by Paul Magrs
There was so much for me and this younger me to say to each other. I wanted to tell her that everything was going to be all right in the end, even though her life seemed so ramshackle now. Even if sometimes it seemed like hard work and felt a bit lonely and loveless. Eventually it would settle down. She would feel less of an outcast. She would have a home. She’d have friends. She’d have a purpose . . .
Right now she looked scared and mystified as to why she’d want to sacrifice anything at all for the queen of this world. What did she really owe anyone?
She’d come to see, I thought, eventually.
Robert came over to tell us, ‘Brendas . . . err, Effie’s Aunt Maud has manifested herself in an antechamber.’
My younger self looked up at me. ‘What does that mean?’ Her face was full of trust.
‘They’re ready to . . . take from us what our friend Effie needs to lift her curse. It won’t hurt. We won’t be harmed.’
‘All right,’ she said.
I led the way across the throne room to the antechamber indicated. On our way we were met by the rest of the party from 1909. They had come to wish their best.
Mrs Mapp was sobbing. ‘I would never have simply given you up, Brenda. I wouldn’t have let them take you and sacrifice you.’ I noticed she was hugging her recovered manuscript to her chest.
‘Good luck, old girl,’ Rupert told us.
They both looked rather strangely at me. They couldn’t understand how I got to live for so long.
‘Where’s Professor Quandary?’ my younger self asked. ‘This was all his idea. He’s saved our life, in a way. By suggesting bringing an older Brenda here. He knew how to save us. We should thank him . . .’
Ah. There he was. The bearded adventurer himself. Hanging back in the shadows. Professor Quandary. Legend and man. He shuffled forward. ‘Hello, my dears,’ he said. ‘Erm, good luck.’
He kissed my younger self’s hand. Then he looked up at me.
Professor Quandary my eye.
It was Henry Cleavis.
I was gobsmacked. My face went numb. My eyes bugged right out of my head. I had no idea. I really had no idea. My mouth flapped open like I was a dead fish on a slab.
I just couldn’t see it. I couldn’t work it out.
‘How. . . how can it be you?’ I asked at last.
He smiled at me. He had the nerve to smile at me. Him there in his great frock coat and tattered dress shirt. Now that I looked, I saw that he was a little different to the Henry I knew. He was more grizzled. More fleshy, perhaps. Deeper lines, more life behind him. But how could that be, as well? He should be younger, not older, if he came from 1909.
‘Brenda, Brenda, Brenda,’ he sighed. He clapped his great meaty paws on my shoulders. ‘It’s been so long. I’m so sorry. About all of this. We’re not so much star-crossed as time-crossed lovers, you and I.’
‘Oh, sod off,’ I snapped. ‘Don’t go all misty-eyed and mystical on me. What are you up to? You should be back in Whitby! We left you behind, did me and the boys. You should be back there, on your killing spree. Seeing to the vampires . . .’
‘Hmmm,’ he growled.
‘Brenda,’ Mrs Mapp put in. ‘It’s me, my dear. Hello. I’m so sorry. We have dragged you here twice now. I’m sorry to put you all through this. But I gather you . . . are acquainted with the queen here. And you can help her.’
‘That’s right.’ I was staring at Bea. All those years later. I was staring at the ratty manuscript she was clutching. ‘That manuscript,’ I told her. ‘You publish it, you know. And then you go on to write many more books about Qab. Many, many more.’
‘Do I?’ She blinked at me. A delighted smile played about her lips. She wasn’t sure she should look so pleased with herself, with all this other stuff going on.
‘Oh, yes. You become a cult. A cult novelist. Women seek out your works. They join together in little groups. They come to believe that Qab is real and they try to come here, by fair means or foul.’
‘Goodness,’ said Beatrice. ‘I always knew there was magic in it. When I was orf in my trances. Didn’t I always say? It felt too real, too weird.’
‘A self-fulfilling prophecy,’ gasped Henry Cleavis – or, as they knew him, Professor Quandary. ‘Mrs Mapp writes the book, which somehow manages to survive through time and create this world, which in turn calls out to her and makes her write the book in the first place . . .’
