LEGENDARIUM

by Kevin G. Summers

“Bombo! I’m just worried about your health,” Carol said. “You can’t keep eating like this and hope to live a good long life. I don’t want to be a widow, you know?”

  Bombo nodded, swallowing most of the donut in one gulp.

  “I’ve been reading this book about vegan dieting—” Carol began, when something very peculiar happened.

  The terrace door opened, spilling blinding light into the Kentucky morning. It was impossible, Bombo knew, but the light coming from the other side of the door was actually brighter than the sun. It took a minute for his eyes to adjust, but when they did, Bombo saw a man in a flowing white robe standing next to the grill. The figure had a long white beard and penetrating eyes. Bombo lowered his cell phone and stared. He’d been licking the chocolate off the screen when the specter had first appeared, which may be why the figure before him was now staring at him with narrowed eyes. Bombo recognized the man at once: it was Leo Tolstoy.

  * * *

  The review was posted on Amazon, Goodreads, and the critic’s personal webpage. It read as follows:

  Anne Askew In The Tower is the worst piece of crap that I have ever read in my entire life. It’s the kind of book that is so hackneyed that you just can’t look away. It reads like it was written in one sitting by a redneck high on donuts and cappuccino. And the author, Bombo Dawson, he looks like a long-lost relative from that show Duck Dynasty. I mean, he makes Patrick Rothfuss and George R.R. Martin appear well-groomed. Whatever you do, don’t buy this book. Not even the e-book. Don't get it even if it’s free on Amazon Prime. I give this book 1-star because they won’t let me go into negative numbers. It’s that bad.

  The reviewer’s name was Alistair Foley. He was a thirty-five-year-old man with thinning hair on top, a ponytail in back, and wrinkles at the edges of his eyes. He had a neatly trimmed mustache and a hoop earring in his left ear. He wore vests and ties and a sports coat, once belonging to his grandfather, with patches on the elbows. He was a creative writing teacher at the community college in his hometown of Carmel, Virginia.

  Alistair Foley was also a frequent reviewer of books on the various websites listed above. He had the tendency to give scathing reviews to practically everything he read. He patrolled—or, more properly, trolled—literary territory like a shark looking for victims. He enjoyed fantasy and science fiction, but was extremely particular even then. If the author was Martin or Rothfuss or King or Salvatore, his reviews were usually positive. If the book strayed too far away from what he considered to be “high literature” however, more often than not Alistair would fillet the author.

  Foley sat at his desk in his empty classroom at the community college. It was lunchtime, and he was enjoying the break between classes by critically shredding Bombo Dawson’s literary debut. The book had only been on the market for a few months, and already it had eighty-seven five-star reviews and thirty-one four-star reviews. It had only one one-star review: Foley’s. Critics and industry people were calling Anne Askew in the Tower the next big thing. Alistair was calling to have it flushed down the commode.

  He’d just finished an hour-long session with his creative writing students. He’d told them that writing was a great way of working out your feelings. He’d told them that symbolism was the most important part of any work of fiction. He’d told them they should submit their manuscripts in twelve-point Courier font, double-spaced. And he told them that they should never, ever, under any circumstances, ever consider self-publishing their work.

  “Indie publishing is for hacks,” he’d said. “No one will ever take you seriously if you go that route. It’s undervaluing your art, and participating in it is joining the pitchforked multitudes in overthrowing our cultural and literary heritage.”

  “What about Hugh Howey?” asked a bright-eyed student in the third row.

  “Whom?” said Alistair. It was a rhetorical question. Alistair had read and enjoyed Hugh Howey’s work just like a million other people across the planet, but he wasn’t about to admit that to his students.

  “You know, he wrote The COTTON Omnibus? Hugh Howey. Everyone’s talking about him.”

  “Oh,” said Alistair. “Him. Well, he’s an exception that proves the rule.”

  “What about Bombo Dawson?” asked another student. “He sold his novel to a publisher in the UK, but self-published it here in the United States. Everyone is talking about him too.”

