The Magic Cottage

BAD TRIP

I ALMOST COLLAPSED with relief when Midge's agent walked through the door.

" Jesus fucking Christ, Val, you nearly scared us shitless!" I thumped my fist on the floor in exasperation.

She was genuinely surprised. "Good Lord, why? I went down to investigate the cause of all the fuss our gibbering friend was making."

She reached for the switch by the door and turned on the overhead light. Walls immediately sprang back into place, shadows instantly evaporated. Val strode purposefully into the room, voluminous flannel nightgown, worn with total disregard to the season, billowing out behind her. Never had she looked so formidable. Nor so reassuring.

"There's nothing downstairs, Bob, nothing at all," she said, bearing down on us. "Now just what is all this nonsense about?"

I drew my robe around me, feeling somewhat under-dressed, and hauled myself to my feet. We looked at Bob together and I was happy to notice a glimmer of color returning to his flesh. He didn't look healthy, though, he didn't look healthy at all.

"Help me with him," I said to Val, and we both grasped his arms and pulled him up. There was no resistance left in Bob, and little life either, and we all but carried him over to the sofabed.

"He was crawling across the room when I got out here," Val explained as we gently lowered his body, "screaming blue murder and pointing at the stairs. I thought perhaps you'd had burglars, so I rushed down there immediately."

I always knew she had balls, but I never suspected how much.

"Empty, of course, no sign of anyone in the kitchen. I checked the door and windows, but there were no signs of (heir being forced. I think dear Bob must have woken from an extremely bad nightmare."

Kiwi was still sobbing, but she managed to say, "No, no. He was awake. He needed a drink of water. He went downstairs."

I was still shaken enough not to take too much notice of her long thighs exposed beneath her short and flimsy nightie.

"Did you turn on the light in the kitchen?" I asked Val.

"No, it was already on. All right, so he did find his way down there, but I can't imagine what sparked off all this hoo-ha."

Midge and I helped Kiwi sit on the edge of the sofabed; Bob lay on his back staring at the ceiling and murmuring to himself.

I lifted Kiwi's chin with a crooked finger so that I could look at her face. "What did Bob take tonight? I know he was on cannabis most of the evening, but he took something stronger when we all turned in, didn't he?"

I felt Midge's eyes on me and risked a glance at her. I shook my head slightly, an apology as much as anything else.

"Come on, Kiwi, we need to know," I persisted.

"He . . . he took some Chinese."

I closed my eyes and silently swore. Smack. Heroin. Cheap brown powder that was mixed with all kinds of impurities, often strychnine and other toxics. The stupid bloody idiot!

"Not . . . not much," she added quickly. "He only sniffed a little bit. He wanted me to join him, but the stuff makes me sick. It's not good for my sinuses."

Bob began to moan aloud and writhe on the bed. Then he sat bolt upright and slowly looked around the room. Still pallid, but his skin no longer having that eerie albescence, he shook less spasmodically than before, the movement becoming a steady tremble.

"This . . . pi—place . . ." he stammered.

It was Midge who came forward and put a gentle hand by the side of his neck.

"Bob, there's nothing here to harm you," she told him, her voice low and as gentle as her touch.

It took a while for his eyes to focus solely on her, and when they did his chest slumped as though he were suddenly exhausted. When he spoke, his words were tearful: "This fucking place . . . I've got to get out of here!"

"Hush, now," she said, and I saw her hand become reassuringly firmer against him. "There's nothing here to be afraid of.'"

For myself, I was angry at him, almost mad enough to pop him. He'd had no right to bring that stuff into our home, no right at all, especially when he knew Midge's feelings against all drugs, hard or soft. It took a lot of restraint not to choke him.

"Snap out of it, Bob," I told him severely. "You've snorted some bad shit, that's the strength of it." But I remembered the menace that I, myself, had experienced.

He seemed more in control of himself, and I think Midge's soothings had much to do with that. She continued talking to him, her tones moderated, her hand always working softly on the stiffened muscles of his neck and shoulder.

When he spoke again, the hysteria was held in check— only just, though. "There was something down there in the kitchen—"

"There's no one else in the cottage," I said.

"Not someone, something! Waiting for me in the dark, sitting there . . . ! Jesus, the stink! I can smell it now. Can't you? There's something terrible here!" His voice was rising in pitch once more.

"No, Bob," Midge replied calmly. "Gramarye is a good place, there's nothing bad here."

"You're wrong. Something's . . . something's . . ." His mouth flapped open; he couldn't find the words.

Kiwi was sobbing aloud again and Bob turned to her, then to me, almost desperately. "Mike, I'm not staying, I'm not staying here—"

"Take it easy," I said. "You're on a bad trip. It'll pass, just calm down."

"No, no way . . . this room . . . the walls . . ."

I knew what he meant. Hadn't I been sure the walls were moving closer, that mold was forming on them in the shadows? Or had his hallucination, his hysteria, insinuated itself into my own mind? Not much was certain to me any more inside the cottage.

"You can't leave in the middle of the night," I told him with a mildness I hardly felt. "For one thing, you can't drive in your present state, and for another, you need to calm down and sleep this off."

"Sleep? You're fucking crazy if you think I'm gonna sleep in this place!" He started looking around again, this time wildly.

