by Paul Magrs
‘Our friend Jessie died as a result of your jiggery-pokery,’ Effie ground out.
‘Surely not,’ he murmured. ‘No, that is not at all true.’
‘And I had a hellish experience in your Deadly Machine! And, what’s more, we know what you were up to! Feeding your old mother on the life essences and whatnot of all your poor victims!’
‘Well,’ he said quietly, and tapped his battered leather suitcase, ‘my mother is a remarkable woman. She needs careful looking after. She deserves the best.’
We didn’t know what he was talking about. He sounded loopy.
‘Has Alucard begun his invocations?’ Danby asked. ‘Would you like to lead the way, ladies?’
I couldn’t think of anything nastier than squashing ourselves into that claustrophobic space with Mr Danby right on our heels. But we went, and he was squeaking with interest as we scuttled up the passageway to stand with Alucard.
‘I have brought her,’ Danby interrupted loudly.
‘Brought who?’ I asked. ‘What are you on about?’
Kristoff stopped chanting and held the match close to Danby’s pale, sweating face. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Thank you, Danby.’
A terrible chill went through me. This was a plan we knew nothing about. These men had organised something behind our backs.
‘I don’t like this,’ Effie whispered.
‘Me neither.’ My voice was rather gruff, as if I might lose my temper at any moment and batter our enemies into submission.
Danby laid his suitcase on the dry, sandy ground and opened its clasps and straps. We crowded round to see, quietened by his solemnity.
‘He has brought the guardian,’ Alucard whispered. ‘The one who controls this gateway.’
‘In a suitcase?’ Effie scoffed.
Danby flipped open the lid.
There, in a nest of tiny blankets and satiny sheets, lay a tiny nun. She was as withered as a sun-dried tomato. Her habit was minuscule, and she was glaring up at us with such malignity that we all drew back. She was like a wrinkled, evil, holy, fairy. She sat up, stretched, coughed and looked furious.
‘This,’ said Mr Danby, ‘is my mother. The abbess.’
‘The original abbess.’ Alucard sighed. ‘Welcome home, my dear.’
‘That?’ Effie pointed a shaking finger at the little woman. ‘That’s what the Deadly Boutique was all about? Keeping that thing alive? That dreadful homunculus?’
‘Effie,’ I warned. ‘Don’t!’ I knew that the creature wielded awesome powers and that my friend was overstepping the mark.
‘All my efforts, for a very long time, have been dedicated to keeping the abbess alive,’ Mr Danby said, clasping his sweaty fingers together. He watched, enraptured, as the nun dusted herself down and hopped out of her suitcase. She surveyed us and tutted loudly.
‘We have found the hiding place of the gateway,’ Alucard said portentously.
‘It wasn’t hard to find,’ she said, in a harsh, grating voice, much too big for her tiny frame. ‘Not once you were in possession of the books.’ I felt Effie stiffen beside me.
‘We have come to the Bitch’s Maw, as appointed,’ Alucard said. ‘I have uttered the spells, and I have drawn you here, Reverend Mother. Show us the Maw.’
She nodded. There was a weaselly, canny look about her that I didn’t like one bit.
As we watched, the tiny nun raised her skinny arms and closed her eyes.
Almost instantly the dark rock of the wall behind her turned translucent orange. It pulsated as if it was molten lava held in check behind melting glass. Then it brightened, turned brilliant white, and the silhouette of that midget hag was burned into our retinas.
When the brightness died down we could see a circular entrance before us. It was covered with inscriptions and seemed to lead off into an unimaginable distance. As my eyes grew accustomed to the light, I saw a lush forest inside the tunnel ahead. It was a primordial, verdant land, of a kind that no one here has seen for many hundreds of years.
‘This is the way,’ said the nun. She glared at us appraisingly. ‘What were you expecting? Fire and brimstone?’
‘To be honest,’ said Effie, ‘yes. Things have a dismaying habit of turning out exactly as badly as you expect.’
The midget nun cackled. ‘Very good! I like her, Alucard. Now, what is it you require of me?’
Kristoff Alucard licked his ruby lips. This was the tricky part, we knew. ‘I have been sent,’ he began, ‘to close the Bitch’s Maw for ever. To seal it off from the world.’
The nun looked appalled. ‘But whatever for?’ She blinked in astonishment. ‘Sent? What do you mean “sent”? Who can send you anywhere, Alucard? Who would dare? Since when did you do any man’s bidding?’
He straightened himself to his full height. ‘None of that is any of your business, Reverend Mother. All that matters is my mission.’
Her face crumpled in concentration. ‘This isn’t what I was expecting.’ She shot an evil look at her quaking son, Danby. ‘You idiot. Seal the Maw, indeed! As if such a thing were possible. You should have warned me, Danby. You’re useless!’ Danby was quaking in his elegant shoes, as far away from the hole in the wall as he could get.
To me, that forest was delicious. It had a fresh, fecund smell: the most inviting scent I had ever experienced. A cool breeze wafted out and everything seemed to be covered with a light morning dew. I could feel myself teetering forward, preparing unconsciously to fling myself into hell . . .
Effie grabbed my arm. Wherever we were going, we would go together.
‘The people of this world don’t want the gateway to exist,’ Alucard said. ‘It’s far too dangerous to allow the denizens of hell to come and go as they please . . .’
‘You talk as if there are thousands tramping about,’ laughed the nun, ‘all coming to Whitby on their holidays. Illegal immigration from the underworld! The numbers are highly exaggerated, you know.’
