by Paul Magrs
‘You don’t care about Effie,’ Brenda flung at her. ‘You just want to mix things up and cause a rumpus. You couldn’t care less about Effie.’
Mrs Claus swung her creaking bath chair round and confronted Brenda full on. Now she was in deadly earnest as she said, ‘That’s where you’re wrong. You know nothing. You never did. You can stop your gums flapping right there.’
‘I’m Effie’s friend,’ Brenda shouted. ‘Whatever’s happened. I care what becomes of her. You don’t. Why should you? Who are you to her anyway?’
And that was when the mistress of the Christmas Hotel floored both Brenda and Robert with just three words.
She said, quite simply: ‘I’m her mother.’
Afterwards, Robert realised that he was prepared to stay there a bit longer and listen to Mrs Claus. Afterwards, he wished that they had. He wanted to hear what evidence she had. He wanted to know how on earth such a thing could be true. He had only a few brief seconds, standing in that bar before her bath chair, struggling to put it all together. The pieces were just about beginning to fit when Brenda whirled away with her hands over her ears.
‘I’m not listening to this! It’s just more rubbish! More of your evil lies to put us off our stroke!’ She barged to the doorway, grabbing hold of Robert’s sleeve. ‘We’re not staying for any more of it.’
‘But it’s all true!’ Mrs Claus bellowed. Robert was struck by the lack of mockery in her tone. There wasn’t a trace of her usual insincerity. She meant this. He could see it in her deeply lined face, which for a moment looked vulnerable. This was for real. She believed it.
‘Brenda . . .’ Robert tried to squirm out of her grasp. She was dragging him to the exit.
‘Robert,’ she warned. ‘We’re going. That old monster would say anything to distract us.’
‘You’ll believe me! You’ll change your mind soon!’ Mrs Claus raised her voice as they left the bar. They were heading back down the corridor with her voice warbling after them: ‘You’ll need my help pretty soon and then you’ll come back! I’ve got something I think you’re going to need!’
‘What’s she on about?’ grunted Brenda, starting to run, taking them out of range of that awful voice. ‘Why does she have to interfere with everything and make it all worse? We should never have come here, Robert.’
‘I thought she wanted to help us!’ Robert protested. But he guessed nothing good had come of this trip to the Christmas Hotel. As ever.
In the foyer and public rooms at the front, the residents were getting whipped up into a frenzy of festive hilarity. The main doors stood open in the scally vampires’ wake.
Great buffeting winds came in with flurries of snow, but even that didn’t affect the atmosphere of the Christmas Hotel. The place was always a madhouse.
‘We’ve got to run,’ said Brenda grimly. ‘Those lads have a good start on us.’
And so began a heart-stopping dash through the elegant part of town. The going was tricky because of the accumulated snow and ice. As they struggled and skidded up Hudson Street, the wind tried to force them back down the hill. Their breath caught in their throats and their legs burned with fatigue, as if they were being held in check by some vast invisible force.
‘Don’t give up, Robert!’ Brenda gasped. ‘Those Walkers . . . we have to stop them . . . there’s no telling what . . . they’ll do . . .’
Robert had his phone redialling Penny, but hers must have been switched off as she took part in the cult’s rituals.
Brenda was trying to ring Cleavis. She got him, and gasped into the phone as the wind whipped around them in a mini cyclone. Robert was standing next to her, and even he could hardly make out her words: ‘Vamps . . . Spooky Finger . . . Effie . . . save them!’
And then she was putting her head down against the wind, tying her headscarf tightly under her chin and bracing her heavy shoulders as she barrelled forward. When they managed to reach Silver Street with its broad shop fronts, the going became a little easier. The elements had a harder time getting at them.
‘Listen!’ Brenda gasped.
All Robert could hear was the wind. His ears were scorched by the frozen air. He couldn’t hear a thing, and then – suddenly – there was a great burst of sound. A crashing and tinkling of glass. Shrill screams. Shocked cries. Guttural laughter. They were just a few doors from the middle of Silver Street. That was where the noise was coming from.
They rounded the corner, and there was The Spooky Finger with its front window punched in. Smoky light came blazing on to the street. The shop’s immaculate displays were wrecked, and books had been scooped into the street, flapping away on the wind like broken birds.
