by Paul Magrs
‘Pah!’ Effie scowls. ‘I’ve been here all my life, Brenda. Trapped in this house, with all my old aunties glowering down at me out of their portraits. I’ve seen nothing of the world.’
‘And so?’ I ask, too much sarcasm in my voice. ‘Alucard’s promising to take you away from all this, is he?’
Alucard himself leans forward to fix me with his horrible, implacable stare. Even I can’t look into the glossy depths of his eyes for too long. ‘Brenda, you must realise what an aversion I have to being so close to the Bitch’s Maw. I was in hell for quite some time, you know. Trapped down there. Unable to return to my beloved. I had to move heaven and hell to get back to her. I had to devise the most outlandish of schemes to liberate myself. . .’
I frown at him. ‘Yes. I know you did. And I did everything I could to foil those schemes. Look at the misery and upset you caused!’
‘Let’s not go into that now,’ he sighs. ‘All we’re saying is that Whitby hasn’t been a very good place for us in recent times. Effryggia and I have decided that it might be for the best if we moved away.’
I stare at them both. I study Effie’s face. ‘For good?’ I demand. ‘You’ll sell up? You’ll get rid of this house and the legacy of all your aunties?’
For a second she hesitates. And I can see that she isn’t certain about any of this. Alucard has hoodwinked her. He has bamboozled her again. ‘He says we can go anywhere, Brenda. He’s taking me to Paris and Venice . . . all the places he has lived. He wants to show them to me . . .’
I stand up abruptly. ‘You’ve let him brainwash you.’
Her eyebrows rise. A look of despair shoots across her face. ‘No! That’s not true.’
‘Oh, I think it is, lady,’ I snap back. ‘He’s got you right where he wants you.’ I move away from the table and go hunting around for my shawl and my bag. ‘I’m off now. I’ve had a bellyful, frankly. Effie, I’ll talk to you by yourself, in the daytime. Not with this awful man hanging about. I’m going to make you see sense. You see if I don’t.’
She sits tight and blazes with indignation. ‘I know what I’m doing, Brenda. And I’m leaving. As soon as I can. My time here is finished.’
Friday is always an extra busy day at Brenda’s B&B, what with all the preparations for a whole new set of visitors. I go about my accustomed tasks on automatic pilot. I’m scrubbing and whooshing and traipsing round with the old hoover. I’m straightening and dusting and casting a critical, expert eye over everything in my tiny kingdom. And eventually, it’s all perfect.
There’s hardly a moment for a sit-down with a pot of spicy tea and a ginger snap before the doorbell’s ringing. It’s the Kendalls from Chester. They were here a year ago, and I remember them well. They say they couldn’t wait to return to my house and they greet me like an old friend, like a beloved auntie. They are falling over themselves in my front lobby with relief at the end of their long journey. I’m smiling and welcoming, but I can feel myself being slightly distant with them. I think this might even disappoint the Kendall family, who remember me being much warmer and more familiar. I’m disappointing myself, as it happens, being so caught up in my thoughts.
Effie can’t go. It’s ridiculous. She belongs in this town more than anyone. She has proper roots here.
After the Kendalls, a young couple called the Mayhews arrive, and I go through the routine again, smiling and nodding and trying to be convivial.
What if the town won’t let her leave? The thought pops into my mind round about teatime. To mollify my guests and to make up for my air of perplexity, I produce a Victoria sponge and invite them into the dining room for a spot of high tea. I’m just sifting on the icing sugar when I start wondering: will Whitby itself and the destiny it has in mind for Effie even let her set off on this jaunt around the world? She’s making these plans, and giving herself up to Alucard’s designs for her – but she’s making assumptions about how far she will get.
I think the forces here will have something to say about Effie turning herself into a globetrotter and gadabout. I hope so, anyway.
I have a quiet evening, catching up with my diary and attending to my scrapbooks. This is a new thing for me, and it was all Effie’s idea, as it happens. It’s my database of spooky and unusual articles from the local and national press. Now I can keep tabs on what’s going on, and look for patterns and clues. It’s how I first cottoned on to the activities of this bizarre Limbosine.
