by Paul Magrs
But as we return to my B&B with my shopping I want to tell him how much I’m getting to like Gila. I want to tell the tale about how brave the green lad was at the Christmas hotel when we paid Madame Claus a visit.
But as I say our private conflab is halted then by a sudden convergence on the street.
Effie is standing before us, clutching her shopping basket, wearing a flaring, stylish cape in mushy pea green and regarding us with a look of wary surprise. ‘Oh, hello, there,’ she says, with a funny expression on her face. ‘Fancy seeing you both here.’
I frown. ‘It’s our street, Effie. We’re always bumping into each other here.’
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘You’re right, Brenda.’
There is an awkward pause. She’s definitely acting oddly.
‘Erm, Brenda duckie,’ she suddenly bursts, ‘When we came back from Haworth, you didn’t happen to bring some sort of… well, how do I put this? Some funny little creature with you? A kind of bear thing?’
My heart starts banging away. She knows about Panda, after all. I struggle to maintain my composure and I’m aware of Robert looking at us as if we’re both being weird, and talking a type of code. ‘I don’t think so, Effie. A bear? How would I bring a bear with me?’
She scowls at what she clearly thinks is my being obtuse. ‘A cuddly bear. A stuffed bear. My childhood companion. A Panda.’
‘Where would I have found a thing like that?’
She purses her lips and glares at me. ‘I don’t know. But when we were separated underground in the secret lair of the Bronte sisters, some very peculiar things happened. I wondered if you had happened upon this small black and white fellow with a nasty tongue.’
‘I’m sure I would remember if I had…’ I say, knowing all the while how hopeless I am at lying.
‘Very well then, Brenda,’ sighs Effie, as if she’s disappointed in me. ‘I’ll let you be on your way, both of you.’
All of a sudden, I’m cross. How dare she get so frosty with me? I’ve done bugger all wrong, as it happens. If Panda’s right, then she’s the one with the posthypnotic command to kill implanted in her ancient skull, but why should that make her act narky with me, her intended victim?
But then Effie could always get herself worked up into terrible moods, whatever the provocation. I prepare to say goodbye and hurry away from her into the seclusion of my home. Then suddenly she catches my arm and I flinch.
‘Jumpy!’ she says, with an insincere tinkle of a laugh. ‘I assume I’ll see you and the others at the Christmas Hotel tomorrow night?’
‘You do?’ I look at her blankly. ‘What’s so special about tomorrow night?’
‘It’s a raffle and the return of cabaret night,’ says Effie. ‘When I saw my mother the other day she was most particular about asking you, Brenda, and your friends to make sure you were there. They’re doing seafood linguini and there’s going to be a magic act by Mr Danby. I thought you’d be wanting to see that.’
‘Why would I want to see that old devil?’ I look at Robert at this point and he seems to be squirming with unspoken knowledge. ‘What? Why?’
‘Because he’s got a magician’s assistant making her debut,’ says Effie. ‘Our friend Penny. She’s going to join him in his magic act. Why, hasn’t she told you?’
For a moment I can’t speak. Then it all comes out in a torrent. How could Penny be so stupid? After everything I’ve said and warned her about him? And how could they work up an act like that so quickly? And Robert – did he know anything about this?
‘I’m afraid I did, Brenda,’ he says. ‘Penny only told me yesterday. And I’ve tried to warn her, and to tell her how furious you’ll be…’
Then I find myself yelling in the street, ‘Don’t you people ever learn? You can’t go messing around with monsters!’ I direct this with particular force at Effie, too, just to let her know that I’ve got my eye on her.
But Effie simply shrugs. ‘Some would say that you yourself were a monster, Brenda.’ This makes me gasp aloud. ‘Of the very nicest sort possible, of course. Now, toodle-oo. See you later!’
She shuffles off in her fancy new cape and her stylish matching hat. I feel like aiming a hefty kick at her backside.
Robert accompanies me to my door. ‘What was her problem?’
‘I’ll try to explain it all later. But she’s been acting very oddly indeed ever since she found out about herself and her whole past in Haworth the other day. She’s had some kind of epiphany and it’s done her no good at all.’
