Magic Cottage, Das Haus auf dem Land

by James Herbert

  Ducking and brushing the debris from my hair, I ran from her. She followed with more woodland dust in both hands, but sprawled over a hidden branch, hitting the deck in a shower of crumbly leaves.

  She swore and I waggled a finger at her. "Now, now, what would all the little kiddie fans think if they heard that kind of talk? Did Enid Blyton ever use language like that? Did Christopher Robin ever speak that way to Winie-the-Pooh?"

  I ducked again as the branch she'd tripped on came sailing by my head.

  "Tut-tut," I said. "Does your publisher know about this vicious streak?"

  "I'll get you, Stringer. You just wait, I'll get you." She then went on to describe what she intended to do to certain delicate parts of my anatomy once she laid hands on them.

  I kept out of reach. "I can't believe I'm hearing this. Did Gretel ever do such things to Hansel? Was Jill ever like this to Jack? Did the princess ever threaten the handsome newt with such sadism?"

  "Frog."

  "What?"

  "It was a frog, not a newt."

  "Whatever turns you on, babe."

  She was on her feet and coming at me, so I ran, chuckling at the outraged shrieks from behind. The odd missile bounced off my back as we raced through the trees, but I easily outdistanced her.

  We'd come quite a ways through the forest already, following what seemed to be some kind of vague path with several even more vague tributaries branching off, and before I knew it, like stepping across the threshold between night and day, I was out in the open.

  Sunlight dazzled me for a moment, but after a few rapid blinks and raising a hand to shield my eyes I found myself looking across a broad sloping meadow. At the bottom, and backdropped by continuing woodland, stood a large gray house—well, a mansion really.

  The buildings had two principle storys with dormer windows set in a hipped roof above, chimney stacks ranged across the top like upended boxes. There must have been eight or nine long windows extending along the ground floor and as many smaller windows above those. I could make out a wide flight of steps leading up to a fairly big entrance; there was no porch, but square columns and a cornice projected from the walls to frame the door. The meadow ran directly down to a rectangular turning area, with no lawns to separate them, and the driveway angled around the quoined corner of the house, presumably to a public road through the forest.

  The place was certainly isolated and the grayness of the walls gave it a dark broodiness, despite the sunlight. Although the setting was beautiful, I couldn't help but feel there was something very uninviting about the house.

  Soft footsteps creeping up from behind and then pincer arms moving around my waist, clawed hands reaching for those delicate parts which I'd run so hard to protect. I grabbed Midge's wrists before she could inflict any damage and she let out a yell of frustration. Turning and crushing her to me so that she was powerless, I bit into her small nose.

  She jerked her head away, laughing and breathless at the same time, her wriggling to break free eventually subsiding when she realized the struggle was useless.

  "Bully," she said sulkily, but loving every minute of it.

  "Gonna behave?"

  "Hummph."

  "What was that? I didn't quite hear."

  "Rat."

  "Agreed. But you haven't answered my question."

  I felt her head nodding against my chest. "Does that mean yes?"

  A muffled grumble and more movement.

  "Okay." I let go, still wary.

  She stepped away and kicked my shin.

  "You bloody cow!" I yelped, hopping and rubbing my injured leg.

  "My dad taught me how to deal with creeps like you before I was out of pigtails," she taunted, dancing out of reach.

  I sprawled, aiming for her ankles, just managing to grasp one and bringing her down on top of me. We rolled a short way down the sloping meadow, Midge giggling and cursing, beating at me with clenched fists, while I tried to hold on to her, enjoying the feel of our bodies tight against each other's.

  We came to a panting stop, me on my back, Midge resting half over me. Her eyes were wide when she saw the house.

  "What a strange place," she said, the words uneven because of her breathlessness.

  She sat up and I rested on one elbow to stare with her across the meadow. "Looks grim, doesn't it," I remarked.

  A breeze swept up the gradual incline, ruffling the grass; it touched us briefly and sped by. I shivered, although I was warm.

  "I wonder who lives there," said Midge.

