[Brenda & Effie 02] - Something Borrowed

by Paul Magrs

  ‘Of course I mean her,’ Martin says resignedly. ‘She controls us body and soul, you know. We have no will, no volition, outside her. We are her puppets, in that ghastly hotel. The staff and elderly guests . . . all dancing to her insane whims . . .’

  ‘What has she done now?’ asks Effie steadily.

  ‘Robert escaped,’ Martin goes on. ‘He got away from her. So it isn’t impossible. But I am weaker than him. I must be. I can’t get away. Only . . . sometimes . . . like tonight.’ He looks as if he is wrestling with himself: as if part of him wants to go tearing back to the hotel. The words are leaping out of him in fitful bursts. He’s like man possessed, and I dread whatever it is he wants to tell us. ‘Robert said that I must confess to you two. That you will help. That you will know what to do. He says that you are good women . . .’

  ‘Cut the flannel,’ Effie breaks in. ‘What has Mrs Claus made you do?’

  I look at her sharply, alarmed by her tone, but it seems to have done the trick. Martin gets to the point: ‘Mrs Claus was terrified of getting one of those letters. Word’s gone round town about Sheila Manchu. Terrible secrets coming to light. Mrs Claus has got a lot to hide.’

  ‘I bet she has,’ Effie breathes. ‘And what conceit the woman has! Imagining that she would be next on the list!’

  ‘She had a good idea who’s been sending these things, these letters, out. She’s had her eye on this person a good long while. Never trusted her an inch.’

  Effie and I draw even closer as Martin lowers his voice. He’s talking more quietly than the gentle sussuration of the sea, but we don’t miss a word of what he’s saying.

  ‘Mrs Claus was certain. She’s always so certain. She’s always right. And so she sent me out . . . on a little errand.’

  ‘No!’ Effie gasps. ‘Murder?’

  Martin’s face squinches up and he sobs desperately. ‘There was nothing I could do! We can’t resist her! She has hooks into us, into our flesh and our minds. We can’t resist her . . .’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I lured the victim here. On to the western cliff. Back there. I phoned her. I told her I had information. I had the dirt on Mrs Claus. Well, I knew that would draw her out. She’d go anywhere for a story like that. She couldn’t believe her luck. So she came. Late at night. She came up to the cliffs to meet me.’

  I can hardly credit it. He’s confessing in such a deathly and calm monotone.

  ‘Rosie Twist,’ Effie says. There’s an edge to her voice – bitter and harsh as old coffee grounds. ‘I thought nowt of her, but she never deserved to die like that.’

  There’s a pause. Martin looks down at the mossy stone underfoot. His face is hawk-like in shadow. I instinctively draw away from him.

  ‘I lured her there. Right to the edge. Making promises. Sure she was the one sending the letters. It was obviously her. She knew everything about everyone. She was in a position to threaten people. That’s why she always seemed so . . . superior and sardonic. Rosie Twist.’ Now he looks savage. He looks murderous once more. But hold on. Don’t panic, I tell myself. Stay with this.

  ‘You shoved her over the edge,’ Effie tells him. ‘You murdered her.’

  Martin nods. ‘Because I had no choice. I had Mrs Claus inside my brain. Instructing me. All this pressure building up. And . . . once I’d charged at her . . . and shoved her in the stomach with both hands, and then . . . it was so easy. The pressure was off. It was a huge relief! I just had to watch her. She reeled backwards with a squawk. An awful noise. But it was cut off, abruptly. As she vanished.’

  ‘She fell over two hundred feet,’ Effie said. ‘Like a rag doll. Shoved out of the way because she knew too much. We saw her. Lying there, broken up. The next morning.’

  Martin cries out then, and thrusts his face into his hands.

  ‘She didn’t do it.’ I speak up hesitantly. ‘You know that, don’t you, Martin? Rosie Twist never wrote any letters.’

  He’s still howling, blubbering, feeling sorry for himself. I can’t even tell if he can hear me.

  Effie slaps at his hands. ‘Listen to her, son! You just listen. Rosie Twist never wrote any poison pen letters. Because more have arrived since . . . since she died. Since you murdered her.’

  Martin looks up at us. He looks just about dead himself.

  ‘You killed her for nothing,’ says Effie.

