The Magic Cottage (47 page)

She reached down for Midge and hauled her up, ducking as objects and bats flew over her head, then turned to help me; but I was already lurching to my feet.

The room was exploding around us, the middle section of floor completely gone, many of the remaining floorboards angled upwards and waving like stiffened streamers; earth and mud were spewing from the opening, spraying the domed ceiling with their dirt. Brickwork was dropping from the walls in huge chunks too massive to be borne by the wind. Those Synergists who hadn’t escaped – those not sprawled on the heaving floor – were clinging to the walls, unable to tear themselves free.

Val propelled Midge and me towards the doorway, as resolute and indomitable as ever, even though she was plainly scared out of her wits.

The back door still flapped wildly, inviting us to chance our luck, to beat the devil – you’d better be nimble, you’d better be quick.

‘
Through the kitchen!
’ commanded Val without even contemplating the challenge.

We rushed for the stairs as one, slipping on loose boards and carpet at the bend, the three of us tumbling down in a rolling avalanche of arms and legs. We came to an untidy halt near the bottom, and the walls were throbbing on either side of us.

We unravelled ourselves with much grunting and groaning and got going again, the noise from behind becoming even louder. We ran across the kitchen, Midge in the lead, the ceiling light dimming and brightening in quick succession. The floor tiles were all loose, rattling against each other like broken crockery, and it wasn’t easy to keep our feet. Something caught my eye but I kept moving, pushed on from behind by Val. Midge threw open the front door and all three of us cleared the step with a jump, literally bursting from the cottage. We kept moving, racing down the path, flowers and weeds waving in the air on either side as if we were runners in the hundred metres, and we knew something catastrophic was about to happen back there, that the place was going to explode, or collapse, or be swallowed into the earth.

But I skidded to a halt halfway down the path.

Midge and Val were at the gate before they noticed I was missing.

‘
Mike!
’ Midge screamed back at me.

‘
Keep going!
’ I shouted, then turned and ran back to Gramarye.

I could still hear her screaming my name as I plunged inside.

Ending?

So there you have it, that’s the story.

I warned you at the start that you’d have to suspend disbelief, and if you found that difficult, imagine how I felt at the time. Even today I sometimes wonder . . .

I wish I could explain more and neatly tie up any loose ends like the psychiatrist at the end of the
Psycho
movie, when he gave us lot sitting out there in the dark (as well as his fellow actors, who were probably equally puzzled) reasons for Norman Bates’ odd behaviour; but he was only dealing with human complexities: this is something else. This is Magic. Explanations can’t be so pat.

What I have learned, by the way, is that there’s no such thing as Good Magic or Bad Magic, White or Black. There’s only Magic. It’s how it’s used, or by whom, that matters. It comes under our direction –
if
we have the power.

All along I’d assumed Midge was the one, and it turned out to be me. That was something of a shock – although once discovered, it was fairly easily and rapidly accepted, as you’ll have noticed. Like riding a bike – once you
knew
you could do it, you
did
it. But it just goes to show how little we really know about ourselves, what lies hidden away, probably never to be used. It shows, too, how little we know of the rules that govern such things – like there are no rules anyway.

Midge had been important in all this: she’d been used to bring me to Gramarye; at least, some spark in her own subconscious had guided her to guide me there. She was special – but then I’d always known that – a chosen one in the Grand Design of things. Whose Grand Design? The Grand Designer’s, of course, whoever He, She or It, might be.

Mycroft was in the tradition of those old-fashioned villains who want to rule the world: he desired Gramarye’s power for his own ends – and I’ve no idea what those ends ultimately were. He vanished inside the cottage along with those followers who hadn’t managed to escape before the walls came tumbling down, and that included Hub Kinsella (hard to shed a tear for
him
). Gramarye didn’t explode or merely collapse, incidentally. Oh no. It
imploded
, went back into itself. Became nothing but smouldering rubble, the channel beneath it sealed, I hope for ever.

That was kind of difficult to explain to the police and fire services when they were later sent out to investigate.
We
owned up, told them we had no idea what had hit the place.
They
, eventually, figured a pocket of natural gas had been trapped beneath the cottage, expanding for some time and finally blasting off the way a pressure cooker with a faulty lid might. That didn’t make a lot of sense to me – and probably didn’t to them either – but you know how the authorities like to pigeon-hole things, keep them nice and tidy, neat and reasonable. Fortunately for us, Gillie Slade came forward (yeah, she was one of the lucky who’d been both nimble
and
quick) while enquiries were going on and dispelled any notions that something funny might have been happening between us and the Synergists. What was left of the Synergists, in fact, disbanded soon after, and scattered for parts unknown – and I hoped they’d stay there.

So why didn’t we tell the truth about what had happened?

Would you have? D’you think anyone in their right mind would have believed us? Damn right they wouldn’t.

