Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

“William ‘Soddy’ Soderburgh and Mary Daisy Davis, died November 1, 1971 in a crash involving a Plymouth Road Runner and a Mack diesel semi-truck at the intersection of Darkhollow Rd. and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard,” said Margaret “Peggy” McGinty, the best paranormal counselor in the Office of Occult Affairs. “Does that aound about right?”

The spectral form of Soddy, perched in a chair in front of her, shrugged. “Yeah, I guess.”

“I go by Daisy,” said the other phantasm, ‘seated’ beside him even though she floated idly a few inches above the seat.

“Of course, Daisy,” said Peggy. “So. Why did you decide to wait until now to begin driving down the road in a wailing, spectral parody of the grim night that resulted in both your deaths?”

“Huh?” said Soddy.

“What?” said Daisy.

“Why did you wait 50 years to start haunting the road where you died,” said Peggy.

“Oh. Well, we had to do some time in purgatory first.”

“Got out early for good behavior,” Daisy chimed in.

“Yeah. And, well, there’s lots of other deadies on Darkhollow road, so we wanted to stand out, right?”

“Go on,” said Peggy.

“Well, the semi truck driver that creamed us, Dale, he just died not too long ago. Fell asleep at the wheel and wrapped his cab around an oak.”

“Super nice guy,” Daisy said. “Did not deserve that, but he lost his retirement in the subprime mortgage crisis and he was still driving at 70.”

“So we figured we’d get Dale in on the action, you know? A spectral big rig chasing us is sure to make us stand out from the others, dig?”

“My witness didn’t see any truck,” Peggy said.

“Right, right,” Soddy said. “Well, you know, Dale’s got to do his time as well. Then he’s got to get the cab, easier said than done. We figure he’ll be ready in five, maybe six years.”

“Good guy, a saint really, those two crashes are the worst things he ever did,” Daisy said.”

“So we thought we’d practice a bit, yeah? Without him?” Soddy shrugged. “What’s the big deal?”

“Oh, nothing that we can’t banish to Limbo for all eternity,” Peggy said darkly. “Unless you’re willing to make a deal, that is.”

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“Why do the kids insist on messing around on Darkhollow Road?” Sanderson Lee, University Vice-Chancellor for Occult Affairs, moaned.

“I know, Sandy, I know.” Margaret “Peggy” MacGinty, the most experienced paranormal councilor under Occult Affairs, replied. “But that’s in the past, and we have to look toward the future. Tell me who it was and what they saw.”

“Right, right.” Lee pulled up the file on his computer. “Police report with UPD filed at 1:47AM last night. Reporter is one Madison Reeve, a second-year pledge out of Digamma Theta Mu. She says she was, and I’m quoting here, ‘chased by a screaming ghost car.’”

“Did she get the make and model of the car?” said Peggy.

Lee gave her an arched-eyebrow glare. “Surely you’re joking.”

“Lee, this is why you’re an administrator and I’m a councilor. If it’s a 1924 Maxwell phaeton, then it’s the restless spirit of J. S. Weatherford and his cronies, who ran off the road and wrapped around an oak in ’26. If it’s a 1960 DeSoto Firedome, then it’s Richard ‘Dick’ Bottoms and his three lovers, who went into Darkhollow Gorge one after the other. Do I need to go on?”

“Okay, okay, I’ll have UPD ask her. How soon can you be onsite? You could ask yourself.”

“I have a lunch appointment with the biology major from Kyoto that accidentally brought a malevolent oni from the Kajurasama Shrine in Osaka,” Peggy said. “I can’t reschedule it because I need Nakamura-san from Modern Languages to translate for me.”

“This afternoon, maybe? Say, 2 or 3?”

“We’ll say 2:30,” Peggy replied. “And we’ll say that you owe me big, and figure out what exact form that takes when we have a moment to breathe, hmm?”

“Of course, of course,” said Lee.

