He holds his jacket by the tape, hanging from one bent finger. His shirt is crisp and white and his blue tie is in a neat knot, as always.
"We'll not find a better offer. It's well within our price range and you like the house. Close to work too, for both of us."
Brian nods, but there is still a hint of reluctance.
"Come into the garden," says Joe. "See what you'll be able to make of it." They step out through the French windows onto the lawn.
It is a May evening. Scents of honeysuckle linger. The sun is low on the horizon but already there is the beginning of a chill in the sunless areas, and dark clouds are piling up in the northeast. Shadows from the wood invade the garden and reach out over the grass towards the house.
"I suppose I could plant shrubs between here and the trees," says Brian indicating the flat grassy area. "It would sort of bridge the gap between the two levels. Then, bedding plants. masses of colour."
The tip of the shadow of a tall conifer touches Joe. It is like a dark pointing finger. A tiny breeze whispers and the finger bends, grasping him in its curl.
He starts as if he has been physically touched then relaxes. All at once a sexual urge snatches at his loins. For a moment he wonders if someone or some thing has rubbed itself against him and he looks down to see - nothing, just the shadow curling and uncurling in the late evening breeze.
"I think we should have it," he says, glancing at Brian who stands, pondering on the likelihood of petunias and French marigolds flourishing in this hemmed-in garden.
"I wonder whether the shade would be too much."
"Later in the year," says Joe dismissing the matter as unimportant, "when the sun is higher, there will be light almost up to the forest for most of the day."
He feels a burning in his loins which demands more than herbaceous conversation to assuage. There is a pressure around his back and sides, almost as if something has clasped him from behind. Mixed with the honeysuckle, there is a goatish smell in the air, musky, exciting. He reaches behind him and feels hair, coarse-curling and animal. It is his imagination because, when he turns to look, there is nothing there - just the piling clouds overhead.
"The agent has left the key with us. Shall we go back to the house?"
Brian lingers a minute, still deliberating on the minutiae of garden planning. He looks out of place in his neat, conservative, dark blue suit, the uniform of his stock-brokerism against the dark background of primordial tree trunks and the sprawling rank undergrowth of nettles and dock. Eventually he turns to wander back, moonwise, the way women dance round the May pole. Suddenly he hears a low snuffling behind him and turns - but there is nothing there and he hurries in to join Joe.
There is a sigh from the wood, a soughing of the wind that has just sprung up. It sounds almost as if something amongst the trees regrets allowing an escape.
Joe has left the French windows open and Brian is about to close them. "Leave them open," says Joe. "Let's catch the last of the sunshine and the fresh air." The expression on his dark face is intense and his mouth is strangely twisted. It is as if he is suffused with an almost animal passion.
Brian notices and asks, "What's the matter?"
The scent of honeysuckle comes in through the open windows and with it another, less agreeable smell.
"Let's stay the night," says Joe. "The estate agent has left the key. He said we could return it tomorrow if we're too late and the shop is shut."
Brian immediately raises objections. "There's nowhere to sleep," he says. "Nothing to eat."
Joe brushes aside his protests. "There's a mattress upstairs," he says. "We saw it in the upstairs bedroom. The water's still on. We can go out to eat later. I want to feel the nature of the place before I buy."
He goes to Brian and kisses him, a rough, brutal kiss that is almost bruising in its intensity, crushing Brian's lips against his teeth. Brian pushes him away with an expression of disgust. "Phew! You smell like an old goat. When did you last have a shower?"
Yet when Joe pulls away, Brian draws him back as if the rank savour has an aphrodisiacal quality. "Have you been to the gym this afternoon?" he asks. "You could have showered first?"
Joe hasn't but he lies and says he has. They stand face to face, their bodies inches apart, Brian's arms hang meekly down his sides. Joe grabs Brian's shoulders as he stares into his partner's blue, blue eyes, innocent and trusting. Joe's are green yet in the last light of the evening sun, they seem to glow with a yellowish tint.
The shadows are half way up the garden now. The scent of honeysuckle is almost overwhelmed by that other, caprine smell. A sexual tension crackles in the air or perhaps it is the electricity from the storm clouds now hanging over the house. Joe draws Brian to him and their loins touch. Joe's hands drop from his shoulders to grasp Brian's buttocks and pull him even closer so that their genitals, hard and hardening. are pressed together through the material of their trousers. Joe's fingers explore the cleft between Brian's buttocks.
"Not here. Not now," protests Brian.
"Why?"
Brian looks round. "The windows are open. Anyone could see," he says.
"There's no one there. No one to see," says Joe.
And indeed only the shadow-tips of the tallest treetops are on the ledge of the door. Perhaps one is just inside. The honeysuckle is entirely subsumed into the goatish reek. The last rays of the setting sun reach out from behind the wood, red, angry. Again there is a snuffling sound.
"What's that noise?" asks Brian.
"What noise?" asks Joe.