  "Someone with more money than we'll ever see, and someone who obviously likes privacy. Even the entrance is facing away from the road."

  "It looks . . . it looks empty"

  "Maybe the owners are away, or maybe it's one of those old family estates that nobody can afford to run any more. The past few decades have been tough on quite a few lords of the manor, I hear."

  "No, I didn't mean that kind of empty." She frowned, trying to put the feeling into words. "It looks bleak," she said finally. "Such a beautiful location, and yet the house seems . . . miserable." She looked down at me. "It feels unfriendly."

  "Oh, I wouldn't go that far. Though, of course, there is the possibility that we're trespassing on private land. Somebody around here might get hostile if they see us." She was immediately scrambling to her feet. "Take it easy," I said, remaining where I was. "I was only kidding. We haven't seen any private-property signs."

  She turned her head as if looking for approaching gamekeepers with loaded shotguns. "I don't like it here. I feel as though we're being watched."

  I rose, brushing bits of grass off my jeans. "You're incredible. Nothing could be more peaceful and you've turned to jelly."

  "I just feel uncomfortable. Let's go, can we, Mike?" Now I regarded her with some concern; there was an anxiety in her tone that the situation hardly called for. "Okay, Midge," I said, taking her hand, "we're on our way."

  We walked back to the trees and I took one last peek at the gray house before entering the shadowy preserve. From that distance, Bleak House looked innocent enough.

  We found the injured thrush some time later when we were almost through the woods, returning along the same path as our outward journey (at least Midge assured me it was the same path). She led the way unerringly while I followed behind, fingers tucked into the pockets of my jeans, occasionally whistling the dwarfs' Hi-ho song.

  Midge gave me a start when she suddenly stopped dead and pushed out an arm against my chest. I froze, lips still shaped in a whistle.

  "What's wrong?" I whispered, but she only waved her hand at me, then crouched low on the path. I heard a frantic scuffling movement and I dropped down myself.

  Midge cleared foliage beside the path and a tiny, sharp cheep warned her off. The bird peered up at us with black startled eyes and twisted its head around in frightened jerks.

  "Oh, poor little guy," Midge cried sympathetically. "Look, Mike, he's got a broken wing."

  I shuffled closer on my haunches and the distressed bird flapped at the earth with its good wing, desperate to get away. Midge put out a gentle hand and its struggles immediately calmed, although it still eyed me with some alarm. She cooed softly and to my amazement the bird let her finger stroke its spotted chest.

  "He's a mistle thrush," Midge quietly told me. "He must have flown into a tree or become tangled in bushes. It doesn't look like he's been attacked by any other animal— there's no signs of blood or wounds anywhere."

  I studied the gray-brown bird for a moment, noticing how Midge's stroking was having an almost hypnotic effect on it; the dark eyes were becoming lidded as though the thrush were nodding off to sleep. "What are we going to do with it?" I whispered.

  "We can't leave him here. He'd never last the night with all the predators in the forest."

  "We can't take it home."

  "Why not? We could keep him safe and warm for tonight, then tomorrow I'll take him into Cantrip or Bunbury, wherever there's a vet."

&nb
sp; "Midge, the bird's wing is too badly broken—you can see how badly twisted it is. Even if the shock doesn't kill it, that wing's never gonna mend."

  "You'd be surprised how tough these little guys are; he can be taken care of, you'll see." She cupped her hands around the thrush's sides and slowly lifted, the bird protesting only mildly. Midge cradled it against her chest and I think the thrush appreciated the comfort, because the shutters closed down completely and it seemed to fall asleep. She gazed down at the small feathery body snuggled against her with such tenderness that I felt something inside me melting. Soft as I was on her, there was always that capacity for extra lump-in-the-throat softness. Call me a sentimental fool.

  We both stood and I put one hand over her shoulder as she led the way back along the path, her movement even more graceful so that the injured thrush would be disturbed as little as possible.

  Soon I glimpsed a tiny flash of white ahead, and knew we were approaching the forest edge and Gramarye.

