[Brenda & Effie 02] - Something Borrowed

by Paul Magrs

  ‘So I took matters into my own hands. I bought an axe.

  ‘I descended into my lover’s secret hideaway in Limehouse. I sneaked past his guards and his myrmidons. And I managed to get into the sacrosanct room where Goomba had lain in wait all those decades, growing steadily and apparently murmuring sweet nothings into Mu-Mu’s ears. So I did what I had to, in order to set my future husband and myself free. I set to work with my shiny axe. And I chopped the bamboo monster into a million pieces. Before the guards found me and dragged me away – oh! they were so horrified – I had succeeded in reducing Goomba to splinters! We were free! We could leave that place for ever!

  ‘Poor Mu-Mu. When he heard what I had done . . . He should have been furious. He should have had me executed. I saw the dangerous light in his eyes. And I knew that a younger, more determined Mu-Mu would have done just that. My silly life was forfeit, and I grew fearful. But I underestimated myself, and the extent to which I had this criminal genius wrapped around my little finger. Mu-Mu sagged back on to his throne. He stopped shouting at me. He ordered his guards to gather together all the little bits of Goomba and bury them safely, deep under Limehouse. And Mu-Mu looked at me and told me that I had got my own way. He would leave behind London and the last of his plans for world domination. And we would come to Whitby together. And he never spoke of Goomba again. And I almost forgot about the horrible thing.

  ‘Until now. Until I foolishly ordered that wickerwork garden furniture. Goomba has found his way back into my life! And he is here in order to make me pay! He exists once more! And he wants my blood as revenge, I am sure of it!’

  ‘But . . .’ I break in. ‘How on earth was Goomba turned into a set of wickerwork garden furniture?’

  Sheila shakes her head tearfully. ‘That I don’t know. But he has found his way out into the world again. He must have taken control of Danby’s Garden Furniture Manufacturers. His very essence must have called out to be revived and to be brought to my garden, from where he could take his revenge. There is no coincidence here. Goomba has seen to it that he will destroy my world at last!’

  Robert has moved over to the kitchen window. He is looking down into the street, frowning. ‘People are drifting back home. They’re like zombies, all dazed. It’s your partygoers, Sheila! The influence has left them and they’re coming home. There’s Raf and Leena from downstairs, letting themselves into their shop. And there’s Effie! Effie’s back! She’s exhausted-looking, but I think she’s all right!’

  So they return home from their night of revels.

  All over Whitby, these droopy partygoers return to their homes and their families. There is about them a smell of barbecue smoke and cocktails . . . as well as a whiff of something alien, odd, dangerous. In no particular hurry, they drift their way through town, returning to their doors. No one hurries to their work. All their usual humdrum concerns are forgotten.

  All they can really think about is the hulking effigy in the beer garden of Sheila Manchu. The prime concern in their minds is the image of that wonderful creation. Goomba stands still in that garden: poised on the brink of becoming. They know he is there waiting for them, and for the moment when the party and the midnight shenanigans can begin again.

  We get to Effie before she makes it back to her house. Robert and I are out on the street, dragging her back to my alleyway. She mutters a few complaints and stares at us wildly, at first, as if she hardly recognises us. But then she relents, and her skinny little body falls limp. We bundle her up my stairs to the attic and get her installed in my comfiest armchair. Henry is brewing up the strongest coffee in the world, bringing over the silver-plated service on a tray with a huge grin. ‘Here we go,’ he says. ‘This will knock her socks off and, I hope, bring her back to her senses.’ We watch Effie grip the mug and slowly sip.

  Henry’s coffee doesn’t do a great deal for Sheila, who is sitting on the sofa, rocking back and forth. She’s still babbling about Mu-Mu and haunted garden furniture. I listen for a second and realise that she’s wondering aloud once more how Goomba has managed to have himself made into sets of bamboo tables and chairs. How has he been so devilishly specific in taking his revenge against Sheila? This thought alone has her rocking and quivering with paranoiac fright.

  I could tell her the answer, though. I think I know how dreadful things like that happen. And it’s all because the world is a terrifying place and it teems with monstrous coincidence. Sheila is quite right to descend into paranoia and terror. The evil forces in the world are indeed ranged against us, and every day they seek new ways in which to do us harm.

