by Paul Magrs
He looked away. ‘Is it any more remarkable than the Bride of Frankenstein opening a bed-and-breakfast?’
‘Hm,’ I said. ‘Touché.’
‘Needs must,’ he said. ‘We’ve all had to retrain, professionalise ourselves, haven’t we?’
‘Brenda,’ Effie broke in, ‘I didn’t even know that MIAOW existed.’
‘They’ve dogged my steps for years,’ I said, ‘and I’d assumed they were leaving me alone now.’
‘It’s true,’ he said, ‘that your file at the Ministry is rather thick. They’ve kept tabs on you, Brenda, but they don’t regard you as a threat. They would never do you any harm. Rather, they’re interested in you. And, of course, in your ultimate destiny.’
‘Hm,’ I said.
Effie was staring at him rather closely. ‘So, really, you came here for Brenda’s sake. It’s true, isn’t it? You’re here in the line of duty.’
‘Of course,’ he said stiffly. ‘But—’
‘And you only stuck around because of her and this destiny business and—’ She flailed out then, with both hands, sweeping a number of the precious books to the floor. ‘You only got close to me for the sake of these tatty old things. These books of pure evil. That’s what you courted me for, wasn’t it? You never wanted me at all!’ She was doing battle with herself, trying not to break down in front of him. I was paralysed with mute horror.
‘Effie, you mustn’t believe that,’ Alucard said urgently. ‘You must never think that.’
‘But I do, Kristoff. How can I believe you? Think of the horror you’ve unleashed throughout your life. I was kidding myself. I’m a crazy old woman. How could I ever have thought that a demon like you would be capable of love? A monster! A devil!’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Effie, that’s not true.’
‘I think he’s sincere, Effie,’ I said. ‘I’m not the most perfect judge of character, but I think—’
‘And you!’ she rounded on me. ‘All this nasty stuff is right up your street, isn’t it? Monsters and demons, things coming out of the past and up from hell. Why, you must be in your element, lady! I suppose it all makes you feel rather special, doesn’t it?’
I opened my mouth to reply but the ferocity of Effie’s attack had knocked the wind out of me.
‘Brenda is rather special, Effie,’ said Alucard. ‘She’s unique. But you are special too, and vital to the success of my mission here. With the knowledge acquired by your aunts, you have shown me how to find and open the Bitch’s Maw.’
‘I’ve hated those books all my life,’ Effie said bitterly. ‘I’ve hated everything to do with magic and all of that. I turned my back on it. But it gets you in the end, doesn’t it? That world reaches out to you, and gets you eventually . . .’
But I was staring at Alucard. ‘Open it? That’s what you want to do?’
He nodded. ‘I think I can.’
‘But why on earth would you want to?’
He licked his lips carefully and, for the first time, I saw his glinting fangs. ‘Because then I can seal it. For ever. And that is my mission.’
Out we went, gallivanting again in the silvery moonlight. It made me excited - it always does, all the frost and the satiny dark - but that night dread weighed on me too. There was a tingle in my extremities and a ringing in my ears.
Effie and I wrapped up warm. She lent me an elegant wrap thing that only just went round my shoulders. She was muttering to herself the whole time, as we prepared for our trip to the abbey and the mystery of the Bitch’s Maw.
‘You don’t seem best pleased by any of this,’ I said quietly.
She put on her good sheepskin gloves and glowered at me. ‘Would you be?’
‘It seems to me that we’re equally mixed up in it.’
‘Perhaps. But . . . Oh, really, I thought I’d found a nice, uncomplicated man-friend. I thought I was having a proper relationship at last, like other people do.’
‘But you are!’
She shook her head dolefully. ‘I feel a bit used, to tell the truth.’
‘Ladies?’ He had slipped into the hallway, and was standing at a tactful distance from us. Now he was wearing a dark cloak with a red silk lining and he was looking every inch the part. We were ready to embark on the last phase of his mission.
Just look at me and Effie, I thought, setting off into the night, tagging along on the heels of this - this abomination.