“You’ll notice I didn’t ask why the hurry,” Peggy added as she moved toward the door. “I’m assuming we have another donor’s daughter?”

“Trustee’s stepdaughter,” Lee sighed. “And a transfer student to boot.”

“I’ll see you at 2:30,” Peggy said with a sweet smile. “It’ll cost you.”

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“Yes, I understand your concern, Mrs. Grantham. No, I assure you that all necessary actions are being taken. Yes, we here at the university are all keenly aware of Grantham Hall and how it got its name. Yes. Yes. Of course. Yes, Goodbye.”

Sanderson Lee, Vice-Chancellor for Occult Affairs, waited until the line had clicked dead before slamming the handset down into its cradle.

“Whoa there, Sandy,” said J. Featherton Bellows, Vice-Chancellor for Fraternity and Sorority Affairs. “If you need to break a phone, pick up a cheap one from Supply.”

“I’m sorry you had to see that, Tonny,” said Lee. “Come in, sit down. You read my email?”

“What little there was to read,” said Bellows. I’m guessing we have another situation that is best without a paper trail?”

“Those assh-, er, our associated from Alpha Qoppa Gamma have once again been up to no good,” Lee said. “They sent another pledge into Mayes Hall during the witching hour.”

“More hazing?”

“More mazing,” Lee said. “We have a supernatural councilor—Patty, you know Patty—on the line with the boy, but he’s trapped in a repeating, non-terminating, extra-dimensional labyrinth.”

“How long?” said Bellows.

“Since about 3:30 AM this morning,” Lee said. “The boy has been able to find functional power outlets and a kitchenette stocked with edible food, but as the maze gains in abstraction and loses coherence that’ll soon stop.”

“They’re looking at another suspension for that,” Bellows said. “Eighteen months, since this is their sixth offence.”

“We can talk about their slap on the wrist later,” said Lee. “Right now, we need to get that boy out. UPD has already failed to penetrate the pocket dimension, and I need someone who know what they’re doing to consult with before 3AM.”

“Why the hurry? The last boy stewed for 36 hours before we were able to break through. I’d consider it part of his punishment.”

“Because he’s Sylvia Grantham’s precious baby nephew, that’s why, and she’s threatening to cut her annual contribution.”

“Definitely the sort of thing you don’t want in an email,” Bellows said. “I think I know someone who can help, though. An Alpha Qoppa from years back, now runs his daddy’s company. They got that little girl out of the well that ended in an infinite torus a while back.”

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“Occupation?”

“Time travel pharmacologist.”

“What?”

“I prepare pharmaceuticals for people who travel through time. It’s an important but complex process, as the medicines need to be prepared in such a way that they will seem period-appropriate, but also self-destruct if tampered with to reduce temporal cross-contamination. It’s important to note that I am NOT a time travel pharmacist; I am don’t prescribe drugs to people in historical periods like those idiots that tried to give Hitler a dose of lithium to prevent World War II.”

“…look, if you don’t want to answer the question, just say so and I’ll leave it blank.”

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The Maybe Snail is an unusual quantum organism that is thought to be from the neomphaline order of shelled snails. Like the closely related Chrysomallon squamiferum or Volcano Snail, the Maybe Snail has incorporated an unusual substance into its outer shell and scutes. While the Volcano Snail uses iron sulfides as a protection from heat, the Maybe Snail incorporates quantum-entangled particles into both its shell and its physiology. This results in a snail that is both existent and nonexistent at the same time, which can occupy multiple points simultaneously or none at all, and is generally resistant to interpretation or study.

Only a handful of specimens have been documented, and only the type specimen has ever been thoroughly studied. It was discovered floating in a specimen jar marked “Empty” at the University of Chicago Biological Sciences Annex in 2007. Other than live specimens, which are generally observed near supercolliders or other high-energy particle physics sites, fossils have been discovered in predynastic Egyptian tombs, Ediacaran geological strata, and in Antarctic meteorites. Dissection of the type specimen revealed a shockingly conventional organism, given its peculiar quantum lifestyle, though its gut was curiously shortened and there was no nutrative mechanism present.

