The Collector of Remarkable Stories Page 4

  "What am I looking for?" he asked.

  "There, look, in my hand!"

  "It's a bag!" he said with a 'so what' sort of tone.

  "Giant, I have to go back to the Emporium. I have to find it. If I came here with this bag, it might hold a clue as to who I am. Don't you see? This bag could be my ticket out of here."

  Back to the Emporium

  Stepping outside the Butchery, Margie got her first proper glimpse of Limbuss. The place in which she found herself was a vast industrial city engulfed in a perpetual blanket of mist. Modern steel constructions loomed out of this gloomy skyline like giant rusting arms reaching up towards the heavens in search of salvation. Meanwhile the walkways and bridges that linked the buildings high up in the sky resembled chains tethering the buildings to Limbuss against their will. On the whole, Limbuss looked like a city in despair. But the little street on which Margie found herself felt different. It felt old, medieval almost; a meandering, narrow street with cobbles and tall, wonky buildings that seemed to jostle for space. In some places, the upper floors projected so far into the centre of the road that they came within arm’s reach of the opposite building. It seemed incongruous when compared to the rest of the city which had a more industrial feel, like a great furnace powering some immense unknown machine.

  And unlike the rest of the city, the street on which the Emporium stood seemed still and silent. The shops, which lined either side of the road, were dusty, grey and worn. Margie felt tired just looking at them; trying hard to imagine the colours and patterns which had long since disappeared beneath layers of dust and desiccated wasps and flies. The buildings didn’t just look sad, they felt sad too. They had been pummelled by tragedy and sadness so many times that the bruises had stopped healing. They spoke volumes to Margie. She knew that the Cotton Jeans Co with a stuffed buffalo in the window display was in fact once a brothel that had been run with a rod of iron by a couple of murderous brothers. She knew that the General Appliance Store three shops down had once been burnt to a crisp, taking with it a number of children.

  Margie didn't really question how she knew all this. She just did. She wondered if she had been here before?

  She had only been outside for a few moments but it was enough to make The Giant nervous. Inside the Emporium already, he reached his arm out of a small gap in the boarded up window and whipped her in like a frog catching a fly.

  "Look what you did!" she exclaimed angrily showing him a tear in her dress. But The Giant remained silent.

  It had only been a few weeks since she’d left the Emporium, but already it looked and smelled different than she remembered. And bigger. After spending so many weeks cooped up in The Giant's smelly little butchery, the Emporium seemed unfeasibly large. "Deary me," said Margie, a hint of resignation already present in her voice. "Where do I start?"

  The Giant wandered over to the till and blew the dust. It billowed up in a cloud that made him cough.

  "He didn't have no customers for a long time. Maybe that's why he were so happy when he found you. You gave him something else to think about."

  Margie nodded. "He was good to me."

  "I miss him."

  "Me too."

  The Giant shuffled back towards the boarded up window and slumped down. "How long will you be?" he asked.

  "What do you mean by that? Aren't you coming with me?"

  "No. I ain't never liked it in there. Gives me the creeps it does. I'll stay here and keep watch."

  Margie scowled at The Giant then marched off in the direction of her little hidey hole. At least she thought it was. She wasn't one hundred percent sure. If she had been wearing a bag when she arrived in Limbuss and lost her memory, it had to be somewhere near where she spent her convalescence. Perhaps Auguste had put it somewhere nearby for safe keeping.

  "Auguste told me that we ain't to touch nothing in the Emporium," shouted The Giant. "He ain't gonna be happy if you touch anything."

  Margie didn't stop to acknowledge what The Giant had just said. She'd touched many of the items already without issue. What was his problem?

  For several hours she tried to find her way back to the trap door below which she'd spent so many weeks with Auguste. She retraced the steps she'd made the day she found her way out of the Emporium, but nothing looked familiar at all. The rooms she recalled seemed to have simply vanished amid the mountains of junk and rubbish. How would she ever find her bag in the vast maze-like Emporium? It was colossal. And with so many doorways, walls and tunnels the rooms seemed to shift and change with every new day.

