by Paul Magrs
There was a whisper of discord about the town. A shiver of apprehension. Dark was settling in like something palpable and wet, like ink streaming from the sodden skies. The heavy sea fog rolling in; curlicues and arabesques twirling round every corner and chimneypot. Clawing at ankles, nipping at throats. And really, could that be true? Was that really the baying of hounds somewhere at the edge of everyone’s hearing? And the bonging of the old brass clock on the church at the top of the hill. Portents and gloom over Whitby, and the Goths were thrilled. There was a frisson of real terror in town tonight.
As they hithered and thithered through the milling crowds, waiting for the ship bridge to lower and let them across to the eastern side, Robert was biting his lip with consternation. Now that he was standing right by Brenda and breathing in her comforting scent of Parma violets, spicy tea and heavy-duty face cream, he was extremely conscious that he hadn’t told her what he knew about the whereabouts of her missing hubby.
‘Brenda, we have to talk about Frank. I was with him. They had us locked up together in an attic at the Christmas Hotel . . .’
‘Not now, lovey.’ She patted his hand and caught his eye. She smiled sadly. ‘I went up to that attic. I saw that they had . . . hurt him.’
The tall ships had passed through the gloomy harbour, and now the bridge was lowering itself to the level again. The crowd massed, ready to surge.
‘He’s gone, Brenda.’
Brenda flinched. ‘Dead?’
Robert shook his head. ‘He’s been taken somewhere . . . somewhere where they might be able to help him.’
Brenda grimaced and swallowed back her tears. They could really do with Frank’s help right now. He was so good in a punch-up.
As the crowd started to move again, she resolved to get all the details out of Robert later, when this whole farrago was over. For now, there was work to do. She said, ‘We’ll just have to get on with this ourselves. That’s all.’
And off they set – Brenda, Robert, Penny and Lisa – amongst the Goths, heading for the abbey.
Poked by the Companion Set
Effie was crouching awkwardly over the slumped Mrs Claus. The old woman wouldn’t let her see where she was hurt.
‘We should get you to hospital,’ Effie said.
‘Ah, I’ve been hurt worse than this before. It’s a flesh wound.’
‘Here, let me help you . . .’
Mrs Claus drew back. ‘I can patch myself up. Our big problem is, what are we going to do with him?’
Victor was face-down on the shaggy rug. There was a spill of rather dark, thick-looking blood tufting up the wool.
Effie sighed very deeply. ‘That bloody zombie. I just knew it.’
‘Brenda’s going to be so upset,’ said Mrs Claus, unjamming the wheels of her chair.
‘She was happy, you know,’ Effie said. ‘Deep down happy. Thinking her dad actually thought something of her.’
‘And he just wanted her bits. And my bits. And the bits off the fellas in the attic. And probably even Karla’s bits. He’s just a nasty grave-robber.’
Effie picked up a Christmassy poker from the fire’s companion set and gave him a shove. ‘Where are we going to put him?’ She knelt on the carpet, careful to avoid any splinters of crystal from the smashed decanter. There. His pulse was slow but persistent. ‘He’s alive-ish,’ she said.
Mrs Claus thought for a moment. ‘I think we should send him to the appropriate place.’
‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’ Effie gave a slow grin.
‘It’s the best place for him. Get him out of everyone’s hair.’
‘But how do we . . . ?’
Mrs Claus picked up a solid gold phone. Effie saw her wince with pain. She had unwittingly used the arm he’d stabbed. ‘I’ll get my car brought to the front,’ she told Effie, and started issuing curt instructions to the elf at the other end of the line.
Effie watched her, thinking: this woman is my enemy. She has set out to foil and hinder Brenda and me in our investigations again and again in recent years. She has even threatened to have us knocked off.
But why has she got me wincing in sympathy at her injuries? Why are we working together? And what was she trying to tell me before, just before Victor Frankenstein came bounding into this room?
There was no time for speculation now.
‘They’re bringing my Cadillac to the front of the building,’ Mrs Claus said. ‘Let’s go. Do you mind hefting me along, Effryggia?’
