[Brenda & Effie 00] - A Treasury of Brenda and Effie

by ed. Paul Magrs

  Nonsense, I told myself, and closed my eyes.

  After breakfast, I took myself out for a bracing walk to clear the cobwebs from my brain. I took a walk down the winding roads and alleyways to the town, to the cliff by the Christmas Hotel to take a good look out to sea. I sat on a bench by the Whalebone Arch for a while and watched the tourists queuing up for the Ghost tours. What would they say if they knew a real monster sat just feet away from them? Boo!

  As lunchtime drew near I made my way down the steep steps in the cliff to the jangling whirl of the amusement arcades and the happy throng of townspeople and tourists. At twelve o’clock I met Effie for a nice fish lunch at Cod Almighty, our favourite fish-and-chip shop on the seafront. I filled her in on my blackout and the memory of being in the halls of the Wildthyme Ragged School For Girls.

  She spooned her mushy peas thoughtfully. “It’s funny you should say that,” she said.

  “About what?”

  “The scratching. In the walls. Some of the girls mentioned something about sounds in the walls. And when I was leaving—after you’d, you know, had your turn—I could have sworn—”

  “That what?”

  She mushed the peas, and stayed quiet.

  “Well, Miss Finch said it was just squirrels. In the wall. They’d called out the pest controller, he was coming to have a look at them.” She leaned forward conspiratorially. “But I don’t know, Brenda—I came over all shivery and it just didn’t feel... right.”

  Effie and her witchy ways. But I knew how she’d felt.

  In her bag, Effie’s mobile telephone began to ring loudly. She rummaged through it to retrieve it. “It’s Penny!” she announced.

  “What does she want? Surely she’s at work isn’t she? It’s Robert’s big inspector day.”

  “Hello?” Effie said, answering. “Yes, she’s here. We’re at Cod Almighty. It’s very—oh yes, right. Here you go.”

  She handed me the phone.

  “Brenda!” Penny’s voice sounded high and alarmed. “Brenda, we have a problem!”

  “What’s wrong, Penny, dear? What’s happening?”

  “We’ve just had a rather nasty customer complaint. A, erm, well—a customer found one of your... er... spare hands. In her bed.”

  “My what?” I almost shouted this, and several customers turned to look at me strangely. “My what?” I repeated, quieter.

  “One of your spare hands,” Penny said. She sounded a little strangled.

  “But... how do you know...?”

  “The customer also complained that the hand tried to pinch her bottom,” Penny told me.

  “Well that certainly doesn’t sound like one of my hands!” I said, affronted. But really, how many disembodied hands could be running around Whitby? I was aghast. How could this have happened? And how could it have been so rude?

  “Don’t worry,” Penny said. “We’ve locked it in the safe. It keeps knocking to get out, but it’s all secure.”

  “Thank you, Penny. I’m frightfully sorry. And today, of all days, with your inspector coming.”

  “It’s okay, Brenda. But I think you’d better get back to your B&B. Maybe find out how it got out?”

  “You’re quite right!” I handed back the phone. “Come on, Effie, we’ve got to leave at once.”

  “But I’ve barely started on the scampi,” she complained, and then, seeing my face, started to pack up her things. “Coming, coming,” she grumbled. We hurried up the cobbles as fast as our legs would take us. My heart was pounding. I’d left my B&B unattended for too long that morning, foolishly wandering around the town lost in my own sorrows. How was a hand loose? Those parts were kept locked tightly in the attic. Could it have been Mr Turlough snooping? No, of course not, he was a lovely gentleman. Just because he had a tail, there I went suspecting him of all sorts of things. I should know better than that.

  As soon as I arrived at the gate of my B&B, I knew something was wrong. All of the windows were open, the curtains blowing willy-nilly in the breeze. The front-door stood ajar. I rushed in, looking around.

  “Oh Effie!” I cried. “Someone’s been here. Look!” The drawers in the hallway had been opened and rifled through. The dining room was mostly untouched, but upstairs in my sitting room there were papers and books strewn all over, the drawers hanging open. I turned to Effie. “Who would do this?” The idea, of someone going through all my things like that, pawing through my private things as if they were at a car boot sale, it didn’t bear thinking about.

