The Magic Cottage

by James Herbert

  Next attempt I butted the door with my shoulder and, wood scraping against wood, it opened; my grip on the handle preventing it from flying wide. I gently shoved the door the rest of the way.

  At first glance the low-ceilinged room appeared empty. At second glance there was no change. But I moaned aloud when I saw the condition my two acoustic guitars were in. I ran into the room and dropped to my knees before them, my moan turning into a wail of anguish.

  The neck of the Martin, the instrument on its stand and set close to a shaded wall, bent toward me as if bowing at my entrance. The Spanish concert lay nearby on the floor, obviously having toppled at a time when the crash couldn't have been heard; its neck curved upward like a thin man trying to rise. First and second strings had snapped on both, the rest stretched taut from head to bridge, pulling in the neck, the incredible tension in them almost palpable. I didn't understand how it could have happened: neither one had been left in direct sunlight, which might have caused the wood to warp—and that would have slackened the strings, not tightened them—and neither had been tuned to a high pitch—I kept the strings at normal tension, unless I knew I wouldn't be using the guitars for a time, in which case I always loosened them. Nylon strings could shrink if subjected to extremes in temperature and providing they didn't break first; but the steel strings of the Martin? Not likely.

  I shook my head, bewildered and upset, the grief I felt not unlike, I'd imagine, having your pet dog run over.

  A soft breeze blew in from the window I'd left open a few inches days before to freshen the room (maybe a stronger breeze had nudged over the classical) and played across the overtightened strings, the vibrations picked up by the soundboards of each and amplified. The echo was more like a sighing groan than a musical shimmer.

  I banged my thigh with a clenched fist and swore, then swore again. Although the guitars were irrevocably ruined (the necks might be replaced, but that would prove expensive and no guarantee that the tone would be as good), I nevertheless counterturned the nuts on both instruments, loosening the remaining strings. It was with some nervousness that I opened my Fender case and examined the electric guitar lying inside (the feeling of opening a casket to take a peek at the corpse therein was strong). Thankfully, my jobbing machine was in good order.

  After that, I could only squat on the floor and stare at my invalided—no, mortally diseased—instruments, while Rumbo had a fine time skipping around the room, oblivious to my misery. I let him romp, glad at least one of us wasn't concerned about anything.

  I sat there gloomily for some time and wasn't exactly sure what had finally roused me—it might have been the squirrel's shrieking chatter, or the sensing of movement over my head. It had been a morning of distant noises, so I was neither disturbed nor surprised to hear further sounds. And of course, on this occasion the source was fairly obvious; the bats were fidgety.

  But it wasn't curiosity about them that caused me to drag a chair over to the center of the room so that I could reach the hatch. I'd dumped Midge's painting of Gramarye up there on the same day we'd discovered the grotesque change—just lifted the hatch and tossed it in, out of sight, out of mind. Burning the picture would have been too much like a ritual. Still mystified about that transformation, now I wanted to take another look. Maybe I thought it might have returned to normal, optimistic fool that I am; anything seemed possible in that place. Whatever, I wanted to study the painting in more detail than last time.

  I balanced on the chair, one hand flat against the hatch cover, the other holding the flashlight I now kept in the attic room specifically for loft visits (usually made by Midge to check on our protected species up there). Straightening my knees, I heaved at the cover, nervous of our night friends but believing, as I'd been informed so often, that they really were harmless.

  The hatch opened with an eerie "Old Dark House" creak, causing Rumbo to shriek and disappear down the stairs. I promised myself I'd oil those hinges at the earliest opportunity. Flashlight on, I used the back of the chair for wobbly support and hauled myself up with my usual lack of dignity. Sitting on the edge, I cursed myself for having slung the painting with such force: I could just make out the rectangular shape before beaming the light on it, and realized I'd have to crawl across joists to reach it.

  Before doing so, I swung the light around the loft and shuddered at the black hanging shapes, certain that they'd become denser than last time I'd looked. They filled every inch of space on the beams and rafters. Just like that first time.

