[Brenda & Effie 04] - Hell's Belles

by Paul Magrs

  Magda shuffled over to them, lurching a little in her filmy muu-muu, revealing a hitherto unsuspected hump on her back, which came as a surprise to Brenda and Effie as they took their drinks from her gleaming silver tray. Effie sipped and grimaced: it was sinfully strong, drowning in gin. She sipped again. Time travel, it seemed, could make you light-headed.

  Brenda tackled Fox’s question carefully, ‘I know that is your mission, Mr Soames. That I understand. In the future, Effie and I have watched some of your films, and documentaries about you on the DVD extras. And we believe that you really thought you were doing good, in warning people not to meddle in the ways of the Left-Hand Path.’

  Fox looked at her blankly. ‘What are these DVD extras you speak of ?’ He puffed on his cigar.

  ‘It doesn’t matter now. The thing is, in setting about warning the world, I think you end up causing even greater chaos and danger. In allowing this film to be made, I think you succeed in doing the very opposite of what you want to do.’

  ‘Balderdash.’ He coughed.

  ‘Listen to her,’ Effie urged. She loved to hear Brenda explain things like this, right in the midst of a fraught and hectic scene. In the middle of one of their adventures, she loved the way Brenda was able to keep her head.

  ‘I believe,’ Brenda said steadily, ‘that this film you’re making now—’

  ‘I’m not making it, though, am I?’ Fox snapped. ‘I’m here only to observe. I’m only the writer.’

  ‘Let her speak!’ Effie growled, sipping her drink, which she was starting to enjoy by now.

  ‘Think about what films consist of,’ Brenda said. ‘Light and sound, trapped on celluloid. Trapped energy. Light jammed tight, for ever perhaps. And darkness, kept cool and preserved in tins, idling away the decades and waiting. Now, I think that this particular film opens up a hole into a different reality. Somehow something happens during this shoot in Wales, and a chink of light from hell gets into the workings. And this film absorbs that. A bit of the devil gets into the very frames of the picture . . .’

  They were all staring at her. ‘Very poetic, Brenda,’ Fox said. ‘Utter nonsense, of course. How does that devil get in? Where does he come from? There are no Satanists here. No followers of the dark path.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Brenda frowned at him.

  Fox paled slightly. ‘You mean . . . ?’

  Effie blurted out, ‘Your leading lady! That Karla one! Her!’

  Fox darted a quick glance at his wife and child. ‘Magda, take Alex for his afternoon nap, would you?’

  Magda looked at him dreamily through the bottom of her martini glass as she drained it. ‘Yes, my dear?’

  ‘Take Alex to his room. And go and lie down yourself, while you’re about it. These ladies from the future and I have important matters to discuss.’

  Magda’s face creased into a feral snarl, which unsettled the visitors somewhat. ‘You. You’re always wanting to be alone with the ladies. You liver-spotted lothario.’

  ‘Yes, yes, my dear. Call me what you will. Now, take my son out of here.’

  Magda went to pick up Alex, who squirmed and kicked, mussing his miniature black velvet suit and ruffled shirt. ‘He doesn’t want to go,’ Magda sighed. ‘He wants to stay here and hear all about the devil. And your fancy women. He likes a nice story like that.’

  Effie raised her eyebrow. What a dysfunctional family! she thought, using a phrase that wouldn’t have been current back here in 1967. Well, that was the sixties for you. She watched as Fox lost his temper and demanded that Magda leave at once, and take their son with her – by force, if necessary. Both Brenda and Effie winced at the kid’s shrieks and howls as he was taken away. They could still hear his muffled cries through the thin walls of the mobile home.

  There came a knock at the exterior door.

  ‘Ah!’ Fox cried, his scowling face lighting up in pleasure. ‘Here comes your proof, my dears.’

  He hopped across the priceless Arabian rug and flung open the door. He leaned out, obscuring their view, but they could hear an oddly familiar voice saying, ‘It really isn’t fair, Mr Soames, to drag me across here to serve you your elevenses. Of course I don’t mind, trogging my way all across the valley floor, but you have to think about the rest of the crew. I’ve left a big queue over there, waiting for chips and so on.’

