[Brenda & Effie 07] - A Game of Crones

by Paul Magrs

  It seems that we aren’t about to escape at all! And they’re hooking me back up with the tubes that will drain away my precious life essence!

  All for the sake of that withered up monster in the casket!

  But let me tell you how we came to be here, tonight, and in this horribly disadvantageous situation…

  ‘Whoever heard of a combined tea room and massage parlour?’ Effie is frowning.

  We are back at Tipple in the park and Effie is staring at a sign advertising this curious combination. It seems that Professor Keyes is keen to offer services no other Whitby tearoom can, and rumour has it that strapping blokes swathed in bandages do the massaging in a secret room under the café.

  We spy Sheila Manchu bustling through the park, on her way to a rendezvous, no doubt. Effie and I confront her on the footpath.

  ‘You know what he’s up to, don’t you?’ Effie asks her sharply.

  Sheila looks distraught. ‘Oh now, look, girls. I know you’re both intent on ridding this town of everything occult and untoward…’

  ‘What?’ I cry. ‘Who told you that?’

  The buxom hotelier looks shifty. ‘Word gets round. I’ve heard tales about your recent adventures.’

  I glare at Effie. I’m not very happy about us getting a name for ourselves.

  Sheila goes on, ‘I don’t care what you ladies have got against him, but Marius Keyes is the first decent fella to look my way in donkey’s years. And he’s not even after my business or my loot. He just wants me for who I am. And I won’t have you telling me that he’s up to no good.’

  Effie coughs. ‘We found a living mummy in his bedroom at the Miramar. It was in his bed, Sheila! Plus, we found some very peculiar herbal samples and things.’

  She looks scandalised. ‘What were you doing poking about among his private things? He said he thought someone had been in.’

  ‘That would have been the blummin’ mummy!’

  Sheila looks disturbed. ‘The mummy isn’t real, you know. It’s just a bloke dressed up. It’s a gimmick. He’s got them giving massages in the basement.’

  All three of us are wondering, if that’s the case, how come Marius had a masseur hiding under his bed sheets? But neither Effie nor I press the point. We’ve given Sheila enough to chew on for one day.

  We both suppose, though, that it’s through her – the blousy harridan, as Effie calls her – that Professor Marius Keyes gets wind of the fact that it was us rummaging through his belongings.

  The reprisals come fairly quickly and brutally after that.

  But we don’t know that at the start of the evening, when I cook dinner for Effie at my place. We’ve having a lovely shepherd’s pie and I’m telling her everything that came back into my head when I had my flashback into my own past life.

  Effie is at once on the alert. I’m just dishing up seconds when I realise that I’ve perhaps given too much of myself away.

  ‘The 1940s, Brenda?’ Effie asks sharply. ‘You were a housemaid to Reg Tyler in Darkholmes during the 1940s? Just how old are you, ducky?’

  She laughs then, as if I have simply made a silly mistake with the dates.

  I blush, because of course I haven’t. It’s just that I have hardly aged a day in over two hundred years. And that’s a secret I’ve been hoping to keep locked up a little longer than this.

  Effie is staring at me as I hand her plate over, heaped with more of that delicious pie. She narrows her eyes suspiciously.

  I brush her chronological quibbles aside. ‘Never mind all that now. The point is, I’ve seen all of this before, back then. When Professors Tyler and Cleavis and I smuggled ourselves into a tea warehouse in the north of Darkholmes, late one Autumn night… and there we did battle with mummies and a certain Mrs Poppy Keyes.’

  Effie purses her lips at me. ‘Are you sure you didn’t just have a funny dream, Brenda? You’ve had a stressful couple of weeks. Setting up a new business, and embarking upon some strange investigations…’ She reaches for the brown sauce and lavishes it on my pie.

  Actually, Effie’s unctuous concern is starting to make me feel cross. I hurry off to the kitchen to make us a pot of tea. My favourite spicy tea, naturally. I’ll make it spicy enough to blow the top of her patronising blummin’ head off.

