This Book Does Not Exist Read online

  As soon as I note the sign for East 84th, the sense of confidence I had when I turned onto Cedar erodes. 83, 82, 81… The numbers on the streets are going down. I’m heading out of Cleveland and into East Cleveland, the most depraved and dangerous portion of the city.

  I’m going the wrong way.

  Before I can turn around, my car slows down without me hitting the brakes. I tap the gas, but it doesn’t affect the speed of the car, which is now dropping rapidly, as if the engine is stalling out.

  I scan outside. The buildings in my immediate vicinity aren’t stable. They are murder scenes waiting to happen.

  The car sputters to a stop. The engine has shut off. I lock my doors, turn off the lights, and grab my phone. As I search for the names of people I could call for help, wondering why the hell I didn’t just try to map my location earlier, I realize I’m not getting any coverage. The bars that normally indicate signal strength are gone. They’ve been replaced by three letters: SOS.

  To my right is a building that looks like a house but is actually some sort of commercial property. A slogan is written on the front, scripted words made with sharp white paint on top of faded pastel blue wooden siding.

  The slogan reads:

  “Come to Geppetto’s today because tomorrow may be too late”

  THE BUILDING IN EAST CLEVELAND CALLED “GEPPETTO’S”

  A sidewalk leads directly from where my car stopped to the front of a business I presume is called “Geppetto’s,” thereby sharing a name with the stranger who messaged me about Naomi.

  I can’t help but wonder if this is the whole point.

  The desolation in East Cleveland loses its diorama quality, becoming more real as I step onto the barely serviceable road and search for cell coverage. I pace, tapping the screen on my phone to keep it lit, watching for any change in the signal strength.

  All I see is SOS.

  I expand the size of the area I’m canvassing. The bright white paint of the slogan on Geppetto’s shines unlike anything in the surrounding area. It looks new. The rest of the dwelling is anything but, and despite the morbid – or sarcastic, I’m not sure – nature of the slogan itself, the freshness of the paint and the preciseness of the lettering give the building an almost welcoming façade.

  “Come to Geppetto’s today because tomorrow may be too late”

  As I re-read the slogan, I can’t alleviate the feeling I am where I need to be. The mechanics of how I arrived in East Cleveland, in front of this building with this name on it, are confounding but also entrenched in a sense of inevitability.

  I take a moment before proceeding inside the building.

  TOMORROW MAY BE TOO LATE

  The front door opens without a hitch.

  Inside, it is dark. There are no windows. I have only the moonlight shining through the doorway and the screen on my phone to help me see. The space is small and square and empty. There is no furniture, nothing like barber’s chairs or a bar and bar stools. Warped floorboards pop up from their original stations, showing emancipated nails that vaguely look like teeth. From what I can tell, Geppetto’s was deserted and then either left unlocked or broken into at some point.

  I say “hello?” even though there is clearly no one here. I look over my shoulder before completely entering the one-room building as if to make sure I’m not walking into a trap. I lift my feet high off the floor and gently set them down to create as little extra noise as possible. I check my phone. I still don’t have any cell coverage. I navigate the bowed boards and the rusty nails until I reach the center of the room.

  Behind me the open door sways. It must be the wind. Going deeper into the space, I notice a fire engine red door buried in the back corner of the room at the intersection of the north and west walls, the sort of place where a closet would be set. Like the slogan outside, the door appears to have been painted only recently, so its color lifts out of the darkness. Confusingly, the handle is also red – the same exact tint as the wood – making it hard to differentiate from the rest of the door. Contrary to what I thought earlier, the door can’t open into a closet because it’s fixed to the very back edge of the building. The space behind it is the backyard. Therefore, the door is likely a strangely cast back/side entrance, although the need for it is indeterminable; there is no indication of what once went on inside this building.

  I reach for the handle. Before doing anything else I double check the bars on my phone. There aren’t any. Just those same three letters, SOS.

  I twist the red handle on the red door.