"It's nearly three in the morning,"' put in Val, who hovered over us all, "much too late for traveling. We'll sit with you until it's light, then if you still want to, you can leave."

Every one of us jumped back when Bob screamed.

"Now! I've gotta get out now!"

He threshed around on the bed like a spoiled kid who couldn't get his own way. I grabbed him and pulled him back as he tried to leave the bed, pinning him there by his shoulders and needing all my strength to do so. I was alarmed to see spittle glistening the sides of his mouth.

"Leave him be!" Kiwi shouted, and began tugging at my arm. "I'll drive, I'll take him home!"

"He's in no condition—"

"I think it would be for the best, Mike."

I looked over my shoulder at Midge in surprise. "It could be dangerous for both of them with Bob in this state."

"He'll be better once he's away from here," she answered.

"We can't be sure of that."

"It's more dangerous for him to stay."

Bewildered, I turned my attention back to Bob; now tears were running from his face onto the pillow beneath him.

"She might be right," said Val. "I should let him go, Mike."

Uncertain, I relaxed my grip, but I didn't release him. "Bob, listen to me now." I held his jaw to make him look lit me. "You can get dressed and we'll take you down to your car. Kiwi will drive, okay? Can you understand me?"

" 'Course I can fucking understand you. Just let me up. Oh Christ, I've . . ." Again he couldn't finish the sentence.

I let go of him and rose from the sofabed. He sat and Kiwi pushed by me to throw her arms around his shoulders.

"Help him get dressed," I told her. "We'll wait downstairs."

The three of us stayed long enough to see that Bob was more in control of himself, and although his movements were erratic and he shivered as if chilled, he gave the appearance of having come to his senses a little more. But we could tell he was still very frightened.

"I'll make some coffee," said Midge quietly, and she and Val went to the stairs. I took time out to return to our bedroom and don jeans and sneakers, keeping the robe wrapped around me. I looked in on Bob again before going downstairs and found Kiwi already dressed, throwing spare clothes and bathroom things into their overnight bag, while Bob slowly did up the buttons of his shirt, his gaze fearfully roaming the room, checking that the walls weren't on the move again.

I was sorry for him and I was angry at him. And, of course, I was worried for him. But also, I was becoming very afraid for Midge and myself.

Kiwi helped Bob on with his jacket while I watched, ready to leap in and restrain him should his panic bubble over again: I could tell the hysteria was just below the surface, barely held in check.

"Bob," I said, "I'd feel better if you didn't leave . . ."

He looked at me as if I were the one in need of treatment, the wildness of his expression contrary to the usual appearance of someone on heroin: there was a kind of dreaminess there sure enough, but it was of the nightmare variety.

He suddenly gripped both my arms, his words forced and slurred. "What is . . . this place?"

And that was all he said.

He let go of me just as abruptly and grabbed Kiwi, pulling her toward the door. He stopped before the hallway, though, and his girlfriend had to support his weight as he swayed there. He kept shaking his head, and for a moment I thought he was going to faint.

"He doesn't want to go down there again," Kiwi called back to me. "Let us out this way, Mike, please hurry."

I pushed past them and unbolted the door in the hallway above the stairs. They were through before I could stop them.

"Hey, it's dark out there. Let me go first—those steps are dangerous." The only reply I got was from an owl somewhere off in the woods.

They were already on the top step, Kiwi struggling with one of Bob's arms around her shoulders, using her free hand on the wall to guide herself, the other carrying the overnight bag. They tottered dangerously and I hurried after them before they could tumble.

Taking Bob from her, I slipped his arm around my neck, gripping his wrist tightly and sliding my other arm about his waist. We began an awkward descent and I was glad I'd cleared most of the moss from the steps. Even so, the stone felt slippery beneath me.

When my fingers brushed against the brickwork of the cottage itself, it too felt silky damp.

Twice my feet slid on the smooth steps, but both times I managed to keep upright, pushing Bob against the wall to steady ourselves. I breathed a sigh of relief when we made it into the garden.

The front door opened as we passed, throwing out some useful light, and Val appeared on the other side of Bob; she helped me guide him along the path, Kiwi running ahead to open the car. At the gate, I turned briefly and looked back at the cottage.

The black silhouette of Midge was in the doorway, so perfectly still that she could have been part of Gramarye's structure. It was a strange, fleeting moment.

We bundled our burden into the car, Kiwi quickly climbing into the driver's seat, and now Bob had his eyes closed. I tucked in his legs and before I straightened, my head close to his, he opened his eyes again and stared directly into mine. I still shudder when I remember that look (even (hough worse and more memorable events were to follow), because I saw not just his fear, but an intense and wretched despair within him. Looking into those eyes was like peering into a deep, shadowed well, at the bottom of which something indefinable in the darkness moved, writhed, reached upward in a gesture of pleading. The drugs he had taken that night had closed certain doors in his mind—which is their true effectiveness—but that had left exposed a direct passage toward other, more inward senses. Whatever he had faced, whatever he had imagined he'd seen downstairs in Gramarye's kitchen, had been drawn from his own darker thoughts.

I pushed myself away and quickly closed the passenger door, the interior light automatically switching off to hide his gaze.

I heard Val advising Kiwi to "drive very carefully," and then the car pulled off the grass shoulder and quickly gathered speed.

I wasn't sorry to see those red taillights disappear around the bend in the road.