Magic Cottage, Das Haus auf dem Land

by James Herbert

  Our nervousness hadn't abated either, and when a huge white-streaked shape blundered across the path we both nearly jumped out of our skins. The badger was equally alarmed and quickly scooted into the bushes on the other side of the track; we watched and heard the animal's progress as he bludgeoned his way through the undergrowth, foliage shaking violently as he went.

  Further along I tripped over a creeper or root that I hadn't noticed Midge hop over, going down heavily and sprawling on the earth. I gasped in air as she knelt beside me, her hand gripping me beneath an arm in an effort to lift. I rose unsteadily and stood there, bent like an old man, one hand on my knee, the other on Midge's shoulder.

  "How much further?" I asked in between labored intakes of breath.

  Her features weren't clear, so shaded had they become, and she sounded almost as breathless as me. "It can't be too far—we've come a long way."

  "Yeah, about a hundred miles. You ok—?"

  The shadow I saw as I straightened was nothing more than a tall bush shaped like a cowled figure, lurking behind a tree. The sighing I heard was nothing more than a newly born breeze passing through the leaves. The thumping in my chest was nothing more than my own heartbeat.

  "Christ, I've got the jitters," I admitted.

  Her voice was soft. "Are we dreaming all this?"

  "My bruised knees say no. My head's not so sure."

  Now arm in arm, squeezed together by the narrow track, we carried on the journey, not caring that movement was awkward in this manner, needing the closeness for mutual encouragement and to keep the wood spooks away. Darkness had settled into the forest like smoke in a lung.

  We hobbled, we held each other steady, we moved as fast as we could, and soon, thank God, we saw gaps in the trees ahead of us, the lighter grays of open space. Relief gave strength to wearying limbs and we broke into a jog once more, hurrying, running, hand in hand, with me shouting my elation and Midge laughing at my shouting.

  We burst from the wood like popped peas.

  Dusk had practically thickened into night, but at least the air was several shades lighter than under the cover of trees. We sprinted toward Gramarye, eager to be behind locked windows and bolted doors, and it was only when we drew closer that we began to realize something was wrong, that what we saw in the dimness wasn't making any sense. We slowed. We walked. We looked at Gramarye in dismay.

  My foot kicked something soft lying in the grass and I stopped when I saw the dead rabbit, small, no more than a baby, a rictal smile of terror fixed to its tiny face. A choker of blood stained its neck. Midge's fingers stiffened in mine and I saw the other slumped form that she'd discovered. This rabbit was larger than the one at our feet, maybe the mother, and its body was raked from head to tail, the fur stiffened with drying blood.

  We didn't speak. We guessed a fox might have killed them, but we didn't put the thought into words. Around us there were other slumped bodies. We walked on, our steps cautious.

  And couldn't comprehend Gramarye's transformation.

  The walls, reduced to gray in the ailing light, showed only in odd patches.

  Black was the dominant color now.

  And still we couldn't understand.

  Until we saw the walls were swollen with life.

  Black, furry life.

  Wings stretching and retracting.

  Bodies, grossly bigger than before, pulsating as the creatures breathed.

  We could only stare numbly at the clinging bats engulfing Gramarye.

  HOME AGAIN

  FOR A WHILE we stood and gawked, our flesh creeping and our senses not quite together. How could there be so many? They couldn't all have been from our loft, many of them had to have come from other places. Maybe it was a bat convention. And how could they have grown to monster size? Most serious of all: what was their intent? These were questions we asked ourselves, not each other—we didn't want our voices to disturb their rest period.

  The inclination, you'll understand, was to make for the road, jump in the car, and get away from that bat-coated place as fast as possible. The only problem was that the car keys were inside the cottage where I'd left them earlier, and when I mentioned that to Midge (in a very low voice) her body kind of sagged.

  "You go sit in the car," I told her in a whisper.