  It opens.

  And I am met, not by East Cleveland, but by the hallowed white light of a near-death experience, pulling me one, two, three steps forward, all the way inside its cloak.

  INSIDE THE DOOR

  Ultimately, my movement through the doorway is no different than if I had walked directly out of a movie theater and into the daylight. Just a moment where the light source switched and the shock of the sun hit, followed by a gradual fade in brightness while my pupils adjusted. Other than my eyes, my body didn’t feel a thing.

  It’s where I’ve come out that I can’t explain.

  I am standing in a cul-de-sac. I can see the house my mom and dad own, the gray two-story with the pointed arch above the front door, the place where they’ve lived since I was twelve. I am in the neighborhood I grew up in, and I can’t understand how. You can’t walk through a doorway in East Cleveland and come out forty miles away in Daventry. You just can’t.

  When I turn around, the doorway I came through is not behind me. Naturally. Why would there be a door to nowhere in the street? As an effect of this, of course, I can’t return to where I came from. There is nowhere for me to go but here.

  I begin to panic.

  Is this the actual cul-de-sac my parents live on, or is it some sort of replica, a virtual reality simulation? How can I tell? There’s no one here, no one to ask. I have no choice but to explore.

  I take my first full step.

  When my red and black Jordan 1 high top hits the pavement, I scrub it back and forth across the concrete. The friction feels how I’m used to it feeling, how it should. I take another full step towards the open end of the cul-de-sac, away from my mom and dad’s house. I walk cautiously, seeking validation in the environment. Overall, the neighborhood looks like it did when I was here seven months ago for Christmas. I don’t see a single person or moving car, but that doesn’t indicate I’m inside of a nightmare. In reality, this is a quiet housing allotment in a slow town. There are a thousand reasons why everyone might be inside.

  I walk to the street perpendicular to the cul-de-sac. I reach a point from which I can see Naomi’s parents’ house. It’s there, where it should be, less than an eighth of a mile away.

  I walk the distance.

  Up close, the house is in the same condition I remember it being in. It’s a ranch with a brick front, white sides, and a black metal fence that squares off the backyard. A small slab of concrete at the door counts as a junior-sized porch.

  I whisk my hand through the grass. As with everything else so far, it’s a brush with normalcy. I head for the porch, fixating on the front door and the doorbell next to it. Before I can worry myself away, I jab the button with my thumb.

  No one immediately answers the door. I listen for movement inside but fail to pick up on anything, so I try the doorbell again. Pressing the button this time doesn’t produce a sound, no “ding dong,” no chime. Did it work a few seconds ago? I don’t remember. The button looks functional. I hit it again. There is no sound.

  Uncomfortable, I retreat from the porch. Indecisive, I nearly go back, when I see someone coming around the side of the house.

  GEPPETTO

  It is a man, an elderly man about my height but plump. His hair is white and thin. He’s wearing thick, rectangular, black-rimmed glasses, a wrinkled light-blue button down shirt with practically invisible white stripes and dark grey wool pants. His high top sneakers – orange and blue Nike Dunks
– stand out because of his age. The expression on his face is neither dour nor exuberant. It is tranquil in a mundane manner. He simply is.

  “Mike,” the elderly man says, in a voice that matches his demeanor, even-keeled and unworn. “It’s good that you came. You can call me Geppetto.”

  “You’re the one who messaged me.”

  “We’re going to be seeing a lot of one another from now on, although exactly how much and for how long is really up to you. It’ll depend on how fast you progress.”

  No matter the words chosen or the direction of the statement, neither Geppetto’s voice nor his expression fluctuates. He isn’t robotic – there’s life in him – but he shows no affect.

  “Who are you?” I ask.

  “Geppetto,” he says again. “Weren’t you listening?”

  He reaches out his hand. I shake it. Nothing about the gesture is insincere or dangerous. His skin feels natural. When the handshake ends, I ask him to explain what’s going on.

