Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

“Hey, good to see you, Jim.” the man smiled. “I haven’t seen you since the gallbladder, how’s it going?”

Syd grinned back as wide as possible. They’d imitated the Movies R Us clerk, sure, but that didn’t include the guy’s name, or his medical history, or anything. At least Syd knew the guy’s name was Jim, at least.

“Uh, hi, doc,” Syd said, taking a desperate guess that the silver-haired man with an expensive-looking watch was a doctor. It was either that or a Chinese medicine guy, with all the talk of gallbladders. “Oh, it’s…it’s fine. Yeah. All healed.”

The doctor set down his DVD, and looked at Syd over the tops of his glasses. “It’s fine, huh? Grew back on you, did it?” he said, a grim and serious expression on his face.

“Well, uh…” Syd tensed up, getting ready to bolt and then chuck the movie rental guy’s form at the first opportunity. “I mean, it sometimes feels that way, but…”

The doctor’s face suddenly lightened, and he grinned. “Relax, Jim,” he said. “I’m just messing with you. Who’d have the gall to grow one of those back after we yanked it out of them already, huh?”

“Ah! Yeah. Well, not me. On account of not having a gallbladder anymore, y’know, nowhere to put the gall.” Syd picked up the DVD and looked at it. “Ice Pirates?” they said. “That is…that’s a deep cut, doc.”

“I know, I know,” the doctor laughed. “It’s cheesy, but it’s fun as hell and it’s not on Netflix. I saw this when I was in college, you know, in the theater. It sucked then, too, but it’s always more about who you’re with at the time, you know?”

“Who were you with?” Syd had no earthly idea how to run the video rental system, so they quickly smashed a few random keys and handed the disc case back.

“My wife. Well, at the time, she was just my live in girlfriend and baby mama. But still. Good times, y’know?”

“Y-yeah,” Syd said. They had a sudden flash of a memory, of sitting in a theater showing From Justin to Kelly, wrapped arm in arm with… “Good times.”

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“This place always creeps me out.”

Jayda was wearing her balaclava, as she always did when out and about as the MacBook Bandit. Leaning to one side, she looked idly about. “You’d think there’d be more people farting around this place, you know? It’s a small town, everybody knows someone who’s been here. Hell, I bet half the old ladies on East Downs already have a place reserved. But it’s always empty except for the days Eddie mows the yard. And of course me and Heath. Why do you think that is, Georgina?”

Georgina didn’t answer, but that wasn’t really her fault–after all, according to the headstone Jayda was leaned up against, she had died a “beloved daughter” about five years ago. It was a big family plot, with the other names already pre-carved (somewhat ghoulishly, in Jayda’s opinion) but the tenants not yet moved in.

“I tell ya, Georgie, it’s always kinda a thing. People are all over this place on Memorial Day, there band comes, they shoot fake bullets…and then everyone goes about like they don’t know anybody that’s come down with a bad case of death. Like they plan to live forever.”

She spied the groundskeeper, Eddie, glowering at her from near his lawnmower shack a fair ways away, down a gentle slope before the graveyard terminated at Tapps Dr. Jayda waved happily; Eddie had seen her loads of times and had never been able to summon the energy to do anything more than scowl in lawnmowerish.

“Hey!” Heath had appeared as scheduled, but coming from behind the stone, he shocked Jayda enough for her to leap about a foot into the air.

“Don’t sneak up on people in graveyards,” she said. “Unless you’re an undertaker on a slow business day.”

“Have you got what I asked for?” Heath said. He held out an envelope. “It’s all there, count it.”

“Oh, I trust you.” Jayda took the bills and shoved them in a pocket. “After all, I know where you live.” She tossed a small package at Heath’s feet. “All the console modding supplies you could ever want, courtesy of an illegal Radio Shack.”

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“Hmph,” Charlie grunted. The bronze figure, impassive, said nothing; he continued leaning on his tiny Greek column with a sheaf of bronze papers in an outstretched hand, as if he’d just been interrupted by a bronze dip halfway through the morning mail.

“Gaius Cassius Longinus Maddox: soldier, Senator, Southron.” The Margrave read from the impressively green plaque. “Served his state as an able soldier during the War of Northern Aggression and as an able statesman during the Restoration.”

