The Collector of Remarkable Stories

by E. B. Huffer

  Grandma Doyle and Black Adam shot each other a quizzical look. They didn't need to say anything; they each knew what the other was thinking already.

  Moments later the two of them were hurrying (as fast as their creaky old bones would allow them) towards the noise. As they neared it they slowed down, creeping inch by inch until they could go no further without being seen. The noise coming from the room was both a blessing and a curse. The sheer volume enabled them to move about undetected. But the voice itself was as torturous and emotionally jarring as the sound of a small child screaming for help.

  "We have to stop here," whispered Black Adam just short of the doorway. A small pile of fallen masonry separated them from the room, but as luck would have it two large mirrors in the doorway itself gave them an adequate view of the room and its contents.

  The room itself was filled with mirrors of every size and description. Old mirrors, new mirrors, large ones, small ones, plastic ones, gilt ones, oval ones, square ones, modern ones, antique ones; they covered the room from floor to ceiling. The effect was that of infinite reflections. And in each and every one, the same horrific scene was being played out: a shadowy and terrifying creature with a skeletal face clawing angrily at Margie's lifeless body. It was Auguste, yet talking in deep raspy tones it was clear that he was no mortal soul.

  Realising that Margie and Auguste were only yards away, hidden among a thousand reflections, a cry of surprise escaped from Grandma Doyle's lips. Black Adam slapped his hand over her mouth. "Are you trying to get us killed," he mouthed angrily. Grandma Doyle shook her head. Tears filled her eyes and Black Adam slowly removed his hand. For the next few minutes the two watched as Auguste, his body withered and wiry, cried out hysterically like a mother over a dead child's body.

  "I will find you," he snarled, grasping Margie's face and squeezing it until his arm was shaking. "You will not beat me. Do you think I did all this for nothing? You think you will be able to run from me forever?"

  Filled with a seething rage Auguste picked Margie up in his claw like hands and threw her across the room. Margie's body hit a large mottled antique mirror which instantly shattered.

  The sound of a woman's voice screaming the word 'no' pierced the ensuing silence. It was Grandma Doyle; a fact that startled even her. While Black Adam remained transfixed with horror, his mouth agape, Grandma Doyle marched out from behind the rubble. She had seen enough. Her beard puffed out like a cat's tail, she rolled up her sleeves and clenched her fists. She was ready to fight this creature; the anger fit to explode out of her ears. She could see Auguste and strode purposefully in his direction.

  THWACK. She walked headlong into a mirror.

  This only served to fuel Grandma Doyle's determination. She wanted to confront that beggaring creature that had injured her Margie; she wanted to save the girl and she was prepared to die trying. Stretching out her arms in front she took several steps forward until THWACK. Once again she hit a mirror. This went on for several minutes. Grandma Doyle could see Margie and Auguste, but no matter which way she turned she couldn't get any closer. She simply couldn't pinpoint where they were among the many reflections. To make matters worse, the further she ventured in the more confused she became.

  "Come on, you useless waste of space!" she shouted angrily. "Frightened of a little old lady are you?"

  Auguste was in no mood for fun and games. One second he was there, reflected in every single mirror and the next he was gone.

  Grandma Doyle spun around, her eyes flitting in every direction. Where was he? She stood still. Listening. Then without warming, a large dark shadow fell over her. Filled with adrenaline she yelled, spun around and whacked the creature across the face. It took a few moments for Grandma Doyle to emerge from the red fog of fury, whereupon she found Black Adam on his knees in front of her, cupping his bloodied chin in his hands.

  "Adam!" exclaimed Grandma Doyle. "How did you get here?"

  "The same way you did you daft old cow," mumbled Black Adam, clearly in some pain.

  "But how ..."

  "Your fingerprints," said Black Adam, "they're all over the mirrors."

  "Yes," said Grandma Doyle, "but why didn't I see your reflection?"

  Black Adam stood up and fixed Grandma Doyle with a perplexed expression. "Well, I could see you."