  Even as I spoke, though, two bats detached themselves from the wall and fluttered around to the other side of the building. The moon was up, unclouded but showing only a profile, and in that clean, eerie light the size of the bats' wingspans froze me. We found ourselves crouching, ready to head back into the forest.

  "Get going, Midge," I urged again.

  "No, Mike," she whispered. "I'm staying with you; we'll get the keys together."

  "That's stupid."

  "I won't let you go in alone!"

  Her voice was so forceful, although hushed, that my shoulders jerked upward and my neck sank in.

  I drew in a breath and squeezed her hand. "Okay, okay. But if they get busy I want you to head straight for the car without waiting for me."

  "What will you do?"

  "I'll be ahead of you."

  She returned the squeeze, but couldn't manage a smile.

  "Let's skirt around and try the kitchen door," I suggested. "Maybe there won't be so many down there."

  Her breathing was fast and shallow as she summoned the nerve to follow me and it wasn't just the moonlight that gave her face such an unnatural pallor. My own skin tones probably matched hers pretty well at that moment.

  We slunk away slowly, bodies bent, not wanting to draw the slightest attention to ourselves. It seemed to me that a whole section of wall rippled, the movement black, a wave in an oil slick. We kept going, retreating, then moving toward the embankment. Everything was still and somehow unearthly around us, the dark mass of brooding forest behind, while in front was the bizarre spectacle of the smothered cottage, wearing bats like a tattered hood. Half-moonlight revealed more bodies prone in the grass, the sickening aftermath of the rabbits' before-bed gambol.

  We reached the short but steep slope and I quietly slid down, reaching back to help Midge once I was on the flat again. She fell into my arms and stayed there for a few moments, reluctant to leave them. The gray strip that was the garden path leading to the gate beckoned invitingly, the road beyond representing manmade normalcy, a concrete reality, and the temptation to hoof it was strong; but the village was a long way off and the road ran through miles of woodland. Better to take the car.

  I'd been right about the bats on this side: they clung mostly to the upper reaches, a dark thatch that twitched and bristled with life. Cautiously, eyes ever upward, I led Midge toward the kitchen door.

  A bat fluttered away from the wall above us. Then another followed. Another.

  The urge to rush for the door was almost overwhelming, but the thought of alarming them all into flight held us in check.

  Take it easy, I kept telling myself. They're only flying mammals, not a vampire among them.

  Tell that to the bunnies, came my own wicked reply.

  The door was on the latch and my hand was trembling when I stretched to press the catch. I thumbed it down as smoothly as I could, but the click still made me grit my teeth; I expected fangs to puncture my neck at any second.

  I pushed the door and the smell of must and rot wafted out as a forewarning that things weren't quite so well inside Gramarye, either; as I widened the gap, the waiting blackness was as welcoming as the stench. If shadows could grin, then they'd have been beaming their darkest right then.

  The interior was menacing, and yet . . . and yet it was somehow alluring. I felt as I had as a kid, standing there at the first door of the funfair ghost house; scared, but I'd paid my money and I was sure as shit going in.

  I almost tripped over something on the doorstep. Committed to stepping in, I didn't stop to investigate. I went through, pulling Midge with me, and immediately turned to scrabble for the light switch. I brushed it down and, momentarily blinded, r
eached back to slam the door shut. Midge caught my arm before I did so.

  I blinked questioningly at her, anxious to set the barricade between them and us; she was staring at the doorstep.

  Rumbo was lying there, his furry little body discolored with blood, his jaws locked open in shock. His eyes were corpse's slits.

  BREAK IN

  WE LAID HIM on the kitchen table, Midge weeping openly, me choking back tears. I hadn't realized till then how fond of Rumbo I'd become.

  The marks on his back were vicious; deep, bloodied grooves running the length of his back where the bats— more than one had done this to him—had raked him. The wounds around his throat were even deeper, but I wondered if fear alone hadn't been the ultimate assassin. He was bald of fur in parts and one tufty ear had been completely shredded; I think he'd put up one hell of a fight.

