Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

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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The casting director steepled her hands on the desk and looked at the broomstick. “Are you…Mr. B. Rümschtick?”

The broomstick standing before her answered (she wasn’t sure where from) in a reedy voice: “That’s right. I’m here to read for the part.”

“Uh, I’m not sure you fit the type we’re looking for,” said the director.

“The cattle call sheet says you want tall, thin, tan, and blond,” the broomstick replied. “I think you’ll find I meet all the criteria to read for the part of Chris.”

The assistant director leaned over and whispered in the casting director’s ear: “The call sheet doesn’t specify humans. Let it read for the part or we could be in big trouble with SAG.”

“Shit, really?”

“They sued when a pig auditioned for a senator three years ago.”

Turning back to the broomstick, the casting director smiled. “Okay, we’ll let you read for the part. Would you like to tell us a little about your background?”

“You’re not allowed to make them say that!” the AD hissed.

“It can be volunteered! Don’t tell me you’re not curious!” the casting director whispered back.

“Well, I’m a witch’s broomstick, given unholy life through arcane rituals which rend asunder the veil between living and dead, seelie and unseelie,” the broom said. “But I’m trying to branch out and try different things.”

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Naturally, Boris preferred to have a reflection, since it made him less likely to be outed as an unholy creature of the night, especially in the mirrored ballrooms of Bucharest. So he had contrived to use his not-inconsiderable powers as a sorcerer to cast a spell to give him a false reflection with which to fool and bamboozle mortals until it was too late, and his fangs were already sunk deep into their flesh and draining their lifeblood.

Unfortunately, the spell was a bit of a kludge. Boris knew a spell for creating illusions, another for making them move, and a third for enchanting mirrors for the purposes of scrying, so he had simply combined all three in an attempt to create a convincing, fake, reflection.

“Heyyy, Boris! Looking a litly doughy there, my man. You just suck too much, you know?”

The spell created a fake reflection all right…and one that dispensed a never-ending torrent of insults, false prophecies, outright lies, and bad jokes.

Worst of all, Boris had cast another spell he knew—permanency—over the whole thing before realizing his mistake. Needless to say, remedying the error was top on his to-do list…assuming he could think over the inane chattering of his doppelganger.

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The grinning skull rotated itself 180 degrees, accompanied by the snapping and popping of bones.

“A construct am I, assembled in death. Speak the password at once, let your words have some heft.”

“I, uh, don’t know the password,” said Rags. “Do you know where I can find it?”

“No password you have, my instructions are clear. I must cut your head off, from all you hold dear.”

The skull emerged further into the pool of light, revealing skeletal arms and a rib cage. Rags backed up a step, alarmed, but his alarm grew a hundredfold when he saw another set of arms, and another ribcage emerged, and another, and another.

The gatekeeper or guardian or whatever it was…the skeleton had too many bones, and it was wending its way toward him like a terrifying wyrm of bleached ivory.

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“So you see, that’s the miracle of EctoCo,” said Madison Grobb, EctoCo COO of BOO. “Ghosts are immortal, already know everything they need to do the job, and are not legally considered people. So we can put them to work to serve the living in a variety of mential jobs once they’re raised.”

“How do you compensate them, or at least force compliance?” asked Blaire Burroughs, the WSJ Correspondent for Underutilized Labor. “I’m assuming pay is out of the question.”

“Of course,” Madison laughed. “I mean, what would they even spend it on? No, the patented PolterAmp™ technology that allows for ghosts to affect the material plane more efficiently works in reverse as well; by dialing in a negative resonance value we can cause them to partially or fully dissipate, the former being painful and the latter being permanent.”

“What happens to a ‘dissipated’ spirit?” asked Blaire.

“We leave those question to the philosophers,” Madison replied. “Ah, we’re just about to raise one now.”

She steered Blaire to a patch of earth, containing mortal remains and a restless spirit, which was undergoing PolterAmp™ testing. As they watched, the ghostly ectoplasmic figure of a person rose from the earth, confused and disoriented.

“You there, what was your job in life?” Madison said. “We’ve got openings in low-level assembly work.”

“I…in life, I was a…steno pool typist,” the spectral being said in a hollow whisper.

“Oh. Ew. No one needs typists anymore.” Madison looked over to the PolterAmp™ tech running the equipment and drew a finger across her throat. “Purge it.”

Blaire watched, raptly taking notes, as the tech smashed a red button and the spirit was torn to pieces as the device inverted itself. The remains and hallowed earth were sluiced away as well to make room for the next occupant.

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Thanks to its large size and asymmetric shape, the pumpkin had repeatedly resisted attempts to tame it. The thing had repeatedly tipped over on the porch, often rolling about and knocking things over. It had blocked the door several times, forcing Frank to go around the back way to get out of his own summer house. Worst of all, it had proven to be entirely impenetrable to the carving implements he had available, bending two knives.

When he final attempt to decorate the gourd with paint failed due to its knobby surface, Frank had enough. He chucked it into his front bed and beat is with a hoe, as if setting an example to the other gourds there.

Once the exceptionally mischevious pumpkin was literally beaten to a pulp, Frank finished packing and left for Florida the day after Halloween. He returned in May, only to find his entire front porch overgrown and begourded. The children of his vanquished pumpkin had risen, it seemed, and they were out for revenge.

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“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” shouted Sedgewyck.

“Oh, the tea is a little hot, so I’m adding some ice cubes to it,” said Rags. “So it doesn’t burn my mouth.”

Sedgewyck rose, furious. “WATERING DOWN the tea? COOLING the tea? This is an insult MOST GRAVE, child!”

“I wouldn’t mind a spot of milk or a bisuit to dunk myself,” said Codswallop.

“You INSULT me, sir!” screamed Sedgewyck. “This is the ancient ELDER TEA, passed down from our forebears who were first wrecked here, and you are DISRESPECTING IT!”

“Sorry, sorry,” Rags said. “I’ll take the ice cubes out.” He reached for a teaspoon, only to have Sedgewyck swat it out of his hand with his cane.

“It’s too late! An insult this grave can only be answered with blood!”

Codswallop had reached across the table for milk, which he had quietly added to his tea. “Are you sure about that, Sir Sedgewyck?” he said mildly. “I have found you and your people affably amusing thus far; it would be a shame to shed your blood over something as trivial as the temperature and composition of tea.”

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