  "Where is it?" she cried angrily to herself. "I know it's around here somewhere. It can’t have just disappeared! Rooms don’t just disappear."

  Day after day she tried to find a different route through the Emporium and day after day she ended up filled with frustration and anger. Regularly she picked up whatever was closest to her and hurled it across the room: an old radio, followed by a primitive walkie talkie, followed by a circuit board, followed by an aerial, followed by a bunch of wires that had been knotted together to form a giant spaghetti ball. Only when her arm tired would Margie eventually stop.

  The more she thought about it, the more she realized there was more to the Emporium than met the eye. She was convinced now that the rooms changed from day to day. That they shifted and moved from one day to the next. Earlier in the week she had spent several hours reading a book about an enormous tree with branches that reached into the clouds. The clouds contained a faraway land that changed with every day that passed. Margie had read the book from beginning to end, fascinated by the idea that a magical land could move or shift to make way for a new one. And now as she lay on the floor, her body aching from the stress of the past few hours, she wondered if it was possible that the rooms in the Emporium were shifting and moving just like the ones on top of the magic tree.

  As the days passed, she stopped really looking for her bag anymore and started looking at all the wonderful things that Auguste had collected. Like Auguste, what others perceived to be rubbish or junk, she saw as a piece of treasure that could be cleaned up and used again; passed on through the ages in various guises. Reincarnation of stuff. She spent hours studying all the odds and ends, imagining what world they had inhabited; who had loved the dolls? Who had cooked with this pan or that pan? Who would have worn the leather waistcoat or crashed the bike with the wonky wheel?

  Then a strange thing happened.

  One day, Margie was picking her way through a mountain of old watches when she spotted a beautifully ornate pocket watch which was shinier than the others and featured a beautiful hand-painted image of a Magpie. She put the watch to her ear in order to see if it was still working and as she did so she suddenly heard a man’s voice shouting the words: "dropped it in the barth".

  Startled by the sudden noise, Margie cried out and instinctively dropped the watch. She scoured the room for any intruders but it quickly became apparent that she was alone. The Giant, satisfied that Margie wasn't under any imminent threat, had allowed Margie to visit the Emporium unaccompanied. And besides, he didn't talk with a la-di-da voice.

  Margie soon forgot about the incident as she moved around the Emporium looking at all the wonderful objects until one afternoon, a few days later, she happened to pick up an old wooden musical box. The small square box was painted with the images of a cheeky looking monkey wearing a red fez. Not sure if the musical element still worked, she shook the box but instead of the tinkle of a lullaby, she heard the sound of a child crying. Again, she threw the box on the floor and the noise instantly ceased. Silence. Margie studied the box on the floor for a moment or two trying to rationalise what she had just heard and slowly picked it up again. Instantly she could hear the child sobbing - only this time he was calling for his mamma too.

  Margie gently placed the box on the floor. Silence. She placed her finger on it. Sobbing. She removed her finger. Silence. She picked it up. Sobbing.

  Margie studied the box intently. It opened f
rom the top to reveal two little monkeys that – had the mechanism not been over-wound and stretched – would have danced together like a furry Romeo and Juliet. It was pretty clear that the box should not and could not have produced any other sound.

  A little later, and still entirely perplexed by the situation, Margie picked up a teddy bear. It was well worn with one eye missing. If the musical box could talk to her, then perhaps the teddy could too. She put the toy to her ear and listened intently. Nothing.

  "There!" she exclaimed, throwing the teddy back on the floor. "It was all in my head."

  One by one she picked up toys, clocks, tools, pictures and clothes and pressed them against her ear. Then one by one she threw them over her shoulder, satisfied that she wasn’t going mad after all.

