This Book Does Not Exist

by Schneider, Mike

  “Dad!” I exclaim.

  He doesn’t acknowledge me.

  I blink.

  The whole scene dissolves. My twenty-something dad and my months old self vanish. The movie and the living room from my old house are gone. The current family room is back. There is daylight again, and everything is entirely back to normal, if it ever can be.

  POSTMORTEM

  I fled the house, and now I am driving I don’t know where, just driving, past Naomi’s parents’ house and out of the allotment. What I encountered can only happen behind the Door, in the other world, a place built on irrationality. There is a trigger – I walk through the Door and enter a twisted version of my reality where anything can happen.

  The Deer Hunter Incident manifested without that trigger.

  Driving faster, I message Geppetto, demanding that he tell me how.

  Afterwards, I try calling my dad.

  This time he answers.

  CONVERSATION WITH MY DAD

  Dad: Hello?

  Me: Dad. Where are you?

  Dad: I’m home with your mother. Are you still coming over?

  Me: I was just there.

  Dad: What?

  Me: Dad, I was just there.

  Dad: We’ve been here-

  Me: I was inside the house.

  Dad: Mike, hang on.

  Me: You weren’t there. I was inside the house.

  Dad: Calm down for a second. When were you here?

  Me: I told you. I was just there. Two minutes ago.

  Dad: Mikey-

  Me: Did you ever watch The Deer Hunter with me when I was a baby?

  Dad: When did I tell you that? It was always on TV for some reason.

  I end the call.

  I check for a response from Geppetto on Facebook.

  I don’t find one.

  My dad calls me back.

  I let it ring.

  Driving way over the speed limit, I tap out a tweet:

  “My dad had me watch deer hunter when I was 6 months old #fb”

  The #fb sends it to Facebook, as well. I want to connect with as many people as I can.

  My phone will not stop ringing. It’s my dad again. I want to shut it off, but I can’t kill my line of communication with Geppetto.

  I’m going back to the Door.

  Unless Geppetto stops me, I’m going back to the Door.

  THE LIGHTER

  Since leaving Daventry, I’ve received three Facebook notifications. The first two are comments on my status about watching The Deer Hunter with my dad when I was a baby:

  Matthew XXXXX: That explains a lot.

  TODAY AT 2:03 PM

  Dan XXXXX: have you ever played Russian roulette??

  TODAY AT 2:35 PM

  The third is a wall post from Naomi’s friend, Virginia. A week ago, I asked her if she knew where Naomi was. She chose now to finally respond:

  “there’s a guy I know who might know, let me check”

  Geppetto hasn’t bothered to answer my message.

  I am standing in East Cleveland. Ahead of me, through the open entrance to Geppetto’s, a bright white light is visible.

  The Door is cracked open.

  I walk inside the building. The room is splayed by light, coming from the fissure in the Door. A Bic lighter is lying on the floor. Coated all the way around its plastic body is a pixelated rendition of the American flag.

  I pick it up.

  Naomi lost lighters all the time. She had one just like this. She used it to light the last cigarette I ever saw her light. At the time, I commented that its design was a metaphor for the country going digital. She said, “You think too much.”

  I drop the lighter in my pocket.

  Finding it here now means Naomi was probably in this room at some point after The JFK Incident.

  But would she have been coming out of the Door – or going through it?

  I step into the flood of light. It is too powerful for me to keep my eyes open. I reach out, grasping for the edge of the Door. I find it. I push. I’m able to move it. Which means I can shut it. I can prevent, I think, any more incidents from springing up out of nowhere like at my parents’ house.

  But if Naomi is in the other world, and I close the Door… I could end up trapping her inside.

  The safest course of action – as far as her wellbeing is concerned – is to leave everything here as is.

  Before I do anything, I’ll make one more play to contact Geppetto. I’ll ask if he knows where she is at this very moment, and if he responds to me, and she’s in the other world, I’ll walk through the Door. I’ll run for her, searching. And when I find her, I won’t let go.

  I release the Door and walk out of the building, looking for the spot where I was able to get cell service earlier.

  I can’t find a signal. Everywhere I go there is just an SOS.

  I linger in the middle of Cedar Road. Grime and potholes surround my feet. I feel a kinship with the decaying city of East Cleveland. I stare inside the building with the slogan “Come to Geppetto’s today because tomorrow may be too late,” its walls harangued by the light emanating from the other world. The longing I have for Naomi echoes between two distinct places in my mind, one that holds on to the past, the other that envisions the future. The pathway to each seems to be chartered by both acquiescence and will. I can’t determine where either action will take me, but a firm and basic hope for resolution rises above all else. I consider going back inside the building, not to enter the other world, but to slam the Door closed once and for all.

  Instead I turn away from Geppetto’s.

  I get back inside my car.

  I drive away.

