by Paul Magrs
She believed she would never see him again. In her own way, Marjorie Staynes had been rather fond of Gila. She dreaded to think what had become of him.
Enough. She must push these troublesome thoughts aside. She had to thank her lucky stars that she was back on her feet. The cult was thriving. The Spooky Finger was back in business. On that terrible night Effie had vanished in the upstairs toilet, it had seemed that it was all over for good. The number was up – again.
Oh, Marjorie had had to live with failure before. The lesson of the Kendal chapter had hit her hard. Best to keep dabblings with other worlds quiet and discreet. Don’t let too many people know. . .
The thing was, people did know about her connection with Qab. People like Henry Cleavis. But he hadn’t bothered her since that dreadful night. And so she thanked her lucky stars.
‘Ladies,’ she said loudly, shaking herself out of her reverie. ‘Perhaps we should proceed to the more formal part of the meeting, hmm?’ This was where she’d pass the bucket round. Sting these keen old girls for hard cash.
Then Marjorie glanced at the stool where Penny had been sitting. It was empty. Had she slipped out unnoticed? Marjorie frowned. She had let the girl join back in with the group’s activities, even against her better instincts, which were warning her that Penny had strong connections with Brenda and her gang. But Penny’s interest, even fervour, in the subject of Qab intrigued the old woman. The group needed younger blood, and so she had allowed her to stay.
But where was she now? Poking her nose in somewhere, maybe. Somewhere she shouldn’t be. Marjorie asked the group if anyone had noticed where Penny was. The ladies of Qab looked puzzled and took a moment to hunt around the small maze of bookcases.
Then came the weird noises from the bathroom on the first landing.
There was a loud crashing sound, and a series of muffled thumps. They came all in a rush, so there was a stunned pause among the women downstairs, who weren’t sure what they were hearing at first. It sounded very much as if a team of inexpert removal men were manoeuvring something bulky and heavy rather clumsily within a small space.
Marjorie cried out and, hoiking up her golden robes, bustled to the side stairs, pushing past her cult members. As she reached the stairs, the noises were louder. There was smashing glass, splintering wood. Loud cries and indistinct words.
All she could think was: it’s all going wrong again! They’re making a mess of everything for me all over again! Just when everything was tidied up and sorted out!
But she didn’t have very much longer to think along those lines. Her attention was consumed by what was going on above her.
First of all there was Penny backing slowly away down the stairs.
‘Penny! What is it?’ Marjorie Staynes shouted over the noise. ‘What’s happening, girl?’
There was a muffled series of shouts and crashes then, and Penny took no notice of Marjorie.
The bathroom door was off its hinges and had crashed on to the hallway carpet. The console table and Marjorie’s aspidistra were underneath it somewhere. And just then, as Marjorie drew level with Penny, she saw that figures were emerging from the small bathroom.
Backlit by the eerie swirling purple lights beyond the Dreadful Flap, a number of figures were staggering out into the world they called home. They were disoriented and ragged, stumbling about in the tiny space of the toilet.
Marjorie started backing away again.
Here came Robert, supporting the shambling form of Brenda. She looked pale and terrible. Dead on her feet. Her eyes were half closed and she was walking like an automaton. Gila was there, supporting her from behind. Gila! He was back! But his attention was on helping Brenda, not on his erstwhile mistress, now shouting out his name from the staircase.
Penny was dashing forward again, to help them with Brenda. ‘What’s the matter with her? What’s wrong with her?’
‘We can lie her down,’ Gila was saying. ‘My room, look. The jump through the gap has weakened her . . . she needs to lie down . . .’
There was another figure emerging from behind them. A calmer figure. Walking very carefully. Stepping over the rubble of the hand basin, which had been somehow wrecked.
It was Effie. Moving steadily in her robes of black and gold. She looked regal and abstract, as if her thoughts were miles away. She looked older. Lined. More like her original self, perhaps. But also, marked by a terrible knowledge. But she was back! Back home again and dressed like a true Queen of Qab.
She stood blinking on the hallway landing.
