In the following weeks, we’ll be presenting a serial novel here in the pages of DPG Online.

Serial novels have been around for many years; hell, Charles Dickens used to put one together every Christmas. Many years ago, the serial novel Naked Came the Stranger actually reached number one on the bestseller charts. A creative writing teacher thought he would mock the business by getting all of his students to write one chapter apiece of a novel they loosely thought out beforehand. He expected the project to tank, and for the students to merely learn the process of submission and rejection.

In the end, readers the world over loved the piece, and it’s still in print today. We, some of the faculty here in the Department of English and Philosophy at Drexel University, thought we’d take on a similar project with Turning the Page. And we did it with even less consideration than that creative writing class, not that that’s something to be proud of. Nonetheless, it does up the stakes a bit, as not one of the writers knew what was coming at them, including the first writer: myself.

I didn’t want to play unfair so I asked Kathy Volk Miller (one of DPG’s directors) to provide me with a list of items that she would like to see me put into the first chapter. She responded with spork, kinky hair, a feminine interest who is deaf and dumb, a male hero with a large nose, a scene that takes place at the Washington Monument, and one that takes place under the bridge outside of 30th Street Station, and… Oh, I think there was more. She played it wild and free…just like the novel itself.

I hope you have fun with it.

-Ken Bingham

Chapter 1 by Ken Bingham
Chapter 2 by Kathleen Volk Miller
Chapter 3 by Fred Siegel
Chapter 4 by Paula Marantz Cohen
Chapter 5 by Scott Stein
Chapter 6 by Dan Driscoll
Chapter 7 by Scott Warnock
Chapter 8 by Robert Anthony Watts

“Books. Why did it have to be books?”

I stood staring at the charred ash and crumbling pages of what must have been over five hundred copies of…who the hell knows? Five hundred was just an estimate of course, but I knew my stuff. I’d seen this before. Three years ago to the very day, on a frozen winter’s morning in Washington D.C. Five hundred burned copies of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, found smoldering at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial.

That was just before the killings began.

“Ah,” Willy nudged a pile of ash, “nothing like the smell of soot in the morning, I always say. Glad to be out working with you again, Schnoz.”

“Yeah, glad to be with you as well.” I looked over the debris set out here under the South Street bridge, the sun shimmering off the Schuylkill River stretching out beside us. The blaze must have actually looked quite beautiful last night. “Why you think someone would do this, Willy?”

“Fuck I know, fuck I care. Let’s just make a few arrests and get this over with, yes?”

“Yup.” My hands deep in my pockets. Kept them from trembling. “Speed’s the thing.” After all, that’s what I’d been called out to do. Just to make it quick, prove I could do my job again. “So, what do you think? What’s your…I don’t know…your assessment?”

“My assessment.” He looked up at the traffic crossing the bridge. Pretty heavy this time of morning. “Well, closest college is Drexel U, right?”

“Right. But Penn’s only another block to the…”

“Don’t make this difficult. So….I’d say some Drexel students get angry at their teacher, take their books out here and make a big fucking bonfire. Kids’re always protesting.”

“That’s an awful lot of books, Willy.”

“So, it was an awful lot of kids.”

“A five hundred student conspiracy? You can hardly get five kids to agree on where to eat lunch.”

“Okay, so let’s say it’s a just a couple, out to make some kind of big statement or something.”

“Pretty expensive statement. At, what…if it’s a college text, you’re talking at least fifty bucks a pop, probably seventy, judging from the width of the spine here, this would add up to…”

“Come on, Schnoz.” Willy walked over, slowly, methodically. Trudging right through the wreckage, disturbing the crime scene. “Just calm down.” He placed his hand on my shoulder. “I’m your best friend, right?”

“Would you not call me Schnoz, please?”

He tapped me on the nose. “It’s a compliment. That beak is the best on the force.”

“…or used to be.”

“…and will be again, if you just do this right.”

“Willy, doing it ‘right’ means I’m supposed to actually find out what’s going on here, who did this and why.”

He shook his head. “Jesus.”

“What, ‘Jesus’?”

“You’re so fucked up. This is about her, isn’t it?”

“Oh, come on, Willy. Why is everything always…”

“You’re not going to win Ginny back by making this a big case. She’s not going to suddenly leap back into your arms, simply because she sees your name in a headline.”

“Willy, I’m not…”

“Let’s just keep focused here, alright, Big Boy?”

“I am keeping focused. You’re the one standing in my way.” I gently pushed him aside. “Let me get to work here.”

“Fine, but let’s be quick. I want to get this over before lunch.”

I knelt beside a mush of pulp. Strong smell of lighter fluid. Same gas that had lit the fire at the memorial. Same that had lit each separate text the killer had left beside each of his victims.