Effie grasped the handles of the wheelchair and braced herself for getting the old woman’s substantial weight over the ruck in the thick carpet.
Out in the corridor, as they left the inner sanctum, they could see that it was turning dark outside. The long windows showed a fantastic view of the headland and the abbey and St Mary’s church as dense purple cloud cover came rolling across. There was a band of sickly yellow sky being squashed violently under that mass of darkness. It was only mid afternoon.
Mrs Claus said, ‘Something is starting . . .’
Karla Takes Direction
Karla was raging at Alex. ‘Where is that girl? She was meant to follow me straight over here. I’m having to do my own make-up!’ She turned to her director, and all at once she felt like sobbing. What was happening to her? This was the worst possible moment to break down. What was wrong with her? She flung down the false eyelash that had so far defied her. ‘This is a disaster. I can’t do it.’
Alex was bizarrely calm, if florid. ‘You can and you will. And your hair hardly matters. Listen to the wind picking up out there. Your hairdo will be neither here nor there.’ Now she knew where he got all his calm self-possession from. He was one of them, wasn’t he? He was part of the fricking Brethren.
‘And where’s Victor?’ Karla snapped, scattering the cards and trinkets on her tiny dressing table. ‘He said he’d be here too.’
‘Everything’s fine, Karla. Everything’s going to be just perfect.’
The trailer rocked then, buffeted by the wind. The lights dimmed spasmodically, as they had been doing for the past half-hour. ‘Maybe the weather’s too wild. It looks pretty dark out there. Maybe we should just delay . . .’
‘No,’ said Alex, fingering the remains of the lilies he had sent her. ‘This is exactly how it should be.’
She sat back down. ‘I don’t want to do it.’
He came to lean over her. She could smell his clean, golden-blond hair. His expensive scent. She gasped as he took hold of her wrist. ‘But you’ve got no choice, my darling. Just get out there. Get those shots done. You’ve got to do hardly anything. Just walk out there. Lie down. Scream a bit. It’s me that has to concentrate. It’s me that has to make it all come together.’
She looked at him. There was no reasoning with her director. Not in this mood. He was Brethren through and through.
At the back of her mind she had been thinking that if anything blew up this evening, during this shoot . . . if all hell broke loose again . . . at least she had her fella to protect her this time. At least she had Victor. But it looked like he had let her down. Just like all the others always had.
Maybe it would just be a normal shoot. This was all illusion, wasn’t it? Just the magic of film?
But no.
Alex relented and drew back, allowing her to stand up and tend to her wardrobe. He stood there watching appreciatively as she donned her negligee and stared at herself in the cheval mirror. Karla could feel the tension crackling in the air, inside the trailer and out.
I look divine, she thought. Better than ever.
And I can feel real magic in the air. This is all for real. The film is reaching its climax. Just a little more to do.
But the film doesn’t want to be made. She knew it. Just as it didn’t forty years ago.
And yet the Brethren are determined that it will get made, this time. It will all come true, again.
‘You are perfect,’ Alex said, coming to stand behind her. She looked at his ice-blue
eyes in the reflection. To her thinking, it was as if something had got into his heart, all those years ago in Wales, the night his mother died. Something wicked crawled into that child’s soul. Even as Brenda rescued him and gunned the motor of her chip van. The devil had hidden himself away inside Alex and he was still there. Ready for this moment.
She let him kiss her a bit and she felt herself swaying and swooning under that influence. Just as she always did.
I’m bad through and through, Karla thought. I always let the bad men take me. Again and again I let them run away with me, don’t I? I never ever learn.
Alex broke off from kissing her pulsing throat.
‘Come. We have to see this through. Right now.’
He turned and flung open the door of her trailer.
She gasped at the livid violet sky and the wind that came in, whipping her black nightie about her and stealing her breath away.
Now there were even more Goths watching the proceedings. As she stepped through the lashing long grass and out of the shadows, on to the set, there was wild applause.
