This little kid on the bus staring around not knowing anybody. 

            Junior high standing in line wondering if anybody will pick him. 

            Raising a hand in high school new once again introduced once again hello how are all of you one more f***ing time.

            Childhood dreams that somehow seem like a motion picture. A trilogy. The good, the bad and the ugly. 

            I want to wake up but it’s weird ‘cause I can’t. I also can’t remember last year. I can’t think of anything much. Sure, the last few days, everything from the beginning of this month. But my brain is becoming scrambled eggs. It’s strange. 

            Shouldn’t someone be by my side to wake me up? To maybe curl up beside me in the morning time? Or maybe let out a snort of a snore before getting out of bed? Something, anything? 

            I shouldn’t be by myself. I don’t fit in this bed, this apartment, this place, this name, this life. 

            There should be more fleshed out. I should be more complicated. I’m not a drone and I don’t have a shrine dedicated to the Cubs. I don’t have much of anything. Except this new day. 

            Another day, surprisingly warm, surprisingly bright, surprisingly inviting, opens its door and tells me to head out. To forget the dreams and the memories and the isolation.

            Salvation might be outside. 

**

            Saturday mornings I get together with Dermot for coffee downtown Appleton. I usually have someone opening up the store and Dermot and I always walk from the coffee shop to HH after our meeting. We usually end up talking about books and writing since Dermot is a novelist. I never use the term aspiring because he writes so he’s not an “aspiring writer.” He wants to be published, of course, and he wants to have a bestseller and make a living writing but he’s still always writing when he’s not working to support a family. 

            “I’m finally doing NanoWrimo,” Dermot tells me. 

            He sure looks like a writer with his disheveled hair and beard and glasses. Dermot is a computer guy at a business in Oak Brook that I still haven’t figured out what they do besides being in the financial world. There’s a lot of people in the financial world, right? Are they just shuffling and exchanging and winning and losing money all day long? Do they actually create anything new or contribute to the world outside of playing around with dollars and percentages? Maybe I’m just bitter because I have no dollars and percentages for someone to play with. 

            “So how far are you?” I ask. 

            I’m very familiar with NanoWrimo, short for National Novel Writing Month. It’s always in November and it’s when everybody who wants to write a novel is given motivation to do so in one month since everybody else is doing it. 50,000 words in 30 days. That’s the goal. Knowing others are doing it and getting support with and through them supposedly helps, though the writers I’ve known who have come into HH over the years doing NanoWrimo never seem to finish their book. 

            Dermot takes a sip off coffee. “Two thousand words, or a bit under. But it’s a fabulous idea.”

            He starts telling me the idea and it sure doesn’t sound fabulous. Maybe it’s the description or the presentation, but I’m sure not going to suddenly find a slot in my bookstore for this particular title. 

            Wow Mr. Arrogant. Why don’t you support the guy a bit more? 

            “Two thousand? Sounds like a bit behind.”

            I haven’t quite figured out the whole concept of encouragement. 

            “Actually, I’d say 1,700, and yeah, a little behind, but it’s the weekend.”

            “I’m preventing you from writing,” I say. 

            “No—the Cubs prevented me. I’ll really get going this weekend.”

            I nod. “Finishing something is good.”

            “You ever try writing a novel?” he asks. 

            “No way,” I say. “I know a great book when I read it. Maybe that’s why I haven’t ever had the thought of trying to write one. My mind doesn’t think that way.”

            “I have too many ideas and not enough time,” Dermot says. “There’s this great quote from J.K. Rowling—here, hold on.” 

            He grabs his phone to look it up.

            “Here it is . . . ‘ Whatever job I had, I was always writing like crazy. All I ever liked about offices was being able to type up stories on the computer when no one was looking. I was never paying much attention in meetings because I was usually scribbling bits of my latest stories in the margins of the pad or thinking up names for my characters. This is a problem when you’re supposed to be taking minutes of the meeting.’” Dermot paused and grinned. “This is totally me.”

            I nod. I know it because he’s always telling me about the five projects he has going on. 

            “Remember that writer who came to the store for the signing and talk? Forget his name—Trevor or something—but he said like ten times over and over again the same thing.”

            Dermot nods. “Yeah. Finish. Finish, finish, finish.”

            “So this month?”

            “Absolutely.”

            “The clock is ticking,” I say. 

