The Magic Cottage

concrete reality, and the temptation to hoof it was strong; but the village was a long way off and the road ran through miles of woodland. Better to take the car.

I'd been right about the bats on this side: they clung mostly to the upper reaches, a dark thatch that twitched and bristled with life. Cautiously, eyes ever upward, I led Midge toward the kitchen door.

A bat fluttered away from the wall above us. Then another followed. Another.

The urge to rush for the door was almost overwhelming, but the thought of alarming them all into flight held us in check.

Take it easy, I kept telling myself. They're only flying mammals, not a vampire among them.

Tell that to the bunnies, came my own wicked reply.

The door was on the latch and my hand was trembling when I stretched to press the catch. I thumbed it down as smoothly as I could, but the click still made me grit my teeth; I expected fangs to puncture my neck at any second.

I pushed the door and the smell of must and rot wafted out as a forewarning that things weren't quite so well inside Gramarye, either; as I widened the gap, the waiting blackness was as welcoming as the stench. If shadows could grin, then they'd have been beaming their darkest right then.

The interior was menacing, and yet . . . and yet it was somehow alluring. I felt as I had as a kid, standing there at the first door of the funfair ghost house; scared, but I'd paid my money and I was sure as shit going in.

I almost tripped over something on the doorstep. Committed to stepping in, I didn't stop to investigate. I went through, pulling Midge with me, and immediately turned to scrabble for the light switch. I brushed it down and, momentarily blinded, reached back to slam the door shut. Midge caught my arm before I did so.

I blinked questioningly at her, anxious to set the barricade between them and us; she was staring at the doorstep.

Rumbo was lying there, his furry little body discolored with blood, his jaws locked open in shock. His eyes were corpse's slits.

BREAK IN

WE LAID HIM on the kitchen table, Midge weeping openly, me choking back tears. I hadn't realized till then how fond of Rumbo I'd become.

The marks on his back were vicious; deep, bloodied grooves running the length of his back where the bats— more than one had done this to him—had raked him. The wounds around his throat were even deeper, but I wondered if fear alone hadn't been the ultimate assassin. He was bald of fur in parts and one tufty ear had been completely shredded; I think he'd put up one hell of a fight.

Without hope I checked for the slightest beat of a heart, and there was none. His body had not yet turned cold and I stroked him, talking softly all the time, as if encouraging his animal spirit to get back inside and loosen up those congealing arteries again.

Rumbo was gone, though, and surprisingly (or maybe not—when it really comes down to it, women are always ! more realistic than men) it was Midge who first accepted the fact. She took my hands in hers.

'Poor little chump,' I said, unable to shift my gaze from the still bundle.

'What are those creatures outside, Mike? They can't be the same bats that were in the loft. Their size . . . Why did they attack the animals?'

I shrugged, maybe the only answer to insanity. My eyes had blurred over and I didn't want to speak right away in case my voice broke up. So instead I looked around the kitchen, turning my head away from Midge before blinking. It wasn't grief that I was hiding from her—we'd shared enough of that in our time together and tears had never been an embarrassment: what I didn't want her to see was my fear.

Gramarye's personality had altered. The disease that had been gnawing at its innards since Flora's death had been halted by our arrival, like a cancer checked by a new drug. Decay had stopped, regeneration had begun. Its magic had been renewed.

I was aware of that now, even though a side of me said, Listen, you're crazy, you're talking about stone and timber, not a living person, not even a mindless organism. An inanimate, insensible pile of bricks, for Chrissake! But I knew different. Something on the sidelines of all this had my ear, was whispering to me like it had before, instilling the notions, maybe chuckling while it did so. Or maybe this something was in dead earnest, afraid I wouldn't hear. Or understand.

And in truth, the thoughts were so insubstantial, so tenuous, I didn't know myself whether I heard or I imagined. Who was I to judge my own state of mind?

But the idea persisted. It wasn't the structure of Gramarye that was alive, but the anima of those who had existed within its fold, absorbed by walls, ceilings, floors, locked in like energy into a battery, so that with time the building took on the semblance of a living thing. Until that life had been corrupted, had been cancered, by other less pure influences. I believed that the degeneration had begun when the Synergists had first visited the cottage.

With Flora's death, so had the power inside Gramarye withered, started to rot. Only our—or, more accurately, Midge's—presence had held the rot, even initiated a rejuvenation. That's what the silent voice told me, that's what I believed. And in part, I was right.

I cleared my throat, then said in a rush: 'Where the hell did I leave the keys?'

'Keys' came out somewhat strangulated and Midge clasped my hands more tightly.

'Perhaps upstairs. God, it's so cold in here.'

As if for effect, she gave a small shiver. Yet I was clammy hot. The thought occurred that we were experiencing Gramarye's fever.

A rending crash from next door brought Midge into my arms and I barely heard her cry above the follow-up tumble of masonry. A dust cloud drifted through into our part of the kitchen. We guessed what had happened but, in the way you sniff milk you know has gone off, we edged toward the opening to see for ourselves. We loitered in the doorway, swiping away unsettled dust before us.

The lintel had finally thrown in its hand and crashed down onto the range, a serious section of brickwork falling after the halved stone. The reverberations hung in the air with the powdery dirt, and the sooty wound in the chimney breast, gaping and jagged, gave a glimpse of Gramarye's dark core, a rent in stone flesh that revealed its black inner substance.

'No, it isn't true, it isn't like that!' wailed Midge, and I understood the image had been the same for her. The misery and rejection on her face was the same as if she'd discovered her favorite uncle was a child molester.

I pulled her away, anxious to be out of there, as far away from the cottage as possible and in the fastest time. We'd fled the Synergist Temple only to find there was no refuge for us here; the cottage had become allied to the gray house, a collaborator in whatever ill cause was possessing that maleficent place. Confused or crazed, I didn't know which I was at that point; all I was sure of was that it was the open road for me.

We could hear the boards creaking beneath the carpet as we hurried upstairs, one cracking clear and loud so that I thought my foot would sink right through; the carpet itself prevented that and we kept going, with Midge careful to avoid the particular step. I flicked on switches as we went and the lights seemed to stutter before gaining their full glow. Into the round room, where the malodor was almost gangrenous and the walls were dribbling wet. I didn't even bother to stop and think about it.

The car keys were lying on the coffee table and I made a grab for them. 'Get anything you need from the bedroom, Midge, and be quick about it. I don't want to stay a minute longer than necessary.'

She didn't reply, just took to her heels and disappeared into the bedroom, leaving me a moment to look around. I wasn't too happy about the black mold that had formed between the top of the walls and the ceiling, the fungus spreading downward in thick spotty patches as if Midge had splattered the walls with her thickest paint brush. Even more peculiar was the bumpiness of the carpet: the floorboards underneath had warped, the ends risen in places, giving the effect of moles trying to break through but thwarted by the thick surface layer.

'Mike!'