“So,” Willy came up behind me, “Ginny, have you called her lately, talked to her?”

“No point.” I lifted some of the ash with a stick. “She’s deaf, remember? Mute.” Not much left of the pages. A word here and there, some of the ink bleeding down the blackened body, like charcoal tears. “It wouldn’t have been much of a conversation.”

“Right. Sorry.”

“S’okay.” The killer must have applied a lot of fluid to get this kind of damage. And would have had to distribute the stacks just right to insure maximum heat. It would have taken time. But he wasn’t scared of being caught. Must have been nine degrees last night. Barren area behind the railroad yard. No one was alerted until the first lick of flame. Lucky it didn’t carry over to the bridge itself.

“Beautiful woman Ginny,” Willy said. “I can understand your obsession.”

“I’m the one obsessed? You’re the one that keeps talking about her.” Ginny Updike. We lived together for four years. Most striking woman I’d ever met. Spiky blonde hair, spiky personality, spiky build, spiky temper. Changed her job every other week: car sales, balloon sales, furniture sales, surgical equipment, hats, boxes, brushes. Loved to wear men’s cologne, Gray Flannel, Polo, combed her hair with a spork. A spork. Said it was the only way to kink it just right. Must have gone through two boxes of those things a week.

“So…” Willy leaned down and tapped my wrist. “If you’re not still into her, then why this?”

“Stop that.” I shook the watch. Still running, thank God.

“See what I mean?”

Ginny’d bought me this the night we met. Swatch watch with a white whale leaping over wild sudden strokes of electric blue. I haven’t taken it off since. Even replaced the battery while it remained around my wrist. And that was difficult, especially with the size of my fingers.

“You at least dating anyone, Schnoz?”

I riffled around the debris with my stick. “Ah, here we are.” Raising a soft mound of paper sponge. “See that?”

“Cause there’s this new babe over in Vice. Kathy, I think. Long dark hair.”

“We got us a partial cover.”

“Blue eyes, she’s got these perky…”

“Harry Potter. Goblet of Fire.”

“What?”

“That’s what these are. It’s a bunch of copies of Harry Potter.”

“Okay, so….”

“This wasn’t done by college kids.”

“What, college kids don’t read Harry Potter?”

“I doubt they study it in college, and if they did, I don’t think they’d protest. Besides…” I looked out over the vast amount of trash. “The hardback costs about twenty bucks. At five hundred books, that makes it….about ten thousand dollars. No college kid is going to make a statement for ten thousand dollars.”

Willy sighed. “You really need to get laid, Schnoz.”

“If a college kid wants to make a statement, they’re more likely to buy a can of spray-paint, not dish out ten thou to a book dealer.”

“Okay, so who do you think is behind all this?”

“You already know what I think. There’s a connection.”

“Oh shit.”

“Dating right back to the Lincoln Memorial, and the Joseph Conrad case.” And of course from that, to the killer’s first victim. “It’s starting again, Willy.”

“Shut up, Schnoz.”

“No.” I looked around me. Only he would be this insidious. Only he would care this little. Only he would be this downright inflammatory. “I know what I’m talking about. I’ve studied this case for…”

“You’ve obsessed over this case for three years. It’s what ended your relationship with Ginny. It’s what got you thrown off the force.”

“I don’t disagree with that.” But why wouldn’t I obsess? I’d been on the case from the start, the night we found the body of Freddy Conrad on the corner of 7th and Arch, together with a singed copy of Heart of Darkness. The second victim came just a month later. Jessica Whitman, a charred copy of Leaves of Grass, delicately sifted over her body. A month later it was Ellen Poe, after that Denise Dickens, Horace Pynchon, Billy Twain, Tom Proust, Cindy Fitzgerald. Added up to fifteen in number.

But then, a year and a half ago, something changed. Oh, there was still a death, it still occurred on the author’s birthday, the victim still carrying the writer’s name, and still left with the rubble of, arguably, the author’s best work.

But this time, the victim was Debra King. The book, The Shining.

….which didn’t fit.

Because no matter the sales, no matter the popularity, Steven King wasn’t in the Canon. Not accepted by the powers that be, not acknowledged as one of the greats. Hell, many people said he wasn’t even a very good writer, something I would disagree with, but still…you had to wonder if the murder was a copycat or if our killer had just been running out of victims who shared their namesakes with the Literary Masters.

“Schnoz, are you even listening to me?”

“Yeah, I…thing is, if this is our killer…”

“You have to drop this.”

“No reason to avoid his name. The Paginator. If this is his work…”

“Schnoz, this has as much to do with the Paginator as it does with experiments made by Swedish neuroscientists.”

“What?”

“Neuroscientists in Sweden. Don’t you read the papers?”

“Of course.” I never read the papers.