  SERVICE

  The second I have cell service I bombard Geppetto with questions. At the very bottom of the message, I write:

  “YOU’RE NOT HELPING ME IF YOU DON’T TELL ME WHERE SHE IS RIGHT NOW”

  My anger and frustration can’t replace the fear that I am on my own.

  “It’s okay,” I tell myself. “You’ve been here before. You’ve been here your entire life.”

  Yeah, I think. And there were plenty of times I wasn’t sure I’d survive.

  THE WORLD IS BLEEDING

  What I believe is that the world inside the Door is being let out into the environment in which I live. The world where only deadly things seem to occur is bleeding into the balanced world where both good and evil exist. Whoever left the Door open – Geppetto or Naomi, I assume – has allowed the two worlds to combine at will.

  I believe I have little choice but to engage the other world if I intend to find Naomi, which is why I left the Door open, fearful of locking her inside and unwilling to risk entering it again myself if she has in fact emerged, safely, from the abyss. But I need to determine if the other world is affecting anyone besides me. If it is, then that would change how I proceed. I would have to think about turning back and shutting the Door, no matter the residual consequence.

  I come across my first opportunity for a test subject on Carnegie, while driving towards the highway. An unkempt man is standing on the side of the road. He is holding a cardboard sign.

  I pull over.

  The man approaches my window. His hair is long and thin and greasy. His beard looks like it consists of gathered, dirty straw. His eyes lack presence; even as he knocks on my windshield, they don’t move in my direction, as if he thinks I’m somewhere else.

  The man shows me the cardboard sign. It is blank.

  As I think through how to discuss the Door, he knocks on my windshield again. This time he actually looks at me. He must sense something is wrong because he glances down at the piece of cardboard and begins to laugh. He flips the sign around. There are words on the other side. He was holding it backwards.

  I smile, calmed by the light-hearted moment. I prepare to ask the man if anything strange has happened to him since last night, but before the words leave me, I read his sign:

  “Lost my family lost my job need money and new
life HELP ME”

  I take five dollars out of my wallet and put the window down. Handing the bill to the man, I say, “I don’t know if this will help.”

  I pull back onto the road and call my brother.

  CONVERSATION WITH TIM

  Tim: Mike-

  Me: Is anything out of the ordinary happening there?

  Tim: Where are you?

  Me: Anything bad, anything weird, anything dangerous?

  Tim: What are you talking about? What’s weird is how you left LA.

  Me: I left because Naomi disappeared.

  Tim: Huh? She didn’t disappear. She went to med school.

  Me: She didn’t go to med school.

  Tim: Isn’t that what you told me?

  Me: I said she might go to med school.

  Tim: That’s not what I remember.

  [I don’t want to debate this point with him.]

  Tim: Dad told me you won’t talk to him.

  Me: I talked to him. But I can’t talk to him right now. So nothing terrible has happened? Nothing bizarre…

  Tim: Mike-

  Me: The Door must not be affecting you. It’s just me.

  Tim: The Door? What door? What’s going on?

  [I think.]

  Tim: Mike. Hello? Are you there?

  Me: You remember that girl that looked like Kirsten Dunst from Joe’s birthday party? She added me on Facebook. Did she add you?

  Tim: No, what does that have to do with-

  Me: What about an old guy named Geppetto?

  Tim: What are you talking about?

  Me: I’m going to go. Be careful. I don’t think you need to be, but just… Just in case.

  I hang up, switch over to Facebook and write a new status:

  “I want to know if anything bad or dangerous or scary or weird or painful has happened to you, especially if it seemed impossible or unnatural – and if you see or hear from Naomi please tell me.”

  Then, on Twitter, I post:

  “I assume today is not going to be a good day”

  216XXXXXXX

  On the highway, I receive several alerts from Facebook. In order to check them without causing an accident, I pull off the side of the road.

  A number of comments have been left on my status, and there is a new message in my inbox. I tap on the message first, thinking Geppetto has finally responded. However, it’s actually from Naomi’s friend, Virginia. That she sent a private message to follow up on her lead – as opposed to using another public wall post – implies she wants to keep whatever she found between us.

  I assume the worst.

  I tap outside of the message before reading any of it.

  I check the comments on my status. which have been left by four separate people. Two of the people I barely know – someone I can’t really remember from high school and a girl Tim went on a date with. The other pair of comments are from Kirsten and Joe:

  Jared XXXXX: dude…what the hell?:

  TODAY AT 6:01 PM

  Lauren XXXXX: well, I drank way more vodka cranberries than I thought was possible last night! now on my way to church at st. Theodosius lol

  TODAY AT 6:02 PM

  Kirsten XXXXX: Mike, this type of status merits a phone call

  TODAY AT 6:16 PM

  Joe XXXXX: Kirsten! How have you been????

