The Collector of Remarkable Stories

by E. B. Huffer

  Margie pulled herself up and swung her legs over the side of the bed. She felt woozy, like she had slept a lot longer than she’d wanted to.

  "My name’s Black Adam," said the man, holding his hand out. Margie shook it warily.

  "You have no idea the trouble you have caused young lady."

  Margie didn’t really know what Black Adam meant by this, but remembering suddenly the loss of her beloved Giant (and feeling totally overcome with sadness) she simply shrugged her shoulders and stared vacantly at a stain on the floor.

  Grandma Doyle threw Black Adam a scowl. "Have some sympathy you old codger!"

  "I didn't say anything!" he said holding his hands up in mock defence. "Now if you'll excuse me I've got work to do."

  Grandma Doyle wrapped her arms around Margie. "I know it's hard, but you have to forget about The Giant for now and focus on getting better. You have a difficult journey ahead of you."

  "I know," sniffled Margie, "and now I have no one to come with me."

  "Well," said Grandma Doyle, "You don't have to worry about that anymore because we are going to take you as far as the gateway to the Darkest of All Places!"

  "Oh no we're not," called a voice from the other side of the scorpion.

  "Yes, we are!" chided Grandma Doyle.

  Black Adam stepped away from the periscope and fixed Grandma Doyle with a stare. "We are taking her as far as the Sea of Sorrow. That was the deal."

  Grandma Doyle smiled sweetly at Margie before striding across the room to Black Adam and pulling a folded-up piece of paper from deep within her pocket. "It says right here," she said in a hushed tone, "...'to the Darkest of All Places'. It doesn't say 'to the Sea of Sorrow'."

  Black Adam frowned. "I tell you what; you take her across the Sea of Sorrow and I'll wait for you with a warm towel and a hot mug of tea!"

  "If that's the way you want it, then that's the way you can have it. But if you want to play that game then the money is mine."

  Black Adam let out a dramatic gasp. "In your dreams old lady! You wouldn't get within a thousand miles of the Sea of Sorrow if it wasn't for me and The Trusty Old Boy." He patted the periscope affectionately.

  Grandma Doyle narrowed her eyes. "You're a fraidy cat, that's what you are. You're frightened. I know it. You're too afraid to cross the Sea of Sorrow." She straightened up and smiled. "It's okay to be frightened. I understand. Why don't you drop the two of us off at the Sea of Sorrow and I'll take her across to the Gateway. We'll see who deserves the money when we go to collect it."

  It was Black Adam's turn to narrow his eyes, "you're a sly old bird, Madame Doyle. You always were." He stared at her for a while.

  "You really don't have to come any further," interrupted Margie. "You've done so much for me already."

  "I know," said Grandma Doyle. "The problem is I want to come with you. I want to look after you. You're getting so sick."

  "Oh listen to her," scoffed Black Adam. "I don't know who'd be holding who back."

  Grandma Doyle fixed Black Adam with a firm stare that instantly rendered him silent.

  "If you really want to come then you wouldn't be a burden," said Margie. "You're like my family now."

  "Oh child," sighed Grandma Doyle.

  "We'll come with you," said Black Adam. "But only as far as the Gateway. Then you're on your own. Okay?" He turned to look at Grandma Doyle. "Okay?!"

  Grandma Doyle clapped her hands happily. Black Adam wasn't a bad person. He was actually very kind. But he had a job to do. And that was to get Margie to the Gateway. He would be paid and that would be that. She knew that The Big Invisible would kill Margie if she didn't make it ... but in her heart she didn't know if she would make it anyway! Once they had The Big Invisible, what would they do with her? She could only hope that whoever had put the bounty out was looking out for Margie. After all, it had already saved her from the Dog Beasts ...

  In the intervening days, the scorpion continued its journey. The mask that Black Adam wore controlled the great metal beast by thought alone. If Black Adam wanted the beast to travel North; he merely had to think it and the scorpion would obediently change its course.

  Margie, meanwhile, kept herself very much to herself. Curled up on the large pile of cushions beneath the trap door she spent her time sleeping. It was the only time she felt any peace. It was during these dormant periods that Margie's body began to weaken. Her already pale skin took on a greyish hue, and her fragile, bird like body shivered continuously. Grandma Doyle was shocked by the sudden deterioration.