  ‘I know that,’ Martin whispers. ‘I realised that. When I heard about these latest letters. When Mrs Claus got hers this morning. I realised what I’d done. And I needed to . . . tell someone . . .’

  ‘Well,’ says Effie. ‘What do you expect us to do about it?’

  I shuffle nervously. I don’t know what Effie’s planning. What can we do? Grab him? Drag him to the cop shop? I try to read Effie’s expression, but in the shadows this is impossible.

  ‘I should give myself up,’ Martin says. ‘I should tell them. What Mrs Claus is like. Stitch her up.’ Suddenly he cries out in pain. ‘But she’s in my mind! I can feel her!’

  I glance ashore and see that Cleavis is up on his feet, silhouetted on the headland. He’s heard the cries from Martin. He gives a quick wave. Do we need his help?

  Oh yes, I wave back, as surreptitiously as I can. We could do with a hand all right.

  Martin’s not watching me, though. He’s squealing and shrieking as if his guts are bursting open inside him. Effie and I take uncertain steps backwards.

  ‘It’s an illusion,’ Effie cries in a commanding tone. ‘She isn’t really inside your mind. And she can’t really control you. It’s all an illusion brought on by the drugs . . .’

  ‘No!’ he howls. ‘She made me do it! She made me commit murder!’

  And now I can hear Henry’s sensible brogues slapping on the wet stone of the pier. He’s running here to help us and the noise puts the fear of God into Martin.

  The elf whirls and dashes to the railing. I yell out instinctively to stop him, and Effie stays my arm. ‘But the sea . . .!’ I screech and watch, appalled, as Martin springs and flings himself over into the darkness. With surprising agility, he has taken himself off into the night.

  Effie and I bolt to the edge of the pier. ‘The tide doesn’t come in this far,’ she’s gabbling. ‘Look. Sand. He’s on the beach.’

  There was no splash. No sudden suicide. Only an escape attempt: the whump of a podgy hotel elf landing heavily on wet sand. ‘There!’ Effie shouts, and we catch a glimpse of Martin scrambling desperately across the flattened dunes. He’s running with the leaden persistence of someone plagued by nightmares.

  Effie’s heading for the stone stairs that lead down to the beach. ‘Come on!’ she barks. ‘We have to get after him!’

  I hesitate for a second.

  ‘Brenda, come on!’ bawls Effie.

  Then Henry is dashing up to us, breathing heavily, and brimming with concern for our welfare. ‘What has he done? Has he hurt you?’

  ‘We’ve got to get him back,’ Effie tells us grimly, and hurriedly plunges ahead of us down the green sea steps.

  I can’t imagine what we must look like. The three of us, three daft old so-and-sos pelting hell for leather over the soft, cloddy sand. It’s like running through demerara sugar: flying up in flurries as we press on. The three of us are so old and out of condition, how can we hope to catch up with the elf ?

  He’s plump but he can put on a turn of speed when need be, it turns out. The three of us are wasting our breath yelling after him:

  ‘Martin! Martin, you’ve got to stop!’

  ‘Come back, you young fool!’

  ‘Give yourself up, it’s the only way! Look, we can tell the police that you were brainwashed! Anything! Just stop!’ This last voice is mine – rambling on, as usual. By now I’ve got the most horrible stitch, all down one side.

  Still Martin won’t stop. We can hear his ragged breathing; it sounds like surf heaving up the shingle. At first he runs for the sea, then seems to change his mind and loops back across the bay. He’s strikin
g out towards the darkness and we seem powerless to stop him. We plunge on heedlessly, in pursuit.

  It’s midnight and surely people can hear us? Not everyone in Whitby is abed yet. Aren’t people staring from the prom? Can’t they see the three of us chasing this murderer? We’re making enough noise to wake the innocent from their beds, surely . . .?

  ‘Martin! Martin, come back!’

  He puts his head down and flees. Who knows what’s going on in that scrambled young mind of his. He came to us in order to confess; to give himself up. But now he has changed his mind.

  I have to stop. I can’t keep this up. I’m seeing luminous spots in front of my eyes. I feel as if I’m going to have a stroke, here and now, in the mouth of the harbour. Henry stops, too, and he’s as whacked as I am. He rubs my back as I bend and Effie starts shrieking at us. ‘We can’t let him go!’

  ‘We can’t catch him up, Effie,’ I pant. ‘I can’t budge another inch!’

