The Collector of Remarkable Stories (5 page)

The Naked Mud Man

From the second Margie arrived at Brookland's House – the institute for fallen women – the religious sisters insisted that Margie leave any notion of her previous life as a world famous psychic at the front door. "We’ll have none of that hocus pocus here," the Sister in charge had barked on her arrival, "you are never to even think about it again." And with that they prayed. They prayed, day and night, that Margie would never again be cursed with the Devil’s work and their prayers were answered for five years until the day Margie got her first period.

"Mother Superior," whispered Margie after fixing her sanitary towel in place, "why is there a naked mud man in our bath?"

"A naked what?"

"Mud man."

"Ain’t no such thing!" said Mother Superior punching a hole in the dough she was kneading.

"Well there is, and he’s in our bath, and he’s got a penis over ten inches long!"

Now anyone who knew the Mother Superior, knew that when she got angry she was worse than any man or beast. The hairs on the back of her neck would stand on end and she would growl a deep guttural canine growl before baring her teeth in a ferocious display that would send even the toughest man running for his life.

Over the years there had been only a handful of people brave enough to stand up to Mother Superior, and they’d paid for it dearly. At best they were transformed into gibbering idiots, at worse they peed in their pants like infants.

When Malcolm Wilby, the milkman, delivered five pints of milk instead of three pints for five days in a row, Mother Superior gave him such a mauling that his hair turned white overnight and all his milk turned sour.

Today, however, she wasn’t angry. She was furious!

Armed with a bible, a rosary, holy water, salt, oil and several crosses Mother Superior marched into the bathroom uttering the prayer to St Michael: "Most glorious Prince of the Heavenly Armies, Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in our battle against principalities and powers, against the rulers of this world of darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high places..."

At the end of the prayer Mother Superior stopped and listened. To ensure that the prayer had worked she took a deep breath and screamed at the empty bath loud enough for the light bulb to pop. "If I’ve told you once I’ve told you a thousand times: NO MORE HOCUS POCUS!!!"

And that was that!

Except, of course, for the poor unsuspecting mud man who turned out to be //Kabo, a small, wiry African who was simply doing what he’d been instructed to do, and present himself as Margie’s spirit guide.

//Kabo was a highly esteemed member of a tribe of hunter-gatherers. He lived with his eight brothers and sisters, his mother and father, his two grandmothers and two grandfathers and a great, great aunt in a low grass hut on a patch of scrubland in a tiny corner of Botswana.

One of the tribes most revered hunters, //Kabo could chase kudu antelope across the desert for weeks, even months, at a time until his prey simply collapsed and died from exhaustion.

No one and nothing could outrun //Kabo.

Legend had it that one summer, after a particularly vicious drought, members of //Kabo’s family started dropping like the waxen petals of an old Baobab tree. First his aunt. Then his cousin. Then animals seeking water shrivelled up and died. Birds fell out of the sky, charred by the sun’s rays. Plants crumbled into piles of ash and blew away with the nightly breeze. Even the sky seemed to fold in on itself, like an oppressive white supernova, exhausted by the heat of a relentless sun.

//Kabo was usually adept at locating underground sources of water by sense of smell alone, yet even he began to wither.

The rest of his tribe, beaten by the heat, sat still, their dusty, mummified skins camouflaged against the parched desert plateau like termite mounds. All they could do was suppress their appetites by chewing on the pulpy flesh of the xhoba tree. But even that used up their precious, ever-diminishing energy reserves.

In the evening, as the temperatures cooled, the hungry earth groaned and heaved and cracked, swallowing up entire huts. Sometimes //Kabo would hear his neighbours agonised screams as the very earth they revered devoured them like insects.

The Gods, it would seem, had deserted //Kabo‘s people. And no one knew what to do.

Then the xhoba tree perished and the tribe no longer had anything to stifle their fierce hunger pangs. When his mother and sister started sucking the marrow out of their own bones //Kabo picked up his bow and arrow and set off running, the brown, dusty earth stretching for hundreds of miles in every direction.

And he didn’t stop.