  The trapdoor to the attic, usually locked and bolted, was flung wide open.

  “My parts!” I whispered. “Effie, all my parts!”

  I was rooted to the spot. Effie pushed past me, and popped her head through the hole into the attic. “Brenda!” she shouted down to me. “They’re gone.”

  “All of them?” I sat down heavily on the step. I was beginning to shake. All of them, gone? Let loose, running around the town? It wasn’t seemly.

  “All of them.”

  “Where could they be?” I moaned, head in my hands.

  “Well, here’s two of them right here.”

  “Robert!”

  He was stood at the bottom of the stairs. Clutched in one hand was a wriggling hand. In the other was a foot, idly kicking.

  “We seem to have a bit of an infestation at the Miramar,” he said. “The hand was one thing, but this foot...”

  “Oh Robert! I hope it didn’t cause trouble...”

  “Trouble? Well, yes, a little. It was quite tricky explaining to the hotel inspector how someone had managed to trip him up in the lobby, when there was nobody there to have done it. Or who exactly it was kicking his door after he’d checked in.”

  Gingerly, I took the hand and foot from his hands. “Oh Robert, lovely, I’m so sorry. Let me lock these away again.”

  “And it was quite tricky explaining that it wasn’t my foot running up his leg at the dinner table too,” Robert carried on, as I retreated up the stairs. “But thankfully that one worked out in my… er, our favour.”

  I placed the errant hand and foot in the open suitcase and wagged a finger at them in admonishment. The hand twirled cheerfully, and the foot wriggled into a corner.

  “What about the rest, though?” Effie asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said grimly. “There’s plenty left to find. If these two went to the Miramar, I suppose they’ll head to places they’re familiar with.”

  From downstairs came the sound of a tremendous caterwauling. What on earth could it be now, I asked myself. Surely this was more than enough for one day?

  “You haven’t bought a cat, have you, Brenda?” Penny was climbing the stairs, clutching in her arms a frantically squirming cat. “Because this one is sniffing around your kitchen.”

  The cat twisted its head, miaowing angrily. Its white ears pricked up furiously. And with that, for the second time that week, I found myself plunging to the ground and into blackness.

  *

  “Harriet!” I said, wrapping my arms around her. “Hush now, hush now, no one’s going to hurt you.”

  “I beg to differ, Brenda, dear!” The voice was cold and high, and carried with it a cruel humour. I twisted in my seat but—what was this?—my hands were tied. I pulled against the bonds. Thick straps were secured around my wrists, tying me securely to the thick wooden arms of a chair.

  I tried to see where the voice was coming from, but whoever was speaking was behind me. I couldn’t see much of the rest of the room: bright gas lamplight and a shapeless darkness. Where was this place? I had never seen a room like this in Wildthyme before—but surely I had seen every room? But never this…laboratory—yes, a laboratory, that’s what this was. Full of bubbling test tubes and mechanical devices. And books, books everywhere, strewn open, pages flapping.

  My stomach tightened horribly. This place reminded me of somewhere else, somewhere long ago, before everything else. I pulled helpless at my restraints.

  “Oh, don’t go struggling
, Brenda. It hasn’t done the other girls any good.”

  I blinked in the bright light and squinted into the gloom on the other side. Against the wall were cages, large enough for people, with thick metal bars and huge, solid-looking padlocks. In the furthest cage crouched a girl. She was dressed in a bedraggled nightie, and was clutching a threadbare teddy. Her head lay pathetically on the floor, and she was clawing in a slow, repeated pattern against the wall. The tips of her fingers were red and bloody.

  Heavens, I thought. I’m in the walls. I’m in the very walls of the school. Has this been hidden here the whole time?

  “That’s better, Brenda.” The voice was right near my ear now. “It’s too late for Greta. She’s useless to us now. But if you don’t struggle, we won’t hurt Harriet. Silly girl—sneaking about in the night looking after her cats.”