The noise from within was horrible.
Brenda and Robert were bracing themselves to plunge into that chaos of tumbling books and crashing shelves when the front door flew open and one of the vamp boys came staggering backwards into the street, like someone straight out of a Western barroom brawl. After him came Gila, Robert’s Gila, looking furious and bloodied.
He was holding some kind of glittering golden sword. ‘Robert! Hold him down!’
Robert dashed forward, but the boy in the hoodie with the crimson fangs was too strong for him.
Robert jumped backwards as Gila wielded that sword. It whirled about his head and the vampire snarled.
Brenda swore. ‘This is what happens! I warned her! I bloody warned her!’ Then she hurried past Robert and stepped into the shop.
Sssswwshht. Gila slashed at the vamp as another came out to join the fight. Robert dodged out of the way just in time.
Gila shouted at him: ‘Robert, get inside there. Help them. Penny . . .’
He didn’t need telling twice. He bolted towards the entrance, dodging his way through Gila’s opponents. Gila could deal with them. But where had he got that sword, and what on earth was he wearing? Hardly anything. Some kind of golden loincloth thing.
Inside it was a scene of horrible chaos. Bookshelves had gone down like dominoes, scattering their precious cargo everywhere.
There was smoke in the air, and Robert didn’t know whether a fire had broken out or if it was just incense.
There was yelling and screaming and the taunting cries of the scally vamps. The first person he recognised was Leena from the shop under Brenda’s house, getting her neck bitten by some lascivious wretch.
Robert picked up a chair and smashed it on to the Walker’s broad back, dislodging him from his gory snack. He could see that Leena’s skin was broken. Livid blood was flowing down her neck, on to the golden priestess robes she was sporting. She clutched her punctured flesh and started screaming horribly.
Robert couldn’t help her now. He could think only about the others. Penny. Where was Penny?
He waded into the shop and a few women pushed past him, fleeing into the night in their strange robes and headdresses. The vamps were letting them go, it seemed. Evidently none of these were the particular woman they were here for.
In the deepest recesses of the shop, Robert found Penny.
She’d been backed into the farthest corner by the leader of the vamps. He was spitting and snarling at her and yelling out questions. Penny was white-faced with shock. She couldn’t say a word. She was mute with amazement.
‘Where’s Brenda?’ Robert yelled, breaking into their scene.
The vamp leader whirled at the sound of Robert’s voice, snapping the spell he had on Penny.
That was all Penny needed. She lifted up a weird heavy pot thing and brought it smashing down on the lad’s head. He collapsed.
But they knew it wouldn’t keep him down for long.
‘Brenda!’
‘I’m here. Wedged on the staircase.’
Dashing over with Penny at his heels, Robert had to lever himself round a fallen case of children’s books and a tangle of ruined bonsai trees.
There on the familiar staircase was Brenda. She was holding Majorie Staynes in a brutal headlock. The elderly bookshop owner was wearing a very
elaborate set of golden robes.
‘You can do what you want with me, you monster,’ Majorie spat. ‘But Effie’s getting away. You can’t stop her. I’ll exert every fibre of my being to prevent you from interfering further.’
If Robert’s ears didn’t deceive him, Brenda snarled at this. ‘How are things downstairs?’ she asked.
‘Chaos,’ he told her. ‘But the women are getting away, I think. Mostly. The vamps are here for us and Effie . . .’
‘How could you bring them here?’ Marjorie moaned. ‘What harm were we doing, really, in our cult? How could you set those fiends upon us?’
‘We didn’t,’ said Brenda.
‘But you did! You sent them ahead of you!’
Brenda tightened her grip on Marjorie’s neck and Robert was starting to worry she would wrench her head off. ‘You’ll never believe me, but we really didn’t. Now, you’re going to get out of my way. Let me get to Effie.’
Behind Robert, Penny was calling out, ‘There’s something happening down here . . . !’
She was right. There was renewed noise. The battle in the bookshop had been rejoined.
Brenda knew at once who it was. ‘Henry’s here!’ she said, as if that fact redoubled her strength. She forced Marjorie down the stairs and into Robert’s waiting arms. ‘Robert, keep her down there.’
‘Where are you going?’ he grunted with the effort of keeping Marjorie still. Her arms windmilled and thrashed about in the narrow stairwell.
