Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

Chick pointed at the ostrich that had charged Sammy. “Now we call the big male War, on account of his insatiable appetite for violence and bloodshed. Don’t you ever turn your back on him, or he will disembowel you with them dinosaur claws of his.”

“Why is he on display then?” cried Sammy.”

“Well, folks like him. Big ole ostrich attacking the gate is as close to a thrill ride as we got here.” Chick Spat on the dusty ground before continuing. “War is mated to the big female over yonder, who we call Famine. She gets that name on account of hos she steals food for everyone, even her own kin, such that some of her chicks done starved to death in her care.”

Sammy shuddered. “Do I even wanna know about that other female, the one that’s lying down with half her feathers missing?”

“Probably not,” replied Chick. “The smaller female is Pestilence, so named because she has what you’d call a predisposition to serious illness and injury. She’s suffered from salmonella of both the typhimurium and enteritidis varieties, chlamydia with the notable factoid as being the first bird in North America ever so diagnosed, avian mycoplasmosis despite a vaccination to the contrary, and of course good ole avian influenza. She’s also broken both legs and both wings, though never at the same time.”

Wincing, Sammy pointed at the other, smaller, male bird. “Death, I’m guessing?”

“You have guessed correctly. Last one is Death. We call him that on account of he dies, frequently. See, War and Famine is a mated pair, so any other male is naturally gonna try to shack up with Pesty. And given the wide variety of pathogens swirling about her at any given time, he usually punches his time card. This is Death XIII, and you’ll note he ain’t lookin’ too good, so we already got Death XIV lined up and waitin’ in the wings, so to speak.”

“My last question is…why?”

Chick grinned. “Because they’s cheap, Sammy. I dunno if it’s crossed your notice, but this ain’t exactly the Central Park Zoo here. The budget is the bare minimum to get Mr. Lysander his pound of flesh and not a penny more.”

“It can’t be up to code.”

“Oh, it ain’t. But let’s just say Mr. Lysander ain’t never had a proper inspection and leave it at that.”

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Of course, over time, with more and more patches overlaid on top of the original fabric, it became harder and harder to discern what the plush had once been. Its own insistence on the placement and shape of patches meant that, over time, it assumed a shape that was rather different from its original plush form. It’s fair to surmise that the tailor and his wife, being old, naïve, and nearly blind, had failed to notice the increasingly violent demands and behavior of their creation.

But when their hut was destroyed in a massive fireball, and a dragon of patches rose above the smoldering wreck with a roar that proclaimed its lordship over all in the town and their valley, it became a larger problem. For no sword could cut the patches deeply enough, no arrow could pierce them to any vital spot, and while the patchwork dragon was theoretically as vulnerable to oil and fire as any other cloth, its immense size and the beating of its great wings meant that few embers survived long enough to set it alight.

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Fresh off the discovery of Smallfoot, it was discovered that nearly every cryptid had co-evolved with a smaller, pint-sized cousin that was much better adapted to surviving and thriving in a dangerous human-dominated world.

Smallfoot of the Pacific Northwest shared the southern part of its range with the Fresno Duskcrawler. The Flatshrubs Monster rubbed elbows with the Mothboy of West Virginia, while Bessie the Puddle Ness Monster frolicked overseas.

Even knowing that, nothing had prepared Torvald to find a cryptid in his cupboard.

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“The code phrase is ‘Octopus finds a ukulele in a haunted house.’ Make sure you memorize it.”

Oscar turned the phrase over and over in his head. How the devil was he supposed to remember something so nonsensical? Visualize, Bowyer had said. Visualize. That was the secret.

Frowning, Oscar tried to visualize the scenario. How did the octopus get into the haunted house? It needed water to breathe. Maybe it had hopped off an aquarium truck? Perhaps it WAS the ghost.

No, no, that was too complicated for a mnemonic. The haunted house was on a cliffside, Oscar decided. It had fallen into the sea, along with all its contents and all its ghosts. An octopus had slimed in, dodging the now-drowned phantasms, only to find and curiously pluck at the waterlogged strings of an old ukulele.

“All right, can you repeat the code phrase back to me?”

Oscar was jolted out out his visualization abruptly. “Oh, uh…ukulele finds a haunted house in an octopus?”

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Naturally, of course the mighty kraken are r-strategists, producing large numbers of planktonic offspring with each mating. Female kraken eventually mature and grow to a size large enough to menace commercial ship traffic, while males remain near-microscopic and serve only to breed during their brief lives.

Unusually, the krakens produce only one kind of offspring at various stages of their life. While below 6 inches or so in size, young tiny krakens will produce only male offspring, while between 6 inches and 600 yards they will produce only female offspring, The reason for this adaptation is not currently well-understood, especially given the relative rarity of larger kraken specimens even in the era before they were hunted on an industrial scale.

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“Why are you hiding back there?” the constable said to the golem.

“Someone wrote ‘hide’ on a scroll and stuck it in my mouth,” the golem responded. “I’m compelled to do whatever the scroll says, officer! It’s not my fault.”