Marjorie fell to her knees. Her home-made robes crinkled and rustled as she perched awkwardly on the middle of the stairs. How cheap and nasty they seemed, how horribly fake they were compared to the real thing. There was a dense, heavy, alien smell that accompanied the new arrivals. It was the very atmosphere of the other world. They had brought a whiff of it with them, like an ancient breeze at their backs. Now it was dissipating, of course, and Marjorie Staynes breathed hard, trying to suck that oxygen into her lungs.
‘Your Majesty,’ she addressed Effie.
Effie looked at her sharply.
At that moment, the swirling lights of the vortex in the bathroom abruptly shut off. The Dreadful Flap had closed behind them, shutting off the link with Qab.
The light was dreary now. It shone fitfully on the broken door and basin, and on the chunks of plaster that had been knocked from the wall.
Effie was watching as the others dragged Brenda away down the hall, to find somewhere to lay her down. Effie looked bewildered, as if she hardly knew what was happening.
‘Majesty, you call me?’ she asked Marjorie.
‘You are the Queen of Qab, aren’t you?’
‘Queen?’ Effie smiled sadly. ‘I think I might have been. I think . . . oh, a long time ago. Perhaps.’ She glanced around at the dingy hallway. ‘What is this place? Where have they brought me?’ She swayed on the spot and Marjorie hurried forward. ‘Oh, I don’t feel so good . . .’
‘Majesty!’ cried Marjorie, darting forward to catch her as she fell. ‘Highness!’
Effie toppled over in a dead faint, as if the weight of her robes had dragged her down.
Hurriedly Gila ushered them into the bedroom he’d thought he would never see again. Nothing had changed, he noted, as he clicked on the light. Vaguely he wondered how long had passed since he and his friends had left, but there was no time to work that out now.
They were hoisting Brenda on to the bed. She was a dead weight. She had stopped muttering and thrashing about now. She was unconscious, he thought. She felt very cool and looked terribly white. The other Brenda had been the same. Robert and Gila had been alarmed to see the results of the operation the twin Brendas had willingly submitted themselves to.
‘They’ve gone too far,’ Robert had said. ‘They’ve weakened themselves too much. What if both of them die? What then?’ Now he wasn’t saying anything. He simply stared at Brenda, and Gila knew he was wondering what they should do next to help her and make her comfortable.
‘What’s happened to her?’ Penny was asking, frantic now that they had their friend safely on the bed.
‘She gave half her blood to Effie,’ Gila said. ‘Half of her life force she donated to save her friend’s life. But it might have been too much.’
‘Oh my God . . .’ breathed Penny. She turned back into the hall. ‘Effie!’ she shouted, seeing Effie toppling to the carpet and Marjorie trying to help her.
‘We’re back,’ Robert was saying. ‘We’re actually back . . .’
It took some little while for that fact to sink in.
Brenda’s friends gathered around her bed and wondered what they ought to do now. They knew from past experience that it was useless calling a doctor out, or taking her to A&E. She would never thank them for exposing her body and its rather strange nature to the medical profession. Brenda had intimated at various points that she had spent rather a long time keeping her curious form out of just such clutches.
But what to do with her? They weren’t even sure they could carry her out of this room, down the stairs and across town. It was almost as if that now she had relaxed into this deep, coma-like state, she had become even heavier and denser.
‘She’s recuperating, I just know it,’ Robert said. ‘We have to wait and let her rest.’
Penny had hugged him and Gila hard. They stared at her in her fake Qab finery.
‘I’m going downstairs to send all the cultists home,’ she said. ‘We don’t need them fussing around.’
Downstairs she found Marjorie Staynes doing just that. The women looked worried and submissive. Marjorie would brook no argument. She had the Queen of Qab upstairs and she wasn’t prepared to share Her with anyone.
‘Where’s Effie?’ Penny asked her, once the last of the Qab women were gone.
‘My room,’ said Marjorie. ‘She needs her rest, like Brenda. What have they done to her? Why is she so drawn-looking? She looks decades older.’
‘I don’t know.’ Penny frowned. ‘Something about blood, they said. Brenda’s donated a lot of blood to Effie. To cure her, they were saying . . .’
