by Paul Magrs
Brenda hid away in the back of her van with the child. She hoped fiercely that he would remain unaware of what had gone on that day. If she thought about it too much, she couldn’t bear it. Magda had been a strange woman. Rather shrewish and nasty-tempered. She had treated Brenda and the other members of the crew as servants. But she hadn’t deserved to slip and plummet to her death on those damp blue rocks. No one deserved that. What would become of her young son? The father, Fox, was no good. He was too busy running after that trollop Karla. What would become of the poor mite? Nannies, public school. He’d never know that once he’d had a mother who’d loved him. Brenda clutched the kid to her and wept for him, and for the love that he’d been robbed of. What kind of a person would he turn out to be without it?
Well, now she knew. Now she was seeing it for herself. Here he stood.
Alex Soames in middle age, piqued and confused by Brenda and Effie’s presence as he tried to work, to create cinema magic, all these years later, in a back street in Whitby.
‘Maybe you won’t remember me?’ she found herself saying, though she knew that wasn’t true. She could see it in his face, the way he looked at her, as if he was peering through fog. He knew who she was.
‘Auntie Brenda!’
Effie was looking from one to the other, amazed.
‘You were just a toddler,’ Brenda laughed.
‘But I wasn’t later on,’ Alex said. His voice was gentle now. He lowered it and turned his back on his impatient cast members and crew. He was earnest, beseeching, staring up into Brenda’s face. ‘Later. When I was at school. You came to see me, didn’t you? Checking on me.’
Her expression brightened. ‘You remember?’
‘You sent me birthday cards. Presents!’
‘Did I?’ Her memory was so patchy. She was glad to hear that she had tried to keep up with him, this child who had been flung into her care, if only for a couple of hours.
‘You came to see me at school. For a while you lived nearby. You were a cleaner . . .’
Brenda couldn’t remember this. Some of the seventies was a closed book to her, for a variety of reasons.
‘You’ve grown up,’ she said, switching her attention back to him. ‘You’re a . . . movie director.’
He pulled a face. ‘If you can call it that. Low-budget straight-to-DVD tacky horror films.’
‘But you’re a success. A brilliant success.’
He shrugged, looking embarrassed.
‘Oh, this is my friend Effie. She lives in Whitby too.’
‘Good morning, young man.’
Alex shook Effie’s hand, very politely. Nicely brought up. Brenda smiled approvingly. He seemed to be undamaged from having grown up without a mum, and with a father who surrounded himself with flighty actresses and black magic lore.
‘I’m afraid I have to go back to work, Auntie Brenda,’ he said, wincing. ‘The crew is waiting for me. We have to get a few shots in the can before—’
‘Shots in the can!’ Brenda grinned. ‘He knows all the lingo, doesn’t he?’
Effie nodded stiffly. She put in, ‘So you are responsible, are you, Mr Soames, for the remaking of this film?’
‘It’s a job, isn’t it?’ He shrugged. ‘It wasn’t my idea, no. But I just take whatever comes up.’ He cast a worried glance at his impatient crew. ‘I can meet you later, Auntie Brenda. Just now I need to . . .’
Brenda was frowning. ‘But Alex, don’t you worry about the bad luck attached to the original film? Don’t you think you might be,’ she dropped her tone, ‘tempting fate?’
He laughed. ‘What . . . the curse?’
Brenda couldn’t believe he was scoffing at her. ‘Your father! The original film . . . and Karla! Your mother! Everything! Just look – hardly anyone from the film is still alive. They all died in grisly ways . . . and bad things even happen to people who simply watch the damned thing.’
Alex suddenly looked furious. He drew closer to Brenda and hissed: ‘Don’t go spreading stuff like that, okay? If my crew start getting cold feet and jumpy, then we’re knackered.’
‘If there is a curse,’ said Effie drily, ‘then you’re knackered – as you so quaintly put it – anyway.’
