by Paul Magrs
‘So, this was the Limbosine.
‘Though I haven’t been directly concerned with investigating this weird phenomenon – which has been plaguing Whitby and its environs for some months now – I’ve been made very aware of its existence. Like everyone else I’ve read the news of the various disappearances, abductions, call them what you will, in The Willing Spirit.
‘I had absolutely no doubt that I had become the latest in a long line of passengers in the Limbosine.
‘The car thrummed along so quietly and easily. Its engine purred like a well-fed cat.
‘I waited, quite calmly, to see what would happen next.
‘‘You grew up here, didn’t you?’ asked the Chauffeur at last. He half-turned to me and I took note of his tinted aviator glasses, his silver hair and his deeply sun-tanned skin. His voice was warm and masculine. Very reassuring. Very attractive, actually.
‘‘Oh yes,’ I found myself agreeing readily. ‘I’m Whitby born and bred.’
‘‘You’ve only seen a very little portion of the wide world,’ he told me. ‘But what you have seen has been rather… intense.’
‘I frowned, not sure what he’d meant by that. ‘I’ve not had an easy life,’ I said sniffily. ‘If that’s what you’re getting at.’
‘‘Quite,’ he said. ‘Poor you. Poor Effryggia.’
‘‘Here,’ I gasped, leaning forward. ‘How the devil do you know my name?’
‘‘I know many things,’ he said. ‘And I always know a great deal about the passengers I pick up in my car. I make it my business to know all about them.’
‘For the first time I properly felt a pang of fear as I realised that I was entirely trapped inside this cosy vehicle. It was moving faster now, swerving gently but swiftly down the narrow country roadways. It felt as though it was hardly touching the tarmac as it surged along.
‘‘Who are you?’ I said.
‘‘I’m more interested in who you are, Effryggia Jacobs,’ he said. ‘I’m very interested in you, you know. Of all the people I’ve picked up in my car in recent months, I think you must be the most intriguing.’
‘‘Oh!’ I went, though I felt a bit proud, as well as worried by this. One part of me was thinking – well, yes, naturally, of course he’s found me interesting. I’ve had many more interesting things happen to me than have most people I know… But then I remembered to be scared and that stopped my triumphant reverie in its tracks.
‘Abruptly the Limbosine drew to a halt. The tyres scraunched on gravel.
‘‘This is our destination,’ the chauffeur told me. ‘Come along, madam. Let us take a little walk.’
‘Next thing I knew, he was out of the car and round my side. The door opened and I saw that it was dreadfully misty outside and he was standing there. Just about standing to attention as he held the door. I took a good look at him. Some kind of showbiz military uniform. Wavy silver hair and sunglasses at night. A polite smile as I clambered out of the car, elegantly as I could manage. The cheeky thing even saluted me as I straightened up and looked around at my new surroundings.
‘‘Some foolish souls call me the Chauffear,’ he said. ‘But I’m not frightening you, am I, Effryggia?’
‘I gulped. ‘No, of course not.’
‘I turned away from him then, because there was something about those dark lenses and the way they stared into me, implacably. And his broad grin with those Hollywood-perfect teeth. Of course he was scaring the bejaysus out of me.
‘Then I realised where we were.
‘Up at the Abbey, in the dark space behind the ruined shell, up on the headland. How did he get his car up here? Aren’t there walls all around this place?
‘The moon was out, full and creamy, with lilac cloud frothing and simmering around it and lighting up the whole spread town and its network of ramshackle streets. But there was something strange down there. Something odd about town and I couldn’t tell what it was at first.
‘I looked around at the church and the Abbey and tried to work out what was different about them. And what was making my flesh begin to crawl like this.
‘‘What is it?’ asked the Chauffeur. ‘Are you all right, Madam?’
‘I wasn’t about to tell him how or what I felt. I glared at him and watched as he strode across the scrubby grass towards the ragged, jagged walls of the Abbey. They weren’t lit up and nor was St Mary’s Church. Usually these days the town’s historical monuments are illuminated by green and pink fairy lights, all through the night. But tonight they were dark and foreboding.
