Clete Reet’s last will and testament bequeathed his estate to his sister, one “Miss Scuttlesby,” of Ennui Plains, Kansas. This third female Scuttlesby with no first name might seem significant, but I am assured by our Mrs. Scuttlesby (whose assurances have the fearsome conviction and the blistering heat of a long burst of hard radiation from a malfunctioning nuclear-power plant) that Reet’s sister was no relation of hers. I also do not believe that Reet’s sister was related to Langford Crispin’s clothespin-on-the-nose housekeeper, the other Mrs. Scuttlesby, because the nine private detectives that I sent to the once bustling town of Ennui Plains, in search of leads, discovered nothing along those lines before they all perished, one by one, in a series of tornadoes. No, the appearance in this story of the three Scuttlesby women without Christian names is just one of those amazing coincidences that litter our lives, but which I, as a novelist, could never use in a work of fiction, lest I be criticized for perpetrating a plot full of improbabilities.
By the way, I say “once bustling,” as regards Ennui Plains, because the town no longer exists. Shortly after Clete Reet’s will was probated and after the full sum of the inheritance was settled upon his beloved sister, something catastrophic happened to this picturesque prairie hamlet. I say “something catastrophic,” because I have insufficient information to be more specific. On the morning that Miss Scuttlesby was to leave on vacation, Ennui Plains ceased to exist. No smallest splinter or stone of the community was ever found, no roof shingle or bent rusty nail, not one shattered teacup or one dented soup pot, not one severed finger or mangled foot belonging to a resident, not one pile of steaming guts or even one freestanding kidney. Ennui Plains had simply vanished. Some scientists speculate that the town spun away into a time vortex, while others suspect that it came into contact with an anti-matter Ennui Plains and was swiveled into an alternate universe; theologians, however, believe that God used Ennui Plains as a cosmic Kleenex, filling it with a great wad of divine snot and tossing it away into deep space. Any of these explanations might be correct, although the truth is most likely stranger still.
In any event, I have not been able to trace Miss Scuttlesby, the big-band heiress, from that fateful moment. Perhaps she disappeared along with Ennui Plains. If she left on vacation just prior to the catastrophe, I’ve no way to discover her whereabouts, for any of her neighbors or friends who may have had knowledge of her travel plans have themselves vanished into a void.
Where was I?
Who am I?
From whence come I?
Wither do I go?
Wherefore art my thumbs?
Is there balm in Gilead?
Where is Gilead?
What is balm?
How much does it cost?
Has it been approved for sale by the FDA?
Is it available in a cheaper generic form?
Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
Who shot Liberty Valance?
Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Who’s who?
What’s what?
How’s that?
Why did the chicken cross the road?
Or did the egg cross it first?
Where did the egg go when it got to the other side?
Do you want fries with that?
Do you think this mole looks funny?
I mean, not funny-ha-ha, but funny as in funny-creepy?
Why do fools fall in love?
Why ask why?
Why not ask why?
Who are you to tell me what to ask and not ask?
Where do you get off ?
For that matter, where do you get on?
Does that feel good?
What about this?
Hmmmmm?
And this?
Do you want to find a motel?
In a real dark night of the soul, is it always three o’clock in the morning?
Or sometimes is it more like 2:45?
What time is it?
What is time, anyway?
Is time a dimension or a force, or entirely an illusion?
Does my Wristwatch serve any important purpose other than to reinforce a delusion that time matters?
What time are we leaving?
Wither do I go?
From whence come I?
Who am I?
Where was I?
Oh, yes, Clete Reet swallowed himself in the Brown Derby, the heiress sister disappeared with Ennui Plains, and The Book of Counted Sorrows was not reacquired by Ed Thomas because he had by then been crushed under a steamroller driven by a coyote. But by diverse means far too diverse to divine, the magical and dangerous volume passed through the hands of a series of bibliophiles, always bringing with it the curse of too much knowledge, and leaving a trail of frightful destruction from 1942 until the present day.