[Brenda & Effie 04] - Hell's Belles

by Paul Magrs

  Mrs Claus wafted a painted claw dismissively. ‘Oh, surely not.’

  ‘You’ve almost had us killed! You’ve kidnapped us! You brought Brenda’s ex-fiancé here to mess with her mind and ruin her life . . .’ Effie was in her stride now. The list came out like a torrent of grudge.

  ‘Ah, but I was right to, wasn’t I? That all worked out in the end, didn’t it?’

  ‘Murder! Cannibalism! Gangsterism! You’ve done it all!’

  Mrs Claus was starting to look like her feelings were hurt. ‘But I’ve never hated you, Effie. I’ve always been rather fond of you, as it happens.’

  Effie laughed in her face. ‘Codswallop.’

  Mrs Claus’s mighty dewlaps quivered with dismay. ‘It’s true. How old would you say I am, Effie?’

  ‘I don’t know. About a hundred and ten?’

  ‘Don’t be unkind, my dear. Here, what about some mint tea and Turkish delight?’

  Effie didn’t like any of this at all. She felt like Mrs Claus was trying to get round her somehow. She knew when she was being buttered up. There was something else going on here. Some wicked subtext. ‘Look, what’s all this about?’

  Mrs Claus fixed her with a very serious look. ‘Family. That’s what it’s about. Can’t you feel them?’

  ‘Can’t I feel what?’

  ‘The ties that bind. The tug of blood relations.’

  Effie’s face crumpled fiercely. ‘What?’

  ‘Oh, my dear. You think you’re alone on this earth, don’t you? All your aunties dead. No one left for you. You’re so lonely. It’s why you’re so touchy. So defensive.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Effie snapped, standing up abruptly and holding her handbag in front of her like it was a protective charm.

  Mrs Claus smiled at her.

  She’s smiling at me! thought Effie crazily. And somehow that gentle, compassionate, bizarre expression was the most terrifying thing of all.

  Mrs Claus said: ‘I think I had better explain myself to you. And tell you – at last – who I truly am . . .’

  Taunted

  It was a few moments before Victor realised that something very significant – apart from a portion of the wall – was missing from the attic.

  ‘Oh no,’ he moaned.

  ‘What is it?’ said Brenda. ‘What’s happened here?’

  ‘This is why it was so chilly!’ Lisa Turmoil said, following them up the attic stairs. ‘Someone’s blown a bloody big hole in the wall. Someone or something . . . has escaped.’

  Victor looked paler than ever. ‘Oh no. I have to . . . I have to find out . . .’

  He turned and dashed out, pushing past Lisa rather roughly as he went.

  ‘Father? Victor? What’s wrong with him?’

  Lisa shrugged. Then she nudged Brenda.

  The two men on the floor had woken. Their eyes were like little pinpricks and they were coated and slathered with blood. The elf and the postman were giggling at the new arrivals.

  ‘Who – the – hell – are – they?’ cried Lisa, backing off. She fumbled in her knapsack for some suitable weapon. Hot tongs.

  One of the men – the postman – was saying: ‘It’s Brenda . . . it’s his missus . . . oh dear, too late, oh dear!’

  ‘Get away from us,’ Brenda warned. She really didn’t fancy a scrap with these queer-looking specimens. Whose blood was it they were basted in? Each other’s? It didn’t bear thinking about. ‘Where is Frank?’ she yelled at them, enunciating each word carefully. The two looked like zombies to her, and in her experience, zombies could be a bit thick.

  The elf boy told her, ‘Frank has been taken away. There are still some bits here, if you look carefully. A scrap of his hair, a bit of his blood . . . we pulled him apart, you know. Hahaha haha!’

  ‘Noooo.’ Brenda froze to the spot. ‘No, you didn’t . . .’

  ‘What are you doing hanging around with Victor, Brenda?’ the postman sneered.

  ‘He’s her father,’ snarled the feral elf. ‘She thinks he’s bothered about her. After all these years. But he’s not! We’ve heard them talking, haven’t we? We could hear it all from up here in our cosy nest. And he doesn’t care about you, Brenda.’

  ‘Yes he does,’ Brenda snapped.

  The postman continued: ‘He’s Brethren, Brenda. All he cares about is serving them. All he wants to do is return to his work for them. His experimental work. He wants your heart and lungs and liver and all your bits for scrap. The Brethren, you see, want you and Frank out of the way. You’re standing in the way of the Bitch’s Maw, you are.’

