This Book Does Not Exist (6 page)

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

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.

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 regularity. 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.

We walk through the large-scale aeronautical murder scene, up to the remnants of Naomi’s parents’ house. Geppetto navigates around the smoldering aircraft. He waves me over and enters through the breach in the home. Lagging behind, I slip inside after he is out of sight.

“Over here.”

I trail the sound of
Geppetto’s
voice through the den, into the family room. I’ve spent hours with Naomi inside this house, mainly during holidays, but the proverbial smell of nostalgia I anticipate is wiped out by the literal stench of death.

Geppetto is leaning over a group of bodies covered by wreckage. I can’t determine their identities through the debris, but the clothing indicates two men and two women, couples of different ages – one old and one young. All four are holding hands, as if they knew the plane was coming and they chose to die in communion. My thoughts flash to the plane crash in Phoenix, where Naomi’s brother and sister-in-law live, and my inability to get her parents on the phone. I look away. Geppetto talks.

“I can’t tell you what will happen from here on out other than to say you clearly need to resolve your separation from Naomi. The incidents my world provides are designed to be illuminating in this regard. Usually, they help people like you and her. Depending on how everything goes. Either way, they formulate a journey. And this is what you both need.”