The Collector of Remarkable Stories (4 page)

Margie instantly forgot her fear.

"It's okay. Look." She plastered a ridiculous smile on her face. "What’s your name?"

The Giant shrugged grumpily. "I ain't got a clue. Been so long sin' anyone called me by my name. Most people jus' call me Giant."

"Well that's easy enough to remember," said Margie.

"What's
your
name?" asked The Giant.

It’s a question that Auguste had asked Margie a million times. And each time she had shaken her head despondently. But today, with barely any effort, she absolutely knew the answer. A mental arm had reached into that subconscious fog and pulled out the very essence of who she was ...

"Margie," she replied happily. "My name is Margie ... May ... Langley."

As she basked momentarily in the glow of finally knowing something about herself, she realised she felt something else. Something painful. Something sad. She couldn't quite grasp it. It was just a hair's breadth out of reach but she knew that Auguste wasn't the first person she had lost. And she had a funny feeling he wouldn't be the last.

The Visitor

Margie tried very hard over the next few days to remember more of herself. She had remembered her name. It had come to her the way the answer to a conundrum comes to you in the middle of the night. But she had no recollection of who she was or where she came from. She couldn't remember how old she was, her birthday, where she lived, whether she had any brothers or sisters. It seemed strange to her that she could speak and remember words, yet she had no memory of herself.

The Giant was kind enough to allow Margie to stay in the Butchery with him until they heard from Auguste again. While The Giant chopped meat in the back room, she made a little home for herself under the counter. A pillow to rest her head and a blanket were all she needed. Most important of all were the small rag balls that Margie stuffed up her nose to eliminate the malodour which had rendered her nauseous from day one.

Margie enjoyed watching The Giant. She liked the way he could cross the entire length of the shop in two or three strides, depending how busy he was. What a great thing to be able to do, she thought.

It saddened her, however, that he had to hunch so much on account of the low ceilings and felt sad when she saw him stretching and twisting his shoulders to ease the discomfort.

"Have you always chopped meat?" asked Margie one day.

"Not always."

"So what did you used to do?"

"A bit of this and a bit of that, it ain't none of no one's business" he said as he chopped the head off a pig emphatically.

Margie was intrigued by The Giant’s reluctance to answer her question but she didn't push him. He was sweet and kind, but she'd noticed that his mood could change from one moment to the next. One time Margie pushed open the door to the shop. She wanted to take a little look at the world outside but The Giant had screamed at her to shut the door. It became clear that The Giant had been given strict instructions by Auguste to keep Margie hidden from the outside world and he was vehemently abiding by those instructions. After finding her at the door, The Giant had sulked for several days until, sick of the mood, Margie said: "What did the fish say when it swam into a wall?"

"I ain't never heard of no fish swimming into no walls before."

"Dam! Get it?"

The Giant didn't laugh, but the spell was broken and moments later, The Giant bounded over to Margie. "Look at this," he said showing her how he could touch his right elbow with his right hand. "Bet you can't do that!"

"Bet you I can't," said Margie, pleased to finally have her new friend back.

And so it was that time passed with not very much to report. One day was much like the next: a special knock on the door followed by a delivery of carcasses, many of which Margie couldn't even identify. With nothing else to do but wait for Auguste's return it wasn't long before she knew her primary cuts from her secondary cuts; her sweetbreads from her sweetmeats; her pluck from her lights and most importantly her butcher's knife from her cleaver.

Then one day there came a loud, hard banging at the door. It wasn't a knock they recognised.

The noise rendered Margie and The Giant motionless for what seemed like an age until a voice shouted: "Official business. Open the door."

The Giant motioned for Margie to hide under the counter. "Who is it?" he called out as breezily as his nerves would allow.

"I have an official warrant to search your premises. Open the door."

The Giant froze, clearly terrified. "It's okay," mouthed Margie reassuringly and motioned for him to open the door.

The Giant opened the door a crack and found himself confronted with a huge heavily browed man wearing a lengthy black jacket and the tallest top hat he had ever seen. He had long hair and a beard, which he plaited under his chin. On his back he carried a monstrous looking contraption with all manner of valves and instruments. The device was attached to a heavily armoured arm plate with a great claw on the end, which gave the man the appearance of a lobster. In his claw he held a poster which The Giant couldn't see very well. Next to the lobster man stood a smaller, less intimidating character with white skin and hair.