We three stuck to a story of complete ignorance. The Synergists had paid us a social visit and while they were there, disaster had struck. What more could we say?

Midge and I are back in the city once again, with Val keeping a motherly eye on us both. I have to admit, I’ve grown pretty fond of Big Val. After some wrangling with the insurance company – just what
does
constitute an Act of God? – we received a handsome cheque to compensate for loss of the cottage, which enabled us to set up house (or in our case, apartment) again. Things are going pretty well for us now: I finished my rock musical – the final version included lots of wizards, pixies and Magic – and Midge designed some quite breathtakingly beautiful sets (I think they had a lot to do with the show’s overall success). It’s playing up in Manchester at the moment, and Bob’s looking for a suitable venue in London so that we can bring it down. I’ve written a couple of chart-reaching numbers (mainly thanks to the big names who recorded them) and am about to embark on my second kiddies’ storybook which Midge will illustrate. And her? She just goes from strength to strength, with more work than she can handle (although she’s reached the stage where she can really pick and choose), and Val’s even arranged a couple of one-woman art exhibitions for her. She’s had Sunday Colour Supp features on herself and her work, and even appeared on Breakfast TV. She’s as pretty as ever and modest with it, too. And I love her more than ever (the good thing is, it’s mutual).

So far, I guess you could say, we’re living happy ever after.

Me and Magic? Well, whatever power I derived from Gramarye isn’t with me now. Occasionally I’ll do something that will amaze both of us, but the ability comes in rare flashes. Very rare. I’m still struggling with the three-card trick.

I suppose I need to be somewhere near the power supply, the source itself, wherever it channels up into the atmosphere, but I’m not too bothered. Out of curiosity, Midge and I took a trip back to the New Forest recently, and all that was left of Gramarye was a perfectly round patch of black earth on top of the embankment where the round room once stood. It’s weird and it made us smile. We drove on to the local pub where the landlord told us that the council has to keep a close watch on the site: apparently those so-called magic mushrooms, the kind that induce hallucinations, used to grow there in abundance, making the area a great focal point for travelling hippies. The council had the ground sprayed, churned over, impregnated with all sorts of poisons, but it took a long time for those mushrooms to stop growing.

Oh yeah. You might be wondering why I dashed back inside the cottage just before it fell apart that night. Remember I said something had caught my eye when we ran like hell through the kitchen? Well, I’d glimpsed that little furry bundle we’d left for dead on the kitchen table stirring, Rumbo poking his head in the air and looking around wondering what all the racket was about.

What I’d seen hadn’t registered until I was halfway down that path, and that’s why I turned and ran back inside.

I managed to scoop him up and get out moments before Gramarye disintegrated.

I think he appreciated the gesture, or maybe he was happy to be alive again, because he licked my face and hands like a puppy dog. He’d never again be the handsome squirrel he once was – those scars on his neck and throat might eventually fade, but fur would never grow over them – but I don’t think he gave a hoot about that.

I let him go once we were on the other side of the gate and, after Midge had made a huge fuss of him, he scampered off into the darkness, jaunty as ever, heading for the forest and whatever secret sweetheart he kept in there. That was the last we saw of Rumbo.

So, it’s all behind us now, and life’s pretty good for Midge and me.

And yet . . . and yet we both get kind of restless now and then. Midge ringed an ad in the newspaper today and left it on the breakfast table for me to see. The ad was in the Properties for Sale section. A small but pretty house, situated in a secluded spot. Somewhere up in the Cotswolds.

Maybe I’ll give the agent a call tomorrow.

Maybe.

Magic has power to experience and fathom things which are inaccessible to human reason. For magic is a great secret wisdom, just as reason is a great public folly.

Paracelsus

The question of magick is a question of discovering and employing hitherto unknown forces in Nature.

Crowley

Magic is believing what you shouldn’t – and enjoying the believing.

Stringer

The Magic Cottage

James Herbert
is not just Britain’s number one bestselling writer of chiller fiction, a position he has held ever since publication of his first novel, but is also one of our greatest popular novelists, whose books are sold in thirty-three foreign languages, including Russian and Chinese. Widely imitated and hugely influential, his twenty-three novels have sold more than forty-eight million copies worldwide.

Also by James Herbert

The Rats

The Fog

The Survivor

Fluke

The Spear

The Dark

Lair

The Jonah

Shrine

Domain

Moon

Sepulchre

Haunted

Creed

Portent

The Ghosts of Sleath

’48

Others

Once

Nobody True

The Secret of Crickley Hall

Graphic Novels

The City

(Illustrated by Ian Miller)

Non-fiction

By Horror Haunted

(Edited by Stephen Jones)

James Herbert’s Dark Places

(Photographs by Paul Berkshire)

Devil in the Dark

(Biography by Craig Cabell)

First published in Great Britain 1986 by Hodder & Stoughton

Published in paperback 1999 by Pan Books