  "Well I couldn't' see you," she replied, wondering what else she couldn't see. But there was something else worrying her. She might not be able to see Auguste but she could hear his growl - low and ominous - and it was getting louder. Was she getting closer to him, she wondered, or was he getting closer to her?

  She would never find out because all of a sudden there was a loud crack and a small flash of light in the ceiling towards the centre of the room. "Short circuit," said Black Adam shakily. But seconds later there came a second larger flash followed by a deafening boom. The room shuddered. Mirrors smashed and piles of junk collapsed to the ground.

  Darkness descended.

  When Grandma Doyle and Black Adam finally came round, they found themselves on the other side of the room covered in a blanket of dirt and debris. How long they had been there, they had no idea. The room looked completely different, like an explosion had occurred and razed everything to the ground. Coughing and blinking the dust out of their eyes, they pulled themselves out of the rubble. Immediately Grandma Doyle's thoughts turned to Margie. Where was she? Was she okay? Was she buried beneath a mountain of glass? She called out Margie's name, but no sound returned except the echo of her own voice.

  Grandma Doyle tried to stand up, but as she brushed the dust off her clothes, she noticed it being sucked away as if being caught on a breeze. Looking up, she saw that the air in the centre of the room was beginning to form a small twister that grew faster and bigger until it was a vertical rip-tide of energy streaming up from the ground beneath them. And as the energy grew, so did the noise.

  "Do you hear it?" cried Grandma Doyle, her eyes suddenly filling with tears. "It's the Stories, listen. The Collector is back!"

  Black Adam looked at Grandma Doyle blankly for a moment. It was just a cacophony of white noise to him at first. But then he heard it too and for the first time in a long time, he cried. It was the sound of millions of people being released from their bondage; laughing and crying as they were enveloped, finally, in the light of love.

  Together Grandma Doyle and Black Adam basked in the halo of weightlessness, serenity, security and warmth and watched in awe and amazement as the stories, like feathers, swirled upwards in a great white tornado. What they were witnessing was something extraordinary; something that they would never see again. Just like the hug they gave each other in one rapturous moment.

  As the initial rush subsided, an unearthly howl brought them both crashing back to reality. It was the harrowing scream of a creature in distress. And Auguste was in distress. Everything he had been working towards was falling apart. The souls; the stories that he had boxed up and hidden away for seven decades had been released. Only one person could have done that and it definitely wasn't Margie. The toad was right. She was not who he thought she was. She was not the Collector. Which meant the real Collector was still out there, plotting to destroy him and everything he had striven for.

  Black with rage and despair, Auguste's entire body began to change until it had become as twisted and contorted as his soul. Black Adam and Grandma Doyle could only watch in horror as Auguste snatched Margie between his razor sharp teeth and scuttled off up the wall and across the ceiling before disappearing into the darkness.

  A long time later, discarded and forgotten like a piece of rubbish, Margie awoke. It was pitch black. Empty. Lonely. Silent. And it was here, in this Hell, that she had her final memory.

  The Final Memory

  It was the middle of January. Ten thirty in the morning. A flurry of snow had just fallen, leaving the churchyard blanketed in an oppressive shroud, the cold, white cloak of Death itself. A group of mourners stood huddled together, pulling their coats tight
against the bitter chill, stamping their feet and shivering violently. Before them lay an empty grave, a simple white coffin sitting neatly beside it; patiently awaiting its final resting place. The muffled silence punctuated only by the harsh caw of a nearby crow.

  At first the mourners didn't notice the strange old lady nearby. They assumed she was just a visitor. Someone come to pay their respects; to lay some flowers and chat about the week's events to a lost loved one, silently listening from six feet under. But something niggled.

  The icy winds coming in from Russia cut like a knife, yet the old woman wore nothing more than a scruffy cardigan over her once-jovial dress. No overcoat, no hat, no scarf.

  "My oh my," exclaimed one mourner quietly, pointing at Margie. "She must be half frozen to death."