  Without hope I checked for the slightest beat of a heart, and there was none. His body had not yet turned cold and I stroked him, talking softly all the time, as if encouraging his animal spirit to get back inside and loosen up those congealing arteries again.

  Rumbo was gone, though, and surprisingly (or maybe not—when it really comes down to it, women are always ! more realistic than men) it was Midge who first accepted the fact. She took my hands in hers.

  "Poor little chump," I said, unable to shift my gaze from the still bundle.

  "What are those creatures outside, Mike? They can't be the same bats that were in the loft. Their size . . . Why did they attack the animals?"

  I shrugged, maybe the only answer to insanity. My eyes had blurred over and I didn't want to speak right away in case my voice broke up. So instead I looked around the kitchen, turning my head away from Midge before blinking. It wasn't grief that I was hiding from her—we'd shared enough of that in our time together and tears had never been an embarrassment: what I didn't want her to see was my fear.

  Gramarye's personality had altered. The disease that had been gnawing at its innards since Flora's death had been halted by our arrival, like a cancer checked by a new drug. Decay had stopped, regeneration had begun. Its magic had been renewed.

  I was aware of that now, even though a side of me said, Listen, you're crazy, you're talking about stone and timber, not a living person, not even a mindless organism. An inanimate, insensible pile of bricks, for Chrissake! But I knew different. Something on the sidelines of all this had my ear, was whispering to me like it had before, instilling the notions, maybe chuckling while it did so. Or maybe this something was in dead earnest, afraid I wouldn't hear. Or understand.

  And in truth, the thoughts were so insubstantial, so tenuous, I didn't know myself whether I heard or I imagined. Who was I to judge my own state of mind?

  But the idea persisted. It wasn't the structure of Gramarye that was alive, but the anima of those who had existed within its fold, absorbed by walls, ceilings, floors, locked in like energy into a battery, so that with time the building took on the semblance of a living thing. Until that life had been corrupted, had been cancered, by other less pure influences. I believed that the degeneration had begun when the Synergists had first visited the cottage.

  With Flora's death, so had the power inside Gramarye withered, started to rot. Only our—or, more accurately, Midge's—presence had held the rot, even initiated a rejuvenation. That's what the silent voice told me, that's what I believed. And in part, I was right.

  I cleared my throat, then said in a rush: "Where the hell did I leave the keys?"

  "Keys" came out somewhat strangulated and Midge clasped my hands more tightly.

  "Perhaps upstairs. God, it's so cold in here."

  As if for effect, she gave a small shiver. Yet I was clammy hot. The thought occurred that we were experiencing Gramarye's fever.

  A rending crash from next door brought Midge into my arms and I barely heard her cry above the follow-up tumble of masonry. A dust cloud drifted through into our part of the kitchen. We guessed what had happened but, in the way you sniff milk you know has gone off, we edged toward the opening to see for ourselves. We loitered in the doorway, swiping away unsettled dust before us.

  The lintel had finally thrown in its hand and crashed down onto the range, a serious section of brickwork falling after the halved stone. The reverberations hung in the air with the powdery dirt, and the sooty wound in the chimney breast, gaping and jagged, gave a glimpse of Gramarye's dark core, a rent in stone flesh that revealed its black inner substance.

  "No, it isn't true, it isn't like that!" wailed Midge, and I understood the image had been the same for her. The misery and rejection on her face was the same as if she'd discovered her favorite uncle was a child molester.

  I pulled her away, anxious to be out of there, as far away from the cottage as possible and in the fastest time. We'd fled the Synergist Temple only to find there was no refuge for us here; the cottage had become allied to the gray house, a collaborator in whatever ill cause was possessing that maleficent place. Confused or crazed, I didn't know which I was at that point; all I was sure of was that it was the open road for me.

  We could hear the boards creaking beneath the carpet as we hurried upstairs, one cracking clear and loud so that I thought my foot would sink right through; the carpet itself prevented that and we kept going, with Midge careful to avoid the particular step. I flicked on switches as we went and the lights seemed to stutter before gaining their full glow. Into the round room, where the malodor was almost gangrenous and the walls were dribbling wet. I didn't even bother to stop and think about it.

