The Magic Cottage

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 (he 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 swiveled 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 around 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.