There had been several occasions in Ben's life when he couldn't recall how he'd got home from the pub. This was the first time he had no idea how he'd got there.
His head swam, as if he'd already been on the booze. He braced a hand against the lamppost and drew a deep, fortifying breath. Then, driven by the instinct to get to somewhere safe and populated rather than by any rational calculation, he clutched his knapsack tight to his chest and staggered toward the The Five Bells.
As he took the few steps across the pavement, he discovered he limped. His ankle ached and his knee was twinging slightly, though he could walk. Not like in the woods. Bloody hell… the woods! He shoved the swing door of the pub open with his shoulder and entered the low-lit interior, scanning the bar and wooden booths desperately for friendly faces. The screams in his mind grew louder by the heartbeat.
What just happened to me? How did I get here?
"Ben! We're over here."
The shout from Kristof snatched Ben back from his spiralling panic. His colleague Kristof—blond, perpetually suntanned, and very well groomed—waved from a booth on the far side of the cosy pub. Ben managed to pull himself together enough to nod an acknowledgement and walk across the room, although he nearly collided with a wooden pillar and then a girl carrying two glasses of white wine.
As he approached, he mustered some semblance of a smile for Kristof, who was drinking with a small group of friends from the office—Andrea, a planning officer, Sam from enforcement, and Tessa, their boss, who wasn't too much of a bitch when off duty and in the right mood.
"How was Shanty Wood?" asked Tessa. "I hope you didn't drop that expensive depth gauge in the water like you did the last one." Her smirk vanished as Ben got closer. Despite his attempted smile, Ben must've looked as shell-shocked as he felt, clutching his knapsack so tight his knuckles whitened. "Ben, are you alright? You look shattered. Did something happen?"
He wanted to tell them what happened. He should tell them what happened. He remembered everything, until… Well, until moments after he'd tripped and Lyle had kissed him. Oh God… and then what? Had he been drugged? But how? He'd not eaten or drunk anything, nor could he recollect the tell-tale prick of a needle. Maybe he'd lost time, somehow, whole swathes of memory erased.
He couldn't conjure anything that resembled the right words to tell his story, not yet. He forced his grin wider. "No, I'm fine."
"No man is fine working past four p.m. on a Friday," said Kristof. "Tessa, you should pay the man danger money for that alone." He slid out from one of the benches, gesturing that Ben should sit down. "Do you want a pint, mate? Or are you driving."
His car! Ben certainly hadn't driven here, so his vehicle must still be in the Shanty Wood carpark. He really had to tell them what'd happened, but he needed a drink first more than he'd ever needed one in his life. He plonked himself down on the warm bit of bench that Kristof had vacated and finally relinquished his knapsack onto the space beside him. "I'll have a pint of something strong," he said. "I, uh, walked back from the wood."
"Why did you do that?" asked Tessa. Ben's odd behaviour also grabbed the attention of the other two occupants of the table, Andrea and Sam, who'd been absorbed by something Andrea had been showing Sam on her laptop. "It's three miles back from Shanty Wood, and there are no pavements along those country lanes. It's a wonder you weren't mowed down and killed."
Ben clenched his teeth, grasping for an answer under the pressure of all four of his colleagues' scrutiny. "I ran out of petrol and I'm not up-to-date with my breakdown insurance payments." Lying wasn't a great idea, but this seemed to satisfy Tessa enough to abate her interrogation. She rolled her eyes and Andrea and Sam went back to looking at whatever fascinated them, which turned out to be work related.
The department had received bad news that day: they'd all been labouring on plans to build new footpaths and a family nature centre at a nearby beauty spot named Warrencroft Forest. While Ben had been on his mission to Shanty Wood, it'd all fallen through.
"I can't believe it," said Andrea. "Some nature nut finds a rare orchid in the dirt, the whole place is declared a site of special scientific interest, and suddenly we're not even allowed to redo the carpark. No more regeneration project for Warrencroft. That's six months of planning down the drain."
Andrea started showing more pictures of the "bloody daisies" responsible, which drew the topic from Ben's late arrival. He should've been as annoyed as Andrea—he'd worked hard on the project too, including spending many late nights at the office—but thoughts of Shanty Wood, not Warrencroft, consumed him. When Kristof returned with Ben's pint, Ben downed it too quickly. He drank his second beer in a steadier fashion, although still failed to add anything to the conversation save grunting sympathetically.
Now he'd considered matters, the timings of his journey back from the forest were astounding—and impossible. The last time he'd checked the hour, before he'd even reached the tower, it'd been a quarter past four. Then he'd carried out his survey and cordoned the dangerous areas off, all while being bugged and slowed down by Lyle. That must've taken at least an hour.
According to his watch, it was only twenty-five minutes past five now. The pub clock and Andrea's laptop confirmed this. Lyle would've had no time to drug Ben or anything sinister, let alone to transport him from the woods to the pub. The walk back to the carpark alone would take up to half an hour, the drive another ten to fifteen minutes. Nothing added up. And, hell, hadn't he injured himself so badly he'd been unable to walk?
