The Magic Cottage

offering any comfort there.

'Bob, for Chrissake take it easy!'

I shook his shoulders, although I was almost afraid to touch their milky whiteness, and he flinched violently. I persisted though, matching his strength with a roughness of my own. This time I grasped his hands and wrenched them down, moving my head close so that he was forced to look at my face.

Maybe I should have realized there and then what part of the problem was, because despite the room's soft light his pupils were small, contracted, as though affected by bright sunshine. And there was a glassiness to his stare that overlaid the horror expressed there; I'd observed that same faraway look over the years on the faces of several acquaintances who'd gone beyond cannabis.

But the atmosphere was too charged, too frighteningly potent, for me to take cognizance of that right away. I kept my voice soothing and controlled as I reasoned with him.

'There's nothing happening to you, Bob, everything's okay. You've had a bad dream, that's all. Or maybe you heard something that scared you. Was it the bats? We didn't tell you we had bats in our belfry, did we? They scare the hell out of me sometimes and I'm used to 'em. C'mon now, Bob, we're all here and nothing's gonna hurt you.

I felt slightly foolish coaxing him like this, but it really was as though I had a terrified child on my hands.

For a brief moment, his eyes managed to focus on mine, and that seemed to help a little. He stopped struggling against me and tried to speak, but still that rasping sound emerged. He was having difficulty in closing his mouth to form words.

I looked away for a second to see how the others were and wished I hadn't. The round room somehow wasn't the same. Oh, everything was in place, the furniture hadn't changed, the carpet wasn't a different color, nor were the drapes: but I was somewhere else. Everything was cold— without touching I knew that everything was tomb-cold— and everywhere there were shadows where they shouldn't have been. And the musty, damp smell was back. I thought I saw bubbling fungi on the curved walls, but the shadows were too deep, too obscuring, to be sure. And the room was growing smaller, the walls closing in so slowly that I couldn't be certain, even when I blinked my eyes and looked again, I couldn't be sure, couldn't measure it. The shrinkage had to be imaginary, had to be! The mustiness clogged my throat, making it difficult to breathe.

Kiwi was wailing, Midge kneeling beside her with an arm around the blonde's shoulders, doing her best to calm her and having about as much success as I was with Bob. Kiwi was trying to tell us something, but I could only understand a few choked phrases here and there:

'. . . thirsty . . . he . . . went downstairs . . . oh my God, I heard him scream . . . he saw someone down . . . there . . .'

More than enough for me to catch the drift, and centipedes fresh from the freezer crawled up my spine. Somehow I guessed what had confronted Bob in the kitchen.

Fingernails raking my chest returned my attention to my buddy lying propped against the wall, and I grasped his wrist to stop the painful scratching. His head was shaking like a palsied man's and his other hand was pointing generally toward the open doorway—I say generally because his arm was moving wildly, barely able to maintain any sure direction.

But I followed his gaze rather than his pointing arm, mesmerized by the stark insanity in his eyes: it was like following the dotted line in a cartoon, from eyeball to object.

There was no light on in the hallway, but a pale glow came from the bend in the stairs; from the kitchen itself, in fact. BOD must have switched on the light down there.

The room, seen only in the periphery of my vision, was growing smaller and the shadows darker, as if both conspired to crush those within. My subconscious sent the message that it was only imagination, my own fear, that was creating the effect; that fleeting realization afforded little comfort. I still gripped Bob's wrist, and now I was shaking as much as he. My jaw locked open as I watched through the open doorway.

A shadow was rising from the stairway. A bulky shape, ill-defined, inky dark. Coming up from the kitchen.

Rising. Lit only dimly from the back. Now in almost complete darkness as it rose higher, came around the bend in the stairs.

Slowly emerging into the soft light of the round room.

BAD TRIP

I ALMOST COLLAPSED with relief when Midge's agent walked through the door.

' Jesus fucking Christ, Val, you nearly scared us shitless!' I thumped my fist on the floor in exasperation.

She was genuinely surprised. 'Good Lord, why? I went down to investigate the cause of all the fuss our gibbering friend was making.'

She reached for the switch by the door and turned on the overhead light. Walls immediately sprang back into place, shadows instantly evaporated. Val strode purposefully into the room, voluminous flannel nightgown, worn with total disregard to the season, billowing out behind her. Never had she looked so formidable. Nor so reassuring.

'There's nothing downstairs, Bob, nothing at all,' she said, bearing down on us. 'Now just what is all this nonsense about?'

I drew my robe around me, feeling somewhat under-dressed, and hauled myself to my feet. We looked at Bob together and I was happy to notice a glimmer of color returning to his flesh. He didn't look healthy, though, he didn't look healthy at all.

'Help me with him,' I said to Val, and we both grasped his arms and pulled him up. There was no resistance left in Bob, and little life either, and we all but carried him over to the sofabed.

'He was crawling across the room when I got out here,' Val explained as we gently lowered his body, 'screaming blue murder and pointing at the stairs. I thought perhaps you'd had burglars, so I rushed down there immediately.'

I always knew she had balls, but I never suspected how much.

'Empty, of course, no sign of anyone in the kitchen. I checked the door and windows, but there were no signs of (heir being forced. I think dear Bob must have woken from an extremely bad nightmare.'

Kiwi was still sobbing, but she managed to say, 'No, no. He was awake. He needed a drink of water. He went downstairs.'

I was still shaken enough not to take too much notice of her long thighs exposed beneath her short and flimsy nightie.

'Did you turn on the light in the kitchen?' I asked Val.

'No, it was already on. All right, so he did find his way down there, but I can't imagine what sparked off all this hoo-ha.'

Midge and I helped Kiwi sit on the edge of the sofabed; Bob lay on his back staring at the ceiling and murmuring to himself.

I lifted Kiwi's chin with a crooked finger so that I could look at her face. 'What did Bob take tonight? I know he was on cannabis most of the evening, but he took something stronger when we all turned in, didn't he?'

I felt Midge's eyes on me and risked a glance at her. I shook my head slightly, an apology as much as anything else.

'Come on, Kiwi, we need to know,' I persisted.

'He . . . he took some Chinese.'

I closed my eyes and silently swore. Smack. Heroin. Cheap brown powder that was mixed with all kinds of impurities, often strychnine and other toxics. The stupid bloody idiot!

'Not . . . not much,' she added quickly. 'He only sniffed a little bit. He wanted me to join him, but the stuff makes me sick. It's not good for my sinuses.'

Bob began to moan aloud and writhe on the bed. Then he sat bolt upright and slowly looked around the room. Still pallid, but his skin no longer having that eerie albescence, he shook less spasmodically than before, the