The Magic Cottage

She was quiet for a moment, just studying the page as though looking for the answer herself. Then she turned to me. 'It feels right,' she said.

Yep. It feels right. That's all.

I sighed, knowing Midge always had great intuition, but not quite prepared to accept it this time. 'Midge . . .' I warned.

'Mike . . .' she said, just as gravely.

'Come on, be serious. I'm not trekking down to Hampshire just on a whim.'

The imp took my hand and kissed the knuckles. 'I like forests,' she had the nerve to say. 'And the price is right.'

'There's no price mentioned.'

'Offers invited. It'll be right, you'll see.'

Mildly exasperated, but not annoyed, I replied, 'The place is probably really run-down.'

'All the cheaper.'

'Think of the work!'

'We'll send the builders in first.'

'You're a bit ahead of yourself, kiddo.'

The merest shadow of uncertainty flickered across her face—or perhaps it was a sudden anxiety; I can read all sorts of things into that expression, knowing what I do now.

'I can't explain Mike. Let me call tomorrow, find out more. It could be totally wrong.'

Her last sentence was hardly convincing, but I let things go at that. It was peculiar, but I was beginning to have a good feeling about the cottage myself.

GRAMARYE

YOU'VE SEEN the film, you've read the book. You know the one—there've been so many: The young couple find the home of their dreams, the wife's ecstatic, the husband's happy but more controlled; they move in, the kids (usually one of each) tear around the empty rooms. But we know there's something sinister about the place, because we've read the blurb and paid our money. Slowly, THINGS start to happen. There's something nasty in the locked room at the top of the old creaky stairs; or something lurks in the cellar below, which is possibly itself the Gateway to Hell. You know the story. At first, Dad's oblivious to his family going nuts around him—he doesn't believe in the supernatural, or things that go splodge in the night; to him, there really is No Such Thing as a Vampire. Until something happens to him, that is. Then all hell breaks loose. You know it like you wrote the story yourself.

Well, this is similar. But different. You'll see.

We drove down to Cantrip the following Tuesday (our work-style allows such freedom), Midge having called the number in the ad the day before and finding it belonged to a real estate agent. He'd told her a little more about the cottage, not much, but enough to increase her enthusiasm. At present it was unoccupied, the owner having died some months earlier; it had taken this long to have the deceased's affairs sorted out before the property could be put on the market. Midge was on edge throughout the journey and kept telling me she didn't expect too much, the place would no doubt be a huge disappointment, but it did sound interesting from the agent's description, it could just turn out to be ideal . . .

The journey took a couple of hours or so, maybe closer to three by the time we'd taken a few wrong turns looking for the village of Cantrip. Still, the scenery, once we reached the New Forest with its wood- and heathland, was worth the long drive in itself. We even came upon herds of ponies and, although we didn't actually catch sight of any deer, there were plenty of signs telling us they were about (and for a city-bred boy, that's almost as good as the real thing). The weather was May-fine, the air crisp and bright. We'd kept the windows of the hatchback down once we were off the last highway, and despite her barely-hidden apprehension, Midge had joined me in choruses of Blue Suedes and Mean Womans and the like (I was going through my old rock period that morning, my musical mood varying from day to day). The fresh air was making me hoarse before we saw the village ahead.

I have to admit, Cantrip was a bit of a letdown. We'd expected thatched roofs, old inns, and a village green with its own rusty-handled pump—National Trust stuff: what we got was a fairly uninteresting high street whose houses and shops must have been built around the late twenties or early thirties. No, it wasn't quite that bad on closer inspection—there really were some ancient properties of crumbling character among the less-old structures —but the overall impression was pretty drab. I could feel Midge's heart sink.

We crossed the bump of a small bridge and drove into the high street, keeping our eyes peeled for the real estate agent's and our disappointment to ourselves. We found his office jammed between a post office-cum- grocer's and a butcher's shop, the frontage so small we'd gone past before Midge tapped me smartly on the shoulder and indicated.

'There!' she cried, as though she'd discovered the Missing Link.

A cyclist wobbled by, scowling because of the car's sudden halt. I shrugged a friendly apology and pointed at Midge so that she could take the blame, but didn't catch his grumbling response. Probably just as well: he looked a mean local.

After reversing into a space, Midge and I left the car and strolled to the agent's office, Midge suddenly nervous as a kitten. Now this was something new to me. We'd been together a long time and I was used to her occasional skittishness, especially when she'd accepted a new commission (I should have mentioned that Midge is an illustrator, and a damned good one, specializing in children's books: you'll see her work on the shelves alongside Shirley Hughes and Maurice Sendak, although you'd know her as Margaret Gudgeon), but nervous of a brick-broker? I quickly realized it wasn't the agent but the prospect of viewing the cottage thai had unsettled her. Hell, the mood had been building from Sunday through to now, and I couldn't understand why.

I pulled her to a stop before pushing open the door and Midge looked at me distractedly, her attention more involved in what lay beyond the glass.

'Take it easy,' I told her softly. 'There'll be plenty more for sale and we may hate this one anyway.'

She took a quick breath, squeezed my hand and went in ahead of me.

Inside, the office was less cramped than it should have been, because although narrow, the single room stretched back a fair way. Pictures and details of properties covered the length of one wall like badly pasted wallpaper. An ample-sized secretary thrashed a typewriter just inside the doorway, while further down a man in a neat gray suit and thick black-rimmed glasses, seated behind an untidy desk, looked up.

I peered over Midge's shoulder and said, 'Mr. Bickleshift?' (Yeah, I promise you.)

He appeared not to mind his own name, because he smiled broadly. No, not really; I think he just liked the look of Midge.

'Yes indeed,' he said, rising and waving us forward.

I nodded at the secretary, who had stopped clattering to give us the once-over as we passed, and I might just as well have greeted a sullen whale for all the expression she showed.

'You'll be Mr. and Mrs. Gudgeon,' Bickleshift surmised, reaching across his desk to shake Midge's hand then mine. He designated two chairs angled toward him on our side.

'No. She's Gudgeon, I'm Stringer.' We both sat and the agent glanced from face to face before following suit.

'Then it's only you, Miss Gudgeon, who is looking for a property.' I'm not sure, but he may have said Ms. just to show he was part of the new order.

'We both are,' Midge replied. 'And it's the cottage advertised in the last Sunday Times that we want to see. I told you on the phone.'

'Of course. Flora Chaldean's roundhouse.'

We both raised our eyebrows and Bickleshift smiled.

'You'll understand when you see the place,' he said.

'And Flora Chaldean—she's the woman who owned the cottage?' asked Midge.

'That's correct. Rather an, er, eccentric old lady. Well-known hereabouts, something of a local character, you might even say. Well-known, but not much known about her. Kept very much to herself.'

'You told me she'd died . . .' said Midge.