  But at least they were still and quiet, as though my intrusion had brought their previous activity to a halt. I wondered how they regarded my presence. With fear? Hostility? Or did they sense by now that Midge and I meant them no harm?

  A single tiny squeak drew my attention to a crossbeam to the left of where I was sitting. I spotlighted a particularly thick cluster of bats; one, near the center, was making small juddering movements, its head arched upwards toward its stomach. Jagged teeth were picked out by the light as the bat opened its ugly little mouth and emitted another barely audible squeak.

  A few more squeaks answered from the darker regions of the loft, all single and somehow pathetic.

  Drawing my legs up, I started making my way toward the painting, not wanting to stay in that inky cavern for a moment longer than necessary. The joists were hard against my knees as I crawled, and the smell of bats' excrement was stronger and more unpleasant than the last time I'd been up there; I comforted myself with the thought that the droppings might at least provide a natural form of loft insulation. I tried to keep my free hand out of it as I went, using the flashlight for guidance, but the stuff was everywhere and I was soon wiping my palm against my jeans to get rid of the sludge. I decided walking across the joists, bending low and keeping a steady balance, would be less of an ordeal, so I rose, swaying awkwardly for a couple of seconds with feet spread on separate sections.

  I immediately brushed against one of the creatures.

  That bat squealed and flapped thin wings at me, and I recoiled, wobbling on unsteady legs, hand flailing air. Half bent and still a little rocky, I stabilized and shone the torch at the offended bat, making sure it wasn't readying itself to attack.

  What I saw created a clogging in my chest, a thick ball of softness inside there threatening to erupt up my throat and splatter the loft. I swallowed hard.

  Only inches away from my head, the bat I'd bumped into was jerking in small spasmodic movements, wings flexed inward, membraned tail curling downward. Something flushed and shiny and repugnant was emerging from between its legs.

  I watched mesmerized, repulsed yet horribly fascinated.

  The pink, hunched thing grew in size, frail shape glistening in the light from the torch. The tiny body oozed out, smoothly and wetly, taking form—an unsightly form—discharged from the womb like an oval blob of pink topping squeezed from an icing bag, to plop onto the mother bat's stomach, caught there and suspended by its life cord. The mother immediately wrapped wings and pouched tail around the newborn, its head striving upward and tongue flickering out to cleanse the sticky fresh body.

  The birth might have been wondrous to a nature lover, but to me, in those dark confines, among a mass of suspended gargoyles, it was an abhorrence.

  I tried desperately to shuffle away, careful not to slip between the joists and only succeeded in disturbing those behind me. And as I turned, the light sweeping around the loft, I saw others giving birth, more and more pink blobs surging forth to dangle at their mothers' breasts. Not just one or two more, but dozens. I swear I saw dozens oozing out. Everywhere I swung the flashlight I caught the same nauseating movement, the shiny gooeyness on the minute bodies reflecting the beam. They looked like transparent bags of pus squeezed from open wounds.

  I scrambled toward the square patch of daylight, slipping off the timbers and cracking my knees against them, but not stopping, collecting wood splinters in my hands as I crawled, the flashlight bobbing wildly, agitating the bats so that
they squealed in protest or alarm, probably both.

  One fluttered by my face and I felt dank air waft against my cheek. Something thumped softly against my back, lodging there for a moment before dropping away.

  I almost screamed.

  Then I was at the opening, swinging my legs over, falling through, my hands and elbows saving me from plummeting to the floor. My feet found the chair below and I snatched at the hatch cover, ducking my head as a small body flew out of the darkness to skim against my arm.

  I pulled at the cover and only just withdrew my fingers before it slammed shut.

  I stood on the chair, hands on knees, flashlight rolling in an arc on the floor where I'd dropped it, and gasped in a huge lungful of air, hoping it would bypass my breakfast which was on the way up.

  PAGE TWENTY-SEVEN

  I DROVE AWAY from Bunbury feeling angry, mixed-up, and I don't know what else. Mystified, I suppose. Oh yeah, and somehow used.

