I walked into town with Jerry – myself to stop and the bank and hardware store, and him to find a pub that he might abuse for the remainder of the day. “All this business with the police,” he said in his low rumbldy voice, “it’s enough to drive even an honest businessman such as myself to drink.”

Jerry had been a been a bouncer and a bodyguard when he had been employed by the Guild of Disreputable Fellows. He was, primarily, a bodyguard still, however since having taken up employment with the Guild of Cartographers, he liked to describe his work as being more “honest”, more “businesslike”. As with many things that Jerry said, it was not readily apparent how much of this was done in complete seriousness, and how much was an expression of his own dry sense of humor.

I walked back home alone, my hands in my pockets, my fingertips feeling the contours of the padlock that I had purchased. I had very pointedly not looked at it yet, not let even the slightest hint of my gaze fall upon its shape and structure. It is only my eyes that perceive everything as a conglomeration of mathematical expressions, not the pads of my fingers. I have always found it wonderfully surreal to become familiar with an object before allowing myself to look upon it and see the raw numbers from which it is composed.

I was three hundred seventy seven feet from the old house when I heard Impossibilia’s cry, high and shrill like the yelp of an injured dog. I broke into a run, racing all the way back, fearing that she was being assailed by some unknown attacker meaning to cause her injury or worse. What I found instead almost made me laugh out of relief – though I was able to control myself for the poor girl’s benefit. Better not to leave her thinking that she was being mocked in her panicked state.

Mrs. Hurchur had been doing so very well that morning, but her bouts of lucidity have always been temporary – ephemeral at best. She had backed Impossibilia into one of the concave corners of the old house’s exterior, murmuring to herself and knotting her hands together as she did so. “All the king’s horses and all the king’s men,” she whispered under her breath, over and over.

I caught her by the elbow, then with my other hand, caught her chin and ever so gently turned her to face me. “It’s all right, Mrs. Hurchur,” I cooed, as calmingly as I could, “Let’s get you inside, okay?”

“They couldn’t put him back together.” She whispered to me, her big, sad eyes imploring, tear stained.

Impossibilia followed along as I led Mrs. Hurchur away, her face still streaked with tears from what she had perceived to be an attack. “She’s a witch,” She hissed to me, “Why can’t ya’ see it?”

“She’s not a witch,” I whispered placatingly as we mounted the stairs to the front porch, “She’s just an old woman who gets confused. Open spaces can set her off sometimes. They make her…” I couldn’t find the right word, but thankfully Henrietta chose that moment to appear in the front doorway.

“Anxious.” She finished for me, “Is she alright?”

“She’ll be fine, ” I reassured, “She’s just a little confused.”

“I meant Impossibilia.” Henrietta clarified flippantly, her tone expressing vague and mild annoyance.

“Couldn’t put him back together…” Mrs. Hurchur whispered. “…He was lost.”

“There, there,” I told her, “Only two more flights of stairs to go.”

The four of us made for a rather awkward procession, winding our way up and through the house with Henrietta and Impossibilia arguing in hushed tones over whether or not Mrs. Hurchur was a witch, and myself continuing to coo soft reassurances into the old woman’s ears. We had just arrived at the top of the stairs, the closet door at the end of the hallway was in sight, when Mrs. Hurchur stopped abruptly and looked up at me. “I remember now,” she said, looking into my eyes, “It was me! *I* was the one who put him back together!” I thought for a brief moment that we might have to struggle in order to get her into the closet, but she simply smiled and started making a happy buzzing noise before allowing me to continue guiding her along.

Henrietta was explaining the logic behind the using closet to the younger girl. “It calms her down,” she said, “being there in a space where she can see and touch all the boundaries of her world. It makes her feel safe.”

We stopped in front of the door, and as I went to open it, Mrs. Hurchur again turned to look up at me. “They want to talk to you, you know.”

I held the door for her and helped her sit down on the chair inside. “Who might that be?” I asked as I began to light the candles that were waiting upon the shelves.

“The words in the jar,” She answered, “They’ve been wanting to tell you something all morning. So insistent.” I turned back to smile at her, happy to hear that the clarity of her speech was improving already, even though (I thought at the time) the content was still muddled and nonsensical. But the smile fell from my face when I saw what she was pulling forth from beneath the chair. Impossibilia gasped when she saw it as well.

It was a mason jar with a metal lid, full to the very top with the tiny bodies of hundreds of dead bees.

I felt panicked. Just the sight of them and the thought of where they had come from made my heart immediately begin to race. I wanted to reach out – to stop her from opening the lid – but my hands would not move. I wanted to run, but my feet were rooted to the spot.

Her hands gave the lid a quick twist, and then began to shake the contents out onto the floor. In retrospect, I’m sure that the sound was barely audible, but at that moment, the noise of those hundreds of winged and lifeless bodies hitting the wood grain seemed to echo in my ears like the crashing of boulders. But the sound was not the worst part – it was how they landed, the way their bodies arranged themselves as they fell, not in heaps and disorganized piles, but into letters of the alphabet. Into words.

“She was dead before you pulled the trigger.” they said.

I couldn’t breathe. I tried to gasp and choke, I tried to run, but my body was having none of it – my force of will was not strong enough. Some ancient and primitive mechanism hardwired into the genetics of my ancestors eons past had left me paralyzed with fear, unable to move even an inch from where I stood. I tried to scream, but managed only to let out a faint gurgle.

Henrietta stared, open-mouthed. Impossibilia shook, cowering behind her whining out the words, “What does it say?”

And in the middle of it all, Mrs. Hurchur was perfectly calm, a dissatisfied look upon her face. “No…” she whispered, perhaps to the words that she had spilled out onto the floor, perhaps just to herself, “That’s not right.” She reached down and swished her hand amongst the lifeless bodies, and when she pulled away, I saw that they had rearranged themselves into new words. She turned to smile up at me. “You see!” she said, “It will be alright.”

“But you can still save her.” the words said.

And then, as if a key had been turned, my muscles unlocked and I ran blindly from the closet, too terrified to stop myself from knocking the girls aside as I fled.