Page 46 of The Society of Unknowable Objects
And then there was a grunt and a cough of air expelled from lungs,and the heavy shape that was on top of her fell away and Magda could breathe again.
She heard scuffling, another grunt, and bodies knocking into one of the shelves, books tumbling to the floor. A moment later the door to the street rattled open and there was a rapid beat of footsteps as someone fled into the dark evening.
Magda stumbled to her feet, leaning on the wall to steady herself, and then made her way over to the desk where Frank normally sat. She fumbled for the table lamp and turned it on, spilling warm, soft light into the room.
There was another figure there, pulling himself up from the floor, a hand to his head. Then he turned around, and Magda’s mouth fell open as the world no longer made sense.
“What?” she asked the universe.
A dead man was looking back at her.
“Tried to help,” James Wei said, smiling apologetically. He showed her the book he was holding, a hardback edition ofThe Crash Protocolby Miranda Hepworth, Magda’s third published novel.
Not my best book.
Magda dashed over and jumped up to throw her arms around James’s neck, feeling the breadth of his chest, the muscles in his shoulders. “I thought you were dead!” she exclaimed into his ear, great waves of relief and happiness and joy washing over her. “I thought you were dead!”
She felt him hug her back, tentatively at first, but then more firmly, and then they released each other, Magda staring at James, not yet ready to believe that she wasn’t hallucinating.
“Erm... sorry,” James said, glancing away, and Magda wasn’t sure what he was apologising for. “I thumped him on the face with this,” he said, showing her the book and rubbing the back of his head at the same time. “I really ought to make a joke about the pen being mightier than the sword but I’m not sure now is the right time.”
“How are you here?” Magda demanded, staring at him, not wanting to look away in case he disappeared again. “You’re dead!”
James nodded. “Yes... about that.” He tried to smile, and Magda thought that smile was an attempt at an apology. “There’s a story there.”
“Is the man with the gun gone?” Henrietta asked, appearing through the wall from the side of the shop, walking though brick as if it weren’t there.
James started in surprise at her sudden appearance.
“Henrietta!” Magda exclaimed.
“She walked through the wall,” James observed, his voice quiet.
Henry looked James up and down quickly. “I’m intangible. I can walk through walls.” Then, to Magda, “Who’s this?”
“Tell me you have Frank,” Magda demanded, darting over to the other woman, grabbing her arm.
Henry nodded. “I ghosted and pulled him through the wall. I came back for you, but you were gone.”
“Where is he?” Magda demanded, terrified that maybe Frank was dead or dying.
“He’s outside.” Henry said, lifting two hands to Magda in a calming gesture. “He’s okay. But we should get a taxi and get him to hospital. Assuming, of course, that the barbarian with the gun isn’t outside waiting for us.”
“And the box?” Magda demanded. “Do you have that?”
“What?” Henrietta asked, not understanding.
Magda rushed down the stairs to the basement, scanning the room. Both the Impossible Box and the chess piece were gone.
“He took them,” she wailed. “He took the Society’s collection.”
The Death of Dennis Wei and the Life of James Wei (2007–2025)
James Wei had lived to adulthood because his father had loved a man. This was a truth that James had only come to realise in the months before his father’s death in 2007, when they had spent some time together reflecting on James’s difficult childhood.
“You were such a sick child,” James’s father, Dennis, had said one evening, as he lay in his bed in their small condominium in Kennedy Town, on the west side of Hong Kong Island. James had brought his father some soft tofu pudding, but the meal remained untouched. His father rarely ate at all anymore, and while he had always been a slim man, he was now gaunt, jaundice turning the whites of his eyes as yellow as old newspaper.
“I remember,” James had admitted, sitting at the side of his father’s bed, next to the window. He could turn his head and see down twelve floors to the cluttered streets below, but he resisted. He watched his father’s face, as difficult as that was, the chill of the air-conditioning on the back of his neck.