  The late Flora Chaldean's solicitor had agreed to see me with considerable reluctance, and really he didn't have much choice. He had some responsibility regarding the sale of Gramarye and I was insistent on a meeting between us. Could be he felt some pangs of guilt, too.

  I wanted to see him because there were certain matters concerning the old lady and the cottage that needed explaining, and Ogborn was probably the most important link (if not the only link). I wanted information. I wanted to learn more about Flora Chaldean. I wanted to know more about Gramarye. I wanted to find out what the Synergist connection was.

  Well, I'd been given answers, but I can't say they were explanations. Now I was confused in a different way.

  Bickleshift, the estate agent who'd sold us the property, was the first one I'd tried to contact after my sickening (literally) experience with the bats in the loft, but he'd been away on a two-week vacation. You might think, incidentally, that I'd overreacted to that particular incident—after all, they were only small winged mammals with pointed ears having babies—but you had to be there to understand there was more going on, that there was nothing Bambi about those tiny, pulpy offspring, nothing cute about them, that this new-life emergence was more akin to an excretion than a spawning. You see, it was like witnessing the propagation of disharmony, the assertion of malign influences, rather than just a natural delight of nature, because it had become very plain to me by then that there were two sides to Gramarye, two climes, or latitudes, whichever way you'd choose to describe these opposing atmospheres. Different zones, maybe. Positive and Negative. We'd experienced the good, the Positive, when we'd first moved in. Now something was elbowing that aside. In the words of Dylan (Bob), times they were "a changin'." And thinking back, the changes had started at the first appearance of the Synergists.

  And these newborn bats somehow represented the unwholesome metamorphosis Gramarye was going through, a change that couldn't be sudden, that was a creeping thing, slow like a monster crawling from the ocean to slime its way up the shore, learning to breathe, gathering strength to rise. Urged on by those who could have use of its power.

  Absurd? That's only the half of it.

  But I'm getting ahead of myself, and I only mention these things because that's how insights were coming at me, like random droplets of awareness falling from some high place, spattering my head in tiny shocks before soaking through to my brain. Driving back to the cottage that day, I remembered exactly what I'd told Midge a couple of nights before, how I'd suggested she was some kind of catalyst or intermediary. I wondered if the Synergists, and more specifically Mycroft, were a different form of catalyst.

  Anyhow, Bickleshift was away, so I'd rung the solicitor, who'd ummed and aahed and finally agreed to an appointment for late afternoon the following day.

  I hadn't said anything to Midge when she'd returned from the village, hadn't even mentioned how my guitars « had warped, their strings, steel ones and all, shrinking inexplicably. I wanted some facts before presenting my case. She seemed too preoccupied with her own thoughts anyway and today she thought I'd gone into Bunbury to buy sheet music.

  I'd spent an uneasy night and Midge had been restless too, but in her sleep. She'd murmured and tossed, her hands clutching at the bedcovers as though she were afraid of plunging into some dream abyss.

  My half-hearted attempts to break through her continued reserve next morning came to nothing, as much my fault as hers: we were like two punch-drunk protagonists, a little too dazed to see one another clearly, let alone throw a punch. Only when I was driving away from the cottage later that afternoon did my thoughts (and my energy) shape up again. Yeah, it was a relief to be away from the place.

  Cantrip appeared almost deserted on the way back and I checked my watch. Nearly six—I hadn't realized it was so late. The shops were closed and the villagers were probably settling down for evening meals. The sun had decided to head for the hills.

  Through the village, moving into the forest lanes. Soon to be home. And the question begged: What kind of home was it? Mycroft might know better than anyone.

  I kept a steady speed, keen to be with Midge again, hoping this time she'd listen to what I had to say, to what Ogborn had told me. No, I'd make her listen. Whatever attitude she had, she would be forced to listen. Then we'd explore Mycroft's sinister motives together.

  I was strangely nervous of the forest's louring deepness on either side of the road.

  Gramarye came into view, walls still beacon-white in the slowly cooling rays of the sun. The garden was beautifully colored. Only when I drew close did the flowers begin to appear faded, did the building's brickwork reveal its sneaking blemishes. I parked the car in its grassy space and vaulted over the fence.

