Page 28 of The Nook for Brooks (Mulligan’s Mill #6)

brOOKS

I promised myself I wasn’t going far. Just a short stroll into the wilderness. A modest jaunt. A dignified ramble. A man needn’t climb Everest to prove his fortitude—a tidy loop around the outskirts of town would suffice.

“Step outside, prove your courage, return in time for tea.” That’s what I told myself. That was the plan.

The trail began reasonably enough. A neat dirt path, shaded by trees that whispered pleasantly in the breeze.

I kept my chin up and my pace dignified. My pocket bulged with bow ties—my “emergency calming devices”—which I occasionally used for reassurance. I was prepared. Sensible. Heroic.

By the third minute, I was sweating.

“This is fine,” I muttered. “This is perfectly fine. Great explorers perspired too.” I tugged at my rolled sleeves, which immediately unfurled, flapping like limp flags of surrender.

At the first fork, the left-hand trail looked dark and ominous, while the right-hand path looked much brighter and easier to manage.

“Easy choice,” I said to myself.

Five minutes later, the right-hand “path” had thinned to something only chipmunks would consider navigable.

I turned back—except the path behind me had disappeared. Trees loomed on all sides, intimidating and treacherous.

“Excellent. I’ve been in the wilderness for ten minutes and I’ve already wandered into The Lord of the Flies . If I hear someone blowing a conch shell, I’m in very real trouble.”

I pressed on, swatting mosquitoes that seemed to multiply with every kill.

Then came the itch. A creeping, prickling burn up my wrist. I looked down to find I’d brushed against a glossy patch of leaves climbing a tree trunk.

“Leaves of three, let it be!” My eyes widened. “Oh god. Poison ivy.”

Before my very eyes, red blotches bloomed up my arm. “Oh great. My first outing alone and I’ve contracted nature’s equivalent of herpes. Why the hell did I think this was a good idea?”

I decided the adventure was over.

I needed to get home and pour a bath filled with calamine lotion… now.

Unfortunately, with every step I took, the forest grew thicker, the undergrowth higher, and every tree trunk looked like the twin brother of the last.

I chose a landmark—a birch with a knobbly bulge on its side that resembled Mrs. Hutchins’s scowl when she visited the Nook to tell me how much she loathed my last recommendation—and kept walking. I knew if I saw it again, I was going around in circles.

I didn’t just see it again.

I saw it again… five more times .

“Oh, so now I’ve turned the forest into a roundabout and Mrs. Hutchins is the traffic island. Marvellous.”

My skin burned.

I slapped my own face trying to swat a mosquito the size of a rat.

I tried veering left. Then right. Then I attempted a straight line before a thicket of brambles snared my trousers, clawed at my ankles, and left me hopping on one leg.

By the time I wrestled free, I looked like I’d been mugged by shrubbery.

The light was starting to fade, shadows stretching longer between the trees. The cheerful green of the leaves deepened to a moody gloom, and suddenly every squirrel rustle sounded like the footsteps of an axe murderer.

“Stay calm,” I whispered. “Just walk confidently. Nature can smell fear.”

I walked confidently—straight into a spider’s lair with its network of webs strung between two branches at precisely face level.

I squealed so loud that I was the one who startled the forest creatures this time.

Web clung to my nose, my lips, my eyelashes. I flailed like a madman, shrieking, “Get it off! Get it off!” until I toppled backwards over a log.

By the time I managed to pull myself to my feet—plucking web off my face and flicking imaginary arachnids out of my hair—the forest had gone completely silent.

Not a bird call.

Not a cricket.

Even the breeze had stopped.

“Oh, splendid,” I said into the eerie hush. “The quiet before my inevitable death.”

Could the woods sense something I couldn’t?

I didn’t want to hang around and find out.

I pressed on with determination… well, a determined limp, at least… with short, panicked pauses to scratch and check my hair for spiders.

That was when the ground tilted beneath me…

I lost my balance…

And tumbled head over turkey down a muddy slope, hitting every fallen branch and slimy rock on the way down, until I landed in a heap at the bottom.

My shoes squelched in mud that sucked at them like a hungry toddler with pudding.

My corduroys turned to sponge, soaking up the quagmire.

“Quicksand? Are you kidding? I thought that only existed in episodes of Tarzan from the seventies.”

I heaved one foot free with a disgusting schlurp , only to topple sideways into a hollow log.

The log buzzed.

I froze.

“No,” I whispered.

The buzzing grew louder.

“Oh no. ”

Then the swarm erupted.

Wasps—furious, vengeful, apocalyptic wasps—poured from the log like tiny black demons, whirring around my head in a hurricane of hatred.

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhh!”

I flailed wildly, slapping at my hair, my ears, my neck. One stung me on the arm. Another on the back of my neck. I hit a high note that would rival an Italian opera soprano. “Leave me alone! I’m not even sweet! I’m cynical and bitter at best!”

With a glug and a slurp and a stomach-turning blurp , I pulled myself free of the bog and away from the log. I bolted through the undergrowth, branches whipping my face, shoes slipping in mud.

Still the buzzing chased me, until a sting landed squarely on my backside.

I yelped in pain. “Oh, for the love of god, spare me some dignity!”

Eventually the swarm thinned. I stumbled into a small clearing, panting, hair plastered to my forehead, arms blotched with poison ivy and my skin welted with stings.

The forest around me was alive with rustles and chirps and distant creaking noises.

A mosquito landed on the end of my nose.

I swatted it and missed, slamming myself in the face.

And just like that, my bravado cracked. I wasn’t a diamond forged under pressure. I was a book that had been shoved in the wrong category.

Worse still…

I had no idea how to get home.