  TODAY AT 6:17 PM

  Collectively, I take the comments to mean one of three things: the Door is only affecting me; the Door is affecting others, but it has not affected any of my friends; the Door is affecting others, and it is only a matter of time before it affects my friends.

  From a probability standpoint, I suspect the first option is the most likely. Good. I don’t need to change course.

  Having gained some reason to be optimistic, I’m able to face up to my paranoia about the contents of Virginia’s message. I tap on it, prepared to accept whatever she has learned:

  “The guy I thought would know is dead. Sorry.”

  The life of a stranger has been lost. I should feel at least a touch of sorrow. Rather, my apprehension grows. The nature of the unidentified man’s relationship with Naomi has gone unstated, which is upsetting. Who was he? How did she know him? Why would Virginia think he could tell her where she was when I couldn’t? Is it plausible that Naomi might have – I don’t know when – developed feelings for him? If I’m supposed to be sympathetic to the notion that she could be in anguish over his death, I’m not. In truth, a complex part of me finds solace in the idea that Naomi might be hurting, too. Whether this is because of jealousy, selfishness, or because I have to consider the possibility that Virginia’s message might not even be from this world, I can’t say for sure.

  Against my wishes, I begin to imagine Naomi doing things, all kinds of things, with this hypothetical other man, a faceless combination of everything I’m not – emotionally stable, financially well-off, scientifically inclined, carefree, adventurous – the boyfriend I thought Naomi wished I was whenever we fought. I see them kissing, holding one another, having sex, eating dinner, dancing, smoking cigarettes in LA on the beach and in NYC on the steps of a brownstone.

  Respite comes in the form of a list of songs in my Facebook news feed that Kirsten has been listening to on Spotify. I pick one – “Sky Might Fall” by Kid Cudi – and stream it.

  Afterwards, I buy the song on iTunes probably just to keep myself occupied. The download is almost finished when a pair of “dings” chime from my phone, and a notification banner rotates in and then out at the top of the screen, indicating an incoming text message from a number with a 216 area code that is not in my address book:

  216XXXXXXX

  Jul 27 6:21 PM

  You should come to bars

  in Cleveland. This is my

  new number. – Naomi

  HOPE AND PARANOIA

  I can’t stop staring at the text, as if I’m waiting for it to vanish.

  Why would she suddenly reach out to me?

  I envision one likelihood: because I left the Door open, and she was able to escape from the other world.

  After saving Naomi’s new number, I notice a light crack in the dashboard of my car that I don’t remember seeing before. I wonder where it came from, if it’s always been there and I just never saw or it, or if it’s a creation of the other world. Since the Door was left open how can I know what is what? Maybe this isn’t even my actual car. I rub the dark blue cloth of the passenger seat cushion, analyzing it for discrepancies. If my car isn’t real then my phone might not be either. Everything I saw on Facebook could be fake. Even if I am holding my phone, just because I read something online does not mean it is true (although the act of digitally stamping something onto the Internet does make it seem more real). And the stream of information on the Web is so long and so easy to perpetuate that confirming what is fact and what is fiction becomes an unkind chore with little time to be accomplished. Furthermore, anyone could have hacked into my friends’ accounts and typed those words. The same line of thinking applies to the text message from the person claiming to be Naomi and to whatever shows up on my phone from now on. Worse, the people reading what I write have every reason to ask these same questions about me.

  I begin to question the reality of everything.

  I focus long enough to thumb out a reply to Naomi’s text.

  I ask where she is.

  The message sends.

  I am alone with my paranoia.

  I get a response:

  Naomi

  Jul 27 6:32 PM

  On W6th downtown w

  friends. I realy want to see

  you.

  Misspelling “really” is unlike her. And it’s 6:33 PM. She’s out early…

  I start my car.

  I text her back to say I’ll let her know when I get downtown.

  I wish I felt better about this than I do.

  EN ROUTE

  I’m driving. What’s new? I have too much time to think until I get to Cleveland. The highway is e
mpty, so I slide my phone out of my pocket and light it up in case I missed something.

  I did.

  I have a new @reply on Twitter from @GeppettoW:

  “@onemikey That is a good assumption to make.”

  My brain labors for a few seconds until I process that @GeppettoW is obviously Geppetto. Not only is he on Facebook, he’s on Twitter, too, and he has responded to my suspicion that today will be a bad day.

  I punch on the radio and scan through the stations. I want to listen to something that will calm my mind. But for some reason I can only pick up a total of four stations and each one is playing a separate album in its entirety without the aid of a DJ. The radio is behaving like a CD changer, in other words, loaded with the following albums: Bon Iver, For Emma, Forever Ago; Elvis Perkins, Ash Wednesday; Marvin Gaye, Here, My Dear; and Kanye West, 808s & Heartbreak.