‘Except… there was a flickering of amber flame somewhere within the Abbey’s broken walls. A liquid sheet of flame, golden and pulsing. I caught glimpses as we moved around the perimeter of the ruins. I was following after my driver, crouching and stumbling through the matted grasses and the tangled rushes.
‘Were those human figures I could see by the fire? Dashing hither and thither in the hot bubble of quivering air. Right in the middle of the Abbey grounds.
‘‘See?’ grinned the Chauffeur as he stopped and turned to me suddenly. ‘Do you see where I have brought you?’
‘Now I saw. As I heard the women chanting and singing it hit me all at once. This impossible thing… this incredible thing. He couldn’t have brought me here… Not to this place and this time…
‘I held my breath and peered around a dark shoulder of crumbling stone. I could see right down the central transept of the old Abbey. And there were my aunties. They were young again, naked, and dancing round the fire they had built. As they sang and clapped and chanted they were taking turns to make running jumps at the conflagration and hurl themselves through its tallest, coolest flames. This made the others cry out and applaud wildly.
‘I could remember how they had all worked so hard on these nights, dragging the firewood up the 199 steps. All weathers, all times of the year, my four aunts and their tiny niece had to struggle and labour with the branches and twigs and the sawn-up bits of old sideboards and wardrobes and whatever else they could lay their hands on. And it had to be done. There was no question of that. For this was essential work. Witchy work. It was war work, though not many might understand that. Not many would see that this cavorting about at the Abbey was imperative for the safety of the whole of the British Isles during this dark period in its fraught history.
‘I stared goggle-eyed at my pink-bodied aunts with their streaming dark hair and windmilling naked limbs. My heart raced at the sound of their raucous shouts of delight. There was Eliza, Beryl and Natasha, all as beautiful as I remember them. But young! So young! Were my aunties ever as young as this? I found it hard to believe. They were nubile, lithe, hopping and caterwauling and turning cartwheels about the steady flames. And here was Aunt Maude – rather older and more sturdy, with her pendulous breasts and her throbbing, thrilling vibrato ringing out as she led the chanting of magical verses.
‘‘Do you remember, Effie?’ asked the Chauffeur gently. ‘‘These nights? These cold, strange, exciting nights when you all built the fires and your aunts danced like Furies? They were dancing to ward off Hitler and his Nazis, weren’t they? For they really believed they could end the war, prevent the invasion and save the islands by carrying on like this. With their magic and their hexing and their wild abandon.’
‘‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I do remember…’
‘Then… sitting on a low, fallen pillar of stone, some distance away from the revels… I saw myself, as I had been at the age of seven. Young Effryggia was in her dressing gown and slippers. She was watching her aunts disporting themselves and warding off the Nazis with white magic. Now they were waving holly and ivy garlands in the air and tossing some kind of magic dust into the flames, which made them spit sparks and turned them a wonderful shade of aquamarine.
‘‘Do you see why some of my passengers fear me?’ the Chauffeur asked.
‘‘Yes,’ I s
aid. ‘I can see that. But I don’t feel fear. Why would I? This… this is just the past.’
‘He nodded. ‘That’s right. I can show you things you have forgotten or laid aside in your memory. That is what I am for. The Limbosine and I are here in order to remind you of certain things – certain vital things – to do with the past. And I promise that I will come for you again.’
‘Now the lenses of his dark glasses were filling up all my vision. ‘I will pick you up again one night soon and show you more things you ought to see.’
‘‘Do I really need to see them?’ I asked weakly. ‘I remember well. I haven’t forgotten anything…’
‘‘Nevertheless,’ said the Chauffear, straightening up, and preparing to leave. ‘I will come back. You will see me again, very shortly, Effryggia Jacobs.’
‘‘Huh,’ I said, and that must have been when I passed out.
‘Next thing I knew, I was lying in a filthy ditch, somewhere out of town on a lonely road. The long grasses were tangled underneath me in a makeshift bed and there was an unpleasant smell when I woke up. I decided that he’d probably set me down on something filthy.