I shot him a glance. ‘Don’t you start off on your mind-benders again. I’ll talk to you later about all that. I assume you’ll be coming back to the twenty-first century with me, hm?’
‘Doesn’t it sound grand?’ grinned Rupert Von Thal, who had been standing quietly by, looking most perplexed. I looked at him and found him just as impressive as I did when I was a girl a mere century old. Oh, those clingy breeches he sported. ‘The twenty-first century! And that’s where you belong, Brenda! You’re there in the future! Having more adventures than I’ve ever dreamed of!’
‘We’re all in the future now,’ I told him, feeling a bit rueful. ‘Now. We’ve got to get this business cleared up. We’ve got Effie’s life to save, and then we all go home, right? You lot must look after that poor, bewildered younger me. She’ll need taking good care of, with half her life’s blood missing. And my friends will return me to 2009. Agreed?’
Professor Quandary – my Henry – produced his pinking shears. ‘I take it you have your own pair, my dear?’ he asked me.
I nodded. I didn’t dare push the point and ask him again which century he would be returning to. To his friends, he belonged with them. But he knew me too. He must be the Cleavis I know, I thought. He has to be. But how can he belong to both times like this?
But that was only a minor mystery. I’d had enough fretting and wrangling my brains around in the cause of Henry Cleavis.
Right then I had to think about you, Effie. Saving your life. Bringing you back to normal. Bringing you home.
I let the lizard men lead me away.
There was an antechamber. Or rather, an auntie chamber. It was where the shade of Aunt Maud had brought herself into being.
The room was dimly lit. There were three makeshift pallets. Effie was supine on one, looking like a corpse, bless her. My younger self was clambering awkwardly into her own little bed.
I’d never seen Effie’s Aunt Maud before. Even though the ghost had lived next door to me, as long as I’d lived in my B&B, and even though I’d heard all about her opinions on any number of subjects, I’d never seen the wraithlike old woman in the flesh, so to speak.
Well, here she was. Rather faint, rather grey. Good stout shoes and a prim little hat. A mannish old woman with a severe expression.
‘You know this is the future, don’t you?’ she snapped at me. ‘You know this is the world that Whitby will become?’
I nodded at her.
‘Speak up!’ she barked. ‘I can’t stand nodders and mumblers! Yes, well, this is why you and Effie have to keep up the good work. Guarding the Bitch’s Maw and so on. Because if and when hell breaks out, you see, this is how it will be. Like Qab. Ghastly bloody place. The future isn’t fixed.’
‘Isn’t it?’ I was staring rather worriedly at the tubes and glass tanks and whatnot that the lizard men were fiddling with. They seemed rather expert in this blood transfusion business. This must be how they fed their queen every day. Wheeling in vast supplies of blood for Her. The thought gave me the willies. Then I realised what brusque Aunt Maud had just said. ‘Isn’t it fixed? Are you saying the world doesn’t have to wind up like this?’
‘Of course not,’ she snapped. ‘The pinking shears bring you to different worlds, different possibilities and dimensions. This can all be averted.’
Now they were taking hold of me, those chilly lizard men. They were lying me down on the black silk of the bed. I wished I’d managed to say goodbye to Robert properly. What if it all went wrong and I never woke up? I should have handed him the pinking shears for safe-keeping. Oww. That
was something jabbing in my arm. Oww oww. Something else. There was a swirling sensation, not unpleasant. And a dragging feeling, like I was being pulled along, stumbling into shallow waters . . . I could feel the deeper ones beckoning . . .
‘How do we avert this future?’ I asked Aunt Maud. She had all the answers, Effie, you always said. Aunt Maud always knew what to do. She was smoothing your furrowed brow as you lay there. You were hooked up to a huge glass vessel. It was filling up gradually with your dark, dark blood. Strange how dark your blood was. It made a ringing noise as it drummed against the inside of the glass. It rang with energy and malice, your blood. They were taking all your bad blood away. But oh, you looked so pale. Like paper, Effie. Like a cut-out doll of the Queen of Qab. Hurry, hurry. We must hurry with our blood to fill you up. Half each. Half of both Brendas to keep you alive.
