The Magic Cottage

by James Herbert

  I followed her gaze and didn't like what I saw. No, I didn't like it at all.

  Mycroft and his motley mob were in the open, their shapes distinct and black against the moon-drenched grass. They stood apart, separate entities, spread like stone menhirs and just as still. Those who had arrived from the forest had switched off their flashlights and although each was isolated, occupying his or her own space, they were a pack, united with their Synergist leader in some mysterious cause that terrified me.

  They watched the cottage as we watched them.

  I stood closer to Midge and she said quietly, "They want us to die."

  That's how she put it. Not "They want to kill us," but "They want us to die," as if they'd have no part in the act, they wouldn't bloody their own hands.

  "That's a bit drastic." If my scorn was reassuring to her it didn't ease my own concern. "They can't go around murdering people just because they like the look of a house. There's laws against that kind of gazumping."

  "They wanted Flora to die and she did."

  So much for humor.

  "She had a heart attack, Okay, so maybe they frightened her enough to cause it, but she was an old lady; how they gonna scare us that much?"

  "Weren't you frightened inside their Temple, inside that terrible room? Weren't you scared in the forest?"

  "Sure. But we're on home base now—let's see what Mycroft can do here."

  You know, sometimes bravado is the worst thing for tempting fate. What could he do? Plenty, and we were about to find out.

  It didn't happen immediately. Seconds ticked by and nobody and nothing seemed to be moving—there wasn't even a drifting cloud in the sky. And it was quiet, so graveyard quiet. Even the floorboards had stopped groaning. The loudest thing was the stench in the air.

  I wanted to step away from the window—we weren't too close, not near enough for the Synergists to see us—but somehow I was rooted to the spot. Fascinated, you see, morbidly curious as to what (or was not) going on outside. Even breathing was a bit of a chore, my skin feeling too tightly wrapped around my chest. We stared out and they stared in.

  Then the nearest figure raised an arm, in his hand a long cane.

  That's when hell let loose.

  The first sound was a muffled roar like an underwater explosion, a sort of deep whoosh which disintegrated into an agitated irregular drumming. For a moment the moon was lost and I assumed a cloud had passed over; but light patterns returned quickly when the blackness above broke up.

  The bats had risen as a whole and were swarming over the cottage, a mass of dark, erratic motion.

  They flew higher, over the moon, as if heading for the stars, the frantic beat of their wings growing distant. We moved closer to the windows, craning our heads upward, because the spectacle was incredible, subjugating even dread.

  We lost sight of them. We lost sound of them. But for no more than a few seconds.

  The drumming returned, a devil's tattoo, increasing in volume, becoming so loud that the building seemed to judder with its approach. We turned from the windows and looked toward the ceiling, neither of us breathing, neither of us capable of speaking.

  The rushing noise centralized, descended to a low rumbling, and our gaze shifted across the room toward the chimney breast.

  They swooped out of the fireplace like Hitchcock's birds, storming into the room, filling the air with their screeches and terrible fluttering wings. Midge's scream (God knows, it could have been mine) was cut short as glass exploded inward from behind.

  We went down in sheer reaction, and it was just as well: bats erupted through with the glass, bursting in to join the others cycloning around the curved walls.

  I felt something land on my back, tiny claws digging in for purchase. As I reached to dislodge the bat, another settled against my neck and stung me with its teeth.

  I rolled, grabbing the one at my neck and squashing the other. The feel of small bones crunching beneath me was repugnant, but holding on to the wriggling thing that was opening an account at the blood bank of my throat was even worse. Above me was a turmoil of flapping wings, its draft ruffling my hair; movement in the darkened room was so fast that everything had become a crazy blur. Through it all I could hear Midge screaming.

  Two more bats landed on my chest and I beat at them furiously with one hand while the other clenched to crush the bat still nibbling at my neck. Because it was close to my ears I heard the squeals as my grip tightened. I tore the bloodsucker away without experiencing any pain as my own flesh broke, then tossed the feebly struggling body into the mass of others. With both hands I wrenched off the two bats at my chest, their claws and teeth making a mess of my shirt. Even as I threw these into the air, still more landed on my arms and legs.