‘There’s no curse,’ Alex snapped. ‘That’s just publicity rubbish. What better way to get attention for a rubbishy horror flick? Don’t you worry about it, Auntie Brenda. There’s no such thing as real magic or any of that gubbins. We’ll be all right.’
With that, he kissed Brenda swiftly on the cheek and hurried away, to carry on with his work.
‘Oh dear,’ Brenda said quietly. ‘He doesn’t know what he’s getting into, does he?’
‘Hmpf,’ said Effie. ‘Youth.’
Fellas in the Attic
So far Frank wasn’t doing that well.
Within two minutes of arriving at the suite of Karla Sorenson, having pledged his undying devotion to her, he had disgraced himself. Right now, several hours later, she was still furious with him. There was a taut silence in the luxurious turret as Karla applied herself to learning her lines.
Frank had offered to help with brushing and scooping up that strange dust from the parcel he had burst and strewn everywhere, but Karla had waved him crossly away. ‘Oh, you’ll just make it worse, you clumsy oaf.’ Instead she had called on Mrs Claus’s willing staff of elves to bring a powerful hoover and to set about gathering up every scrap of alien matter from the carpet, the bed sheets and her own person.
‘But what is it? Why is this powdery stuff so important?’ Frank beseeched her.
She looked furious with him. ‘I don’t know. But the Brethren say that it’s very precious indeed. And now I’ve got it all in my fricking hair.’
She had stomped off to the bathroom to wash it out, ruining her new style, of course. She sieved out the dust and chunks of grit using a pair of tights.
‘I think we’ve got most of the bits,’ she said worriedly, watching the helpful elves empty the Dyson cylinder into the crystal fruit bowl, where she was gathering all the vital granules. ‘We must have lost some. There seems to be less, somehow. What do you think, Frank?’
‘Frank doesn’t know,’ he said huffily. He was more concerned about the weird feeling that the powdery substance was giving him. Like it was poisonous somehow. Noxious. Could it be radioactive? Was that what made him shiver inside his oversized clothes and boots? His very scalp tingled. The bolts in his neck seemed to bristle and click with static electricity.
And all because of the contents of the parcel that Karla had been so keen to salvage.
Now the precious dust was heaped in the bowl, pride of place on the coffee table in Karla’s suite. Karla was curled on the sofa, flicking through her script and frowning as she strove to commit her lines to memory. Frank was at a loose end, and in disgrace. Karla hadn’t said anything to him for hours. Was this what slavish devotion was meant to feel like?
Glumly he stared out of the turret window, studying the swelling sea and the few brave souls walking on the stormy prom.
Brenda. That was who he was missing. His brain had jolted back into action suddenly. It was like sobering up. Suddenly he remembered his wife and his home. He remembered that he shouldn’t be here, with this bad-tempered woman. He didn’t belong to her. What would Brenda think?
He had spent so long trying to get back to Brenda, and now he had flung it all away. In just one night and one day it was all gone. The future he had imagined. He had been lured by the charms of Karla. Just like those two men she had sent up to the attic.
‘Oh, Frank,’ she said, making him jump. An elf had arrived with a large covered tray of food. ‘I’ve had some sandwiches brought for the fellas in my attic, Kevin and Bobby. Would you mind carrying the tray up to them?’
He was glad of something to do, even if she had started to treat him like the home help. He sighed. ‘Club sandwiches. Very good. Is there a sandwich for Frank too?’ His stomach growled savagely as he spoke, and he realised that he had eaten no
thing all day.
‘Of course.’ Karla nodded. ‘Now, I’d like you to eat up in the attic with the other two, if you don’t mind. I’ll lock the three of you in there, for the rest of the day and the evening and overnight, while I go out for dinner with my director.’
Frank baulked. ‘What?’
Karla held up her hands to placate him. ‘Just a precautionary measure, Frank. You three are my boys. My special boys. I am here to protect you. I don’t want anything bad to happen to you, so I am putting you up in the attic, where you will have everything you need.’
