Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

“It’s all about possibilities,” Gerald said. “Most people can’t see the possibilities in their daily lives. They’re acted upon instead of acting.”

“Sure, yeah,” Mindy said. “People who are acted on, they’re the real villains.” She wasn’t about to argue with the man who had a loaded gun.

“Take this book,” Gerald continued, sweeping a battered Harlequin off the table. “Dime a dozen at any garage sale. Hundreds come out every month. But think about it for a second.”

It was very pink–that’s all Mindy’s fear-addled mind could perceive. The pink of freshly-shed blood sinking into an immaculate white carpet…

“Imagine all the steps that they had to go through to get this terrible thing published. Someone had to write it. Someone had to proofread it. Someone had to sell if. Someone had to bind it. Almost anyone off the street could do the same, and better. But they don’t. ‘Priss McClachty’ is the one with the fat royalty check in her bank account. Why is that?”

“Because she acts,” Mindy whispered. “And isn’t acted upon.” Someone should have been there by now. Did they not get the message? Had her code been too subtle?

“Now you’re on the trolley,” Gerald said. “Let’s see what’s at the end of the track.”

I didn’t know his–or her–real name, but they were one of my favorite online correspondents–not least because they, like me, tried to maintain capitalization and punctuation even in the anything-goes milieu of the ‘net. Most of our conversations tended to revolve around spelling, pronunciation, and other lexical matters, come to think of it. Any other conversation tended to arrive at that point rather quickly.

daleksex89: I must admit I was impressed you got my username’s reference back in the dark days when so few Americans had seen the programme.

tiberiusjk01: “Programme?” I can’t get over seeing it spelled that way. All those unnecessary letters at the end. Couldn’t you spell it my way and save yourself two keystrokes?

daleksex89: Couldn’t you spell it the proper way at the cost of two necessary keystrokes? You make the effort for capitals and full stops, so why not spell properly while you’re about it?

tiberiusjk01: What’s incorrect about American spelling? It’s much more concise.

daleksex89: Oh, I think American spelling is adorable. So earnestly phonetic, like a child’s letters on an icebox door, with no regard given etymology and history.

tiberiusjk01: And I think British spellings are like an old bottle of snake oil patent medicine, all old-fashioned and hoity-toity just for the sake of appearances. It’s…what’s the word…quaint. Or should that be “kwaynt?”

Harry would have found something sinister or otherwise remarkable in what he saw; then again, Harry was the sort of man for whom a tattered Bazooka Joe comic could and often did hold a mystical status as a stegotext for a nationwide conspiracy.

From what I could see, the reality was almost painfully mundane. For all its fearsome reputation among conspiracy theorists, the Chalice and Cross society seemed little more than a secretive country club. They’d kept meticulous records, thoroughly indexed, of initiations, events, members, and dues. Three men who later became President of the United States were on the rolls, as the crazies were so quick to note, but two appeared to have dropped out shortly after initiation. A smattering of other luminaries filled the membership rolls, but most were not even members in good standing at the time of graduation–and I, for one, had grave doubts that an organization would orchestrate the appointment of a Supreme Court justice when he owed the Crossmen $250 in back membership dues!

In fact, the only thing of note was a ledger that appeared to be written in some kind of cipher. It was too brief to contain any of the things the one-world-government crazies like Harry would have expected; in fact, I was able to take a high resolution digital photograph of each page using the rig the university archivist had set up for me. Most ciphers rely on the reader not being able to decode them at their leisure; I was about to do just that.

I’d just finished taking the final shot when I heard footsteps. Not an archivist, either, but someone very keen on remaining unnoticed as they approached.

The next morning, Kevin couldn’t find it in himself to crawl out of bed for so much as a glass of water. His temples pounded mercilessly in what he might have called an ‘uber-headache’ had he been able to so organize his thoughts. Half-hangover, half-migrane, it made the soft lights and sounds of the waking world outside the bedroom all but unbearable. Despite a parched throat and chapped lips, Kevin was too weak to get the bottle of water at his bedside, much less sip from it. And even then the sunshine streaming through the closed blinds and the rustling of the blankets would have been more unbearable than thirst.