The weather was perfect. The darkness was delicious. Conditions were ideal.
I’ve no choice, Karla told herself. I don’t even know what’s going to happen to me. But I’m a pro. And I’ve been here before. I know all my lines. And all the moves.
It was all so familiar to her. Just the same as it had been – even better than it had been – back in her glory years of the sixties. The chanting, the extras, the sacrificial altar.
She was ready to be remade.
Penny in the Middle of it All
Penny decided that if this was what hell breaking loose looked like, well, at least it was quite pretty.
She stopped in her tracks at the top of the 199 steps.
How could Brenda go tearing past her like that? The woman was indefatigable.
The steps were busy, too, with revellers hurrying up to the top – mad keen to see what was going on. Others were actually fleeing the site. It was all too lurid, too noisy, too weird. Too real, for some of them. Word had gone round already. There was weird shit going down, up at the top of the hill. Penny caught whispers from the bodies dashing up and down the steps.
Now she could see much more clearly the green and yellow flaring lights; this nimbus of ethereal flame centred on the ancient ruins. It looked something like the Northern Lights, rippling across the jagged shell of the grand old abbey. Somewhere at the heart of it was bright light, electric light . . . casting fluttering shadows across the stone walls.
And the noise! It was as if there were hundreds, thousands of people up here. All of them chanting and moaning in terror and supplication.
Penny caught Robert’s arm as he hurried past her. Her hands slithered on the velvet of his jacket. ‘It’s all true,’ she gasped. ‘All of it’s for real, isn’t it?’
‘What?’ He laughed. There was an air of reckless excitement about him, and Penny saw at once: he loved all of this. He adored being in the thick of all this magic and mayhem. That must have been what had attracted Michael to him, of course. Robert’s fearlessness, and his easy belief in the fantastic – they had snagged the attention of the supernatural being hiding beneath the skin of the Michael she had known.
And I didn’t interest him at all, she thought. I failed to turn his gorgeous head. And it’s all because . . . when it comes right down to it . . . I’m scared.
She was scared right now, hanging back as Brenda pushed her way through St Mary’s churchyard, Lisa alongside her. They were threading their way through the wonky and weatherbeaten gravestones towards the abbey and the source of the commotion. And Penny was hanging back, clinging to Robert, holding him back with her.
He looked at her earnestly – that smile still playing about his face. But not mocking her.
‘Of course it’s real, Penny,’ he said. ‘This is what we do. All the time. These are the kinds of adventures we get ourselves into.’
She nodded. ‘I’m a bit scared, actually, Robert. I always thought it was the kind of thing I would enjoy. I’m not so sure now.’
He sighed. He was keen to be off again, she could see. ‘You can go back down the hill, you know. No one would think any worse of you if you just went back home right now. Back to the Miramar. I wouldn’t mind. Brenda wouldn’t mind.’
She looked into his face and she knew he meant it. But it wasn’t true. They would mind, really. They would be disappointed in her.
‘I’ve got to be brave,’ she said.
A Nasty Fandango
‘Those are screams . . . !’ Lisa gasped.
‘And chanting,’ frowned Brenda. ‘But maybe it’s all part of the film?’
Lisa craned her neck, trying to see past the bodies and the crumbling walls. They still weren’t close enough to know exactly what was going on. ‘I’ve seen them rehearse this bit. I don’t know. It sounds a bit extreme to me.’
‘And added to that, people running away from the scene . . .’
‘And the lights in the sky . . .’
Brenda looked grim. ‘I think it’s fair to say that things are getting out of hand up there.’
Lisa tugged at the sleeve of her good woollen coat. ‘Come on! Run, Brenda!’
Brenda still lagged. ‘Where are Robert and Penny?’
‘They’re coming – look! Behind us!’
As Brenda ran after Lisa, she was finding it harder to breathe. Her heart was playing merry hell in her echoing chest cavity. Her limbs were shaking with exhaustion and tension. That was her renewed zest gone, then.
She was suddenly vaguely glad that Effie wasn’t here for this. It was all rather chaotic and messy.