  I could hear the phone ringing inside the cottage.

  The door was closed, and I was surprised at that; Midge loved the fresh air to waft through the rooms, up the stairways, and she adored the framed view of the garden from the kitchen. The phone was still ringing.

  Quickly unlocking the door, I pushed against it, meeting with some resistance at first. Firmer pressure sent the door inward and I stopped momentarily on the threshold, eyes adjusting to the gloom inside. That gloom seemed unreasonably slow to give way to the brightness surging past my shoulders.

  I called out Midge's name, even though I was fairly sure she wasn't there: front door shut, phone left unanswered, and something else—the almost tangible coldness of her absence. Only the persistent ringing occupied the dank air.

  I went to the stairs, thinking it could be Midge at the other end of the phone, that maybe she was calling to let me know where she was. But where could she have gone without the car?

  I climbed in a rush, certain the ringing would stop before I got there, grabbing the receiver midshrill.

  Static hawked in my ear and I jerked my head away.

  "Hello . . . hello . . . ?"

  I could just hear the faint voice behind the interference: the call sounded as though it came from a remote battlefield with artillery fire all around. I thumped the earpiece hard into the palm of my hand, unclogging carbon granules with the impact, and for a while the distant gunfire quietened.

  "Can you hear me?" asked the familiar voice.

  "Yeah. Is that you, Val?"

  The agent's voice remained a long way off.

  "Mike? Mike, is Midge there with you?"

  "Uh, no. I just got in myself, and she doesn't appear to be around."

  "Perhaps it's as well—it's you I wanted to talk to."

  The chill huff of apprehension tensed my neck.

  "What's the problem?" I asked, my casualness forced.

  "I'm not sure. It's all rather peculiar, actually."

  The ceasefire was suddenly over and she was almost lost in the barrage.

  "Can you hear me, Mike?"

  I could, but only faintly.

  "This line is bloody awful."

  "Hang on, Val," I shouted into the mouthpiece. I banged the receiver again, this time with more force. The crackle remained, but was at lea
st less obtrusive.

  "Okay," I said, "what did you have to tell me?"

  "You might find this very odd."

  Oh really? I smiled thinly.

  "It's to do with Midge's painting," she explained. "The painting of Gramarye."

  "Go on," I told her warily.

  "When I first saw the picture, before . . . before it was ruined . . . something struck me. I felt somehow I'd seen that picture . . ." static overrode her words for a second or two ". . . remember where. I convinced myself that my brain was playing games after the tiring journey down. I'd seen the same view in the flesh, as it were, when I'd arrived at the cottage that evening. I assumed that what I thought had been déjà vu, was in fact the association of reality with the painting's fantasy."

  "Val, this line's gonna break up completely . . ."

  "All right, I'm coming to the point. Mike, find a copy of a book Midge illustrated several years ago . . ."

  I lost her again as the crackling crescendoed. The agitation settled after another hefty thump from me. The palm of my hand was becoming red with the bashing it was taking.

  "Sorry, I missed that. What book are you talking about?"

  "It's called Sorcerer's Kingdom, you know the one?"

  "Yeah, I remember."

  "Well, look at page twenty-seven."

  "What?"

  "Look hard and you'll see what I mean . . ."

  I yanked the phone away as static all but exploded in my ear. It sounded like a direct hit at the other end.

  "Mike . . . can you hear me?"

  "Only just."

  "Can you hear . . ."

  "Look, Val," I shouted, "I'll call you back later!"

  ". . . at the illustration . . ."

  "Okay, okay!" I don't know if she caught my hurried good-bye, but clunking the receiver down was a relief.

  I didn't stay a moment longer in the hallway musing over what Val had asked me to do. I went straight into the round room and headed for the bookcase there. I searched the titles and couldn't find the one I was looking for. But then we had many books and Midge made no special display of those illustrated by her. The spare room, where we kept the major part of our collection, was the next place I tried. I scanned the loaded shelves and soon came across Sorcerer's Kingdom.