Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

HOST: We’re here dead at Wickham Manor, a 19th-century robber baron estate currently haunted by Marie-Anne Wickham, the ghost of the last owner’s maiden aunt who died in a tragic cotillion accident. Marie-Anne, tell us about your haunt.

MARIE-ANNE: Well, I mostly moan on the upper stories and in the attic, sometimes singing old nursery rhymes or writing threatening messages in the dust.

HOST: And you’d like this to be upgraded to a Class IV haunting on the Tobin scale?

MARIE-ANN: More than anything. That uppity Undine McCrae at the Haversham Plantation thinks she’s sooo fancy with her Class IV rank and her four Michelin skulls from the guidebook. Makes her insufferable, the old banshee!

HOST: Well, you’re in luck! The Pimp My Gloom™ crew is here to help. Now, while the zombies get to work on zhuzhing up your overall creepiness, and our posthumous designer is getting some cobweb samples ready, tell me: when’s your deathday, Marie-Anne?

MARIE-ANNE: May the 25th, the day of the Spring Cotillion. I can still hear the screams!

HOST: Have you ever thought about something simple to commemorate it? One easy-and fun!-option is to reenact your final hours in spectral form on your deathday. Descend the grand staircase, greet illusory guests, and of course set the room and guests alight with spectral fire as you burn.

MARIE-ANNE: Oh, wow, I never throught of that! I mean, it’s nothing I’m not doing already, but the deathday anniversary just makes it that much more meaningful, you know?

HOST: Of course! Now let’s check in with Pierre, our loup-garou life coach. He’s going to run some simple exercises and drills with you to get the walls bleeding on command.

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Title: The Park Bench, J.R. Maxwell;

The enormity of being alive woke me fom a deep sleep. I was finally cnfronted in a manner tht would not rest nor allow any quarter. I am dying. Of course we are all dying;you, me, everyone on the planet begins a the top of a hill ad gradually descends a winding trail meandering. Some of us even run. Sitting here knowing, believing and trying to process a reality like that gathers its own momentum. For most of my life, I hid it from my daily examination, like a passenger riding on a train. Staring out the windows, from the passenger car, it was a blur. I saw my death as though it were scenery. Background that came with the journey. When the journey ended at the station, just before disembarking, I would forget

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With the tweak made, the specter’s visage changed, fading away from frenzy to confusion, and then to peace. In much the same way it had appeared, it vanished, like a mist before the sun.

“What did you do?” Kitty said.

Sam pulled the Rwio off his hand and secured it in a well-loved leather holster on one side. “I rewrote its memory,” he said. “Ghost can’t haunt if it doesn’t think it was murdered.”

Kitty put her hands to her forehead. “You what? Like a wethacker rewriting a person? That’s illegal!”

“What are they gonna do, arrest me for murder?” Sam laughed. “But yeah, same principle, if you want to put it like that.”

“I have…SO many questions,” Kitty continued. “How can you alter the memory of something supernatural, with no physical form? Something that’s outside the laws of physics?”

“Hey.” Sam held up a forefinger. “It follows laws, we just don’t know what they are yet. Give it fifty, a hundred years, and someone’ll be able to do the math and show their work. All I know is that a Rwio works on a spook if you adjust it to use a 60 Hz carrier wave with a complex amplitude, and…”

Kitty tapped the jammer pin on her collar. “Look, using a Rwio to rewrite people’s memories is tough enough even when you’re not being jammed. How the hell can you do it to a spook?”

“Memory is just patterns in the ectoplasm,” Sam said. He tapped his temple, smoke from his cigarette ringing his head. “Same as the electrical impulses in my meat-brain here, assuming I remember anything about this conversation. Y’know, since it’s sort of boring.”

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While Lord Dothan could raise the dead to do his bidding, they were simple creatures that could only obey the most basic of commands. Tactics beyond an inhuman wave were ineffective, and Dothan found himself still reliant on his living acolytes for much of his combat strength, which meant more resources and logistics were required to move them.

In years’ worth of experiments, building upon the libraries he had captured as well as experimenting on prisoners taken in raids, Dothan gradually uncovered his answer. When slain, a person’s life force would dissipate. But it could be siphoned off and placed into a holding device and fueled with further energy taken from the living. The energy could be formed into matter of a sort, if enough of it were present, and it required neither food nor rest.

