Page 74 of The Society of Unknowable Objects
Before she could process that realisation, sudden, bright light shattered the darkness, erupting into the world from behind Lukas. Magda flinched away as a beast-like roar filled her ears. Shadows danced around her, moving with the light, and Magda was frozen to the spot.
“Car!” James shouted next to her, and Magda gaped as the speeding vehicle careered towards them.
This Is Magic
Magda felt James’s strong hands push her roughly across the road. She landed on the tarmac, on her side, breath punched out of her, and watched in horror as the car that had appeared out of the darkness careered into Lukas, knocking him flying, head over feet. The car didn’t stop, speeding onwards and straight through the motionless Henry as if she wasn’t there, and then directly at James, standing where Magda had been moments earlier.
Magda heard herself screaming as the car ploughed straight into James, carrying him backwards, his shocked face lit up vividly from below by the headlights. Then the car thumped up against the kerb and James bounced off sideways and rolled away. The vehicle crunched into one of the gas pumps, knocking it over, and then finally came to a stop nose-first in the side of the Gas and Go, directly below theIce ColdCoca-Cola Here!sign. Then all movement stopped—the car, the shadows—and James was face down on the asphalt.
The car door opened. A man tumbled out onto all fours, then pulled himself up on the car frame with one arm, the other arm held across his torso. He lifted his face to Magda and she saw that it was Owen Maddox, with his ice-blue eyes and pale skin.
“You,” he spat, glaring at Magda and sneering.
There was movement away from the car, and Magda saw Lukas standing up and brushing himself down.
That’s impossible. The car must have hit him at fifty miles an hour.
He still wore the bag, and as Magda watched he bent to retrieve something from the ground—the chess piece, she thought, even though she couldn’t really make it out—and then he turned his eyes towards the vehicle and Owen Maddox. “Oh,” he said. “He’s come back.”
“I am going to kill fucking everyone!” Owen bellowed. He reached into the car and pulled out a gun. Magda scrambled to her feet, glancing quickly at James’s prone body.
He’ll be alright. He survived a bullet, he can survive a car, right?
Henry was suddenly beside her, holding her, and Magda felt that same queer sensation of cold passing over her at the same time as two gunshots cracked the night air.
Henry smiled at her. “Ghosted you, dear.”
“Are you okay?” Magda asked, looking Henry up and down.
Henry shook her head, dismissing the question. “Fine. Just couldn’t move until the car hit our new friend.”
There was another gunshot, this one muffled, and Magda looked towards the car to see that James was back on his feet, seemingly entirely unhurt by the collision. He was wrestling with Owen, the two men pressed up against the body of the car, arms up, Owen roaring in fury.
Beyond the melee Magda saw people emerging from buildings down the street in Masters, drawn by the screams and the gunshots. She saw Annie and the boy at the door to the diner, a man on his porch on the other side of the street, all of them staring up towards the noise. Owen fired another wild shot and the people scattered, fleeing back inside.
Wehave tokeep this away from them. What would Owen do to them? Or this strange man?
“I’m going to fucking kill you!” Owen shouted at James, each word pushed out between gritted teeth. He was a vicious animal, hurt and cornered.
Magda saw James tense and lift, turning at the hips to drop Owen to the ground beneath him. The gun skidded and slid across the road, out of his reach.
“Stay down!” James demanded, his smooth voice suddenly booming and authoritative.
“Stay here,” Henry said. “I’ll go help.”
Before Magda could stop her Henry scampered away.
“I don’t like that man.”
Magda yelped and turned on the spot to see Lukas standing right behind her.
“He tried to kill me before,” Lukas said, his eyes fixed on the two men wrestling on the ground. Magda watched him, feeling that same uneasy, unsettled nausea again.
What is it about this man? Why does he make me feel this way?
Lukas met her eyes. “He said he would bury me and leave me in the ground.”
Magda followed Lukas’s gaze down to his hand. He opened his fingers to reveal a gold coin lying in his palm.