Speaking of which, it’s because of the Limbosine that Robert comes round at seven, when he’s off his shift at the Miramar and the sea mist comes creeping up the little lanes from the harbour. Town is pitch black, starless and I can’t help tingling with frosty nerves as the two of us totter out of my guest house and into the shrouded streets, off on our investigations.
Can Robert really replace Effie on these do’s? These dangerous quests of ours? And do I really want him to? He seems ever so eager to step into the old dame’s sensible shoes.
We’ve decided that the best thing is a short bus ride out of town, and to get ourselves dropped off in one of the outlying clusters of houses stuck in the wilds and miles of twisty, hilly roads out towards the Hole of Horcum. It’s not that far, but the landscape is wild, wuthering and unwelcoming. It’s a perfect place for coming across unwary hitchhikers. And tonight that’s what the two of us are going to pretend to be.
I suddenly feel very reluctant, dinging the bell and getting the bus to stop in the middle of nowhere. But Robert is looking extremely determined, so I take a grip on myself and clamber down the gangway. The driver seems mystified as to why anyone would want to get out here.
‘I think it’s going to snow,’ Robert says. ‘You know that sort of dusty smell? And the muffled sound of the air?’
Now we’re standing alone on the road, watching the spearmint blue of the bus windows streaking away up the zig-zagging road. Dark fields stretch out in every direction. We’re tucked away in a cleft in the hills and can’t even see the lights of Whitby from here. I do up the rest of the buttons on my good winter coat.
‘This is the last place that the Limbosine is supposed to have been seen, about a week ago,’ Robert says. I already know all of this - from my scrapbooks, and keeping an ear open for the news on Whitby FM. Robert is trying to teach his granny to suck eggs. He’s acting like this kind of thing isn’t something I’ve been doing since well before he was born.
‘So, we’re live bait tonight,’ I say, stamping on the road to keep the blood chugging around my antiquated system. How long can we manage out here? And how the devil do we get back? ‘Shouldn’t we split up? Would that be more of a temptation to this strange chauffeur?’
Robert nods, but is looking less keen now, at the thought of standing alone on one of these lonely roads. I wouldn’t mind a bit of peace, actually. The thing about Robert is that he tends to fill up the silence with a lot of chatter. Something you couldn’t accuse Effie of. Me and her, we can be quite companionably quiet when we want to be.
So Robert and I go our separate ways for a while. We’ve both got our mobile phones (a recent acquisition, in my case, and I’m not at all sure about it. I leave it switched off most of the time, as it happens), and off I plod, into the darkness. I’ve a tiny pen torch I ply into the darkness, just to make sure I don’t teeter off the road on a sudden bend and plunge into the undergrowth.
As I walk on, miles and miles under the charcoal grey of the skies, I decide that Robert might be right. I can smell snow too. And the silence out here is marvellous. A great big muffled quiet that I find very soothing. I’m in a sort of contented trance as I wander along the country road, further and further out of town.
The landscape around me becomes more and more featureless. No houses. Scrubby grass. Distant hills and the gleaming silver sash of the sea. It’s like a lunar landscape, and its blankness feels immensely satisfying. This is the furthest out of Whitby I’ve been for a few weeks. I stand there and survey the lie of the land.
What if I s
uddenly decided one day that I’d like to pick up and leave? Would I be allowed to? Somehow, I think not. I imagine an invisible force shield around the town. A bell jar with its impregnable walls somewhere out here, on the frozen earth.
But I’m glad to feel at home here. Even to feel as if I’m trapped here for ever. I wish Effie felt the same.
I turn back. I’ve come far enough tonight. I wonder about giving Robert a ring. I wonder if he’s been luckier than I have, drawing the attention of our spectral kidnapper. Probably not. It was a silly plan, really. All I’ve done tonight is frozen my bum off.
I keep walking and walking and walking. And eventually I’m back where we hopped off the bus. No Robert. Maybe he’s in the Limbosine?
