Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

“Welcome, friend. I have long seen you wander through this place,” I said, “yet this is the first time you have ever suffered my approach. I hope you don’t think it imprudent of me to ask who you are, and what business brings you to my family’s gardens?”

A solid white sheet hid the content’s of the woman’s face from view, tucked cleanly into her shawl. But I could see a jaw moving beneath, the outline of brows.

“It is always a pleasure to be approached so politely.” The thing’s voice was like paired pipes, one high and soft, one deep and desert-cracked. “Pleasantries are meaningless but they do ease the burdens of weary travelers.”

“May I fetch you anything from the house?” I added.

“To answer your second question: no thank you. There is naught there which would nourish me. To answer your first, I am a seamstress of the human soul. But I am not a wealthy one, and I must make do with the scraps.”

“I am afraid,” I said, “I do not catch your meaning.”

“When a soul passes, it furnishes material from which new souls might be fashioned. It is the nature of my kind to do so. But without means, the poorest of my kind must take the barest soul-scraps and fashion from them quilts.”

I sucked in a breath. “And what, pray, is a soul-scrap?” I whispered.

“Ask your sister,” the thing replied. “She has just lost the life she has carried for six months, and that tiny scrap is what I have come to collect as an act of charity.”

Inspired by this.

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Dear Inspector,

It’s always a murdering psychopath, isn’t it? Really, if serial killers were as prevalent in real life as they are on the TV, we’d all be dead by now. And, honestly, who would need to do it in this day and age? The sort of twisted psychopaths who one slashed their way through the 70s can now satisfy their every urge growing fat on a sofa with an internet connection. Add to that the investigative tools now at peoples’ disposal and…well, I won’t say it’s impossible, but psychopathy certainly seems to lose its appeal.

The challenge then becomes what outlet is there for a violent and amoral person such as myself to cultivate a smug sense of superiority, especially when matching wits with investigators who, lacking the wits of Holmes, nevertheless have the university of Moriarty behind them. Ten, twenty years ago, I would have been a serial killer. Now, I’m a freelance web developer (more or less). It’s not enough to run rings around police with cars that barely have wi-fi.

No, I have laid in a much more cunning game for you and yours. And I’ve even designed it to get easier for you as things go on, in case I am too subtle. But the motivator here isn’t just death, though there will be plenty of that to go around if you bide your time.

Oh, and don’t try to cheat by using the internet. I’ve seen to that.

Sincerely yours,

Serpentarius

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1848 was not long after the official inception of Southern Michigan University and the incorporation of Hopewell as the country seat of Muskogee County. Mayor Jacob Rayman was embroiled in scandal and eventually hung for the death of his wife, who disappeared during a picnic that spring. Rayman insisted that the last he’d seen of his wife was when she followed a black butterfly into an old farmhouse.

In 1888, Gerald Compton, a philosophy student at Southern Michigan University, didn’t return from an outing. A thorough search by the Hopewell Police Department and the Muskogee County Sheriff only uncovered Compton’s sketchbook. It was found in a disused silo and was full of nature sketches, apparently from life, of a black butterfly.

1938 saw a new society club appeared in the pages of the Hopewell High School yearbook. There were several photographs of the four young women in the club, frolicking and smiling. The yearbook was published in May; none of the participants were seen again after June of that year. The name of the organization was the Black Butterfly Club.

The 1978 underground musical scene in and around Southern Michigan University included a duo that lit up crowds at small venues. They has just pressed their debut LP when they vanished after a concert near the edge of town. A thorough search turned up only a pre-release copy of the album, signed by both members of Black Butterfly.

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They called it Wolf Creek because it was haunted by packs of unusually aggressive wolves.

Once every half-century or so, someone would try to settle there. The Eden Party of 1888 was the last and perhaps most famous. Twelve families and livestock set out for Wolf Creek, and they appeared at market in Grant’s Crossing the following fall.

The settlers complained of constant wolf attacks, and made large purchases of poison and ammunition in attempts to defend their livestock. Records in Grant’s Crossing show the purchases continuing through 1889 but tapering off through 1890. A census-taker visiting in 1890 found eight families, and later remarked that the grounds had been positively haunted with wolves, with the settlers treating them with a mixture of hysterical fear and reverence.

The last record of anyone from Wolf Creek appearing at market was in 1893, and a surveyor passing through in March 1894 found the settlers’ buildings deserted. Curiously, there was no graveyard or gravesites ever discovered.

Decades later, in the 1920s, the Department of the Interior began a study of the wolves there, some of the last survivors of their kind in the continental USA. They reported that the packs were unusually large and aggressive, and that there appeared to be twelve major wolf conglomorations spread across the territory.

Wolf Creek remains unoccupied to this day.

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“Any one of you could be next. Any given psycho has reason to fear for their personal safety.” The Chair pronounced this gravely, as was his wont.

Murmurs from the various figures on the webcam. “What do you expect us to do?” said the Roadside Strangler. “We can’t exactly go to the police.”

“It’s a trick,” said “Wild Bill.” “They’re trying to get us all in a net by making us nervous and sloppy.”

“You can’t deny that Serpentaurus is dead, any more than you can deny that the cops found The Butcher fried in his own crematorium,” said the Widower, her voice strident, irritated.

“Listen, the very reason we devised the Circle was to support ourselves in our endeavors,” said the Chair. “Nevertheless, it’s clear that whoever strangled Serpentaurus with her own garrote and fed The Butcher to his own inferno must be one of us.”

“Of course it’s one of us, you idiot,” snapped Clowniac. “The Butcher’s own mother didn’t know about his crematorium, and she lived with him!”

“And that is why I’ve decided to take the next logical, if drastic, step,” said the Chair. “I’ve independently funded the Circle from the beginning, and now I offer you this: $100,000 for proof on who it was. Double that if the proof is accompanied by their head. Don’t think you can feel me, either; remember where that money came from.”

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