  But I also glimpsed something else. At least, I thought I did, because when I tried to focus it was gone.

  I thought I'd caught sight of a figure standing some distance away among the trees. Midge's attention was still on the bird cushioned in her hands, so I knew she wouldn't have noticed anything. I squinted my eyes again to sharpen my vision, wondering if I'd merely noticed a shadowy bush shifted by a breeze, and scanned that section of woods. Nope, nobody there.

  Yet I found it difficult to shake off the impression of someone standing among the trees. A figure dressed in black, perfectly still and watching. Watching us.

  A VISITOR

  WE RELAXED in the round room that evening, Midge lying on the carpet, her head propped up by cushions, me on the sofa with a guitar—a concert Spanish—tucked into my lap, wine bottle and glass on an occasional table by my side. The hurt thrush was downstairs in the kitchen, resting in a cardboard box lined with soft material, and looking pretty snug if a little mournful. Midge had coaxed a small amount of milk-dipped bread into its beak, and had laid out the broken wing as carefully and as comfortably as she could. Now it was up to the bird itself to pull through.

  The sun was almost lost behind the trees and the room was bathed in that rich warm light as before, but this time more mellow, somehow deeply soothing. I touched the soft strings of the guitar, and the notes resonated against the curved walls, filling the room with lovely sounds. Midge didn't just look impressed as I moved into a piece I'd had difficulty with for some time, Paganini's Grand Sonata in A (oh yeah, I'm not only a rock-'n'-roller)—she looked positively entranced. As I was too, with my own music. No part was hesitated over, nowhere did my fingers stumble. I was overjoyed with my own dexterity, my hands confident and strong, the intricacy and the length of the composition never daunting (it always had been in the past). I made mistakes, of course, but they were lost in the flow of bright music, and when I'd finished, I think even old Segovia himself might have given me the nod. As it was, the wonder on Midge's face was enough.

  She crawled over and rested an arm across my knees. "That was . . ." she gave a quick shake of her head ". . . brilliant."

  I held up my hands, palms facing me, and looked at them as though they belonged to someone else. "Yeah," I agreed breathlessly. "I was good, wasn't I? Jesus, I was incredible."

  "More," she urged. "Play some more."

  But I laid the guitar down. "I don't think so, Midge. It's odd, but I don't think I've got any more left in me tonight. Or maybe I don't want to spoil anything—quit while I'm ahead, right?" That was partly the truth—I didn't want to fail with something else—yet there was another reason: I was exhausted. Whatever it had taken to play like that had also drained me of energy, physically and mentally. I slumped back into the sofa, eyes closed and smiling. Oh, that had felt good! Midge snuck up beside me and rested her head against my chest.

  "There's magic in Gramarye, Mike, and it's working on us both."

  She'd said the words very quietly and I wasn't sure I'd heard them correctly. I reached for the glass of wine and sipped, content to just sit there, with Midge close and the world—if there really was a world out there—peaceful and still.

  By this time, of course, I'd dismissed the lurking figure in the woods as imaginary, my own rationality dulling the memory: why should anyone hide once I'd spotted them, and how could they have disappeared so quickly anyway?

  Besides, another event had distracted my mind shortly after, when we reached the cottage itself: the kitchen window had been left open and we discovered Gramarye had a visitor.

  The red squirrel was perched on the table finishing off pastie crumbs left on our plates from lunchtime. I'd swung the door open so that Midge could enter carrying the injured thrush, and the squirrel's head had snapped up, then looked in our direction. It saw her first and if animals can smile, this one certainly did. There was no fear in this little beggar at all and it didn't appear to be in any hurry to leave. Our intruder resumed nibbling the crumbs.

  Only when I approached the table did the squirrel become skittish. It took one look at me and jumped onto the nearby sideboard, causing the hanging cups and mugs to rattle against each other. I held up a hand in a gesture of peace, but the universal sign meant nothing to the departing animal. It skipped onto the windowsill and with a last cheeky look here, there and everywhere, leapt out into the garden and was gone.

