[Brenda & Effie 04] - Hell's Belles

by Paul Magrs

  Penny gawped at him. ‘You’ll be telling me next that everyone misunderstands her. That no one sees the real Mrs Claus.’

  He shrugged, smiling embarrassedly, as if those really had been the next words on his tongue.

  ‘Well, she’s certainly done a number on you, all right.’ Penny was struck by a horrible thought. ‘Er, she didn’t make a pass at you, did she? At the end of the night?’

  He stared at her. For a second he looked furious. Penny knew at once she had gone too far with her mockery. ‘Of course not,’ he snapped. ‘We took a nightcap in her private sitting room, to calm down after all that noise and confusion at the end of the cabaret. And she told me a little more about herself.’ He frowned at Penny. ‘So you can get your mind out of the gutter.’

  Penny stared down at the bar top, ashamed of herself. ‘What did she tell you about herself, then?’ she asked at last.

  He shrugged. ‘I was just interested in how she came to own and run such a big hotel, all by herself. I asked about her past. And she was quite open. I think she was pleased that someone was taking an interest . . .’

  ‘You have put your finger right on it, my dear,’ Mrs Claus said, with a huge sigh. ‘How sensitive of you. How very thoughtful. You are a rare man, Michael. There can’t be many like you.’

  For their nightcap they were having snowballs in tall glasses, decorated with paper umbrellas and flowers. Michael didn’t particularly like them, but felt he couldn’t turn down her kindness.

  So here he was again. His second night running, in the sitting room of Mrs Claus, ready to hear more of her story.

  ‘Penny was in my bar tonight, asking about you.’

  ‘Penny?’

  ‘The girl who was with Brenda’s party last night. She seemed surprised that you and I got on so well.’

  ‘Did she?’ Mrs Claus smirked. Tonight Mrs Claus’s evening attire was even more elaborate. She was keen to scrub up well for this handsome near-stranger. She was in a tinselly kaftan of silver and green, and her make-up was at its most stunningly garish. Her thinking was, I may not look much these days, but I always stand out. You can see me from a long way off. And that was how she liked it.

  ‘So where was I?’ she said, settling to her tale. ‘I never tell stories in the correct order, of course. My mind’s always all of a muddle.’

  ‘You told me that your family disowned you. And how you ran away . . .’

  She scrunched up her doughlike face. ‘Oh, are you bothered about hearing all my tales of woe?’

  ‘I find it very interesting,’ he said stiffly.

  ‘And it’s true, I’ve never talked about any of this for years.’ She smiled. ‘All right, then. I’ll go on. Just for you, dear.’

  They both settled for the telling. Mrs Claus paused reflectively before going on.

  ‘This part of my story concerns a Christmas a long time ago. I was a slip of a thing. It was before the war. And I met my fancy man. That’s what I called him. Straight away. I knew that’s what he was. My fancy man. I was walking one Sunday with my sisters – Beryl, Eliza, Natasha and Maud. We were taking this long walk round to Robin Hood’s Bay. Have you been there, dear? Have you taken the walk? Oh, we used to love it. All along the clifftops. Spectacular.

  ‘My sisters and I used to gather grasses and herbs all the way there and back. Not in winter, of course. Not on those crisp, snowbound mornings. In winter it was bitter berries and black bark that we collected for our potions.

  ‘He came galloping along on horseback. On this towering, magnificent steed. We saw him coming from miles away. Heading right towards us. Who was he? Some rich noble? Some highwayman or bandit? He was sending up massive flurries of snow all around him, ruining the smooth tranquillity of the land. My sisters were intrigued, even a little bit scared. My oldest sister wasn’t, though. It took a lot to scare her. Old Maud was imperturbable. She always was. She set down her shopping basket and folded her arms and watched him approach. And she was scandalised when she saw how I reacted to him. She could sense it.

  ‘He came trotting up, yanking off his scarf to show his pale, beautiful face. He shook out his tangled mane of hair, black as his steed. Maud knew I was breathing harder, my eyes had widened. I was used to her scrutiny. I was used to all of my sisters studying me like that. I was used to knowing that I did the wrong things, that I wasn’t the same as them at all.