            “Man—it’s always good to have a ticking clock. It’s even a literary device. You have to do something before a certain time or the bomb is going to blow up.”   

            “Yes,” I say. “Then you make it into a movie starring Tom Cruise.”         

**

            When I get to HH with Dermot, Casey tells me I have an envelope waiting for me. It just has my name on it. Nolan. 

            “Who’s it from?” I ask. 

            “I don’t know. I think it was slipped under the door.”
            “You can slip things under the door?” I ask, not that I’m going to actually try it out myself. 

            I take the envelope in the back office and open it up, assuming it’s a bill. I just got a bill from the IRS that I had to sign for—sign and put my address and all that at the post office—that was called “Notice of Intent to Levy.” Meaning I better pay the $1,493.72 I owe them from last year. There’s just a white sheet of paper in this that’s folded in thirds. 

            It’s a short letter that looks typed. Typed in the way they used to actually type, using the big, bulky thing called a typewriter. With keys that triggered an arm to pound a block with ink on it into the piece of paper. 

            The message is short and sweet. 

            Nolan:

            Solve the mystery. Figure it out. Don’t give up. Your very life depends on it. 

            A Friend

            Just like with the girl from the Cubs celebration I never saw, I’m wondering if this is a joke or an illusion. 

            Or maybe the mystery is Lexi. Who is she and what’s she doing in my life? 

            No other contact is given. Just typed. I bet if I gave this to my friend in the FBI and he checked it for fingerprints, it would be clean. But I’m not going to do that because I don’t have any friends in the FBI. 

            At least I don’t think I do. 

            Another mystery? 

            Life is a mystery. The first being how in the world to sell books in today’s world. How to keep a brick and mortar business operating. Those are the first two. 

            Then the whole question of Nolan, this guy I’m supposed to be. Well, maybe that’s the whole, big question. 

            My very life depends on solving a mystery I haven’t asked yet. 

**

            Bits and pieces of the last few days are being picked up and examined and wondered about. It’s weird. My life was basically static five days ago. But then something happened. I woke up and had no idea where I was or kinda even who I was and then the Cubs won the World Series and now I don’t know anything. Now I’m wondering over and over again. 

            Like the books I find on the new books display table. There are six copies of the same novel, a rarity since I almost never buy six copies of anything. HH isn’t the place to get the latest John Grisham story, though of course I’ll have a couple on hand. I can’t remember ordering the book, and I’m the only one who orders at my store. I pick up the title and examine it. 

            Breathing in the Smokies by Ethan Ware. 

            The cover shows the Smoky Mountains in a variety of colors that move just as the rolling hills do. It’s a bit melancholy and a bit omnious. The book is hardcover and published by Scribner. I open the novel and look at the jacket sleeve to see who this Ethan Ware happens to be. 

            Ethan Ware holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in fiction. An award-winning adventure writer, Ware is a contributing editor at Outside Magazine and Men’s Journal. He is the author of two nonfiction books and three novels, including The Bluff and An Eagle’s View. He lives in Asheville, North Carolina with his wife and two sons. 

            Ethan looks familiar and I assume I’ve seen him somewhere being interviewed. I don’t think he’s been at the store. Sometimes I forget these things (or pretty much 85% of things lately). If he lived in the Chicago area, I’d say he probably visited our store. But who knows. 

            The novel has a nice blurb on the cover from Leif Enger, the author of one of my favorite novels of all time, Peace Like a River. Authors and publishers do these sort of things to connect the style of the novel. Sorta saying Hey if you loved my book then you’ll really love this one without coming right out and saying it. 

            Maybe that’s why I ordered Breathing in the Smokies. The story centers around a couple and their fractured marriage (aren’t all of them a bit fractured?) and the stranger that moves to their town who threatens to tear their lives apart. My brief summary makes it sound like a Lifetime movie of the week. The book sleeve uses words like “poetic” and “honest” and “mysterious.” 

            Everybody loves to use the word “mystery” these days. 

            “Hey—have you read it yet?” Casey asks me as she passes by. 

            “No. I didn’t know we got these in.”

            “Yeah. Just put them out. Remember when I asked why you’d ordered half a dozen?”

            I nod which really means no I have no idea when I did that. 

            “I’m surprised you didn’t stay up reading it when they came in,” Casey says. “You talked about that excerpt for like a month.”

            “The Cubs,” I tell her. 