We prepare to go our separate ways and kiss each other quickly outside the mini-market. ‘I’ll have another go at Penny,’ he says. ‘Try to get her to stop this magic act nonsense. The thing is, I think she’s been taken in by Danby. I really think she likes him.’
I roll my eyes. ‘We’ll sort him out. And you, young man, you try to keep away from your seducer on the flying sofa. We don’t want any further trouble from worlds beyond. We’ve got quite enough on our plate.’
Robert looks shame-faced and I see immediately that it’s too late. I can see it in a flash. He’s already getting up to rude stuff with the Erl King in the deepest watches of the night. Those sofa springs have been jingling.
I watch him go and reflect briefly on the fact that we’ve all got our problems just now. No wonder we’ve been warned about a time of tribulation!
I heft my bags up the alley and, just as I rummage for my door keys – that’s when I see the note pinned to the glossy purple paintwork.
Each letter has been cut out of headlines from magazines and stuck down on the paper. It’s a death threat, of course.
YOU HAVE LIVED LONG ENOUGH. DID YOU THINK YOU’D GO ON FOREVER? YOU ARE GOING TO DIE. BUT ALL FOR A GOOD CAUSE.
YOURS FAITHFULLY
YOUR NEMESIS
It must be the most polite death threat I – or any one else – has ever received. I take it in with my shopping and, having struggled up the stairs, set to examining it minutely on the kitchen table. I sniff it and examine the letters. They’ve been cut with pinking shears out of the pages of The Whitby Gazette, The Spirit is Weak and The People’s Fiend.
Oh, Effie, Effie, surely you couldn’t have sunk this low?
I don’t realise that I’ve said this aloud until a small, gruff voice replies.
‘I’m afraid she has. She is indeed your nemesis.’
I swing round, clutching the death threat to my bosom. ‘Who..?!’
But it’s only Panda, sitting on the bobbly green armchair, looking very worried indeed.
§
I’ve got work to do. I can’t sit around moping and fretting. Yes, so Effie might have turned assassin and her fate may well be to do me in. In the coming days I may have to face all kinds of dangers, but I can’t let that stand in the way of business.
I get to work scrubbing and dusting, and holding back the tide of muck that threatens to engulf Brenda’s B&B. I welcome new guests into my home and bake them cakes, make them tea – alert all the while to any hint of their being professorial in any way. I’m on my guard against these academics who come to spy on me.
At breakfast I notice a rather bookish, fussy, bachelor type flipping through the pages of ‘Tendencies.’ That rings alarm bells. He stuffs it away, into his briefcase, as I advance with his kippers.
I still can’t figure out their interest.
And so the new day dawns and this evening we’ll be at the Christmas Hotel, watching Mr Danby making a show of himself. I have a morning phone chat with Robert, to see if he’s talked Penny out of appearing as the magician’s assistant, but no luck there. He says there’s no stopping her. She’s got a funny look in her eye, as if her mind has been tampered with. Well, we all know that Mr Danby is not above that kind of thing.
Upstairs, all through the night, I heard Panda shuffling about. He’s exploring the attic
above my head and all night I hear the muffled thud of his footsteps. This morning he comes to me and discusses my supply of tired spare parts. He’s very sanguine about that gory hoard up there. He takes it all in his tiny stride. ‘You should put them all together and make a spare Brenda,’ he advises gruffly. ‘I think there’s enough of everything up there. Except your brain, of course. That would have to be replaced at the last moment. If anything happened to you. If the worst happened, you know. It could be a kind of insurance against damage or injury.’
The macabre little devil! I think, as he tells me this over morning coffee. But he’s quite right. It’s a contingency I’ve always had in mind. It’s like the old story of the broom. Change the handle, change the brush, dozens of times over in rotation. Where’s the original broom? Is it still here? Well, when it comes to me and my own philosophical status or what-have-you, I like to think – yes! I am still me, after all, no matter how many changeovers and replacements I’ve had over the years. Existentialism, pah.