  Effie swears very loudly. She’s craning her neck to catch another glimpse of him. ‘We’ve lost him,’ she curses, and turns to give me a very black look.

  She’s about to say something else, too, when the most horrific noise reaches us from across the dunes. It’s Martin. He’s screaming.

  ‘What . . .?’

  And there’re other noises, too. Fleshy, rending noises. Tearing, sucking noises. Teeth and fangs and the chortling glee of something not quite human. Or, no longer human.

  ‘By Christ . . .’ Cleavis breathes.

  Effie clutches at my arm. Martin shrieks again and again; his last, desperate cries emerging as shock waves we can just about feel as they batter us, and they puncture the perfect stillness of the bay. They die down to gurgles. And we can hear a gibbering shriek that all three of us recognise at once:

  Womanzee!

  We catch only the tiniest glimpse of Jessie. The three of us are frozen to the spot. Clutching each other. Too scared to give chase. I don’t think it would be a good idea to pursue her anyway. When we catch sight of her she’s capering like a sprite: feral and dripping with gore. Martin is obviously stone dead and limp in her arms. She’s dragging him away at great speed towards the shore and, presumably, her cave. Soon, the shadows have swallowed them up.

  ‘Home,’ Henry says thickly. He urges Effie and me to come to our senses. ‘We must go home at once.’

  ‘Oh my word,’ Effie moans. ‘She . . . just did away with him!’

  ‘I knew it,’ Cleavis says grimly. ‘I knew it when we saw her last night. I knew she would end up doing something like this.’

  As we turn to plodge back up the sands Effie and I exchange a strange look. I don’t know if we’re accepting blame for what’s happened to Martin, or if we are both racked with guilt, or what. I just don’t know. But we both keep quiet about Jessie. I wish I’d never told Henry she used to be my friend.

  As we struggle back up the slimy steps to the pier, I can still hear Martin’s screams in my head.

  No one has come running. Surely all of Whitby must have heard his cries? But no. If they heard them, they’ve ignored them. They’ve snuggled into their bedclothes and tried to block out their night terrors.

  ‘Jessie,’ Henry mutters. ‘You said her name was Jessie, didn’t you?’

  I nod unhappily. He buttons his lip as we hurry back down the pier. Effie is straggling behind thoughtfully. ‘It feels awful, to have left Martin’s body back there,’ she whispers. ‘Even if he was a murderer.’

  There was nothing of him left. Jessie had taken the body. And then, the grisly thought strikes me that we have to tell Robert about this at once. We don’t want him going out to his aunt’s cave – happily taking her breakfast – and finding her sitting there, gnawing on the remains of his friend.

  ‘Robert is going to be devastated,’ I tell Effie. ‘He won’t have it that Jessie’s regressed so far.’

  ‘She’s a danger to us all,’ Henry says. Now, as we step off the pier, on to the cliff edge, we see that a thick sea mist is coming in behind us. It’s rolling in to cover the whole town. I greet it with a weird lifting of my spirits – as if the mist could wipe over and obscure the terrible thing that’s happened tonight.

  If only.

  We hurry through the streets of town. They are quieter than usual. Only a few drunks and one or two mysterious figures flitting across the narrow alleys. The three of us hurry straight to my place, by unspoken agreement. We don’t say anything more until we’re in the side passage and I am unlocking my door. We stumble into the warmth and comfort of my home, groaning with relief.

  Soon, we’re installed in my attic. Effie and Henry slump in the comfy chairs by the stove and I’m bringing them tea laced with whisky. I pull up a wooden chair and sit by them.

  Even in the midst of all this business, it still feels good to sit with my two best friends in my attic. Henry is sipping his tea and looking about with interest, his bright eyes gleaming. I think he likes my home, for all its cramped confines and its clutter. But I can tell his mind is on other things. He’s still dwelling on the horror we witnessed on the sands.

  ‘There’s a sort of poetic justice to it,’ Effie says harshly.

  ‘Oh, Effie,’ I say. ‘He might have deserved it, but I wouldn’t have wished that on anyone.’

  Henry darts Effie an annoyed look. ‘You know where that creature lives, don’t you?’

  For a second she is affronted by his tone. ‘We do indeed. We took her kippers on Monday morning.’

  ‘You fed her?’