I know. It comes to something, doesn’t it, when even I get to call someone an abomination? But that’s what he was, wasn’t he? Or what he used to be. I don’t know why or what had changed his nature. I don’t know how he had calmed down, cleaned up his act and ‘professionalised’, as he put it. But he had gone from a ravening, corpse-sucking demon lord to a smarmy secret agent. I’m not sure I wanted to know how that had happened.
As we left the building through Effie’s dingy shop, he gave my shoulder a staunch pat, as if we were brothers in arms. I stepped aside as Effie locked and bolted the door and refused to meet his eye. I hated him insinuating that we were made of the same stuff, that we were bonded somehow. I was, in principle, against everything Alucard stood for, yet he spoke to me as if we were alumni from the same old School of Monstrosity.
We marched through the mist-shrouded town centre and Effie kept shtum. Her heels scraped loudly on the cobbles and I was wondering how she expected to climb up to the abbey in shoes like that.
‘A long time ago,’ said Alucard, ‘I met your father.’ I glanced at him sharply. ‘On a number of occasions, actually.’
I breathed out slowly. I wasn’t sure I believed him. ‘Is that a fact?’
‘I found him charming. If a little egocentric. But, then, why shouldn’t he be? He had created life from scratch. Imagine that!’
‘Indeed,’ I said drily.
‘I was pleased to make his acquaintance,’ Kristoff said. ‘Over the years I have met a great many of the great, the good and the downright wicked. Your father stood out, you know. Oh, yes. He was remarkable.’
‘When was this?’
‘Oh, I don’t remember exactly.’
‘So, is it true, then,’ I said, ‘that you lot spent much of the nineteenth century hanging around together and having bloodcurdling adventures? Wolfmen and lizardwomen, mummies, zombies and . . . my dad?’
He chuckled: an oily, uncanny sound. ‘Our paths crossed on a number of occasions. Monster team-ups, we liked to call them. You know, Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman Meets Dracula’s Daughter, kind of thing.’
I whistled. ‘You must have had a whale of a time, running about in central Europe, being mobbed by torch-waving peasants, getting bumped off and being resurrected all over the place.’
I looked at Alucard, and he was smiling.
‘I wouldn’t have wanted to be involved anyway,’ I said. ‘All that supernatural nonsense.’
‘Really?’ Alucard said. ‘I can’t help but think you must have been lonely, Brenda. All those years alone, abandoned on these islands. A reject. Herr Doktor’s terrible mistake.’
I flashed him a look. ‘All right! Don’t go rubbing it in.’
Of course, I had thought these things a million times and I really didn’t feel as sorry for myself as all that. Not any more. But in Kristoff Alucard - this man-beast gone legit - I had come across the closest thing I would ever get to someone from my own time and background. I felt like wailing and gnashing my teeth at him. A dreadful wave of self-pity and loss came over me as we crossed the bay and headed for the steps.
Town was dead. It was as if we three were the only living things abroad. And some of us were hardly living.
‘It can’t have been easy for you,’ he said, as we turned on to the path that would wind us round the headland and above the rooftops. Eventually it would take us right to the top, overlooking all of Whitby. ‘None of it could have been very easy.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘It hasn’t been.’
‘From the little I saw of your father, and from the little I kno
w, I’m sure he would have been very proud of you.’
The steps are very steep, pebbly and noisy to climb. Effie was crunching ahead, and my own large feet were slithering along in the shale. I was out of breath already, feeling my age and all my fleshy heaviness. Of course Alucard was gliding along beside me as he talked. Patronising sod.
‘I don’t care,’ I said. ‘I really don’t care what he would have thought of me. I’ve never needed him for anything, and I don’t need his approval now.’ I gritted my teeth as the crash and swelling boom of the sea filled me with rage. I fought to control my temper, hunched my shoulders forward and tried to increase my pace. I started counting the steps. I thought superstitiously that good things would come if I counted them all.
Kristoff Alucard’s words had put me right back in the past.