  ‘I think I’ve got some walnut cake in that tin,’ I tell Robert. ‘Fetch it out, would you? Effie might respond to something sweet. If cake doesn’t work, we’ll have to mix her a snowball. Eggnog in the top cupboard, there.’

  Now Effie is hissing under her breath and we all lean in close. To my dismay she’s saying: ‘Woorrshiip hiimmm . . .’ So it seems that she’s still subsumed by all that nonsense. ‘Gooommbbaaa . . .’ moans High Priestess Effie. ‘Gooommbbaaa!’ And this sets off the other one. Sheila spills her coffee in the act of thrusting her arms into the air, joining in with Effie’s chant: ‘Woorrshiip Goooommba!’

  ‘Oh, God,’ says Henry weakly, and I know it’s more of a feeble little prayer than it is a muttered curse. ‘Can’t we get them to stop?’

  Robert is mixing up snowballs on the kitchen table, but I think that’s probably a poor idea, now I see how demented these two are.

  ‘He will take us with him,’ says Effie. ‘When he returns to the stars and the Interstitial Fold, Goomba will bear us with him . . .’

  Sheila chimes in with this, as if it’s an aspiration she shares with Effie. But I know this isn’t something Effie’s been particularly keen on doing before. This is mind control, I know it. Goomba has reached right into their souls and taken them over. Not even daylight, coffee and my best walnut cake can do any good. Robert hands them both a snowball and they drain them in one go. Effie sits there with her turban awry and an eggnog moustache, and the look in her eye is one that I find frankly blood-chilling.

  I am glad I don’t have a soul. It’s at times like these – and only times like these – that I find myself actually glad of that unfortunate fact. Nothing can get to me. I can’t be taken over like this. But now the onus is on me, of course, to sort the whole mess out. ‘Robert, you stay here with the ladies,’ I tell him, standing up decisively. ‘Whatever you do, don’t let them out. Keep a keen eye on them. Give them anything they need.’

  ‘Goomba! Goomba!’ chant Sheila and Effie in what can only be described as a samba rhythm.

  ‘Okay.’ Robert nods grimly. I notice he’s fetched himself a snowball.

  ‘Henry, come with me,’ I say tersely, and lead him straight upstairs to my bedroom.

  Because I have a plan. Sheila’s tale of Goomba in Limehouse has set my thoughts running wildly and spectacularly and I have made a connection. A fantastic connection. I have had the most marvellous idea, and as I thunder up the stairs I’m hoping fiercely – with every fibre of my frazzled being – that it’s going to bear fruit.

  Henry lumbers up the stairs behind me. ‘Oh, heavens. Um. Back in your bedroom, Brenda? I. Um.’

  This brings me up short. I stop and turn to glare down at him. ‘What about my bedroom?’

  He looks down shamefacedly. His bristly eyebrows conceal the expression in those eyes of his as I stare down at his blushing bald head. ‘We didn’t really um. Did we? Anything? Did anything happen?’

  ‘No,’ I growl. ‘And I’m not at all sure how you wound up in my bed anyway. I nearly had a coronary. You, lying heaped there in your old yellow vest.’

  ‘Me too!’ he gasps, starting to chuckle. ‘When I woke. I um! What a shock!’

  Now this has me miffed. ‘Oh! Would it be so bad, eh? If something untoward happened?’

  He is appalled that he’s offended me. ‘Goodness, no! Um. It would be a turn-up, though, wouldn’t it? Um. A
fter everything. All these years.’

  ‘Anyway,’ I break in. ‘Past all that nonsense.’

  ‘Quite. But still. Good pals and all, eh? Funny that – exhausted as we were – we just fell asleep like that together. Rather um. Sweet, no?’

  I glower at him, still feeling obscurely offended. But there is work to do. ‘Come on! In the attic! In my safe!’

  Henry scurries after me. ‘What is it? Something useful?’

  ‘I hope so. Sheila reminded me. When she was talking about Tyler’s book.’ I am at the safe, clicking away at the familiar combination.

  Henry tuts and shakes his head. ‘Reg’s bloody old book. Sometimes I wish he’d never bothered, you know. What a fuss it’s caused! And he never even um, published it, after all that fuss.’