  ‘And when my fancy man turned up that Christmas Eve, glittering with snow, grinning at us mockingly – the five solemn virgins trudging along the cliff edge – I knew my future had arrived. Everything had turned a corner that day.

  ‘I knew that soon I’d leave my sisters for ever. I would go with this man. I’d leave Whitby behind and go wherever he told me.

  ‘What did he say? You know, I can’t even remember. Some flattering, flirtatious nonsense. Flim-flam. Daftness. My sisters tried to cover my ears, but I was too far gone. Already. I was fifteen and my head had been turned. Earl, he said his name was. Was that an American name? He certainly seemed foreign, exotic. Not from round here. Earl. It was romantic, aristocratic. I wondered if he really was an earl, or something noble. We didn’t get a lot of those round our way.

  ‘I was distracted all that Christmas. In our tall house on the harbour, my four sisters and I made merry in our usual ways. I was the youngest, and the petted, spoiled child. I helped with the steaming of puddings, the roasting of fowl. I helped brew up the potions and sift the powders that my sisters required for their everyday work.

  ‘The shop at the bottom of our house was a kind of apothecary. We dispensed lotions and potions, tinctures and tonics, all made by our own fair hands. We had learned the skills from our aunts, who had all but passed away by then. There was a lot to learn. Sometimes I would despair. I would never be like Maud or the others. I was deficient somehow. I was made for some other kind of life.

  ‘My mind was filled with superficial things. Silly things. Dancing and dresses and Christmas and silliness. They called me a flibbertigibbet. That was their name for me. They made fun of me all the time, though I knew they loved me really. My sisters were not beautiful. Some of them were downright ugly. Poor Eliza. But they were kind. And they saw in me all the beauty and hope and lightness and grace. Everything they weren’t, I was.

  ‘And I was their best hope for the future. One day I would bear a child and she would carry on our work. My sisters were past all that. None of them would be having children. It would have to be me.

  ‘Throughout that final Christmas at home, all I could think about was my fancy man on his horse. Smiling down at us. Looking through the others. Staring at me. I knew he was staring at only me.

  ‘On Christmas morning a card came through the front door of our shop.

  ‘“It’s from him,” Maud said tersely. Her hair was in curlers, her dressing gown wrapped tight about her. An awful silence fell over our gift-giving and unwrapping. There was tense silence in our sitting room.

  ‘“Who?” asked Natasha, never the brightest of our bunch.

  ‘“The fella on the horse,” Maud growled. She nodded at me. “It’s for her.”

  ‘“Me?” I stopped unwrapping the nettle-green jersey Beryl had knitted for me. It smelled pungent and weird, but that’s not why my head swam for a second. “He’s sent me a Christmas card?”

  ‘Maud made a moue of displeasure. “Here you are.”

  ‘ “But you’ve opened it! You’ve opened my Christmas card!”

  ‘It was a lace-edged thing, more doily than card. Beautiful, exquisite thing, purple and black. I held my breath, opened it, and read his spiderlike writing inside: Will you come away with me? ’

  ‘And?’ Michael was leaning forward on his chair. His snowball was finished; just a yellow foam was left in the bottom of his glass.

  ‘Well.’ Mrs Claus chuckled, breaking the mood. ‘I went to him, didn’t I? That Christmas night. Just for a walk along the front, as he requested. And oh, but my sisters weren’t pleased. There was war
on at our house. They thought they had to protect me at all costs from this terrible, beautiful man.’

  ‘And did they?’

  Mrs Claus smiled at him, and reached out with one of her chapped red hands to tap him lightly, affectionately on the knee. ‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘I was fifteen. I was a fool to myself. And I wasn’t the same as them. I wasn’t destined to turn out the same as my sisters.

  ‘And so I went with him. I fled. And I never looked back, once.’

  The Film’s Release

  Before they passed out, Brenda and Effie managed to get the gist of the plot.

