This Book Does Not Exist

by Schneider, Mike

  “She’s been going through her own version of this?”

  “Similar, but with different incidents. Sometimes they overlap, depending if it makes sense. But anyway, Naomi is alive, and she’s not inside the Door. That much I know. And the movie set is still by my office. The production is on schedule. I do think you may be better off waiting for them to leave.”

  Geppetto takes a few steps away from me, opens the doors to the church and says, “But what I really came here to tell you is that there’s one thing about the other world you haven’t discovered yet, outside of the memory and imagination shtick.”

  He goes back inside the church.

  When I go in after him, he’s gone.

  And so is the lonely old man.

  SOMETHING ELSE DIES

  Before leaving St. Michael’s, I send a text to the number that may or may not belong to Naomi:

  Naomi

  Jul 28 6:31 PM

  I know something’s wrong

  but the Door is affecting

  us. I tried to find you at

  WTC. Still trying. Won’t

  give up. I miss you.

  I wait for a response. Two minutes pass. Without warning, my phone shuts down.

  The battery is dead.

  I left the charger at the motel.

  THE FINAL DISCOVERY

  I’m on my way to the motel. Geppetto insinuated the one thing I have yet to discover about the other world is crucial to finding Naomi. At the motel, I can wrack my brain in solitude and charge my phone. Writing ideas out on my computer may help me organize my thoughts.

  At 8:03 PM, I pull into the motel parking lot.

  In nine hours, the film production is scheduled to wrap, and the route to the Door will be clear. I can shut out the other world then.

  Given its track record, I’m hard-pressed to believe it won’t try to get me at least one more time before then.

  I’ll be ready when it does.

  THE DEER HUNTER

  I’m exploring new ideas and transcribing old details about the incidents on my laptop, searching for clues to the final discovery. Betting that the other world won’t repeat incidents, I find a stream of The Deer Hunter online. If I’m right, indulging memories the Door has already manipulated may be a way to fend it off completely.

  Before starting the movie, I update my Facebook status:

  “Watching ‘The Deer Hunter’ for the first time since I was 5 months old.”

  The first section of The Deer Hunter is set in a small town near Pittsburgh. Christopher Walken, Meryl Streep, and Robert De Niro perform in scenes designed to resemble un-choreographed slices of life. As the movie builds at a snail’s pace to a wedding and a reception where the men say “nostrovia!” during toasts, just like my grandpa, I recall having heard that portions of the film were shot in Cleveland, with Cleveland obviously doubling for Pittsburgh. Especially in the late 60’s and early 70’s, the two cities – with their cold, working class neighborhoods and prominent factories – were brothers in style. In fact, many of the locations in the movie remind me of the area around St. Michael’s, which I learned after looking online is in the neighborhood of Tremont, on the West Side of Cleveland.

  Pausing the movie, I search on Google for “The Deer Hunter” and “Cleveland.” A page of links comes up. I remembered correctly. Both the reception and the wedding sequences were filmed in Tremont at Lemko Hall and St. Theodosius Russian Orthodox Cathedral, respectively.

  Something about the name of the church sounds familiar.

  I switch over to Facebook. Scrolling through my profile page, I hit upon what I was looking for. Lauren, the girl who friended me after she went on a single date with Tim, mentioned it in an earlier comment on my status:

  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

  SAT AT 6:02 PM

  I never talked to her after I accepted her friend request. I don’t think Tim did either. And now this comment?

  On a whim, I check the chat function to see if she’s online.

  CHAT WITH LAUREN

  Me: did you write to me about st theodosius before for any specific reason?

  Lauren: omg, your watching deer hunter? coincdennnnnnce lol

  Me: do you always go there or was that like a one time thing?

  Lauren: it’s a good movie its sad what happened to the director but I think id like to get married in that church someday, m

  Me: why?

  Lauren: u should get married there toooo! lolol

  Me: what the hell are you talking about?

  Lauren: ok m gotta go appt at the doctors, getting a cat scan, yay!

  [Lauren is offline.]

  THE REST OF THE MOVIE

  The conversation ends there, with me finding it impossible to believe Tim ever went out with Lauren at all. Was she sent by the other world? If so, the implications are severe since she entered his life before I found the Door.

  Thinking, I restart the movie. The first Russian roulette sequence begins, the same one my 26-year-old father held my 5-month-old self in front of almost thirty years ago. As it must have, innately, when I watched the movie as a baby, the tension in the scene is transferred to me, adding to the strain I already feel from the other world and the pressure from the vacuum that exists between myself and Naomi. These are the issues I’m confronting now, but I have always had issues… My weight, my loneliness, my stalled career… I have lived with an awareness of struggle from a very early age, from at least the point my dad placed me in front of this movie, and I absorbed the conflict it dramatized. Even being born was a quest, a battle to come out of the womb – prematurely by three weeks in my case – one fight just to get to the next fight faster. If I had stayed inside as long as I was supposed to how would my life have timed out? How many struggles might I have avoided? But no, I wanted out and into the world. I wanted my life to begin. And then my parents named me after St. Michael and this is the person I have become.