I yank out my phone and squint at the tiny buttons under a street lamp. Whoops. I didn’t have it switched on after all. Fiddly thing. Eventually I get it working and the welcoming musical jingle sounds impossibly loud out here.
There’s a message from Robert, which he left about twenty minutes ago.
‘Brenda? Brenda, it’s me.’ He’s hissing down the line. He sounds rattled. ‘I’ve found something. You’d better . . . Can you . . . Ermm . . . I’m not sure what to do. Oh, answer your phone, woman!’
There’s a crackling pause then. What’s he on about? I wonder testily. But my intuition is right on cue. This isn’t Limbosine business. This is much more serious. The word pops into my head at just that instant: Walkers. The Walkers are out tonight. Then Robert’s voice is going on again.
‘I’m by that garage at the very end of Clifftop Terrace. I was heading back into town because I’d run out of ciggies.’
Oh, get on with it, I think furiously.
‘And I’ve found something terrible, Brenda. I don’t know what to do. The police or . . .’ Another pause. ‘It’s a body, Brenda! It’s a young bloke lying here, next to the play park on the gravel. I don’t know if he’s alive or what. Oh, look, I’m gonna get an ambulance. But I thought you should know . . . it’s his throat.’
I know what he’s going to say before he next opens his mouth.
‘His throat’s been bitten, Brenda. He’s been vamped!’
It’s late before the police let Robert and me go home. They know the body’s nothing to do with us. We’re just the innocent discoverers, but the look that DCI Aickmann gives me is filthy. He knows I’m always mixed up in the creepy and crazy stuff.
‘The lad’s dead,’ he tells us. ‘Drained almost completely dry.’
Robert’s beside me, sick with dread.
‘It’s been a while since we had an infestation in Whitby,’ Aickmann goes on. He looks at me very severely, ‘If you know more than you’re letting on, Brenda, then you’d better start talking.’
I pretend to come over scandalised. ‘Me?’
Robert is shooting me a glance. And it makes me wonder: why would I even think about protecting Alucard? Why don’t I just dob him in it and tell the police he’s back in town, that he’s staying with my neighbour? But I don’t say anything.
The police get caught up in identifying the victim and tracing his relatives. After our statements are taken, Robert and I are eventually free to go home. Aickmann would still like to know what we were doing, traipsing the quiet back streets after dark. But we tell him nothing about our investigations. They have nothing to do with him.
The next day we learn that the victim was a Walker. No sooner was he put away in cold storage in the town morgue, than he was back on his feet. Hard for the relatives, those cases, I always think. Especially when they trudge in to confirm identity and the body’s done a bunk.
‘A Walker,’ Aickmann repeated the word heavily down the phone. ‘I don’t have to tell you what that means, do I?’
‘No, indeed,’ I muse, twiddling the phone cord round my finger. ‘Someone is recruiting, obviously.’
That conversation was all to come on Saturday morning, however. On Friday – when we still thought the body we’d found was a goner – Robert and I traipsed back through town towards our respective homes. We were feeling, it has to be said, a tad glum.
Just before we separated – Robert peeling off to the Miramar – we passed the darkened store fronts of Silver Street. I paused before a particular gaudily painted shop window. It was rigged with eerie lilac lights, which fell upon the serried spines of hardbacks and the lurid covers of artfully strewn vintage paperbacks. I surveyed the newly minted shop sign, creaking in the wind above our heads.
‘It’s The Spooky Finger,’ I tell Robert. ‘This is the place Penny was going on about.’
‘I’m not much of a reader, to be honest,’ he says.
‘She’s asked me to join this book group of hers,’ I say. ‘But I’m not sure. Has she asked you?’
‘It’s women only.’ He shrugs at me. ‘You should go. You might like it. It might be consciousness-raising.’
I frown, not quite sure what he means by that. ‘I don’t need my consciousness raising.’
Robert smiles. ‘Penny always gets herself involved in way-out stuff. She’s a good kid, though.’
I like the way he calls her kid. She’s only a couple of years younger than he is.