‘I could be dead, I thought. Dead in a ditch and with a dose of pneumonia to boot. Well, no one was going to find me like this. I still had my dignity to think about. Other victims of the so-called Limbosine have been picked up by the police in remote spots like that, and they were gibbering and frothing insensibly. They talked of abductions and terrifying ordeals. That kind of palaver isn’t for me.
‘I dragged myself up out of the roadside and got my bearings in the darkness. I frowned, realising that the driver had set me down not too far from the spot where I had first encountered him. For a moment I allowed myself the luxury of imagining it was all a dream. I stomped towards Whitby, entertaining this fleeting hope. Yes, a dream. My subconscious reminding me to remember my aunts once in a while. To remember them not just as irksome spirits loitering about in the curtains and cupboards and behind the portraits – but as living vital souls. As real women, strong women, brave women who took very seriously their job of defending this town against the forces of darkness in their own time. Women who had loved me and done their best by me. I know that in recent times I’ve grown neglectful of their legacy, and I’ve been vexed by their ghosts, who insist on hanging around my home all the time.
‘But I knew it was no dream. The Limbosine was real, as was the disturbingly attractive Chauffear, as he had styled himself. And he would be back, as he promised. Of that I’ve got no doubt. But what could he show me, really, that I can’t already recall? What is it he feels I need to know? It must be something terrible, mustn’t it? It must be something locked up, deep inside me. A memory I have repressed.
‘Really, Brenda, it’s got me all of a sweat. I’ve thought about this all the long walk back to town. What will I learn, when he next picks me up in his fancy wheels? What the devil is that man going to reveal to me next?’
§
That night Effie stayed in one of my guest rooms. She was in too much of a lather to go back to her own place. And no wonder, I thought. What an ordeal she had been put through. How on Earth would I react if some dreadful beast like this driver person tried to take me into my past! Just let him try. I could give him more than he bargained for.
But Effie wasn’t just upset and discombobulated. Her reaction was more complex than that. She was also excited. She was feverish and somehow invigorated by this journey back in time. This mingling with phantoms.
Perhaps it was because the whole nocturnal adventure had brought her closer to her family. She had seen all those aunts of hers in the flesh once more and it had made her feel young. I don’t think there’s anyone in my past I would like to revisit. At least, I don’t think so. Not that I remember, of course.
This morning I’m letting the poor dear sleep in. She’s been up much of the night and she’ll be just about dead with tiredness. I decide to treat her as if she was one of my valued guests in my B&B and I creep about the place, attending to my early morning chores, careful not to disturb her.
I’m out of basic breakfast things. Even tea. I nip down to the shop on the bottom floor of this building, and there I find the disconsolate Raf, alone at the counter.
He rings up my purchases – including my spicy tea – looking incredibly glum. His white shopkeeper’s coat is wrinkled and stained. He’s letting himself go, and I suspect I know why.
‘No sign of her?’ I ask gently, fishing out my change.
‘No, hen,’ he sighs. ‘She’s not coming back, is she? She’s away forever now.’
This is his wife Leena. The town’s biggest gossip. She used to aggravate me, the way she’d slouch over the piles of evening papers on her counter and tell tales on everyone she knew. But she didn’t deserve her awful fate. The last anyone had heard of her, she’d gone streaking off in the night, vampy bites all round her neck, avid with the need to slake her lethal passions.
‘Twenty two happy years we had,’ Raf sniffs. ‘We were looking forward to growing old together. But now I’ll have to do that by myself. She’ll be running around forever young.’
What do you say? It’s so hard to find the right thing to say, no matter how many times this kind of thing happens.
‘It’s this place,’ he growls in that thick Glaswegian brogue. ‘We should never have moved to this awfy town. We thought it would be perfect for us. Quiet, ideal. Healthy, even. But we weren’t to know, were we? This evil town is cursed.’