  That is, until she picked up an old rusting tobacco tin – the kind that most people would have lying around in an attic or cupboard under the stairs, filled with pins or buttons. This particular tin bore the words Foursome Mixture and featured a picture of four old men playing golf in vintage garb. As soon as Margie put the tin to her ears, her eardrums were assaulted by the sound of an old woman howling. The words – if indeed they were words – were an incoherent jumble of sounds that quickly disintegrated into louder, more sorrowful howls. This woman, whoever she was, was quite simply inconsolable.

  In the coming days and weeks Margie forgot entirely about the bag and focussed on the items which ‘spoke’ to her. And as time went on, the voices became clearer. "Help my husband . . . Tell my daughter . . . I’m OK . . . I’m not OK . . . Tell them to let me go . . . Tell them to visit more often . . . More flowers . . . Less flowers . . . Tell her to marry him . . . Tell her not to marry him . . . Why don’t I have a grave . . . Why did I die so suddenly . . . Why did I die so young . . . Why did that son of a bitch not die with me ...

  Some of them pleaded. Some of them cried. Some of them wailed. Some of them shouted. And all of them seemed to have something pressing to say.

  Margie didn’t know what to think. How did these things – junk – have voices? How could they talk to her? Who were these desperate sounding people? Were they a figment of her imagination? How could she ever know?

  Sometimes they weren’t even words. They were feelings – fury, love, happiness, sadness. These would take her by surprise, particularly the items that produced emotions like anger and depression. Once or twice she was overcome with such bad feelings that she could easily have cut her own throat. Sometimes she was so overcome with anger she could have swung an axe at someone. She was also wary of the items which seemed to give her pain. Once she picked up an old hammer to her ear and was suddenly gripped by the most incredible pain in her head, followed by a sensation of sinking into the ground.

  Margie decided it was time to tell The Giant.

  Margie carefully selected a number of items and threw them into an old sand bag. First there was a green domed army helmet with a pair of goggles attached to the front. The words were almost incomprehensible at first, like someone was talking underwater. But then they came through thick and fast. "Maria, Maria ... it happened quickly ... they didn’t do it properly ... they got the money ... in the bath, in the bath, in the bath." None of it made sense to Margie, but that didn’t matter.

  Next to speak was an old bicycle seat.

  Followed by a rusting cog.

  As she walked through the now familiar 'toy room', carrying as many bits and pieces as her arms would allow, she saw something she had never seen before. It was a small black rag-doll with woollen hair. It wore a red jacket and black-and-white striped trousers and despite its bright red smile, looked sad and forgotten.

  Abruptly, Margie found herself transported back to a time before Limbuss; a time when she lived in the home for wayward children.

  The Naked Mud Man

  From the second Margie arrived at Brookland's House – the institute for fallen women – the religious sisters insisted that Margie leave any notion of her previous life as a world famous psychic at the front door. "We’ll have none of that hocus pocus here," the Sister in charge had barked on her arrival, "you are never to even think about it again." And with that they prayed. They prayed, day and night, that Margie would never again be cursed with the Devil’s work and their prayers were answered for five years until the day Margie got her first period.

  "Mother Superior," whispered Margie after fixing her sanitary towel in place, "why is there a naked mud man in our bath?"

  "A naked what?"

  "Mud man."

  "Ain’t no such thing!" said Mother Superior punching a hole in the dough she was kneading.

  "Well there is, and he’s in our bath, and he’s got a penis over ten inches long!"

  Now anyone who knew the Mother Superior, knew that when she got angry she was worse than any man or beast. The hairs on the back of her neck would stand on end and she would growl a deep guttural canine growl before baring her teeth in a ferocious display that would send even the toughest man running for his life.

  Over the years there had been only a handful of people brave enough to stand up to Mother Superior, and they’d paid for it dearly. At best they were transformed into gibbering idiots, at worse they peed in their pants like infants.

  When Malcolm Wilby, the milkman, delivered five pints of milk instead of three pints for five days in a row, Mother Superior gave him such a mauling that his hair turned white overnight and all his milk turned sour.

  Today, however, she wasn’t angry. She was furious!