  Suddenly I can appreciate how this must look to Henry Cleavis. Crazy spinsters feeding dangerous monsters. ‘She used to be our friend, Henry. She was human, once.’

  ‘Most monsters were,’ he ruminates darkly. ‘That’s what makes them monstrous. Not their ugliness or savagery. It’s the loss of their humanity and their souls.’

  I absorb this quietly. For a second I feel irked by him for his easy expertise. What does he really know about this business of being a monster?

  What about those of us who were born monsters? Who never had a soul in the first place, and so never had one to lose? What about those of us who have had to try so hard, and work so consistently, at turning ourselves into human beings?

  I bridle for a while and don’t say anything.

  Effie cackles bitterly. ‘This town is full of monsters, Henry. You’ll find that out.’

  ‘You need to tell me where she is hiding,’ he says.

  ‘Why?’ Effie narrows her eyes at him. ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘You saw how dangerous she is. She ripped that poor boy apart with her bare hands. She came running out of nowhere. She crept up on us and attacked like that. No one is safe! She needs to be dealt with.’

  ‘What are you going to do, Henry?’ I am very struck by the quiet determination in his voice.

  ‘I shall eliminate her,’ he says calmly.

  ‘Eliminate?’ Effie echoes. She looks him up and down. ‘Are you sure you can manage the job?’

  ‘Of course I can,’ he says, with just an edge of crossness in his tone. ‘That’s what I do. It’s what I’ve always done. I eliminate monsters.’

  ‘Oh,’ says Effie. ‘I thought you translated ancient poems?’

  ‘I moonlight,’ Henry says, with grim humour. ‘And I’ve been dealing with creatures like Jessie for years.’

  I moan, rubbing my tired face. ‘You can’t just kill her . . .’

  He looks at me sharply. ‘What do you suggest I do, then?’

  ‘I mean, it won’t be as easy as all that. She’s . . . she’s undead. She returned to life.’

  ‘That’s right.’ Effie snorts with laughter. ‘We watched her ourselves, didn’t we? Crawling out of the grave. She burst her way right out of the coffin and hauled herself back on to the earth. Hell kicked her out, didn’t it, Brenda?’

  I nod, and slowly sip my tea.

  Henry is looking at us both and I don’t like his expression. He wants to know how we can know so mu
ch about this. Why are we tangled up in it so thoroughly? I watch him suppress his feelings of revulsion. He smiles pleasantly. ‘I have despatched zombies before,’ he says. ‘And I shall do so again. Now, my dears. It’s very late. And it’s been the most extraordinary evening. If you don’t mind, I think I’ll make my way home to the Miramar.’

  Effie and I watch him get up and stretch. He puts down his mug and straightens his waistcoat.

  Effie and I look at each other. The question hangs silently between us: are we just going to stand by and let him destroy Jessie?

  I’m tossing and turning all night.

  The noises come. This night they decide to redouble their efforts. They plague me through the pre-dawn hours. That thumping, skittering noise in the hallway is back. Right outside my door. The spider-octopus thing, dancing on the drugget at the top of the hall stairs.

  Wrong. The spider-thing is coming into my room. There is a sharp squeak and a long-drawn-out squeal. The light shifts slightly. Pitter-patter, pitter-patter. Something comes across the floorboards on tiny feet. It’s coming closer to me and I’m rigid there in bed. I’m icy. I can’t budge an inch, even if my life depended on it.

  Then: patter-patter-patter and the thing moves away from my bedside. I feel as if it’s been looking up at me. Checking on me. Then toddling off. Away from me. Exploring on its own. What is this thing?

  And why am I too stupidly scared to get up and see what it is? It fills me with dread, as nothing else does.

  Those are my last thoughts before I drop mercifully into oblivion.

  But I wake early and straight away I know what I have to do. I get up and drag on some clothes. I don’t exactly dress with meticulous care this morning. I just need to be covered in my usual human disguise. My thoughts are fixed on getting to Robert. I phone ahead and warn him. Check that he’s not already left for the harbour mouth; that he isn’t visiting Jessie’s cave this morning. My heart leaps up when he comes to the phone. At least I’ve spared him the horror of getting there and finding Jessie crouched on the beach, eating human flesh like a latter-day version of the Scots cannibal, Sawney Bean. On the other end of the phone Robert sounds confused and worried by my call. I tell him there are things he needs to know, and I have to tell him face to face.