That sounds a bit strong to me. As you know, I’ve been very happy here myself, never having previously found a place I could really call my own. Whitby has opened its arms to me in a very particular way and I don’t think of it as cursed per se. It has its problems, like any town has. But Rafiq won’t be deterred.
‘Oh, I know what goes on here. I’ve kept my ear to the ground. And I know you’re mixed up in it all, Miss Brenda. You know far more about the darker side of this place than anyone else.’
I find myself blushing. I feel ashamed. I feel like he’s making me responsible for the terrible thing that happened to his poor mouthy wife. All of a sudden I feel rather dizzy. I’m reeling amid the shop’s usually homely scents of fenugreek and coriander. I need to get out, back into the open air. ‘I’m sorry, Raf, I…’
He looks alarmed. ‘Miss Brenda, I didn’t mean anything bad…’
‘No, it’s alright,’ I wave him back, clutching my jute bag filled with milk cartons and bread and so on. ‘I think… maybe, a touch of jetlag…’
Even as I’m backing out of the shop I feel a fool for saying this. Everyone knows we were only travelling to Europe.
I bustle out and hurry to the side passage of my house, and quickly up the stairs. I rationalize my dizzy spell as a result of my not having had my morning cuppa. I need caffeine, quick.
Effie still isn’t awake. Poor old thing. I suppose she’ll be having agitated dreams all about luxury cars and her aunts in the nuddy.
Any mention of Effie’s aunts always gives me the heebie-jeebies. When I’ve been next door, I’ve felt their many ghosts slinking about in the skirting boards and behind the heavy furniture. I have felt their bridling antipathy directed against me. Though what I’ve done to deserve it, I’ll never understand.
I bolt down my tea and toast and then I’m off again. I hurry up the hill and through the leafier streets towards the Miramar hotel, where everyone is busy finishing up breakfast and cleaning everything in sight. And Robert is at reception, seeing at once that I need to tell him something important.
He leads me over to the coffee nook just by reception and listens intently as I describe Effie’s activities in the early hours.
Robert has been very concerned about the Limbosine affair for some time. But he’s never had a first hand account of what actually occurs when folk get driven away. He looks delighted that Effie apparently remembers
everything.
‘Good for old Effie!’ he says. ‘But is she all right?’
‘I think she’ll be fine. She’s a bit shook up by it all. Plus, she thinks the horrible thing is coming back for her. To show her another episode from her past.’
‘Huh,’ says Robert. ‘I hope she can deal with it all.’
‘It seems fairly harmless so far. She’s not hurt or anything.’
‘Maybe we should keep an eye on her? Never let her out of our sight, night and day?’
It’s a thought. I wonder what Effie would say to that. I smile at Robert, sitting there in his fancy manager’s suit. It’s a new suit, I notice. A very expensive one, by the looks of it. Suddenly it strikes me that he’s lost some of that gangling boyishness he had managed to carry into his early thirties. There is something more assured about him now. He’s gained a lot of confidence from taking over the Miramar these past couple of years. He’s quite different to the first Robert I knew, who was jumpy and not quite happy with himself yet.
Suddenly Penny is with us, looking frazzled in a slightly gothy maid’s outfit. I waste no time in telling her, ‘I’ve thought about this, and I believe you ought to keep right away from the Spooky Finger, Penny.’
She stares at me in surprise, and I realise I’ve miscalculated. Penny hates being told what to do, by anyone. ‘What?’ she says. ‘Because of that old bloke, Mr Danby? He’s just a little fella. I’m not scared of him.’
I warn her, getting up and rubbing my arthritic knees. ‘You ought to be scared of him, Penny. He’ll be up to something heinous, you mark my words.’
She scowls at my warnings, but I don’t want to stand round here arguing. I’ve got to hit the supermarket before town gets too busy. I’ve cupboards to fill at home.
§
I’m quite surprised when, late in the afternoon, Effie calls round breezily, full of plans for the evening. Apparently we’re going to a do at the Christmas Hotel.
‘It’s Summer in the Sixties Night,’ she announces. ‘So we all have to put flowers in our hair and gussy ourselves up as hippies.’