People came and went downstairs all day–it was impossible to miss the nuclear detonations that accompanied each footfall, door slam, and idling motor in the driveway. No one could be bothered to check in on poor old Kevin, but in many ways that was a blessing in disguise. A conversation–or, heaven forbid, a hospital visit–would have reaped more in agony than it sowed in goodwill.

The man picked himself up, and tossed aside the mangled remains of his weapon. “My name is Tobias Schiller, but to most around here I’m ‘the Kraut.'”

Vincent had never heard of anyone embracing that term with anything approaching good humor. “You don’t mind being called that?”

“What, a ‘Kraut?’ No. In fact, I’ve come to embrace it as a useful shibboleth,” Schiller said, grinning.

“A what?”

A shrug. “It means way of telling one sort of person from another. Anyone who calls me ‘the Kraut’ has exposed themselves as a little crude, a little ignorant, and certainly no friend of mine. Useful when consorting with gangsters and machine guns both, wouldn’t you agree?”

“How long has it been gone?”

Cecelia consulted her computer. “It was scanned on the twelfth. East desk, and just before closing according to the system.”

“Who would be there on Saturday night?”

“Gertrude, I think,” said Cecelia. “I can check the schedule if you’d like.”

“No, no,” Quinn rubbed his temples. “It makes sense. She’s the most junior person the library’s got, so she gets the graveyard shift on the weekend. Low stress, get your feet wet, and all that. At least that’s what they told me when I used to work it.”

“If you want to talk to her about it-”

“No,” Quinn said. “You’d have already done that, at least if you’re half as professional as I’ve come to believe.”

Cecelia flushed a little. “Well, yes. She said that it was an average-looking man with a valid library card, and nothing seemed odd.”

“Not even the fact that it was called ‘On Symbologie’ with fancy letters and fancier spelling? Not even the fact that the book was stamped “do not circulate, do not remove from building?”

“She checked the inside cover, and said there were no stamps, and the edge was gilded; it wouldn’t hold ink.”

“I suppose he could have pasted in a fake page to cover the stamp,” Quinn mused. “Easy enough, I guess; we don’t exactly search people for glue sticks.”

“What makes you think that? That he’d use a fake page?”

“It just seems to fit in with the modus operandi. Fake library card; fake barcode, fake page. If you were determined enough, you could pull a barcode off another book or the desk when no one was looking, and stick it in. Library cards can be stolen.”

“This name, though,” Cecelia gestured at the card. “It’s not in our system. Instead of using someone else’s card, this guy made his own, and not with the sort of name I’d use if I wanted to remain inconspicuous.”

“Pierre Richat,” Quinn read. “Sounds Cajun. Should make tracking him down easy enough.”

Things had a funny way of happening in town, and this was as good an example as any you’re likely to find.

“Slim” Whitemore, a local stockyard worker, was out leaning on the local Greyhound bus building. He’d just gotten what was left of his paycheck after alimony and garnishments and was nursing a forty in a plain paper sack as local statutes demanded. Thing is, he was wearing a plaid shirt and jeans he’d bought secondhand–not unlike the outfit favored by one Davis Cunningham, especially when you throw in the John Deere cap and long afternoon shadows.

The brother of Davis’ ex-wife happened to be passing by on the other side of the street, and mistook Slim for his erstwhile brother-in-law. This led to some rather uncomplimentary remarks being exchanged. Slim, never a particularly subtle man even when sober, responded in kind. Then he pulled out the .45 revolver he kept for putting down diseased stock at the yard, and things started getting interesting.