“Well then you’d know they’re experimenting with a virtual reality apparatus. Been doing it for years.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“Exactly.”

“Willy, don’t play games with me here. This burning has all the earmarks…”

“You’re the one playing games. Straight question, Schnoz. You want to get back on the force, yes?”

I took a breath. It was a fair question. And Willy was the right one to ask it. After all, he’d put himself on the line for me here. If it weren’t for him, I would never have been called back in, wouldn’t have been given this chance to show that I could still do my job. “Yeah.”

“Yeah what? Let me hear you say it.”

“Yeah, I want back on the force.”

“Then we do it simple. And we do it quick. You go to Drexel, you make a couple arrests, we bring ‘em in, and the case is closed.”

“Really? And just who am I supposed to…”

“You get reinstated, you call Ginny, you set up a date.”

“Who am I supposed to arrest?”

“You actually show up to the fucking date, and you get your life back together.”

I sighed. No matter how much I wanted to, no matter how much at stake, I couldn’t just ignore what I saw here. This was the first violent act against literature since the King killing. And it dovetailed nicely with his decision to shift his emphasis to current writers. “I hear what you’re saying, but we should at least call it in. See if someone named Rowling lives in the city.”

“And who’s that?”

I pointed to the books. “J.K. Rowling. Writer of the Potter series.”

“You don’t even hear me, do you, Schnoz?”

“Someone might be in danger here. I can’t just stand back, and…”

“Will you just fucking stop it?” This time he kicked at the books, sending a mass of ash flying into the air. It hung beautifully for a moment, getting caught in a puff of winter air, then shifting slowly, ever so delicately, like black snowflakes to the ground. “You’ve already been down this road, Schnoz, and it nearly destroyed you.”

“Just ask them to make a couple calls.”

“Just a couple calls. Just like before. Only that’s just how it started. Each and every week, it was another author, another birthday, another stakeout, more taxpayer dollars, more department time, more tapped forces, more of a waste of time and money.”

“Just routine police work.”

“Even had us look into…who was it? Mindy…Mindy Tartabull.”

“Tarkington.”

“Yeah, that’s it. That woman put out a restraining order on you.”

“I wanted her to be safe. I thought…”

“Yeah, yeah, I know, you thought the killer had her pegged for the next victim. You’re lucky you just got suspended.”

“What was I supposed to do? You guys wouldn’t back me up, someone had to go and…”

“She didn’t even have an author’s last name! For Christ sakes, Schnoz.”

“Booth Tarkington. Highly recognized writer from the early twentieth century. In fact….”

“In fact, no one knows who the hell that is. I doubt you could even find five hundred books of his to fucking burn.”

“I was just trying to do my job.”

“Well, try to do your job now. This is a college prank. End of story. And as for who you arrest, it doesn’t make a fucking difference. You bring ‘em in, we question ‘em, we let ‘em go. Who the hell cares? They’re just books.”

“Right.” Just books. Coming from a guy whose main reading pleasure was the Sudoku he played over lunch. “I guess you’re right.” I forced some form of a smile. “I got to get my head on straight, hey?” If I at least looked like I was complying, I would find it much easier to follow up the Rowling angle on my own. “Just any kids, you think?”

“Nah, not just any. They got to have some kind of motive.”

“…a motive to burn five hundred copies of Harry Potter.”

“A kid who’s doing bad in his studies or something.”

“Aren’t you worried about false arrest?”

“Nah. College kid. They won’t care. We’ll have ‘em out in a half hour and they’ll have a good excuse for skipping their chem lecture. Why don’t you call that, who was that guy you used to talk to here? Rod somebody or something?”

“Ray. Ray Brebach.” Authority on Joseph Conrad. We sought him out after the first killing. Ended up giving us some great insight into possible connections between the writers, even some suggestions as to who might be next.

“Yeah. Rod Brebach. He’ll know some students with a grudge, I’m sure. Come on,” he glanced at his watch, “if we rush, we can get the kids to the precinct, and get ‘em released in time for lunch.”

“Sure thing.” As I began to rise, I noticed a small shining item lying loose in the area that Willy had dislodged. Among all the books, burnt pages, soot, and ash, lay what looked like…

A white plastic spork.

I lifted it to the aching sunlight. Loosely wrapped around its twines was one long blonde hair.

“What’s that?” Willy turned back. “You find something?”

“Huh?” I stood up. “No. Just another piece of Potter.” I shoved the spork into my pocket. “Come on, let’s go make those arrests.”

Ken Bingham is a teaching professor in the Department of English and Philosophy at Drexel University, where he has taught for the past 20 years. He is author of eleven novels, fifteen plays, and runs several theaters in the Philadelphia, New Jersey areas.

Click here to go to Chapter Two of Turning the Page. Its author is Kathleen Volk Miller.