[Brenda & Effie 04] - Hell's Belles

by Paul Magrs

  Scissors Cut Stone

  As ever, Karla was acting her socks off. Not that she was wearing any socks. Her negligee had gone west some time ago too. Now she was writhing like billy-o and overacting like she never had before.

  Then, just as the pretty lights were making her feel a little bit out of control, she was aware that her hair and make-up stylist was peering over the edge of the sacrificial stone at her.

  Lisa looked very worried indeed as she tried to avoid being seen by the horned Alex and his jiving lackeys.

  ‘What?’ shrieked Karla. ‘What do you want? You weren’t here before! I had to do my own make-up and styling! What the fricking hell are you doing here now?’

  ‘Karla, it’s me, Lisa Turmoil.’

  ‘I can see that, you silly bint. What the frig do you think you’re doing?’

  Lisa was emptying out her bag of hairdressing equipment on to the Stone of Death. ‘Let me help you, Karla. Look, I’ve got my sharpest scissors. I can set you free!’

  Karla roared: ‘You’re ruining the scene!’

  Lisa looked at her helplessly. ‘It isn’t a scene. It’s all for real. Look at those lights. Look at that . . . maw thing.’

  Karla sobbed with frustration and fear. ‘I know . . . I know it’s all real, but . . . it’s too late for me, Lisa. It’s very good of you. But this is how it’s supposed to go. This is my destiny.’

  But Lisa wasn’t having any of that. She was sawing through the bonds that tethered Karla to her supposed destiny.

  ‘Look! You’re free! Come on, you silly mare!’

  Karla had turned rigid on the slab. She lay in a very undignified position and her face had gone slack. Her voice came out in a dreadful monotone that made Lisa freeze where she stood.

  ‘HE is coming!’ said Karla.

  Then the light from the Bitch’s Maw did something very strange indeed.

  Off Road

  The pink Cadillac of Mrs Claus was approaching the abbey, across the flat, frozen marshland, at tremendous speed. It had taken a little while to loop around the town and to approach the hallowed site from the other direction, but it was the only way to come by four wheels.

  When the abbey and all its outrageous, flaunting lights swung into view, the two women inside the car and the elf driving it could hardly believe what they were seeing.

  ‘Faster!’ urged Angela Claus as the Cadillac caromed down the rutted road.

  ‘We’re not going to make it,’ said Effie from the back seat.

  The elf was gripping on to the steering wheel for dear life. He told them, ‘If we park at the church . . . how are you going to get across there to the abbey? You’ll never get your motorised chair across the grassy tussocks and the graveyard . . .’

  Mrs Claus had to agree. It was murder when she came up here for Jessie’s premature funeral that time. It took ages, getting about.

  Effie told the elf driver, ‘You’ll just have to go off-road, won’t you?’

  The elf baulked at this. ‘What? But that’s too dangerous!’

  Mrs Claus was in dreadful pain. There was no time to be lost. Every iota of her patience had fled. Through gritted teeth she told her driver: ‘Danger! Ha! Come on! What do we care? We’ve only got a matter of seconds by the looks of that Bitch’s Maw over there . . .’

  The elf could see there was no arguing with her. The elves learned pretty sharpish at the Christmas Hotel that what madam wanted, madam got. He clenched his own teeth and yanked the steering wheel around.

  The car lurched on to the frosty grass. It veered and wove through the swirling misty madness, sending panicking Goths streaming away, swerving to avoid gravestones. It made resolutely for the abbey up ahead and all the blinding arc lights.

  ‘Oh no!’ howled Effie.

  ‘Effie!’ screeched Mrs Claus. ‘Hold my hand!’

  ‘FUCK!!!’ yelled the elf.

  Apotheosis

  ‘He is coming!’ chanted Alex, the director. The eyes on his goat’s mask flashed nastily.

  Now they were all chanting the same thing: ‘HE is coming . . . !’

  Brenda, Robert and Penny were shielding their eyes as hell’s gate flared with even greater intensity. It was pulsating now to an unearthly rhythm. Brenda could only see black blobs where people should have been.

  ‘What’s that noise?’ yelled Robert. ‘It’s like an engine . . .’

  ‘Fire brigade?’ asked Penny, a bit prosaically, she realised.