It is hypothesized that the Maybe Snail has a symbiotic relationship with a quantumophile microorganism from which it derives nourishment. The exact nature and form of this symbiosis is still theoretical, however, given that close examination of the dissected specimen showed that all microbiomes had been sterilized by the formaldehyde bath.

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The Glow-Torch

Enchanted by a journeyman out of the Timeless Bastion, the Glow-Torch is a metal rod approximately one foot long, made of metal and incised with a variety of runes and magic symbols. Anyone with knowledge of arcane languages or writing will recognize them as powerful spells of illumination, light, and darkness-banishing. However, when the command word is spoken, only a faint glow will appear at the item’s tip, variously described as “a meager spark,” “a solitary firefly,” or a “lowly glowworm.”

The glow is too dim to provide useful illumination in all but the darkest of environments, and even then a lengthy period of adjustment is necessary. As a type of magical illumination, though, the glow cannot be blown out, snuffed, or extinguished in any way other than by the speaking of the command word. In this way it has occasionally been mentioned in annals as a useful source of emergency illumination by those who see well in the dark, but it is still a disappointment given the seemingly powerful runes with which it is carved. Sadly, it takes a true runic master to see the myriad imperfections and errors that conspire to reduce the item’s intended fiery illumination to a faint glow.

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The Asan call the melody the “Lullaby of the Lost,” and it is a song that is often sung during times of stress and hardship among their people.

According to an oral tradition, long passed down, an Asan mother once lost her child in a forest and was able to make herself known to them by singing the song. The child emerged from hiding, knowing from the song that they were not being punished. When the child, now an adult, predeceased their mother, the Asan said that she sang the lullaby again, and received a peaceful vision from her child’s departed spirit in return.

Many Asan therefore believe that the Lullaby of the Lost is not simply for those who are lost or who are looking for someone who has been lost, but to those who feel lost, alone, or abandoned in any way. In the words of an Asan holy one whose name is lost to history, “all are lost in one way or another.”

Those who spent time among the Asan would often sing the lullaby themselves when they returned to their people, and in that way it spread somewhat beyond its origin, though few other peoples used it as anything other than a lullaby for children, or a dirge.

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In the hippie era, the United States government decided to commit federal funds to an official organization to study new age developments, both as an olive branch to transcendental thinkers in that country and out of fear that the Soviets had a similar program. The result was the National Auranotics and Spaced Out Administration (NASOA), which was authorized in 1968 and began operations in 1970.

As the name suggests, NASOA started with studies on the colored halo or “aura” that many new age practitioners claimed that they could see around people, either innately or with the assistance of crystals. The Head and Deputy Head of NASOA, Dr. J. Smithers Coby and Cascade Liberation II (“CL2”), could not agree on whether to study the auras for military or civilian purposes, so as a compromise, both were studied. Dr. Coby, with half of the NASOA staff, began an Aura Survey of top government officials, major players in entertainment and religion, and—with the aid of crystalloscopes provided by the CIA—key people behind the Iron Curtain. CL2, with the other half of the team, conducted an Aura Census, trying to measure the auras of as many people on the street as possible. Both agreed to compare their findings after a study period of 24 months.

In 1972, NASOA presented its findings to a joint panel of military officers, government functionaries, and key representatives from the counterculture movement. Dr. Coby’s Aura Survey had received inconsistent findings, as many of the people who claimed to see auras had reported contradictory colors for the same people. But they were able to provide some consensus, with President Nixon displaying a sickly puce aura, Vice President Agnew either midnight black or navy blue, and Soviet ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin a sickly yellow. When pressed to quantify those colors, Dr. Coby was forced to admit that there was no consensus there either.