He had little choice, for as soon as he stopped running, his feet burned and blistered on the scorched sand. The smell of baked flesh reminded him of the kudu meat that he and his family relished cooking in the ashes of their fire. And the memory spurred him on even faster than before.

As the days and nights passed, //Kabo’s body began to mummify from the outside in. His mouth, nose and ears dried up and fell off. His tongue shrivelled up and clunked against his teeth. And his body flaked and cracked like old papyrus paper.

Just as Death caught wind of //Kabo, so //Kabo caught wind of a herd of eland.

Armed with a sense of smell more powerful than any wild animal, //Kabo tracked the eland, day after day, night after night, through deserts and bushes, mountains and savannahs. Crawling through sand storms on his hands and knees, breathing heavily through desiccated lungs, //Kabo chased the herd for three long months until finally he became very tired and stopped running. Laying in the dust //Kabo saw a flower drifting by on a stream of water, and he reached out for it.

When //Kabo awoke the following morning he was shocked to find over two hundred eland eyes gazing at him from all around. Thinking that he must surely be hallucinating he closed them opened his eyes again.

As it turned out, the beasts were so impressed with //Kabo’s dogged determination, that they had simply surrendered. Just like that.

//Kabo’s tribe could not believe their eyes when he returned several days later, with one hundred and thirteen eland in tow.

The women drummed (using their own shrunken bellies as drums) and the men danced, whirling and whooping themselves into a state of ecstasy.

The relief that spilled out of everyone that morning must have broken something in the atmosphere - either that, or the Gods (like the eland) were exhausted by //Kabo’s defiance - for within hours of //Kabo’s return, the skies had darkened. With a flourish of electricity, the first rainy season for three years poured forth.

Sadly, the world’s greatest hunter would soon fall prey to the world‘s most avaricious hunters. When the white settlers came with their guns, //Kabo was hunted down and slaughtered. And once he was killed, his family were taken away to be slaves.

Three-hundred-years later, //Kabo found himself sitting in Margie’s mother’s bath.

He’d prided himself over the years on many fine accomplishments, from Florence Nightingale to Ghandi and was, in fact, an expert in his field. But he had not anticipated Mother Superior’s explosive reaction. He couldn’t believe he’d finally drawn the short straw.

Of course, Margie never knew anything of the Mud Man’s history, or that he was in fact her spirit guide. All she remembered was that after the Mud Man's brief appearance Mother Superior made her life a living Hell. At her hands, Margie endured a cruel regime that included long periods of prayer and solitary confinement. In her darkest hours she vowed to do everything in her power to ensure that it never happened again.

Her hatred of the dead had begun ... and so had a series of events that would lead to untold catastrophe for hundreds of thousands of innocent souls.

*****

Back in the Emporium Margie tried to make sense of what she was remembering. Had she really been abandoned in such an establishment? This wasn't exactly what she had
hoped
to remember. It didn't matter anyway. Right now she had more exciting things on her mind, like what The Giant would think of her amazing new talent.

The Listening Hands

The Giant had not noticed Margie creeping up on him. He was totally engrossed in butchering a creature that Margie had never seen before. The hairless creature, which hung upside down from an iron hook in the rafters, had the body of a large pig, the head of an ox and the teeth and jaw of a piranha fish. Margie had never seen her gentle Giant chop anything larger than a shank before and felt distinctly unsettled seeing him hack away at such a fearsome looking thing. A tub under the creature served to collect the innards as they fell.

Margie coughed politely feeling very pleased all of a sudden that she had never eaten any of The Giant's meals.

Startled, The Giant spun around, his knife stopping inches from Margie's face. He frowned when he saw her. "You made me jump!"

"What
is
that thing?" asked Margie, unable to take her eyes off the strange mutant beast.

"It ain't nothing for you to worry about!" replied The Giant, clearly tense. "I don't ask no questions when they bring 'em. Jus' do as I'm told."

Margie took the hint. "I need to show you something," she said dropping her sack on the ground.

"I ain't got no time," he muttered as he continued to hack away at the body. It was clear he had done this many times before. His great bulk moved effortlessly and within minutes there was barely anything left of the creature but a bucket full of viscera and a small wooden straw-lined crate filled with shiny red meat.