At the beginning. Lying on that makeshift trolley. Coming to life, I suppose you would say. Opening these eyes. Stirring these limbs. And slowly becoming aware of the world about me. A nasty, confined, slimy sort of world, the basement laboratory on that island. But as yet I knew no other. I drew in a huge breath and my lungs ached, crackled, wheezed. Then I saw my prospective husband staring down at me from that window, high up in the wall. My beautiful Intended looked so eager and gleeful. He was delighted to have witnessed my birth.
But my father wasn’t glad.
His hawk-like face was overcome with disgust. His sharp nose wrinkled in dismay as visions of horror rose before him. It was at that moment that Herr Doktor had realised he couldn’t bear the thought of my husband and me breeding. My fiancé’s delight appalled him. He saw visions of our dreadful children: of our kind slowly populating the world. He realised the sacrilege he had created in setting himself up as God. And so, seconds after my birth, he had decided to mend his ways and murder me.
I mean, we never even knew, did we? We never got a chance to find out whether we were compatible, whether we could breed or not. We were never given much of a chance to do anything.
Kiddies. That would have been something, wouldn’t it?
My father, it seemed, couldn’t imagine anything worse. He wanted to ensure that the world would not suffer the vile offspring of this monstrous woman. He wouldn’t risk opening a door into a world that could never be closed. Who knew what might come tumbling out?
So my father did what he felt was the only decent thing. He murdered me. Out came the scalpels and knives once more.
My husband wailed and screamed to be allowed in to save me from my father. Only minutes into this life, I was fighting to stay alive.
But I was murdered.
Or so my father and my husband thought. They left me to it, lying in my own blood. They tore off to pursue each other. Monster and creator locked in combat unto death. And I was left behind.
And now Alucard was telling me I should care. I should be thrilled that my father would have been proud of me.
No. I think he would have been proud of his handiwork, his cleverness and skill. He’d have been cock-a-hoop that this body - this child of his intellect and nimble surgeon’s fingers - has lasted so long. But proud of me for myself? I doubt it.
My father never could, never would and never actually did give a fuck for me.
‘I won’t talk about the past any more,’ Alucard said gently, as we approached the top of the hill. ‘I can tell you don’t like to.’
We paused in the shadow of the church. We caught our breath and watched the endless glimmering of the North Sea. ‘There isn’t time to get caught up in the past,’ I said. ‘Just look at now. Look at the present. It’s so huge. There’s quite enough of that to be going on with.’
‘You’re right,’ he said. He cast a furtive glance across the graveyard to where Effie was picking her way through the long grass, stiff-backed and frosty.
‘I do have feelings for her, you know,’ he said suddenly. ‘It wasn’t just a pose, or a means to an end.’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘good. I suspected as much.’
He nodded, and seemed a bit lost. ‘It hasn’t happened for a long time. I thought my feelings had evaporated. I’m so corrupted and congealed inside. And there she was! But . . . I’ve messed it all up.’
‘I’m sure you haven’t, Kristoff. Effie will come round. She just feels a bit less special than she did a few days ago. You made her feel wonderful, you know. You really did.’
He smiled at that. He wasn’t used to feeling unsure. I decided that what I liked about Alucard - despite everything - was that there was none of that posturing male-ego rubbish about him. He didn’t need endless flattery. It was enough for him to hear that he had given pleasure - sheer, unadulterated pleasure - even if only for a short while.
I envied them both just then.
I thought, Where’s my fancy man?
But it wasn’t the time to dwell on such things.
‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Let’s find this gateway. Are you sure you know what you have to do?’
He nodded. I suppose he’s always been pretty efficient.
‘I’m word perfect,’ he said, and struck out, determined, for the ruins of the abbey.
He knew where he was going. He had checked and rechecked the notes and cryptic hints left by Effie’s female relatives, and now he knew which corner of the great ruins he should head for.
Effie and I fell back, letting him lead the way through those opened chambers. I had never really been so close to the place. Something had kept me away. The atmosphere surrounding it, perhaps. Now that we were wandering through the middle of the building, I felt as if I was inside the skeleton of a vast creature, its stunted ribcage rising brokenly to the sky.