            That’s going to be my answer to everything. Banana Republic credit card calls to remind me of my missed payment on money I spent for clothes fifteen years ago. 

            “The Cubs.”

            Mom calls me to tell me I missed coming over there this past weekend. 

            “The Cubs.”

            My life coach tells me I haven’t been showing up for our regular meetings. 

            “The Cubs.”

            Of course, I don’t have a life coach, but maybe one would be good since I really need one. 
            “I’m going to take one of these,” I tell Casey. 

            “Ask the boss,” she says. 

            “Thought I just did.”

            I like joking that she’s the boss. But lately in life, it seems pretty much everybody is my boss in one way or another. 

            I look at the opening sentence in the novel. 

            “Beginnings spark near the halfway point when you least expect them and when your life seems stuck on course.”

            It’s an opener that you have to read again and again to try to make sense of. Hopefully the rest of the novel will be a little more clear. I think some certainty in my life right now. 

**

            I close the shop meaning there’s always about one or two people I have to politely say time to loiter somewhere else. I usually close at the hours I’m supposed to, and tonight’s one of those nights. When I step out on main street, a cool breeze cuts through me. It’s furious even though it seems to come out of nowhere, like it’s been waiting for me. One of the street lamps is off above the sidewalk. I begin to walk toward the parking garage when I swear I hear shuffling feet. I turn and don’t see anybody, then I keep going and hear the shuffling again. Not like a regular somebody walking but like two brushes swishing away on a tile floor. It’s almost as if whoever the sounds belong to wants to be heard. 

            I parked on the second story of the parking garage, basically the rooftop which is open. I have to look for a few seconds to remember where I parked, then I head toward the corner where my SUV is somewhat hidden by the building next to it. Right before I reach my vehicle, the shadow covering it starts to move and literally jump out toward me. 

            Ah I get it. 

            Then I see a figure and do stop and freak out a bit. 

            “Nolan,” a rough, gruff, tough voice says.    

            I see the beard first, then piercing eyes and the thick dark hair. It’s the most interesting man in the world, or at least in Appleton. 

            “Hey, Jack,” I say in far too calm of a manner for someone jumping out of the—well, yeah. “What’s going on?” 

            Jack Van Orton stands there looking around us in a suit that probably costs more than my SUV. There’s a ruffled look about Jack, even in the muted light of the top of the parking deck. The top two buttons of his dress shirt are open and it looks untucked. Jack looks like he might have slept in this outfit last night. 

            “We need to talk,” Jack tells me, still surveying the area around us. 

            “Do you want to go somewhere?” 

            That piercing stare is suddenly pointed right at me like some kind of laser scope. 

            “Yes. But not around here. Nowhere around Appleton.”

            His voice sounds gravely, as if he’s been shouting so much he lost it. 

            “Yeah, sure. You okay?” 

            He gives me a look that says I just jumped out of the shadows and I look like shit and I’m all shifty-eyed on a Saturday night and I’m asking to talk. So yeah. I’m fine. 

            “Can you drive?” he asks. 

            “Sure.”

**

            We sit outside in the orange glow covering the tables, taking advantage of the warm November night like the others at half a dozen tables are. I’ve never been to Hardware before, but Jack says it’s amazing and that he’ll order for us. 

            “You drink Scotch?” he asks. 

            “Yeah, sometimes, but I’m not a connoisseur by any means.”

            I say that in a tone that says hell no. So when the server comes to our table, Jack tells him we’ll take a couple two-ounce glasses of the Macallan Rare Cask. I look at the menu and see that it’s $82 per drink. They say it has hints of stuff like vanilla and nutmeg and clove and raisin giving way to apple, lemon and orange. But come on. I’ll believe it when I sip it. 

            We didn’t talk much on the drive over to Hardware and it makes me think of the cut movies always make when someone comes out of nowhere and then says “let’s get a drink” and then boom they’re having a drink. What about all that awkward silence or that nondescript small talk? Sure, there’s no reason to document it, but when you’re actually living it, it’s something, right? 

            I can’t remember if we talked about anything. 

            I do know that once in the SUV, Jack smelled like he’d been aging himself in lots of single malt action. (I don’t know if that even makes sense but let’s go with it since I’m about to enjoy an $82 glass of scotch). It’s almost as if Jack needs to have a drink before he says anything. So when the glasses come, with the cube of ice hovering inside it and looking like it’s about two sips, Jack scoops it up and then holds it up to toast.