“Always thought he looked kinda like Col. Sanders,” Charlie said, looking at the carefully manicured green goatee and ‘stache that the statue sported.

“The Margrave smiled at the reference, and then, turning to Charlie, asked what else this statue made her feel.” Inscrutable behind her veil, her words came out almost sounding as if they’d been condensed from the very air. “She knew that Charlie was not always confident in her words, but bid her try anyway.”

Charlie squinted at the statue. “Awfully nice things on there,” she said. “Not what you’d think for a traitor.”

“The Margrave continued, gently: what about the words they use, the words they chose? What did the statue-makers think?”

“They were on his side. They thought old GCL here was a good guy. A hero. Even though his mustache is telling a different story.”

The Margrave moved closer. “And, the Margrave wondered aloud, did that make Charlie feel like doing anything?”

Charlie looked at the statue again. “Well,” she said. “I’d like to throw it up in the air. Then, I’d jump up there and do the 1000 Fists of Shattered Jewels attack. I don’t know if you’ve seen that movie, but it would knock the statue really far. Then I’d find the crater and pound it in. Do you think the statue is hollow?”

“Everything about this town is hollow.”

“Then I’d crumple it into a ball and drop-kick it into the sun,” Charlie finished with a satisfied nod.

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Lewy was sitting on one of the headstones, his legs crossed and dangling merrily. “Looking for someone you know?” he said. “Why is it always that looking in on you and yours is such a grave responsibility?”

Charlie had been poking around, reading the stones with a guarded expression on her face, occasionally stopping for a moment of respectful silence. “Why isn’t it for you?” she said.

Rocketing across the distance between them, Lewy rested his chin atop the headstone, grinning. “Maybe because me and mine are right here with me,” he said. “All holed up in the Fox Mansion, a little dysfunctional family straight out of a soap opera. Except our bubbles are interdimensional and we’re cleaning worlds of filth instead of just circling the drain.”

Charlie looked down at the stone. Adrian Abbott, Beloved Husband and Father, 1939-1999. “I knew his kids,” she said. “He died real suddenly when they were still in school. Was kinda hoping he lived in this Higbee.”

“Makes perfect sense, seeing as folks are always going around and carving stones for people who’re still alive,” said Lewy.

“Does making fun of me make you feel like family?” said Charlie, glowering.

“Poking fun at mean-spirited times is the very heart of family,” Lewy replied. “What sort of family did you grow up in?”

“We’re trying to make Higbee better,” Charlie said. “I talked to the Margrave about it. I’m allowed to be sad if I want to be.”

“To be sad about someone you knew in another universe, another dimension, that might have nothing more in common with this bag of bones than a birthdate and a general physical appearance?” Lewy shook his head. “We’re here to destroy this place, Chuck. Kick the door in and watch the whole rotten structure collapse. Sad is just gonna make you hesitate when it comes time, if the little Abbott kids can’t run fast enough.”

“Don’t you ever wonder?” said Charlie. “You came from Higbee too. Things might’ve been…different.”

“I learned long ago that if things were gonna be different, I had to do it myself.” Lewy tapped the stone. “But I tell you what, when we make this place perfection, maybe we’ll bring back Mr. Abbott as a sentimental gesture.”

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Rita nodded at the figure of their father, sitting out of earshot on a bench and quietly feeding the birds. “Dad’s not doing too well,” she said, “but he still owns the business. Body’s going to pieces but his mind is still sharp. And he won’t let us sell.”

Gnat folded his arms. “S-surely, even given the cost of raw materials, there’s a considerable profit to be made there, to say nothing of the cachet the bakery holds with the community.”

“It’s not as big a profit as you’d think,” Jim Jr. scoffed. “And you really have to knead and bake and scrape it out of every little piece of dough. It’s hard work, and we’ve been doing it since we were kids. We want out.”

“What about people like m-..ah, people that love the place? Warm baked goods, especially sweets, are statistically much more likely to form lasting memories. Think of all the kids that grew up on Orville’s.”

“What about all the kids that grew up in Orville’s, huh?” Jim Jr. snapped.