Instead, the life force constantly ebbed away and could be replenished with further infusions. A campaign of conquest with a force of these revenants at its heart could, then, use the power of its enemies’ life forces as fuel for an infinite campaign to bring the world to oblivion.

Lord Dothan created a variety of terrible ‘revenant engines’ to serve as his commanders and elite, warriors with bodies resistant to damage and untiring. But it was for himself that he devised the most perfect revenant engine of all: a series of gems that, fueled by the life force of his most devoted acolytes, could sustain Dothan far beyond his natural lifespan and allow him to complete his oblivion crusade.

The force that marched out from the ruined gates of Vaaj had only a few living among it, mostly scouts and spies and a few cooks to provide for them. The others were revenant engines or the shambolic dead, with a dark figure at their head: Dothan himself, reborn as the ultimate revenant engine, ready to sow oblivion as a balm over a suffering world.

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Vaaj had decreased in population by half during its prince’s absence, but it still had high walls manned by able troops. Rather than storm it, Dothan Vou presented himself at the gates, demanding that they be opened. His father, Dothan Xiong, by now old and nearly blind, ordered the guard to admit his son.

Dothan Vou patiently explained his revelation to his father, presenting him with a copy of the Nihilexicon and claiming that his new philosophy was the secret to conquering not only the Great Famine, but all other problems. Dothan Xiong asked in return, after a long pause, how a man who did not believe in ascension could ever hope to see such a plan succeed before he fell into oblivion himself.

“The One did it,” was Dothan Vou’s reply. “The One ascended,” his father replied angrily. “This is a descent, and one into madness.” He then ordered his son to leave, casting him out.

Dothan Vou politely obeyed, retreating through the city gates. His father dispatched emissaries to his allies, begging for help–the only sources by which the incident is known, as the messengers proved to be among the only survivors of what was to come.

Within a day, half of Vaaj was sick or dying; Dothan Vou had spread his insidious mercy poison into the water while within the walls. Depleted and still starving, the city guard were no match for Dothan Vou’s forces, and the city was slain to the last.

Rather than raze it, though, Dothan Vou–now known simply as Dothan, as he had become the last of his line–established it as a base. He would spend the next few years consolidating and preparing for his great crusade of oblivion.

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Stripping himself of all his princely vestments, Dothan Vou began his journey down the river toward Vaaj at its mouth. At each port, each town, he disembarked and preached the joy of oblivion. His message always found a few eager ears among the disaffected and the dying, for the Great Famine had begun to reach even the upper river.

As he trained his first acolytes, Dothan Vou wrought the destruction of each settlement in turn. His skill with the Art, and his long meditations, had furnished him with the tools he needed to bring sweet oblivion to the river valley. Those who submitted willingly were provided with an elixir of Dothan Vou’s own creation, which slew them quickly and painlessly. Those who did not were put to the sword, and many of their bodies were raised to serve as shock troops for further conquest.

Unlike many conquerors, Dothan Vou left no administration behind, no lieutenants, no structure. Those who had gone willingly were left where they lay as a sort of final mercy, while those who had not were raised as needed. Everything needed for the utilitarian maintenance of the living beings in the force was stripped from the area, and then the town was razed.

It was during this time that Dothan Vou also began researching further into the arcane. His desire was for a force that required no fodder, could endure as long as it was needed, but which would be strong and flexible enough to accomplish the mission, however long it took. Each city sacked was another library added to his own, and another morsel of dark knowledge added to his growing array.

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With no one remaining in Qasile, Dothan Vou took all the supplies for himself and resolved to meditate on the matter until he received the enlightenment he sought or until he ran out of supplies and starved.

It was during this meditation that Dothan Vou first conceived the ideas that he would eventually collect into the Nihilexicon, the Book of Oblivion. There was no higher power or higher plane of existence, he reasoned. The One had been mistaken in that, though Dothan Vou did not blame him for this failing.

The One had been right, that emotions born of the flesh were the source of all suffering. But the solution was where He had erred; it was as impossible to purge all emotions born of the flesh as it was to remain alive after starving to death. And, far from an enlightened ascension, denying emotions born of the flesh led only to more suffering in an endless cycle of despair.

