October 15, 2021
“The whole…village constructed like the game Mousetrap,” the note said. “Or maybe Mantrap, like the one around my leg just now…I see the blood. I don’t have long.”
“It seemed like such an inviting place, so friendly and welcoming, but it’s a trap. Once you’re here, they never want you to leave, and they have the traps to make sure it happens.”
October 14, 2021
And I found then, that wandering the halls of my own memory was like unto an expedition into caverns of glass. Every facet a memory, and by placing a hand thereupon I could relive it in all the detail that the fading of time had left to me. From the brutal pain of having the wind knocked out of me as a child, to the inimitable boredom of a long bus ride, it was all there.
I had only just begun my search when my hand grazed, unintentionally, over my first heartbreak. Even after the assuage of decades, the hurt was so intense that I could only fall to the floor with a choked sob.
October 13, 2021
After he was shot, Swingin’ Joe reportedly whispered to an onlooker “it’s all in the last song” before dying of blood loss. The lead singer of the popular 60s band The Water Waves, Swingin’ Joe had recently been hard at work on a solo album, using studio musicians instead of his usual The Water Waves bandmates. And, upon his death, those same bandmates as well as the record company were shocked to find that Swingin’ Joe had hidden most of his assets, including millions of dollars in gold, in an undisclosed location.
“The last song” is thought by many to be the enigmatic final ballad of Swingin’ Joe’s posthumous record, which was completed and released by The Water Waves as their ninth and final studio album. Ostensibly this was done in their slain frontman’s memory, but in reality it was an injection of much-needed cash. The final song consists of vocals by Swingin’ Joe, singing lyrics he wrote, accompanied by studio musicians on piano and tambourine with The Water Waves adding in bass, rhythm guitar, and percussion in post.
Small rocky islands floating in a sky of lemons
Pinch me now because I think I’m in heaven
Golden circles showering down upon the earth
If you have to ask me then you know what it is worth
This final refrain, repeated three times while faded out via an echoplex, is often cited as a treasure map of sorts. With its description of yellow circles, rocky islands, and lemon sky, it has led many treasure seekers to search and illegally dig in Thailand’s Phang Nga Bay and Palau, where the rock star owned island homes.
October 12, 2021
I look at a forest of not-trees
A wistful sigh on my lips
I wish that I could tread those not-paths
And soft not-beds upon which to sleep
But those not-flowers are forever beyond me
The not-water in babbling brooks
I can almost breathe the not-air
But it all remains trapped in a book
October 11, 2021
“We can only cross the Noctilucent Glaciers at night.” Guide looked over the windswept landscape, her breath misting the air even in the relative shelter of the campsite.
“Why’s that?” Newc asked. “Should be pretty easy, yeah? Just don’t fall and slip?”
“Crevasses.” Guide’s breath misted about her scarf, clinging in laces to the fur of her hood, where tiny icicles had begun to form. “Deep pits of ice, often covered with a thin rind to trick you into stepping on them.”
“I know what a crevasse is,” said Newc. “Mountaineers have ways of dealing with them, yeah? Ropes, poking the snow, all that sort of thing?”
“These are trickier. It’s almost like they want you to fall in.” Guide snorted to herself. “Hell, maybe they do. But the glow only comes from solid ice, from critters that live in it. So we wait.”
As the sun set, and true to Guide’s word, the glacier was soon suffused with a gentle lucent glow, outlining a safe path forward.
October 10, 2021
Someone had definitely been there; a fresh path was worn through the brambles, almost like a game trail, and the old greenhouse had been restored. It looked like they’d used cheap acrylic instead of glass, likely taken in a few sheets at a time and caulked into place. A few of the original leaded glass windows remained, either cleaned or repaired with more plastic. They were all fogged over with condensation, blocking any view of the interior.
The old clearing still got plenty of sunshine, and wisps of steam were rising from the old chimney–whoever had been squatting there had somehow relit the old boilers that the 12th Earl had used to keep his botanical specimens warm.
Someone had gone to a lot of trouble, and expense to reactivate the place in secret, but for what? Growing illegal plants to make drugs, perhaps? Maybe methamphetamine?
