Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

I have long known what people say about this old place. The antebellum grandeur is just a memory of a memory now, and the respectability Father brought to the place is headed for the dim mists of time as well. They only gossip about how haunted the old house is now, and about the things they think happened that long-ago April night.

You know, I had dreams once too, the same dreams I think Daddy had for the both of us. During the coming-out cotillion, why, I heard people say that we could make a go of it in Hollywood or even New York City. We had that kind of beauty, that kind of poise. People were talking about us, and that’s been the coin of the realm ever since Father’s father’s time.

Even during the trial, with you weeping in the box and me shedding my best crocodile tears from the gallery, it struck me how wonderful that was. People knew who we were. Even if those dreams of stardom and the big city were not to be, we were still being talked about.

I read the letters you sent from prison, even if I never replied. You didn’t say–because you didn’t have to–that when your sentence of thirty-to-life was up, you were coming for me. After all, only Zuzu Carroll and I knew where you really were the night Father died, and I think you’d have done just about anything to protect her and her family from scandal. Even if it meant taking the blame for those bare few drops of strychnine in Father’s medicine.

Zuzu died in ’85, as I’m sure you know; wasted away, the poor thing. The old house was let go for tax reasons after I declared bankruptcy; I still see it on my way to and from my job at the grocer’s. How that must have made you laugh, if you ever knew it before now, your sister working in wrinkled shame after it turned out Father’s fortune was a rickety cover atop a mountain of debt.

The place was empty until a few days ago. I knew you’d come here, and so you have. Oh, don’t give me that look. You should be thanking me. Once the knife has finished its work, there’s a bottle of Father’s old medicine upstairs, laced with enough morphine to put down a horse.

Don’t you see, my dear sister, oh don’t you see? I’ve made a machine that will keep us in living memory for as long as this ton stands. Good or bad, what does it matter? In death, we both get the immortality we craved in life.

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“You said that the bamboo you planted wasn’t your fault, and that I’d just have to suck it up if it spilled over the property line.”

“But-”

“And that’s why I planted kudzu. I keep it trimmed on my side; you’ll just have to suck it up.”

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The shoots grow
Knitted together
Of cellulose strands
Sugars made real
Water made woody
The shoots grow
Too quickly by far
To be cut back
Only a fool
Would ever
Try

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The first time we turned the lights out and I saw the bioluminescent speckles along the back of that frog, I had a thrill like I’d never felt before. Seeing those glowing spots seemingly dancing through the darkness of their own accord, by an amphibian who seemed blithely unaware of her importance to the team…I’ve never felt anything like it, before or since.

Perhaps if I’d know where that road would have led us all, I’d have felt something else: raw dread.

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So it was finally agreed, and the crown set upon the candidate’s brow. Some might have questioned the notion of giving the crown to the late King’s pug dog, but none could argue with the results. The prime ministers and the cabinet ran the country without interference. The monarch was present at every major ceremony, and never had a gaffe. He was, in every way, the perfect, silent king.

But he had been fixed, and after seventeen years the end of his reign was nigh without an heir in sight.

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Bedknobs and Broomsticks Monthly
This glossy rag is packed to the brim with tips on keeping your housekeeping and transportation enchantments humming! No modern witch should be without it. Now available digitally on your crystal ball of choice!

Home & Cauldron
The bitter rival to Bedknobs and Broomsticks Monthly, but why not have them both? With a greater focus on enchantment in the kitchen, this periodical will keep your witchy meals filling and non-fatal.

Familiar Circle
Keep up with the world of familiars, from black cats to psuedo-dragons, with this useful publication. Veterinary tips, debugging, summoning, and more are at your fingertips every month!

Enchantment Weekly
Tap into the glitzy world of high-profile celebrity witches! Every week, all the latest magical gossip is right there in your inbox. Who’s enchanted with who? Whose ex has cursed them with frogmouth boils? The answers are inside!

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Observers never see the Four Ladies apart, or in any other orientation. The specters are always facing each other, with the innermost two embracing while the others look on, impassive. The middlemost of the Four are always seen in full, while the others grow indistinct toward the ground, trailing off into wisps of vapor.

No one knows what the Four Ladies are the spirits of, if spirits indeed they are. A popular rumor about a summer camp for women that was the site of an illicit tryst is easily debunked–the summer camp started in 1960 and the apparitions had been seen for decades before then, and never at the site itself. A local legend about two pairs of twins, and one from each becoming lovers, has never had any substantiated proof. Theories about four personalities of a schizophrenic also are not supported by any real evidence other than salacious rumor.

The only thing that the paranormal investigators from Spook!TV claimed during their filmed segment was that they felt an “insidious anger” in areas frequented by the Four. The episode never aired, as the crew fell into infighting and their camerawoman quit on the spot.

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It’s clear that the item is manmade; even through all the intervening centuries, fingerprints are still visible in its fired clay surface. It also appears to be largely intact. But its purpose and design remain obscure.

The name “Devil of Wickhamshire” or “Wickhamshire Devil” come from two sets of small protrusions that look like small horns depending on the orientation, and an overall “facelike” shape. Alarming newspaper coverage at the item’s discovery in 1857 sent panicked locals into a mob to demand that the evil icon be smashed; a resourceful page from London who had been sent to collect the find gave them instead a worthless potsherd upon which he’d scribbled a menacing face.

With its odd shape, two central holes, and ‘horns,’ arguments for the Devil have cast it as everything from some sort of abstract idol to an incomplete pottery experiment to a simple block and tackle. Even carbon dating has failed to settle the dilemma, with a date of 3510 years before present, ± 100 years–an era long before the Roman invasion for which there are no known records.

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