  Harriet was sniffling. I tried to smile at her—a patented Miss B smile—to remind her to be brave. In her lap was cradled the basket, the kittens mewling softly. She was stroking Charlie’s head, whispering to him.

  “Now, shall I tell you a little bit about what’s going to happen, Brenda? You see, me and my sisters have been trying for a long time to find out a special little secret. But it seems like someone very close to you beat us to it.”

  Somewhere machinery started to grind and my chair slowly began to turn.

  “The transference of mortality,” the cruel voice continued. “Someone put life into your empty body, and now you, nothing more than a bunch of jumbled parts sewn together by a madman, can live forever. With a little routine servicing, of course.”

  In the corner of my eyes, I could see a murky shape—something resembling human yet just a little off in a way that made the stomach churn—move in the darkness.

  “Did you think we wanted you for your knowledge? To teach the girls? You were nothing but a maid—you don’t think we make a habit of employing maids as teachers at institutions like this one, do you?” A high, cold laugh. “No, we wanted you for that sublime energy that runs through you.”

  I could see the figure more clearly now, a dark translucent smear, radiant with some kind of dark green energy, and more figures behind her. I could see through them, right through to the filthy walls behind them. They were moving, slowly, closer.

  “It’s all we need, Brenda. Just your life force. Enough to transfer me and my sisters into these girls, and then we shall have youth. Forever!”

  The chair finished its full turn, and she walked towards me, a flickering, indistinct phantom, her sisters creeping behind her. Her eyes burned a fiery emerald, sparking as she stretched out a ghostly hand to me. Her mouth, gaping open, stretched inhumanly wide; a black tongue somehow more corporeal than the rest of her lashed out to suck from me the very energy that bound me to my body.

  From behind me, I heard Harriet shout out: “No! Miss B!”

  And then blackness.

  *

  “We have to go to the school!” I told them, waving away their tea and cold flannels. “No arguments. Robert—you’re needed at the Miramar. Who knows what mischief the rest of my parts are getting up to and I won’t have my wandering hands ruining your big day, Robert.”

  He opened his mouth to argue, but he must have seen the look on my face. I can be quite determined when I put my mind to it.

  “Penny, you’ll need to go search the town. They’ll run to somewhere they know. That’s why you’ve found two of them at the hotel. We’ve lost too much time already.” Whilst I was unconscious night had settled over Whitby. The rest of my parts could be anywhere by now. I shuddered, imagining them taking a turn around the dance floor at the Christmas Hotel all by themselves, thumbing the naughty books at the Spooky Finger, pulling pints at the Demeter. Or, god forbid, waltzing around the deep fat fryer at Cod Almighty and falling into the batter.

  “Effie, I think we might be needing a few of your aunts’ ancient tomes. There’s some dreadful witchery afoot at the school, and we must be putting a stop to it. And as for that moggy, I’ll be taking him.” I bundled the white-eared cat unceremoniously into the cupboard by the door and turned the key.

  I ushered them out of the door and busied myself getting ready. Monster-hunting or no, it didn’t do to go rushing out into the cold night without being adequately wrapped up.

  At the door, I let the cat out of the cupboard. He spat and hissed angrily in my arms. “Now, now, Charlie,” I told him firmly. “None of that. You should know much better.”

  I held up him up and looked into his eyes. Such old, old eyes. He’s just like me, I thought. He’s been living far too long.

  “I remember you when you were just a kitten,” I told him. “What strange magic did they do to you, to keep you alive all this time?”

  Charlie hissed and twitched his whiskers.

  Effie knocked at the door, and I hurried to open it. She was all bundled up in her second-best fur coat, clutching a filthy grimoire beneath it. “Ready!” she said, and I could hear the excitement in her voice. I didn’t blame her. And it was really quite nice, wasn’t it? To go rushing out to solve mysteries and battle monsters with your best friend.

  “Ready!” I told her.

  Miss Finch didn’t look surprised to see us at her door again, but I suspect she is not the kind of woman who allowed herself to look surprised by many things. Most headmistresses aren’t, I imagine.

  “Back again, ladies?” she asked us, heaving open the door for us.

