by Paul Magrs
‘If I give you all her bits, you’ll bring her back to life. The monster will walk again!’
‘That’s the general idea,’ says Effie. ‘And you shouldn’t be so nasty. She’s a very nice woman, actually.’
‘Mrs Claus says that Brenda must stay dead this time…’ gasps Aickmann.
Suddenly it seems very clear to Effie. ‘You’re under orders from my mother?’
He grits his teeth and sweat runs down his fat face. ‘She… will punish… me, if I fail her… again…’
‘He’s having some kind of breakdown.’ Robert says. ‘Quick, while he’s distracted!’
Effie lashes out with her legs and fists. She moves in a blur like a ninja fighter. Everyone falls back in shock as she knocks the police inspector down and his gun clatters to the floor. The hatbox takes a tumble as well.
Gila checks out Aickmann. ‘He’s out cold!’
Robert asks, ‘When did you learn to fight like that?’
‘My early training’s coming back to me now,’ says Effie. ‘Ever since my memory got jogged in Haworth. I was one of Charlotte’s Angel’s, you know.’
Then Penny cries out, ‘The head!’
And they all look to the middle of the floor. Where my poor head has rolled out of the hatbox for all to see. It’s still wearing its beehive wig – and an expression of outrage and pique.
‘Oh, Brenda, dear,’ Effie says. ‘Look at the state of you!’
And then she starts issuing commands to our young friends, chivvying them into assembling my fragments, ready to take me home.
In my disembodied state I have a curious reaction to seeing my own lifeless and familiar face. I feel instantly nostalgic. I’m thinking: Oh yes! That’s me! Hello, you! That’s who I want to be!
Still and all and after everything – even after feeling almost like an angel – I still want to be her! The lumpy woman with the badly-matching legs! It’s me! That’s me! Hello again!
Six
STITCH IN TIME
I realise I’m back in my own body when I hear all this screaming from the doorway of my room. Effie has found me in bed with Panda.
‘What the devil is he doing here?’ she gasps. She’s wedging open the bedroom door and just about spilling a tray of dishes onto the carpet. I can smell chicken soup. I’m utterly ravenous, I realise.
Panda sits up, clutching the counterpane and boggling at Effie. ‘I’ve every right to be here with Brenda!’ he bellows at his one-time owner. ‘I’ve helped nurse her through her illness! And, if you remember, it was because of me that anyone knew that her spirit was still floating around the place. In fact, if it wasn’t for me, I doubt she’d be back alive at all. So you can stick that in your pipe and smoke it, Effryggia Jacobs.’ He settles back with an angry sigh and watches narrowly as a cross Effie dumps the dinner tray onto the bed.
For a moment she looks as if she can’t be bothered to argue with Panda, but Effie can’t help herself. ‘You needn’t lay claim to everything! It was me who performed the ceremony that put her soul back in her body. And a very arcane ceremony it was, straight out of the Books of Mayhem. It’s only given to a very few to perform such miraculous feats. You couldn’t have done that, could you?’
‘Humph,’ says Panda. ‘If you ask me, you seem to be a dab-hand with all kinds of dangerous magicks these days, young lady.’
I’m approximately half in the land of living at this point, and following their nasty-natured row only vaguely. I’m gaining my senses and my bearings very gradually. Here’s my rose-patterned duvet and pillows and the iron of my bedstead. The window is open in the sloping attic roof, and I can hear seagulls cawing above the harbour. I hear the brassy timpani of the church bells.
I’m back in the land of living. My heart starts beating wildly at the very thought. But maybe I’m just dreaming this sensation. It feels very like I’m safely ensconced in my old body and my old head, and the two have been married together again following their unfortunate and messy divorce… but I can’t be sure. Not until I lift my arms (they feel so leaden and heavy!) and pinch myself with trembling fingers. I take in a huge, shuddering breath. I blink and rub my smarting eyes. No, it’s true. I’m definitely here. I’m back in the world at last.
Panda pats my arm. ‘Well done, Brenda. You’ve come through one of your greatest ever challenges. You’ve survived a beheading! There aren’t many who can say that!’