  The car keys were lying on the coffee table and I made a grab for them. "Get anything you need from the bedroom, Midge, and be quick about it. I don't want to stay a minute longer than necessary."

  She didn't reply, just took to her heels and disappeared into the bedroom, leaving me a moment to look around. I wasn't too happy about the black mold that had formed between the top of the walls and the ceiling, the fungus spreading downward in thick spotty patches as if Midge had splattered the walls with her thickest paint brush. Even more peculiar was the bumpiness of the carpet: the floorboards underneath had warped, the ends risen in places, giving the effect of moles trying to break through but thwarted by the thick surface layer.

  "Mike!'

  It took me no time at all to reach the bedroom.

  "Oh no—"

  Where there had once been a hairline split in the wall, there was now a one-inch furrow running from floor to ceiling. I imagined I could see the night peering through from the other side.

  "Forget about packing," I told Midge. "We're getting out right now before this place falls apart."

  She was hesitant. There was a turmoil going on inside her that was almost visible. I could appreciate her dismay, her bewilderment; my only wonder was that she wasn't totally traumatized. Midge's dream had become a nightmare, everything that had happened here illogical and disconcerting (to say the least). An idyll had been corrupted by forces that neither of us understood—and frankly, as far as I was concerned, didn't want to understand. It was worse for her, because she was aware that she had a role in this disorder of things, but she had no idea what that role was. I'd had a glimmer, and I'd tried to convey that to her, but when it came down to it, what did I know about anything? The only thing that was obvious was that Gramarye was no longer a safe place to hang around in.

  I was about to go to Midge and drag her out of the bedroom—drag her from her own introspection—when her eyes widened and she pointed toward the window.

  Headlight beams were gliding to a stop on the other side of the garden fence. More headlights from behind lit up the yellow Citroen.

  "Bastards," I muttered.

  Grabbing Midge by the wrist, I stomped out into the hallway.

  "What are you going to do?" She clung to me as I snatched up the telephone receiver, and her trembling ran through me as though I were touching a tuning fork.

  "It's about time the police got involved in all this. I don't know what the fuck
I'm gonna tell 'em, but I'll think of something. Holding you against your will might do for a starter."

  "But that's not true."

  "So I'll lie a little. We just need the police here."

  Static leapt out of the earpiece like a gremlin up to mischief.

  I cursed and held the receiver away as I dialed. More terrible static, and then a whining screech, the kind of sound we might all hear one day when the Bomb has dropped and line meltdown has started as we ring to check on loved ones.

  "Shit!" I said again (times of pressure, my language gets pretty poor). I jiggled the cradle contacts until the less strident interference returned, then redialed. Same sound, ear-piercing sharp.

  We both winced and I slammed down the receiver. "Out through this way," I shouted, already reaching for the door. "We'll hide in the forest—they'll never find us there."

  "No, Mike. We're safer inside Gramarye."

  I stared at her incredulously. "Are you kidding? Can't you see what's happening to this place? This is condemned property we're standing in."

  "I don't think we'll be harmed here."

  "Flora Chaldean probably felt the same. Look, I don't know what Mycroft and his loonies have in mind, but I think club membership is now out as far as we're concerned. And Mycroft let us come here because that's where he wants us. God knows why, but I'm sure he's got his reasons. So let's get, come on!"

  I opened the door, and dislodged bats beat against my head and raised arms before skittering off into the gloom. In the chill of the moment I'd forgotten about them. I waited for a mass launch. None came, but my relief was only momentary.

  Lights were emerging from the woods.

  I was back inside and locking the door in a flash. "They followed us through the forest too."

  Midge was wearing a stupefied expression.

  "He split his forces, sent some by road, the others through the forest after us. Seems I was right—he wants us trapped inside the cottage."