  Armed with a bible, a rosary, holy water, salt, oil and several crosses Mother Superior marched into the bathroom uttering the prayer to St Michael: "Most glorious Prince of the Heavenly Armies, Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in our battle against principalities and powers, against the rulers of this world of darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high places..."

  At the end of the prayer Mother Superior stopped and listened. To ensure that the prayer had worked she took a deep breath and screamed at the empty bath loud enough for the light bulb to pop. "If I’ve told you once I’ve told you a thousand times: NO MORE HOCUS POCUS!!!"

  And that was that!

  Except, of course, for the poor unsuspecting mud man who turned out to be //Kabo, a small, wiry African who was simply doing what he’d been instructed to do, and present himself as Margie’s spirit guide.

  //Kabo was a highly esteemed member of a tribe of hunter-gatherers. He lived with his eight brothers and sisters, his mother and father, his two grandmothers and two grandfathers and a great, great aunt in a low grass hut on a patch of scrubland in a tiny corner of Botswana.

  One of the tribes most revered hunters, //Kabo could chase kudu antelope across the desert for weeks, even months, at a time until his prey simply collapsed and died from exhaustion.

  No one and nothing could outrun //Kabo.

  Legend had it that one summer, after a particularly vicious drought, members of //Kabo’s family started dropping like the waxen petals of an old Baobab tree. First his aunt. Then his cousin. Then animals seeking water shrivelled up and died. Birds fell out of the sky, charred by the sun’s rays. Plants crumbled into piles of ash and blew away with the nightly breeze. Even the sky seemed to fold in on itself, like an oppressive white supernova, exhausted by the heat of a relentless sun.

  //Kabo was usually adept at locating underground sources of water by sense of smell alone, yet even he began to wither.

  The rest of his tribe, beaten by the heat, sat still, their dusty, mummified skins camouflaged against the parched desert plateau like termite mounds. All they could do was suppress their appetites by chewing on the pulpy flesh of the xhoba tree. But even that used up their precious, ever-diminishing energy reserves.

  In the evening, as the temperatures cooled, the hungry earth groaned and heaved and cracked, swallowing up entire huts. Sometimes //Kabo would hear his neighbours agonised screams as the very earth they revered devoured them like insects.

  The Gods, it w
ould seem, had deserted //Kabo‘s people. And no one knew what to do.

  Then the xhoba tree perished and the tribe no longer had anything to stifle their fierce hunger pangs. When his mother and sister started sucking the marrow out of their own bones //Kabo picked up his bow and arrow and set off running, the brown, dusty earth stretching for hundreds of miles in every direction.

  And he didn’t stop.

  He had little choice, for as soon as he stopped running, his feet burned and blistered on the scorched sand. The smell of baked flesh reminded him of the kudu meat that he and his family relished cooking in the ashes of their fire. And the memory spurred him on even faster than before.

  As the days and nights passed, //Kabo’s body began to mummify from the outside in. His mouth, nose and ears dried up and fell off. His tongue shrivelled up and clunked against his teeth. And his body flaked and cracked like old papyrus paper.

  Just as Death caught wind of //Kabo, so //Kabo caught wind of a herd of eland.

  Armed with a sense of smell more powerful than any wild animal, //Kabo tracked the eland, day after day, night after night, through deserts and bushes, mountains and savannahs. Crawling through sand storms on his hands and knees, breathing heavily through desiccated lungs, //Kabo chased the herd for three long months until finally he became very tired and stopped running. Laying in the dust //Kabo saw a flower drifting by on a stream of water, and he reached out for it.

  When //Kabo awoke the following morning he was shocked to find over two hundred eland eyes gazing at him from all around. Thinking that he must surely be hallucinating he closed them opened his eyes again.

  As it turned out, the beasts were so impressed with //Kabo’s dogged determination, that they had simply surrendered. Just like that.

  //Kabo’s tribe could not believe their eyes when he returned several days later, with one hundred and thirteen eland in tow.

  The women drummed (using their own shrunken bellies as drums) and the men danced, whirling and whooping themselves into a state of ecstasy.