‘Frank doesn’t need protecting.’
Her expression darkened. ‘Strange things are coming, Frank. You don’t understand. You are very vulnerable.’
‘Frank? Vulnerable?’ he boomed.
Karla’s eyes narrowed. ‘Indeed. You think you are invincible. But all you have is brute strength. That’s not enough for the powers massing about Whitby. Oh no. You came here seeking my protection. And this is how I extend it. You will join the others in the attic, Frank. And sit there and wait until I have need of you.’
Frank glowered at her. What was he doing? He didn’t have to listen to her. He didn’t have to obey. And yet . . . he couldn’t help himself. He was grateful to her. She knew what she was talking about. She knew how to keep him safe. And she was only doing it out of love. He could see that.
He took the tray and hefted it in his arms, turning to the doorway and the ladder up to the attic.
‘You’ll see it makes sense, Frank.’ She smiled at him.
To Frank, as he heaved himself up the wooden steps, it made very little sense at all. He just had to listen to her voice and do everything she said, and everything would be all right. He just had to trust that she knew the right thing to do. He jumped as the door behind him slammed and she hurriedly turned the chunky key in the lock.
Downstairs, Karla was glad to have him out of her sight for a while. The way he looked at her! Like a giant puppy.
As she returned to her script, her mobile trembled and bleeped. She sighed. Them again. Another message.
Darling daughter. We assume the parcel arrived with u safely. The precious contents must b treated in the correct manner. U need the blood of the man-monster. Only that will work. Do u understand? We cannot say 2 much by text. Just a pint of his blood will do, stirred in2 the remains, then leave it in the moonlight and u will c.
Oh, great. Karla deleted the message crossly. Now they were wanting her to do some fricking voodoo thing. Well, she’d done this kind of thing before at their request, and it always went to the bad. Why couldn’t someone else do their will?
She looked at the grey mess in the crystal fruit bowl and shuddered. So what exactly was this stuff ?
And more to the point, who was it?
It’s Only a Movie
Back in her attic rooms that evening, Brenda was holding up a certain shiny disc, saying: ‘I didn’t think Robert was going to give us this, did you?’
‘You never saw the state that poor girl Penny got herself into after she watched that bally thing.’ Effie’s expression was unfathomable. ‘I did. I saw her face. I was the one who brought her back to life.’
‘Well, we’re hardier than that, aren’t we? We don’t scare easily.’ Brenda bit her lower lip as she squinted at the controls of her DVD player.
‘That’s true enough. But I don’t like anything vulgar.’
Brenda had put on a light buffet-style supper for them both, so they could nibble as they examined the evidence.
Despite the nature of the viewing material they had selected for that evening, Effie was glad to spend some time with her best friend alone. For ages now, it seemed that whenever they got together, a gaggle of other people were orbiting too. Tonight it would be just like it used to be.
‘That was a turn-up for the books, wasn’t it?’ She smiled, sinking into the paisley two-seater. She had loaded up her plate with chicken legs and coleslaw and mixed bean salad, and they were settling to watch Prehysteria!.
‘Hmm, lovey?’ Brenda was reading the box. It was some kind of dinosaur movie, it seemed, starring Karla Sorenson and a tribe of primitive females dressed in skins.
‘Your friend Alex turning out to be the director.’
‘There are no coincidences, Effie,’ Brenda said darkly. ‘Not in an affair like this.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘We are being drawn into this together. Nothing is happening by accident. Someone, somewhere is moving us about like chess pieces on a board.’
‘Who, though, ducky?’ Effie sounded alarmed. ‘That Karla woman?’
Brenda pulled a face.
They watched the first film, crunching and munching their way through the salads Brenda had so lovingly tossed together. (Eating healthily! Effie thought. If we keep this up, we’ll be all slim and lovely for the winter holiday period. We should go on a cruise!)