Just then someone – a visiting Goth woman in heels – took a nasty tumble, right beside her. Brenda slowed to help, but Lisa urged her on. There wasn’t time. There was more at stake than a stranger’s twisted ankle. Brenda tried to shut out all of the noise and the horror. Why were the Goths screaming? And didn’t it take quite a lot to whip them up into a frenzy? They had always struck her as rather laid-back, as a type. Were they screaming in terror, or pleasure? It was so very hard to tell. Ah – that was terror. Accompanying a savage crash of lightning and the awful noise of a fall of stones from the top of the abbey.
Lisa and Brenda paused at the perimeter of the ancient site. They tried to get their bearings, and a sense of what was happening on set. The lights were on. The cameras appeared to be rolling.
The extras were milling about and chanting like crazy.
There was young Alex, apparently exhorting them into fervour. His chosen method of obtaining the best from his cast and crew seemed to involve donning a horned goat’s mask and his own voluminous sorcerer’s cloak.
Karla was stretched out on the altar, writhing for all she was worth.
And the lights were coruscating about her. Just as Brenda had suspected, the very centre of the Bitch’s Maw had opened up around her.
Brenda swore colourfully and explained to the dumbstruck hairstylist at her side, ‘It’s the gateway into hell.’
Lisa hissed, ‘They’ve gone and done it then? For real?’
‘Just as they did back then. Oh yes.’
Penny and Robert joined them then in the dark hollow in the ground. They were breathless and struggling to keep still. A stiff wind was pushing them all backwards. It was as if the wind was emanating from the gateway itself.
‘You all right, Penny?’ said Brenda.
Penny nodded queasily.
‘What can we do?’ Robert shouted above the din.
‘It’s too late,’ Brenda told him.
‘Was it all just a ploy then?’ Robert shouted, trying to understand. ‘The whole film thing . . . it was just their excuse to open up this hole into hell?’
Brenda was suddenly very upset. She was angry with herself primarily. ‘This is my job. This is why I’m here. I’ve got to watch this thing. And make sure nothing gets out that shouldn’t . . . And look at me! I’m sitting in a ditch as
it all goes blummin’ tits up!’
Robert had never heard Brenda swear before.
Lisa was focused on the busy starlet on the altar. She was bucking and tossing like a rodeo champion. ‘What about Karla?’
Robert gasped. ‘Her? Stuff her! She can burn for all I care.’
‘She’s not so bad.’ Lisa frowned.
Brenda looked at her thoughtfully. ‘What are you saying?’
Lisa gripped her knapsack. ‘We could save her.’
‘WHAT?’ Robert was shocked.
Lisa went on, ‘Their attention is all on the gateway thing. We could nip in there . . .’
‘Look, you do what you want,’ Robert said. ‘I reckon you’re pretty fond of her. You do her hair and make-up and all that, don’t you?’
Brenda thumped his arm. ‘Robert! Don’t be horrible! Karla’s well nigh possessed! Everything she does has been controlled by those terrible men . . . the Brethren.’
‘You’re too forgiving, Brenda,’ Robert shouted. He was out of order, he knew. ‘If you only knew what they did to Frank . . .’
Brenda stared at him. He looked away, ashamed of himself.
Lisa took her chance to break away from them. With a cry of ‘I’m going to save Karla!’ she nipped out of their hollow in the long grass and dashed towards the satanic mêlée in the abbey grounds.
Brenda turned her attention back to the chaotic scene at hand. Her differences with Robert could be addressed at a later date. She refocused and frowned.
‘What on earth is Alex doing dressed as the horned god and dancing around?’
‘Alex?’ Penny asked.
‘The director,’ Robert told her.
‘Little Alex,’ said Brenda mournfully, watching him caper obscenely around the supine Karla. ‘Oh! So he was in on this nasty fandango the whole time! He must belong to the blummin’ Brethren. Oh no. Whatever would his old dad have said about that?’
Robert urged Brenda to get out of their ditch. ‘We must stop this. You have to get them to stop!’