            “To the end,” Jack says as I clink his glass. 

            He sips it, slowly and carefully. The first sip makes him close his eyes in pure satisfaction. The drink is smooth. Very smooth. But I’m not sure if I taste anything like nutmeg or apples and oranges or any of that. I feel the warmth in my throat and then the slow burn in my gut. 

            “Did you hear about my wonderful incident?” Jack asks. 

            I nod. I still have no idea why I’m here. It’s not like Jack and I have ever hung out by ourselves. 

            “Don’t let that confuse you,” he says. “Nor let my shoddy appearance tonight. Or my reliance on this.”

            He holds his glass up and finishes it. 

            “There’s a great disturbance in the force,” Jack says. 

            I wait for a moment to see if he’s trying to be funny. 

            “Yes, Star Wars, of course,” he continues. “My grandson is finally old enough to watch it so I’ve been watching the movies with him. Great stuff.”

            “What’s going on?” I ask. 

            “Someone—some people—know my story. My secrets. And they put it in book form in order to threaten me and my family.”

            “Seriously?” I ask. 

            “Listen—I came to you not to talk about me. I came to you because you know most of the folks in Appleton.”

            “I know a few.

            Jack waves down the sexy server and orders another drink. I’m still working on mine, taking $20 sips. 

            “You’re a book guy—a publishing guy—so I can talk to you about book-related matters.”

            “Sure,” I say, still trying to figure out if he’s high on some kind of drug that makes you paranoid. 

            “I’m not high on anything that makes me paranoid,” he says. 

            Did I just speak my thought outside? 

            Jack produces a list. A folded list of names written in black ink. 

            “This is everyone I know who’s involved,” Jack says. “And I’m giving you this because I know you can do something with it.”

            I don’t have on my reading glasses so I can’t read the names. 

            “Involved in what?” I ask. 

            Jack looks around at the fellow people sitting at table outside. Then he starts to whisper. 

            “The dark belly of the beast, Nolan. The raw, nasty intestines of a vile entity.”

            His hoarse voice sounds like scratching over my skin. 

            “What entity is that?” 

            “Appleton,” he says. 

**

            A few minutes later, he gets down to the details. 

            There had to be a pause after he mentioned “Appleton” because there’s no other way to go dum dum DUM other than writing it out kinda like I just did. 

            Oh well.          

            “There’s this man I know—from different circles,” Jack starts to say.     

            “What kind of circles?”

            He just looks at me, seeming to wonder if I can keep a secret. 

            “We share the same interests. Let’s just keep it that simple.”

            The interests he’s talking about seems to go far deeper than sipping scotch.    

            “This man—he invites me to this party of sorts. And it’s bizarre. You heard of that strange connection John Podesta has to this occult-practice called the ‘spirit-cooking’?” 

            I shake my head. “Podesta—Clinton’s guy, right?” 

            “Yeah, yeah. It’s some artsy nonsense that has some kind of recipe that includes blood mixed with breast milk and sperm.”

            I already think Jack’s lost his mind, but now I’m thinking he must be writing some kind of Dennis Shore novel. 

            “I know—sounds bizarre,” he says. “I’m not making it up. I’m serious. Look it up. So here’s the thing. I’m invited to this party as I said. And I go. Because—honestly, I’m curious. And it turns out to be some kind of really sick devil worship.”

            He’s still so serious. Not just that but he keeps looking around, beyond anxious, as if someone’s going to jump out of the bushes around us. 

            “The place we go—it’s an abandoned warehouse west of the Fox River. I have to say a magic password to get in and I swear I’m thinking it’s going to be like an Eyes Wide Shut sort of thing. Because—well, that’s our mutual interest thing.”

            I’m getting way more info than I want to hear and still find myself half-doubting any of this. 

            “There’s twenty people in this warehouse. It’s one built in the early 1900’s and completely bare and everybody’s in robes and they’re all positioned in certain places there’s candles and I swear it’s like the most terrifying haunted house you’ve ever set foot inside.”

            He orders another scotch and then asks me if I want one and I tell the server yes and forget to mention for the love of God bring me the entire bottle. 

            “I can barely make out anybody except my friend and a couple of others I know. One is a notable figure in town. The other is a younger man who’s part of the special club. But there’s old and young people and men and women. I swear I thought I saw some ten-year-old. I was given a robe and all I wanted was to get the hell out of there. But I was stuck. And I was really curious. Wouldn’t you be?”  