  Were they just tired? It was possible. It had been an exhausting couple of days. And this was, of course, the third movie they had watched on the trot that evening. The attic had grown warmer and cosier, and they had worked their way through all the snacks they had assembled. And usually, watching any film, Effie would start dozing at about the twentieth minute, if her friend wasn’t there to nudge her awake. She’d shout out, ‘What? Whassat? I was awake! What’s happening? Who’s he?’

  Before they started on the film at the top of the evening’s bill, Brenda read aloud the review she had found in a second-hand copy of Nelliwell’s Guide to World Film.

  ‘Here we are,’ she said, finding the place. ‘Erm . . . “Nineteen sixty-seven’s infamous Get Thee Inside Me, Satan. Satanic trash. Cast and crew reputed to be cursed. Deservedly so, we say.”’

  So they put the disc in the machine and started to watch. But by then it was very late. It was the early hours, and this time, twenty minutes into the movie, both of them were starting to drift off.

  They were fighting sleep during the psychedelic dream sequence into which Karla’s character sinks ineluctably. When the devil comes to her in the form of an evil beautician and promises mastery over all mankind, the two ladies were struggling to keep their critical faculties engaged and their attention from sagging. The music and pulsating lights were hypnotic, and Brenda and Effie found that they were quickly mesmerised.

  They snored gently in time with the soft prog rock of the soundtrack.

  The film’s bizarre narrative ran on without them, luridly, violently.

  Though neither enjoyed horror films of this type per se, both had been intrigued by the storyline. It was more believable than either had expected, and focused on the fate of a woman who worked on the make-up counter of a swanky London department store. Plagued by dreams and desires and the blandishments of sinister beauticians, Karla’s character’s plight touched them both. She was possessed by Satan and there was nothing she could do about it. She wasn’t one of those who willingly chose her fate, who flirted with evil and danger. She was plucked out of the heady world of Swinging Sixties London and sucked into a life of wickedness and cruelty.

  Brenda and Effie sat up in their chairs, Effie on the paisley two-seater, Brenda on the bobbly green. Both slept deeper than they had in years, eyes wide open, faces slack. Swirls of light licked and tickled at them as the film rolled towards its end and the final showdown between the devil and the shop girl, somewhere in a quarry in Wales.

  The light from the TV screen was the only illumination in the attic room. It played delicately and teasingly over the ladies’ forms. The pale colours drew together into wraithlike beings. They seemed to twist in mid air, transparently. The light coiled itself and went hunting snakelike about the corners of the sleeping room. Then it found the cooling fireplace and explored the sooty recesses, rushing towards the salty night air outside.

  The lights danced and trickled over the rooftops of Whitby.

  Ribbons of transparent blueness transmitted themselves, freed of the disc by the DVD’s laser. Sometimes faces could be seen, rising and grimacing. There was the steady throb of an unfolding tale. The movie swirled and eddied about the town, thrilling to its own liberation.

  Released at last!

  Then it found the Christmas Hotel. It knew it had found its quarry.

  The phantom movie swept about the rooftops, prying and sniffing at windows. Peering down gutters and overflow pipes. Then it was wreathing ecstatically about the turret that contained the suite of Karla Sorenson. In here, up in the attic. This was what it had come for.

  Inside, two men were slumbering and a third was keeping awake, watching the others. Three prisoners in the attic. It prised itself through the tiny cracks in the dusty window pane, high up above the Christmas Hotel. As it issued into the confined space, it felt the crash and boom of the surf buffeting around the room. The phantom blew in with the sea winds, crackling and flickering with intent.

  Kevin was awake in the turret, feeling betrayed, if he was honest with himself. He felt a fool. What had got into him, going with Karla in the first place? He had hardly left her suite ever since she got here. In fact, had he left it at all? He had been like some lapdog.

  But it was as if, now that she had been away for a few hours, her control had faded. The link between them had stretched and snapped. And he found himself lucid again. Up here. Locked in. Full of misgivings. Still dressed as an elf in the middle of the night.

  She had used him. He had done her bidding. He had slept with her. Suddenly it came back to him. Being squashed in her still lithe arms. Her insatiable demands. That was all real, wasn’t it? It wasn’t just some terrible dream. He had gone willingly to her bed and had stayed there.