  I’ve seen all I need to see of the movie. I close my laptop. The hard drive falls asleep, and I open the Pinterest app on my phone.

  JOURNAL

  7.29.98

  deer hunter. what is war? war is selfish. war is life. war is death. war is a million moments, a million pulls of the trigger, a million bullets flying, a million combined hits and misses, everyone stretching or taking life. war is like a walk in the streets, the new york city mentality amped up a million times, but instead of harsh words and stubborn, hateful, (or worse) apathetic glances there’re weapons and live ammo and it's flying. war is terror. war is survival. war is apathy for everything except your own life – it's beyond selfishness. war is ultimately kill or be killed. what deer hunter did was show me what war is....war is a fuck you delivered to the world with the most powerful weapon you can handle. it's amazing that something so individual is at the same time so much a part of a larger, massive situation. i anticipated war itself as this huge mess of moments of decision and action, the human mental process pushed somewhere near if not to its extreme, this ball of life at the end, not the individual struggles. they didn't become clear to me until i saw them and then i felt like i was war. where my life hangs above all other things.

  p.s. there was something else, something in the 'war is' mess that flew my mind and i can't retrieve it. no matter how much this disturbs me i have to accept it's lost like much of war – the thing that could've happened; one step left, a second less, a bullet more. or like the bullet that just left - it's gone. forgotten in a stream of life. i can't be sure my short term memory lapse is so elegant but i can only hope. and only hope that like a lost bullet it's left a mark somewhere that someone will find someday.

  7.29.98 (hours later)

  ...i may have found it. the extremity of war makes us look deeper – it's very difficult to look at war and not see something more than what it physically is. it’s life at its best and worst – where the deepe
r, more important significance of the moment is most easily seen and known. the ability to transcend this shallow basin of knowledge exists only at extremes, to see life significantly as we walk on the street and look at the people in the cars, to find something more...we must first understand war. to do this is to better understand life.

  AT 12:38 AM ON JULY 29TH

  The logic in the alleged journal entry is circumspect. The sentence structure is fractured. Meaning is evident but layered and imprecise. It reads like a missive from a foxhole. As with the other entries, I can’t remember writing it, but the content is reasonably similar to something I can imagine having written in the past. I do not, however, have any recollection of watching The Deer Hunter while I was in college.

  My phone vibrates. A notification from Facebook. As I swipe to read it, my phone vibrates again. Not once, but two times, and then not two times but three, four, five, six, seven. My phone won’t stop shaking. I grip hold of it and watch the number of notifications pile up – eight, nine, ten, eleven, fifteen, twenty and climbing.

  It stops when I open the app.

  In sum, twenty-eight new pictures have been posted to my wall.

  All twenty-eight have been added by Geppetto.

  The first photo is of the Door. It is cracked open. Pure white light leaks out.

  The next picture is also of the Door, taken from the same angle and distance, except in this one, the Door is open a bit more.

  The photo after that is another replica, but the Door is open wider still.

  I scroll down. Every picture in the series is of the Door. Combined, the photos are like a flipbook. Each image in the line depicts the Door more open than the last, and more open and more open, until it’s being ripped off its hinges by a manic, invisible force that ultimately obliterates it, leaving nothing but particles of wood dusted through the air.

  The twenty-eighth and very last photo shows the doorway, entirely absent the Door, just a sharp rectangle of blinding white light.

  I get the message. If shutting the Door was an option before, it isn’t anymore.

  A red mark fills the globe at the top of my Facebook page, indicating yet another notification. I tap on it to receive an abbreviated description:

  “Geppetto W. wrote on your wall.”

  To see exactly what he’s written, I refresh my profile.

  I thought things were getting better, not worse.

  I was mistaken.

  Geppetto has written three words on my wall:

  “World War 3”

  IN THE EVENT OF MY DEATH

  http://tinyurl.com/intheeventofmydeath

  THE SEVENTH INCIDENT

  Outside I hear war, only war. Seventeen minutes have passed since Geppetto wrote on my wall. Moments ago, an explosion blew a hole in my motel room. Fearful of stray gunfire, I snuck downstairs into the basement of the building, which is where I have stayed.

  So far this incident has evolved differently than the others. Geppetto has not made an appearance. No parameters have been set. A specific situation I need to work my way through has not been defined. World War 3 just seems to exist – and I have to deal with it.

  The motel’s guests and employees are gone. I’ve tried reaching Tim and my parents and Naomi by voice, text, email, Twitter, and Facebook. No one has responded. I’m getting wireless for my MacBook from a connection labeled “Pre_Apocalypse_Now. The war itself is on all of the news websites – CNN, The New York Times, MSNBC, ABC, CBS… It is indeed being called “World War 3” and from what I can gather based on frantic skimming of the main articles, a consortium of countries including China, Russia, Pakistan, India, Iran, the UK, France, Spain, Mexico, Venezuela, Brazil, and even Israel are in the opening stages of an invasion on US soil.