‘The integral thing is the brain, of course,’ muses Panda, chewing on a crumbly slice of flapjack.
I’m wondering now, though, whether I haven’t at some point swapped brains as well. The same one couldn’t have lasted all this time? So then, how am I still me? The very thought makes my head spin at the kitchen table. Not literally.
‘Those are fairly oldish spare parts up there in the attic,’ Panda says. ‘It looks like a long time since you collected any new ones.’
I flush. ‘I just can’t seem to do it, Panda. In years gone by, I had no qualms. It was just survival. Bits of dead bodies, of course. Bits and pieces laying about, as it were. Often I had to dig them up. Oh, it was awful.’
‘But necessary,’ he says, ‘for one such as you.’
‘I’ve lived with the same bits, plus my collection of spares, for decades now.’
We sit in uncomfortable silence. I never usually talk about things like this. In fact, hardly ever. What is it about this strange creature that has me talking now? Perhaps it’s because he’s right, and the remnants I’ve got are running down. I need to think about replenishing myself, or shutting up shop for good. Both are hideous thoughts, especially on a sunny morning such as this.
I pop the nosy mite into my shopping bag and we take an amble across the bay. Nothing like the sea air to clear the cobwebs and bad thoughts away. I take him up the 199 steps to the churchyard at the top, so he can look down over all of Whitby. At the breezy summit he pushes his head out of my bag and glares out to sea, and then at all the rooftops of our town.
‘Effie once carried me up here, when she was a little girl,’ he says. ‘It was the night before we were sent to Haworth. She stayed out as late as she dared and we sat on a gravestone together with a little picnic. It became colder and colder and still she wouldn’t budge. She said she was calling out to the spirit of Dracula. Begging him to come back. Telling him he had to return to Whitby, and he had to take revenge on all the kids that picked on her. She stood out, you see, as a strange girl. She got quite a lot of grief from the other kids, because she lived in that house of witches.’
‘Poor Effie,’ I sigh, watching the sea rolling in. It all looks so freezing cold today. You’d never think it was summer. ‘She got her wish in the end. Alucard returned to town. She fell for him.’
Panda looks surprised. ‘When was this?’
‘A little while back. He led her a merry dance, but she was happy now and then with the old devil. Though I tried to make sure he got sent to hell and stayed there. Back he would come to lavish his attentions on daft old Effie. In the end it was a boyfriend of mine who staked him through the heart. We’d just had dinner together as a merry foursome in a fancy restaurant and my boyfriend got him in the cloakroom.’
‘Good,’ says Panda. ‘He’d have been a terrible influence on our Effie.’
‘He was! Anyway, he’s gone now. Though I do think Effie will never forgive me, in her heart of hearts, for plotting his demise.’
‘Effie’s life has been all death and disaster,’ Panda says gloomily. ‘In a way, it was fated. She was the chosen one, as far as her aunties were concerned. She was the child of that devilish sister of theirs, Angela Claus, and her fancy man, the king of fairyland. Of course Effie was going to grow up under a hot, broiling cloud of noxious destiny.’
‘Hmmm.’ Then I make the connection. Of course! The King of Faerie land. He’s back in town, too, isn’t he? Effie’s purported father, the ageless and beautiful king from the fey realm. He’s currently hovering about and tempting Robert, isn’t he?
I get a sudden, jolting sense of pieces falling into place. All the elements are present. All the pieces are on the chessboard. And even though the summer sun is bright on the streets and rooftops of Whitby, I can see that cold front rolling in. Sea mist and murk are advancing on the town, even in the middle of this afternoon.
I help Panda back into my bag and prepare to descend the steps – and to face the music, and whatever fate’s going to throw at us.
§
At The Christmas Hotel…
How many evenings have my friends and I traipsed in here, fully aware of what a deadly place it can be? When we have known that somebody is up to no good and that we are walking blithely to our possible doom?
That feeling is stronger this evening as we arrive for the night of the raffle and the cabaret. I feel as if I am walking in a dream. This must be how the condemned felt, as they were marched up to the scaffold.