He’s snuggled right into my side down there. I wonder if he’s looked after me during the whole period of my convalescence. When I think about it, I feel as if I’ve been adrift in a little boat, paddling fiercely toward a great big ocean liner. Eventually I caught up, and I was hauled aboard again.
But I don’t know how long that has taken.
I look at Effie, who is fussing with the things on the tray. I see a bowl of soup, a mug of cold milk, a little vase of flowers.
‘Did you know I was going to wake up today?’
‘I’ve been feeding you,’ she says curtly. ‘Don’t you remember? For the past month. You’ve been a very good patient.’
‘You mean I’ve been awake already?’
‘Awake, but not quite yourself.’ Effie glances down at my lunch. ‘I suppose you can start feeding yourself today, then?’
‘Yes, please,’ I say, and study her. Why is she being so odd? I think she should be more pleased to have me back to normal, frankly. I raise a hand and feel my neck. There is another monstrous scar all the way round my throat, and all the way round the back to the nape. The stitching feels lumpy and not quite even. There are puckers and tight bits and the twine is still there in the partly-healed and tender flesh. ‘Who stitched me up?’
‘I did,’ Effie says. ‘It wasn’t a very pleasant job.’
‘Thank you, Effie,’ I tell her. ‘I’d never have survived this without you. Without all of you. I’m alive again, and grateful.’
She looks at me sharply. ‘Don’t go thinking you’re out of danger yet. Don’t go thinking it’s over, Brenda.’ She turns away and starts fiddling with the paper blind, softening the daylight. ‘The Bronte sisters still want you dead.’
That’s put a dampener on my pleasure in being born again, again. Those paranormal sisters won’t leave me be.
‘Why?’ I ask her. ‘Why do they want me dead?’
Effie nods calmly, biding her time. ‘I think I know the answer to that. And if I’m right, we’re going to have to box clever. We have to make plans. In fact, while you’ve been languishing in that coma of yours, our plans are already underway.’
‘What?’
Panda puts in, ‘Well, we had to get on with something, Brenda. We had to set about some kind of action, dear. Otherwise we’d have gone crackers waiting for you to revive yourself.’
‘It’s a full month later?’ I ask. ‘That’s how long I’ve been out of it?’
‘Too long,’ Effie says. ‘The time of tribulation is approaching fast. Everything is getting darker and nastier. The Walkers are abroad every night. There have been deaths and conversions and some horrible scenes. Whitby has become a lot less safe.’
I start struggling to get up. ‘Then I better get up and about… I’ve got to…’ And as I swing my legs out of bed a wave of horrible nausea goes through me. ‘Ohh… that doesn’t feel right…’
Effie pushes me gently back down. ‘You must rest. You’ve only just got back into yourself. Your soul is still settling in…’
I lie back woozily. I couldn’t touch a drop of that soup or that milk now, even hungry as I am. The attic room starts to sway and spin like it’s adrift on the North Sea. I find myself muttering: ‘But I shouldn’t have a spirit… I don’t deserve one… I’m a thing of bits and old leftovers…’
‘Hush, now,’ Effie whispers. ‘Panda, you come with me.’
He grumbles, but he hops out of bed.
‘Sleep now, Brenda. And later you can get up, maybe. You can come into the sitting room later this evening. I’ll tell you a little more about what’s going on. And about our plans…’
‘Good…’ I say, and all the urgency is seeping out of me. My panic is ebbing away. ‘You must tell me how you got my mind back into my body…’
‘Very well,’ says Effie. ‘It wasn’t very easy…’
‘And will the others be here? Robert and his friends?’
‘Er, no,’ Effie says, as she backs towards the door. ‘They aren’t in town just at the moment. They’re elsewhere.’
Panda blurts out, ‘They’re on a mission! They’re already doing the plan! They’ve been gone for over a fortnight…!’
‘Ssssh!’ hisses Effie and grabs him up and hurries out of my bedroom. Slam goes the door and I don’t even have time to mull over the implications of what they’ve told me. Next thing I know, I’m asleep.