  "How long til we get there?" she asked Black Adam for the umpteenth time. "We're not out here to admire the view you know!"

  Black Adam ignored her. Looking through the periscope he had other things to worry about. He had never ventured this close to the Darkest of All Places before and was already beginning to regret his decision. He had a feeling that they weren't alone on their journey; that they were being watched. To make matters worse, a silent storm had been raging around them for days, sending bolts of lightning across a bruised and battered sky.

  For days he had seen what looked like a lighthouse blinking in the distance. Could this be the lighthouse which overlooked the Sea of Sorrow? Black Adam was sure it was. He'd studied his maps and charts religiously. As the days passed, however, they didn't seem to get any closer. Instead, the sky grew darker; more ominous; more threatening. This only added to Black Adam's misery, making it difficult for him to navigate the already-temperamental scorpion. He was sure they were moving; it definitely felt like they were. And Grandma Doyle had certainly berated him often enough.

  "Control your scorpion," she'd admonished wiping up spillage after spillage of soup or tea.

  Black Adam spent a few more minutes studying his charts. By his dead reckoning, it should only take a couple of days to reach. Scratching his head, he put his face to the periscope.

  He quickly wished he hadn't when, without warning, one of the lightning bolts formed a giant claw-like hand. It reached out of the sky and hurtled down the periscope grabbing Black Adam's throat and squeezing it until his face turned blue. Black Adam clawed at the hands, desperately trying to prise them off when suddenly the hands were gone and he found himself flying several metres backwards. He landed with a crash on one of the bunks.

  Grandma Doyle shouted angrily from somewhere nearby. "Are you trying to wake the girl you old fool?"

  Dazed and frightened, Black Adam remained silent. Staring at the periscope he could see nothing. What was that? He had never encountered anything like that before. He looked across at Margie, who was sleeping fitfully beneath a mountain of blankets and wondered if there was more to this young woman than he'd first thought. Did she really possess something more powerful than Limbuss itself?

  He'd heard the rumours; he'd scoffed at the idea that a pretty young woman could carry something so destructive. Yet here he was having doubts about this job. Just what had he gotten himself into? He wasn't the young man he used to be. His days of battling were long gone. He preferred the easy life now, simple bounty assignments ...

  He was struggling to shake off the sense of foreboding that had just swamped him when something brushed the back of his neck. This was followed directly by the sound of a deep, raspy sigh.

  At almost exactly the same moment, Grandma Doyle let out a scream. Black Adam leapt to his feet (as fast as his aching bones would allow him). There he saw Grandma Doyle standing next to the periscope, shaking violently; her eyes wide with shock.

  "Look," she cried, "it's the Sea of Sorrow." She clutched the periscope like it was a long lost family member. "We've arrived."

  "You crazy, foolish, stupid old woman!" shouted Black Adam, breezing over and pushing her out of the way. "What have I told you about touching things that don't belong to you! You have no right to be looking through this thing. Do you hear me?"

  "Well it looks like someone got out of bed on the wrong side this morning."

  Black Adam grabbed the periscope and, af
ter taking a long deep breath, peered through the view finder. What he saw was in stark contrast to what he had seen just moments earlier.

  Grandma Doyle's voice interrupted his thoughts. "Isn't it just the most beautiful thing you've ever seen?"

  She was right.

  Legend had it that the Sea of Sorrow was made from every tear ever shed by man and that every one of those tears contained an echo of the pain and sadness that had caused it. A sea inhabited not only by ghosts but also the sorrow that had engulfed them in life.

  As a result, Black Adam and Grandma Doyle had anticipated a great swamp of doom; a dark gurgling cesspit of sadness. Instead it was more like a silent lake over which hung a floating island shrouded in mist. From the mist rose a great white cathedral of ice it's tall twisting spires reaching up into the sky like great crystal stalagmites. The sea on which it hung looked clear and as still as night.

