The Magic Cottage by James Herbert Page A

creatures skulking around. Hell, this is the countryside and full of non-rent-paying lodgers! Birds, mice, spiders—
    But the cottage was empty before.
    No, you just didn’t find anything on that particular day. Now get up there and take a look.
    Dragging over the room’s one and only chair, I placed it beneath the hatch. The noises had died off, but that was no encouragement.
    I didn’t know why I felt so nervous – something to do with ‘fear of the unknown’, I imagined – but my knees were less than firm when I climbed up onto that chair.
    Now my face was only a few inches away from the trapdoor and I listened intently. Nothing there. Huh! No manacled, grey-haired, claw-fingernailed, dressed-in-tatters loony whom old Ma Chaldean had kept locked away for the past half-century because he, she – IT! – was the unfortunate product of family inbreeding. Oh no. No clinking of chains up there, no demented howls, just . . .
    . . . Oh Christ, just that scurrying scratching sound. There it goes again, on the other side of the wood.
    I stretched up a hand that wasn’t very steady. The fingers flattened against the surface. I pushed.
    The trapdoor resisted for about half a second, then lifted. Only an inch, that’s all I opened it. Blackness inside hung on to its secret. I slowly began to straighten my arm and the gap widened like a dark and toothless mouth . . .
    ‘Mike!’
    I nearly toppled from the chair as the trapdoor banged shut (I thought I heard more scurrying noises up there). I hesitated, hand poised to try again, but Midge’s voice called from the stairs once more.
    ‘Mike, I’m back! Where are you? Come on, I’ve got something hot – well, it was hot – for your lunch! I raced back from the village so it wouldn’t get too cold! Mike, can you hear me?’
    ‘Yup!’ I called down.
    I glanced back at the closed hatch and shrugged. I was in no hurry to find out what was up there. Probably only mice in the rafters. Plenty of time to look later. Besides, I’d had hardly any breakfast and I was famished.
    That was my excuse, anyway.
    I jumped off the chair and went down to lunch.



The Grey House

    The ‘hot’ pasties Midge had bought in the village may have been lukewarm by the time we got to eat them, but they were delicious and filling. I wolfed down two to her one, and reached into the bag of apples she’d also brought home.
    ‘I’ll cook a proper meal tonight,’ she said.
    ‘This is great,’ I told her between bites. ‘How was Cantrip?’
    ‘Okay. The people in the shops were very friendly once they discovered where I lived.’
    ‘You told them?’
    ‘They asked me in the greengrocer’s and the baker’s if I were just passing through. I thought they were a bit reserved until I let them know I was going to be a regular customer. Even then they looked suspicious until I told them we’d moved into Gramarye. They really opened up after that.’
    ‘They say anything about old Ma Chaldean?’
    ‘Mike, don’t call her that.’
    I looked towards the ceiling. ‘No offence, Flora. Just my way.’
    ‘They didn’t talk much about her, but I gathered she was something of a local legend; someone who kept very much to herself, though.’
    ‘That’s not surprising living all the way out here.’
    ‘It’s not so far from town.’
    ‘It might have been for an old lady. Y’know, we never did find out what she died of.’
    ‘Old age, I’d imagine,’ Midge replied, and there was an element of regret in her voice. ‘I hope she didn’t suffer alone out here.’
    ‘I doubt it. She’d have called a neighbour or friends on the phone, I’m sure. The social services hereabouts probably kept a close eye on her as well. All the same, life must have been sad for her, living on her own, with no relatives, not seeing many people.’
    Midge twisted in her chair so that she could see out of the open kitchen window. ‘I don’t think so. I don’t think she was ever really lonely in Gramarye.’ Her