Seeing the shop front of The Spooky Finger (and its sign in the shape of a gesticulating digit, naturally), I’m reminded of the novel Penny gave me and how it’s still in my tea towel drawer. The thought of Warrior Queen of Qab buzzes in my head and lingers as I kiss Robert good night and turn to hurry down the hill, the short distance to my B&B. Suddenly it feels incredibly cold. We’ve been standing around for hours in the dark. My feet and fingers are numbed by the cloying mist.
My guest house is quiet, with no lights burning. Everyone’s abed early tonight. Passing Effie’s house, I squint at the attic windows, mellow with an amber glow. Is she up there with him? Is she sitting up alone, waiting for him as he flits around the town, feasting on the blood of the unwary? How can she kiss the man? How can she let him touch her?
Oh, Effie. You daft old mare.
For the first time I’m starting to think that maybe it’ll be for the best if the two of them really do leave town. Then the old fiend can get up to his sordid nastiness elsewhere.
I need to talk with her alone. I need to see her and convince her that she’s being a fool, getting tied up with that creature. He will consume her body and soul. There’ll be precious little Effie left.
I’m relieved to be home. Once I’m indoors, I get this mammoth wave of fatigue trampling over me and it takes a huge effort to creep soundlessly up the side steps. It’s like I’m having to haul myself up the banister.
But when I’m in my attic rooms, locked up against the night in my private quarters, I find that my mind is still fully alert. I’m over-stimulated by all that’s been going on. Mysterious cars and kidnappings and corpses in the night. Foolish Effie and all her shenanigans. It’s all whirling round and round in my head as I go through my elaborate bedtime preparations.
My sumptuous bed in my luxurious boudoir awaits. No chance of sleep just yet. I stumble heavily to the kitchen and grab Penny’s book from my tea towel drawer. I might as well have a little read. Perhaps it’ll soothe me and put me to sleep. I prop myself up on my silky, tasselled cushions and open the novel by Beatrice Mapp.
The book is so old its spine cracks sharply, and I brace myself for all the pages falling out. But they’re okay. A stale waft of old paper reaches my nostrils. Smoky and woody and oddly delicious. I don’t think this is my kind of thing at all. It’s all swords and sorcery and fighting and fantasy . . . people with funny names. I like books with real people in them, and something I can believe in.
Yet I read for longer than I expected to. I fall asleep over the book, and later, I’m not certain whether I’ve dreamed the story or if I’ve been reading it. That night the book comes seeping into my dreams. That’s what it feels like. And I wake up on Saturday with the strangest of feelings.
Saturday.
Dear Henry,
Just
a quick note from me. Hello, dear, how are you? Keeping well?
It’s been so long, it seems an age since you were last here. It was all that business of the dark secret of the beer garden of Sheila Manchu, up at the Miramar. What a terrible affair that was. We all almost karked it that time. But we lived to fight another day, didn’t we? I’m sure you won’t be surprised to hear that your old friend Brenda has been involved in a number of adventures since then. And I’m sure you haven’t been idle either, if I know anything about Henry Cleavis, eh?
Well, my dear, this is just to say that of course you are welcome to stay here throughout the Christmas season. I have a particular room in mind; for you I’ll do a special offer! Half price! And Christmas dinner thrown in! How about that?
Let me know when you’d like to arrive. The room is free when you want it. It’s my newly refurbished Red Room – the jewel in my little crown – and you’ll be the first visitor ensconced there.
Oh, what fun we’ll have over the Yuletide period! I can’t wait to see you again!
All best wishes (and love),
Brenda
I seal the envelope, stick on the stamp and, as I write out the address of his fancy college in his decrepit old town, I wonder. Maybe I’m sounding too eager.
Funny as well that I don’t mention anything about having been recently married. Since the last time Henry was here, a whole lot has gone on in my life, and I don’t even allude to it.
Scribbled on Saturday night, a bit tipsy.
Robert, Penny and I are sitting in the bar at the front bay windows of the Christmas Hotel. It’s Saturday night and the snow is starting to tumble down. I’ve just been telling Penny that I wasn’t sure I was enjoying that book of hers at all. Was ‘enjoy’ even the right word for it?