  Alistair leaned over his desk. His face tightened and his eyes narrowed. “Don’t say that person’s name in my class ever again, do you hear me? We discuss literary luminaries here—not cartoonish, donut-chomping buffoons who manage to bang out fifty thousand incoherent words on a computer between snacks. Dawson is a hack, do you understand me? H-A-C-K. What does that spell?”

  * * *

  Alistair was still trembling with rage after his students had left. He couldn’t eat—just the thought of Bombo’s novel made him sick—and the last thing he needed was to throw up all over the cafeteria. Especially not in the social media age. Someone would take a picture with their smartphone—maybe one of those retro-looking pictures—and post it on Facebook. And that, as they say, would be that. If he didn’t get fired, he’d probably have to quit just from the shame and embarrassment of it all, and then he’d have nothing left to live for. As it was, the only thing that gave meaning to Alistair’s life was literature. He spent considerable time in various realms of fantasy—since his real life basically sucked.

  He lived alone in a one-bedroom apartment that was within walking distance of the community college. And his girlfriend of five years had recently dumped him like a bad habit.

  “You’re a great guy,” Lisa had said. “Actually, that’s not true. You’re an asshole, and after five years I’ve realized that I could do better than you by literally picking any stranger off a street corner, or randomly dialing numbers until someone single picked up.”

  “Please,” Alistair had said, “give me another chance. I can change. What do you want me to change?”

  “Everything.”

  “Is there anything about me that you do like?”

  Lisa thought about it. “No,” she’d said. “Not that I can think of.”

  So, angry and feeling bitter, instead of eating lunch, Alistair decided to write a review of Anne Askew In The Tower. He’d read the book over the weekend, and to his disgust, couldn’t get it out of his mind. He shared his review on his Twitter account, snickering to himself all the while. This is going to drive Bombo’s fans crazy, he thought as he pressed the tweet button.

  That was the moment—the very instant when Alistair’s tweet went live—that something amazing happened. The classroom’s closet door swung open, spilling a terrible light into the room. It had an otherworldly glow that gave Alistair a terrible sense of vertigo. He braced himself against his desk. This is like something out of a fantasy novel, he thought.

  And then Thornton Wilder stepped out of the closet.

  * * *

  Tolstoy had an epic beard that put even Bombo’s to shame. It was long and white and completely unkempt. Another man might have mistaken him for a biker, or a homeless person that had wandered into the house while Bombo and Carol were having breakfast on the terrace, but not Bombo Dawson. He recognized Tolstoy at once. Immediately he grabbed a deck chair and prepared himself to smash in his all-time-favorite author’s head.

  “Wait!” Tolstoy shouted. “I’m not a zombie.”

  “You’re not?” Bombo asked. “Do you feel like eating me?”

  Tolstoy scowled. “Of course not.”

  Bombo turned to Carol, “He’s not a zombie, dear. So that’s good.”

  “Who is this man?” Carol asked. “Do you know him?”

  “It’s Leo Tolstoy,” Bombo said. He rolled his eyes like anybody should just know that.

  “He doesn’t look like a zombie,” Carol said.

  “I’m not,” Tolstoy said. “We already covered that. I’m a ghost. There’s an important difference.”

  “Oh y
eah?” Carol said. “What could possibly be the difference? Both are dead, right? Or used to be? And both get reanimated somehow to walk around and do things and stuff?”

  Tolstoy glowered at Carol. “The difference is significant, I tell you!”

  Carol stared at him for a moment as the terrace began to rotate slowly all around her.

  “Carol?” Bombo said. “Are you all right?”

  “I don’t feel so good,” she said. After a few wobbly seconds, her eyes rolled back in her head and she fainted. Lucky for her, Bombo was remarkably light on his feet for a man his size. He caught her as she fell back and eased her gently to the deck.

  “Your wife appears to have fainted,” Tolstoy said.

  “Sorry about that,” Bombo said. “She’s been on a vegetarian diet and we all know that avoiding meat isn’t actually all that healthy.”

  “I’m a vegetarian,” Tolstoy said. “Or, I used to be when I was alive.”