  The pastor commenced his service: "Death reminds us that we live in a fallen, imperfect world ... we are reminded of mankind’s failings, flaws, and limitations ..."

  "Well, she's in the right place," murmured another.

  "Do you think she's okay?" whispered a third. "She's not moving much."

  All of them studied the old woman intently, their view partly obscured by thick clouds of boastful breath vapour, and the snowflakes which danced before them like little ghosts, tickling their eye-lashes and noses in an apparent attempt to distract them.

  The old woman studied them back, like a chimp studying a human studying a chimp, then with a burst of maniacal laughter, lifted her skirt over her head.

  The mourners gasped. One fainted. And another vomited. For the old woman was entirely denuded from the waist down (barring a pair of thick woolly socks and a pair of tatty old boots).

  "Behold," cried the pastor, completely oblivious to the naked septuagenarian, "I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed ..."

  The old woman dropped her skirt and this time bared her teeth whilst growling and barking at the congregation.

  "She just ain't right," said one of the mourners.

  "She's a stark raving lunatic," spat another.

  "Squirrel food," said a third.

  Now, it just so happened that the old woman had an ally in the form of a grave digger called Lennie. Lennie had been watching this particular burial from a respectable distance, for it was his job to get the hole filled back in as quickly as possible.

  He was used to seeing the old bag lady. And he was used to her strange ways. Hell, he wasn't exactly the full shilling himself. And his own grandmother had succumbed to the madness, imprisoned in a home filled with dribbling old ladies that smelt of cabbage. He hated everything about the nursing home. The faux leather chairs. The sycophantic nurses with their £7-per-hour smiles. The smell of shit, mash and polo mints.

  Lennie had dreamt of stealing her away from it all, and the old bag lady was the living embodiment of this dream. She represented the freedom he'd wished for his beloved Nana.

  It was against council policy to allow people to sleep in the cemetery, but Lennie felt sorry for her. He often wondered (for his job was quite a lonely and boring one) what her life had been like. What had brought her to this place. What had spiralled her into the madness. As long as she wasn't being a nuisance or damaging church property, then Lennie was willing to turn a blind eye.

  There was something odd about her today though. Something a little bit irritable.

  He had already made a move in her direction before she lifted her skirt. And she was already barking by the time he reached her. He motioned for the congregation that he had the situation under control.

  "Margie, Margie, Margie," he soothed. But today, for some reason, Lennie was a red rag to the bull. Without warning, Margie started screaming like a woman possessed, her arms and legs thrashing about violently in all directions.

  "Shh, shh, shhhhh," he urged, holding her firmly by the left elbow. But Margie was having none of it. She began lashing out and spitting and scratching like an angry drunk.

  Lennie smiled nervously in the direction of the mourners then tightened his grip as Margie fought and struggled and wriggled. "Where in God's name did she get this strength from," he thought. "Calm down," he whispered, "it's okay. It's me. It's Lennie."

  Ignoring the unfolding rumpus, Pastor Norman raised his voice: "Jesus suffered in every way we could ever suffer," he shouted. " And He also is sympathetic with our weakness."

  Margie pulled away from Lennie and, in the blink of an eye, once again exposed her seventy-two year old tutu to all and sundry. And that's when it happened.

  Margie peed. Right there on Arthur Ormondroyd's grave. And for miles around, there was no other sound. No sermon. No crows. No howling wind. Just the sound of warm urine pouring forth and hitting the cold snow. The mourners, the pastor and the crow stared on in utter disbelief as steam rose from the snow between Margie's legs and a large yellow stain appeared.

  The silence was broken only by the sound of a mourner's scream!

  Incensed they started shouting.

  "Who is she?"cried one.

  "It's an outrage," cried another.

  "Someone call the police," cried another.

  "There's a phone in the Chapel office," cried the pastor.

  Moments later a siren wailed in the distance.

