Page 76 of The Society of Unknowable Objects
“I don’t know why you aren’t being nice to me,” Lukas complained, his voice a whine again. “Imelda always said nice things about you.”
“You shut up!” Magda screamed through her tears, gathering herself and getting to her feet again. “Shut up about my mother!”
“Would you like to see her again?” Lukas asked, tilting his head.
Magda stared, her mouth open but empty of words. Lukas closed his eyes for a moment, his whole body still hanging in the air where Magda held him. “Just for a moment,” he said, almost a tease.
“Shut up!” Magda wailed again, her voice cracking. She had never felt so alone, so unsure of herself, sofrightened.She wanted Henry and James, she wanted Frank.
It’s too much, all of it. Magic was supposed to be exciting and an adventure... but not this... not like this!
Beyond Lukas, in the shadows beneath the trees at the edge of the woods, a figure sat up. A woman. Naked, grey hair. She stared straight ahead for a moment, and then turned her face towards Magda.
Magda’s concentration burst like an overinflated balloon, all of her attention on this figure who had appeared from nowhere.
“Mum?” Magda gasped, as Lukas, now freed from her control, dropped clumsily to the road.
There was no recognition on the woman’s face as she stared back at Magda, just blank eyes and slack features.
Then the resurrected Imelda turned her head a little further and saw Lukas, as he bent at the waist to pick up the chess piece. He returned it to the bag and, as he did so, Imelda’s face crumpled in fury and pain, becoming shockingly ugly in a single moment. Magda watched in slack-jawed horror and disbelief as her mother jumped to her feet with the screech of a wild animal and ran at Lukas, both arms thrown out in front of her. She roared, her mouth wide open and teeth and saliva showing. Lukas did nothing, he let her come, until she slammed into him and they both fell to the ground.
“Mum!” Magda yelled, dashing forward, but Imelda’s head snapped up ferociously, alien eyes and a sneer directed at Magda, a warning and a knife in her heart. Magda shuddered to a halt, and the thing that had been her mother dropped her face again to maul Lukas like an animal, biting at his neck and clawing his chest.
“Mum!” Magda wailed, tears raining from her eyes. She dropped to her knees once again, all strength and sense scattering like startled birds. The resurrected thing that had been her mother, was her mother no more, and Magda was alone in the darkness.
The Society, Scattered
In the ground, beneath Alabama
In the darkness under the ground, Henrietta Wiseman was the ghost. She swam through the mud and the roots and the burrowing insects and worms in search of a man who had been eaten by the world. There was no light, but Henrietta could sense the different types of matter, the things moving and the things not, the living and the dead, and it was like different flavours or smells, discernible even if not always identifiable. She could feel the age of the earth as she travelled, the great immensity of time and age in the rocks and the mud, the cold indifference to the passing matters of a living being, these momentary blinks of energy in the endless eternity. It was doing something to her, Henrietta knew, something she had resisted and sought to ignore in the past. Being intermingled with these substances was leaving a mark on her. She could feel it now, a hand on her back, a mark of association.We havemixed together. You know us.
These thoughts played through her mind as she searched in the darkness, reaching out with her hands, trying tofeelJames Wei. She hoped he was still alive; she hoped his magical pill was somehow protecting him even though she didn’t know how it could. She wondered what would be worse: to have been snuffed out instantly by the ground slamming together, or to be trapped and alive in the darkness, unable to move and to escape. That would be worse, surely?
She kept moving, wondering now if it would be better to find James dead rather than alive.
***
In the darkness at the edge of Masters, Alabama
The thing that had once been Imelda Sparks was thrown off by the man and pushed backwards towards the trees. She stood for a moment, staring at the man, hating him but not remembering why. He had a flower in his hand now, although the thing that had been Imelda didn’t really remember the word “flower.” She didn’t remember many words. The man lowered his head slightly, staring at her from beneath his brows, and suddenly something grabbed her around the waist, something thick and moving and from out of the woods behind her. She looked down and saw it curling around her, and if she’d still had the words she would have known that this was a vine. It curled around her neck to strangle her and the thing that had been Imelda remembered that she had died this way before, more than once, strangled back out of existence.
The vine dragged her down onto the ground and back into the woods, away from the bright lights and the noise and the man.
She was trapped, on her back and gripped and pressed and strangled by the vine. Life left her slowly, like a mountaineer clinging stubbornly to an impassable rock face, and various thoughts tumbled through the pain and agony that was Imelda’s mind as the light dimmed.
There were images from her life before, the adventures and the joy, even though she didn’t remember the feeling of being truly alive. These were just still photos on a wall in a dark room, colours she saw but didn’t understand. These images were sudden bursts of sunlight in her screaming, dark mind, but they were not enough to fix her.
She remembered how it felt to have been brought back, to be alive when she should not, that incrediblewrongnessdeep within her, the sense that something fundamental was out of place and could never be put right, a jigsaw puzzle forced together with pieces in the wrong places. It couldn’t be fixed, not while she remained alive.
She remembered dying and then being brought back again, and thenthe odd, tanned man, the demon that had tormented her. Dying and coming back. Dying and coming back.
And then she remembered the woman, as she had tried to kill the man, the woman with red hair who had tried to get in her way. The thing that had been Imelda hated and was furious at that woman, but a different, deeper, less damaged part of her knew that this was wrong and tried to remember who the red-haired woman was.
But then her thoughts slowed and stumbled and stopped entirely, and life was gone from her. Thewrongnessof Imelda’s existence was made right once again.
***
On the road in Masters, Alabama
