The Magic Cottage (27 page)

The light came on and it was a relief to find the room unoccupied. I padded past the table into the kitchen proper, going straight to the fridge (the same switch operated the lights in both sections of the kitchen) and taking out a milk carton. A tall glass had been left to dry on the drainer and I filled it to the brim with milk, drinking half standing there at the sink, then filling it again. Delving back into the fridge, I found some ham, and it was as I was spreading butter on a slice of bread that I got the curious prickling feeling of not being quite alone. I looked up and around: the window over the sink only showed me a pale reflection of myself. From where I stood at the working surface I couldn’t see the table and chairs next door. But my mind could see someone sitting there.

I turned slowly so that I faced the opening. I didn’t want to look, not really. As a matter of fact, I wanted to bang on the ceiling with the broom handle and get Midge down there fast, just for company, you understand. Naturally I couldn’t do that, and naturally I had to poke my head through the doorway, unless I was prepared to wait there till morning. I moved cautiously and steadily towards the doorway, like a Hitchcock camera performing one of those famous tracking manoeuvres, the angle beyond the opening changing as I approached, revealing more and more the closer I got. The corner of the table, a shopping-list notepad lying there, a pepperpot, the edge of a chair . . .

My own slow, deliberate movement was giving me the creeps, but the feeling that someone was sitting there waiting for me to peer around the corner of the doorway, waiting there and grinning, mouldy tea untouched, was just about overwhelming.

So I took the last couple of feet at a rush.

She wasn’t there. Old Flora was lying up at the village cemetery, not sitting at the kitchen table in Gramarye. Thank God.

I leaned against the side of the doorway and steadied my breathing. She wasn’t there, but oh, there was an atmosphere in that room. Maybe my imagination was running loose again, but I was sure I could sense a presence, something in the air that was almost tangible. There was an old person’s smell about the room, you know the kind I mean? Sort of sweet and musty and ancient at the same time. I once read somewhere that certain parapsychologists claim ghosts are nothing more than the lingering dregs of a dead person’s aura, and now I thought that theory could easily apply here inside the cottage, Flora Chaldean’s psychic residue permeating the surroundings, her seeping vitality impregnating the furniture, the walls themselves. And that’s what it felt like: she was gone, but a part of her personality remained locked inside Gramarye, perhaps in time to fade to nothing.

I shuddered at the idea, but at least it precluded any romantic notions of ghosts and hauntings.

I went back to the worktop and swiftly finished making the sandwich, then took it and the glass of milk through to the stairway, unable to stop myself from glancing at the table as I passed. I felt I could reach out and touch her, so strong was the eidetic image. It took some effort to switch off the light down there.

I went up the stairs faster than I’d come down, leaving on the hall light when I went into the round room. Despite my nervousness, though, I didn’t turn on the light in there, and there was a simple reason for that: so as not to disturb my sleeping partner, I was going to eat my snack outside the bedroom, but I didn’t want to look at that picture again, not in full light, just in case those vibrant colours worked their peculiar tricks again. Light from the hallway and moonlight flooding through the windows was good enough for me to see comfortably by, yet subdued enough not to make things
too
clear. I slumped onto the sofa and filled my mouth with ham and bread, my naked knees projecting whitely before me like the tops of two thin skulls, the milk glass held on one covered thigh.

Sitting there I contemplated Mycroft’s assurance that he could help Midge contact her dead parents and the fact that she was falling for it, really believing this creep was some kind of mystic, able to converse with souls of the since-departed (while I might have gone along with the possibility of life after death, I just couldn’t fall for the crazy notion of having a direct line to this other stratum – that was taking ‘long distance’ a bit too far). Yet my heart bled for Midge, because part of her still grieved so much for her parents. In a way, I think she was searching for her own peace of mind. Let’s face it, for most of us the tragedy of death is its utter finality – ‘now you see me, now you don’t’ – and that hardship, of course, is with those left to mourn. One moment Midge had a family, the next she was quite alone. Certainly there was a little time between losing both, but not enough to break up the trauma.

Her mother, then in her mid-fifties, had suffered from Parkinson’s Disease for a number of years, Midge and her father having caringly nursed her through each degenerative stage. Drugs such as levodopa unfortunately had severe side effects for her, so much so that they could barely be tolerated; according to Midge, her mother’s distress had been intense over long periods at a time. Yet the mother worried constantly about the well-being of her husband and daughter, deeply concerned that she was proving such a burden to them both, spoiling – or impeding – their lives, particularly that of her young daughter who was prevented from spending more time fully developing her own remarkable artistic talent. But Midge and her father were prepared to make any sacrifice to keep her as comfortable as possible, and between them they coped pretty well.

Until Midge’s father was fatally injured in a car crash.

His skull had been cracked wide open, yet it took five torturous days for him to die. And in his very few coherent moments during that time, his concern had been only for Midge and her mother.