  How could something so beautiful harbour something so brutal, so treacherous? And more to the point, how had they managed to reach the Sea of Sorrow in just a matter of minutes when it should have taken them days? Was someone, or something, trying to tell him something? He'd been in Limbuss long enough to know that nothing happened without reason.

  He stared at Grandma Doyle for the longest time, a single throbbing vein on the side of his head the only clue to the angry thoughts that were screaming round his head.

  "I have a bad feeling," he said. "What we're doing isn't for the good of Limbuss like the poster said. I think it's blood money."

  "What on Earth has gotten into you?" she scoffed. "Have you been on the moonshine?"

  "Of course not, you daft old bat," he spat back.

  Grandma Doyle's face pinched in tightly. "You want to back out don't you. You've changed your mind again!"

  "And what makes you think we'd be of any help if we did go with her?" asked Black Adam. "If she is the collector then she has the protection of the divine order, why does she need us? Look at us; we're just a couple of old has beens."

  Grandma Doyle lowered her voice to an almost inaudible whisper, "and what if she isn't the Collector. What then?"

  Black Adam shook his head. "How can she not be? You've seen for yourself what she carries with her. You've heard the whispers too; she carries The Big Invisible."

  "And that's all they are: whispers. If she is divine then why does she carry The Big Invisible? The fact is we just don't know."

  A gravelly voice interrupted their conversation. "Is there a problem?" yawned Margie, sitting up shakily.

  "Aha, the Sleeping Beauty has awoken," exclaimed Grandma Doyle with an exaggerated smile.

  Margie rubbed her eyes. "I hope you're not fighting because of me."

  Grandma Doyle and Black Adam remained locked together in a silent standoff.

  "Nothing for you to worry your pretty little head about," said Black Adam eventually. He glowered at Grandma Doyle before resuming his position begrudgingly at the periscope.

  "Ignore him," mouthed Grandma Doyle. "We've almost reached the Sea of Sorrow. We're almost there."

  "Really?" squealed Margie, jumping up and joining Black Adam at the periscope.

  "You're limping," said Grandma Doyle.

  "It's okay," replied Margie, eager to forget her close encounter with Alpha. "I must have slept funny."

  She was, of course, lying. Grandma Doyle knew it too. Her face for a start was more pale and drawn than it had been. If she wasn't already dead, Grandma Doyle would have said she was on death's door. The invisible demon that Margie had been carrying on her back was eating away at her slowly but surely.

  As she drew close to the periscope, Black Adam shifted to one side, his eyes firmly on her back.

  "Is the Darkest of All Places on that island?" asked Margie.

  "So they say," said Black Adam impassively.

  Margie suddenly looked brighter than she had done for days. "I thought it would take forever to find. Yet here we are. And look how beautiful it is."

  "Don't get too excited child," said Grandma Doyle gently. "Fire is also a beautiful thing, but it sure as hell burns." She stroked Margie's face. "Sit down, you need some food in your system."

  As Margie sipped on the broth which Grandma Doyle had prepared, Margie shivered uncontrollably. "What do you know about the Collector," she asked as Grandma Doyle placed a heavy blanket across her shoulders.

  "Ah well," said Grandma Doyle with a smile that lit up her entire face. "The Collector is the first person you see when you die. She's beautiful, just beautiful. The first thing she does is hold your hands and then she asks you - without even speaking - if your story is complete. My child, have you never wondered why your life flashes before your eyes at the very moment of death? Well, that's the Collector drawing near; getting ready to take your story away. I was so happy to see her, I really was ... but I carried too much guilt. It weighed me down. And that 's why I ended up here."

  Grandma Doyle thought for a while. "No one knows what happened to her. She just disappeared one day. And that's when things went horribly wrong. With no one to collect the stories - which are the very essence of who they are - and no one to turn them into light, people just started arriving in Limbuss. At first there were millions. It was a real crisis. Then all of a sudden it was under control. A system was created, I'm guessing, to cope with the problem until the Collector returned. But she never did. Some people think she got taken. Others think she just got fed up with it all. Really! Can you imagine that."

  Grandma Doyle tutted then looked at Margie. Her face was pale and drawn and the lower part of her chin shimmering with a fine layer of frost. Grandma Doyle placed another rug over Margie's shoulders and shuffled up closer to her.

