Page 63 of The Society of Unknowable Objects
The Dead Reckoning
The man looked exactly as Owen remembered, but in the bright afternoon sunlight all of his features were more clearly visible: his weather-beaten face and crumpled, dirty clothes, the old baseball cap on his head and the crucifix on a chain against his chest, glinting where it caught the sun. He was still carrying the same bag, hanging from a strap across his chest, and he looked at Owen with the same guileless expression that had been on his face five years earlier at River House.
Studying the man closely, Owen felt a throbbing behind his eyes, a pain that appeared suddenly and was immediately distracting.
The man stepped out of the doorway and down the steps to the ground, flowers around his shins.
“Stay where you are,” Owen ordered, lifting the gun again. As he sighted down the barrel, the pain behind his eyes seemed to intensify, like someone in an upstairs apartment suddenly cranking up the volume of the stereo.
The man stopped where he was, watching Owen with wide eyes.
“I can see your wings,” he said. His voice was higher pitched than Owen remembered, slightly pinched and nasal. “I remember them from when I saw you. You still have lots of colours in your wings.”
Owen blinked away the pain and tried to ignore the annoying tug of the backpack straps on his shoulders. The stranger’s eyes were rovingaround above and to the side of him, drinking in the sight of Owen’s wings.
“You have my flask,” Owen shouted. “I’ve come to take it back.”
“I don’t have any wings,” the man said. He tilted his head and asked, “Why don’t I have any wings?”
Owen didn’t know how to answer so he said nothing, clenching his teeth against the headache and trying to construct a coherent plan of action. A shadow passed over, a bird high above, and it cawed at them. Owen wondered if it was the same bird that had called to him back on the road. He wondered if the bird was trying to warn him, telling him to turn and run away.
“What did you do here?” Owen asked, because he wanted to know about the plants, about the nightmare that surrounded him. “What is this place?”
The man turned his head, to the left and then back to the right, his face without expression. “I like plants,” he answered, dropping his eyes to the flowers at his feet. “I used the blue flower.” He reached into the bag at his side and removed a single blue flower. “I grow plants and trees that I like.” The man’s lips spread into a smile, but his eyes were flat and emotionless. “The flowers and the trees aren’t scared of me. Everyone has always been scared of me. They don’t like me near.” He returned the blue flower to his bag and then bent at the knees to pluck one of the blooms at his feet. As he lifted it the garish pink colour faded out of the petals, and the plant wilted visibly in the man’s hand. Owen blinked, trying to clear his eyes. “I like the colours,” the man continued. “I don’t have any wings, any colours of my own, so I like to make them.” The man met Owen’s gaze again, dropping the hand holding the flower down to his side.
Owen ached at the thought he might see his own butterfly wings again. It had been so long. He wanted his flask. But if he were to succeed, he had to keep his wits about him.
He stole a quick glance back over his shoulder towards the tree that had just tried to grab him. It remained bent over and motionless, like a drunk leaning against a wall.
“Your wings are coloured with all the people you have killed,” theman said, pulling Owen’s attention back to him. He took another step forward. “I can see it. I can see so many things when I drink from the flask.”
“My flask!” Owen shouted, venting fury and fear and pain. “It’s my flask.”
The man absorbed that without expression. Then he asked, “Why do you kill people?”
The question silenced Owen’s mind. Nobody—not even he—had ever asked that question. Why did he kill people? Why did he enjoy it? Was he like this naturally or had something made him this way?
He shook his head quickly, trying to rid himself of this distraction. He felt sweat on his forehead and soaking the rear of his shirt where the backpack pressed against him.
“My name is Lukas,” the man said suddenly. “Just Lukas.” He took another step forward, a few steps away from being able to touch Owen. “Everyone has wings except me.” His voice was suddenly a painful screech in Owen’s ears, like the tines of a fork dragged along a porcelain plate. “Is that why people don’t like to look at me? Because I don’t have wings?”
One more step forward, close enough that Owen could see the pores on the man’s nose. He struggled to maintain his focus, his eyes sliding off to the side like feet on an icy path. The man was rambling nonsense, wasting Owen’s time. So Owen acted, decisively. He fired two bullets directly at the centre of the man’s chest, shots that should have ended his life but seemed only to make him stumble backwards slightly.
“I wish I had wings,” Lukas said, as the echo of the gunshots reverberated around the clearing and into the sky.
It was just like River House all over again, Owen thought, the impossible happening right in front of his own eyes. A man who couldn’t be stopped by a bullet. But that was why he had planned for this second meeting. He had prepared for this.
Plan first, act second, always.
Owen turned his mind to the chess piece in his left hand. He gripped it more tightly and focussed his attention, seeking to halt Lukas in histracks. For an awful moment nothing appeared to be happening. Lukas took another step, but then he stopped where he stood and his lips parted slightly. He was still and silent, frozen like a film paused. Caught! The flowers on all sides shimmered in the breeze, and they were no longer looking at Owen, it seemed; they were just flowers again. No longer intimidating him.
Owen smiled in relief and his gun arm sagged as he felt tension drain out of his body.
“Ha!” he yelled, spittle flying. “That got you, didn’t it?”
He turned on the spot, rubbing his temples with the heels of his hands in an attempt to ease the throbbing pressure. “I’m going to take everything you have,” he muttered, edging close enough to Lukas that he could smell the foul stench of the man’s body odour, sharp and sour and stale all at the same time. “I’m going to take my flask and I’m going to take every other magical trinket you possess.”
Owen could feel the energy being contained by the chess piece. He was aware of Lukas pushing against the restraint, trying to force himself free. “Or maybe you have something that can kill you,” Owen suggested. “Something in that bag, eh?” Owen returned his gun to the holster and used his free hand to take the bag from Lukas, lifting the strap over the man’s head. “Let’s see what you have in here.”