  ‘I know. He died in . . . what? 1972? And the few privately printed copies were spread far and wide across the globe. What Sheila was saying had me thinking. That’s what we need! We need Tyler’s book in order to know how to deal with Goomba. All the secrets will be there. Mu-Mu was scared that they would get into the wrong hands . . . so there must have been something there . . . something about how to put a stop to Goomba . . .’

  ‘I don’t have a copy.’ Henry sighs. ‘I wish I had. But I never had a copy of Tyler’s The True History of Planets. Not even the British Library has one. It’s as if they all went up in a puff of smoke.’

  ‘Hm . . .’ I swing open the door of my safe. ‘I was in here fetching something the other day. And hunting through all these precious bits of bric-a-brac.’

  Henry shuffles nearer, and I instinctively hold him at bay. ‘What have you got in there?’

  ‘All the oddments and remnants of a long life spent having wild and supernatural adventures,’ I tell him. ‘There are things here I daren’t even tell you about. Anyway, I glimpsed something out of the corner of my eye the other day. And I never consciously realised what it was. Only just today I made the connection.’

  ‘And?’ says Henry eagerly.

  Then I find what I’ve been looking for. It’s a bundle of greasy and water-damaged papers held together by string. They are almost solid, like papier mâché, but I know this is what I am looking for. ‘When I was fished out of the Thames by those children in 1946, following our misadventures in Limehouse . . . a bundle of papers was found upon my person. I was babbling and crazy and my memory had gone. I couldn’t read anything for years afterwards, you know. But these were all the personal effects I had left to me. So I hung on to them, like something talismanic. It was very strange. Superstitious. And so I’ve still got these papers. And I’ve never opened them up, in order to see what is inside.’

  Henry’s eyes are out on stalks. You can see his fingers itching, keen to grab the bundle out of my grasp. ‘Do you think . . .? Could it possibly be . . .?’

  I shrug carefully. My hands tremble as I take the papers to my bedside table. ‘I think they are the pages we found in Freer’s bedsit. The ones Mu-Mu was missing. Do you remember? I shoved them down my cleavage – and I left them there. Little knowing how precious and useful they might one day be!’

  I can sense Henry holding his breath.

  What we expect to see is page after page of Tyler’s tight, unreadable script. Luckily Henry is an expert. He mastered Tyler’s personal hieroglyphics a long time ago.

  I start peeling away the pages. They resist, and then open up with an almost audible crack. I half expect them to crumble to dust in my shaking hands.

  Here they are. I hope this is it. I hope the solution to our whole quandary lies here for the taking, right in the palm of my hand.

  ‘Well?’ Like the fussy old academic bloodhound he is, Henry shoves his cold nose forward, quivering, in order to see. ‘Is it? Is it Tyler?’

  I am staring into my hands. I can’t believe what I’m looking at. Fruit scones. Steak and kidney pie. Spotted Dick. ‘I’m afraid not.’ I’m holding a handful of ancient recipes.

  ‘Oh,’ says Henry, deflated. ‘Never mind.’ He pats my shoulder heavily. ‘It was um. Worth a try, old girl.’

  Now I’m furious with myself for getting both our hopes up. What on earth made me think this useless bunch of scribbled recipes could have been the answer to our prayers? It would have been too neat. I’m a fool. I caught a glimpse of ruined old papers and assumed they were the crucial pages. But no. Things never work out as tidily as that.

  A weight of despondency rolls over me. Henry watches it happen, compassion crinkling his eyes. ‘We’ll sort it out anyway,’ he tells me softly. ‘Together. And remember: you don’t have to do this on your own. It isn’t you who has to come up with the answer to everything, Brenda.’

  Downstairs we have something of a situation, since the two ladies are up on their feet and they want to go out. They are still in their dazed, trance-like state and, although they aren’t very forceful about it, we know they would rather be out of here. They get up, we push them back down. They slump down, and then get back up on their feet again.

  ‘Need to go . . . Goomba calls usss . . .’

  ‘We need to . . . Yesss, Goombaaa . . .’

  It’s quite distressing, watching them flounder like this. Robert is worn out with keeping them in the room. He’s been alone with these two pale ladies and it’s taking it out of him. They seem to me like two giant moths, daft and determined, batting at obstacles.