  “None of that, you old crone!” Effie cried. I had filled her in on my latest memory on the journey over but still, this seemed rather unnecessarily warlike.

  “Now, Effie, we don’t know that she’s—” I intervened. I always get nervous whenever there’s a whiff of pitchforks and torches in Effie’s attitude.

  “Oh, don’t be daft, Brenda. Honestly, you’re so naïve sometimes. Of course she’s involved in all of this.” Effie was menacing Miss Finch with her umbrella, advancing on her through the hall. “She’s sent out her evil magical cat here to steal your body parts so she can use your life-force energy to save her strange ghosty sisters and put them in the bodies of innocent young schoolgirls!”

  Miss Finch peered down at her nose at her as if she was a schoolgirl caught out of bed after curfew. “Effryggia, I really don’t know what on earth you’re babbling about. Brenda, is she quite all right? She's talking the most absurd nonsense. Has she had some sort of stroke?”

  Effie frog-marched Miss Finch into her office and demanded she sit.

  “Now, whether you’re involved or not,” I told her, glaring at Effie, “there is something strange and dangerous going on in your school, Miss Finch, and it’s our duty as Whitby’s appointed guardians who get to the bottom of it.”

  “Protectors?”

  Effie waved her umbrella. “We’re the protectors of Whitby against the forces of the supernatural,” she explained, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

  “Yes,” I said. “Whitby's premier protectors.”

  Miss Finch gulped. “I see. And what... exactly... do you think is happening here at Wildthyme?”

  I did my best to explain to her the theory that Effie and I had cobbled together in the taxi. “Seventy years ago, I was here in this school,” I told her. “I taught here. Yes, yes, I know, how could I? When I have aged so little. I’m not quite a normal human being, you see. And that’s why they wanted me. Some sort of strange creatures were living here—in the walls I think—and they wanted to use me and my life energies to do some sort of magic and put themselves into the bodies of the girls. So they could live forever, you see.”

  Effie sat on the table, leaning forward menacingly, and I wondered if perhaps she had been watching a little too many late-night police shows recently. “Show us where the laboratory is!”

  Miss Finch’s mouth moved nervously. “Laboratory? I don’t know about any laboratory!”

  She looked so scared that I began to wonder if she might be telling the truth. Perhaps she was just unluc
ky—an old girl returning to open her old school, unaware that it was filled with lurking creatures just waiting to lure me back into their clutches to enact their nefarious plots. Poor Miss Finch, caught up in this madness.

  I stood up. “It’s behind the walls of the hall,” I told her. “I remember. I can find it, I think.”

  In the hall, I borrowed Effie’s umbrella and tapped along the walls. Halfway along, I heard an empty echo. “It’s here,” I told them.

  “How do we get in?” Effie asked, looking high and low. “There must be some secret lever, or...” She scrabbled around the antlers of the deer on the wall. “Hold on. There’s always a hidden switch…”

  There was the sound of falling rubble. Effie turned around. “Or you could do that, Brenda.”

  The gaping hole yawned into a dark, musty gap. I brushed rubble off my knuckles.

  Effie snatched back the umbrella. “You first,” she said, poking Miss Finch with the tip. I found myself half-inclined to take it back from her, certain now that poor Miss Finch was as innocent in all of this as Effie and I.

  Stepping inside, I thought for a moment I’d blacked out again. It was like slipping back in time. I shook myself. Come on Brenda, I thought, you’re plenty strong enough to deal with whatever spookiness you might find here.

  Dust had settled over everything: the books, the equipment, the test tubes, the cages and the big mechanical chair in the centre, turned away from us. “That was where they tied me up,” I whispered. “Tied me up and tried to steal my energy for their evil dealings.” I pointed. “And over there was poor Gertrude, locked up by the wall. And Harriet—”

  “Harriet?” Effie asked, turning on me.

  “Yes, Harriet,” I said. My eyes, quite independent of me, had welled suddenly with tears. I blinked them. I’d had quite enough of my body parts working of their own accord for today. “The little girl. Poor mite, she was only trying to look after her cats.”