Magic Cottage, Das Haus auf dem Land

by James Herbert

  "What do I have to do to get a serious conversation out of you nowadays?" she said, pouting.

  "Talk about me?" I suggested, gingerly remolding my released nose.

  "Boring," she droned.

  My hand was up inside the nightshirt and fingers poised around the side of her lower ribs before she had a chance to move. "Boring?" I asked.

  "No, Mike! You know I can't stand that!"

  I nodded and squeezed, sudden and hard, rigid fingers finding those ticklish zones between ribs. With a shriek she leapt two or three inches off my lap, but my other hand held her down again.

  "Boring?" I repeated with a pleasant smile.

  "Mike, please, you know—"

  My fingers twitched spasmodically, showing no mercy, and she jumped again to land squirming in my lap, hiccuping with her own laughter as I kept probing.

  "Mike, noooo!"

  "Did you say boring?"

  "No, no! Interesting! No—exciting! Yes, exciting! The most . . . Mike! . . . ex—exciting . . . no, fascinating . . . person . . . I've . . . stop it, Mike, please no more . . ."

  I could barely hold her there, slight though she was, and I was laughing almost as much as her. Her legs flailed the air and soon she was slipping from my lap, nightshirt rising as she sank.

  She screamed when her naked bottom touched the quarry tiles. "It's cold! Oh you bast. . ." The rest was unintelligible amid the laughter.

  I buried my face in her hair, hands sliding down her body to clasp together beneath her breasts. The memory of last night's lovemaking was not too far from my thoughts as I nuzzled her ear. My teeth gently nipped at her neck.

  "Well hello again," she said brightly.

  It wasn't the response I'd expected. I looked up and saw she had been greeting another caller at the door. Our friendly neighborhood squirrel was grinning at our fun from the open doorway.

  "Come on in," I invited the animal, noticing Midge modestly pulling the nightshirt down over her thighs. "This is Open House, no tickets for admission."

  The squirrel looked uncertain.

  "Hush, Mike," warned Midge, "you'll frighten him. Come on, little 'un, pay no mind to this big old ugly brute behind me. Snarl and he'll hide under the table."

  It hopped inside. Another hop and it was only a couple of feet away from Midge's wriggling toes. I think my eyebrows must have touched my hairline in surprise. Midge giggled as the squirrel chattered.

  "Yes, I know he looks like a big bad bear with toothache, but he's very nice once you get to know him," she told the noisy mite.

  It looked at me and then at her, and then at me again. I gave it my best smile and the squirrel's tail swished in annoyance.

  "Hey, I live here, y'know," I said, then wondered what the hell I was doing. Talking to a squirrel? The boys in the bands had said I'd flip outside my natural environment. The animal jerked its tufty head in funny little ducking movements, narrow shoulders hunching up, and to me it looked like it was chortling.

  "This guy's got no respect," I complained to Midge.

  "He's the same squirrel who came visiting yesterday," she said thoughtfully.

  "Didn't that one look more Jewish?"

  She banged my sneaker with the heel of her fist, hurting my toes.

  "Come on, Midge, how can you tell? They all look alike. And how d'you know it's a he, anyway?"

  "I just know. He's got a personality all his own."

  She put her hands on my knees and levered herself up from the floor. "Let's find something for you to eat, eh?" she said to the squirrel, who appeared pleased with the idea; without further bidding, it leapt onto the table and chattered all the more. Midge broke off some of my toast and offered the piece to our intruder. Showing no timidity whatsoever, it skipped forward and grasped the toast in its tiny paws, licking at the butter first, not even backing away once it had started nibbling.

  "I don't believe this," I said as I rested an elbow on the edge of the table, palm supporting my chin.

  "Neither do I. Red squirrels are rarely this tame, unlike the gray."

  "Red . . .? Midge, no outdoor animal is tame. I mean, maybe in zoos and things, but not out here in the wild."

  "Could be that they got used to Flora. I bet she'd been feeding generation after generation of animals hereabouts. Look how the birds were at the window on our first morning here. It's almost as if this place is a natural habitat for them, part of their own forest."