Marjorie nodded, though she was clearly out of her depth.
‘I’m phoning Henry Cleavis,’ Penny decided. ‘He can help with this.’
Marjorie yelped and clutched her mohair cardigan tighter over her chest. ‘Not that man! Don’t bring that man here! Not after what he did last time!’
‘I have to,’ Penny said. She fetched out her mobile. ‘He needs to know they’re okay.’
‘Please,’ Marjorie said. ‘Don’t let him stake anyone else.’
As Penny keyed in the number for Brenda’s B&B, she secretly agreed with the bookshop owner. It was Henry’s staking people that had caused all this fuss in the first place.
‘WHAAAT?’ he bellowed at her, from the sanctuary of the Red Room, where he was polishing up the tools of his trade. ‘I’ll come at once. And you’re sure she’s all right? She’s alive?’
‘Brenda’s . . . unconscious. But we think she’ll be all right. And Effie is . . . they say that Effie is . . . cured.’
He made a noise at the other end of the phone line. To Penny it sounded like the verbal equivalent of a scowl. ‘There is no cure, Penny. Not for what she is.’
‘But there is! There is! Brenda’s blood is the cure. That was one of the secrets of Qab. You’ll see, Henry! You’ll see!’
‘Brenda’s blood?’ he said wonderingly. ‘Yes, yes . . . I knew it! So . . . the legends were true.’ Then he added, ‘I’m coming at once.’
Penny blinked as he disconnected the line. ‘He’s on his way,’ she told Marjorie, who cringed at the thought.
Penny went upstairs to tell the others.
Robert took her aside. ‘So . . . you told him Effie was cured?’
She nodded. ‘Yeah, we don’t want him coming round and shoving a stake in her, do we?’
He frowned. ‘But did you tell him how she was cured?’
‘With Brenda’s blood. Erm, yeah, I think I did . . . erm . . .’
Robert sat down heavily. ‘Ah. That might cause problems . . . if he knows.’
‘Why? If he knows that Brenda’s blood is somehow, magically, able to change vampires back into human beings, and save their souls and prevent them from biting anyone else . . .’
Robert looked at her bleakly. ‘What’s he going to do with that knowledge, Penny? What do you think?’
Her breath caught in her throat.
They both turned to look at Brenda, still as could be on Gila’s bed. Gila was mopping her brow and hovering anxiously at her side.
‘He wouldn’t,’ said Penny. ‘He couldn’t . . .’
Robert said, ‘It all depends what means more to him, doesn’t it? Whether Brenda means more to him. Or whether Henry’s more concerned about his lifelong battle with the forces of darkness.’
‘Oh God,’ said Penny, sitting down hard on an armchair piled with unironed clothes.
‘He could rid the whole town of vampires. Maybe more. But what would he have to do, eh? What would he have to sacrifice?’
They sat staring at Brenda as she lay there breathing shallowly. She was quite oblivious to everything that was going on around her.
Their quiet, tense expectancy lasted for some time.
Long enough for Henry to go dashing out of Brenda’s side door at the B&B. He went haring past the boarded-up front windows of the shop downstairs. He clattered up the cobbled lanes, dragging his bag of clanking work tools with him. His wispy hair streamed behind him, along with the tails of his long coat. His mind was whirling with images and ideas. What to do . . . what to do. . .
She was back. His lady love was back. She was more precious than ever. Infinitely more precious.
He tore along LeFanu Close. A dark, chilly evening. Frost setting hard on the pavements. The sky was inky and sheeny with lilac cloud. Few souls about. Fewer than ever during these vampinfested days.
Henry yomped along Silver Street. His breath was ragged, white clouds of exertion all around him, like a locomotive coming to its destination. Nearly there. The bookshop was lit up brilliantly.
She was in there. As were the others. They had come back to Whitby. Come back to him. They had brought with them secrets from another land.
Despite everything, Henry Cleavis found himself grinning at that thought.