“There’s $100,000 in baking equipment alone in that shop, easy,” said Rita. “Old stuff, good stuff, stuff that they don’t make anymore. The stand mixer itself is worth $10,000; Stone Ground Bakery upstate is willing to pay cash and even haul it away for us.”

Gnat looked at the distant, hunched form of Jim Sr. “And your dad?” he said. “What about him?”

“Listen, kid,” said Jim Jr., irked at the gall of someone walking up and interrupting his stroll to cast aspersions on his motives. “Dad cares more about his dumb breads than he does about us. Always has, always will. So, as soon as he can’t hold us back anymore, we’re going to return the favor.”

“Well then,” said Gnat. “I think I may have just saved you the trouble, then, Orvilles.” He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a cookie, lavishly if crudely decorated to resemble a copyrighted cartoon character. Biting into it, Gnat’s eyes fluttered with joy for a moment before he continued, chewing heavily. “I just unraveled the fabric of your bakery and everything in it. This cookie is all that’s left of your inheritance.”

He threw it at their feet, startling Rita and Jim Jr. enough that neither could respond.

“Go on and see what you can sell that for,” Gnat said. “You’ve earned it.”

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“You think you can intimidate me? Girl, I was in the United States Army for fifteen years,” said Vice Principal McNab. “I’ve been dealing with jumped-up little shits in the school ever since. I can handle myself.”

Charlie grinned and snapped her knuckles loudly enough that the bartender looked up, startled at the sudden sound of dry twigs. “Major, huh? Bet you fought a lot of paperwork,” she said. “Must have been some real long division in there to be harder than handling a bunch of kids.”

McNab was on his feet, his barstool toppling loudly. “You do not question my service, girl, or my patriotism!”

“Must not be very sure of it, if you think it won’t hold up to a couple questions,” said Charlie, suddenly very intent on her fingernails. “Get a lot of papercuts in the line of duty there, G.I. Joe?”

“Look, you two, if you’re gonna yell, I gotta ask you to take it outside,” the bartender said with a sigh, casting a forlorn glance at his near-empty tip jar.

“You wanna see what they taught me?” McNab shouted. “Go on than, take a swing, girl. I’ll give you one for free. But don’t think I won’t hit back on account of you being a lady.”

Charlie squared her impressive shoulders and raised a hand in a taunting “come hither” gesture. “Ain’t no ladies in here,” she said, “no gentlemen either. I don’t need a free shot. Hit me with all you got, desk jockey.”

With a huffing noise like an overheated rhinoceros, Vice Principal McNab stepped forward and threw a right hook. It was the sort of thing they might have taught in Basic decades ago, and Charlie simply leaned her shoulder into the blow, literally shrugging it off.

She followed with a slow, powerful smack to the middle of McNab’s chest, deflating him like a leaky bellows.

“Here, let me help you with that,” she said. Leaning over, she righted the barstool that McNab had upset and then picked him up effortlessly, perching him on it and laying his gasping face on the bar. “Huffing and puffing with your head down. Army desk job all over again, huh?”

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Rubymaximum Chronofile Entry 16,060
Our local legend and recluse, Lady Simona Osborne, has turned out to be not only surprisingly friendly but also extremely helpful, bringing a long-view perspective to our current predicament that is extremely useful and even refreshing. However, decades of being essentially housebound have left her with a rather severe case of agoraphobia. Needless to say, we need her out and about if she’s going to help us lay a beating on these erasure-happy invaders. So I’m taking her to the alleyway behind Movies R Us and the Launderdrome to practice being in public. It’ll be a big enough step just getting her in the car, but I think after that the alley should be an excellent dry run for reentering society. The only folks she’ll see back there are underpaid drudges like me taking smoke breaks and the occasional kid cutting through.

“I’m not so sure about this, Ruby.” Simona was as frightened as Ruby had ever seen her; quivering visibly beneath the immaculate and stylish fur-lined coat. “Some folks are meant for meeting and greeting, and some for entertaining quietly at home. I’ve been sure I’m the latter every year since 1980, inclusive.”

“Miss Osborne, there’s no one in the alley but you, me, and the guy who unjams the Launderdrome quarter slots,” Ruby said. “And I’m pretty sure he doesn’t give a care about you being here.”