CL2’s Aura Census had measured the auras of 18,126 people across 23 states in the 24 months of the project, employing a staff of 30 who could reportedly see auras and a further 45 who used crystals to aid in the process. CL2 reported that 27% of those surveyed had blue auras, 18% had green, red and purple were tied at 13% each, followed by orange and black at roughly 7.5% each, with all other colors splitting the remaining 14%. When asked by the panels what the aura colors meant, SL2 claimed that that had been beyond the scope of the study, and that Dr. Coby had been expected to provide the necessary data for interpretation. He could not, however, explain how the distribution of auras from his census almost exactly matched the distribution of people’s favorite colors from the 1967 Heintz-Dolorre Color Survey.

These results were largely seen as dissatisfying, though the political benefits of keeping NASOA alive meant that it continued to operate until 1981, when it was defunded at the federal level and shut down, with all remaining project files destroyed.

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There was once a man who approached the Sage on the Mountain and asked if he could see the spirits of the dead. When the Sage asked why he would want this, the man replied that he often felt the presence of spirits in his home, and wanted to see them to know what they wanted. The Sage warned that the dead keep their own ways, their own counsel, and that the man would regret his request. Confident, the man insisted he would not. The Sage gave him an obol coin and told him to place it under his pillow, and that his wish would be granted.

A week later, the man returned. He had clearly not slept and barely ate in the intervening time, and the effort of re-climbing the mountain had nearly ended him. As the Sage nursed him, the man begged to return his gift, to unsee the dead. The Sage asked why, and the man spoke.

“The dead crawl and twist and writhe everywhere, spirits laid across the land so thick that there no nowhere they do not rise to the heights of mountains or beyond. Humans, yes, but also beasts and insects and all the life that has passed from this place since the beginning of all life. They gnash and wail silently in torment, trapped amid the crush of their fellows, neither understanding nor comprehending the horror in which they find themselves. Ours is a red world, a dead world, for the spirits outnumber us by legions to one, and I do not wish to know this any further.”

The Sage of the Mountain asked if the man now understood why his request had been foolish. The man readily agreed, and added that the experience had made him fear death ever more. The Sage offered him a second obol to place beneath his pillow, but the man died from exhaustion and starvation before he could use it. Over the man’s funeral pyre, the Sage said the following:

“It is not the living’s place to know of the dead, nor is it the dead’s place to be known by the living. Where he saw horror, perhaps the dead do not. He knows now the truth, though, as only the dead can truly know their own.”

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The Mysterious Tone at 1098 Country Club is one of the Seven Mysteries of the City of Davis. It is a tone, reportedly between 30-40 Hz with a modulation of around 2 Hz, that can be heard in and around 1098 Country Club Lane.

1098 Country Club is a relatively modest house for the most expensive neighborhood in town, a ranch-style house stop a small hill under a thick canopy of 100-year-old trees opposite Harrison Park. Joggers and dog walkers in Harrison Park are the major sources of information about the tone, which is reported to authorities every few weeks.

Notably, the mysterious tone has never been recorded or detected by the authorities, who have generally labeled it as a hoax and refused to comment further. This is compounded by the occupant of 1098, whom land records identify only as H. Harrison and who has owned and lived on the property since 1970.

H. Harrison has rebuffed all requests for interviews, generally refuses to answer his door, and has been known to confront suspected intruders with a pistol or shotgun. As this is within the state law’s application of the “castle doctrine,” he has never been charged or punished for such behavior. To keep curious onlookers at bay, Harrison has erected a metal fence on the property and keeps a rotating series of flags flying that are designed to scare away would-be trespassers—generally right-wing extremist flags in nature.

Naturally, many theories have arisen in local gossip to explain the hum and Harrison’s hostility. Most posit an underground laboratory in the hillside, the subject of nefarious experiments, while others believe it to be the result of chemicals leaking from an illicit methamphetamine lab. Enthusiasts and adherents of UFO religions have attempted to connect the tone to the famous Taos Hum or Windsor Hum, but with little result.

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