“I see,” the constable said, writing PATROL THE NEIGHBORHOOD on a scroll with a stub of a pencil and rolling it up.

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“So tell me, Mr…?”

“Scarey,” the scarecrow said, removing Babathiel’s hat and bowing. “Scarey Pritchard.”

“Right, yes,” the inspector said. “Mr. Pritchard. You seem to have an unreasonably large collection of eyeballs. Care to elaborate?”

“Tell him they are just for sightseeing,” Babathiel’s hat told Scarey through their psychic link. “A joke to break the tension and make you seem less like an obvious dummy.”

“They are for seeing sights,” Scarey said, laughing uneasily.

“…indeed so,” the inspector said, unconvinced. “I’m curious why you haven’t declared them on your Form 1BDI.”

“I’m holding them!” Scarey blurted, before Babathiel’s hat could feed him any lines. “For a friend!”

“And what friend is that?” said the inspector.

“Don’t say her name-“ the hat began.

“Babathiel! My mistress Babathiel!” Scarey cried.

“Ah, well, that’s fair enough,” the inspector said. “I’ll just make a note to audit your mistress Babathiel when the opportunity arises. Naturally, as her thralls, you can’t legally he held responsible for her actions.”

Scarey looked up at Babathiel’s hat, smiling and giving a rickety thumbs-up. If the hat wasn’t capable of scowling, it certainly gave it a good college try at that moment.

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While Babathiel, the Old Witch of the North Woods, was on her extended trip around the world with her old coven, the various and sundry objects she had enchanted to sentience were found with time on their hands. Metaphorically speaking, of course, since none of them had hands except her old enchanted clock.

Babathiel’s broom had flown to Los Angeles to try its hand at acting. Her cauldron had taken on a side job with a farm-to-table co-op. And her black cat familiar, Yagnider, had found a suburban cul-de-sac to mooch off of, having convinced no less than four families that he was their sole and only cat and collecting four dinners a day.

With the enchanted clock happy to sit around and waste time, that left only Babathiel’s hat. While it had many powers—increasing spell slots, acting as a bag of holding, and being able to sort people into broad personality types when placed on their heads—the hat was not satisfied to merely exercise them.

No, Babathiel’s hat had grander ambitions.

It was up to no good.

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“You wanted to see me, Bob?”

“Yes, Ernie, come on in.” Bob gestured to a chair opposite him, while Bob stumbled over to it, dragging his gimpy leg behind him and moaning.

“What can I do for you and HR?” Ernie said, a friendly expression on his pallid face. The one eye that still worked regarded Bob brightly, while the other stared cloudily at the wall.

“Well, Ernie, the fact of the matter is, we were hoping that you would take a compensation package and retire.”

“Never!” said Ernie, shocked. “Bob, this work is my life.”

“Ah, yes. Yes, I figured you thought that after you died at your desk and then arose the next morning to clock in as usual,” Bob said. “But listen, Ernie, it’s time to go. A living employee would be cheaper for us, work less overtime, move faster, and would attract fewer scavengers.”

Ernie glanced at the raccoon gnawing on his gimped leg. “This is starting to sound awfully ageist, Bob, I gotta say.”

“Well, I hate that you feel that way, Ernie, but Legal has assured me that, as the living dead, you have no rights to speak of and that we can fire you with no repercussions if you decline to retire.”

“Decline to quit, you mean,” Ernie said. “Look, Bob, I also don’t take any breaks and I’m the only one who knows the old accounting system code that we need for legacy support.”

“Oh, we’re well aware of that, Ernie,” Bob said. “In fact, we’ll increase your buyout by 50% if you agree to train Neussbaum on the system.”

“And what would 50% more money do for me?” laughed Ernie, his voice creaking eerily. “Especially if it makes me lose the only thing that is animating this tattered form?”

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“What’s got you down, Scarey?” said Crow, settling on the scarecrow’s outstretched arm.

“Well, I’m not all that good at scaring crows, as you know,” said Scarey.

“Not all that good?” Crow said, trying to be kind. “Why, you scared Cousin Crow so much that he took an hour, maybe two, to come back and eat some corn! Uncle Crow said he’d never seen him so spooked.”

“It’s kind of you to say, but you perched on me and saying it rather proves my point,” said Scarey. “But it’s okay. I know my limitations, and I’d rather have you as a friend than an enemy.”

“So what’s the problem then?” said Crow.

“My other job, my only other job, is to be spooky on Halloween,” said Scarey. “And I’m afraid I’m not very good at that either. And if I can’t even be scary one day a year, why, they might take me down.”

“That would be the end of old Scarey, wouldn’t it?” Crow said.

“And they might get something else to keep crows away,” said Scarey. “Like guns or poison.”

“Listen to me, Scarey,” said Crow. “I swear on the good name of my grandfather Crow, sweet Granny Crow, and all the rest, that I will help you be a scary Scarey for Halloween.”

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