Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

“And so we release you, mighty Holaak-Hliqu, that you might rain fire and destruction upon our world!”

“Why is it that these faux-Lovecraftian elder gods always have such loyal cultist minions?” Lia asked. “It doesn’t seem to me that they have a very good benefits package.”

“They get eaten first, and spared the insane ravages of That Which Man Was Not Meant To See,” Jim replied. “Lesser of two evils.”

“But the Elder Gods are always released due to the cultists’ actions,” Lia said. “Why not just leave them sealed in the dark cave of Un’Pro-Noun’Cible? The ersatz Great Old Ones in the movies are never going to return on their own like in the real Lovecraft.”

“Maybe that part got left on the cutting room floor.”

“Or maybe they needed a lot of extras for the rock-jawed hero to blow up real good before the final confrontation. I tell you, it just doesn’t add up.”

Jim shrugged. “Well, the next time we come up against a murderous cult of insanity-worshippers, I’ll point out the contradiction.”

“Yes?” The man said. His eyes remained closed, and nothing save his mouth budged from the position of thoughtful meditation it occupied.

“I was just wondering, sir, if you could give me directions,” Jarl said, craning his neck to address the man atop his rock.

“That depends on where you want to go,” the man said evenly.

“Hoborg,” said Jarl. “I need to go to Hoborg.”

“You must reach within yourself, to find that you already know the way to Hoborg.”

“I…wait, what?” Jarl said, cocking his head. “No, I don’t know the way to Hoborg! I wouldn’t be asking if I did!”

“Would you now?” the man asked. “Would you indeed? Perhaps you simply do not know what it is you know.”

“You’re messing with me, aren’t you? Just trying to shoo me away with a lot of nonsense?”

“Perhaps.” The last ‘s’ trailed off into a low hiss.

“They call this creature the Mana Cricket, even though it’s really more of a grasshopper,” said Spinelli. “It feeds off of arcane essence ethereally siphoned from other living beings.”

The insect alighted on Gibbons’ arm and began crawling around. “Hey! That tickles!” she squealed.

“Now, one Mana Cricket obviously isn’t going to do much, and is easily squashed,” said Spinelli, adjusting his uniform cap. “Happily, they’re rarely seen in groups of less than 1,000.”

Dozens more large blue grasshoppers descended on Gibbons, causing her to emit a series of shrill not-quite-screams, not-quite-laughs. They crawled over her, apparently benignly; she didn’t reach for the pistol in her holster or attempt to summon a fireball.

“Of course, even a thousand–or hundred thousand–Mana Crickets can’t kill you,” Spinelli said.

One by one, the grasshoppers alighted, leaving Gibbons alone and swaying. “I don’t feel so good,” she moaned.

“But what they can do is drain you so completely that it will take days for your natural arcane essence to rejuvenate, and in the meantime…”

A door in the arena opened, revealing an immature ghast which promptly charged Gibbons, its knuckles dragging through the dirt. She gestured with her arm, apparently expecting a fireball to spring from her fingertips; when none was forthcoming, she could only utter a startled “Ugh!” as the ghast tackled her.

“Don’t worry, it’s been declawed and defanged.”

Let’s face it, you’re still scared of the dark. It’s hard-coded by our species’ relative lack of night vision, and reinforced by a thousand hours of pop culture.

As you wander through the darkened hallways, catching a glimpse of the city lit up at night, you reflect on how many films have shown someone in the same situation meeting a grisly death at the hands of mass murderers, monsters, and other fun chaps. The emergency lights give the place an eerie sheen like the best Hollywood mood lighting, and the fact that, in your mind’s eye, the place bustles with attentive life makes its still, cold silence all the more difficult to bear.

Even with the weight of years upon your brow, you can’t help but believe in some heart of hearts that Murgmagh the Eyeball Plucker is lurking out there, and that unless you turn back now, he will have his meal.

“The name comes to us from the Greek planetoi, which literally means ‘I wander.’ They, like many of the ancients, noticed that some stars seemed to move about the sky rather than remaining stationary, and hence they were known as wandering stars. Today, of course, we know that this is not the case, and that the orbits of the planets are more or less fixed in relation to the Earth. Their apparent wandering is but an illusion.”

“We all know this, Hempsey,” said Cullins. “Why do you prattle on telling us things we learned as students?”

“I am simply building up to the point of my discussion,” Hempsey replied evenly. “I ask you: what if one could prove those long-ago Greeks prophetic?”

“Surely you don’t mean-”

“Oh but I do,” Hempsey said. “Our astronomical observatories in Siam, Prussia, and Newfoundland confirm that, as we speak, a rogue planet is passing through our solar system.”

“So what’s the name of this band?” Jeanette asked.