In the opposite corner of the alley, the Launderdrome guy raised two fingers to his forehead in a salute, a smoldering cigarette clutched between them, never looking up from his cell phone.

“It doesn’t matter who’s here to see,” Simona said. “I don’t belong out here! This was a big mistake, young lady, I’d like to go home now.”

“Miss Osborne, what if you’re home then? What if they come and erase the place with you inside?” Ruby said. “You were able to send them running with just a few words, and you saw right through their disguise. We need you to help us.”

Simona whirled around. “It’s nothing fancy, Ruby!” she snapped. “It’s called being assertive and standing up for yourself! Looking folks in the eyes and reading them! I had to learn how to do that, or the sixties would’ve eaten me alive and spit out my bones.”

Clearly, more drastic measures were needed. “So, you think I just need to be more assertive, huh?” Ruby said, putting a hand on her hip.

“Exactly. I can show you how to do that over tea at Osborne House. Come on, let’s go back there. I’m having trouble breathing out here.”

“No,” said Ruby. “Sit your fancy butt down, Miss Osborne, because you’re not going anywhere. I’m going to keep you here, getting used to the water in the kiddie side of the pool, if I have to throw you over my shoulder like a sack of potatoes.”

Simona’s eyes flashed dangerously and she stalked up to Ruby, and gloved finger raised toward the heavens. “Don’t you talk to me like that, you little puke!” she said in an outraged tone that was so over-the-top that Ruby had to bite her lip to keep from bursting into laughter. “I’d like to see you try to lay a hand on me when I’m not in a cooperative mood! Father had me take jiu-jitsu, and I will flip you into that dumpster with your own momentum and slam the lid.”

“Oh, will you now?” Ruby held up Simona’s keys, jangling them in one hand. “Well, you’re going to have to dumster me, I guess, if you want these back. Unless you wanna walk back to Osborne House. Its only six blocks, right?”

“Give those here, you little hooligan!” Simona rocketed forward with shocking speed, given her outfit, but Ruby was well used to playing keepaway–it was the only thing that roused Heath out of a vidjagame trance sometimes. She cut left as Simona approached, zigging and zagging in a serpentine motion to stay just a few steps ahead. The Laundrodrome guy gave them the same dual-fingered salute as they swept past him.

After about half a block, true to her threat, Simona was able to trip Ruby, bring her to the ground, and put her in a surprisingly agile joint lock.

“Keys. Now.” Simona held out a manicured hand. “I won’t ask again without constricting your windpipe a little.”

Ruby handed them over, grinning despite the pain. “Hey, Simona,” she said.

“What?”

“You’re out of the alley now.”

Simona looked up, shocked. They were in the middle of downtown Higbee, with several people scrupulously ignoring the scene while one small child looked on, avidly licking an ice cream.

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Lebedev pounded frantically at the courthouse door, rattling the hundred-year-old panes in their hand-carved frames. “Help me, somebody!” he cried. “The sheriff’s gone, the sheriff department’s gone, and my station along with it! There’s got to be somebody in there!”

Relief flooded Lebedev’s flushed and sweaty face as he saw a shape approaching. He wiped the white hair out of his eyes, instinctively getting ready to give his “local business need government support” speech. Even in his confusion, even coming from a grassy field where his QuickStop ought to have been, it was always his first and best instinct. Whoever answered, a secretary, the judge, a clerk, it didn’t matter. He’d talked his way out of a hundred environmental sanctions for leaking gas tanks, public health citations for the noxious meats his deli sold, and even a Department of Labor person once about the low pay he offered “tipped workers.”

The shape resolved itself into someone who looked altogether too young to be working in a courthouse, and too casually dressed besides. With a wan grin, they unlocked the door and swung it open, nearly hitting Lebedev in the face.

“Aren’t you a little young to be working here, son?” said Lebedev. “I need to talk to somebody, urgently.”

“Of course! Who would you like to talk to?”

“Well, there’s no one answering the phone at the sheriff’s, and -”

“How about the judge? I can have you talk to the judge.”