Perhaps I had never visited the ruined abbey because it reminded me too much of myself.
Alucard flitted ahead, sure of his purpose. His black and scarlet cloak billowed behind him as he moved like a whisper among the rubble and long grass, cutting rather a dash.
Were we scared? I’m not sure. Effie and I exchanged a few glances, but not many words. All that I was sure of was the rightness of our being there. We were both in no doubt that we were meant to be at this point, at this time. It had been on the cards for ages. I’m no good at spotting constellations and all that, but the stars looked brilliantly propitious through the shattered abbey roof.
He had stopped at a ruined tower and motioned us over. A tiny doorway was concealed behind a scrub bush, which he cleared with a ripping sound. ‘Just inside,’ he said. ‘It was the cell of an abbess over a thousand years ago. It’s she who guards the way. It was she who opened the gateway in the first place.’
‘An abbess?’ said Effie. ‘Well, it just goes to show.’
We struggled in through the hole, and had some difficulty standing up in the confined space. Alucard lit a match and suddenly there was a real whiff of sulphur. Effie pointed this out, and we all laughed uneasily. A short tunnel opened up ahead. It smelt rancid and wrong - like bad milk or vegetables, rather than old stone and earth.
‘It should be just a few yards down this way,’ Alucard said.
His voice was shaking! He was nervous! I thought.
‘Look, I’ve got to start this chanting business now. I need to concentrate.’
‘How long do the invocations last?’ Effie asked.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I haven’t rehearsed.’ He started then, inching forward into the darkness, holding aloft his weirdly long-lasting match, which sputtered and spat. The words he spoke were ancient and alien-sounding. They came out in long strings and stanzas, sometimes sounding like poetry, at others like demands, commands and earnest prayers.
I felt Effie draw away. She was slipping backwards down the passage and through the nun’s cell. Alucard noticed too and, not breaking off from his spell-saying, gave me a look and a nod to fetch her back. All of us had to be there.
I caught up with Effie. She was leaning against the stone wall outside, breathing raggedly under the milky moonlight. ‘I had to get out for a bit,’ she said. ‘I hat
e being around magic. I couldn’t stand it when I was a child. This is bringing everything back.’
I nodded. ‘We all have to be there, though.’
‘I know. I’ll just get my breath.’ She gazed at me searchingly. ‘Do you trust him?’
I didn’t know. But it seemed we were in too deep now to back out. We simply had to trust him, and I told her so. ‘I believe he wants to seal off this gateway,’ I said.
Effie straightened up and tugged on her sheepskin gloves again. Then, like a rabbit in the middle of the road, she froze.
‘What is it?’
‘Look!’ she gasped. ‘Who on earth is that?’
Across the top of the hill, silhouetted against the bright night sky, a figure was moving through the abbey’s bonelike remains. He was bustling towards us, all businesslike, and as he grew nearer we heard him whistling a jaunty little air.
‘He’s coming straight for us . . .’
He was a short, pale-haired man with rounded shoulders and stubby arms, carrying a hefty suitcase.
‘Danby,’ Effie said. ‘It’s Mr Danby.’
Sure enough, he was close enough now for us to see his smug, ghoulish face, with its too-wide, simpering smile. As he stepped up to us he clicked his heels and gave a silly salute. ‘Ladies! An auspicious evening, no?’
Effie frowned. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ She spoke with the kind of hauteur that would have frozen any mortal in an instant. But it seemed Mr Danby was made of sterner stuff.
‘I wonder, given the solemnity of our mission this evening, if we might draw a veil over the recent unfortunate goings-on at my boutique? I hope perhaps we can have a truce and learn to work together.’
‘A truce!’ Effie spat.
‘Why would we have to work together?’ I asked.
He sniggered. ‘You will learn shortly. But come now, let bygones be bygones and all that. Surely if I can sweep my feelings under the carpet, then you two ladies can, too.’