  Lisa clutched Brenda’s arms, which had gone slack, hanging by her sides. ‘Come out of here, Brenda. We don’t need to listen to this.’

  ‘It’s not true. My father . . .’ whispered Brenda, with feeble resistance.

  Lisa tugged at her and drew her away from the terrible attic, and back down the stairs.

  Karla’s servants giggled and chortled in Brenda’s wake.

  Dante’s Bloody Disco Inferno

  Effie wasn’t prepared to listen to any more of this nonsense. Mrs Claus was acting very oddly indeed, and Effie didn’t see why she should have to put up with any more of it. ‘I don’t care who you are. And I don’t want your tea and sweets, thank you. You’ve probably poisoned them.’

  ‘Oh, Effie. It hurts me that you’re so suspicious of me.’

  Effie was up on her feet, striding about the grotto-like parlour. ‘Of course I’m suspicious of you. You and this place. It’s like Dante’s Bloody Disco Inferno in here!’

  BANG BANG BANG.

  Someone was at the sitting-room door.

  ‘Who the buggery is that?’ cried Mrs Claus irritably. This was one scene she didn’t want interrupting.

  Victor erupted into her inner sanctum with his cravat flying loose and his hair flapping awry.

  ‘Where is he?’ he demanded, shaking a finger in Mrs Claus’s face. ‘Where’s he gone?’

  ‘You can’t come barging in here!’ Mrs Claus wailed, hoisting herself up impressively in her chair. ‘I’m having a vitally important talk.’

  Victor dismissed her concerns brusquely. ‘You can’t have failed to notice that someone has put a very large hole in the attic turret. Frank has escaped.’

  Mrs Claus did a judicious double-take. ‘Frank?’

  Victor scoffed, ‘Don’t pretend you didn’t know we had him.’

  ‘I don’t have to admit to anything.’

  Victor reached forward to put his strong, sensitive hands round her throat. ‘Where is he?’

  She walloped him for coming too close. ‘Clear off out of it. I don’t even know where you came from, you nasty piece of work.’

  Effie could stand this no longer. She broke in on their row: ‘What’s going on? Have you got Brenda up there?’

  Victor gave her a nasty look. ‘Oh, it’s you. The witch. I’ve been hearing all about you. Yes, Brenda’s told me all kinds of things about you.’

  ‘Rubbish. She’d never discuss me behind my back.’

  ‘You might be surprised.’ Victor smirked.

  ‘You don’t care about her.’ Just at that moment, Effie felt like walloping Frankenstein herself. She rounded on him dramatically. ‘You’ve got her all gooey about Daddy coming back, but you don’t care a fig for her at all.’

  Mrs Claus counselled: ‘Be careful, Effie. Don’t get him riled. I don’t trust him. We don’t know how powerful he is.’

  ‘Don’t tell me what to do!’ Effie shrieked at her.

  Victor tossed his arrogant head. ‘I’m pretty powerful. But so are you, aren’t you, my dear?’

  ‘As it happens, yes,’ purred Angela Claus.

  ‘Quite a magnificent specimen, all in all,’ mused Victor. His fine nostrils flared. ‘And I detect . . . some hint of faerie about you. Am I right?’

  Effie said, ‘Some hint of what?’

  ‘Fey blood,’ muttered Victor. ‘She’s been round the block. The eldritch block, that is.
She’s been to the wild woods and back, and under the hill. She’s magical, didn’t you know? A witch just like you.’

  Effie licked her suddenly dry lips. She felt parched. ‘So?’

  ‘Keep away from me,’ Mrs Claus warned Frankenstein.

  He chuckled, patting one of her gleaming wheels. ‘You can’t run from me, can you, my dear?’

  ‘I’ll call in my elves. Effie . . . help me!’

  Effie folded her arms. ‘Why should I?’

  This made Victor chortle. ‘She doesn’t care about you. You’re at my mercy, Mrs C. And do you know what? I could cut you up, right here and now. Oh, I’ll be needing all kinds of spare parts. Your heart and lights, I think. And your eyes. Maybe your whole head.’