  In the glow from the hallway I caught sight of Midge's writhing body, although so covered in the creatures was she that she resembled a multiwinged horror rising like some hideous beast from the pages of one of those splatter comicbooks. She was shrieking and beating at herself in terror, and I crawled toward her, ignoring the bats clinging to my own body.

  She fell to her knees again and I beat at those hugging monsters in blind fury, snapping wings and breaking bones with a wildness even these tenacious bastards couldn't withstand.

  They fell away. I ripped out two that had become entangled in her hair. I beat them from her shoulders, pulled them from her back. We had to get away from there, but to where? All the rooms had windows. And all the while I struggled, more bats were settling on me, while others were returning to her. I swiped them from the air, but for every one stunned, three more took its space. My own frustrated exertions were wearying me, and the bats' combined weight, insubstantial though it may have been, was gradually bringing me down. Midge and I sank together, bodies enveloped by the black-winged vermin.

  We lay close on the floor and the pain wasn't that bad— nips and scratches were all we felt. It was sheer terror that kept us there.

  I slumped over Midge in an effort to shield her, although knowing it was no use, the fuckers were going to get us. Just like they got the rabbits. Just like they got Rumbo.

  I closed my eyes and waited.

  Until the bats were suddenly gone.

  THE POWER

  THE AIR WAS empty of them. Their weight had been lifted from our bodies.

  We listened to the retreating sound of their wings and we stayed there, faces buried into the bumpy carpet, waiting for the mass flip-flap to become distant, waiting for it to disappear completely.

  Only when that happened did I raise my head to make sure we were really alone. A weak fluttering nearby caused me to search alarmedly for the source: one of the bats, a wing broken and useless, was rotating on the floor, pushed round and round by the tip of its good wing. Another dark shape across the room flinched feebly. Others, those I'd managed to kill, lay in silent mounds. The smell of them all, those dead, those flown, lingered in the room, combining with the musty dampness and rot; even the breeze cooling in from the broken windows couldn't dispel the corruption.

  "Midge." I eased my weight from her, but she remained inert, face downward. "It's over, Midge, they've gone."

  Her back shuddered and I realized she was weeping. I knelt back on my haunches and, with bloodied hands, I drew her up against my chest. By now we were both beyond questions and I could only hold and gently rock her in the way you'd calm a baby.

  Our clothes were torn, shredded in places; yet although we were patchy with blood neither of us was seriously hurt. Even the wound in my neck only bled a little. As I stroked her hair, Midge's tears seeped into the material of my ragged shirt.

  A soft click struck me motionless once more.

  The noise had come from the hallway where the light still shone brightly. The click was from the door. The outside door. Impossibly, the key on this side was turning in the lock.

  Midge, alerted by my sudden stillness, raised her head. She, too, watched the key.

  Which turned completely round, cl
icking finally into its new position.

  The bolt at the foot of the door began to slide, slowly, evenly, drawn back by an invisible hand. The metal bar stopped only when it had reached the end of its run.

  Nothing happened immediately.

  Then, almost leisurely, the door swung open.

  Mycroft stood in the shadows outside.

  I moaned and Midge collapsed into me.

  He stepped into the light and his smile couldn't have been bettered by Boris Karloff himself. It made me cringe just to see it.

  Mycroft strolled into the cottage, thin cane poised before him like a blind man's stick, and although he wore that plain gray suit he was no longer unimpressive. In fact, knowing what I did about him, his very blandness was all the more sinister: it'd assumed a strikingly direful quality. He stopped at the threshold of the round room, countenance in shadow again, light from behind outlining his figure. I heard him draw in a long, deep breath as though he were sucking in all of the room's foul air, filling his chest with the stench.

  He'd used the bats to soften us up and now here he was, in person.

