This Book Does Not Exist (5 page)

It took me 37 hours to drive all the way from California to Ohio, from Los Angeles to
Daventry
. To make it without spending the night at a motel, I consumed
Vivarin
like peanut butter M&M’s. I still had to stop three times, twice at rest stops in Oklahoma and once on the side of the road in Texas. I slept in each place for an hour at a time. A giant vanilla milkshake from McDonald’s helped carry me through St. Louis and Indianapolis and into Ohio. When I reached the turnpike in Toledo, it was night (again), and I started to hallucinate. The brake lights on the semi trucks in front of me transformed into devil-like monsters, as my mental and physical selves seemed to separate. I had an out of body experience, and I no longer believed I could control my car. Thankfully, it passed. I caught my second wind once dawn began to break.

Now, I pay the toll for the turnpike at the
toll booth
in
Daventry
and drive onto the exit ramp, which manages to be long without being winding. Both sides of the road are lined with trees, and the leaves seem to be falling off prematurely. The trees themselves are more ashen than I remember, and I wonder if they’re dying. The day itself is blisteringly grey, like someone flipped a switch on the sun to change the color of its light from golden to cement. I would expect this from
Daventry
in the winter, not in the summertime.

At the conclusion of the exit ramp, I should find Route 58, a four-lane state highway that runs
north-south
through
Daventry
, straight into Lake Erie. I don’t. Instead, I discover a city. An advertisement for the paint company Sherwin-Williams, which famously replaced the
LeBron
James “Witness” banner, hangs from a middling-sized skyscraper. A baseball stadium with the lights wastefully on despite the time of day grabs my attention. I see a sign for East 9
^th
Street. Somehow I got off at the wrong exit. I’m in Cleveland, on the near west side
Innerbelt
, heading east. I can’t figure out how I ended up here, but I suppose this is the sort of thing that happens when you haven’t slept for a day and a half.

In front of me, the road bends sharply underneath a tall bridge, coming up on a high accident area nicknamed “Dead Man’s Curve.” The next exit is for Carnegie, so I take it, planning to use the corresponding entrance ramp to loop onto the westbound side of the highway and head back towards
Daventry
.

My plan fails, however, when the entrance ramp I need to get on is closed in order for city workers to replace a mangled crosswalk sign.

Heading east down Carnegie, away from downtown Cleveland, I try to see if my surroundings match anything from my memory of previous drives to the East Side and the campus of Case Western Reserve, where a friend went to college. I think I can remember how to get back to
Daventry
from there. Some things do, like the warning signs for electronic speed traps, the frequent stoplights, the new construction interspersed with broken down homes and gas stations with bars over the windows. Other things don’t. I’m unsure about many of the structures that belong to the Cleveland Clinic. Is this how they used to look? Were they even here before? I can’t say for sure whether this is the right way or not, so I decide to keep pressing onward until I can.

Eventually,
I spot the name of a street I definitely recognize – Cedar Road – and it clicks for me that this is a route I’ve taken in the past. I’m supposed to turn right onto Cedar, I remember, so I do.

Cedar Road
is filled with potholes that would look at home amongst craters on the moon. I am the only traffic. Cliché-like, small groups of men stand on the corners of adjacent streets, either to do business or to escape dilapidated homes. The number of houses that have been abandoned altogether multiplies the further I look off the main drag. It would be easy to assume these houses are victims of the foreclosure crisis, but I suspect they may just be products of moribund prosperity in the Industrial Midwest.

I pass
an ancient strip mall with only one open store, a barbershop. The rest of the spaces are up for rent. If the people living here, in what I guess are the East 80’s, weren’t already haunted by reality, the mall could be turned into a haunted house for Halloween, I think, as I check the street signs to confirm exactly where I am.

As soon as I note the sign for East 84
^th
, the sense of confidence I had when I turned onto Cedar erodes. 83, 82, 81… The numbers on the streets are going down. I’m heading out of Cleveland and into East Cleveland, the most depraved and dangerous portion of the city.

I’m going the wrong way.

Before I can turn around, my car slows down without me hitting the brakes. I tap the gas, but it doesn’t affect the speed of the car, which is now dropping rapidly, as if the engine is stalling out.

I scan outside. The buildings in my immediate vicinity aren’t stable. They are murder scenes waiting to happen.

The car sputters to a stop. The engine has shut off. I lock my doors, turn off the lights, and grab my phone. As I search for the names of people I could call for help, wondering why the hell I didn’t just try to map my location earlier, I realize I’m not getting any coverage. The bars that normally indicate signal strength are gone.
They’ve been replaced by three letters
: SOS.

To my right is a building that looks like a house but is actually some sort of commercial property. A slogan is written on the front, scripted words made with sharp white paint on top of faded pastel blue wooden siding.

The slogan reads:

“Come to
Geppetto’s
today because tomorrow may be too late”

A sidewalk leads directly from where my car stopped to the front of a business I presume is called “
Geppetto’s
,” thereby sharing a name with the stranger who messaged me about Naomi.

I can’t help but wonder if this is the whole point.