  ‘You ghoul,’ whispered Mrs Claus. She had encountered a good deal of wickedness in her past. But there was something so calculating and calm about Victor. She felt his evil inside her like something cold ripping through her flesh. Sliding through tissues like they were silk; her seams dropping apart at his touch.

  ‘That’s right. A ghoul,’ smiled Victor. ‘That’s precisely what I am.’ He fished in his jacket pocket for what looked like a neat little spectacle case. But when he flipped it open, he produced a very fine and deadly-looking scalpel. ‘Ah. Here we are,’ he sang.

  Mrs Claus could suddenly see the danger she was in. Yes, she was powerful. Yes, she had protection. But he was too close. He could be on her in an instant. ‘Get back! Oh, help! Help!’

  Effie watched him advance. She was torn. She gabbled: ‘I knew you were wicked . . . I knew it . . . Brenda will hear about this.’

  ‘Brenda won’t,’ sneered Victor. ‘I’ll be getting to Brenda sooner or later.’

  Mrs Claus tried to reverse her chair. Its gears were jammed. The brake was on. The wheels were rucked on the deep pile of the shag. She was stuck. ‘What are you going to do? Hack bits off me and stick them on to your precious daughter?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Although that is what she believes.’

  Effie was gobsmacked to hear it. ‘What?’

  Victor said, ‘Brenda thinks I am here to help her. To repair her. To resurrect her parts again and add some new ones and thus make her young once more.’ He laughed at the very thought of it. ‘But what scientist returns to fiddle about with some failed experiment, hm? What would be the point? However, I am going to start again. From scratch. Frank and Brenda were all right as far as they went. But they have outlived their usefulness. I am going to cannibalise them. And you as well, Mrs Claus.’

  Mrs Claus – not given to panic in her everyday life – threw back her massive painted head and made a fairly good stab at it. ‘Nooo! Effie, help me!’

  Effie dithered. She hated herself for dithering in moments of crisis.

  But dither she did.

  ‘Get back, Effie,’ growled Victor Frankenstein. ‘What do you care about her? She’s your enemy!’

  ‘Effie, get help,’ gasped Mrs Claus. ‘Run away. Save yourself.’

  Victor jeered at the Yuletide hag. ‘And why do you care anything for her? She hates you! Do you hear me? She despises every stinking atom of you!’

  Unbeknownst to the ranting Victor, Effie had stopped prevaricating. She hoisted up a very nice crystal port decanter.

  She swung it around in a glittering arc, using all her strength and considerable skill.

  And she brained Frankenstein right there where he stood. He fell like a very slender, elegant silver birch. Smack dab on the shag pile. But his scalpel arm flashed out as he fell, as if by some weird surgeon’s instinct. As he collapsed, he felt the satisfying thrill of connecting that blade with human skin one last time. Mrs Claus screamed as he flensed through the thick flesh of her upper arm.

  ‘He stabbed me! He stabbed me, Effie!’

  They both stood there gibbering with panic. Victor lay face down between them in the frosty glitter of smashed decanter and a monsoon of spraying blood.

  White Lilies

  Karla was waving at the Goths who had come to see the filming. Big ones, small ones, old and young. Every kind of Goth she could imagine, lined up in the long, waving grass at the edge of the abbey.

  She had a few words with the crew. Jollied them along, though that wasn’t how she felt at all. She posed for a few publicity shots against the large plastic sacrificial altar they had erected amongst the genuine gnarled stones of the abbey. She mugged and camped it up with some of the extras in their dark hooded robes. Holding up the ceremonial knives and messing about. Something about the sight of those implements, however, sent gooseflesh rippling all over her body.

  They were lighting blazing torches. Putting on the arc lights. Was that dry ice? A little. But there was also real mist, curling in from the sea, as if on cue. Thick, turgid, salty mist, woolly as convent-school tights.

  Seething with mixed feelings, Karla traipsed back to her trailer, to prepare herself mentally, and to warm herself through by the gas heater. She imagined crouching there, soaking in the heat, knowing she’d have to be out here soon, in the virtual nuddy. On this set she only had one trailer. No special meditation space for her these days. But never mind. This was enough. This tiny van at the top of the town. She threw open its door to the heavy, almost sickly scent of white lilies.

  According to the tasteful card, they had been sent by her doting director, Alex. What disturbed her somewhat was that the card was inscribed in a tight, jagged gothic script.