  A big hand for Mycroft the Magician, illusionist extraordinaire. Only the bats had been no illusion—a breeze flowing in from the broken windows and blood staining my ripped clothes told me that. And the door really had unlocked itself—his presence in the room asserted that. I wondered if part of his act was making water boil in car radiators; and if he had such mental powers, then luring us close to his lair that Sunday couldn't have been much of a problem.

  Mycroft reached out and flicked on the light before stepping all the way into the room. His smile was no more pleasant.

  Others filed in behind him, going to his right and left alternately, keeping near to the curved walls to form a human claw that closed around us. I suppose there must have been a dozen or so of them, the others presumably keeping watch outside, sentinels in the moonlight.

  I looked from face to face and they impassively returned my gaze. Even Gillie, who was among them, displayed no feelings, and I expected at least a leer from my old chum Kinsella but he, too, was stony cold.

  "Some—" My voice cracked and I had to start again. "Something we can do for you, Mycroft?"

  I didn't think that was bad under the circumstances, but it didn't seem to cheer up anyone, least of all myself.

  "Not any more," he replied, and the idea that we were no longer of any use to him chilled me further. He pointed his cane at Midge. "She could have helped me, but chose not to. For that, I blame you." The cane singled me out.

  I shook my head in protest. "We still don't know what's going on. We don't want to fight you, Mycroft, we don't mean to get in the way of your Grand Plan, whatever the hell it is. So how about just leaving us out of this?"

  "Unfortunately it's too late for that. You've become an integral part of Gramarye."

  "That's crazy. You want the place? So take it. Make me a reasonable offer. I don't give a shit." And I meant it; I really didn't.

  "No!"

  That was Midge crying out as she sprang away from me.

  "Don't you know why he wants Gramarye, why Flora fought so hard to keep it from him?" she said to me. "He told us back there in the Temple, don't you remember?"

  Again I shook my head, this time blankly.

  "Gramarye, or at least the ground it stands on, is a channel for the power he uses, a supply source of some kind. Don't you see that? Whoever occupies this cottage is the guardian of that power. Like Flora, like the person who lived here before her, and before even her. The line is probably endless."

  A month before—no, a week before—I'd have laughed at such a suggestion; now I wasn't so sure. It was hard to swallow, but then so was everything else that had happened there. And hadn't I had my own "insights" about the place recently?

  Mycroft seemed amused. "Finally you're beginning to understand. You can feel the magic that gives life to this earth, makes air so that we may breathe, creates springs that become rivers so that we may drink, provides food to sustain us. Could you really imagine that ail we live among is one vast accident, that Nature has no design, no driving force? Don't you see there are sources contained within this planet that can never be understood? Sources sought after only by the enlightened through the centuries? Are you foolish enough to think all those legends of old, stories of wizards, of witches, of magic kingdoms, are no more than children's fairy tales?" He laughed aloud, Karloff at his finest, and there was appreciative murmuring from his henchmen around the room.

  "That foolish hag," Mycroft went on, really getting his teeth into the part, "prevented me from striding the chasm, from absorbing its potency into my being, stopped me from using the ethereal vitality that leaks from this point in the earth's crust. But she was old and feeble, and soon cast aside."

  I started to giggle then. I couldn't help it. Maybe it was the onset of hysteria, a combination of exhaustion and fear, but I couldn't help thinking that the situation had got out of hand. God knows why, but I kept wondering what good old down-to-earth Bob's reaction to Mycroft's diatribe would have been. Christ, he'd have been high for a week! The more I thought of that, the more I laughed. I fell back, one arm resting against the sofa for support.

  But Mycroft didn't like me laughing. He didn't like it one bit. He pointed the cane in my direction again and I suddenly realized he was using it as a wand. Mycroft the Wizard and his Magic fucking Wand! Tears rolled from the corners of my eyes I was laughing so much.

  Midge stared at me as though I'd finally flipped (I probably had at that point). I wanted her to see the joke but I was guffawing so much I couldn't speak. Bob's face, listening to the bullshit Mycroft had just come out with. Too much, too much!

