The Magic Cottage

The first sound was a muffled roar like an underwater explosion, a sort of deep whoosh which disintegrated into an agitated irregular drumming. For a moment the moon was lost and I assumed a cloud had passed over; but light patterns returned quickly when the blackness above broke up.

The bats had risen as a whole and were swarming over the cottage, a mass of dark, erratic motion.

They flew higher, over the moon, as if heading for the stars, the frantic beat of their wings growing distant. We moved closer to the windows, craning our heads upward, because the spectacle was incredible, subjugating even dread.

We lost sight of them. We lost sound of them. But for no more than a few seconds.

The drumming returned, a devil's tattoo, increasing in volume, becoming so loud that the building seemed to judder with its approach. We turned from the windows and looked toward the ceiling, neither of us breathing, neither of us capable of speaking.

The rushing noise centralized, descended to a low rumbling, and our gaze shifted across the room toward the chimney breast.

They swooped out of the fireplace like Hitchcock's birds, storming into the room, filling the air with their screeches and terrible fluttering wings. Midge's scream (God knows, it could have been mine) was cut short as glass exploded inward from behind.

We went down in sheer reaction, and it was just as well: bats erupted through with the glass, bursting in to join the others cycloning around the curved walls.

I felt something land on my back, tiny claws digging in for purchase. As I reached to dislodge the bat, another settled against my neck and stung me with its teeth.

I rolled, grabbing the one at my neck and squashing the other. The feel of small bones crunching beneath me was repugnant, but holding on to the wriggling thing that was opening an account at the blood bank of my throat was even worse. Above me was a turmoil of flapping wings, its draft ruffling my hair; movement in the darkened room was so fast that everything had become a crazy blur. Through it all I could hear Midge screaming.

Two more bats landed on my chest and I beat at them furiously with one hand while the other clenched to crush the bat still nibbling at my neck. Because it was close to my ears I heard the squeals as my grip tightened. I tore the bloodsucker away without experiencing any pain as my own flesh broke, then tossed the feebly struggling body into the mass of others. With both hands I wrenched off the two bats at my chest, their claws and teeth making a mess of my shirt. Even as I threw these into the air, still more landed on my arms and legs.

In the glow from the hallway I caught sight of Midge's writhing body, although so covered in the creatures was she that she resembled a multiwinged horror rising like some hideous beast from the pages of one of those splatter comicbooks. She was shrieking and beating at herself in terror, and I crawled toward her, ignoring the bats clinging to my own body.

She fell to her knees again and I beat at those hugging monsters in blind fury, snapping wings and breaking bones with a wildness even these tenacious bastards couldn't withstand.

They fell away. I ripped out two that had become entangled in her hair. I beat them from her shoulders, pulled them from her back. We had to get away from there, but to where? All the rooms had windows. And all the while I struggled, more bats were settling on me, while others were returning to her. I swiped them from the air, but for every one stunned, three more took its space. My own frustrated exertions were wearying me, and the bats' combined weight, insubstantial though it may have been, was gradually bringing me down. Midge and I sank together, bodies enveloped by the black-winged vermin.

We lay close on the floor and the pain wasn't that bad— nips and scratches were all we felt. It was sheer terror that kept us there.

I slumped over Midge in an effort to shield her, although knowing it was no use, the fuckers were going to get us. Just like they got the rabbits. Just like they got Rumbo.

I closed my eyes and waited.

Until the bats were suddenly gone.

THE POWER

THE AIR WAS empty of them. Their weight had been lifted from our bodies.

We listened to the retreating sound of their wings and we stayed there, faces buried into the bumpy carpet, waiting for the mass flip-flap to become distant, waiting for it to disappear completely.

Only when that happened did I raise my head to make sure we were really alone. A weak fluttering nearby caused me to search alarmedly for the source: one of the bats, a wing broken and useless, was rotating on the floor, pushed round and round by the tip of its good wing. Another dark shape across the room flinched feebly. Others, those I'd managed to kill, lay in silent mounds. The smell of them all, those dead, those flown, lingered in the room, combining with the musty dampness and rot; even the breeze cooling in from the broken windows couldn't dispel the corruption.

'Midge.' I eased my weight from her, but she remained inert, face downward. 'It's over, Midge, they've gone.'

Her back shuddered and I realized she was weeping. I knelt back on my haunches and, with bloodied hands, I drew her up against my chest. By now we were both beyond questions and I could only hold and gently rock her in the way you'd calm a baby.

Our clothes were torn, shredded in places; yet although we were patchy with blood neither of us was seriously hurt. Even the wound in my neck only bled a little. As I stroked her hair, Midge's tears seeped into the material of my ragged shirt.

A soft click struck me motionless once more.

The noise had come from the hallway where the light still shone brightly. The click was from the door. The outside door. Impossibly, the key on this side was turning in the lock.

Midge, alerted by my sudden stillness, raised her head. She, too, watched the key.

Which turned completely round, clicking finally into its new position.

The bolt at the foot of the door began to slide, slowly, evenly, drawn back by an invisible hand. The metal bar stopped only when it had reached the end of its run.

Nothing happened immediately.

Then, almost leisurely, the door swung open.

Mycroft stood in the shadows outside.

I moaned and Midge collapsed into me.

He stepped into the light and his smile couldn't have been bettered by Boris Karloff himself. It made me cringe just to see it.

Mycroft strolled into the cottage, thin cane poised before him like a blind man's stick, and although he wore that plain gray suit he was no longer unimpressive. In fact, knowing what I did about him, his very blandness was all the more sinister: it'd assumed a strikingly direful quality. He stopped at the threshold of the round room, countenance in shadow again, light from behind outlining his figure. I heard him draw in a long, deep breath as though he were sucking in all of the room's foul air, filling his chest with the stench.

He'd used the bats to soften us up and now here he was, in person.

A big hand for Mycroft the Magician, illusionist extraordinaire. Only the bats had been no illusion—a breeze flowing in from the broken windows and blood staining my ripped clothes told me that. And the door really had unlocked itself—his presence in the room asserted that. I wondered if part of his act was making water boil in car radiators; and if he had such mental powers, then luring us close to his lair that Sunday couldn't have been much of a problem.

Mycroft reached out and flicked on the light before stepping all the way into the room. His smile was no more pleasant.

Others filed in behind him, going to his right and left alternately, keeping near to the curved walls to form a human claw that closed around us. I suppose there must have been a dozen or so of them, the others presumably keeping watch outside, sentinels in the moonlight.