‘Even one is too many,’ Alucard said. ‘Even you and your sniggering son. Or Sheila Manchu. Or the proprietress of the Christmas Hotel.’
I was holding my breath. Mrs Claus! Sheila Manchu! Of course they were damned. Of course they had escaped through the Bitch’s Maw.
‘They don’t cause many problems,’ the old nun said. ‘They seek merely to live a quiet life in this small town. They do not want to be in hell, and hell has no need of them. As someone put it recently, hell is bursting at the seams.’
‘I can’t allow it,’ Alucard said, preparing to spring. ‘I am pledged to protect mankind from the denizens of hell.’
‘What? Really? How ridiculous! You, who feasted on them, who made this world a sensual playground - made everyone submit to your fiendish appetites?’
‘That is in the past,’ said Alucard. ‘I work for the Ministry now.’
‘Oh, the Ministry,’ said the nun. ‘I’ve had that lot after me before. Do you mean MIAOW?’
Alucard nodded tersely.
‘How ludicrous,’ said the nun. ‘They’ve castrated you, Count.’
‘Perhaps.’ He looked at Effie. ‘But things change. People change.’
The abbess followed his glance. ‘You’ve fallen in love with the witch?’
‘Witch?’ gasped Effie.
‘I have.’
‘You do not deserve to love,’ said the nun. Then, with a wave, she hexed him.
We had barely time to realise what was going on. A vast wave of power emanated from her tiny form. Like an invisible fist, it reached out, grabbed Alucard and shook him as if he were a rag doll. He cried out once, sharply, with infinite regret, and was flung into the Maw.
He went spinning and dwindling through the air to vanish in the far distance and that swaying canopy of trees. Effie screamed. She collapsed beside me and I had to hold her up, though I was pretty startled too. Beside us, Mr Danby quivered with laughter.
‘A lackey for the Ministry, indeed!’ cursed the abbess. ‘My dear, you’re better off without that old fool. I’ve
always thought he was weak. You do not need him.’
‘You’ve - you’ve sent him to hell!’ Effie sobbed.
The abbess cackled. ‘In a fashion, that’s true. But he can’t stay there - no soul. Like your friend Brenda. They’ll hunt him down and drive him out . . . eventually.’ She was convulsed with laughter.
I patted Effie, trying to console her. But it was hopeless.
‘Oh, never mind him,’ said the abbess. ‘He might have been sweet so far, but he’d end up reverting, you know. One day you’d wake up with your delicate throat ripped out and a raging thirst. Forget him.’
‘I want to go home,’ said Effie.
‘You may,’ said the Abbess. ‘Our work here is almost complete.’
‘What work?’ I said. ‘We’ve done nothing but send poor Kristoff away.’
‘He has been put out of the way, yes. The plot to close the gateway to hell has been halted. The Bitch’s Maw will remain open for the foreseeable future.’
‘And spill hellish inhabitants into Whitby for as long as it amuses you,’ I added tartly.
‘Of course,’ said the abbess. ‘That’s as it should be. That is why I am in this town. And why Danby is here, to keep me alive. And why Effie, her female relatives and their books of old knowledge are here. And finally, Brenda, it is why you are here. You have work to do among the damned.’
I stared at her. I knew that what she was saying was true. I knew this was my destiny at last. The buzzing in my ears was a fanfare now.
‘Some will need your help. Some will be out of control. Some you will have to do battle with. But you will come across them all, Brenda, one way or another. You must be waiting for them when they emerge from the underworld. ’
‘Why?’ Effie asked, still choked at the loss of her beau. ‘Why should we do anything for you?’
‘Because there is no one else,’ the abbess said. ‘Only you stand between your precious world and the demons absconding from hell. Only you can sort them out.’
‘Oh,’ said Effie, in a very tired voice. ‘Splendid.’
The abbess waved her arm, and the glowing Maw with its primeval forest faded. I thought about Alucard, trapped in there somewhere, in one of those ghastly realms. He’d be all right, wouldn’t he?
The wall was black stone once more.
‘Pop me back in my suitcase, Danby,’ we heard the nun say in the darkness. He set to work diligently, ignoring us now, tending his precious mother.
It was time to go.
Effie and I found ourselves wandering back across the top of the hill. We linked arms against the cold and the dark. We were shivering with terror and trying to conceal it. We didn’t say much. ‘Poor Kristoff,’ Effie said, at one point. ‘Poor, poor Kristoff.’
We didn’t want to talk about it yet. Any of it. The main thing was to get ourselves down those hundred and ninety-nine steps and home. We could think about it, and the implications, later, when we were safe. Not here, not yet.
‘Kristoff will be fine,’ I said. ‘He’ll escape - you’ll see, Effie.’
Effie was struggling to regain her composure. ‘But what else will escape, Brenda? Who will escape from hell next?’
We were cutting across the church graveyard at the top of the steps. It wasn’t the nicest place to be, after everything we had been involved in. But we were impatient to be home.
We skirted the graves, treading lightly, hearts pounding. One was covered with fresh flowers. Jessie’s, of course. The carnations and roses were stirring in the breeze.
Actually, when we looked closer, they were doing more than that. They were being dislodged. Beneath them, the freshly turned earth was juddering and heaving.
Effie and I drew back, clutching each other.
We stared, frozen, as two hands emerged from Jessie’s grave. They were hairy, dirty hands, clawing desperately at the night air.
What were we supposed to do? Run screaming from the graveyard?
Effie and I looked at each other calmly. Then we stepped forward, took hold of a shaking forearm each - and heaved . . .
Never the Bride
PAUL MAGRS
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