  Was he with the Brethren? Was he really? Was this his subtle, conniving way of letting her know? Hence his excitement. Hence his glee. Hence his delight in this whole tawdry enterprise. She remembered what he had told her, about watching a copy of the old movie. How it was brought to him especially by a man in a dark suit. At the time he’d told her this she had paused for thought.

  Alex was a tool of the Brethren. They had got to him somehow. Perhaps manipulated his career. Getting him to this point, on this project, in this town, today. They had placed him here with consummate skill and irony. His old dad would be spinning in his grave, wouldn’t he?

  Karla found that she was a bit upset. I’ve never had any choice, all my life, have I? The Brethren had dogged her seven-inch heels wherever she had gone. There was never any chance of escape. There was never any choice. The Brethren were everywhere and she had to do as she was bid.

  She crushed lily petals in her fists and sobbed. She was drenched in the funereal scent of the pollen.

  Stomping

  On the pavement outside the Christmas Hotel, with Lisa in tow, Brenda stomped straight into Robert and Penny.

  ‘We’ve been chucked out!’ Robert said.

  Brenda cried out: ‘Robert! You’re alive! You’re here! Where have you been, lad?’

  They took a few minutes, hugging and gabbling away at each other about their respective adventures.

  Penny broke into their reunion. ‘And Effie’s still in there. She went off with Mrs Claus.’

  ‘What?’ Brenda could hardly believe it. Effie despised the woman. What was she up to now?

  ‘To be fair,’ Robert put in, ‘she was sort of dragged along by Mrs Claus. God knows what that old cow wants with her.’

  ‘That’s no good,’ Brenda said. ‘Time’s getting on, look. I thought Effie wanted to be up at the abbey with us . . . in case . . . in case . . .’

  Her words dwindled away.

  Something very peculiar was happening.

  Night was coming down even earlier than it should at the end of October on the north-east coast. There was a low mumble of thunder that seemed to come up from the ground and rattle the teeth of all four of them standing there. The last remaining light had turned strangely flat, as in an eclipse.

  ‘Look,’ said Penny breathlessly. ‘Look at the lights!’

  Instinctively they all knew which way to look. Across the headland and the harbour. At the jagged ruins of the abbey.

  Beneath the smouldering violet of the dark there was a dancing light. An eldritch light. Playfu
l and rippling. It seethed and skittered all about the distant abbey stones.

  Brenda said, in a very low voice, ‘I don’t think that’s special effects.’

  Robert looked grim. ‘Are we going to stop them?’ He gulped. The task seemed pretty major now. It was as if all the artificial lights in town were going out, draining away and turning dull, compared with the flickering halo on the far hill. ‘That was always the plan, wasn’t it?’ he added, trying to sound braver than he was. ‘We’re going to, um, put a stop to them. Doing bad stuff.’

  Penny squawked. ‘We can’t let them finish the movie. We can’t let another film like that exist in the world.’ She still had the DVD – which she’d picked up from Brenda’s sheepskin rug – in her handbag. It was strange, but it made her bag seem heavier somehow. Almost as if it was slowing her down. It felt like Frodo’s ring must have felt to that put-upon hobbit. It was weighing on her like an obligation.

  Brenda was trying to think things out as they stomped away from the Christmas Hotel. She was saying, ‘Effie was all for preventing the film being made, same as me. But then she seemed to change her mind . . . I think she thought we should let it happen after all. Because of something she saw when we were back in the past, behind the scenes of the original film. But I don’t believe that. I think you’re right, you kids. We have to get over there and put the kibosh on it.’

  Robert was surveying the high horizon, which was looking rather more Sturm und Drang than it had mere seconds before. ‘We might be too late. What does that look like to you?’

  Brenda looked hard. To her, the swollen, heaving skies looked rather like the Bitch’s Maw. The gateway into hell that she, along with Effie, was supposed to defend. It was a whispered-about thing. A secret thing. A thing of legend. But here it was. Opening up in the teatime skies above Whitby, for everyone to see.

  They bustled through town. Down the West Cliff, past the tacky arcades and along the prom. Brenda could set quite a pace when she had a mind to. For the moment, she was glad of the extra reserves of energy she had managed to summon up. She even took a momentary pleasure in her renewed zest. The others were tugged along in her wake. Goths scattered as she barrelled along the harbour front, eyes gleaming.