A pistol’s not too accurate at that range in the best of circumstances, and tipsy trigger finger doesn’t do much to improve things. Despite emptying all five loaded cylinders, Slim didn’t come close to hitting his target. And if that had been all there was to tell, it might not have gotten any further than that–a story people told when they saw Slim sauntering into Carrie’s Red Dot, maybe.

But Slim and Davis’ ex-brother-in-law weren’t the only people on the square that day.

Marian Fisher, dressed in black and sporting a lace choker as always, had a booth at the seventeenth annual Mason County High School Fun Fair.

The cheerleaders were selling kisses, the marching band had a ring toss game, and the football team operated a dunk tank. Even the chess club had a booth, challenging all comers to last just five moves against “The King of Pawns.” Marian’s booth was different; she was associated with no club and had built the stand in her spare time. The sign simply read “Free Milk and Cookies,” with no conditions or prices.

Keith Nost, who knew Marian from weekly D&D games, was the first one to stop by.

“Would you like some lactateous secretions or miniature cakes baked just short of carbonization?” she asked in her usual monotone.

“What are you doing here?” Keith said. “What is all this?”

“I’m amazed you can keep a character sheet without being able to read. It’s a stand for free milk and cookies, and I just offered you some.”

“I know, but…putting yourself out here like this? You’re just gonna get made fun of. Publicly. Lord knows I would. I don’t wanna see that happen to you.”

“Why would anyone take the time to browbeat a humble cookie vendor?” Marian asked. “Don’t worry your bezitted little head about me, dear.”

“And since when can you cook? I’ve seen your fridge at home. Expired milk, eggs making like their forefathers and going south…”

The desktop was like his room, clean and generally neat. Documents were neatly labeled and sorted; again, mostly school stuff. I was surprised to find a few short and half-finished stories there—as I said, I’d never know him to be a writer. They were pretty rough, though, and in one case I wasn’t able to follow the plot thread or characters. So much for posthumous publication and literary fame, I guess.

Mike had always been the trusting sort, so all of the passwords on his computer and in his browser autocompleted—I had more or less full access to everything he’d done. And that’s where it got interesting.

It seems he’d been quite the net-hound, with memberships in multiple message boards, forums, and other kinds of internet discourse. His mailboxes were jammed with old correspondence from friends he’d probably never met, wondering where he’d gone. He’d kept an online journal of random observations on one forum, helped run some sort of weekly contest at another.

The last posts were just a day before the accident. There was a journal entry about something in one of his freshman classes, a professor’s gaffe. He’d written in a thread about funny things to yell during sex a mere six hours before we’d gotten the call; it may very well have been the last thing Mike ever wrote, the last communication he ever made.

Matthias Becker had almost made it to the front door when his wife confronted him.

“Who are those flowers for?” she asked. Without allowing space for an answer, she continued. “Matthias, are you seeing someone?”

Her husband laughed. “Anke, I’m seventy years old. I’ve hair where it shouldn’t be and none where it should and I’ve got enough extra skin to make a small child with some left over. I’m not rich enough to be seeing anyone like this.”

“Then who are the flowers for?” Anke pressed.

She was getting to be like this more and more often, always suspicious and full of questions. “They’re for my father.”

“That’s awfully sentimental of you,” Anke said grudgingly. “Stop at the Edeka for some coffee on your way back.”

The handful of tulips from Matthias’ garden looked lovely in front of Uwe Becker’s headstone; his son couldn’t remember the last time he’d come to visit or gone to a service in the chapel in the distance.

“Surprised to see me, eh Father?” Matthias said. “I admit, I haven’t been by much, and I’m sorry. You remember how Anke and the boys and I used to come by after the mass, don’t you? No mass, and the idea just sort of slips our mind.”

The granite didn’t reply, of course, but Matthias envisioned his father seated behind it, semitransparent, silent and thoughtful. Not the husk that lung cancer had claimed in 1977, either, but rather the barrel-chested man that had always swept his only son onto his shoulders, even when the boy had outgrown it.