  Effie suddenly clutched Brenda’s arm. ‘He’s brought you over!’

  ‘What?’ At first Brenda didn’t get it.

  ‘In here, my dear,’ Fox was saying, his voice filled with glee. ‘Bring the tray into my sitting room.’

  Brenda and Effie watched, appalled, as he led a tall, ungainly woman into the room. She was carrying a silver salver, which she placed on a free corner of his desk. She whipped off the lid to reveal a plateful of steaming fish and chips. ‘Will that be all?’ she asked crossly.

  Fox clapped his hands. ‘Look! Look at my guests! Are they at all familiar, hmm?’

  The dinner lady frowned. ‘Guests? You want more chips bringing over, do you?’

  Fox swayed dreamily over the fish and chips. ‘Food of the gods, my dear. No, I have quite sufficient. But look! Behold! Your future self.’

  Effie took a step forward then, almost protectively, as the dinner lady swung round and the two Brendas were suspended there, on the carpet of purple arabesques, staring into each other’s identical faces.

  ‘It’s true!’ cried Fox. ‘You were speaking the truth. You really have done something fiddly and clever with time.’

  ‘Of course we have,’ said Effie’s Brenda. ‘Why would we lie about a thing like that? You needn’t have brought me in like this. I mean, her. You’ll confuse the poor thing. Addle her brains with paradox.’ Brenda stared pityingly at her younger self. She had so much still to come, this Brenda. So much she hardly suspected as yet.

  The other, younger Brenda shrugged. ‘Oh well. That’s me, is it?’

  ‘Yes!’ Fox simpered. ‘You from the future! Come back in time!’

  ‘Very nice.’ The younger Brenda nodded. ‘Time travel. Lovely. I suppose this is all to do with some kind of spooky investigation you’re caught up in?’

  Older Brenda nodded enthusiastically. ‘Isn’t it always?’

  ‘Then I’d better leave you to it,’ said the careworn dinner lady. ‘I’ll try to keep out of your way. But I must say, I’m glad to see that we’re still at it. When did you say you come from?’

  ‘Forty years hence!’ said Effie, in a very portentous manner, Brenda thought. Effie was really building up her part as the ominous emissary from the next century.

  ‘Oh, this is Effie,’ Brenda told her younger self. ‘You don’t know her yet. But she’ll be a good friend to you.’

  Fox glared at one Brenda and then the other. ‘What’s wrong with you both? Can’t you scream? Can’t you react? Can’t you behave as if this is something even just a little bit out of the ordinary?’

  The younger Brenda rolled her eyes at him. ‘You can bring your own tray and crockery back to my caravan. I won’t be dragging myself all the way over here again today. I’ve got a lot on, as it happens.’ She looked back at Brenda and Effie and smiled politely. ‘Well, it was nice to meet you. Best of luck with your investigation. What was it about again?’

  ‘Satanism,’ Brenda told her cheerily. ‘Karla Sorenson, the star of this movie, is in a pact with the devil himself, which means that this film they’re making, and everyone involved in it, is going to be cursed for ever.’

  The younger Brenda tutted. ‘I thought so. I thought there was something funny going on. Anyway, cheerio, lovey. See you all later.’

  And then she was gone.

  ‘Nice woman,’ Effie said.

  Volunteers

  Teresa and Helen, the charity shop ladies, took the lift down from the turret where Karla was living, and slipped through the rest of the Christmas Hotel, hoping no one would notice them.

  Helen was feeling bad. ‘It can’t be right. What we just did.’

&n
bsp; ‘We were doing our duty. What we had been told to do.’

  ‘Who by, though, Teresa? I don’t understand!’

  ‘You don’t have to understand, Helen.’

  ‘But that young man. What were we doing, dragging him halfway across town? Bundling him about like someone’s luggage?’

  Teresa snapped: ‘What are you complaining for? You got to meet a film star, didn’t you?’

  ‘Oh yes, of course. That was very nice. She’s every inch the star, and it was a real honour. But I still don’t see, Teresa, what she wanted with the boy . . .’

  Helen stopped and glared at her colleague. They were in a corridor somewhere in the middle of the vast hotel. The dark, avid look on Teresa’s face made Helen step backwards.