Lebedev nodded eagerly. “Yes, the judge! We play golf together, you see, and my wife and his wife are-”

“You’re thinking of the old judge.” The kid smiled. “The office has fallen vacant and been filled in a by-election. ‘Course, at such short notice, there weren’t many voters, but it was still a blowout. What can I do for you, citizen?”

“This is no time for jokes, kid,” Lebedev said. He tried to muscle past into the courthouse, but found himself pushed back by a surprisingly forceful blow from the one in his way.

“Did I say anything about a joke? If this was funny, you’d know, because your sides would be splitting.” With a quick and savage jab, the kid punched Lebedev in the stomach, leaving the old man gasping for air.

“Y-you…you little…” he wheezed, sinking to his knees.

“Now, I know you don’t remember me, maybe because it was in a parallel universe or two, but I used to work for you,” the kid said. He knelt, bringing himself face to face with Lebedev. “Tell me, Mr. Lebedev, are you still as much of a greedy corner-cutter here as you’ve been in every other Higbee I’ve visited?”

“I’m…I’m not…”

“Oh, don’t try that on me. I still remember. ‘Lewy, just ignore the tank leak alarm.’ ‘Lewy, just serve the damn meat, no one cares if it’s expired.’ ‘You get whatever comes in the tip jar, so I have to pay you less.'”

“Man, it felt so good to wipe that inconvenience store off of the map!” Lewy stood up. “Tell you what, why don’t I send you to join it, hm?”

Lewy grabbed Lebedev by the ankles and dragged the old man inside. He kicked weakly, but wasn’t able to put up much resistance.

“Now, ordinarily, just walking away is enough to save you from oblivion along with this place, now that its ley lines are cut loose and flapping in the wind,” said Lewy. “Let’s see if you have the wherewithal to do even that, hmm, you big old hypocrite?”

Whistling a jaunty tune, Lewy closed and locked the courthouse doors behind him, snapping off the handle and bending the post with a quick flash of megastrength.

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Elena knitted her hands and looked across the hallway, drifting on currents of memory. “It wasn’t so big back then, but this part is the same. I sat on this bench, right here, every day after school for Mom or Dad to pick me up.”

Simona nodded. “The old school’s long since torn down, but they had a bench too. I think one of the sour old ladies in the office–and there’s always been a sour old lady in the school office, it’s like a grease trap for them–likes to put the kids they don’t much care for on display there. For sins of their parents, real or imagined.”

“They thought your parents had done something wrong?” Elena said.

“They had me, didn’t they?” Simona laughed. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure plenty of Higbee’s most distinguished men had precocious little half’n’halfs like me running around. But Doctor Osborne had the bad taste to acknowledge it.”

Elena grew quieter at that. “The kids have had to sit here too,” she said. “I’ve heard they’re called Kilgore’s Bastards. Hell of a thing, you know?”

“Oh, I know. Once I could write, I kept a list. I think I was up to about thirty-five when I stopped–not because I was offended, but because it was getting boring. Bigots aren’t all that creative with their insults, as I’m sure you well know. I’ll give a cookie to whoever thought up ‘Osborn’s Oopsie’ for me, though.”

Elena laughed. “You know, we used to tell stories about you when I went here.”

“Oh goodness, I’m sure you did,” said Simona. “Let me guess. I was sitting on a pile of Confederate gold up in my luxurious mansion, and I had killed my 147-year-old husband to do so.”

“You got it,” Elena laughed. “Wow. Total accuracy. Put in a few prepubescent voice breaks and it might as well have been Jimmy Hagarman saying it.” She shrugged. “Seriously, though. Kids spreading rumors aren’t any more creative. Word was that you were a witch, that your cats obeyed your every command as an unholy army of the night, and that there was…well, Confederate gold under the house. But not from your susquicentenarian murdered husband, it was from Doctor Osborne himself.”

“And did I murder him?”

“Odds were even that he was murdered or turned into a toad.”

Simona roared with laughter. “I am fabulous, but not that fabulous. It’s good to know I had such street cred with the kids then.”

“Do you think…” Elena hesitated. “I’m doing my best. I’m sure Doctor Osborne did too. Is it enough, do you think? Or are people like us just destined to ride this bench forever no matter what the folks who love us try to do?”