§
It’s night time when I awake again. I’m assuming it’s the same day, but I’m not even sure. My hunger pangs are less fierce, so perhaps Effie has fed me while I slept again. I blink and look up at the skylight window and watch clouds move across the moon’s face. They look like soft clean washing to me, tangled and floating through the skies. How lovely it would be if I was my normal self again, and back about my old chores. Something in me longs to stuff the washer and the drier full of clothes and to hear the consoling noise of the suds and the motors going full belt.
Panda is lying beside me again. I turn and see his bright button eyes watching me.
‘Why don’t…’ I begin, but my voice is parched. He gets up and hurries to the bedside table, bringing back a glass of water in both paws. ‘Why are you and Effie so cross and snippy with each other?’
‘We had a terrible row,’ he groans, as I gratefully gulp down the lukewarm water.
‘I thought you’d be so pleased to be reunited. Childhood friends and all…’
He shakes his head sadly. ‘Unfortunately not. You see, there’s very little of the child about Effie any more. In fact, she was never much of a child when that’s what she was meant to be. Too old for her years. Too pragmatic and sensible. Pretty literal minded and dismissive of anyone who thought differently. She believed in me and my ideas and thoughts for a while back then… but it faded. Her love for me faded with her belief. She could consign me to the past. To the life of the baby she’d been before she spent that year in Charlotte’s Academy.’
‘That’s such a shame,’ I say. ‘You must have been so upset.’
‘When she rejected me? Yes, yes I was.’ Panda goes off into a reflective little sulk. ‘So we parted company, and I was left to languish for so long in those catacombs under the moors. Until I met you, Brenda. And you changed my life. You really have. I’m in the world again. Having adventures and meeting new people.’
‘I’m glad,’ I tell him.
‘Are you feeling any better? Still feeling queer?’
‘I’m feeling a lot better, actually.’ I move my fingers and toes. I roll my eyes about. I’ve definitely got fewer bits aching and complaining.
‘That’s good,’ he says. ‘Effie says she’s coming over this evening. We might try sitting in your lounge together. She wants to talk, she says.’
‘Poor Effie,’ I sigh. ‘She’s still not her usual self. She seems so mithered.’
‘She is, dear!’ Panda says. ‘I suppose it’s guilt.’
‘Guilt?’
‘Well, she’s the one who’s brought the Brontes to you. She’s placed you in danger.’
‘Oh dear, Panda. I think it’s all fated. It was all decided a long time ago. I would eventually end up here, in Whitby. Right next door to the woman who had been trained and secretly commanded to kill me.’
He coughs. ‘Horrible business, whichever way you look at it.’
‘Hmm.’ Then something important occurs to me. ‘H-how did she do it? How did she bring me back to life?’
I feel quite uncanny saying that. It seems like the kind of thing beyond the reach of mere mortals. The only person I ever knew who possessed the powers to bestow life upon the dead and gone was my putative father. And can Effie have the same kind of necromantic skill at the ends of her fingers that Herr Doktor Frankenstein had? The thought seems terrifying.
‘Oh,’ says Panda, lowering his voice. ‘Oh, that. Well, it was quite a to-do. It took several nights and days. She exhausted herself, the poor lamb. She followed the instructions from the Books of Mayhem to the strictest letter. She chanted and sang and made the most bizarre gestures. She paced around your body and your head as they lay on the carpet in the living room. The rest of us had to pull back all the furniture to make space. Then she drew obscure markings on the wooden boards in coloured chalks, she burned incense and thick church candles. And she concentrated with all her considerable might in drawing your soul down from the ether… She was enticing it back into your body…’
‘Yes…’ I whisper. ‘I think I can remember that… it was like hearing a tune you used to love, or hearing a voice you’d forgotten… or finding a once beloved article of clothing at the very back of your wardrobe. She snagged my attention… I was drawn through the air. For a panicky few moments then I forgot who I was, or who I used to be completely…’
‘Whatever she’s like,’ Panda goes on. ‘However snobby or shrewish, you have to know that she loves you, Brenda. She stretched herself very thin those days and nights. It wasn’t just the exhaustion, dear. It was her soul, stretching thin… she was reaching out onto the astral plane in order to meet you halfway. It’s an exceedingly dangerous thing to do. One wrong slip and she could have gone TWAANNGG and lost her connection with her own earthly form. She went out on a limb for you, Brenda. She held out her hand and got you to grasp it…’
‘I see…’ And now I feel terrible because I can’t remember that bit at all. I don’t recall the precise moment on the astral plane when my best friend held out her hand and grasped hold of my wrist.