  She can forget all about dessert. I was going to do a trifle, but my heart’s gone out of it, frankly. There I was, offering up a glimpse of my shrouded past, and Effie was looking like she didn’t believe a word of it…

  And, as I sniff the gorgeous aroma of my tea as it brews, I think it might be possible that I’m going off into a reverie again… and slipping back into the past…

  I’m in a leafy back lane, checking out the walled perimeter of Poppy Keyes’ tea warehouse. I won’t go into the intricacies of how I have to shin up a horse chestnut tree to get my legs over the top of the wall. Suffice to say, I get myself inside the tea compound. I think I must be rather nimbler back in these times.

  I dodge between wooden crates and the place seems oddly peaceful. All that can be heard is the sleepy whickering of horses in the stables.

  Then, as I approach the rear of the warehouse itself, I can see lights and burly figures working into the night, moving huge loads in their bare arms. It seems that the tea company employs a mummified work force.

  Now. Where do I think the Professors will be held?

  I manage not to be noticed by my lumbering foes and inveigle myself into an office crammed with paper folders and receipts. I have a quick look through and can’t find much evidence of a thriving business. It seems that this tea company doesn’t much care for profits. All they do is give the stuff away.

  In the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet I find a selection of withered-up gourd-type things. Nasty-looking objects. They have a strange scent about them. It’s familiar because it’s the scent of Poppy Keyes’ special blend in concentrated form.

  Oh my, what have I been brewing for my old Professors?

  Speaking of which – it’s they who I should be looking for. I turn to go – and that’s when I’m captured by the mummies. I thrash about a bit so they don’t take me too easily, but it’s no use. These revenants are possessed of an inhuman strength. As they carry me off into the murkiest recesses of the fragrant tea warehouse I believe I recognise the specimen who was, of late, supine on Prof Tyler’s dining table. His bandages are still half-hanging-off.

  ‘You will be silent… until you come before the mistress…’

  ‘Yes, but you’re him, aren’t you? The mummy who came bursting into our house. The special servant of Princess Ayotep…’

  ‘You must be silent and stop wriggling…’

  ‘Where are you taking me? Who is this mistress, anyway?’

  ‘All will be revealed…’

  Well, perhaps. But for the moment, as they lug me into their secret hideout, this mummified minion is keeping things firmly under wraps.

  And then… all of a sudden… I am in an underground lair. A huge blazing lake of what looks like lava takes up most of the space. There are great golden statues of gods and creatures that I suppose came out of ancient Egypt. Lots of conspicuous wealth on display. I find it all a bit showy, to be honest. I’ve spent a lot of time in secret hideouts by this point in my life and I’m not easily impressed.

  ‘Brenda! You’re here!’

  ‘Oh, so they captured you too, then.’

  ‘Did you get my note?’

  ‘That’s what brought me here, Professor Cleavis. I came here to rescue you both.’

  ‘The mummies are too strong. We’re at their mercy.’

  ‘I rather think our pessimistic friend is right, Brenda. They’re going to do something terrible to us, I imagine.’

  ‘Well, at least we’re all together.’

  ‘Harrumph. I don’t see any benefit in that. What a terrible way to die. What an awful waste! And my magnum opus only half-finished.’

  ‘He’s been going on about his magnum opus quite a lot.’


  Just then there is the noise of a gong and a kind of brassy fanfare. We realise that someone rather grand must have entered the place…

  ‘Oh, yes. Over there, look. By the sacrificial altar sort of thing…’

  ‘It’s Poppy Keyes!’ I burst out.

  ‘It’s who?’ asks Tyler.

  ‘The woman who came to your door, Professor. Offering free samples. She’s all dolled up tonight though, isn’t she?’

  ‘She certainly is,’ gasps Henry.

  ‘Like a kind of Egyptian Queen… or the reincarnation of one..!’

  And that is the long and the short of it, really. Poor, silly Poppy Keyes. She is only a purveyor of fancy beverages, but something has gone a bit wrong in her noggin. I suspect it’s down to all the time she spent in hot climes and poking about in tombs for a hobby. But somehow she has convinced herself that she is the ancient princess got up in a new incarnation… Oh dear.

  ‘Avast and avaunt!’

  ‘What’s the Professor doing?’

