[Brenda & Effie 01] - Never the Bride

by Paul Magrs

  ‘You’re just seeing stuff floating on your eye,’ said Effie.

  We seemed to sit there for hours, all tense. After what seemed like a lifetime we started a conversation in whispers. I wondered what was happening to the Green family, and where they had travelled to.

  ‘Don’t you think they should have gone home?’ Effie said. I’d been given a little pen torch and swung it round to light her. She looked quite serious. ‘Are you crazy?’ I said. ‘You saw what Frank the detective was like. The Elders of their village must be horrible. Anyone would want to run away.’

  Effie did her sucked-lemon face. ‘Don’t you think they’re better off with their own kind?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘They were coerced into staying there. What could be good about that?’

  ‘But they were . . . different. That girl had tentacles!’

  ‘So what? Should we lock them up? Hide them away?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ whispered Effie.

  I made a loud noise of disgust, not trusting myself to use words. Eventually I said, ‘All the Greens want is an inconspicuous life in the real world. That’s all anyone wants, isn’t it?’

  Effie shrugged and we fell quiet again. The tall old house creaked and settled around us. We’d both lost sight of what we were meant to be doing. My heart was pounding - with anger, rather than fear. ‘The Greens were held back by their Elders, who thought that people outside of their village would never accept them. But . . . in the hundred years or so since the invasion, the world has become a better, more tolerant place, hasn’t it? And the Greens think it will accept them for who they are.’

  ‘Do you think so?’ Effie asked. ‘A girl with tentacles? A boy with a third eye?’

  I remembered my conversation with Katherine Green, just before the family left. It had been along just these lines, and she had caught me unawares when she asked, ‘This outside world accepts you, Brenda, does it not?’

  I looked at her in shock. ‘Pardon?’

  She apologised swiftly. ‘Forgive me,’ she said. ‘Forgive me for noticing . . . but you aren’t quite a natural woman, are you?’

  During that week the Greens and I had lived in close proximity. Katherine had seen me without my wig, glorious in all my scars. I was dumbfounded and scared by her quiet voice, but I met her eye. She looked shocked, still, by what had transpired in my living room, and that her daughter had turned murderess to keep the family free. I believed I could trust her with one of my own secrets.

  ‘You’re right, Katherine. I’m not quite natural,’ I’d said. ‘I’m the only woman on earth who was not of woman born.’

  She nodded, biting her lip, but didn’t ask any more. Tact. I like that. It’s a gracious attribute.

  For some reason I didn’t feel I could tell Effie as much as I had confided to that woman, the young mother of a fugitive family. I just don’t trust her enough.

  Now Effie was saying, ‘Don’t you think people should stay in the place they come from?’ She gestured at the darkness. I had an impression of her hand flailing, but it was fiercely dark. Her movements reminded me that we were marooned up there, in the still of the night, waiting for horrible things to happen. ‘This is where my people belong. All the women in my family, going back all those years. So . . . shouldn’t I stay here to honour them?’

  I shook my head. ‘You don’t understand anything - you haven’t been anywhere or done anything—’

  ‘Oh!’ she broke in. ‘And I suppose you’ve done and seen it all, Brenda. You’re a regular international woman of mystery.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ I said. ‘And, as far as you’re concerned, that’s how I’m going to stay. Who knows? Maybe you’d turn me in to the authorities or anyone who gave two hoots, given half a chance.’

  ‘I don’t want to know anything about you,’ she spat back. ‘I don’t care who you really are or what horrible things you’ve done in your past. But I know there was something. Something you feel guilty about and ashamed of. You’ve got some kind of sordid past!’

  At that moment there was a load of noise from the floor below us. It was a combination of several things: furniture crashing and creaking, shrieks from the production team - notably Lisa Turmoil who, as she had explained to me, had been promoted because of her talent for screaming. Then, it sounded as though something terrible was happening. The mélange of noise carried on for several heart-stopping moments and Effie had seized my sleeve with both claw-like hands. She kept tight hold of me.

  But I was up on my feet. ‘Come on!’ I urged. ‘It’s all going on downstairs.’ I had to virtually drag her along with me.