‘Then she had Robert making a huge pot of that spicy tea you like so much. We all assumed that she snapped out of her spooky trance in order to tell him to do that so that you’d have a lovely cuppa waiting for you when you were corporeal once more. But, no. The tea was crucial in the return of your spirit to the material realm.’
All of a sudden I know what he’s talking about. I can smell cardamom pips and ginger and black pepper. Those heady scents fill up my senses. Nutmeg grates at my nerves. I’m studded all over with cloves. Dried petals and leaves return to life and swirl through the chambers of my heart. And caffeine races through my bloodstream again. ‘She enticed my soul into the teapot, didn’t she?’
‘Oh yes,’ he nods. ‘The long-forgotten secret in the transmigration of souls, according to Effie, is that it involves piping hot tea. Your spirit swirled and dissolved in the spicy brew. Effie took a whiff and looked mightily pleased with herself. Then, as the mystical infusion cooled she took up her needle and thread and, without further ado, stitched your head back onto its neck as we all watched.’
‘And then?’
‘Then we helped her to get you to sit up, slapbang in the middle of that multi-coloured pentagram, and she poured the tea down your neck. Once it was cool enough, of course.’
‘I drank myself back to life…?’
‘Oh yes,’ chuckles Panda. ‘You had the whole pot to yourself. She was very careful not to spill any, of course. We didn’t want you dribbling out any bits of your psyche… And so, give or take a week or four of gradual convalescence – here you are!’
I don’t know what to say. My life has been saved by my friends and my favourite spicy beverage. ‘Would it have worked with any old tea, Panda?’
‘Oh no, apparently not,’ he says darkly. ‘It has to be spicy. I think it’s something to do with Indian mystics or somesuch, but you’ll hav
e to ask Effie about it.’
‘Hm.’ Actually, I feel rather shy of asking Effie about anything that’s been going on while I’ve been having my mind and body split and their subsequent reunion. Maybe it’s best not gone into. I’ll just buy her a nice thank you present and quietly drop the matter. She’s so funny about her magic, as we know. I’ll just be grateful to be here.
‘I could really do with some spicy tea right now, actually.’
‘Well, come on!’ cries Panda. ‘I’ll fetch your dressing gown. Look! It’s almost midnight! You’ve time for a bath and a cup of tea before Effie comes round to see you!’
§
I take some time pampering myself in my private bathroom. I pour in nearly half a bottle of my favourite bath cream, which is mixed up by a witch on the market especially for me. It is scented with something that reminds me of a very romantic night on the island of Capri god knows how long ago.
In the bathroom I take a good long look at the body I have re-adopted. I stare at that gruesome new necklace and decide that it could have been worse. I will just have to wear higher collars for a while, or dig out some snazzy silk scarves to camouflage the damage. I stare at myself and experience a fleeting nostalgic pang for that wonderful light and liberated me that I became when I was a ghost, or a disembodied spirit, or whatever you’d call it. I fancied myself gorgeous and slim, or anything I wanted to be. It didn’t matter. The frailties and vanities of the flesh had ceased to bother me.
But now I am back in that fleshy state and I feel heavy and the ground feels steady under my feet. I’ve never felt more like this is where I belong.
I bathe and let the warmth and the bubbles wash over me. I have a little reverie about what it’s like to be alive again. Then I think, four weeks! All manner of things could have happened in the time I’ve been out of it.
I remember Panda telling me that the young ones are away on a mission. I hope he’ll elaborate on that tonight. I don’t like the thought of them going off and doing something stupidly dangerous – especially not on my account.