Now it was Beatrice Mapp who was traipsing up and down the many stairs of her house, bringing the tea tray with nourishing meals and pots of tea. Porridge and honey, chicken broth and hearty stews. She was working in the kitchen every day for Brenda. The roles were reversed. But Beatrice didn’t mind. She wanted to help her erstwhile servant. She had to. She felt like she had to make amends.
She had led Brenda into that savage land. Although she hadn’t known what Rupert Von Thal’s plans were beforehand, Mrs Mapp still felt terribly responsible. She felt that she had been led along into a situation in which they ended up with no choice but to exploit poor Brenda. They had robbed the servant of the chance to make up her own mind, and that was wrong of them. Beatrice Mapp felt as awful about it as if she had, in fact, been in on the plot. Ignorance was no defence. Where had her common sense been? She had been so caught up in her dreams of Qab, in her excitement that the land was real. She had failed to protect Brenda through her negligence and intoxication with Qab. She had, in short, gorn orf. To an almost deadly degree.
Beatrice Mapp still felt bewildered by the whole journey and their return home. Even two weeks later she was having to remind herself that she was home again. Boring old London. Safe old Blighty. Tavistock Square, blustery and grey.
Today the patient was looking much better. Perky, even. Colour in her cheeks. Beatrice let herself into the bedroom – the best spare bedroom, overlooking the square (there was no way Beatrice was tending to Brenda in her usual place, at the very top of the house). And there was Brenda looking better than she had for ages, in a pretty knitted bedjacket, sitting up and writing in a cheap notebook.
‘I’m trying to get some of my thoughts down.’ She smiled. ‘My memories are a bit . . . scrambled. I’m trying to put them in order. Each day I wake up, there’s less there, less to remember . . .’
Beatrice put on a sympathetic expression. ‘Don’t worry about it, dear. You’re still recovering from your tribulations. Your mind will heal itself. You will remember everything you need to.’
Brenda screwed her eyes up tight. ‘I know we went somewhere together. Somewhere . . . hot. Very hot and . . . exotic. And there was something weird about it . . . and those men were there.’
‘It was just a trip, Brenda,’ Mrs Mapp said sternly, setting down the tray. ‘Now look, here are some eggs. And toast.’
‘You’re very good to me.’
‘I need my Brenda, don’t I? I can’t have her wasting away.’
‘So . . . did I get ill on our holiday then?’ Suddenly Brenda looked alarmed. ‘Did I spoil it? Did you have to come back
early?’
‘It doesn’t matter now. It really doesn’t.’
‘I must have picked up a nasty foreign germ, perhaps. Something in the water, do you think? Maybe I was bitten by something?’
Beatrice urged her to eat. ‘Brenda, don’t go thinking about that. You’re fine now. You’re better. We’re safe at home in London. Everything is all right.’
Brenda nodded, almost submissively. She pulled the tray towards her and examined the badly poached eggs. They were watery and unappetising. ‘It’s just that I remember . . . hardly anything at all, ma’am. Before our return to Tavistock Square. Everything before that . . . everything in my life . . . it’s fading into the distance.’ She held up her notebook, which was half filled with mostly illegible scribbles. ‘What has happened to me, Mrs Mapp? Why am I like this?’ She fought back a sob. It would be wrong to cry in front of her mistress, who was being so good to her.
‘There, there, Brenda dear.’
‘Who am I, Mrs Mapp?’
‘You’re Brenda,’ said Beatrice Mapp. ‘You needed my help. You came here unannounced and I took you in. I don’t know who you are or where you came from. But we can start again, can’t we? A clean slate? What more do you need to know, hm? You have a job here. A life here. Come on, Brenda. Don’t worry yourself about it.’
Brenda nodded and poked a fork into the eggs. ‘Yes, ma’am.’
Beatrice Mapp left her to her supper.
She went downstairs to her study.
The house was chilly throughout, and dark. She was quite used to the silence. Just the odd creaking of the old wood. The gurgle of the ancient pipes. She hardly even noticed the regular chimes of the clock in the hallway. Tonight, though, she did. She counted eleven. It was later than she had thought.
Today she had frittered away the hours between Brenda’s meals, thinking about Qab.
Unlike Brenda, Beatrice Mapp remembered everything.
She was making her own notes.