  ‘Down there? We can’t! Stay here! It can’t get us here! Let it have them!’

  ‘Effie,’ I growled. ‘We have to go down. We can’t leave them with it, whatever it is. And I’m not afraid of spooks, are you?’

  Underneath all the shouting and screaming, there was this awful, rumbling voice, huge and raucous, making itself heard above the hullabaloo. I knew it didn’t belong to any of the crew, and I couldn’t hear what it was saying to them, but I had to know. I had to get closer. My heart was pounding and my blood was racing through my ancient veins. Was it something really, truly supernatural?

  ‘You’re coming downstairs with me, lady!’ I barked at Effie. ‘You brought all this on. You wanted them raising spirits round your house. You’re the one with the witchy relations. Have some courage, woman!’

  Effie was almost hysterical. Her skinny body had seized up and she was gibbering. ‘It’s him! He’s come back to torture us for sticking him in a hole in your garden! It’s Frank! He’s going to get us, Brenda!’

  ‘Rubbish,’ I snapped, and hauled her along bodily to the top of the stairs. I wasn’t having any more of her nonsense. Of course it wasn’t Frank. He couldn’t have come back already, could he? And besides, that voice . . . that rumbling, terrible voice . . . It sounded more like . . .

  ‘Be careful,’ I told Effie sharply. ‘You can’t go thrashing about like that on the stairs. Come on. We shouldn’t leave your visitors to fend for themselves . . .’ My nails were digging into her thin arms. She came reluctantly after me to the next floor down. There, we could listen more closely to the abandoned shrieks and the clattering furniture.

  ‘They’re in Great Aunt Maud’s old room,’ Effie whispered, calmer now. She resisted less as I drew her towards the door. She was starting to tremble and moan.

  Inside the room we found a scene of chaos. Tables, chairs and bedside tables, undisturbed for years, had been turned over and scattered. Crazy shadows were flashing all over the place as the production team waved their torches, seemingly searching for something. Even among all the noise and mess, the cameraman and the sound engineer were keeping a tight hold on their clunky equipment. Eunice was on the bed, as if she was on a ship in a storm at sea, yelling at the top of her voice, with Lisa crouched by her, whimpering. After a few moments I worked out the focus of their attention. And whence that huge, booming voice was emanating.

  Brian the psychic was standing in the centre of the room with his head flung back and his arms spread wide. A fierce seething of energies came off him and buffeted us back, preventing anyone from reaching him. Even more odd, he was hovering several feet off the ground.

  ‘Oh,’ said Effie, mildly. ‘Blimey.’

  ‘Join us, please,’ bellowed Brian, without a trace of his Geordie accent.

  ‘He’s possessed,’ Effie muttered. ‘I’ve seen it before.’

  ‘Don’t be shy,’ he intoned. ‘You need to hear what I’m going to tell you.’

  ‘Are you real?’ Eunice was yelling, the sheets whipping up round her, and her hair hanging in tatters. ‘Can you achieve a physical manifestation for us?’

  ‘I wish that awful woman would be quiet,’ said the voice speaking through Brian. ‘She’s been shouting at me for ages. Does she never listen?’

  One of the production team - a bald, burly man called Steve - was glaring into a particular piece of equipment and sho
uting, ‘Brian’s body is completely blue on the heat register! His temperature’s dropping right down! It’ll kill him if—’

  ‘Your psychic is quite safe,’ Brian told them. ‘I will make sure he survives this. He has done well. He has acted as the link between us.’

  ‘Who are you?’ Eunice shouted.

  ‘I wish to talk to those two.’ His hand shot out, isolating Effie and me, seemingly bathing us in a murky light in the sudden stillness of the room.

  ‘Are you Maud?’ Effie asked bravely.

  Brian laughed for some time. ‘Naturally you expect your forebears to return to you. And it’s true that that brood of wicked harpies did come crowding round me. They appeared in their finery, fully expecting to manifest themselves before you. When they heard what you were planning here, Effryggia, they were pleased. They were glad to learn that you have not forgotten them.’

  Effie was holding her breath. She nodded.