  Robert was on his feet, squinting through the hellish radiance. ‘It’s a car! And it’s making for the abbey, coming over the grass! It’s a pink Cadillac! Brenda . . . what’s a pink Cadillac doing up—’

  Brenda was beside him, grabbing at him. ‘Ssshh! Look ahead – at the circle!’

  Alex and his demonic cronies were not to be deterred. ‘He is HERE! The Lord of the Earth!’

  Some of the noise died down in an instant. The weird atmospherics calmed somewhat. Everyone stood with baited breath as they waited for what would happen next.

  A dark silhouette was emerging from the Bitch’s Maw.

  It was a slim, dark figure in a somewhat tattered black cape. He stepped blinking into the circle of evil and smiled at them all. ‘Good evening, everyone,’ he said, a little uncertainly, as if he wasn’t used to as much attention as this.

  Brenda could have spat. ‘Alucard!’ she thundered.

  Alex whipped off his goat’s head and stared at the whey-faced figure before him. ‘Master?’

  Alucard ran a hand through his slick black hair. ‘I’m afraid not, my son. Will I do?’

  There was, however, huge applause from spectating Goths at this point. They at least were very impressed by this manifestation. It might not be the devil, but who cared? This was pretty good.

  Lisa Turmoil turned to Karla, who was by now sitting up on her slab, rather perturbed at the lack of the actual sacrificial part of the proceedings. ‘Who is it?’ Lisa asked her.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Karla scowled.

  Lisa gasped: ‘Is it the devil?’

  Alucard shrugged. ‘Ah, actually, no.’

  Before he could explain further, there came an interruption in the form of Brenda, Robert and Penny hastening over to the centre of the circle of death.

  ‘Brenda!’ Alucard cried, seemingly delighted.

  Brenda punched him in the mouth.

  Robert was uncomfortably aware of the pink Cadillac, tearing madly over scrubby grass. Growling and groaning it came, louder and louder, sending the film crew and assorted Goths scattering, and then pulling up right beside the sacrificial stone and the heaving Bitch’s Maw with a ghastly screech.

  Brenda was oblivious to anything but the fact that no matter how often she smacked Alucard in the mouth, he wouldn’t fall down. ‘You! You idiot!’ she sobbed. ‘What are you doing here? Do you realise what a fuss you’ve caused . . .’

  Alucard merely laughed and stamped happily on the frozen ground. ‘I’m out! I’m freeee! At last!’

  Then the doors of the Cadillac flew open.

  Mrs Claus shrilled, ‘It’s him!’

  Effie whooped with joy and hurled herself out of the car. ‘KRISTOFF!’

  Alex was lost. ‘Who?’

  ‘It’s me!’ screamed Effie as she ran towards them. Her thin body thumped into Alucard’s and he smiled embarrassedly as he hugged her. She buried her sobbing face in her beloved’s frilled shirt front.

  Alex was studying the new arrival keenly with mounting dismay. ‘Nooo! What have you done? Who is this? You aren’t the master of the world!’

  ‘Not yet,’ grinned Alucard waggishly, trying to disentangle himself from Effie.

  Mrs Claus was slumped painfully against the side of her beloved car. She was dripping with tinsel and her own spilled blood, but her attention was fixed on the eldritch light of the gateway before them all. ‘That’s the Bitch’s Maw, isn’t it? The doorway to hell?’

  Alucard nodded at her, ‘I should cocoa. Hello, Angela, dear.’
/>   ‘Right! Effie!’ Mrs Claus commanded. ‘Elf boy, you too . . . bring him out!’

  Effie reluctantly let go of her man and hurried back to the car. Mrs Claus obviously couldn’t help them, so it was left to the elf and Effie to manhandle the shattered, unconscious form of Victor out of the Cadillac. He was paler than ever, coated in treacle-like blood and stuck with shards of crystal.

  Karla was up on her feet. She boggled at the sight of her lover. ‘No! What are you doing to him?’

  Mrs Claus gazed up ironically at Karla in all her glory. ‘Shoving the old sod back where he belongs! Have you got a problem with that, you mucky old tart?’

  Karla tried awkwardly to get down off the slab. ‘Yes! He’s mine! What have you done to him?’

  Mrs Claus shrugged. ‘Effie brained him with a port wine decanter. She was magnificent!’

  Just now Effie was puffing and panting as she struggled across the circle of death holding on to Victor’s ankles. The elf was doing most of the work, looking anxiously backwards as they moved towards the scintillating gash in space.