‘The lavvy,’ said Brenda grimly.
‘You interfering devils,’ Marjorie snarled. Her nails reached out for Robert, tearing at his face. That was all the impetus he needed to shove her down the stairs. ‘Penny, catch!’ He’d had quite enough of this old horror. Her funny looks and nasty words every time he went round there. The way she treated poor Gila as her servant. Like something subhuman.
The noise in the bookshop was overwhelming by now. Crashing and smashing. Screams of terror. Weird explosions. Cries of triumph from Henry Cleavis. Robert recognised his bellowing voice. He was in his element. It was a massacre down there.
Robert left them to it.
He hurried up the stairs after Brenda, to the lavvy.
It was a confined space, that middle landing. Brenda wedged the whole space solid with her trembling bulk.
She was confronting her friend.
The bit of Effie Robert could see past Brenda seemed very unfamiliar to him. She was in robes, just as the other women in the cult were, but Effie’s were even more elaborate. She had a headdress and a sceptre kind of thing, with which she was holding Brenda at bay.
‘You’re not taking me,’ Effie said.
From her voice, Robert knew at once that she had gone crazy. Maybe it was the ritual, or some kind of drug Marjorie had been giving her. Robert didn’t know. Maybe it was the vampire virus whizzing round her rejuvenated veins. But Effie was pop-eyed with hatred and determination.
Brenda managed to keep her own voice calm. ‘Effie, this has to stop. I’m here to help you.’
‘You?’ Effie gasped. ‘On New Year’s Eve you were the one sending me away! You said I had to get out of town as quickly as I could. Well, that’s what I’m doing. Good riddance, eh?’
‘Not like this!’ Brenda shouted. ‘I said Scotland, didn’t I?’
And then Robert could see more of the tiny bathroom where Effie was making her last stand. She was an incongruously magisterial figure by the toilet. But there was something else in there. Something weird. Something he had already heard Penny describe.
The Lakeland watercolour on the wall. It was morphing and shifting. A hole was opening up in the painting. A portal. A vortex through time and space, growing larger and larger as the two old friends confronted one another.
‘I want to go to Qab,’ Effie said. ‘You can’t stop me.’
‘It isn’t real,’ said Brenda. ‘That Marjorie Staynes woman has got you all confused. You’re believing in things out of old books because your head’s messed up. It’s Alucard’s fault, he—’
‘Don’t you criticise Kristoff! How dare you? Accomplice! Murderess!’
‘Effie, don’t . . . !’
Now the vortex was swirling purple and black, blanking out much of the wall on the right-hand side of the bathroom.
‘What’s this then, eh?’ Effie shrilled, teetering on the brink. ‘Where does this lead? This gap in the Very Fabric of Time and Space?’
‘What is it, Brenda?’ Robert asked her urgently. ‘Is it another Maw? Another gateway into hell?’
‘It’s a Dreadful Flap!’ Effie shouted triumphantly. ‘And it’s been opened up tonight by the combined willpower of the cult of Qab! By the women warriors of The Spooky Finger! Look what we have done! Isn’t it marvellous?’
Brenda’s voice sounded dry and small as she said, ‘You mustn’t do this, Effie.’
‘Call yourself a friend.’ Effie frowned. ‘What do you do? Set my own vampire boys upon me and my cult! What were you playing at? Those boys are mine! How dare you try to twist and control them.’
‘That was Mrs Claus,’ Robert piped up. He wasn’t going to have Brenda falsely accused. ‘She sent them round here. She wanted to stop you opening up this . . . Dreadful Flap thing as much as we do.’
‘She wouldn’t interfere,’ said Effie. ‘She just wouldn’t.’
Brenda’s voice was even smaller. ‘And why’s that, Effie? Why wouldn’t she?’
Effie’s eyes lit up. It was clear that she had a strange and lovely secret to tell. ‘She’s my mother. Did I never mention that, Brenda?’ She gurgled with horrible laughter and then turned to look with interest into the spiralling abyss on the lavvy wall. ‘I’ve had enough of all this talking. It’s time to go.’
They were interrupted then by a gruff male voice from the bottom of the stairs. ‘Brenda! Brenda darling, I’m here! Is she there? Have you got her? Have you captured her again?’