  ‘Trying to cast out her demons,’ Henry tells me. ‘He always has a go at this. He’s rather good at it. It’s worked once or twice in the past…’

  ‘Even when he’s tied up? Doesn’t he need his arms free?’

  ‘He’s got a very carrying voice.’

  ‘Out, foul demons! Leave this innocent woman in peace!’

  Well, even I can see that it isn’t working this time. Through her kohl-lined eyes and golden headdress, Poppy Keyes is smirking at him. She’s grinning at him madly. She’s raising a cup and saucer to her lips and toasting him with her special blend.

  That’s when I look into the molten lake of lava, ringed by fire. And I see that it isn’t lava at all. It’s a swamp of used tea leaves. A quagmire of old dregs.

  The mummies step forward and help their mistress disrobe…

  ‘Goodness me!’ Henry shouts.

  ‘The woman’s a decadent piece of work, and no mistake! Gracious!’

  She delighted in appearing before us naked. She Who Must Be Obeyed. She For Whom Everything Stops. We watched her step into the lake of tepid tea leaves and swim there luxuriously…

  ‘Aaagghhh!’

  ‘Aaahh—owww!’

  ‘Professors, what is it?’

  ‘It’s… agony..!’

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’

  ‘She’s… she’s inside my mind, Brenda… we’re psychically linked…’

  ‘What? Through tea leaves…?’

  ‘A-absurd though it seems… yes!’

  ‘Do something, Brenda! She’s absorbing our brainwaves! And the minds of every tea drinking intellectual in Darkholmes..!’

  ‘Quickly, Brenda! She’s destroying our minds!’

  Once again, everyone is looking to me to sort it all out. The two old Professors are screeching fit to burst. The invidious Poppy Keyes is currently doing the backstroke in the lake of tea leaves, kicking up her legs and showing off madly. She gives a carefree laugh and her whole body glows as she leeches off their mental energies…

  And I stand up. I’ve got to step into the breach, and rescue my professors.

  The mummies see that I’m on my way. They come lumbering towards me. I roll up my sleeves…

  ‘You must fight them, Brenda! You must…’

  ‘You must put a stop to Poppy Keyes, Brenda!’

  ‘Help us, my dear…!’

  Well, it’s just at the most exciting bit when I come back to myself. I’m standing in my kitchen feeling very peculiar.

  Was I really involved in a terrible punch-up and fracas in that weird sepulchral place? Did I batter mummified revenants that night in order to prevent my professor chums from having their life force drained out?

  And did I really wade into that rock pool of tea dregs in order to grab hold of Poppy Keyes and box her ears bloody? Reincarnated Egyptian Princess or not – I foiled her plans good and proper. Silly old tart.

  And here we are again. All these years later. And she’s raised her spooky self out of the dregs once more…!

  Along with her spooky – though handsome – nephew.

  This tea’s stewed, I’ve been in such a state of abstraction. I must…

  Hang on. What’s that noise?

  There’s a scream, and I recognise Effie’s voice. Then there’s all this running about on the staircase. Very heavy, muffled footfalls. Who’ve I got staying? Just a few elderly ladies, who’d surely be hard-pressed to cause such a racket on my stair carpet?

  I gird my loins and hurtle into the hallway. And I’m just in time to see Effie fending off three huge mummies with my ewbank. That carpet sweeper’s got a lovely action, is all I can think, absurdly, as my neighbour takes her life into her hands. I hope she doesn’t break it. At that very moment it gets smashed to smithereens and Effie herself is grabbed by the rampaging monsters. At once she is hoisted howling into the air above the banisters.

  The third mummy whips around as I shriek and shoves his horrible, clothy face right into mine.

  ‘Keep your nose out of our business!’

  ‘I will not! I’ve put a stop to you lot before, and I will again!’

  The mummy snarls and I see that his hoodlum chums are carrying my best friend off down the stairs. She’s very quiet. Have they snapped her spindly neck? I think she’s simply fainted. Quick as a flash, the three of them lumber out of my Guest House and down the side passage into the darkness outside.

  Of course I thunder after them, thinking surely someone out there will see them and blow the whistle? Even in a town like Whitby three bandaged corpses making off with an unconscious antiques dealer can’t go unchallenged? All of a sudden I feel alone and helpless.