  Margie, having finished her wee, looked at Lennie who in turn looked at her. For the longest time their eyes spoke to each other and in a rare moment of clarity, she understood what Lennie was willing her to do. He wanted her to run. He didn't want her to be picked up like a stray dog and taken to some shelter where they would put a time limit on her life. He wanted her madness, her anger and her fire, to endure. To live to tell the tale. He couldn't say it to her. His conscience was telling him to report her to Social Services. She could die of exposure and he would never forgive himself. He could say it out loud. But he knew she knew. She knew he would be there when she returned. If she returned. She had a funny feeling about today. Maybe that's why she was feeling a little bit antsy. She put it to the back of her mind for now. She didn't want the police to find her. She hated the police. They had let her down before. She didn't care what others thought of her. The more they stayed away from her, the better.

  She picked up her bags and ran. Down the hill, out of the church yard, down the lane and up the road towards the train station.

  Already the snow had started falling again, more heavily now. But Margie ran on.

  Moments later, Margie was lying in the road, a couple of yards ahead of a large, red, double-decker bus. The driver of the bus, a tall slender man with a 1950s teddy boy quiff, was drawing heavily on a cigarette and shivering through shock and cold. "I didn' see her guv. Just come out of nowhere she did. Out of nowhere."

  "Is she dead?" asked a passerby.

  "Dead as a dodo."

  "It's a shame that disgusting smell didn't die with her," said the passerby turning up his nose at the stench.

  "Ah, it could have been worse," said a police officer. "She was a handful alright."

  "One less nutter on the street."

  And together they laughed.

  *****

  Back in the darkness, Margie could see the image in her head, as though she was floating over the body. She could see the old woman's face. The bags. The old lady's hands. And then she saw it. The bag. The tatty leather holdall. The one she had been carrying when she arrived in Limbuss. Her chest tightened. Her stomach did a flip. The bag lay open on the side of the road, its contents spilled out for all to see and what Margie saw was like a kick in the gut.

  The bag contained nothing but empty carrier bags. Hundreds of them.

  A gust of wind snatched one of the bags and dragged it into the sky, whipping it about this way and that. Agitated. Restless. Anxious. A passerby attempted to grab the bag as it stumbled past him tantalizingly close. But it ducked and dived away. The bag had succeeded in its bid for freedom.

  The Wanderer Returns

  In the beginning, Margie spent most of her time weeping. She wept for the people she ha
d lost and the life she had lost. She wept for her mother and father. She wept for Archie and The Giant. She wept for the pain she felt and the empty bag. Eventually she forgot what she was weeping for. She wept because she pretty much felt like it. The Beast of Loneliness hounded her relentlessly and she would often wake in panic, overwhelmed by the silence and the loneliness. And then she began to believe that perhaps she deserved no less. That the world (and indeed the universe) was better off without her. She couldn't figure out where the darkness inside her ended and the darkness on the outside began.

  Time passed. Margie stopped weeping and started rocking. She started banging her head against her knees and pinching great bloody holes in her skin. Tormented by Hellish visions of Auguste and Spider Beast, she ripped all her teeth out one by one. She tore all her clothes off. And pulled all her hair out. The muscles in her body had seized up long ago imprisoning her in her own immobile body, her hands like claws and her nails like talons.

  And then she simply gave up. She no longer allowed herself to exist. She went to sleep. And one year turned into a million years ... or so it seemed ... until one day something a little bit odd happened. A tiny, infinitesimal glimmer of light, a mere pinprick made thousands of miles away, broke through the darkness like a great shard, piercing through the desiccated remains of Margie like a spear.

  Margie's body was there, but Margie was somewhere far, far away. As the light cut its way through to the outer core, it roused something deep within her. Slowly, slowly the young woman fought her way through the fog then chipped away at the inside of the shell until she broke free.

  Margie shielded her eyes as from the light which shone brighter than the sun. As her eyes adjusted Margie found herself looking at a herself. Exactly herself. Like a mirror image. Only the new Margie was surrounded by a halo of light.