They kept walking, and they kept walking. Todd didn’t know if it was miles, or hundreds of miles.

“Where are we going?” he asked, even though he knew it was a ridiculous question.

“Oh, you’ll see,” said Jake. “Say, Todd,” he added, “there’s something I wanted to ask you.”

“What?” said Todd.

“Where do you get your ideas from?”

Jake laughed. Billy laughed. Timothy laughed.

Todd screamed.

*  *  *

“Here we are,” said Jake. Timothy and Billy fell back into the shadows, and Todd rubbed his arms. For dead and mangled corpses they sure had a strong grip.

“You see, Todd,” said Jake. “There’s a special place for the likes of you and me, and it ain’t posterity. It’s not the shelves of fancy bookstores and it’s not the bestseller lists. It’s this. You want to know what this is?”

He gestured around him, at the miles and miles of empty shelves.

“Is it… Hell?” asked Todd.

“Oh no,” said Jake. “It’s much worse than that.”

There was a sound behind Todd. And above him, and around him. It was a rustling sound, like leaves or tiny wings. Todd was reminded of one of Sara’s favorite movies, The Birds, the part where the woman is in the children’s playground. Only these weren’t birds. They were books, suddenly appearing on the shelves.

“Hell is for people,” said Jake. “People come and go. If they didn’t, we’d be knee deep in our ancestors. People are just flesh and bone, and then they’re dust and ashes. But books go on.”

He gestured around him. The shelves were full. Book after book lined the walls.

“Books are our memories,” Jake said. “They’re like babies, in a way, in that they contain something of us when we’re gone. Books outlive us, right? Books get passed on from generation to generation, and books are kind of unforgettable.”

“But this place—” he said, and pulled out another book: All My Colors by Todd Milstead, “—is where books come to die.”

Todd almost laughed at that.

“Come on,” he said.

“You think you’ll be remembered, Milstead?” said Jake. “You think future generations will fall in love with your work? Kids will study you in school? Movies will be made of your book? Ain’t gonna happen. Your book is going to be forgotten, just like mine was. Your little head’s gonna slip beneath the surface of history and drown.”

“Bullshit,” said Todd. Suddenly he was angry, and why not? He was having a fucking terrible day. “I’m going to write a new book. A sequel. Maybe. Maybe not. But it’s going to be the real deal, this time. It’s going to be massive.”