  Now he was here. Shoved to one side. Hidden away in the attic, with the rest of her toys.

  There the others were, too. Bobby the postie, who Kevin knew well. He’d been drawn in too. Sucked of his own volition. At first Kevin had been resentful. Who was this new plaything of Karla’s? Who was this to rival him? But that was part of the strange spell. He knew the woman enjoyed that kind of vying and posturing. She loved the idea of men fighting over her.

  The third man, too. The monster. He lay in half-shadow, breathing heavily, horribly. His expression was tortured as he lay there, as if he was having dreadful dreams.

  What kind of dreams would a monster have?

  The three of them should be finding some way to free themselves. Surely if they put their joint strength behind it, they could smash down the locked and bolted door? But it was thick, reinforced. Kevin had already examined it. The door to this attic had been specially prepared for this eventuality, it seemed. Mrs Claus had created this space as some kind of hideaway prison, and Karla had adapted it to her own uses.

  Then Kevin was aware of the light at the small window growing brighter. Quivering at the corner of his vision. He thought at first it was a lighthouse, sweeping its beam over the town and spilling into the turret. But it wasn’t. It slunk into the dark space. Emerging from the shadows and presenting itself to Kevin’s view. He blinked. He could see phantoms inside that weird shaft of light. Faces and forms. He could hear voices and . . .

  He could even see the credits rolling. ‘I’m sorry about this,’ the credits said. ‘I don’t want to do this. But I have to. He is making me do this. He is in control of my actions now. He is directing me to do this. I’m so, so sorry . . .’

  Kevin blinked and shook his head. The credits were communicating with him as they swirled about his head in lurid shades of blue.

  ‘I cannot resist his awful powers! His terrible will!’ the credits scrolled. ‘What am I? I’m only a movie . . .’

  The film took him over.

  Get Thee Inside Me, Satan had got inside Kevin.

  He blinked again. It was subsuming him. It had slipped down a treat. Now it was looking out through his eyes and he knew what to do. He knew exactly what he had to do.

  Kevin stood up stiffly in the confined space and set about shaking Bobby awake. The hairy postman glared at him. ‘What? What?’ He looked confused about where they were. Then he grew belligerent, until Kevin fixed him with a steady gaze, allowing the shimmering light to flood into Bobby’s eyes as well. Then Bobby could see the point. He too could see what needed to be accomplished that night.

  It was a difficult task. A gruesome
one, but someone had to do it. They were the men for the job.

  They found ropes and chains lying ready for the purpose. They stole closer and closer to the man-monster, Frank. They tried not to let the chains clank or the floorboards creak. Frank stirred and moaned in his sleep, but his eyes never opened. He never saw them or paid any heed as they looped ropes about his wrists and ankles and tethered him to the rafters. They chained his waist and throat, and that was the worst moment. They thought he would rip suddenly awake, suddenly alert. He would seize them by the necks and dash their heads together.

  They could sense the strength in the slumbering giant. If he caught them, they wouldn’t stand a chance. But they were driven by the strength of someone else’s convictions. They plugged on with the task of tethering the monster. At the very last moment they tightened the knots and secured him completely. Only then did he jerk awake.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he growled. Then he saw them. The fluctuating outlines of the two men confronting him. The blue light played like cool flames around them. He twisted and roared and shouted at them. But he couldn’t break free. ‘What are you doing?’ What are you trying to do?’

  But the two men now had the next part of the task to fulfil. It was the hardest part. Now that the monster was secure and pinned to the dusty wooden floor, they had to get on with the next bit. It was vital.

  What could they use to accomplish their task?

  This attic space was a prison. There was nothing here. Nothing they could use.

  Ah. Bobby smashed the tiny window. Cold air and noise came rushing in. The panes cracked apart into jagged segments. He shared them with Kevin. Their tools. These would do. The glass shards had cruel edges. They were sufficient to the job, which, let’s face it, didn’t have to be carried out very neatly or carefully.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Frank said uneasily, shrinking back instinctively, as far as his bonds would let him.