The caretaker eased the door opened, and then coughed as something extremely bitter popped on his lips and ran down his chin.
Someone had prepared a greenhouse glade filled with a bubble machine, and nothing else. Soapy bubbles pinwheeled through the otherwise empty structure.
“What do you think of my crop, then?” A voice behind the caretaker said. “Best harvest I’ve had, so far.”
October 9, 2021
Down a metal beach I went
Onto a rusty shore
A sea of razors there I met
Breaking with metallic roar
To go forward was to die
From a thousand tiny cuts
And yet across the bay I spied
A scattered run of huts
My destination, or so it seemed
Was plainly there in sight
Yet I could not step into the stream
Of rust, of fear, of blight
There was no choice for me to make
No alternate paths appeared
To reach safety I would have to take
The route that I most feared
October 8, 2021
Gasping, and still holding the oozing wound in his side, Reginald limped toward the exit. He was sure of it; the way looked familiar, right down to the decorative trellis.
“Reggie, dear?”
Bethany’s footsteps were slow, languid, and every now and then one of her bright white wedding shoes clacked on a hard flagstone.
“Reggie, darling!”
Reginald steadied himself on the trellis just before the exit. “I knew you were a nutter…fifty years ago…” he gasped. “You didn’t snare me so easily then, and you won’t now…!”
He staggered through the trellis, only for a defeated wail to escape his lips. It was’t the exit after all; far from it, he saw more landscaped hedges and more of those damnable white flowers spreading in every direction.
And behind him, in a bridal dress as old as the day he’d left her, Bethany. “I’ve had ages to plan my revenge, Reggie,” she laughed. “I know you so well even after all these years, and I’ve made sure my botanical mazes of white lace and trees aren’t so easy to escape.”
October 7, 2021
“Maybe you’ve been out closer to the edge of the Permeables before, but this is different. Things can take on a life of their own left out here.”
Hax gestured at the mirror forest filled with reflective crystals spread out before them. “This isn’t like planting an iron pipe and growing a boiler,” he said. “What caused something like this to sprout up?”
“A mirror and an idea.”
“You’re gonna have to unpack that for me a little,” said Hax.
“Well, the first part is just speculation, but I have the second from a friend that was in the know. Someone left a mirror here once, maybe just to see what it would do, and the result looked to someone passing by like something they’d once seen, maybe a movie or a comic book.”
“What about?”
“About a tree loaded with crystals that could imprison whatever touched them. We best be careful.”
October 6, 2021
“Well, you got to realize how easy it is for them pipes to grow out of control,” Ffolkes said. “My system, I have to go in every day in the summer, every other in the fall, with the snips to cut off the little steam pipes as they bud off. It’s easy when they’re that small.”
Moyer looked at the cellar door, uneasily. “You’re saying Jacobi didn’t do that?”
“I kept telling him. Snip them pipes when they’re a quarter inch, before any steam can flow through them, and seal with a spot weld or solder. Easiest thing in the world. Let them go too far and they’ll start growing boilers. ‘Well, maybe I like boilers’ he says.”
“And then one day, he didn’t come back.”
“You let a boiler system grow too much, other things start moving in,” Ffolkes drawled. “You might get a concrete infestation, growing floors where you don’t want ‘em, and that’ll take a jackhammer to pull out. Might even get an electrical system growing on the ceiling, and you know they’d never wired quite right without a little tending. Good way to get electrocuted.”
It was time, Moyer thought, to start considering worst-case scenarios. “What’s the worst you’ve ever seen, or heard of?”
“I heard that up by Grant, when they dug up the old utility building, they found a steam turbine generator,” Ffolkes said. “Never seen it myself. Worst I ever seen woulda been the house on the other side of town, where they yanked it down without digging up the pipes and had no idea anything was wrong until radiators started sprouting two doors down.”
Moyer looked toward the door again. Jacobi, or what was left of him, was surely down there, in a labyrinth of rocks and steam.
And no bets for who had to go in after him.
Excerpts From Nonexistent Books 