  "Several decades later a young woman rocks up in Limbuss, unable to remember anything about her past and all of a sudden lots of people are getting very excited. Some people think she is The Collector ..."

  "Do you?"

  Grandma Doyle thrust a sideways glance at Black Adam that warned him to keep his mouth shut.

  "I know you are."

  "How do you know?"

  "I don't know for sure. I just feel it in my heart."

  "What's The Big Invisible Grandma Doyle? I heard you talking."

  For the first time ever, Grandma Doyle was stuck for words.

  "If I am the Collector, then why has The Big Invisible attached itself to me?"

  "Poppycock," she replied. "The Big Invisible is just a legend. A story that old men like to tell when they're three sheets to the wind."

  "I'm frightened," whispered Margie, her teeth now chattering.

  "Come, come," said Grandma Doyle gently wrapping a third heavy blanket around Margie's shoulder. She squeezed Margie tightly. "Just remember one thing. It's very important: the darkest of all places is where the tiniest ray of light shines the brightest. Do you understand what I'm saying to you?"

  Margie nodded then lay her head down in Grandma Doyle's lap, her eyes rolling into the back of her head. Grandma Doyle looked at her with growing horror. It was clear that Margie was running out of time.

  A loud screech signalled that the scorpion had come to a halt. They had finally arrived at the shore of the Sea of Sorrow. And as they prepared to embark on the next stage of their journey, others too were preparing. In the Darkest of All Places, the darkest of all shadows gathered and lay in wait for the arrival of their unsuspecting prey ...

  The Sea of Sorrow

  Black Adam studied the ship through his periscope.

  It was a tall, narrow clipper called Swiftly, a beautiful ship with three fifteen-storey masts and three square sails on each. From a distance, she looked like a great billowing cloud (even though she was moored in a windless harbour) as though desperately trying to relive her heyday as the world's most fêted tall-ship. She was, however, nothing more than a spectre among the dead for all around her lay the wooden skeletons and the putrefying corpses of boats and ships that had been abandoned, lost and forgotten.

  Black Ad
am shivered. There was something about this ship that made him feel uneasy.

  Thankfully, his part of the story was almost over. He would drop her off at the gateway, collect the bounty, then beat a hasty retreat. What happened to the girl after that was completely out of his control.

  "Wake the girl," he shouted, eager to crack on. "We've arrived."

  Black Adam led Margie through the narrow, dirty streets and alleys which led down to the harbour, while Grandma Doyle followed behind, keeping herself close to the shadows. Something didn't feel right. Everywhere she turned there were signs of life; a half eaten meal, abandoned card games, open doors swinging restlessly. Yet there were no people. The only sound they could hear was the mast of a tall ship creaking in the wind and the faint soft sound of waves.

  It had seemed quite small at first, but as they drew closer it became clear that the boat was in fact enormous ... and in a dismal state of disrepair. A legend in her time, the ship had been built for a ship master called Bob (Rat Run) Roberts who was known for his sharp wit and impetuous spirit. His ambition: to be the fastest ship in the annual tea race. But it was this ambition combined with his fiery temperament that ultimately cost him his life when in June of 1865 he left Shanghai with 1500 tons of tea and never arrived home. Rumours were rife that, driven to drink and madness he sunk the ship in a storm, doggedly refusing to bring down the sails. Others claimed it had been overrun by pirates and subsequently used for smuggling. No one would ever know as no trace of the ship or her crew were ever found.

  Of course, Black Adam knew nothing of this. All he knew was that the ship was right there in the harbour (albeit barely in one piece) and he was one step closer to claiming his reward.

  "Who's that on the boat?" shouted Black Adam as they came within several yards of the vessel.

  "It's not a BOAT, it's not ... a ... BOAT!" screamed the figure angrily, "it's a bloody ship!"

  The man (clearly not a sailor) wore a double breasted frock coat and top hat. His eyes were hidden behind a pair of dark, round glasses. A crudely made leather face mask had been pulled down under his chin, two pipes leading out around his face and into some kind of breathing apparatus on his back. He leaned over from the foremost tip of the hull: