The Magic Cottage

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.

I looked from face to face and they impassively returned my gaze. Even Gillie, who was among them, displayed no feelings, and I expected at least a leer from my old chum Kinsella but he, too, was stony cold.

"Some—" My voice cracked and I had to start again. "Something we can do for you, Mycroft?"

I didn't think that was bad under the circumstances, but it didn't seem to cheer up anyone, least of all myself.

"Not any more," he replied, and the idea that we were no longer of any use to him chilled me further. He pointed his cane at Midge. "She could have helped me, but chose not to. For that, I blame you." The cane singled me out.

I shook my head in protest. "We still don't know what's going on. We don't want to fight you, Mycroft, we don't mean to get in the way of your Grand Plan, whatever the hell it is. So how about just leaving us out of this?"

"Unfortunately it's too late for that. You've become an integral part of Gramarye."

"That's crazy. You want the place? So take it. Make me a reasonable offer. I don't give a shit." And I meant it; I really didn't.

"No!"

That was Midge crying out as she sprang away from me.

"Don't you know why he wants Gramarye, why Flora fought so hard to keep it from him?" she said to me. "He told us back there in the Temple, don't you remember?"

Again I shook my head, this time blankly.

"Gramarye, or at least the ground it stands on, is a channel for the power he uses, a supply source of some kind. Don't you see that? Whoever occupies this cottage is the guardian of that power. Like Flora, like the person who lived here before her, and before even her. The line is probably endless."

A month before—no, a week before—I'd have laughed at such a suggestion; now I wasn't so sure. It was hard to swallow, but then so was everything else that had happened there. And hadn't I had my own "insights" about the place recently?

Mycroft seemed amused. "Finally you're beginning to understand. You can feel the magic that gives life to this earth, makes air so that we may breathe, creates springs that become rivers so that we may drink, provides food to sustain us. Could you really imagine that ail we live among is one vast accident, that Nature has no design, no driving force? Don't you see there are sources contained within this planet that can never be understood? Sources sought after only by the enlightened through the centuries? Are you foolish enough to think all those legends of old, stories of wizards, of witches, of magic kingdoms, are no more than children's fairy tales?" He laughed aloud, Karloff at his finest, and there was appreciative murmuring from his henchmen around the room.

"That foolish hag," Mycroft went on, really getting his teeth into the part, "prevented me from striding the chasm, from absorbing its potency into my being, stopped me from using the ethereal vitality that leaks from this point in the earth's crust. But she was old and feeble, and soon cast aside."

I started to giggle then. I couldn't help it. Maybe it was the onset of hysteria, a combination of exhaustion and fear, but I couldn't help thinking that the situation had got out of hand. God knows why, but I kept wondering what good old down-to-earth Bob's reaction to Mycroft's diatribe would have been. Christ, he'd have been high for a week! The more I thought of that, the more I laughed. I fell back, one arm resting against the sofa for support.

But Mycroft didn't like me laughing. He didn't like it one bit. He pointed the cane in my direction again and I suddenly realized he was using it as a wand. Mycroft the Wizard and his Magic fucking Wand! Tears rolled from the corners of my eyes I was laughing so much.

Midge stared at me as though I'd finally flipped (I probably had at that point). I wanted her to see the joke but I was guffawing so much I couldn't speak. Bob's face, listening to the bullshit Mycroft had just come out with. Too much, too much!

The Synergists gathered around the room were glaring at me. Christ, they'd never see the joke!

I buried my face into the soft material of the sofa, my shoulders jerking with the effort of laughing, wanting to ask Mycroft where he kept his long pointed hat and black kaftan, but too choked up to manage the words. I felt the sofa begin to undulate beneath me. Still giggling, I raised my hand in surprise. My outstretched arm was waving up and down with the material's motion.

A pinpoint in the surface frayed, became a hole. Something black wriggled through. Another multilegged creature followed, popping through and scurrying off. Another and another, becoming a stream of black-shelled bugs.

More holes appeared. More bugs crawled out. More holes. More bugs.

I leapt away and watched in horror as hundreds more— thousands more—gnawed their way through the material, the sofa soon turning into a seething mass of shiny black fermentation. They broke off in well-ordered lines, hurrying down the side of the sofa to drop onto the floor and advance toward my outstretched leg.

Then I remembered that ultimately Bob hadn't been so cheerful in this room (his wit had been scared out of him) and my own manic humor drained away. I pulled in my foot as the first bug climbed aboard.

"Stop it, stop it!'

Midge was on her feet screaming at Mycroft. He merely smiled back at her.

"You can't use Gramarye this way! It's meant for good, not for your perversions!" Her eyes were blazing, her face screwed up in anger.

"The power contained within this place can be controlled in any way its receiver chooses," Mycroft replied. "The old woman could no longer direct its force, she was too weak, made too infirm by her years."

"You killed her!"

Now he grinned, apparently keen on the idea. "Yes, yes, I believe I did. I tempted her with the other side, you see, what you and your like might call the dark side of Magic. Her ending was very sudden—" he seemed surprised, then snapped his fingers "—like that\ One moment alive, the next, dead. She couldn't cope with the revelation, you see, she couldn't accept the blackness inside her own soul. How else could I have revealed such darkness to her if it didn't lurk within herself. Strange how her body corrupted so fast, as if that badness inside swept through her physical being, shriveled her up like an old prune." He chuckled at that, unconcerned at the disgust on Midge's face.

The light faded and rose as though somebody had just been electrocuted next door, and Mycroft's poise momentarily wavered. He peered around at the walls, the ceiling, the floor. Then his grin returned.

"Can you feel the surge of kinetic force?" he asked his followers. "Be receptive, blend your thoughts and absorb its strength. Fill yourself with its vitality!"

Most of them closed their eyes, faces strained in concentration. I saw Gillie, standing close to the wall, sway and almost fall backward. Another woman on the other side of the room moaned aloud. Kinsella continued to watch Midge and me.

Strangely, such was the power of suggestion as Mycroft encouraged the Synergists further, that I also felt a tingling starting in my own spread fingers. The sensation emanated from the floor itself, passing up into my arms and across my shoulders and chest. I suddenly remembered the bugs that had been set to crawl up my leg, yet when I checked, they'd gone, disappeared completely. The sofa contained nothing more than a couple of cushions. The bugs had been another of Mycroft's illusory games.

"I can stop this!" shouted Midge. "That's why I'm here, why I was chosen!"

"Ah yes, you," said the Magician slyly. He pointed the cane and Midge toppled backward. She didn't go down though. She regained her balance and glowered at Mycroft, shoulders bunched forward and fists clenched.

"I can!" she yelled, and I loved her for her defiance. I scrambled to my feet.

She stood with her legs apart, rooting herself to the carpet, and slowly raised her hands to her face, unwinding her fingers and bringing them together almost in a praying gesture. Then she twisted her wrists so that her fingers were leveled at Mycroft, and his expression turned anxious. That, at least, was heartening.

Midge was shivering and it looked as if every muscle in her body was tensed, every ounce of strength she possessed directed at Mycroft. I wanted to cry out, to goad her on. She could do it, I knew she could do it! But my cry was only a whisper.

"Zap the fucker, Midge."

Her teeth were gritted so tight that her face had become a grimacing mask, and her figure was taut, her body like a divining rod into which energy coursed.

"You can do it, Midge!" I called out, still in a strained whisper.

And I was certain she could. She was Flora Chaldean's successor, the natural heir to those weird powers whose source was Gramarye and the ground the cottage stood upon. Everything that had happened over these last few months had been directing her toward this critical point. Whatever governs these mystical laws of sorcery and all that entailed had decided she was the one to carry on old Flora's good work, she was the guardian, the keeper of the power, the one who would prevent it from being perverted. In a funny way, I felt proud (although I could have done without the trauma).

"Get the bastard, Midge!"

Her arms were fully extended, palms and fingers flat together. It was as if she were aiming an invisible gun at Mycroft's head and I reveled in his growing discomfort. The tension constricted my throat and I could cheer her on no more. Instead my fists trembled in the air before me. Now she had him, now she'd put an end to his lousy bloody tricks! Her arms were ramrod straight and I could almost see the energy pouring through.

Mycroft's eyes had widened so that the pupils were surrounded by white.

Kinsella was trying to move in and I got ready to tackle him. But he'd stopped dead, unable to move.

Mounting pressure was drumming in my ears.

Midge's fingers opened.

She exhaled squealing air.

And nothing happened.

"Shit!" I shouted, and stamped the floor.

Mycroft was perplexed. Then very happy. He raised his cane and suddenly Midge's feet left the carpet. She floated upward.

Her body tilted and she screamed my name. She rose, four feet, five feet, rigid as a board and becoming horizontal. She put her arms over her face as the ceiling came closer, and I could only look on in shock, unable to do a thing.

Her body was only inches from the ceiling when he laughed and let her go. She plummeted down and I moved fast to get underneath her, catching her in my arms, both of us crashing to the floor.

We lay there battered and gasping and all I could hear was Mycroft's laughter—his cackle. Kinsella and the others were also amused. Except for Gillie: she'd fainted.

We were finished. He'd kill us and probably make it look like a lover's tiff gone wrong. Or maybe the conclusion would be that someone had broken in, burglars on the make, and had launched a frenzied attack on us when they'd been discovered (just look at the state of the place). He'd find a reasonably rational way, of that I was sure, but why should I worry what that would be? That was his problem.

I raised myself on one elbow, ready for the worst, but determined to make a match of it.

When the doorbell downstairs clanged.