Gone Home✔️

Chapter 16: Approaching the Truth

I sat at the kitchen table for several more minutes, then finally made myself get up. I considered what to do with the remains of my meal, then just sighed and abandoned it. I was in no mood for chores. Moving on, I marched over to the only other door in the room and slid it open. I moved into a small, dark room, the only light coming from an open doorway in the left wall. I saw a drawstring and pulled on it.

Boards and bags of soil lay on the bare concrete floor of this small room, while shovels and rakes hung on the walls. Okay, so it was like an indoor shed. I found some more good news on a narrow table to the left. Another copy of dad's reprinted book, this time his second one, and there was even a nice letter to go along with it.

MARCH 28 1995

UNKNOWN DIMENSION
LIT.

Dear Mr. Greenbriar,

First let me say that I hope this missive finds
you well - - hell, it feels like a goddam miracle
that it finds you at all! Do you know how long
we've been trying to track you down!? Worry not,
we aren't the Feds, the men in black, or any
other sort of creeping fascist hobgoblins. In
fact we're on your side. Let me start from the beginning.

Unknown Dimension is what you might call a
Specialist publishing house - - we traffic in the
weird, the ahead-of-its-time, the lost-but-not
-forgotten-by-a-small-but-dedicated-group-of
-plugged-in-bibliophiles type of out-there mass
-market-shunning visionary expression that refu-
ses to be taken on anything but its own terms.

We've had an unparalleled run since our incep-
tion four years ago, unearthing and reviving,
Christ (or Zombie-) like, timeless works such as
N.N. Bestmans Message of the Snakemen, IT'S
INSIDE ME! BY Jens Keller, and Emil Kriegers
oft-banned Venusian Fleshtraders.

But ever since we discovered tattered copies of
your ACCIDENTAL series at a church rummage sale
in Long Branch, NJ, we've been trying to track
down the author of this weird and dark American
outsider art. It's just the kind of forgotten
portal into 20th century civilization's anxieties
and delusions that our readers lose their minds
over. James Bond and Harrison Ford might be the
dick-swinging heroes that modern suburban Amer-
ica wants, but John Russel, mild-mannered
insurance agent by day, reckless history-revising
sociopath by night, is the twisted peacekeeper
that it deserves. It is our mission to bring
him back to life.

OKAY, SO I'VE TYPED PLENTY. WHAT DO WE WANT FROM
YOU?

We want your permission to reprint the work,
since your original publisher, Mercury Books,
folded a decade ago. We want you to supply a new
foreword for the books, to appear in brand new
editions of THE ACCIDENTAL SAVIOR and THE
ACCIDENTAL PARIAH, to be produced by Unknown
Dimension as a limited run and marketed directly
to our highly discerning customer base. And we
want to offer you a portion of the proceeds,
(contract to follow, assuming you're interested
in coming along with us on this weird odyssey).

WE LOOK FORWARD TO EMBARKING WITH YOU, and to
thrusting your work screaming back into the swe-
ating palms of an unsuspecting American public.

It's about time.

Blast off,
KAZ

Okay...wow. And weird. This guy sounded kind of nuts, but hey, it was working, apparently. Dad was getting his books republished and apparently working on a third one. I mean, that was pretty damned cool...if it worked out. I hope he wasn't some kind of scam-artist. Feeling a strange stew of emotions: hopeful for dad, angry at mom, worried about and sorry for Sam...I pressed on. Because I got the feeling I was getting close to the end. I mean, how much house was there? Besides, I had to be on the lookout for that all important key.