  Now it was Brenda’s turn to stagger forth into the limelight. ‘Noo! Father! Effie – what have you done?’

  But Karla was there first, wrenching Victor out of the elf’s grasp. The wretched old man slumped to the floor. The elf leapt backwards, overawed by Karla’s Amazonian splendour. She gave him a nasty look and set about slapping her man friend awake. ‘You’ve cut his fricking skull open! His beautiful skull!’

  Brenda had hold of Effie, pulling her away from the old man. ‘Effie, you’ve . . . you’ve . . .’

  ‘You don’t understand, Brenda,’ Effie shouted at her friend. ‘He was going to . . . cannibalise you!’

  Alucard – morbid as ever – was peering over Effie’s shoulder, having caught the whiff of blood. He frowned. ‘He was supposed to get her and Frank out of the way. Are you saying he was going to eat her?’

  ‘No,’ said Effie. ‘I mean, chop her up for spare parts. That was his plan. It’s always his bally plan!’

  Effie didn’t notice Alucard’s shifty expression. He had known full well what Frankenstein was about. Working through the Brethren, it had been Alucard who had finagled Victor’s return to life. But he wasn’t about to go into that just now . . .

  Karla was shaking her fiancé, and yelling furiously at the others, who were crowding her in. ‘I don’t believe you! He wouldn’t have done any harm! He’d stopped with all that nonsense! Victor, Victor . . . wake up!’

  Meanwhile, Robert and Penny were standing a little way back from the tight crush of yelling bodies. Penny was hypnotised by the swirling vortex in the dark air before them.

  ‘Hell!’ she gasped. ‘There it is!’

  Robert nodded grimly. ‘I’ve, um, seen it before.’ He didn’t go into how he’d actually been down there and seen what it was like in the underworld. It turned out that hell was other people’s ex-husbands. But this didn’t seem like the moment to go into all the details.

  Penny suddenly knew what she had to do. While all the oldies were arguing ferociously amongst themselves, she had a job to do. She had to act immediately. She gabbled, ‘Robert – the film! Here, look – the DVD! Chuck it in.’ She produced the gleaming disc from her handbag. ‘We can be rid of it for ever!’

  ‘Brilliant.’ He grinned. ‘That’s a fantastic idea!’

  She looked around. ‘And the crew are fleeing . . . they’ve left all the equipment, the cameras, the shooting scripts . . . everything!’

  ‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’ Robert said.

  Penny shouted, ‘Let’s chuck it all into the Bitch’s Maw. The old film. And all the bits of the new one. Everything!’

  They were doing just that when Alex noticed what they were about. They were carrying a relatively lightweight camera towards the gateway and were just popping it into the screaming nexus when he screeched at them: ‘Stop! What are you trying to do?’

  Robert faced up to him, bunching his fists. ‘Putting an end to the curse of this ludicrous movie.’

  Alex laughed like a mad thing. ‘But we are in the movie! You can’t destroy it! We’re in the film for ever now!’

  ‘Punch him, Robert!’ shouted Penny.

  ‘No,’ said Robert, as Alex continued to dance and prance around the scene of destruction. ‘His mind is gone. That’s where devil worship and bad movies get you, Penny.’

  ‘Shame,’ she said. ‘He was all-right-looking, really.’

  All of this was on the periphery, however. Alex’s dancing around in his sorcerer’s cape went unnoticed by the others, who were gathered around Victor Frankenstein.

  They all took a step back as the old man jerked into spasmodic life.

  ‘I’M ALIVE!’ he cried. Then he blinked up at the figures around him. His eyes widened at the strange light and the noise, and the fact that Karla was hovering over him in the nude. ‘Karla . . . W-where are we? What are they doing to us . . . ?’

  ‘My love!’ Karla said, trying to get to him. But there was a kerfuffle, with everyone trying to grab everyone else.

  Brenda heard Effie cry out, ‘Don’t you try to come the innocent, Frankenstein. Kristoff’s here now. He’ll sort you out.’

  Victor flinched at the sight of the man standing by Effie. ‘Alucard!’ he cursed, his eyes lighting up savagely. He tried to lash out with both legs at the vampire. ‘I’ve waited centuries to be revenged upon you!’

  Some of the others backed off as they heard the sheer ferocity in the old man’s voice. It was a legendary hatred, echoing through the centuries.