The
 
desolation
in East Cleveland loses its diorama quality, becoming more real as I step onto the barely serviceable road and search for cell coverage. I pace, tapping the screen on my phone to keep it lit, watching for any change in the signal strength.

All I see is SOS.

I expand the size of the area I’m canvassing. The bright white paint of the slogan on
Geppetto’s
shines unlike anything in the surrounding area. It looks new. The rest of the dwelling is anything but, and despite the morbid – or sarcastic, I’m not sure – nature of the slogan itself, the freshness of the paint and the preciseness of the lettering give the building an almost welcoming façade.

“Come to
Geppetto’s
today because tomorrow may be too late”

As I re-read the slogan, I can’t alleviate the feeling I am where I need to be. The mechanics of how I arrived in East Cleveland, in front of this building with this name on it, are confounding but also entrenched in a sense of inevitability.

I take a moment before proceeding inside the building.

The front door opens
without a hitch.

Inside, it is dark. There are no windows. I have only the moonlight shining through the doorway and the screen on my phone to help me see. The space is small and square and empty. There is no furniture, nothing like barber’s chairs or a bar and bar stools. Warped floorboards pop up from their original stations, showing emancipated nails that vaguely look like teeth. From what I can tell,
Geppetto’s
was deserted and then either left unlocked or broken into at some point.

I say “hello?” even though there is clearly no one here.
I
look over my shoulder before completely entering the one-room building as if to make sure I’m not walking into a trap. I lift my feet high off the floor and gently set them down to create as little extra noise as possible. I check my phone. I still don’t have any cell coverage. I navigate the bowed boards and the rusty nails until I reach the center of the room.

Behind me the open door sways. It must be the wind. Going deeper into the space, I notice a fire engine red door buried in the back corner of the room at the intersection of the north and west walls, the sort of place where a closet would be set. Like the slogan outside, the door appears to have been painted only recently, so its color lifts out of the darkness. Confusingly, the handle is also red – the same exact tint as the wood – making it hard to differentiate from the rest of the door. Contrary to what I thought earlier, the door can’t open into a closet because it’s fixed to the very back edge of the building. The space behind it is the backyard.
 
Therefore, the door is likely a strangely cast back/side entrance, although the need for it is indeterminable; there is no indication of what once went on inside this building.

I reach for the handle. Before doing anything else I
double check
the bars on my phone. There aren’t any.
Just those same three letters
, SOS.

I twist the red handle on the red door.

It opens.

And I am
met, not by East Cleveland, but by the hallowed white light of a near-death experience, pulling me one, two, three steps forward, all the way inside its cloak.

Ultimately, my movement through the doorway is no different than if I had walked directly out of a movie theater and into the daylight. Just a moment where the light source switched and the shock of the sun
hit,
followed by a gradual fade in brightness while my pupils adjusted. Other than my eyes, my body didn’t feel a thing.

It’s where I’ve come out that I can’t explain.

I am standing in a cul-de-sac. I can see the house my mom and dad own
,
 
the
gray two-story with the pointed arch above the front door, the place where they’ve lived since I was twelve. I am in the neighborhood I grew up in, and
I
can’t understand how. You can’t walk through a doorway in East Cleveland and come out forty miles away in
Daventry
. You just can’t.

When I turn around, the doorway I came through is not behind me. Naturally. Why would there be a door to nowhere in the street? As an effect of this, of course, I can’t return to where I came from. There is nowhere for me to go but here.

I begin to panic.

Is this the actual cul-de-sac my parents live on, or is it some sort of replica, a virtual reality simulation? How can I tell? There’s no one here, no one to ask. I have no choice but to explore.

I take my first full step.

When my red and black Jordan 1 high top hits the pavement, I scrub it back and forth across the concrete. The friction feels how I’m used to it feeling, how it should. I take another full step towards the open end of the cul-de-sac, away from my mom and dad’s house. I walk cautiously, seeking validation in the environment. Overall, the neighborhood looks like it did when I was here seven months ago for Christmas. I don’t see a single person or moving car, but that doesn’t indicate I’m inside of a nightmare. In reality, this is a quiet housing allotment in a slow town. There are a thousand reasons why everyone might be inside.

I walk to the street perpendicular to the cul-de-sac. I reach a point from which I can see Naomi’s parents’ house. It’s there, where it should be, less than an eighth of a mile away.

I walk the distance.

Up close, the house is
in the same condition I remember it being in. It’s a ranch with a brick front, white sides, and a black metal fence that squares off the backyard. A small slab of concrete at the door counts as a junior-sized porch.

I whisk my hand through the grass. As with everything else so far, it’s a brush with normalcy. I head for the porch, fixating on the front door and the doorbell next to it. Before I can worry myself away, I jab the button with my thumb.

No one immediately answers the door. I listen for movement inside but fail to pick up on anything, so I try the doorbell again. Pressing
the button this time doesn’t produce a sound, no “ding dong,” no chime. Did it work a few seconds ago? I don’t remember. The button looks functional. I hit it again. There is no sound.