  “You went through the Door, obviously, which can be disconcerting initially, but I don’t have to tell you that.

  “This,” he continues, gesturing to the overall environment, “is the world I live in. At the moment, it looks a whole lot like where you live, but by no means will this always be the case. It’s a very liquid place, as you’ll discover.

  “As far as what you really want to know – or, rather, whom you really want to know about – I brought you here because of Naomi, as I said in the message. As for me, I’m just an old man who knows some things, like the fact that Naomi came through the Door several days ago. That’s why you need me.”

  “You know where she is…”

  “Sometimes. It depends on the level of communication between the people I work with. Really, don’t get caught up in the bureaucracy. It’s meaningless. The important thing is how you ended up here. Sometimes, you see, people falling in and out of love find the Door.”

  I don’t like what he’s implying. When I challenge him, he says, “I’m not really implying.”

  “What? How can that be?”

  “You can find Naomi in my world, but it won’t be easy. You’ll need strength and patience.”

  Who is this man really? What does he know that he isn’t telling me? What is this world?

  A vrrrrooooommmmoooooshhhhhhhh blares out behind me, like a plane landing, but we’re nowhere near an airport.

  Geppetto shouts, “Consider this the first incident.”

  I swing around, and I can’t believe my eyes when I see that a passenger jet is about to land on the street.

  THE FIRST INCIDENT

  I drill my hands over my ears to muffle the sound. Still the plane is so loud I have to fight to stay upright. I have to fight to keep my eyes open as cars and people appear on the road out of thin air, and they’re all in the way of the plane, which is landing, it’s touching down, and it isn’t going to stop – oh god it can’t stop – and it barrels through everyone and everything, crushing bone and metal, shredding people into pieces and popping them into the air like a special effect in a low-grade horror movie, but this violence is real, and it is coming for Naomi’s parents’ house, and the only meager shot I have at survival now is running as fast as I possibly can as the plane shatters heads and legs, turning the whole road Jackson Pollock-red with blood as I race away, towards the cul-de-sac where I was raised, having watched people die for the first time in my life, and I have no sense of how to react… And then I’m back on my parents’ street. I’m at their door, pounding, hoping someone will let me in, knowing – I don’t know how, I just do – that they won’t, and I can’t understand this world I’m in, but I know I’m afraid to die in it.

  I rotate to face where I came from. The plane is crashing into Naomi’s parents’ house, obliterating the entire east side. The aircraft smokes and people scream from somewhere invisible to me and a Yellow Lab puppy like the one I had as a child runs out of the house. I watch the dog, wishing I were running with it somewhere far away, when a man wearing a pilot’s uniform emerges from the gaping hole in the house.

  From an eighth of a mile away he points at me.

  “Michael!”

  No one besides Naomi calls me that, except now this man, this pilot, who is closing the gap between us faster than should be possible on foot.

  He tosses something at me.

  The object skips on the porch and bumps against my foot.

  It is a knife. A commando-style knife designed to kill.

  The pilot stops ten feet away from me. He is tall and muscular, a man in uniform with flawless skin and a movie star face, younger than me. There is ferocity in his eyes but a mischievous slant in the way the edges of his mouth curl upwards, as if he’s competing in a game he loves only when he doesn’t lose.

  “You pickin’ up the knife or what?”

  The pilot is clutching a smaller but still deadly knife of his own. I consider answering his question by attempting to escape, but the pilot has proven to be incredibly fast already. I start to debate other options, but I always think too much, so this time I act. I bend. My arm leans for the knife. My fingers curl around the handle.

  There is no turning back.

  I swipe at the pilot’s leg.

  The blade slices across the front of his shin and cuts through his pants. A channel of blood, blood that I released, leaks through the hole in the fabric. Becoming hyper-aware of my own vulnerability, I slip back, anticipating a counter-attack, and I’m right – the pilot plunges his knife at me – but he misses. His aim, pathetic.

  I have a moment where I think this is a fight I cannot lose.