But he himself hears padding all around as if leopards prowl the length and breadth of the room, and hard clipping sounds like cloven hooves tapping on the floorboards. He breathes in and then out deeply through his nostrils. He snuffles like an animal exploring an interesting smell.
They are still standing face to face, chest against chest, loins pressed together. Only Joe's legs are apart so that Brian stands inside his partner's. A sound breaks the air which has momentarily stilled - the calm before the storm. It resembles the wind blowing down an organ pipe. There are two notes, two solitary notes, high-pitched and tremulous. They seem oddly apart as if neither belongs to the scale of the other. One high and the other lower but discordant so that the ear drum, hearing them both together, feels abraded, as if the very sound scrapes something deep inside the head.
Brian shudders at the sound and the movement of his body against Joe's arouses him.
A third note squeals its way between the other two. A pause and then there are three more so that the six notes form a tune but one which raises the hairs at the nape of Brian's neck, sets vibrating some primitive nerve endings at the base of his spine, weakens the sinews in his legs so that he wants to run in a drunken panic away, away from the sound.
But Joe holds him fast and, whereas the tune, if it can be called that, terrifies Brian, it provokes Joe into a mounting state of sexual turmoil. Wild urges are clamouring to be released. Brian's quivering body pressed against Joe arouses his cock. The shirt which Brian is wearing is an unnecessary encumbrance between their flesh. He tears at it while Brian protests.
"What are you doing? That's my best shirt."
The protests are ineffectual and the material rends from top to bottom while the music plays faster and faster. Joe slavers and he feels heavy hairy haunches gripping him from behind and an erect hard member pressing between his own buttocks. Clothes are an irrelevance.
Joe scrabbles at the zip of Brian's trousers, finds the metal tag and drags it down reaching in to find Brian's cock coiled in the soft warmth of his underpants.
The sun disappears behind the trees. Where it has gone, there is a halo of dark red-gold which seems to shine up from the depths of the earth as if with a last despairing grasp, The piping is suddenly punctuated by sharp cracks of thunder and a jagged bolt of lightning streaks from west to east across the sky. The first few drops of rain fall, fat and heavy, followed by a downpour which slaps against the leaves of the trees. They nod and toss in protest. The rain drums against the roof slates and courses down and through the windows soaking the floor.
"Wait!" shouts Brian, and then, as if looking for a valid reason, "The rain's coming in."
And other things are coming in, not that either Brian or Joe can see them. There is a feeling of pressure, of bodies filling the space around them, warm, hungry bodies, panting, and giving off smells of wet fur, or hair or skin. Unwashed bodies, rank and malodorous, smelling of earth and sweat and even less agreeable stenches, faecal, sexual. And still the music plays, in its wild, unmelodic, discordant mode, stretching the nerves, grating the nails and teeth, echoing in the cavities of the brain - Pavane for a Mad Infanta.
Brian's hair stands on end as he struggles to escape. Joe's cock stands on end as he struggles to strip off the obstructing clothing. He has torn off Brian's trousers, ripped away his underpants and somehow divested his own clothes so that both are naked and able to feel, if not to see, the pelts of whatever presences surround them. It is pitch black outside and Brian and Joe are just pale struggling figures in the livid blue-white flashes of the lightning.
Without knowing it, Joe is snarling his lust and Brian his fear. The room screams with sexual abandon as satyrs and centaurs couple with each other and the dryads and hamadryads of the trees. Brian is turned and entered. Goatish Pan, member erect, mounts Joe from behind. There is a crescendo of animal noises, brute and human indistinguishable. Faunus, Silenus and his fauns, Bacchus, Pan, Silvanus, Cemmunos, the Green Man, Dionysus and his Maenads. "Joe! Joe! You're killing me." Squeals of lust. Animal grunts, heavy breathing, whickers and whinnies, harsh coughs and snorts.
Combining into a final orgasmic howl.
And then silence. . . . .
At nine o'clock the following morning, the estate agent arrived at the house. He was a grey-haired, middle-aged man with a moustache and the sort of face that clients would instinctively trust if they didn't look too hard into his somewhat shifty blue eyes. He had been concerned that the two gentlemen hadn't returned the keys as he'd asked. Looked like trustworthy, dependable people, he had thought, not the sort who would let you down - and he was seldom wrong in his summation of people.
He opened the front door, went into the main room downstairs and tutted with annoyance when he saw that the French windows stood wide open onto the lawn. Rain water had blown in and lay in puddles on the wooden floorboards. Some discarded clothing had been scattered around. He went to close the windows and stared amazed at the lawn. There on the rain-soaked grass, cutting into the surface, were scores of animal footprints, all leading from the house towards the forest.
"And," he told the staff when he got back, "it looked as if a herd of buffalo had crashed through the undergrowth. There were even a few bare human footprints in the mud. I really don't know what had been going on."
"You going to tell the police, Mr Devenish?" asked Paula, the office junior.
"Least said, soonest mended," he said, shaking his head. "We don't want any disturbing stories circulating about the house. It's a most desirable property."
ichael
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