Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

Manifestations
Not everything can exist in normal reality–the place they come from is just too different. In that case, they appear as a manifestation, which is able to function in our reality. Manifestations are varied in form and function, but the result is always the same: killing the manifestation does not and cannot harm the original, though they do tend to avoid the places where their manifestations were slain.

Entities
Entities are living, or quasi-living, things that do not seem to follow the normal rules of life: they seldom reproduce, often do not eat, and may be completely incorporeal. Their unpredictable appearance, behavior, and interactions make them by far the most dangerous supernatural creatures that can be encountered.

Beings
Sentient creatures that are roughly equivalent to humans in terms of intelligence and temperament but choose to remain aloof, hidden, or otherwise disengaged from human affairs. This includes those few who live among or are able to pass for human as well as others who disdain contact but are able to communicate. Beings have far more to fear from humans than vice-versa, though in a one-on-one scuffle any given being ill often have the upper hand.

Beasts
Much like beings, beasts are of roughly animal intelligence and behavior, albeit with unusual properties or characteristics that defy known laws of physics and/or zoology. Unlike beings, they are usually unable to intelligently communicate, though peaceful interactions are sometimes possible.

Spirits
Spirits include any creature that was formerly alive and has continued to display signs of life after death. This goes not seem to prevent them from dying a second time, or at least being destroyed, and even incorporeal spirits leave traces of their passage.

Hybrids
The aforementioned categories can all exist as hybrids as well; since the laws of physics do not seem to apply in some cases, the laws of reproduction do not seem to either. As such, it is common to find humans, animals, and even plants that have mixed roots. The results can be unpredictable, to say the least.

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“We can’t go any further until you tell me why everyone in town–except me, apparently–calls you Dink.”

Jen smiled wanly. “Tell you what. You figure it out, I buy you lunch.”

“Well, now.” Alan hooked his thumbs in his belt loops. “My wife’ll confirm that betting me lunch is a dangerous game. When I’m paying, I get meals made by Ronald McDonald or Chef Boyardee. When someone else is paying, I take lunch at Ponce De Leon’s Bistro downtown.”

“They even open right now?”

“They do curbside. And they make a gourmet chicken cordon bleu sandwich like you wouldn’t believe. Local cheese, local bread, taste that’s out of this world. Starts at $25, and that’s before I order the house kettle chips.” Alan paused, turned away for a drag on his cigarette, and then turned back. “Which I will.”

“That suits me just fine,” Jen said. “But you gotta do it honest. No asking anybody straight, cuz I’ll find out.”

“Fair enough,” said Alan. “You catch me doing that, I owe you lunch at Poncey’s.”

“We need a deadline, then, to make it a proper gentleman’s wager.”

“End of this week. My week starts Monday, so Monday next.”

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“Well, near as I can tell, you’ve got a Class III hybrid manifestation,” Shanika said, scrubbing her hands vigorously. “Normal corporeal matter, but with a definite touch of the exotic. Pretty rare.”

“How rare is pretty rare?” Jen said.

“Well, my predecessor as coroner, old Josiah Washington Jr., saw a total of two Class III hybrids and one Class IV hybrid in his career, if that gives you any indication.”

“And he was coroner for, what was it, twenty years?” said Alan.

“Thirty-five. And the Class IV was the thing that retired him.” Shanika looked up. “Tell me again what this precocious little scamp was doing?”

“Breaking into the Providence Missionary Baptist Church Of All Nations,” Alan said. “Trying to eat the caretaker

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“You hauled in a marlin here, kids,” Shanika said. “Hand me my murder bag, will you?”

Alan reached over and grabbed the old-fashioned black bag that rested on the countertop between an old CRT set to (muted and subtitled) daytime TV a stack of autopsy reports.

Shanika reached in and produced a battery-powered circular saw, the sort used for light drywall work. A few quick revs to make sure it had a charge, and she leaned in over the horror that Alan and Jen had retrieved.

“Aren’t you going to use a scalpel?” Jen said.

“Too much CSI: Miami huh?” Shanika said, looking up. “Look, if you want to try sawing through whatever this bad boy has in what passes for his chest with nothing but an Xacto knife and hope, be my guest. But around here, we use power tools to do the heavy lifting.”

Jen visibly blanched at the thought.

“Nobody said you had to look,” Shanika said, leaning forward with the saw. Then, almost as an afterthought: “You might wanna step back, though.”

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The loading dock door opened at the knock, revealing the coroner for Van Buren county, Shanika Daniels. She was dressed in scrubs with a mask pooled around her chin, and looked rather irritated.

“Dr. Daniels,” Jen started, “we have-“

“New intern?” Shanika said, looking over at Alan, who gave her a knowing nod. “Listen, sweetie, it’s Ms. Daniels. Or Shanika, I really don’t care.”

Jen cocked her head. “Don’t you have to be a doctor to be a coroner?”

“You’re thinking of a medical examiner, sweetie. Coroners are elected. I’m the only one who ever runs.”

“Don’t let her modesty fool you,” Alan said. “She might not have the piece of paper from med school, but Shanika knows her stuff thanks to the school of hard knocks.”

“Enough chitchat. We’re on the clock here, and I’m moonlighting. Show me what you got.”

Alan swept the tarp off the back of the truck, revealing the limp form of the creature they’d shot near Providence MBC Of All Nations. It’s tentacles lolled a bit as it as jiggled, causing Jen to jump back a bit.

“Whoa, we’ve got a looker here,” Shanika said. “Definitely a new one. Haul ‘im onto the gurney, I’ll give you a discount for a novel critter but you’re gonna lose most of it because of the tentacle surcharge.”

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Beneath their long white hoods, the monks wore fine-woven circles of wicker, with no hole larger than a pinprick.

“Why do you wear them?”

“So we are not stung. Will you not wear one?”

“I am not afraid of stingers.”

The monks obligingly took their guest to see where their honey was made. Inside the cavern, accessible only by bridge from the monastery, the monks again asked:

“Will you not wear a mask so you are not stung?”

And, again, their guest refused: “I am not afraid.”

Where there should have been darkness in he cavern, there was light. Thousands of incandescent beings flitted silently about, and their radiance was like no light human eyes had evolved to see.

Protected by their masks, whitch let in bare pinpricks, the monks were safe.

Their guest was stung.

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“They have all of us over a barrel. You just have a nicer barrel.”
-Republic of Pirates saying

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And I said to them, in return:
“Give us 5000 masks if you like”
“Paddle us across lakes of sanitizer”
“But it is, all of it, theater”
“While you continue to ask us”
“To risk our lives, and die”
“That you might make money.”

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“And you don’t think anything of it?” I said.

He took a purposeful drag on the cigarette, pulled his mask down, and exhaled.

“The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born; now is the time of monsters.” The smoke streamed from the sides as he spoke, his eyes pressed shut against the stinging fumes. “The question folks need to ask themselves is, which sort of monster do they want to be? Are they gonna be the monsters we see in old pictures, condemned, or are they gonna be the monsters whose crimes are forgiven–heroes?”

“Which are you?”

He laughed. “Ask whatever’s left in 10 years.”

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Thomas rode by the assembled bands, close enough that any could have reached out and touched him. Geoff noticed that a rather curious sword bounced by Thomas’s side, and poked Marie in the ribs. “What’s that?”

“Thomas of Visreu is a peasant,” was her reply. “He killed his first enemy with a sickle. So as a reminder of that, he had his sickle-blade set into a hilt and he still bears it as a sword. He is sworn, after the revolt, to plunge it into the Prince-Regent’s heart himself.”

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