The film was awful. It all took place on what was obviously a studio set. The caves that the women inhabited looked plasticky and terrible. The dinosaurs – when they eventually made an appearance – seemed to be made out of old socks and papier-mâché. Brenda laughed (‘That cave woman is the spit of Jessie!’), but Effie merely rolled her eyes. ‘Do we have to watch this rubbish?’
‘We’re learning about Karla,’ Brenda said, becoming particularly alert when Karla’s character – the rebellious cavewoman Urtaka – made her appearances.
‘But the film’s got no dialogue,’ Effie moaned. ‘It’s all grunting.’
‘Robert would have enjoyed this.’ Brenda smiled. ‘He likes a nice tacky B movie.’
Effie bristled. ‘Well then maybe you should have asked him instead of me.’
Brenda didn’t say anything. Robert had merely acquiesced – eventually – to their request to borrow Penny’s DVD of the original Get Thee Inside Me, Satan. He had been worried about them viewing it – but only in a distracted way. His mind was on other things, Brenda realised, as he led them into his office and fetched the disc out of his safe. She even asked him, ‘Are you worried about work, Robert?’ He shook his head briskly. ‘No, that’s all fine.’ But there was still clearly something that had him foxed.
They didn’t get very much out of Prehysteria!. As Effie changed the discs, Brenda went to fetch the cheesecake out of the fridge. She cut it into dainty slices and dolloped it with double cream.
‘It was an impulse, buying these silly things from Save the Kiddies,’ said Effie.
‘Know your enemy.’ Brenda nodded approvingly. ‘You were right to.’
Carnival of Flesh was a little more illuminating. In this early seventies picture, Karla was playing her more usual lady vampire character, and arriving in a backwoods town at the head of a bizarre freak-show-cum-circus. Entertaining the lowly superstitious villagers and striding about in a succession of alluring outfits, she was on top form in this particular show.
‘It’s got more of a story, this one.’ Brenda nodded, forking up her cheesecake. ‘Says on the back of the box it’s a classic of its type.’
Effie was pursing her lips. ‘I think it’s bally awful. And the woman can’t act for toffee.’
There Brenda had to disagree. She thought Karla was pretty good at what she did. It was a kind of stylised performance. Sheer camp, she supposed. Karla was larger in gesture and vocalisation than every other character on the screen
Both ladies were a bit surprised when the sexy scenes started up.
‘Goodness!’ Brenda said.
‘Brenda!’ Effie cried out. ‘I had no idea it was as rude as this!’ (What were Save the Kiddies doing, offering this kind of nasty smut for sale?)
Karla’s character was a woman bent on wholesale corruption of every man and woman in this backwoods village. One by one she seduced them, ripped out their throats and – as a nice extra touch – ate an eyeball or two as if they were pimento olives.
‘Why would they even make films like this?’ Effie said, hiding behind a tassled
cushion. ‘It’s not very true to life, is it?’
Brenda did a kind of facial shrug. Some of the places she’d been in her long life, this was social realism.
They discovered the DVD extras. (‘Oh no! There’s more? Haven’t we seen enough?’ The very concept of DVD extras was a new one on Effie.) Besides some rubbishy out-takes and extra scenes, there was an interview with Karla, from the time of the making of the movie, summer 1970. She was wearing chunky curlers and a bathrobe and was sitting in her trailer looking worn out and sounding stiffly polite. To Karla’s bored bemusement, the interviewer was trying to get her to articulate why exactly she thought her movies were popular.
‘People enjoy the thrill of being scared and seduced, don’t they?’ she said. ‘And I suppose I embody both things. I am one of the few stars of these kind of fantasy movies who could thrill you both ways. In terms of fear and in terms of sex appeal.’ The 1970s interviewer – comb-over and leather sports coat – nodded energetically at this.
Effie snorted. ‘She thinks a lot of herself, doesn’t she? When was this? Nineteen seventy? Why, she looks about the same age then as she does now, doesn’t she, ducky?’