  ‘You mustn’t abandon their work,’ Brian said hollowly. ‘They have left you the texts. You must learn from them. There are reasons why you are here, in possession of all this knowledge. Do not ask me what they are. You can’t know yet. But you have been retained here, Effryggia, for a purpose. It is why Brenda has been drawn here to live by your side.’

  ‘What?’ I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. ‘What are you saying? Drawn here?’ Suddenly I was furiously indignant. ‘I came of my own free will, I’ll have you know.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’ said Brian.

  ‘It’s true. I’ve roamed around everywhere. Nowhere seemed right . . . and then this place . . .’ Suddenly I saw that the night-vision cameras were trained on me. Everything was being recorded. I had to shut up. But I couldn’t. Something about this visitation had got my hackles up. ‘I chose what to do with my life. Where to live. Who to be. What I was going to become. Nobody else had a hand in it. No Fate, no god, no father or destiny. No one apart from me!’

  ‘No one?’ asked the voice, quieter now. Almost mocking.

  ‘I have made my own life,’ I said.

  The voice was silent for a moment. Then it said, ‘You have been led here. You are here at the behest of higher powers.’

  ‘Higher powers?’ cried Effie.

  ‘Rubbish,’ I said. ‘Look, who are you, anyway, to talk to me like this?’

  The voice chuckled. ‘Haven’t you realised, Brenda? Do you really not know who I am?’

  My heart lurched, as if it was dropping free of its moorings. I felt nauseous suddenly, as people are reputed to do, in the presence of powerful spirits. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I have no idea who you might be. I have no relations. No family. I recall no one who has passed over to the other side . . .’ I spoke fiercely, determined to deny him.

  ‘Think, Brenda. Think right back. Think hard, Brenda. Don’t pretend to forget. You know me. You’ve known so many people. Think, Brenda. Remember me.’

  ‘No!’ I yelled. ‘No!’

  ‘Can you give us a name?’ Eunice yelled, still struggling to stand against the waves of power. She was remembering her duty and what she usually did during these moments of communion. ‘Please, tell us your name. Or even just an initial—’

  ‘Silence,’ said the voice. ‘It isn’t you I’m here for. And time is short. I won’t waste my breath on you. Why should I want to be on television? Which spirit would ? You people, these days,can think of nothing more exciting than being on your precious television, and you suppose mistakenly that all the dead must feel the same. As if, having been born too soon to experience TV, we must be ushered into your future as swiftly as possible, and make our appearances, fret, strut and take our bows. Well, I have no interest in appearing on your . . . cable channel.’

  Brian waved his hand again, jerkily, and the camera crew jerked likewise, some of them crying out. ‘He’s wiped it! Everything’s gone!’ It was a magnetic wave, was what they said afterwards. No recordings of the night were intact. Brian’s visitor hadn’t left a single trace of himself.

  ‘None of the dead I know would ever come to you,’ he told the quivering team. ‘Why do you suppose they would want to be recorded, taped, transcribed and broadcast? What you are doing is futile. The only reason I came here tonight was to warn Effryggia and Brenda.’

  I licked my dry lips. ‘Warn us about what?’

  ‘Your purpose,’ he said. ‘To guard the entrance to the Bitch’s Maw. To watch over those souls exiled from hell.’

  I hadn’t a clue what he was on about. I supposed he was talking figuratively. Brian shook his head. ‘I mean it. You will be watching over the damned. Some have already appeared in this town. They need to be taken care of.’

  ‘Who . . . ?’ But already suspicions were forming in my mind. ‘What is . . . the Bitch’s Maw?’

  ‘You will find out soon enough,’ he said. ‘Hell is too busy. It’s bursting at the seams. You must be here to catch them when they come spilling out . . .’

  ‘But why?’ I shouted. ‘Why me?’

  ‘Because you have no soul, daughter. You have nothing to lose.’

  And then, suddenly, he was gone.

  I found myself sitting on the dusty, threadbare carpet. I tried to collect my wits as Effie fussed about me, and the television crew gathered round Brian, who had sagged to the floor when the spirit had left him.

  ‘He called me daughter,’ I said. ‘Did you hear him, Effie? He called me his daughter . . .’