  "The local fast-food counter, you mean. I can understand how it's popular. The problem is, how long before they start messing up our cozy country retreat? They could do some damage."

  "Oh, Mike, the birds, the squirrels, and any other animal that cares to wander through, are as much a part of Gramarye as are we. Don't forget, they were here before us." She lowered herself, bending her knees and balancing on the balls of her feet, hands resting on my knees. "We've got to adapt to them, Mike, don't you see? Feed them and help them survive. Treat them as friends."

  "I draw the line at snakes and lizards."

  She smiled. "I'll allow you to close the door on rats as well."

  That reminded me I had some investigating to do. I leaned forward and kissed her lips, conscious of the squirrel gnawing toast while observing us.

  "Voyeur," I called it when Midge and I parted. "Okay, Pixie, all creatures great and small are welcome here, so long as they're not too great and not small enough to bore holes in woodwork. Deal?"

  "I don't know what you're expecting—so far we've only had a bird and a squirrel inside the house—but okay, it's a deal. Elephants and woodworm are out."

  We shook hands on it and I winked at the squirrel. "All right, Rumbo, you're in. But don't get me jealous or mad."

  Midge laughed. "Why Rumbo?"

  "I don't know. He just looks like a Rumbo, doesn't he? More like a Rumbo than a Rambo, anyway."

  The squirrel jerked its head convulsively, tiny shoulders juddering, its chattering like laughter. Which Midge found hysterically funny.

  "I think he agrees," she said between giggles.

  "Yeah, a real clown," I said drily. I stood slowly, careful not to startle our chuckling guest. "This man's got work to do."

  "So's this woman."

  "You think he'll mind eating alone?" Now he had a name, Rumbo was no longer an "it" to me.

  "I suggested we make friends with the animals, not pander to them. He can make his own conversation."

  So we left him there feeding quite happily, Midge departing for the sink next door and me, after taking a flashlight from a downstairs cupboard, for the loft. I felt cheered as I climbed the stairs, glad to be alive and glad to be in love, musing over how real love has constant moments of absolute freshness, as if you've only just fallen, the realization always exciting, always absorbing. We'd got to know each other—I mean, really know—Midge and I, but we'd never got too used to one another, had never become complacent. Don't get me wrong—our relationship hasn't always been as rosy as the picture I'm painting here; in fact, there have been some very stormy patches, times when we've come close to break-up. Fortunately, we've always managed to see sense at the same time and come to terms with the other's faults (or point of view, as Midge would have it). No false modesty here: we both have our own special talents in music and art, and have you ever known any talented person not to possess a streak of temperament? Goes with the territory, as they say. I'm not talking about arrogance or ego, but the single-minded drive within to get things right (to their way of thinking, of course) and the frustrations that quickly develop when those things aren't so. They're the times when the nearest person to you takes the brunt and has to learn to duck and weave, or just talk plain sense. We'd learned with each other over the years. We'd also learned not to take our respective selves too seriously, a bonus if you're aware of that before you're too old for it to matter.

  Resisting the temptation to pick up a guitar, knowing the morning would be gone if I did, I approached the chair left standing directly beneath the loft h
atch the day before. The flashlight worked fine, the chair was steady, the hatch cover was waiting: time to make my move.

  So why was I hesitating?

  Maybe I should have brought the stepladder up with me; climbing to the loft would have been much easier. No, the ceiling wasn't high; the chair would do.

  There were no noises up there now so perhaps the problem had gone away. Still no reason not to take a look-see.

  I was being sissy and I knew it. Yet something was telling me I really didn't want to look into that loft. Could be that there's a tiny compartment in everyone's mind where the future exists here and now, where archives of events yet to come are kept, where the record keeper (who is, after all, oneself) occasionally slips a hint beneath the sealed door. Could be. Such things are a mystery to me as I'm sure they are to you; all I know is that the urge to back away, to retreat down the stairs and invent some excuses for not going into the loft, was immense.

