Incomplete

            The first thing I noticed about my uncle’s home was the vast amount of books in his library. They were everywhere. Stacked in piles on the floor, overflowing from the handsome, mahogany bookcases, covering the chairs and generally filling the room to bursting. He’d left me the house and everything inside but I really didn’t have the need for so many books. I could tell that some were old (these were the ones in the best bookcases which had glass doors and were locked) and written in many different languages. I couldn’t make out many of these titles. Necro-something-or-other, De Lib-something, whatever. They were old so they must have been worth something. I cleaned and straightened them up as best as possible, putting the oldest in one section and trying to move up through to modern titles. When the room was somewhat neater, I had an appraiser come in and look them over.

            “You’ve definitely got some volumes that are worth something,” she said. “These older books (she pointed to the ones in the locked cases), for example, would fetch a nice price from some libraries or museums. But I’m afraid that a lot of them aren’t worth much of anything.”

            Confused, I asked her to explain. “Well, a lot of the most recent books are ones that your uncle must have had printed himself. They are simply bound manuscripts that were probably done by a local bookbinder and, basically, they’re all pastiches.”

            I had no idea what that meant. “It seems that your uncle fancied himself a bit of a writer. He apparently wrote a LOT of stuff in the style of some of his favorite authors. Here’s some Lovecraft, Verne, a few H.G. Wells, some Machen, Dunsany, Blackwood, even some Dickens.”

            “How do you know that they aren’t ‘missing’ stories or something like that?”

            She looked at me like I was a bug. “This is my job. I know these authors and these stories not only have never existed, but they were never mentioned ANYWHERE by ANY of them. No, your uncle wrote them or had someone write them for him. Nice work though. Really captures the style and imagination of the writers. I don’t know. I guess a private collector might be interested or you could maybe publish them yourself as ‘posthumous’ collaborations.” She left and promised to find a buyer for the remainder of the other books.

            That night, as I slept, I had a strange dream. I had entered a vast library that stretched further than I could see. It was one of those old time libraries with oak bookcases, little cubicles with reading lights, an English bibliophiles fantasy. I drifted from stack to stack and saw thousands of books whose titles I had never heard before. Just the section on Lovecraft was huge. The titles were intriguing. Names like UNDER THE DARK and SALEM RISING caught my attention and I barely noticed the tall figure nearby.

            “Ah, there you are, we’ve been trying to reach you,” he said. “Are you aware of the vast number of missing items your uncle has?” I stared at him. “Hmm, not in quite a deep enough sleep, are we? All right, this is the Library of Dreams. Here reside all the titles that people have dreamed of writing in their lifetimes but never got around to writing. Your uncle, shall we say, ‘appropriated’ many of these books. We’d like to get them back. Now.”

            With that, I awoke to a loud pounding on the front door. There was a dark figure standing on the doorstep with a large handcart. Without a word, he went to the library and started packing up the handbound books. Strangely, I didn’t stop him. The next night, the librarian was more cordial and handed me a library card that trilled and whistled in my hands. “Enjoy yourself,” he said, “you might want to check out your own section.” I looked under my name and found thousands of books there and I remembered each one like they were lost children. As I stood amidst what could have been a product of a lifetime of work, I wept. The librarian came up to me. “Yes, this happens to everyone the first time. The sight of so many dreams forgotten and buried. It’s a shame, really, you used to be such a powerful dreamer.” When I awoke, my pillow was spotted with tears and I wept again.