  ‘We work for the same people as Ms Sorenson. The same organisation.’

  Helen gulped. ‘Save the Kiddies?’

  ‘No, something else. A shadowy organisation. A secret fellowship.’

  ‘But . . . I don’t!’ Helen’s voice turned into a kind of rough squawk. Shadowy organisation? She wanted none of it.

  ‘You’re my friend,’ said Teresa softly. ‘You don’t really mind helping me out, do you, Helen?’

  ‘Why, no. Of course not, Teresa.’ Helen fought to make her voice steady and brave-sounding. ‘But when it comes to keeping people captive. And putting them in attics against their wills. I’m not so sure. Did you see? She had other men in there. Other prisoners.’

  Teresa patted her on the arm. Teresa’s hand felt like an old claw to Helen. ‘Our job is to keep quiet, and to pretend that we haven’t seen anything. Come on now, Helen. Our work here is done.’

  Superstitious

  Alex delivered the new shooting schedule in person.

  ‘As you can see, the old one is in tatters. Everything has had to be switched around and reordered. It’s given me an awful headache, this.’

  Karla had her servant elf Kevin pour him a stiff whisky. ‘Poor dear. I can imagine what a faff it’s been.’

  ‘You don’t mind? Being shunted around, I mean? You haven’t been able to get on with anything yet, because of all these minor mishaps. You haven’t been able to really get your teeth into anything . . .’

  She laughed, throwing back her head. There was a manic tinge to Karla’s laugh. ‘I’m an old pro. I can hold myself in check. I understand how these things work.’

  ‘I wish I was as understanding as you.’

  ‘I’ve been around film-making for almost fifty years, my dear. I know the kinds of things that can go wrong.’

  ‘Silly young women half choking themselves on sausage baps? Oh, and there’s Ralph, too, tonight. One of our best technicians. Slipped in the shower and broke his leg. He’s got concussion too. He’s out of the picture.’

  ‘My goodness. You’d think there was a Jonah about, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘That’s what the crew are starting to say. At least, those of them staying up drinking all night at the Hotel Miramar are. They’ve been talking about the famous curse on this project . . .’

  ‘And on me?’ Karla smiled.

  ‘You know how they are. Film people. Apparently there’s some young woman, works up at that hotel, going round telling everyone that whomsoever watches the original film goes into a trance, and comes to a bad end.’

  Karla shook her head firmly. ‘Every print of the original movie was recalled. No one can watch it.’

  Alex sipped his drink. ‘I’ve seen it. Someone from the company slipped me a copy just as I embarked on this project. They thought I should see it. It seemed imperative.’

  ‘Who?’ Karla felt herself go rigid. ‘Who gave you it?’

  ‘Strange executive type. I’d never met him before. Came knocking on my office door and said he’d brought me something special, and vital, in person. And it was the disc. Get Thee Inside Me, Satan. Very strange kind of executive. Black suit. Colourless face. Didn’t even tell me his name.’

  ‘You watched it? All the way through? And nothing happened to you?’

  He smiled ruefully. ‘Well, it was kind of late. Apparently I fell asleep in front of it. My girlfriend Janice found me still sat there the next morning, staring at the fuzzy screen like I’d lost my marbles. I hardly remember anything of what I saw.’

  ‘Poor Alex. You shouldn’t have watched it. I watched it once. It’s not a good idea.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘It’s . . . a living thing, that film.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I mean it, my dear. Sometimes I think the movie really is alive. It comes to me, speaks to me. Insinuates things in my ear. It can creep up on you. Snaking through the airwaves, playing itself again and again in your mind’s eye. Once you have let it in, it stays there.’

  ‘Yes, well, um . . .’

  ‘Oh, sorry. I’m letting actressy superstition get the better of me.’

  ‘There seems to be a lot of superstition around this film.’

  Karla studied this out-of-shape, blustery man. He looked uncomfortable under her gaze. He was in her realm. Here, it wasn’t so easy to avoid her enchantments. She asked him, ‘Don’t you remember, my dear? Don’t you recall what happened on that particular night in 1967?’

  ‘I was too young. I was little more than a toddler.’ He chuckled at the very idea of remembering so far back.

  ‘Oh, I suppose so. You wouldn’t have understood any of it anyway.’