Aunt Maud said, ‘Just make sure that Beatrice Mapp never publishes her book. She must be stopped. If her book disappears, then Qab will never come to be. You will see. I have told that old boyfriend of yours. Quandary or Cleavis or whatever it is he’s calling himself now. He has to go back with her to 1909 and put a spoke in her wheels. That’s the only way. Only then can everything come out right.’
I was feeling very strange indeed by then. The blood was flowing. I was shrinking down to nothing. I was gliding about on the ceiling. I was wafting down to the floor like autumn leaves. I felt like there was nothing left inside of me. I was doing all of this for you, Effie . . . both of us . . . both Brendas . . . we were doing all of this for you . . .
And we were relying on our friends to get us home again. To the right times and places.
Home again, home again . . .
And that was when I stopped talking to your rather mannish old auntie and it all went dark.
That was the last I remember of being in the world of Qab.
Return from Qab
What was she doing here? After everything? What on earth did Penny think she was up to, coming back to The Spooky Finger?
But here she was. In the headdress and everything. Dressing up in the fake battle armour of a woman warrior of Qab. And pretty uncomfortable it was too. Something was digging in, somewhere under her rib cage, some kind of buckle. And she felt such a fool, sitting there in the back parlour of The Spooky Finger with fifteen other women.
Fifteen other women! Numbers were up. How strange.
Since that terrible night when Marjorie Staynes’s shop was attacked by the vampire lads, it seemed that whispers of Qab had only increased. The mystical place had somehow gained in allure. Add to that the mysterious disappearance of Brenda and Effie, Robert and Leena . . . People were becoming aware that something truly weird and quite real was centred about this bookshop.
And so, when it reopened and the book group started up again, it was only natural that the cult began meeting again. And its members began donning their golden armour once more.
Penny was coming along only to learn what had happened to her friends. Marjorie Staynes was inscrutable. She welcomed Penny, but she was evasive. She wouldn’t answer any of her questions.
Chanting, chanting, incense and dressing up. And somewhere across the universe, her friends were in peril. Penny felt pretty hopeless. She stared at Marjorie Staynes, all got up as a high priestess and waving her chubby arms about sinuously. You caused all of this. You brought this trouble to our doorstep.
Oh yes, Penny had carried out further research on the internet, digging deeper into the bottomless archive of Qab fan discussion. She had confirmed her suspicion that Marjorie Staynes had, in fact, belonged to the chapter of the Qab cult that had caused such trouble in Kendal. The group that had had to be forcibly closed down. Marjorie Staynes appeared to be the only surviving member. The rest had gone to ground or vanished completely.
Now the same thing was happening here.
Henry Cleavis wanted to put a stop to it all immediately.
‘I could get them cleaned up,’ he had told Penny. ‘My superiors in MIAOW won’t let this Staynes women operate a Dreadful Flap for long, not if I tell them. Sounds to me like my people were behind the Kendal closure. They operate a, erm, scorched earth policy, where dimensional transgressions are concerned.’
Penny stared at him. This was last night. They were having dinner in a new bistro on LeFanu Close. Sipping Merlot in the window, Penny agog at Cleavis’s terse words. This was the man whose otherworldly books she had adored as a kid. And he was so blasé about all this business. His monster-hunting activities. He was telling her all about them.
She supposed that was because he had no one else to talk to, what with Brenda gone. It was Penny who was hearing about his routing of the scally vamps. His slayings and his pursuit of Leena. Except he hadn’t found her, had he? The vampires were toying with him, he was starting to suspect. Their numbers were increasing. It was looking hopeless. He might have to call in the bigger guns. . .
‘And we don’t really want that,’ he grumped. ‘The big guns can make a mess of a little place like this. A quaint little town like this.’
Penny gulped, and then their main courses had arrived. That was when she told him about going back undercover at The Spooky Finger.
He tutted and whistled. ‘That Staynes woman has no idea what she’s meddling with.’