  But that moment ends when the pilot punches me in the head.

  I crack back, down and off the porch. He cackles as the pain takes hold of my skull. He wipes the blood off of his shin before it runs down to his boot, which appears heavy enough to stomp a concrete block into gravel.

  He brings that boot down on top of me.

  I roll, arcing my knife at his chest. It doesn’t connect. He stabs at me in return. His first attempt hits air. His second comes as I’m clawing back to my feet, and it nicks my bicep. The puncture in my flesh burns. I stand up to him, angry.

  We square off.

  I read him. He reads me. We both search for an opening. He is almost giddy, and it lures me into a comfort zone, where I imagine us being able to carry on a conversation, with me lobbing questions like, “What is this place?” and “What is happening to me?” and “Why did you kill all those people?” and “Did Naomi tell you to call me Michael?” But I don’t say anything because at my core I’m still scared to death.

  Suddenly, the pilot flips his knife between hands and lunges. I dip away, thrusting my knife forward, aiming underneath his attacking arm to try to get to his stomach before he can get to me, but he pulls back – and I can’t extend myself all the way to his body – so I only clip his hand.

  The cut forces open his fingers. His weapon ricochets across the ground. He recoils to get it, and I go at him full on, striking his chest with the serrated edge of my blade and plunging it through his skin, bricking up against his sternum. The impact stings my hand the same way not holding my bat tightly enough when hitting a fastball out of a pitching machine would. Despite the shock, I hang on to the handle and rip the knife from his upper body, sending him spinning – and I cram the knife into his back.

  I lose my nerves along with my grip.

  The knife sticks in the pilot, who revolves as he plummets. The handle hits the ground first, and the collision drives the blade further into his back, all the way to the hilt.

  He curls into the fetal position. He twitches then spasms.

  I did not want it to come to this.

  The pilot is dying yet the look on his face is unnaturally jovial. Is he really a man or is he some kind of being?

  He/it blinks. His/its lips tremble.

  I back away, scouring the neighborhood for what might come at me next. I have no hope for peace or regul
arity. Already my most basic expectations have been abolished. Beyond the aftermath of the plane crash, there are no policeman or firefighters. No rush of paramedics. Everything is still. Everything is quieter than it should be.

  My attention falls back to the pilot, the man or the being. He is breathing but immobile. “Where am I?” I ask. “What is this place?”

  He mumbles something that sounds like “herrrrr maaadeer” and follows it with a whistle that slowly bobs into a melody. Abruptly, he cuts the tune off to croak “herrrrrrrrr, maaaaadeeeeer” again, this time at a more grotesquely languid clip, before returning to the melody. Afraid that these mad mumblings are a precursor to another attack, I ask him what he’s trying to tell me, but he just continues his pattern of droning then mumbling until finally he stops making noises altogether.

  He ceases to twitch. His eyelids go still.

  Studying the pilot, I sense the dissolution of a presence. A person has left the world. A person has left the world because of what I did.

  An element of myself I didn’t know I had abandons me and something new replaces it. I know it’s there because I feel it bouncing around the pit of my stomach like an anvil rolled with spikes. That I feel this way convinces me the pilot was a man. It convinces me this world, whatever it is, is not a digital simulation or a dream – it is real.

  I hear the door to my parents’ house opening behind me.

  I turn. Hope and shame co-exist inside of me, as I expect to see my dad or my mom or both.

  But my parents do not come out of their house. Geppetto does.

  “You stopped him,” he says. “And you’re still alive. Something positive. Let’s take a walk.”

  “Where?”

  “The incident has to teach you something – or really what would be the point?”

  Geppetto steps off the porch. For an old man, he walks well. Every stride is precise. There is no hurry in his movement, as if he’s carefully allocating his energy. He leads me down the sidewalk and out of the cul-de-sac. Turning onto the street where the plane crashed, I glance back at the carcass of the pilot. It remains inanimate. I can’t say if this is good or bad.