The Giant lifted up the bucket and in his haste nearly tripped over Margie's sack. As his foot caught the corner of the sack it opened, exposing its contents.

"You ain't allowed to touch those!" he yelled.

"Says who?" asked Margie.

"Auguste. He said it to my face. We ain't allowed to touch that stuff."

"Where is he then?" yelled Margie angrily. "I don't see him! Let him come and tell me to
my
face."

The Giant paced and muttered incoherently under his breath.

"Look," said Margie. "I have something I need to show you. It could be really important."

Margie lifted the rusting cog to her ear. It had given her the most clear and comprehensible message just moments earlier. "Look," she said. "I know this is going to sound really crazy, but it talks to me. Tells me things. Everything does; shoes, plates, toys."

The Giant kicked at some sawdust on the floor. "Looks like we got mice down here," he said absently. "Can't be doin' with no mice. Auguste wouldn't like that neither."

"Are you listening to me Giant? I just wish you could hear it too. Everything talks. It’s like they’re all tuned into radios and I have a receiver in my ear that lets me hear them. I don’t know what any of it means, but it’s true. You have to believe me."

The Giant stood still. Silent. Awkward.

"C’mon, c’mon," she urged the cog, "tell me something."

Margie held the cog out to The Giant. "This cog," she said, as though she was about to announce something amazing, "told me a code earlier; a load of numbers."

The Giant folded his arms.

"Really," protested Margie. " It meant something I just don’t know what."

Margie looked at the cog. "I don’t know why it’s not saying anything now. Let me try one of the others ..."

"Look Margie," said The Giant picking up the hoof of a cow, "this bit of beef is saying ... hang on ... it’s ... yup, it’s definitely saying Moo."

He threw the hoof over his shoulder.

Margie observed The Giant sadly. "You don’t believe me?"

"I ain't never said that. It's just ... you hold a bit of metal to your ear and tell me it’s talking. That's all I'm sayin'."

Without uttering another word Margie gathered together all the bits and bobs she'd collected and headed towards the door. She could understand The Giant’s reaction. She would be sceptical too. She had been initially. It didn't stop her from feeling angry and embarrassed though.

As Margie reached the door The Giant called out to her.

"Here," he said throwing his watch in her direction.

Margie barely caught it, dropping her bag in the process. It made a loud clatter as it hit the ground. The watch was heavy. Several pounds at least.

"What's it telling you?" asked The Giant.

Margie placed the watch to her ear and listened.

"I see a circus. I see lots of tents. I see lots of people. Strange people. People with deformed bodies. I see ugly people; people who can turn themselves inside out; a boy with the face of a dog; a lady with tattoos on her face; a troop of midgets ..."

Margie stopped and looked at The Giant with wide eyes. "I see you."

"How did you do that?" demanded The Giant. Margie had never seen him look so fierce.

"Your watch."

"You liar! You’ve been snooping!"

Margie threw the watch across the floor. "I’ve not been snooping. The watch told me all this stuff. It told me that you have a problem with your front tooth; that you suffer pain with your knees; that you once lost a ring that meant something to you and to this day you're terrified it landed up in a bag of meat scraps that got fed to the pigs ..."

"Enough!" shouted The Giant. "No more."

Margie stared at the floor.

"They was really talking to you then."

"I guess," said Margie sulkily.

"You know what this means?" said The Giant with burgeoning excitement.

Margie shook her head.

"Maybe you
are
the Collector. Maybe Auguste were right all along!"

The Giant clapped his hands together so gleefully that Margie couldn't help but laugh. She didn't know who this Collector person was. Truth be told she didn't much care. The Giant was full of funny ideas that didn't make sense. What was important right now was that The Giant had
believed
her. She liked The Giant a lot. He was a simple person who wore his heart on his sleeve. She liked this; it made things easy. And easy was good. Like all things in Limbuss, she was beginning to feel languidly comfortable with her existence. The search for her bag had long since been abandoned. Instead she passed the time quite happily poking through the Emporium, not really thinking much at all.

What she didn't know was that throughout Limbuss news of the Collector's potential return was creating quite a stir. Everyone wanted a piece of the action and unfortunately this didn't bode well for Margie.