  Alex stiffened. He even felt a bit cross at Karla, raking this up. ‘Besides, my mother was killed that night. Tragically. I don’t like to even think about it, to be quite honest.’

  Karla wouldn’t let it drop. She curled her legs under her and surveyed him from her recumbent position on her white leather chaise longue. ‘And yet, in making this picture, I think you are facing your demons.’

  ‘No!’ he cried, too forcefully. ‘As far as I am concerned, nothing out of the ordinary is happening now, and nor did it back in 1967. There was a thunderstorm. There were some accidents. There was no . . . devil walking amongst us.’

  ‘Oh, Alex. You know that’s not true.’

  ‘All I know was that I was with my Auntie Brenda, in her chip van. And there was a storm, and she kept me safe.’

  ‘Your Auntie Brenda, was it?’

  ‘Yes! And that’s another thing, Karla. The most curious thing. A weird coincidence. She is here! Brenda is here!’

  Karla smirked, and lit herself a cigarette. ‘Oh, really?’

  ‘Perhaps you don’t remember her. In fact there is no reason why you should. She was just the dinner lady on the set.’

  ‘No, I’m not sure that I do remember her at all.’ Karla inhaled the smoke deeply and luxuriantly. ‘But she was kind to you, you say, this Brenda person?’

  Alex nodded.

  ‘What an amazing coincidence. Ah, now I think on, you know, I do remember Brenda. Very well indeed. She’s a very special lady, you know. A unique woman.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I know her father, you know. Nice man.’

  Alex blinked at her. He was trying to imagine a man old enough to be the father of Brenda.

  Karla was amused as she watched him. They drank and she smoked and she thought about the old man having a lie-down in the very next room.

  He was here. Right in this very suite!

  Once reborn, he had been exhausted and disorientated. Karla had helped him lurch into her bedroom, where she tucked him in and watched him fall into a deep and healing sleep.

  He was a skinny old thing. Stick-insecty. She’d urged him into a plush dressing gown, to hide his stringy old body. His face was fleshless, almost skull-like. Expressionless, too. He hadn’t paid any heed to his surroundings, merely pulled the dressing gown tight about him, shivering violently, as if he had spent many years somewhere devoid of body heat. Which was probably true.

  He lay down and closed his eyes and Karla had watched over him for some time. The old man she had made out of ashes and bones and the blood of a monster. Her very
own creation. She had watched over him closely until Alex came round for his drink.

  Victor. It was Victor she had recovering in the very next room. Recovering from his resurrection, which must be a very tiring process indeed.

  Karla couldn’t wait to see Brenda again, after all this time. And to spring this particular surprise upon the old dear.

  Confronting Karla

  ‘Fox! You really can’t expect me to listen to this. It’s ridiculous. Ludicrous!’ Karla Sorenson threw up her hands and laughed out loud.

  To Brenda and Effie’s ears it was a very false-sounding laugh.

  They knew that Karla knew that she had been caught out.

  ‘I think this film of ours is going to your head, Fox. You’ve started to believe in your own stories.’

  She laughed again and swivelled round fully on the low stool in front of her make-up mirror.

  And there she was. Karla Sorenson forty years ago. In her absolute prime, and tip-top condition, as a horror movie starlet. Even in a chenille bathrobe and with a turban round her head she looked magnificent.

  Effie couldn’t help catching her breath.

  ‘Really, Fox. Who are these women? Why have you brought them to my trailer? I’ve got a lot on, my darling. We’re doing the big scene tonight. You know the one. I’ve got to prepare myself, mentally and physically.’

  Fox studied her carefully. She was shifty, all right.

  They were bearding her in her den.

  Her trailer was almost as luxurious as Fox’s, but not quite. It was dusky, with purple lampshades, crimson flock wallpaper, and black candles sending smudgy fumes everywhere.

  Brenda spoke up. ‘It has to stop, Karla. You’re placing everyone in very great danger.’

  Karla snarled, ‘Who is this woman? What’s she on about? Fox, get rid of her.’

  Fox sighed deeply. ‘She’s come a very long way to give you a warning, Karla. A very serious warning. You wouldn’t believe how far she has come.’