  “Oh,” Bombo said. “I didn’t realize…”

  “That’s fine,” Tolstoy said. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Would you like a donut?” Bombo asked. He picked up the box and offered it to the author of War and Peace. Tolstoy looked over the box with great care, as if the next decision he made might affect the fate of the world. After several moments, he selected a plain glazed.

  “Thank you,” Tolstoy said.

  “No problem,” said Bombo. He looked from Tolstoy to Carol. “Maybe I should try to wake her up or something.”

  “Perhaps you should wait,” Tolstoy said. “What I’m about to tell you might be upsetting to her.”

  “She survived a zombie apocalypse,” Bombo said. “She’s pretty tough… for a vegetarian.”

  “Be that as it may,” Tolstoy said, “what I have to say is for your ears alone.”

  Bombo nodded. “Okay then, lay it on me.”

  “I come from a place called the Legendarium,” Tolstoy said. “It is a sacred place to all writers.”

  “Is it a place where all the stories are collected?” Bombo asked.

  “Yes,” Tolstoy said. “How did you know that?”

  “Lucky guess.”

  “There are forces at work to destroy the Legendarium…”

  “And you want me to help defend it, right?”

  “Yes,” Tolstoy said. “And how did you know that?”

  “Hugh Howey called me about twenty minutes ago,” Bombo said. “He told me this crazy story about Kurt Vonnegut and this metaphysical library. I thought he was playing a practical joke or trying to lure me down to Florida so he could eat my brain.”

  “I can assure you,” Tolstoy said, “this is no joke.”

  “Well,” Bombo said,” I suppose I’ve got nothing better to do. What about Carol?”

  “She’ll be fine,” Tolstoy said. “You can tend to her when you get back.”

  Bombo looked from Carol to Tolstoy. He looked from Tolstoy to Carol. He looked at the donuts. He took one with zebra-striped frosting. “Okay,” he said and took a bite. “Let’s do this!”

  As he spoke, donut crumbs sprayed out of his mouth, and a few caught in Tolstoy’s beard. Bombo reached over to the Russian’s beard and began trying to pick out the crumbs but as he did, sugar clumps that had been stuck to his fingers replaced the crumbs he was trying to remove. Overall, as he worked in silence, the problem of donut shrapnel in Tolstoy’s beard got worse and worse. After an awkward thirty seconds or so of the author of War and Peace glaring at him, the great writer finally smacked Bombo’s hand and pointed toward the glowing door.

  Bombo stepped over Carol and followed Leo Tolstoy through the door—and into the glowing light of the Legendarium.

  * * *

  The distance from the surface of Alistair Foley’s desk to the floor seemed to wobble and stretch as the creative writing teacher attempted to rise. He lurched forward and nearly fell, but managed to keep his feet.

  “Are you quite all right?” Thornton Wilder’s voice rose in the middle of every sentence and tapered off at the end. His hair was cut so short that he was almost bald. He wore round, Harry-Potter-type glasses and had a neatly trimmed mustache.

  “I—I think so,” said Alistair.

  “My name is Thornton Wilder,” Thornton Wilder said. “Are you Alistair Foley?”

  “I, um… yes.” Alistair shook his head, trying to make sense of what was happening.

  “I’m going to say some things that might upset you,” said Thornton Wilder. “They might hurt your feelings if you’re particularly set in your mind about scientific laws and the structure of the universe. But what I have to say is important, and—“

  “How can you be here?” Alistair said. “You died almost forty years ago.” He staggered, and would have fallen if Wilder hadn’t caught him at the last minute. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author helped the creative writing teacher back to his seat.

  “I need you to listen,” said Thornton Wilder. “This world isn’t all that there is. There are thousands—”

  “Are you one of those zombies they had over in London last year? The ones that only ate good writers?”

  Thornton Wilder sighed as he leaned against Foley’s desk. He shifted his Harry Potter glasses on his nose. “If I were, I imagine you’d be perfectly safe. But I’m not.”

  Alistair winced. “Ouch.”