  ‘Let’s . . . let them out,’ Robert says, looking pained. ‘We can’t really keep them here, can we? Not against their wills.’

  Now Effie and Sheila are getting worse. They are moaning continuously and waving their arms about in the air.

  I fold my own arms steadfastly. ‘I don’t think it’s a good idea to let them out and about while they’re in this state.’

  ‘They aren’t in their right minds,’ Henry puts in. ‘They might do themselves a mischief.’

  Robert has got hold of Effie by her arms, and he’s trying to draw her back to the settee. Suddenly she uses all her strength to shrug him away. He backs off. ‘We can’t stop them going, if that’s what they want to do. They won’t come to any real harm, will they? All this talk of Goomba . . . We don’t know what it is, really. We don’t know what it actually means. And maybe . . . maybe it isn’t even anything really bad? It almost sounds quite nice . . . what they’re saying about going to other planets and stuff . . .’

  I narrow my eyes at him. ‘Now, don’t you start, Robert.’

  ‘I do feel a bit strange,’ he says.

  ‘Be strong!’

  ‘And I don’t feel exactly, um. Tip-top,’ Henry adds.

  Oh dear. At this rate I’m going to be the only one in all of Whitby who hasn’t succumbed to the psychic blandishments of Goomba.

  ‘Right,’ I tell them. ‘Let’s tie the two old ladies up.’

  That afternoon the booming voice of Goomba calls out to me, louder than I’ve ever heard it. It’s almost pitiful, the way he sounds.

  ‘Freeee meeeee!’

  It makes my heart turn over with pity. It brings tears up, all spiky in my eyes. But I refuse to listen to him going on. I try my damnedest to block him out.

  ‘Breeennndaaa! Listen to Gooommmbaaa!’

  I mean, he can’t intend anything good, can he? He must be up to something really nasty. He just has to be, what with the way he’s trying to control everybody, and the extraordinary way he is making them carry on . . .

  So I resist him with every atom of my mortal being. And because I am soulless, he can’t reach into me and take me over. He simply can’t do it. That sorcery of his – elemental, cosmic, arboreal, vegetable, whatever it is – it passes straight through my hollow body, and there isn’t anything he can do about it. I can sense his bristling outrage at that. I can hear the thrashing, twisting wickerwork fibres, just about snapping with frustration.

  Not as benign as all that, then, Goomba . . . reaching out to me . . . hoping to take possession . . .

  ‘Gooommmbaaa . . . Come to Gooommmbaaa, Brennndaaa!’
/>
  Fat chance, chum, I throw back at him.

  Dusk comes early. Sea mist drifts in from the harbour. A savage chill seeps right through my house. I am upstairs in the lavatory when all the noise starts from the attic.

  Oh, no. That’s all I need. My spare parts playing up again.

  Pitter patter. Scritch scratch. Tap tap tappety tap.

  ‘Go away!’ I hiss at the ceiling. I get up and flush the loo, drowning out the insistent noise of them over my head. ‘Pipe down! I’ve got guests in! We don’t want to be hearing all your nonsense! We’ve got enough on our plates . . .’ And isn’t that the truth. But the noises continue unabated, and I imagine those dismembered hands and legs, organs and extremities, jumping up and down for attention in the dark. Frenzied and ghastly.

  Trip-trap. Tappity-tap.

  Henry is waiting for me on the landing, looking grim. ‘Is that your ghosts playing up again?’

  I remember that I never actually told him that Effie and I solved that particular mystery. Now I’m blushing. ‘I reckon so,’ I say. ‘Never rains but it pours, eh?’

  ‘It’s awful.’ Henry shudders. ‘Those two old ladies like zombies down there, chuntering on. And I think Robert’s getting taken over, too, now. I keep fighting Goomba off . . . but I don’t know how long I can keep it um, up. Frankly. Um. And now your ghosts!’

  CRAAASH. That’s the new, hefty locks I fixed to the attic hatchway.

  They’ve smashed them open. Easy as anything.

  Really, I don’t know my own strength.

  The lock falls away and the hatch is thrust rudely open. Poor Henry. He’s so shocked at this he jumps about a foot into the air. Lets out a squeal of fright. What comes next startles him even more, of course.

  But not me. I know what’s coming next. Not that that makes it any easier to deal with.