The Magic Cottage

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 feel the breeze. And there was someone inside the cottage, and I'm sure I know who it was—"

I expected bewilderment, incomprehension. I expected concern, maybe even alarm for my state of mind. What I didn't expect was her fury.

"Just what the hell did you and Bob get up to last night? You promised me, Mike, you promised yourself! No more of that stuff! No more junk!" Tears came with her anger.

"No, nothing like that, Midge! I promise you, we drank, that was all. You know I wouldn't—"

"Liar!"

I almost dropped the glass. She had shrieked the accusation and her eyes were blazing through a moist, glittering screen.

"We only drank—"

"They warned you, the doctors warned you last time!

They told you how lucky you'd been to survive! God Almighty, Mike, couldn't you learn from that? The whole point of us coming here was to move away from that crowd, that scene. One night on your own . . ."

"It wasn't like that. What's got into you?"

"Into me? You're the one who's freaking-out, who's seeing perfectly ordinary pictures move! What did you take last night? Coke again? Smack? Don't you remember how I hated seeing you on even the soft stuff years ago? Doesn't it mean anything to you?"

Right then, of course, I didn't realize that her vehemence was more of a defense against something she didn't want to acknowledge herself, rather than anger directed at me. It was only later that I found out Midge had begun to understand a lot sooner than me, but she hadn't wanted the unreality questioned, hadn't wanted logic to destroy what was growing inside her and reawakening inside Gramarye. For that moment, though, neither of us understood anything that was going on.

"Midge, you can ask Bob. I've invited him down this weekend—"

"Oh, terrific! He's just the person I want to see here!"

"You're being unreasonable. Why don't you hear me out first?"

"Listen to you describe your hallucinations? You think I'd enjoy that?"

"The animals here, the bird with the broken wing, the way those flowers we thought were dying in the garden picked up—none of it's natural."

"How would you know? What do you know about anything that's beyond city walls, anything that's beyond the gutter?"

I stared at her aghast and she avoided my eyes.

Midge was kneeling before me and her chest was rising in exaggerated movement as though her anger could barely be contained. She gained control, then said in a low, almost resentful voice, "I didn't mean that. I'm sorry—"

She broke off and pushed herself away, her tears finally breaking through to join with the rain-dampness already on her cheeks. She ran from me, slamming the bedroom door behind her. I could hear her muffled sobs.

I sat there stunned. Confused, too. Totally. What the hell had happened? To me. To her. What the hell had happened?

I slugged back the rest of the brandy, nearly choking on its raw heat, then put the glass on the floor. I wiped my eyes and cheeks with my hands and wasn't sure which was damper, face or palms. Beginning to rise, knowing I couldn't let matters rest there, couldn't leave Midge in such mistaken misery, I was stopped by a remote scrabbling sound. It came from behind the sofa.

I stood, afraid because I was still disorientated and vulnerable; there wasn't much more I could take that afternoon. The noise persisted. Stepping to the end of the sofa, I peered into the shadowy abyss between the back of the chair and the curved wall. And was relieved to discover what was hidden down there.

I pulled the sofa away from the wall, exposing the tiny, shivering figure of Rumbo, his tail fluffed up, his paws digging at the carpet in nervous agitation.

With a quick, startled look at me, he shot from his hiding place, across the room and out through the door that was still open, quickly vanishing into the foliage beyond.

I wondered why I had the feeling a sinking ship had just been deserted.