“The Bad Electronic Twilight Cowboys,” Leif replied.

“Okay, what is is about bands these days?” Jeanette said, waving her arms. “Is it asking too much for a normal name, or does every single one have to be spat out of a Weird Word Generator? It’s like freakin’ Mad Libs, only they get taken seriously.”

“No,” said Leif, “the Mad Libs are playing in the second set.”

“What genre do the Bad Electronic Twilight Cowboys play?”

“Punk/ska/rock fusion.”

“That’s another thing!” Jeanette cried. “Why does every freakin’ band have to be its own genre? Why can’t we just call them punk? Or ska? Or rock? And why fusion–is that some sort of magic word that makes genres that have nothing to do with each other get along? What are the Mad Libs, a hair metal/chamber music fusion? Or maybe country/Andean panpipes/Tibetian yak horn fusion?”

Leif calmly took a sip from his energy drink. “I’m sensing a little hostility here. We still going?”

Jeanette sighed and gave her head a shake. “…it’s just the coffee talking. Let’s go.”

Dr. Stryver paged through the manusccript. “The Edoans worshiped a variety of deities, the most prominent of which was Eonar, god of summer. He was said to wander the countryside in the guise of a friendly old gardener, well-rounded by plentiful food and deeply tanned. Passersby would find him working their garden or fields, after which the harvest would be unusually bountiful.”

“Does the book say anything about his eye color?” Harry asked. “Or some kind of necklace or talisman? Maybe a weapon?”

“Hmm, let’s see…usually dressed as a laborer…known to indulge heartily in wine…ah! Yes, it says that those he visited sometimes knew him by his unworldly violet eyes. And…yes! There’s mention of a sickle or scythe-shaped charm, a gift from his son Edoyar, god of he harvest.”

Harry and Kim looked at each other meaningfully.

“As for a weapon…all it mentions is that Eonar was a renowned archer.”

“There’s no doubt, then,” said Kim. “That’s he man we saw in the Dennis Fields.”

Once they had properly tied me up and set me in a chair–not to mention making unambiguous gestures with their weapons–I was willing to listen to the Elrinists’ demands. “What’s it called?”

The lead Elrinist withdrew a piece of paper from his pocket and reverently unfolded it. “Dirk Chiseler and the Gilded Alchemist of the Sargasso Sea,” he said. “Parts I-XIV, in Astounding Tales magazine. July 7, 1938 thru January 17th 1939.”

I stared at him, thunderstruck.

“Well, do you have it in the archive or don’t you?” he cried. “It’s on the list on your website.”

“Well…” I said, examining the instruments of pain, both blunt and explosive, the Elrinists carried. “Let me get this straight. You want a run of a lousy pulp adventure story from a half-rate magazine?”

“It is the only copy in existence,” the head Elrinist said. “We seek it for the wisdom it carries, delivered from our Mission Commander’s mind before he began his great work. Surrender it to us…or die.”

The deadly seriousness in his voice was too much, and I couldn’t restrain my laughter any longer.

“They have me against somebody called ‘Sapphire’ Barnes,” said George. “Doesn’t sound too tough.”

“Oh, he’s not called ‘Sapphire’ Barnes because he’s delicate,” a nearby fan said.

“Or valuable,” added another.

“Or easily worn on one’s finger,” chimed a third.

“I have a feeling I’m not going to like what’s coming next.”

“He’s called ‘Sapphire’ because he’ll beat and choke you ’til you’re blue,” the first said, miming the action of choking with one hand while lashing out with the other.

George could feel his neck begin to burn with flop sweat. “I-I guess I should be grateful I’m not going up against ‘Ruby’ Barnes.”

“Oh yeah. He wears a tiara.”

Local lore had it that the man buried under the blank tombstone in the oldest section of the city cemetery had wandered into the town square over a hundred years ago, clutching a nugget of gold in one hand. His skin cold to the touch, the man had muttered “ice, ice,” before succumbing to death by frostbite.

The fact that New Mexico only saw large amounts of ice on rare occasions, and that the man had supposedly died in July, precluded any serious acceptance of the story. Yet still it circulated among the bored and ne’er-do-well during the height of summer, with many wondering what riches might be found in deciphering the crazed wanderer’s calling of ice.

One man in particular had hit the town library and historical society in search of proof–Carlos’ father, during a stretch of unemployment in the late 1960’s. There had been plentiful newspaper accounts, many embellished, and a careful survey of the cemetery confirmed that someone or something was indeed buried there. But eyewitness testimony had been hard to come by, and the only clue as to the disposition of the gold supposedly clutched in the dying man’s hand come in the form of a sudden building spree around 1881.

But, for Carlos, that was more than enough.