  Effie saw her opportunity. ‘Help me, Kristoff. Help me grab him, while he’s still weak.’

  Brenda was appalled. ‘Effie, what are you doing?’

  Effie wasn’t about to have an argument with her best friend over this. ‘I’m going to chuck him back to hell. Get out of my way, Brenda!’

  Brenda screamed, grabbing hold of Effie’s upper arms. ‘NO! He’s my father!’ Effie’s bones felt so brittle in her hands. She could snap them so easily. She could put an end to this right now, if she had to.

  Effie leaned in as close as she could, seeing the craziness in Brenda’s face. ‘You don’t understand, Brenda!’

  ‘I don’t understand? What?’ Brenda tried to shake sense into her friend. ‘What about you – allying yourself with Mrs Claus? And Alucard? I think it’s you who’s got it all wrong, Effie love!’

  The two friends were at an impasse. ‘Brenda, get out of my way!’

  ‘No!’

  Effie took a deep breath. ‘All right, then . . .’

  For the first time, she played dirty. For the first time, she did something to Brenda that she could hardly credit.

  Effie knew far more magic than she pretended. A simple freezing spell did the trick. The work of an instant. A tiny, muttered invocation and Brenda froze solid. She’d stay that way for a whole minute – with that look of horrified dismay on her face – and that was long enough for Effie to do what she needed.

  Effie pushed her backwards and Brenda toppled like a statue on to the hard-packed earth. Then she turned and placed her hands on old man Frankenstein.

  ‘No!’ he gibbered, terrified of the witch woman. ‘Get off me!’

  ‘Leave him be!’ snarled Karla.

  Before Karla could actually intervene, Robert was behind her, grasping her in an armlock. He looked rather awkward, seizing a naked woman old enough to be his grandmother, but he held on manfully. Lisa tried to stop him, but he wasn’t listening. The hairdresser just didn’t understand anything.

  Alucard was beaming with joy, delighted by the proceedings. ‘Oh, Effie. It’s so good to see you again! I’d almost forgotten what fun we have together!’

  ‘Shut up and help me, Kristoff,’ she ground out between gritted teeth.

  ‘If you’re sure, my dear.’ He frowned. ‘Are you positive you want rid of old Victor?’

  ‘Yes!’ she yelled.

  ‘Seems a shame,’ he muttered.
‘I had the Brethren go to such trouble to bring him back. But if it’s what you want . . .’

  Between them, Effie and Alucard scooped up the slight form of Victor Frankenstein and started to swing him back and forth to gain momentum. As the others backed away, the old zombie was shrieking the whole time. His cries cut out abruptly as his captors propelled him into the shining Bitch’s Maw.

  They cheered as the gap in relative space-time swallowed him up.

  Karla screeched in protest, breaking free of Robert’s grasp with a sudden burst of aggrieved strength.

  She dashed over to Effie and stood there helplessly. All the violence drained out of her. She stared into hell and felt like she had lost everything. ‘He made me happy! The only man who ever could . . .’

  Effie was as sympathetic as she could be. ‘He was only after your head, you daft mare! He was only after your various bits!’

  Karla laughed bitterly. ‘Aren’t they all? But at least he cared. I’d have given them to him gladly. Whatever I had to give. What have I got now? Nothing. Nothing!’

  Brenda had broken out of her freezing spell. She lumbered woozily to her feet. ‘Oh, Effie. What have you done?’

  As Effie slipped back to talk urgently with Brenda, Karla felt herself drifting inexorably closer to the gateway.

  ‘That film was my last shot at stardom,’ she said. Her words were like a voiceover in her mind. The chilling narration laid over the final reel of her movie. ‘That man was my last shot at love . . .’

  And before she even knew she had made the choice, away Karla went, into the gaping Bitch’s Maw. Just as it was starting to close, she went quite calmly into hell.

  Those who watched her from across the circle of death saw that she was dancing rather than shuffling off this mortal coil.

  Alex came to his senses as the Maw started to fade away into the smudgy night. ‘Did you get all that? Did we shoot it?’ Already his brain was in overdrive, trying to make sense of it all; to make these fantastic events somehow fit the plot of his film.

  One final remaining camera assistant laughed at him. ‘Shoot it with what?’ She nodded at Robert, Lisa and Penny. ‘They ruined all the stuff.’