  Just then a dark silhouette detaches itself from the shadows of the alley. He rears up before me. The dashing and handsome Marius Keyes himself.

  ‘So this is where you live.’

  ‘I’m not so hard to find. It is called Brenda’s B&B, after all.’

  ‘Perhaps we had better go inside to discuss this.’

  ‘I’m not letting you in.’

  ‘As you like.’

  ‘Where are you taking my friend?’

  ‘I’m afraid I’m having to be so vulgar as to take her hostage. She will be escorted to my secret hideout and kept safe by mummies until you give me what I require.’

  ‘And what can I give you? I’m just a harmless old woman. Same as Effie. What can you possibly require that I have?’

  ‘You’re rather more than a harmless old woman, my dear. Let’s not beat about the proverbial bush. I know that you know that I know you were present in Darkholmes in 1943. I know you were at the warehouse when my aunt was concocting her plan to live eternally.’

  ‘Oh yes?’

  ‘I know you thwarted her by wading into her pool of eternal youth and punching her lights out.’

  ‘I did, did I? Well, she was a dreadful woman. She wanted to drain all the genius and life force out of my old professors…!’

  ‘She was – she is – a wonderful woman! After my parents and my uncle died she was all I had. And so what if she was insane and believed that she was the reincarnation of an ancient Egyptian princess? She kept me fed and in fancy clothes and took me around the world with her. The soul-sapping activities she got up to, involving raising bodies from the dead and stealing vital energies from the living, that was all by the by, really. She was marvellous and beautiful and the most thrilling woman I ever knew.’

  ‘I think you might have an aunty complex as well as a mummy one.’

  ‘But now she’s bitter and twisted and hideously deformed. And it’s all because of you, Brenda! Because you denied her access to that pool of eternal life essence!’

  ‘By punching her in the mush?’

  ‘Don’t you remember? You knocked her out cold and you pulled the plug. Literally.’

  ‘Did I?’

  ‘You saved the lives of all those boring geniuses. You doomed my poor aunt to a shrivelled and embittered afterlife.’ />
  ‘Good!’

  ‘And now you are going to come with me.’

  ‘Never!’

  ‘You will if you want to see your nasty best friend again!’

  Oh dear. And that, you see, is how I ended up following Effie into captivity. Into the mysterious crypt-like place beneath Tipple Tearooms in Pannet Park.

  And here we are now. With me all tied down and my life essences draining out… into the desiccated body of the Aunt of Marius Keyes.

  ‘Oh, Princess Ayotep! We beseech thee! We have done all that we have done in order that thy nefarious will be done! We have caused to be brought forward before you this shambling wretch! This woman known as Brenda! May her strange and mysterious life force bring you back to full strength!’

  ‘Don’t count on it, buggerlugs!’

  ‘Silence, woman!’

  ‘Well, this was a right to-do. I had thought we had a chance of escaping, back when I started this narrating lark, and then Effie came and found me in this evil massage parlour of doom. However, things don’t seem to be going our way, do they?’

  ‘For all these years we have tried to find you, Brenda. We have followed the traces for decades now…’

  Effie hisses out of the corner of her mouth, ‘What’s he on about, ducky? Why is he saying they’ve followed you about?’

  ‘My aunt and I have known for many years who and what you truly are! We know what tremendous, occult forces are surging round in your immortal body…’

  ‘Oh, now, I wouldn’t go that far, Marius…’

  ‘That night in Darkholmes – my aunt knew. She knew that her hopes lay with you and your blood and inspiration, Brenda. She knew she had to find you again.’

  ‘Now you’ve got me.’

  ‘We have indeed! Behold – she arises..!!’

  ‘Now that’s torn it,’ says Effie.

  We are reduced to cowering on the slab as a brilliant violet light suffuses the casket wherein lies in the dried-out husk of Aunty Poppy. Sheila Manchu is on the floor somewhere, moaning and gasping at these queer developments.

  I’m feeling ever so depleted, what with my vital life-energies flowing into this… this monstrosity!

  ‘Welcome! Welcome back to the land of the living, Aunt!’