Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

An ancient Ford Model T lies in the center of the field, slowly rusting away. Bare rungs that once held a roof jut nakedly into the cold morning air. Stiff oxidized springs squat forlornly where a driver had once sat; the soft padding long ago dispersed by countless mice and birds. The entire front end of the vehicle is missing, its parts no doubt scavenged to prolong the lives of other vehicles. It looks like the skeleton of some forgotten animal, forever lifeless and condemned to stand as a memorial to what once had been.

“Are you sure this is it?” Sam says.

Her grandfather pokes a finger through what looks like a bullet hole on one of the rocker panels. “How could I forget?”

The town had an eerie stillness about it, a kind of emptiness that cut into Carl more deeply than the chill February breeze. Walking down the street, not a soul stirred: the sidewalks were vacant, the cars were parked and locked, and the store windows were fogged and frosted. Carl knew that the subzero temperatures had forced everyone indoors, but he still felt a kind of grinding uneasiness as he walked along.

A shape appeared at the far end of the block. Carl felt a bit of relief in seeing another soul, and was about to cry out a friendly hello when he noticed something very strange about the other person’s gait.

“Hey, are you all right?” he said. A moment later he gasped—a sound that quickly became a shocked yelp.

Harve shook his head. “No. I won’t. You can’t make me.”

“Why not?”

Harve’s eyes flashed. “I don’t need to explain myself to you!” he shouted, “I don’t owe you anything! I said NO, and I mean it. Now leave me alone.”

“You’re just afraid,” came the reply. “You’re a coward and a weakling.”

“Wrong.” Harve said through clenched teeth. “I despise you–and I’m not going to let you have you the pleasure of seeing me give in.”

“I’ll make you.”

“Good! Go ahead and try. Nothing could be better than spitting in your face when you try to muscle me into doing things your way.” Harve smiled bitterly. “Go ahead and try.”

“All right. I’ll enjoy wiping that smile off.”

This was too grievous an insult to bear. The Marching Wildcats stood for a moment, stunned, until big Jacob Yotz held his sousaphone aloft and uttered a guttural cry before heaving it at the ground. The crowd and the players froze, watching silently as Yotz pried a piece of piping from the mangled instrument at his feet and charged forward, screaming.

The tubas followed him, and then the trombones, the trumpets, and the entire band. The percussionists threw aside their heavy drums, brandishing their sticks as the Marching Wildcats erupted into hoots and hollers and charged. They plowed into the enemy, cutting a swath through them as the Battle of the Band was joined.

Joshua nodded. He glanced out the window, eyes streaming with tears. The intense light had faded from his eyes, and now they brimmed with sunlight.

“So what do we do now?” Margie said. “They’ll be looking for us. When Wright doesn’t report, they’ll send someone out.”

“We’re stabbed the Entente in the back,” Lightoller sighed. “We’ve stabbed the Germans in the back. Everybody here is going to be wanted wherever we land.”

“We’ve got to go on,” Joshua said, finding his voice. “Henriques and Lily gave us that obligation through their sacrifice. If we sit here, if we turn ourselves in, if we give up…we’ve betrayed everything they gave up for us.”

There was silence for a moment. “So what do we do now?” Margie asked again.

“We live,” Joshua said, “and we keep on living.”

And so it was that the Center was boarded up and locked. Weeds grew in the sandy volleyball pits, and the vibrant red letters faded. Six months after its closure and the firing of Jon Eckles, the city council approved the center’s demolition as a derelict building; they cited “safety” as their primary concern. The equipment that had stocked the Youth Center was sold at auction or destroyed along with the building.

A year later, the council approved a plan to build low-income housing on the plot, saying it would increase tax revenue by attracting students from nearby college towns. That same year, ninety percent of the high school’s graduating class of 137 left the town. When the new apartments opened, 97 people had signed leases.

Jim gave a wry smile. “I see a little problem with your idea, Mary.” he said playfully.

“And what would that be, sir?” Mary asked with exaggerated care.

“You’ll have to catch me first!” Jim was gone in a flash, laughing and running.

Without a moment’s hesitation, Mary lunged after him, giggling, but Jim was already far ahead.

They chased each other about the grounds as the shadows grew long and the light golden, either ignoring the pall that hung over the next few days or willfully disregarding it.

“We have been content to watch from afar, to feed. Still, we always expected that someone would arrive,” said one of the Children.

“Just as the ruins of the old world gave birth to us, so too did we beget suffering and chaos unprecedented even in the time of its destruction,” said another, who might once have been a woman. “That was our ultimate revenge.”

“But we knew it could not last, just as the strife that burned for generations before our coming. Now that the wall has been breached, the time has come for the children of the old world to begin the next phase.”

“We have seen the suffering we have wrought echo across a hundred generations, but no more. As in all matters of revenge, we must now move on to death.” The Child who had spoken smiled, the eerie green light of the glass reflected in its eyes. “The Children of Xencobourg will sear our enemies to dust.”

Harry gnawed meditatively on the end of a pencil, leaving deep tooth marks.

“That’s a bad habit,” I reminded him, as I always did.

“And you have a bad habit of reminding me that it’s a bad habit,” came the standard reply.

Everyone has a nervous habit, and Harry simply preferred pencil-chewing. He claimed it was cheaper than smoking, and better for the environment to boot. In front of the bank of computer monitors in his apartment, there was always a fresh batch of pencils in a little jar. I once got a good laugh by replacing one with a yellow pen, which burst and gave Harry a blue mouth for a week.

Don’t get me wrong–I want to be sad about what happened. But how can I be, when every memory I have of Harry is so much fun?

No one is perfect; that’s an established fact. My idea of perfection in a person would be the right combination of personality and looks. A beautiful person with a single-digit IQ is like a Ming vase, pretty to look at but disturbingly empty. An ugly person with a winning personality isn’t bad, but it’s hard to appreciate someone who shatters mirrors and turns mortals to stone.

I’ve often noticed that people who have the power to attract a retinue will usually surround themselves with one of either type. Maria, for example, was regularly accompanied by Annabelle Schmidt and Betsy Purdue. Annabelle set the curve in chemistry class but had terrible teeth and more moles than a country garden; Betsy had near movie-star good looks, but thought General Motors was named after a war hero.

Through skillful manipulation, Maria used them both in different ways to make herself seem smarter and more attractive; I was about to get a more personal demonstration than I would have liked.