  The Synergists gathered around the room were glaring at me. Christ, they'd never see the joke!

  I buried my face into the soft material of the sofa, my shoulders jerking with the effort of laughing, wanting to ask Mycroft where he kept his long pointed hat and black kaftan, but too choked up to manage the words. I felt the sofa begin to undulate beneath me. Still giggling, I raised my hand in surprise. My outstretched arm was waving up and down with the material's motion.

  A pinpoint in the surface frayed, became a hole. Something black wriggled through. Another multilegged creature followed, popping through and scurrying off. Another and another, becoming a stream of black-shelled bugs.

  More holes appeared. More bugs crawled out. More holes. More bugs.

  I leapt away and watched in horror as hundreds more— thousands more—gnawed their way through the material, the sofa soon turning into a seething mass of shiny black fermentation. They broke off in well-ordered lines, hurrying down the side of the sofa to drop onto the floor and advance toward my outstretched leg.

  Then I remembered that ultimately Bob hadn't been so cheerful in this room (his wit had been scared out of him) and my own manic humor drained away. I pulled in my foot as the first bug climbed aboard.

  "Stop it, stop it!'

  Midge was on her feet screaming at Mycroft. He merely smiled back at her.

  "You can't use Gramarye this way! It's meant for good, not for your perversions!" Her eyes were blazing, her face screwed up in anger.

  "The power contained within this place can be controlled in any way its receiver chooses," Mycroft replied. "The old woman could no longer direct its force, she was too weak, made too infirm by her years."

  "You killed her!"

  Now he grinned, apparently keen on the idea. "Yes, yes, I believe I did. I tempted her with the other side, you see, what you and your like might call the dark side of Magic. Her ending was very sudden—" he seemed surprised, then snapped his fingers "—like that One moment alive, the next, dead. She couldn't cope with the revelation, you see, she couldn't accept the blackness inside her own soul. How else could I have revealed such darkness to her if it didn't lurk within herself. Strange how her body corrupted so fast, as if that badness inside swept through her physical being, shriveled her up like
an old prune." He chuckled at that, unconcerned at the disgust on Midge's face.

  The light faded and rose as though somebody had just been electrocuted next door, and Mycroft's poise momentarily wavered. He peered around at the walls, the ceiling, the floor. Then his grin returned.

  "Can you feel the surge of kinetic force?" he asked his followers. "Be receptive, blend your thoughts and absorb its strength. Fill yourself with its vitality!"

  Most of them closed their eyes, faces strained in concentration. I saw Gillie, standing close to the wall, sway and almost fall backward. Another woman on the other side of the room moaned aloud. Kinsella continued to watch Midge and me.

  Strangely, such was the power of suggestion as Mycroft encouraged the Synergists further, that I also felt a tingling starting in my own spread fingers. The sensation emanated from the floor itself, passing up into my arms and across my shoulders and chest. I suddenly remembered the bugs that had been set to crawl up my leg, yet when I checked, they'd gone, disappeared completely. The sofa contained nothing more than a couple of cushions. The bugs had been another of Mycroft's illusory games.

  "I can stop this!" shouted Midge. "That's why I'm here, why I was chosen!"

  "Ah yes, you," said the Magician slyly. He pointed the cane and Midge toppled backward. She didn't go down though. She regained her balance and glowered at Mycroft, shoulders bunched forward and fists clenched.

  "I can!" she yelled, and I loved her for her defiance. I scrambled to my feet.

  She stood with her legs apart, rooting herself to the carpet, and slowly raised her hands to her face, unwinding her fingers and bringing them together almost in a praying gesture. Then she twisted her wrists so that her fingers were leveled at Mycroft, and his expression turned anxious. That, at least, was heartening.

  Midge was shivering and it looked as if every muscle in her body was tensed, every ounce of strength she possessed directed at Mycroft. I wanted to cry out, to goad her on. She could do it, I knew she could do it! But my cry was only a whisper.

  "Zap the fucker, Midge."