  Come on, Stringer, I scolded myself, get up there and rout some rats, unless you want to face derision and disgrace. Still I hesitated, eyes locked on the hatchway: derision and disgrace weren't so bad.

  Common sense prevailed, the pragmatist in me won the day; I stepped onto the chair and switched on the flashlight. With one hand I pushed up the hatch—only a couple of inches, though. No menacing eyes peered down at me through the gap, nothing shifted, nothing "snuffled liquidly." All was still and quiet. Feeling a fraction bolder, I widened the opening and shone the light through, standing on tip-toe to try and peek over the edge. I couldn't quite make it, but I was sure there was a small amount of daylight coming from low down. I switched off the flashlight to check and then was certain that daylight was coming through the eaves around the roof.

  There was the answer: birds had squeezed in and had made a nice protective aviary out of the rooftop. Maybe last night they'd decided to throw a party to celebrate. I switched on the light again and swung the hatch back as far as it would go, my hand sliding toward the base the wider it opened. Finally, the hatch overbalanced and fell backward, only a little way, though, something behind catching it with a bump.

  Putting the flashlight over the lip, I grabbed the sides and pulled myself up; what I lacked in athletic style I made up for in curses as I hauled myself into the loft, white sneakers kicking empty space below like demented doves. Resting on the edge, feet dangling, I caught my breath and immediately regretted the inhalation. The air up there was foul, a kind of acidy stench wrinkling my nose.

  "Jesus," I said aloud and I thought I heard a movement not too far away.

  The light was pointing to one side, but I could still make out the dim shapes of rafters and crossbeams. There were no holes in the roof itself, the builders obviously having done their job well. But I could just see something else on the crossbeams, dark objects, unclear in the gloom. They seemed to be hanging from the timbers and with a shudder I noticed there were more—many more—on the sloping rafters.

  I knew what they were but I reached for the flashlight anyway and shone the beam upward. I felt a trembly revulsion when I saw what seemed like hundreds of dark little furry bodies hanging upside down like withered fruit on branches, all crammed into the loft space and filling it with their stench.

  Even as I watched, a wing twitched, stretched outward in a quivering movement, then tucked back into the dark body.

  "Oh God," I murmured, frozen there. In the still silence, I imagined I could hear their tiny heartbeats, pulsating as one, a regular rhythm that unified the creatures, gave them mass.

  I was shivering when I quietly lowered myself from the loft, afraid that the slightest sound would send the bats into a mad frenzy of shrieks and fluttering wings.

  WATCHER

  IN THE BATHROOM, I doused my face with water, washing away the perspiration that had broken through. Then I vigorously scrubbed my hands as though they'd become contaminated by those things in the loft. I felt sick, but the nausea remained glutinously locked inside my chest.

  Bats! Ugly, sinister, wizened monsters. And from what I'd seen, a plague of them! And O'Malley must have known they were there: why the hell hadn't he said something? I now regretted not having accepted sound advice to send in a surveyor to look over the cottage, thinking one fee less would add financially to the repairs we could carry out; at least a surveyor would have discovered their presence and informed us. I dreaded telling Midge, not wanting to spoil this idyll of hers; but she would have to know, there was no way of keeping the fact from her.

  Creepy little bastards! There had to be exterminators in the area, or perhaps even the local council handled such things. Were bats a health hazard? They were a mental hazard, that's for sure.

  I wiped my face and hands dry, head buzzing with flesh-crawling thoughts. I suppose I may have been overreacting, but the unpleasant feeling I'd had before opening the loft, together with the shock of being confronted by all those black hanging bodies, was having a strong effect. I wondered how long Gramarye had been the creatures' domicile; had they arrived after Flora Chaldean's demise, or had they taken up residence while she was still around? The latter was hard to imagine, but then again, we knew she'd been something of an eccentric, so maybe Flora had made them welcome. Well, the new management reserved the right not to accept certain parties, and elephants, woodworm and bats were definitely out.

  I walked through into the adjoining bedroom and went to the window with the intention of throwing it open and gasping in deep lungfuls of fresh, unmusty air; I checked my breath when I saw a group of figures by the garden gate.