  Another way to put it would be America versus the World.

  The war is being written about as the culminating event in a succession of dramatic global changes: world leaders have been assassinated, the polar ice caps have melted, an earthquake registering 9.3 on the Richter scale has shattered Southern California, and cyber attacks on American infrastructure have crippled the economic system. There is more, all of it linked to the fall of the United States, but I know it’s merely a narrative created by the other world to challenge me, one more booby-trap on the path to finding Naomi.

  None of my Facebook friends are available to chat, but all of the statuses are about the war. Some people have asked for prayers – “please pray for us” and “please pray for my boyfriend he was just shot in the head.” I read RIP messages with tags like “we will always love you.” I find a contingent of updates from people apologizing for things they did before the war started, for hurting loved ones or for taking an old relationship or a child or a family member or pet for granted. New statuses are frequently being written. I read about destroyed homes and people wanting to join the army and fight the enemy and protect and love America. Vitriol about the invading countries is spewed, including ethnic and racial slurs, but the amount of these ugly declarations is dwarfed by the number of personal notes on people’s walls. Brief questions like “are you ok?” and “are you safe?” are coupled with answers like “i am. are you?” and “I dont know all I hear are bommbbs”.

  In multiple instances, one person has told another that they love them and attached a qualifier such as “i’ve always wanted to tell you that i love you but never had the guts to do it.” I notice another status, a man informing his brother he misses him and that he’s sorry for not calling more often.

  The scene on Twitter is very much the same, except paradoxically more and less personal, with 140 character messages that bare the soul but are also knowingly being broadcast to strangers. Many are less specific but more poignant and loosely esoteric. “Can anyone else hear someone shooting outside? help!” on Facebook becomes “i can hear them shooting outside. shadows whole world against us + me. why god why? save my family help help help” on Twitter. These fits of sentiment are integrated with tweets from reporters and news sources, in addition to notes from men on the street like “military is rounding ppl up on 3rd ave and 12th” and “triage on ocean.” “#WW3” is the number one trending topic worldwide, above things like “guns” “RIP” “bomb” “death” “USA” “shot” and “blood”. I click on the hashtag. Every usage of it coalesces into a single feed. Clinical reporting and screams from the populace aggregate in one constantly updating digital stream. The picture it provides of the war is ominous, dark, and bloody. I know it will only get worse.

  Outside, the sounds of battle intensify. Instead of moving away, the war is getting closer. And why wouldn’t it? The war is here because of the other world. The other world is here because of me.

  The way I see it, I have two options:

  Option 1: Hide in this basement for as long as possible, hoping no one finds me and the building never gets raided from the ground or bombed from the air.

  Option 2: Leave the motel altogether. I put myself in the middle of the war, and I try to get to the Door and destroy it. How exactly, I don’t know. But maybe, just maybe, this is the last incident. Maybe its purpose is to yield the final discovery and the understanding that will allow me to find Naomi once and for all.

  I don’t think I can win the war hiding underground.

  I close my laptop, place it on a box in the basement, scribble out a note, and prepare to enter the invasion.

  Even if I fail I have to try to finish this.

  If I die trying, so what?

  At least I tried.

  ENTERING THE WAR ZONE

  I am standing in front of a door I don’t want to open but know I must, a door that leads into the lobby of the motel, the final buffer between me and the war zone.

  What I suspect is mortar fire buffets the exterior of the building. Soldiers speaking languages I can’t comprehend chatter with volatile intensity over shrieks and screams from Americans in distress. Sharp differences in the volume of each of the noises enable me to guess the position
of their sources outside – where people are dying, where the enemy soldiers are, where the Americans who may want to help me can be found, where the mortar is dropping. My accuracy is probably not great. But it’s something. It’s a start.

  I open the door and push into a corner of the lobby before daring to look outside. When I do, I see about what I expected from this vantage point – barely anything at all. The night sky is lit by stars and crummy parking lot halogens. No soldiers, American or otherwise, are visible from here. I can’t see any of the mortar fire or any civilians. I can hear it all, gunfire and shit blowing up and breaking apart, but I can’t see any of it.

  From what I can gather through the dust and debris floating above and around the cars and the blacktop like an alien cloud sucking away whatever clean air is left, the parking lot appears to be untouched. Rather fortuitously, my car is unharmed. I doubt I can get out of the parking lot without being shot at or cordoned in by the enemy. I think I hear trucks down the street… Before seeing them roll towards the intersection in front of the motel.

  I listen to the war long enough to determine the rhythm of the action – what the highs and lows sound like – as I search for a pattern that might suggest the best time to break for my car.