Penny looked into his eyes then. She could see how worried he was for Brenda. It was over a week now, and there had been no word.
Cleavis had been round to the Christmas Hotel. He had quizzed the inscrutable Mrs Claus. Eventually she had told him about the pinking shears.
‘The shears!’ he had gasped. ‘The actual shears. But. . . how did you come to have them?’
On this point Mrs Claus had ground to a halt. She looked quite shifty. ‘I’ve had them for years,’ was all she’d say. ‘I’ve hardly ever used them. They draw attention. Magic like that. It can get you in hot water.’
He gazed at her steadily in her Christmassy boudoir. ‘Yes. Um, you’re quite right. It can get you into a lot of trouble. MIAOW have been after those pinking shears for a long time.’
Mrs Claus shrugged. ‘They’ve been quite safely put away. Until recently. Now Brenda’s got them.’
A greedy look was on Cleavis’s face at this point. To Mrs Claus it was quite unmistakable. ‘I want them,’ he said.
‘I thought you were looking for Brenda,’ she taunted him. ‘Your beloved Brenda.’
‘Of course,’ he snapped. ‘And your daughter, too. The silly bitch who caused this whole, erm, fandango in the first place.’
Mrs Claus had reacted as if he’d slapped her. ‘Silly bitch!’
She called for her elves and had him dragged away. Dumped on the pavement outside the Christmas Hotel. This gave the old woman some slight, small satisfaction. But still she was unwell with worry. A week now and no word from Qab. They might be away for years. They might never come back at all.
Sometimes Mrs Claus was disparaging about the efforts of Brenda and Effie to protect Whitby from the creatures of the night. Sometimes she even stood in the way of that task. But she realised that the place would be worse off without them.
‘Oh, Effie, dearie. Come back. Throw off this curse or whatever it is. Come back to your senses. Come back to Whitby . . .’
When Mrs Claus heard that the Qab cult was meeting again, she urged Penny to rejoin.
‘You must! Maybe they’ll send you through the Dreadful Flap as well! Maybe . . . maybe you can go after them!’
This was on the phone. Penny quailed at the suggestion of following her friends into the unknown. But she knew Mrs Claus was right. It might all fall to her. She was the next one who had to step up to the plate.
Everyone else was gone, weren’t they?
Now the chanting had reached a fever pitch. As the clouds of sweet-smelling incense just about obscured the features of the worshippers across the room from her, Penny came back to her senses.
Here she was. At The Spooky Finger again. Listening to Marjorie Stayn
es spouting off about the sainted Beatrice Mapp and her magical connection with the world they all knew was real.
Penny had lost her enthusiasm for Qab. Now that it was seemingly more than fiction, she felt peculiar peering into those stale yellow paperbacks. It was as if she expected to find her missing friends translated on to those pages.
The chanting finished abruptly with a high, keening note from Marjorie Staynes.
There was a heavy, smoky pause.
Then Marjorie said, ‘Well, ladies. Let’s break there, shall we? I’ll put a brew on and we can mingle for a while.’
Everyone seemed relieved to have time out.
Penny nipped up to the bathroom. She made sure she did it while Marjorie was busy with the tea urn and biscuits. She wouldn’t want Penny upstairs. Not when she knew of her connection to those who had caused the kerfuffle here.
Penny locked herself in and stilled her breathing. Calmed herself down.
Then she looked at the framed watercolour of the lake. It was unharmed. Even the thin glass was unbroken. There was nothing to show that it was anything out of the ordinary.
She looked closer. Perhaps it was a stormier landscape than she remembered. The clouds were darker, more purple. The waters of the wide lake were nearly black. They were so cleverly painted. She hadn’t really noticed that before. It was as if they were rippling, shifting . . .
Penny gasped. Unconsciously she lifted a hand to touch the glass.
It was soft. Like warm melted toffee. Just like before.
Something was stirring in the Dreadful Flap.
Tea break was over. Marjorie clapped her hands to draw her ladies together once more. She sighed at the mess, all the cups and saucers and plates of cake crumbs. Gila would have whisked away the detritus in a flash. But now she was having to do without her servant boy.