  I’ll try to explain,” he said. “It’s like this: when a writer dies, a part of their spirit lives on in a place called the Legendarium.”

  “Like Tolkien’s Legendarium?”

  “No,” Wilder said. “Well, sort of. That was pure fiction. This Legendarium is a real library, a repository of every story ever told. It touches every world—”

  “Every… world?”

  “There are thousands, millions of other worlds out there,” Wilder said. “One for each novel or short story ever published. Some scientists might call it a multiverse, and that’s as good a name as any. Of the other worlds, many are just like this one, only with subtle differences. In some, the South won the Civil War. In others, the North won, but perhaps Abraham Lincoln was never assassinated. Do you follow me so far?”

  “Like alternative histories?” Alistair said.

  Wilder nodded. “Yes, but in the Legendarium the history of those stories is not alternative. It is the real world created by that author. And although the writer’s words do not directly affect what happens or exists in this world, they do affect the readers of those words that live in this world. In that way, the relationship between worlds is very, very real.”

  Alistair rubbed his eyes and then scratched his head. “Okay, if those worlds are real to the people in them, then how do I know that I’m not the character in someone else’s story? How do I know that I’m real?”

  Wilder smiled, and when he did, his glasses slipped a few centimeters down his nose so that he was looking over them at Alistair. “I’ll answer your question with a question, sir. In what fictional world would any writer worth their salt allow you to teach people about writing? All you have is a degree; you’ve never actually published!”

  Alistair scowled. “That hurts… just a little bit.”

  “My apologies, sir,” Wilder said. “But I wanted to keep you on point. We have no time for digressions. So, do you understand what I’ve told you so far?”

  “I think so,” Alistair said. In truth, he was beginning to think that he was suffering a schizophrenic episode. This was not entirely out of the range of possibility. Alistair’s great-grandfather had suffered from schizophrenia, and it was a very real possibility that any male descendant of that great-grandfather could one day be rendered a lunatic, unable to distinguish reality from fantasy. Still, Thornton Wilder had a point about Alistair being allowed to teach creative writing at the college level. He hoped to be a great writer one day, but he was hardly an expert. That alone gave some credence to the idea that perhaps what was happening was actually real.

  “There are yet other worlds,” Thornton Wilder was saying
, “where human beings live alongside elves and other creatures, and dragons are real. I don’t mean to go on and on, but I want you to understand that all of these worlds exist within the mind of God. They exist, and in every single one there is a place where it overlaps all the others. We call that overlapping place the Legendarium.”

  “I don’t understand any of this,” Alistair said. “Maybe I have food poisoning. Am I going to be visited by three ghosts?”

  “Of course not,” Wilder snapped. “Don’t be ridiculous. This isn’t that world.”

  “I’m hallucinating.”

  “I can assure you,” Thornton Wilder said, “that you are not.”

  “But you’re dead. And you appeared out of the broom closet. And you’re Thornton Wilder.”

  “Jesus wept. Listen to me,” Thornton Wilder said. “The Legendarium is very real—and it is in trouble. Something is corrupting the multiverse, and if it isn’t put to a stop, all human knowledge will be wiped out. Do you understand that? If you don’t help me, the world is going to slip back into the dark ages, or worse.”

  Alistair stared at him without comprehension. Food poisoning would be easier to deal with than schizophrenia, and it would explain the way his stomach lurched when Thornton Wilder walked into the room. On the other hand, Wilder seemed quite real and the nausea was now gone.

  “I need you to come with me,” said Thornton Wilder. “I’ve been sent to recruit you. Will you help me?”

  Foley sighed. Whatever the cause of this hallucination, it wasn’t going away. Perhaps he had to let it play out to the end, and then everything would return to normal. “I have another class in twenty minutes. Is this going to take a long time?”

  Thornton Wilder adjusted his glasses again. “Time has no meaning in the Legendarium,” he said. “When you return, if you return, it will be at the exact moment that you left.”

  “Well, that’s convenient,” Alistair said.

  “Will you go then?” Wilder asked. “Will you defend the Legendarium?”