“Listen,” Simona said. “I am eighty-seven years old, and in my time I’ve seen everything Higbee can cough up. Riding this bench? Some little shits whose sainted asses never touched it still found themselves awfully messed up.”

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The old bell hung above the door to the QuickStop jingled to announce a customer. “Be with you in a sec,” Jayda said. “Just gotta finish with #7 pump.

She peeked out the window, which doubled as a drive-thru for folks who wanted to take advantage of the QuickStop’s built-in deli meats.

Tapping the mini intercom, she said in a voice that was 98% static by volume: “Can I get you anything else? Snack or deli meats?” Jayda had the dubious honor of slicing salami for anyone who wanted it as part of her shift, even though the slicer was about Truman Administration vintage. She could stuff her face for free, but after one ill-fated roast beef sandwich, and a subsequent trip to worship the porcelain goddess she packed a lunch.

“Ew, no,” said the customer at #7. “Stop asking me if I want your tainted meats, girl.”

“Look, Mr. Lebedev makes us ask,” Jayda sighed. “Don’t hold the dodgy quality of his salami against us, hmm?”

#7 was already replacing his pump, grumbling, and slipped into the front seat of his ’87 Lincoln Town Car without so much as a glance at the plastic “TIPS” cup duct-taped to the pump–the very loophole that allowed Lebedev to pay Jayda about $6 an hour.

Now grumbling herself, Jayda turned to the pump controls. She reset the leak alarm, which had been going off more or less continuously since 1978, zeroed out Mr. Lincoln’s balance, and smiled slightly as she had the brief, gratifying thought of covering his car in sliced, noxious salami as revenge.

“Now, what can I do for you, Mr.-” Jayda began, turning to face the customer waiting patiently at her counter. She stopped when she saw the imposing figure there.

“She bid the attendant a fond hello, and inquired about the existence of a…shall we say…lost and found.” The woman standing at the counter was tall and regal, dressed all in black, and despite the searing brightness of the QuickStop’s cheap fluorescents, her face seemed indistinct, shadowed. That buzzing, unfriendly light didn’t seem to want anything to do with her.

Jayda recognized the strong, eccentric figure at once–probably the crackpot who’d moved into the old Fox place, and another weirdo in a town that was already well above its dosage. “A lost and found?” she said. “Sure, there’s one right here.”

She dipped beneath the counter and reappeared with an old cardboard box. It was bursting with lost keys, questionable t-shirts both greasy and torn, and other bric-a-brac. Mr. Lebedev tended to help himself to anything more valuable that got lost, quietly hawking it on eBay.

The woman pushed the box aside; it seemed like a gentle, almost motherly motion, until it slid off the edge and clattered to the tile with a noise that made Jayda jump where she stood.

“No, there was nothing in the moldy old box of rightfully forgotten detritus for her,” the woman said, airily referring to herself in some hoity-toity tense. “What she had lost was far more personal and dear. One might say it was stolen, even.”

“Look, lady, the police station is five blocks down and three blocks right,” said Jayda. “It’s in the same building as the library and the county health office. You can’t miss it.” The cops did come in to gas up their cruisers on occasion, with Lebedev giving a rather bribelike fleet discount that probably helped keep him in business, but they tended to pay at the pump and never made small talk–much less collecting anything lost or stolen.

“The attendant was not understanding. Was it mere ignorance, or was it because she knew the truth and could not bear to speak it?” The woman paused, smiled in the shadows, and continued. “And so her guest continued to speak, outlining a thing that had been stolen–stolen from one of her very good friends, and something that was vital to her ongoing work. A map, of sorts, in a special case.”

Jayda tried to maintain a poker face as her stomach skidded into the leaky fuel tanks ten feet below. The worthless little case she’d mistaken for a laptop? The MacBook bandit’s first bum score in her nearly one-year Robin Hood crusade? How could this bizarro customer know about that?”

“She saw a flicker of recognition on the attendant’s face, and knew that she had come to the right place. She made her next words firm, but clear. That map was a map of many things, and they ley lines inscribed upon were the web on which accursed Higbee rested. She would have it back, or the young attendant, not yet known to all as a daring thief, would find herself in a most…dangerous…position.”

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