  Midge and I laughed delightedly and she said, "D'you suppose all the red squirrels in this part of the world are that bold?"

  I remembered the one we'd come across in the road on our first visit to the cottage. "Could be," I replied, "unless that's the same guy as before."

  Her mouth dropped open as if she were really considering the possibility, then she said, "We're lucky to see any at all. They were almost wiped out by an epidemic some years ago and I know not many survived in this area. The grays rather took over their territories."

  "We'd better make sure the windows are closed next time we go out, otherwise we might come back one day and find we've been invaded."

  "Now that would be nice."

  "Not if it were by rats or mice."

  "Trust you to look on the dark side."

  For a moment I was serious, although I meant no jibe. "One of us has to keep their feet on the ground."

  She regarded me quizzically, then became aware that she still cradled the injured thrush in her hands.

  I found a cardboard box and lined it with an old sweater of mine and a scarf of Midge's; she laid the bird inside and placed the box in a corner by the sideboard. After that, she attempted feeding the thrush, giving up after a while to try again later, this time with a degree of success. What was left of the afternoon—which wasn't much—was spent sorting out clothes and ornaments, finding a more permanent home for tools, equipment and various household items, hanging pictures, sweeping and cleaning, and generally bringing things together a bit more. O'Malley and his men had done a fine job on the cottage, fixing, painting, and pulling the building into shape. Even the cupboard doors everywhere fitted snugly and I assumed they had been planed down before being repainted. Some of the floorboards still creaked here and there, but there was no sagging and I could find no serious cracks in the wood.

  After dinner, a stroganoff which Midge had prepared with much care and devotion because it was to be our first "proper" dinner at Gramarye, we adjourned upstairs to the round room. I tried the TV but the picture was annoyingly snowy and as neither of us was really interested anyway, I soon switched off. I resolved to do something about the aerials for the set and the radio next day. We relaxed to some vintage Schmilson for a while and I was relieved that at least the stereo wasn't dogged by interference. We both felt at peace that evening, no sad memories marring the contentment for Midge and no reservations about the move nagging at me. When the album was finished, she asked me to play for her, something I often did during the evenings she had to work at her drawing board or those times we merely felt in the mood. I went to fetch the guitar w
hile Midge opened a bottle of wine for me.

  Now I was slumped back in the sofa, fingertips of both hands still tingling from their contact with the guitar strings, Midge's head resting against my chest, and it wasn't long before our mutual warmth turned into mutual desire.

  Unlike that morning's gloriously frenzied lovemaking, this time it was languid and exquisite, every movement and every moment savored and lingered over, all fervency contained yet still indulged in to the full. As the sensuality built in our bodies, so the room seemed to spin and weave around us, the last fading rays of the sun becoming a spectrum of colors, although always influenced by the sanguine flush that stained the walls.

  The love act between us slowly became something more. It became a great expansion of emotion that went far beyond our physical bodies, that did not so much explode within our spirits, as erupt in a leisurely-spreading shower of energies. Imagine a slow-motion film of glass shattering into thousands—millions— of fragments, every single part caught by the light, each tiny piece reflecting its own entity, its own being: that might represent a physical equivalent to the sensory response aroused in us, although the comparison is far from accurate, because such a brittle splintering is the very antithesis of the soft starbursts we both experienced. We joined together, fusing not just with each other but with the air around us, with the walls, with every living organism contained therein. In some way we had reached another level, one that perhaps we all glimpse from time to time, but are always on the periphery of, always just at the edge, knowing dimly of its existence, but never able to perceive it clearly, our minds always defeated by their own limiting truth.

  Heavy stuff, right? But in my own inept way I'm trying to give you a glimmer of what happened to us that evening in Gramarye. And maybe put it into some kind of perspective for myself.

  There was more. We sensed the aura of Gramarye, a spirit that had nothing to do with Flora Chaldean or all those others who had occupied the cottage before her, but was the essence of that place itself. Its own nature, if you like. In the structure, the grounds, the atmosphere around, there was immense goodness, an outflowing of earth purity.