The Magic Cottage

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 the 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.'