No, the only times devoid of suffering were the oblivion before one was born, and the oblivion after they died. That was perfection and freedom. After all, in his journeys, Dothan Vou had seen the brilliance of the skies, and the great natural wonders of the river basin. What need had the universe of people, of suffering?

Oblivion, Dothan Vou came to believe, was the only answer. And so, on sheets of vellum made from the flayed skin of the people of Quasile, he began to write the first copy of the Nihilexicon. In it, Dothan Vou pledged to spread this oblivion to all the peoples of the earth, and then to die by his own hand.

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The Prosperous North had long been influenced by the philosophy of the One, so named because when asked his name or his nature, he would always reply “I am but one of many.” The One held that human suffering was caused by emotions born of the flesh–desire, hunger, thirst, and the like–and that by overcoming those emotions, one could enter a higher and more blessed state. Dothan Vou was, like his forefathers, a devout follower of the One and at each stop along his river journey, he sought out the wisest men he could, followers of the One all, and asked them what he should do for his people.

The answer Dothan Vou received, invariably, was that suffering was caused by emotions born of the flesh. The people of Vaaj would only know happiness and prosperity again by denying themselves and entering a higher, more blessed state. To each of them Dothan Vou replied: “That is all very well and good, but my people will die if they are not sustained by water or food; what am I to do?” The wise men could only repeat the strictures of the One again, which left Dothan Vou unsatisfied.

At each stop, hunger and privation took their toll on Dothan Vou’s traveling companions, and his party dwindled from dozens to a mere handful, and eventually the prince himself and a single retainer. At the tiny port of Qasile, that last companion died of starvation, having secretly given all their rations to the prince to keep him sustained. At that town, Dothan Vou found the wisest man and asked him what he could do to stop the drought, expecting the same answer. Instead, the man pointed a finger at Dothan Vou. “It is your desire to save them that you must give up,” he said. “Your emotions, born of the flesh, must be overcome.”

“If I do that, my people will die,” Dothan Vou replied.

“Death is a part of life, for cities and nations as well as men and women,” was the reply. “The time has come for your city to die, and only by giving up the desire to preserve what was can you proceed.”

“Many could not leave even if they wanted to. I will not condemn them to a slow death by starvation,” Dothan Vou replied.

“Then you know what must be done,” the wise man said. It is thought that he was speaking of allowing those people to die, as part of a natural cycle. But Dothan Vou took quite another meaning from the old man’s words.

He drove his sword through the wise man’s heart, killing him. The people of Qasile, seeing this, attacked him. But they were not warrior, and they had not the fearsome control of the Art that Dothan Vou possessed. He slaughtered the inhabitants to a man, woman, and child.

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In the Prosperous North, there stood the city of Vaaj, sometimes spelt Vaj or Vaugh, that ruled over a hinterland of the same name. It had been given over to the House of Dothan to rule by the Heavenly King before his line had failed and the old Prosperous Empire crumbled. The house of Dothan ruled for seven times seven generations in peace, only riding forth to war in aid of their friends and allies. But in the reign of Dothan Xiong, an enemy arose which infiltrated the lands and lad them waste: drought and famine.

Dothan Xiong cared greatly for his people, ruling them with the title of Khan as had his forefathers before him. Much of the treasury was spilled in buying food from abroad for the people, but that was not sustainable, for the gold was finite and Vaaj’s trading partners were in as desperate a state as it was. It was then that Dothan Xiong turned to his only son, Dothan Vou, sending him and a small retinue abroad to search for a solution to the Great Famine. Dothan Vou was skilled in the Art, much more so than any in his family had been in generations, and as the son of the queen, last scion of the nearby land of Sokho, he stood to inherit both kingdoms as Khan upon his ascension.

Dothan Vou started up the river that led through Vaaj, seeking its source and answers for the withering of his nation and its people.

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I squinted at the bumper sticker on the car in front of me, a small, two-door Nissan:

I ♥ MY ELECTRIC CORPORATION

There was something deeply disturbing about that. People didn’t love their electric corporations. At best, they were indifferent toward them; electricity was the sort of thing no one noticed until it wasn’t working properly. And even then, the emotion at play was white-hot rage, not love. No one commended a utility for producing particularly good electricity, a fine vintage amperage from a good year for coal.

What sort of person displayed, and proudly so, a bumper sticker like that? It was suspicious, unsettling.

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