"I ain't seen or done nothing to no one," said Giant.

The man pushed open the door using one foot. The Giant stepped aside nervously as the officious looking creature entered the Butchery with an awkwardly stiff gait. The little white character remained outside, looking left to right.

Once again the lobster man held a poster up in front of The Giant's face.

"Do you know the whereabouts of this man?"

The Giant studied the poster for a moment or two longer than he needed to, then shook his head numbly.

"Are you sure about that?"

The Giant stared up at the ceiling and wiggled his fingers nervously. "I ain't seen him since he went away."

"How long ago was that?"

"He ain't done nothing to no one."

The official looked at the poster. "I didn't say he had. I just want to know where he is."

Peeking through a small crack in the counter side, Margie could see that The Giant's answers were being recorded by the contraption on the official’s back.

"I can see that you're busy, so I won't keep you," said the lobster man. "But just so that you're aware; there is a reward for any information you can provide on his last known movements."

"What kind of reward?"

"Anything you want," said the official. "Anything that your heart desires." He said the last bit pointedly, like he knew something about The Giant that he barely knew himself.

The Giant turned his back on the official. It was clear that he was fighting something within himself. A temptation.

"I tell you what, Giant, I will leave this poster here and you can have a think about it."

The lobster man dropped the poster on the floor next to Giant's feet. "Oh, and if you have information on the girl too I will personally see to it that you are reunited with your Siamese freaks.

The Giant spun around. "You're a liar!"

But the man had gone.

The Giant slammed his fists into his temples and howled like a wounded animal before collapsing to the floor.

Margie crept out of her hiding place and upon seeing that the coast was clear, hurried over to where The Giant was sobbing in a great helpless heap.

"What is it?" cried Margie, "why are you crying?"

But The Giant was unable to answer her.

"What did he mean by Siamese freaks?" asked Margie.

"I don't want to talk about it."

Margie spotted the poster and her chest tightened. Snatching it up she studied it for what seemed like an age. It was the first time she had seen what happened on the day of her accident. The image, clearly taken from the window of a nearby building showed the Gravitonius lying on its side; a crowd of people; Auguste and a young woman lying on the cobbled street looking half dead. Her hair was wet and strewn across her face whilst her broken body lay at an awkward angle. Margie was suddenly overwhelmed with sadness, not just because of the image of Auguste, but because she hadn’t realized quite how serious her accident had been. The Gravitonius was huge. At least eighteen feet tall and forty feet long, and surely weighing several tonnes.

Written across the top of the poster was the word WANTED. And beneath that, the word REWARD OFFERED.

The Giant shook his head. " It ain't right. You gotta watch your back. Sooner or later they'll be back and they ain't gonna be so friendly next time."

"Who
are
those people?"

"We call 'em Feelers. They get money for finding people for those in power."

"Bounty hunters?"

"Something like that."

Together the two of them sat side by side, each lost in their own bubble of sadness until Margie eventually broke the silence.

"Giant. What do you know about Auguste?"

The Giant beamed. He knew a lot about Auguste. Everything in fact. And he was only too happy to share this knowledge with his new found friend.

"He ran the Emporium next door selling everything. There were nothing he didn't have. Nothing. People came from all over the city and all sorts because they knew they could find what they needed at the Emporium. Not only that, Auguste were a genius. Could make anything from other peoples' rubbish – robots, houses, statues ... People paid money to come and see them and there weren't a question on how to build things that he didn' have an answer for. See, that were his downfall. When Torquere took over the running of Limbuss, he forced him to build them Dog Beasts, an army of mechanical dogs that terrorise everyone in Limbuss. It were the ruin of him. People found out he were the one what had created them and stopped coming to him. The Emporium suffered. He ended up hiding himself away. He locked himself away in the Emporium and started collecting, collecting, collecting. He wandered the streets collecting old bits of metal and junk. Stuff he thought one day someone might need. But no one ever did."

"Why are they looking for him?"

The Giant shrugged "cause of you?"

Margie looked at the poster again. What
was
that? She studied the poster closer then shrieked with excitement. "Giant,
look!"
The Giant studied the poster.

"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 from 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.