  There was no need to continue with the filming. The whole night’s work had been ruined and dawn wasn’t far off. Eunice and her crew had no option but to declare the project a disaster.

  ‘They’re gutted,’ Lisa Turmoil told us, as we made our way downstairs. ‘Those were the most spectacular results they’ve ever had. We’ve never seen Brian as possessed as that. If only the equipment hadn’t failed!’

  Effie and I shrugged. What could we say? Myself, I was relieved that no record existed of the night’s events. I had no desire to be on telly, glowing green in the night-vision, yelling at Brian.

  I shuddered as we went down all the staircases to Effie’s ground floor. I couldn’t stop. I felt like we’d had a near miss. I felt like we had brushed past the Angel of Death, almost touching its wing tips. That was how I felt and, from their faces, I could see that the others felt the same. We had escaped some dreadful fate. We had dabbled with something best left alone, something bigger and nastier than any of us, and it had let us go. We were safe again.

  Down in Effie’s dusty shop a pale light was coming through the smudgy windows. Dawn was breaking over the bay. Brian still hadn’t said a word in his natural voice to reassure us that he hadn’t lost his marbles. He was just murmuring in a troubled way, and the crew had to half carry him out of the shop, into the street and my place, where they could put him to bed. After that Eunice dismissed them for the night to their beds at the Hotel Miramar up the hill. You could see the relief in their faces when they departed.

  Us girls decided to retire to my front parlour for an early-morning nightcap.

  ‘Look at us,’ Effie chuckled, accepting a glass, ‘drinking brandy at this time in the morning.’

  ‘I think we’ve earned it, don’t you?’ said Lisa, next to her on the chintz.

  Eunice had pulled a heavy jumper over her skimpy catsuit and glugged back her brandy in one go.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Lisa asked me. ‘The spirit - whoever he was - seemed to seize on you in particular.’

  ‘He did,’ I said, staring into my glass. ‘And at first I thought I knew who it was. But now I’m not so sure.’

  ‘He called you “daughter”.’

  ‘I had no father,’ I said. ‘Well. Hardly. It couldn’t have been him. It simply couldn’t. No . . . it was something horrible and wicked speaking through Brian. Something I’d rather forget.’ I knocked back my drink, relishing its heat.

  ‘It was a warning,’ Effie piped up. ‘That’s what it was.’

  ‘About messing with spirits?’ asked Lisa.

  Ef
fie was looking pinched and worried. ‘No. It was a warning about what’s still to come. For Brenda and me. All that strange talk about the damned, and hell bursting at the seams. The voice suggested we had a role to play. And I believed it. I believe we’re here for a reason, and we’ll find out what it is before long.’

  ‘I don’t like talk of hell,’ said Lisa. ‘I don’t like to believe in it.’

  ‘I think it’s closer than we know,’ said Effie - Effryggia, as the spirit voice had called her. Effryggia, with her witchlike forebears and her books of arcane knowledge.

  ‘I still don’t like the thought of . . . being drawn here. I don’t like the idea of predestination,’ I said. I picked up the brandy bottle. Now it was completely light outside. ‘I want my free will back,’ I said. ‘I just want my life to be still my own.’

  Effie looked me in the eye. ‘I don’t think it is, Brenda. It never really was, was it?’

  Chapter Four:

  Murder at the Christmas Hotel

  Things had been pretty strange lately. They were about to get a good deal stranger, nastier and more dangerous. Hurray!

  I really hadn’t settled there in search of excitement and adventures. I’ve already explained that what I really wanted was a quiet life and to keep my head down. Just recently, though, as autumn set in, it seemed that strangeness and mystery-filled adventures were purposely seeking me out.

  Effie and I were about to learn that there was a reason for that.

  A few days after the cast and crew of Manifest Yourself ! had left our town, a bit shell-shocked and worse for wear, it seemed that everything had gone quiet and returned to relative normality. In the shop downstairs Leena asked if anything had happened during our television recording. Had the dead come back? She laughed. I’m afraid I was rather frosty with her. I didn’t want to talk about it. I wanted distractions. I wanted pulling out of myself before I got gloomy and depressed. It was as if something in the terrible voice that Brian had channelled had filled me with doomy thoughts . . .