The Magic Cottage

She had obviously worked from the grass shoulder outside the garden gate, using her small easel to support the artboard, because the cottage was viewed from there, the garden, with its wild patterns of colors, in the foreground. The forest behind provided a strangely brooding backdrop, albeit insignificant against the exuberance of Gramarye itself, the walls brilliantly white, yet detailed, marked where the real walls were marked, worn where the real brickwork was worn. The colors may have been exaggerated—no roof could ever be quite that shade of rusty red, the grass and nearest trees could never be that vividly green—yet they conveyed the true vibrancy of our home and its surroundings, the invigorating quality we had both felt when we first moved in, but which only Midge, with her unique and skillful, child's-view artistry could express. You know, my knees actually went weak as I took it all in.

But that was nothing compared with what was to come.

Outside, the sun broke through the clouds, washing the room with a sudden brilliant warmth, striking those lucid colors before me so that they dazzled and surged, yes, surged, with sparkling energy, the brightness striking into me, deep into me, and reproducing—not just duplicating— the image inside my head, as if it had solidified in there, was as real as the original.

Remember that first day Midge and I had come to look at the cottage, when I thought I'd gone into some kind of delayed drug excursion? Well, this was it again. Either I started swaying or the artboard started moving, because the picture kept dancing in and out of focus.

The sun behind me blazed on my shoulders and the top of my head felt so hot I wondered if it were on fire. I could feel myself going, my knees sagging, the picture captured inside my head swelling, becoming too immense to contain, threatening to expand through my brain and push against the inner walls of my skull. The pressure was almost unbearable.

In some kind of fantastic and frightening way, I became part of Midge's picture, living and breathing in it just as surely as if I were outside standing before the garden gate; only whether I was truly inside the picture or the picture was inside me, I had no way of knowing. The smell of fresh paint was slight, but the smell of flowers, of grass, offence, of road—of sky!—was intoxicating. I was hallucinating and I was totally aware that I was doing so. But nothing, no effort of will could bring me back. I'm sure I cried out, because I was scared, Jesus, I was so scared!

Everything was a chromatic replica, an illustration, but it was all real—the sky was real, the forest was real, and Gramarye, stylized, the colors too fresh, too synthetically manufactured—too bloody fairy-story!—was real. And the clouds moved, and there were birds lazily arcing in the sky. It was alive and it existed. But it was only paint! Moving, breathing, paint! And I was part of it!

And there was the path, the flowers on either side dipping with the easy breeze. And of course the path led up to the cottage door. Which was open. And the cool darkness inside was inviting me in, an alluring emptiness, but an emptiness that really wasn't empty, because although I couldn't see into the darkness there was something, there was someone, there. Someone sitting at the kitchen table. Someone who was really a something. And that something was beginning to move, beginning to rise from the table on which stood a cup filled with moldering tea, undrunk and festering with all kinds of minute, crawling life.

And the someone who was now only something was a darker shadow moving among other shadows, shuffling rather than walking, coming to the open door, coming to greet me, coming to encourage me forward, raising a hand—I could see that hand rising, see the fingers that were no more than bones with thin lumps of rotted flesh still clinging.

And that something was nearly at the door, almost in the light. But it lingered there, because light revealed too much, light was unnatural for a thing such as this. I could see what was left of the finger curling inward, gesturing, beckoning me, telling me to come closer, wanting me.

And I found myself opening the gate, setting foot on the path, walking forward, confused and wondering why I didn't resist, the flowers beginning to wilt now, starting to crumble, the petals' edges turning brown, dying, and the door was open to me, a darkness waiting and something waiting in the darkness.

And daylight was fading—the cottage walls were gray, the windows black, and the roof had become muddy dark, and there were black pits where tiles had fallen through, and as the light dimmed, the sun swallowed whole by painted ebony storm clouds, creatures fluttered out from those pits, wheeling in the heavy, murky air, screeching their welcome, circling above the cottage, occasionally diving erratically, but never approaching me, content to wait until I was inside. Only then would they return . . .

I was near the doorway, and I was trying to hold myself back, my footsteps weighty, cumbrous, my shoulders almost leaning backward. But still I continued that sluggish journey, impelled by what I knew was just inside that door, watching me and waiting patiently.

And my foot was on the step. And she was coming forward. And even in the gloom I could see she was almost faceless. And when both her rotted hands reached for me I opened my mouth in a silent scream . . .

. . . And a voice called me back . . .

ACCUSED

FIRST HER VOICE, and then her, Midge, standing in the upstairs hallway, the door behind open wide, the greens outside muted by drizzling rain.

She was watching me as though I were an intruder, a sneak-thief inside her beloved cottage; and in truth, that was how I felt.

The illustrated scene that had been more in my mind than on that artboard was wrenched from me as if into a vortex, the root of which was the painting itself. Visions of reaching bones left me, in part dissolving but mostly swallowed, sucked away. I staggered back, suddenly released from the spiraling images like a jettisoned first stage from a rocket, and my shoulder hit the windowframe behind. The brief pain jolted my senses even more and my eyes rapidly focused.

Midge's painting was there before me, a bright, daylight landscape, correct in essence to the original, yet idealized in its presentation. A pretty cottage in a pretty setting. But I had glimpsed something dark.

'Mike? Mike, what's wrong?'

I turned to her, and I still leaned weakly against the windowframe. I was too confused to speak.

Midge strode into the room and her hair and face were wet with rain, the anorak she wore shiny with moisture. She came to me and I all but collapsed into her arms.

'You look dreadful,' she said. 'You're so pale. And your eyes . . . oh God, your eyes!'

'Let me . . . let me sit down.'

I hardly understood my own words they were so garbled, but she could see for herself that I was barely able to stand. She helped me to the sofa and lowered me onto it. Gratefully, I sank back against the cushions.

I stared over at the drawing board, the picture taped to its surface no longer visible from that angle, while Midge stroked my cheek with a damp and cold hand. She left me. but quickly returned with a small tumbler of liquid.

'Brandy,' she said, holding the glass toward my lips.

I took it from her, barely able to lift the glass. The brandy tasted awful, but the warming shock was good.

'Oh, Midge, you've no idea . . .'

'Your eyes are so bloodshot, Mike. How much did you drink last night?'

'The picture . . .'

'You may not have liked it, but isn't this an overreaction?'

'No, Midge, no joking . . .' I drank more brandy.

She steadied my hand as the glass trembled against my mouth. 'Tell me what's wrong,' she said, her voice hushed.

'Jesus, it's this place, Midge. There's something going on here that we don't understand.'

'Oh now, Mike, how can you say that?' she chided. 'It's perfect here, and you know it.'

'The picture moved. I looked at it, and the picture bloody moved!'

Reasonably enough, she looked at me as though I were crazy.

'It's true, Midge! It came . . . it came alive! I saw things happening there, I could smell the flowers, I could