  Midge, now dressed, and on this side of the gate, had her back to me and was in conversation with three other people, two men and a girl. They were casually clothed—open-necked shirts, slacks, the girl in a longish, patterned skirt and blouse. She had long blonde hair and even from that distance looked vaguely familiar to me. A Citroen was parked half-on the grass shoulder behind them (by then we had found a clear patch to the side of the garden big enough to accommodate our Passat). Their voices drifted up to me over the garden, but I couldn't make out what they were saying. Feeling particularly receptive to human company at that point in time, I left the bedroom and went downstairs. If this group were local, they might even know how to handle our bat problem.

  The strong pure scent of flowers cleared my head of stale fumes as I strode down the path. The three strangers looked past Midge as I approached, Midge herself turning to greet me when I drew near.

  "Mike, we've got our first visitors," she said, obviously enjoying the contact.

  "First human visitors," I corrected, smiling at their brief puzzlement. I managed to push thoughts of tiny winged creatures aside for the moment.

  "Mike's referring to certain animals who've dropped by since we moved in," Midge explained, and smiles broke out all around.

  "I'm afraid you'll soon learn it's we human folk who are the interlopers in this neck of the woods." The speaker was as blond as the girl, although his hair was a mite shorter, almost military length, in fact. He was about my size—five ten—and his eyes were Newmanish blue. He reminded me of a time-capsuled 60s Californian surfer, and his American accent enhanced the image, although I sensed an intensity about him that belied his laid-back manner. He was grinning and even his teeth were pure Hollywood.

  "Hi," he said, extending a hand over the low gate. "I'm Hub Kinsella and . . ." he waved his free hand toward his companions ". . . this is Gillie Slade and Neil Joby."

  I shook hands with all three as Midge introduced me. Each one looked to be in his early or mid twenties.

  "We saw you when we passed by the other day," the girl said, hardly any pressure at all in her handshake.

  "Oh yeah, I thought I'd seen you before," I replied. "You waved at me from the car, right?"

  She nodded. "You waved first."

  We laughed, the way uncertain strangers do at the slightest hint of humor. She was English enough and quite pretty in a wan sort of way. She wore no make-up and freckles sprinkled t
he tops of her cheeks and her nose; there was a nervous skittishness about her that was either appealing or annoying, I couldn't be sure which.

  The second man, Joby, was short and thin, and close up I noticed he was dressed less informally than the others, inasmuch as he wore a tie with his shortsleeved shirt, his trousers were sharply creased, and his shoes were brightly polished. His hairless arms projected from their sleeves like white bendy sticks and his grip was a little too tight, as if the firmness was assumed rather than natural. There was the faintest Midlands nasalization to his voice when he greeted me with, "Hope you like your new home."

  "Yeah, we do," I said, "but it'll take a while to settle in."

  "Are you both from London?" Kinsella asked, his tone politely interested rather than inquisitive.

  "How could you tell?"

  He smiled disarmingly. "You have that look about you."

  "Ducks out of water?"

  "Oh no, I didn't mean to imply that. I just felt this was kinda new to you."

  "Not quite for Midge—she was raised in the country. Me, I'm a novice."

  "You'll soon come to love it out here," put in the girl, Gillie. "I did."

  Midge tucked her arm into mine and leaned against me. "You know the big house we came across on our walk yesterday, Mike?"

  "Blea—the gray house?"

  She nodded. "That's where Hub, Gillie and Neil come from."

  "Really? You live there? All three of you?"

  "More than three of us, Mike," said Kinsella.

  "What is it? A hotel, a health farm of some kind?"

  "Neither of those. Why don't you drop by some time when you're settled and we'll show you around?"

  "Yes, please do," said Gillie, surprising us both by reaching out with both hands to touch our arms. "The house is beautiful inside and we'd make you so welcome. Please say you'll come and visit."

  I was slightly taken aback with her enthusiasm, but Midge seemed pleased with the idea. "That would be nice," she told the girl. "We were intrigued by the place yesterday, weren't we, Mike?"