Effie recognised Henry Cleavis, just as the others did. Her eyes narrowed. ‘You’ve brought him after me. That killer. You’ve brought him here to murder me!’
Brenda shook her head. ‘No, Effie, no. That’s not . . .’
But Effie just scowled. She adjusted her headdress and straightened her shoulders, then without another glance at her former friends she stepped straight into the vortex.
And was instantly gone.
‘Effie!’ Brenda shrieked, jolting forward just as Henry came thundering up the stairs.
The Dreadful Flap gave a kind of satisfied shudder, as if it had ingested something delicious. Then, in a flash, it was gone. Leaving just that tatty watercolour on the wall.
‘Have you got her?’ Cleavis cried, reaching them at last, streaked with dust and vampire gore.
‘She’s gone,’ Brenda said hollowly. ‘Gone to Qab, she says.’
They stood looking at the empty bathroom.
Downstairs it had all gone a bit ominously quiet. Robert was hardly aware of Penny joining them on the landing and staring at the space that Effie had occupied scant moments before.
‘But is there really such a place as Qab?’ Robert asked aloud. ‘It was just a silly game, wasn’t it? Just that mad Marjorie Staynes having everyone on . . .’
Penny surprised him. ‘I’m really not so sure, you know.’
Henry Cleavis put his arm around Brenda. She shrugged her lover off.
Brenda stayed very quiet.
Cleavis said, ‘Erm. Well. Y’know. Actually. It does exist, you know. In actuality. Qab. It really does. I think. But I, erm, I have to check. I have to find out for sure.’
‘And how do you do that?’ asked Brenda wearily.
‘There’s a way,’ said the old professor.
As Cleavis turned to lead them down the staircase, Robert’s thoughts went to Gila, and he ran through the ruined shop to find his boyfriend out on the street.
Gila’s enemies were slain or fled and Robert’s lizard boy was standing in the icy road with his ornamental sword. He was
looking crazy and very, very out of place.
Brenda in Bloomsbury
Sometimes my mistress would shout at me and I would dash out of the house to sit in Gordon Square till things died down.
She wasn’t a nasty woman, my mistress, but she’d get herself all het up – especially when her work wasn’t going so well. I’d sit on a bench, quietly, a few streets away, reminding myself what a grand spot I lived in. How lucky I was to have fetched up here, in Bloomsbury, and how fortunate it was that Mrs Mapp had been so good to me.
She had taken me in when I was on my last legs.
She had never been satisfied with her domestic help. Well, I have always been what they called then a good plain cook. And I can sweep up, mop and polish and do all the required household tasks. To me, all that came quite naturally, as if it had been built into me somehow, at my genesis. (Now there’s a funny thought!)
I was only too glad to pitch in and work my fingers to the bone for Mrs Beatrice Mapp of Tavistock Square. I’d sleep under the attic eaves of my very own room at the top of her house and I’d thank my lucky stars.
At that point in my very long life I hadn’t had a room for many years. I’d recently come out of one of those periods that I spent wandering aimlessly, pillar to post, town to town. My brain was leaking sawdust and I retained hardly any memories or faces. When I staggered into Mrs Mapp’s life the first time – bedraggled and starving – I was Brenda all alone in London, and it was as if I had no past at all. It seems to me now that my memories only stick when I’m somewhere I can be happy for a while. That’s something I’ve learned. I didn’t know it then – a hundred years ago – but I was already a century old. And yet I was still only just learning to be me.
I assumed that restlessness and unhappiness came with the territory and there was no other way for me to exist on the face of the planet. I never expected to put down any roots or retain any memories, fond or otherwise.
But pretty soon after starting my life in Tavistock Square, I grew fond of Mrs Mapp, though she could be harsh and shout at me when she wasn’t happy with my work, her work, or in herself. She was plagued by her own demons, that poor girl. She had been widowed so very young. Her husband had been a banker, much older than her and dicky in the region of the heart. She had no one now, apart from me, though there were reminders all over that house of her gallant, danger-seeking brother, who was dead abroad and in a foreign grave. And reminders also of her uncle, who had left all his glass cases of stuffed beasties and insects for me to polish and dust. Some kind of naturist, he was meant to be, before he ‘popped orf ’, as Mrs Mapp put it.