His death, it seemed, had broken down his wife’s remaining reserves of strength, and with them the spirit that had helped her resist the worst of the disease. So rapid was her deterioration over the next couple of days that she was unable to attend the funeral. When Midge returned alone to the house after the ceremony, she had found her mother out of her sickbed and slumped, fully clothed, in an armchair, a framed photograph of her late husband cradled in her lap. An empty pill-bottle lay at her feet together with a spilled glass of water. A transparent plastic bag, tightened around her neck by a thick rubber band, covered her head.

She’d left a note, begging her daughter’s forgiveness and pleading for her to understand. Life had finally become too hard to suffer any longer, the loss of her dear husband, Midge’s father, compounding the physical and mental torment; and by remaining alive she merely served to mar her daughter’s young life, keeping her tied, stealing her freedom. Her regret was that neither parent would now witness the artistic success their beloved daughter was bound to find, but at least she, herself, would not hinder that talent.

It was easy to appreciate why Midge was so susceptible to Mycroft and his phony promises.

Her drawing board loomed in the semidarkness, surface angled, the painting held flat against it. Without looking, I knew the moonlight was illuminating the picture in its own eerie fashion, creating a different texture, maybe yet another spooky dimension. I wasn’t curious enough to take a peek.

Black shapes skittered across the floor to give me a start, but I quickly realized that several of our night friends upstairs were leaving their roost, their winged bodies caught in the moon’s glare, their shadows cast into the room. The sandwich consumed, I rose from the sofa, taking the drink with me, and wandered over to one of the tall windows, skirting the drawing board and studiously avoiding looking down at the painting.

The landscape outside was washed in that special brightness that had nothing to do with warmth, but a lot to do with ice and bleakness. So colourless was the grass that the expanse appeared frosty, and so deep were the shadows beneath individual bushes and trees that they were like black voids. The forest top wore an undulating silver-grey cover, an impenetrable layer over catacombed darkness.

I sipped milk, and liquid cold soaked into me. My eyes reluctantly scanned the dark boundary of woodland, looking for something I didn’t want to find. Discerning a lurking figure would have been impossible anyway, so concealing were the shadows, but that didn’t stop me searching, and the knowledge didn’t even prevent a sigh of relief when I found nothing.

That relief was premature, though. Because my attention was drawn to something standing midway between the forest and the cottage. Something I didn’t remember having been there before.

It was so still it could have been nothing more than a tall bush. But a pallid blob at the top of the motionless shape that could only have been a face said otherwise.

And another smaller whitish shape that now slowly rose up could only have been a hand.

And that hand beckoned me.

Nobody There

I was scared. No, I was bloody terrified. But I’d also had enough aggravation for one day. I was hurt that I’d been accused of doping, confused by the afternoon’s hallucination, and sick of being intimidated by this mystery onlooker who didn’t have the nerve to knock on the door and properly introduce him- or herself. All that combined into anger inside me, which rapidly began to boil over.

I think dropping the glass of milk on my toes precipitated the final eruption.

With a shout of rage, I ran for the door, hopping the first few steps because of the pain. Shooting back the bolts with as much noise as I could make (Midge managed to sleep through all this), I yanked open the door, and then I was out there in the night, racing back around the cottage to the side where the figure waited, slipping on grass still wet and mushy from the day’s rain, robe flying open so that air rushed in at my exposed body.

I didn’t care, though; enough was enough. I was going to sort out this bloody watcher in the woods once and for all. Forget about discarnate beings and women in black and shrouded apparitions and something wicked this way comes and psycho and omen and exorcist and the evil fucking dead – I was going to confront the beast that wasn’t a beast at all but somebody playing silly bloody games at my expense.

Whatever fear may have been in me was easily overwhelmed by a furious indignation.

I pounded across the open stretch, ignoring sharp stones or twigs that painfully stuck to the soles of my feet, enraged sufficiently to leave caution well behind.

But I was running out to nobody.

I made for the precise spot where the figure had loitered, judging the position by the line of the window I’d gazed from and a low clump of bushes to the left. I swivelled my head around without breaking pace, not slowing until I reached the place where I was certain the figure had beckoned from.

He, she – or whatever – couldn’t possibly have darted back into the woods, nor raced to the other side of the cottage. There wouldn’t have been time. But where the hell was it? It couldn’t have disappeared into thin air.

I kept running, perhaps more in an effort to keep up my flagging bravado than anything else, scooting round nearby trees, swiping at bushes to flush out anything hiding there. Something did run out from beneath one clump of foliage, in fact, scaring me half to death, but it was small and scurrying, an animal more frightened than me.

That little shock cooled me down a bit, and I stood there looking left and right, in front and behind, chest heaving as I wheezed in breaths, shoulders slumped and perspiration already becoming cold on my near-naked body.

I drew the robe around me as I sank to the ground. And there, squatting back on my heels, I howled in anguish at the moon.

Company

We were sitting side by side on the bench around the back of the cottage, Bob and I, six-pack between us, the sun beginning to glow red. The evening was warm and bumble bees still droned, not yet ready for bed. Our girls were downstairs, tossing salad, slicing ham and probably making a lot of fuss over what was supposed to be a simple meal.

Bob poured himself another beer, surveying the darkening forest opposite. He shook his head. ‘It’s so fucking rural.’