            “This all happened?”

            “Damnit. I didn’t come out here to blabber on about some kind of insanity just for the hell of it. To someone I don’t know.”

            “But why are you telling me all of this?” I ask. 

            It’s a logical question and it’s one he seems to think about for a minute. 

            “You know the town and you’re a single guy and you have connections.”

            How’s does he know? 

            “I haven’t spoken to my cousin in months,” I tell him. 

            My cousin, Murphy, is an FBI agent living in Wayne not far from me. He’s my age with a nice wife and nice family and nice life. But he’s one person in this world you don’t mess with. 

            “Just—listen, okay” Jack says. “So I’m there and they’re saying all this crap and the old guy—he’s the one I listed at the top—he’s leading the service and speaking in French and they’re chanting. Then they bring in something wrapped up in white silk—something long that’s either a really heavy rug or a body. And unfortunately you know what it turns out to be.”

            “A rug?” I joke. 

            “It’s gotta be someone young, maybe a high school kid or something. And they’re dead. That’s the thing. Someone’s already killed them—I can’t tell how because at this point I can no longer look. But I do long enough to know that it’s real. I swear they didn’t do this thing just to freak me out.”

            He’s freaking me out and I don’t want to hear any of this. I want to go back to Normaltown and live my nice, happy, no-Satanic-services life. 

            Jack looks away, has a sip of his scotch and then wipes the sweat off his forehead. 

            “And I swear—they were going to do something with the body. I don’t know what but they had these daggers being passed out and that’s when I bolted. Like I was Usain Bolt and I got to the door and had to wrestle this guy to the ground to get out.”

            I laugh. Nonsense. Crazy. Insane. 

            “I got out and got back in my car and took off,” Jack says. 

            “Yikes,” I say. 

            I love that word because it reminds me that SNL sketch with Will Ferrell called Dr. Beaman’s office. He plays an utterly insane doctor who loses a couple’s baby and when they finally leave he utters a big, fat “Yikes.” 

            “So then what?” I ask him. 

            “Nothing. For a while. This happened a month ago. I know enough not to say anything. But I’m feeling watched. I don’t show up to my monthly. . . meeting. My group. And that’s when I get this manuscript handed to me. And it’s supposed to be fiction—a thriller—but the whole thing is about me. And it’s about everything in my life. Stuff nobody’s ever known. Stuff I forgot. And it’s the most frightening thing I’ve ever experienced.”

            “What’s the most frightening thing?” I ask. 

            “Reading that book. They knew things—there was no way they could have found that out without something happening.”

            I exhale with a sigh that seems to shake.  

            “Without what happening?” I ask. 

            “Without me writing it myself.”       

**

            I’m not sure if it’s the multiple scotches or the nonsensical babble or my current mood that sends me home that night with my head truly spinning. Jack shares more stories/theories/hysteria with me and then says he just called an Uber to pick him up. He doesn’t mention anything about going home. He just reminds me to look up those three people and check out the address he’s written down. He does give me one last parting nightmare to dwell on. 

            “Even if you don’t believe any of this and you toss that note away and never think about it again–please, Nolan, just hear me out. If I disappear in the next few weeks—or if I’m found floating in the river—tell your cousin. You got it?”

            I nod and watch him disappear into the night. 

**

            The whole devil worship thing sounds straight out of a Netflix movie you come across and stream. I do look up the whole Podesta thing but I can’t tell which Wikileak is real or fake these days. There are too many leaks and too many emails and too much bad political blood. No pun intended. 

            The strangest thing out of all of this is Jack telling me the novel he received was full of secrets of his. Ones nobody else knew. 

            Maybe Jack’s so insane he wrote the book himself and submitted it? 

            That’d be a cool twist in a story. 

            If the book wasn’t written by him, and if it did indeed contain these things nobody knew about, was it that terrifying to make him go crazy and start to undress? Why undress? I can think of a thousand better things to do under serious duress than suddenly get naked in front of my coworkers. 

            Yeah. I don’t get it. What a weird day.  

            I pull out the letter that arrived today and read it again. 

            Nolan:

            Solve the mystery. Figure it out. Don’t give up. Your very life depends on it. 

            A Friend

            I wonder if a friend really wrote this, and if it has anything to do with Jack.