"Will you excuse me?" said Ben, cutting through the others' conversation. He dashed for the Gents loo at a breakneck pace and locked himself in a cubicle. He fumbled open his button flies and yanked down his trousers.
There was a slight bloodstain on the inside of the crumpled fabric that had touched his knees, but no sign of any cut or even of bruising. He didn't need to pull up the bottom of his trousers to confirm that his left ankle had been fixed. He stood beside the toilet bowl with his weight distributed evenly between both feet and experienced no pain, not even the slight twinging he'd felt when he'd found himself outside the pub.
He threw the toilet seat down with a clatter and sat heavily on it, his head in his hands. Peeping between his fingers, he fixed on his boots, the laces of which were tied in neat bows, matching and even on both sides. A cold knot tightened in his gut. They were the kind of pretty bows his mum used to tie on his older sister's pigtails, years ago. Way too perfect. Nothing like the careless way Ben fastened his boots.
Hands shaking, he tugged one of the trailing bootlace ends. It didn't come undone instantly; the bow proved a complicated one that Ben hadn't a notion how to tie.
He jumped off the toilet, threw up the lid, and was violently sick.
*~*~*
When he returned to his friends about ten minutes later, all four of them looked at him with concern.
"I was about to come find you," said Kristof. "Are you okay?"
"I'm not feeling so great," admitted Ben, slumping back down next to Kristof. "I'll stay off the beer, maybe."
Tessa fetched him some ice water, which he sipped. He placed down the empty glass, and the words he'd grasped for all evening finally came to him.
"Guys," he said quietly. "Something happened to me this afternoon. Something weird. Has, er, anybody heard any stories about magic in Shanty Wood?"
Tessa's chuckle betrayed a patronizing air. "If you think the common loss of couples' clothing in the area is magic, then yes, there's plenty of it. What do you mean by weird, Ben?"
Ben found he didn't want to share anything about Lyle, particularly not with Tessa. Glancing sidelong at Kristof, who he hoped to be more open-minded, Ben said, "Oh, stupid stuff. My shoelaces came undone then got done up again without me tying them. Time went weirdly slowly and…" He still couldn't bring himself to come clean about his sudden arrival at the pub. Nobody would believe him, so he resorted to another lie. "I, uh, swear I had enough petrol when I set out on that trip, but I ran out."
"Well, I'm sure it was pixies then, dear," said Tessa sarcastically.
Kristof, in contrast, put down his drink and leaned toward Ben with interest. "I don't know anything about Shanty Wood specifically, but there are plenty of old stories about fairies, goblins and the like getting up to mischief in this part of the world. You know—the usual stuff about little folk with big flappy tongues and toadstools on their heads. Undoing shoelaces is a traditional pastime, I believe. I don't know about doing them up again, though."
"Are you kidding?" said Andrea, glancing incredulously at Sam, who just looked bored.
"I bet those pixies love to drink petrol as much as I adore my chardonnay on Friday," said Tessa, clearly still proud of her previous jibe. She put down her empty glass and reached for her handbag. "As much as I'd love to talk about the Tiddy people all night and grow a toadstool for a bonnet, I really should be getting going. My brood of elves will be getting hungry."
Ben felt grateful when Tessa, and then Andrea and Sam, said their goodbyes. Kristof, who was currently in between girlfriends and in no more rush to get home than Ben was to return to his parents' attic, fetched west-country cider for himself and orange juice for Ben. He settled on the opposite side of the booth, savouring his drink.
"Honestly," said Ben. "Weird shit happened this afternoon. I can't really explain it all. You see, I met this guy—"
"Oh yeah!" Kristof snorted, amused. "No wonder you didn't want to talk about this in front of the boss. Been having too much fun in your working hours, eh?"
"Nothing like that," said Ben. "He was just… a guy, and anyway, that was nothing to do with it. I can't account for a couple of things that happened, and I'd kind of like to go back there. It's not just the, um, weird shit. I'm not really satisfied I made the area safe, you see? While it was quiet this afternoon, there will be families with kids around there this weekend. Plus, I need to pick up my car, and I really don't fancy that walk up the lane again. Are you, er, busy tomorrow?"
"Nope," replied Kristof, and he smoothed his lips together. "But if you want me to go help you finish your work on a Saturday morning, you're going to have to buy me fish and chips on the way home from here."
"Deal," said Ben. They tapped glasses, juice clinking against cider, sealing it. As Ben drained the rest of his glass, he basked in a glow of happy warmth that shouldn't have been there after the trauma of the day. With Kristof at his side, he felt brave enough to go back to Shanty Wood and find out what had been real and what hadn't been. Because he couldn't trust his own senses right now.
And he needed to find Lyle. He had to know what'd happened earlier and… Well, it was no good denying it. He wanted to see Lyle again.