Here we all are, togged up in our finest. Effie walks by my side as we enter this opulently festive hotel. She’s distant in her manner and wearing yet another little outfit she picked up in Paris. I don’t know how she fitted everything into her luggage. Robert trains a wary eye on her and, beside him, Gila is keeping a wary eye on everyone. Gila behaves as if he is entering the site of some grotesque pagan festival, perhaps of the type he was used to in the savage land of Qab.
As we take our places at one of the tables in the ballroom, Panda is kicking softly inside my oversized handbag, eager to be out. But I’m not sure that would be a good idea.
Someone has pushed the boat out tonight. There are heavy tablecloths and candles at every table. We all bask in the golden glow as the elves bring champagne in buckets. The evening kicks off with Mrs Claus calling out raffle numbers from the stage. As she entertains the crowd I can see her manic eye searching the tables and finally resting on me. She looks pleased to see that I am here, which I find disconcerting.
Then there are musical numbers and a contortionist act, and the elves bring food. Seafood linguini, as promised. It’s delicious and we twirl pasta round our forks and tuck in happily. That is, until Gila picks something out of his dish with his fork and shows it to us. A tiny tiara, encrusted with jewels and seashells.
We hardly have time to react before Mrs Claus rolls onto the stage once more to announce the evening’s main attraction.
‘You know him best as a wonderful disc jockey on Whitby F.M.,’ she cackles. ‘And you may even remember his marvelous beauty parlour, the Deadly Boutique, which for a while was a godsend to we ladies of a certain age. Anyway, he’s a man of many talents and tonight he’d like to share his wonderful magic with us! Here he is… Mr Danby!’
Immediately, everyone at our table is sitting up attentively. The matter of whether we have all just been eating miniature mermaids in the linguini is temporarily forgotten. There is a bank of woolly mist seeping from the stage and all kinds of laser effects flashing through the dark. The rest of the audience are oohing like mad. Melodramatic music starts up. There is a crack of fake lightening. And then Mr Danby is on the stage in a tuxedo and a top hat almost as tall as he is. He’s dashing about with armfuls of golden rings, juggling and showing off.
The old idiots here are applauding his every move. They delight in every raised eyebrow and sickly grin from the horrible man. Then, suddenly,
there’s Penny with him. Alongside him. Got up in some kind of burlesque outfit with black feathers and sequins. For a moment we’re not even sure it’s her, all of us in my party, and we exchange puzzled glances.
Effie says, ‘Well, it turns out she has quite a nice figure under all that Goth gear she usually puts on.’
And it’s quite true. Penny looks lovely as she dashes about on the stage, passing Mr Danby various props as he needs them. The magic’s all a bit tame, I must say. It’s all collapsing boxes and disappearing rabbits, just kid’s stuff really. For some reason the crowd of pensioners are going wild for it. It strikes me that Mr Danby must have quite a lot of fans and supporters here in Whitby. That thought gives me an odd little shiver.
Then there’s a different feeling in the air, as the act nears its climax and Penny wheels a tall, upright cabinet onto the stage. It’s a black, lacquered number that wouldn’t look out of place among Effie’s stock of antiques.
Danby shows it off, opening the doors and spinning it around, demonstrating that it’s without a false back or any other escape route. Then Penny is handing him metal blades, which he’s flexing and it’s obvious how nastily sharp they are.
Penny steps towards the box. She’s grinning and showing off as if she hadn’t a care in the world. She’s being very showbiz all of a sudden. How did a girl who’s usually quite shy suddenly become as confident as this?
Robert leans forward and grabs my arm. ‘Brenda! He’s going to put her in that cabinet and slide the guillotine blades in!’
We all know it. We’ve all seen terrible magician acts like this a dozen times before. But I shake myself out of my stupor and have this awful, lucid thought: That’s Danby up there. He can’t do magic. He’s a charlatan in everything he does. He always causes death and disaster…
I’m feeling fuzzy round the edges. My reactions are slowed… I start to stand up and it all takes so long… I look at the others and they seem to be in slow motion too. Was the bubbly poisoned? Was the mermaid linguini spiked?