Chapter 55

  Eric and Heidi

  Heidi is kind-of intimidating! She is always ready to fight for what she wants. Luckily she wants good things. Actually, I think what she really wants is to have friends. Well she doesn’t have to fight to have me as a friend!

  Maybe we always have to fight for our friends. Maybe I am the one who needs to fight! I think it is actually really important somehow for us to be friends with Heidi. None of this is going to work without her.

  - excerpt from Kate’s journal

  They ran for what felt like a long time. Eric knew the area well, and they had a head start. He was fairly sure, after several corners, an alley, and a swift duck into a hardware store, that they had lost their pursuers for a moment. Heidi, he had discovered, could run much faster than her stature might lead one to believe. She had kept up. Heidi also did not fear turning to take a brief stand and shoot back, forcing their pursuers to find cover. She had kept a clear head, and when they at last paused for respite in a back aisle of the local hardware store they looked at each other and nodded. It took Eric a long time after that to really work out exactly what that nod conveyed. But although he didn’t get it, it made him smile.

  His smile evaporated immediately as he remembered the body they had just run from. He felt that image trying to take over, trying to make him shake and weep and vomit all at once—the emotions, the questions, the howling desperation building up. And he felt himself shoving it all back, fighting it off so that he could focus, like Heidi, on what he could actually do at this moment.

  “Leah,” he said, as a reminder to both himself and Heidi.

  Heidi nodded again as though this were obvious.

  “Okay…” He took a frantic mental inventory of people. His parents were probably still out of town. Jim was with Mike; he was in good hands. But what about the others? He had no doubts now: they were all in danger “I need to check on Isaac,” said Eric. “Can you get Liz?”

  Heidi pulled out her phone, keeping one eye toward the entrance of the hardware store.

  The sky. Cracks in the sky, that’s what Isaac had said. And he’d said it before the sky over Chicago had in fact cracked. Eric needed to find out if this, whatever it was, this Cascade, was happening everywhere. And when it came to sky-related phenomena, Isaac was the go-to guy. He tried to call, but got only a sustained beeping. Someone, he couldn’t remember who now, had said something about this. They needed to use CHIME now. And who had got them started using CHIME months ago? It had been Isaac.

  EW: yo come in bro we got shit to discuss

  EW: isaac you read me?

  IM: Wehhi if the

  IM: Who if tg nida

  EW: what the fuck

  IM: Sorry it js bnwei wormlin ewll

  EW: now is not the time bro

  EW: im not fucking joking

  IM: Hard to type

  EW: wtf why

  IM: It’s coveted un mood

  EW: isaac i swear to god

  IM: this phone is covered in blood

  A cold sensation washed over Eric. Kate’s phone was also covered in blood. He swore he felt it like a weight, twenty pounds, in his backpack. He stayed cool. He replied.

  EW: what

  EW: is that what you meant to say

  IM: Yes

  IM: i’m not Isaac

  EW: this isnt the time for games isaac

  IM: My nacfe if Jacob

  EW: fuck

  IM: Isaac id desd

  EW: no fuck cmon man

  EW: dead?

  IM: Black killed him

  Eric closed his eyes and breathed deeply through his nose. Kate and Isaac both? No way. No fucking way.

  IM: But mechbr he is only jcslbf grave

  IM: half dead

  EW: half dead?

  EW: is this some shitty miracle max reference now you got me thinking you really are isaac again well fuck you either way

  EW: what do you mean half dead

  IM: Hid angel may hsve taken gin

  EW: jacob right?

  IM: Yes

  EW: we will talk later

  IM: Yes

  He turned at once to Heidi. “Liz,” he said. “Is she answering?”

  Heidi shook her head. “No response. Isaac?”

  Eric opened his mouth, but didn’t know what to say. Dead? For real? Two of his best friends, just like that? How could he know for sure Isaac was dead; all he had was the word of some guy named Jacob. Who the fuck was that? But Isaac had been in danger. He knew that.

  “It was someone else,” he said. “They told me Isaac was dead.”

  Heidi’s eyes widened in shock. “So…Liz?”

  Eric considered trying her himself, but no. If she wouldn’t respond to Heidi, she wouldn’t respond to him. He slid his phone back into his pocket. “She has Callie.”

  “Callie?” said Heidi.

  “Don’t tell me you don’t know about her indestructible teleporting demon ghost cat. Or angel. Whatever. We can’t assume the worst. It’s hard to imagine anything bad happening to Liz as long as she’s with Callie.”

  Eric knew that he was distracting himself. Talk about anything, think about anything, except the fact that Kate had died, and had died protecting Leah. That was his job, damn it! “What do I do now?” he muttered, only half aware of the words. He fought back a cold nausea. Isaac? Nah. No way. Not until now, at this very moment, did Eric realize that he had always halfway believed Isaac’s confident claim that God was with him. “What the fuck do I do now?”

  He felt something break again, just like before. The hardware store was empty, but by leaning to one side Eric obtained a view of the employee at the register stepping outside to look up at the sky. Some people on the sidewalks did the same. Everyone could see it. Everyone had noticed.

  Also, he saw an orange and grey van slowly roll past outside the front windows. He kept watch as it lurked its way past. Then he said “shit,” when it halted just out of sight and began backing up. He watched only long enough to see it stop right in front of the hardware store. Did they have some way of tracking them? Was it their phones?

  “Time to go,” said Heidi.

  Eric nodded. He put the broken shades back on his face.

  They fled to the employees-only door in the back.

  Heidi gripped the semi-automatic handgun, her palms sweaty. Would Alan’s palms be sweaty? Probably not. But he was used to this. Heidi had never been in a life-or-death situation like this. Not with people, real people, actually trying to shoot her. Kill her. She had imagined it, of course. Countless times, alone on the island, she had pretended to be Alan’s sidekick while he was on his secret missions. She would die before admitting this. And now, here she was. This was her chance to prove it, prove to herself and to everyone that she could be brave, that she could handle the pressure, that she could keep herself and her friend alive. Even though she had already failed once, had already failed to keep a friend alive. This fact was burning in her mind, it was like a predator prowling around outside, waiting for a moment of weakness to strike.

  She crouched in an alley behind a dumpster, ready to spring across the gap and try the door on the other side as soon as Eric gave the signal. Eric, already across and a little way down, watched down the alley with his stupid-looking broken sunglasses that could tell the future or something.

  “Now,” he mouthed to her.

  Heidi darted across the gap and snuck a look at the two men down at the end of the alley. They both faced Eric and Heidi, but for a brief instant something behind them caught their attention. Heidi passed just as they both twisted to check something else. And then she was across. She tried the door. Locked. Damn. She retreated back to the dumpster just before the men turned back around.

  OI seemed to possess some means of vaguely tracking them. Although she and Eric had traveled half a mile from his apartment, the men in orange-and-black coats still appeared around every corner.

  Heidi had never killed anybody. But these men had killed Kaitlyn. Kate. And maybe Isaac. Maybe Leah. Maybe Elizabeth. For all she knew, maybe Alan. So if it came down to it, she didn’t think it would be a problem.

  She watched Eric closely. He crouched behind a crate at the end of the alley—the dead-end alley they found themselves trapped in. She saw him swear, then grit his teeth, then look at her. He made the fingers of his right hand into a gun and pointed toward the two advancing men. Heidi nodded. She heard the footsteps of the two men coming down the alley. She knew they had firearms.

  Eric waited until they came very close to Heidi, then sprang up from behind his crate, into the full view of the two men.

  She heard them aim their weapons at Eric. She rose from behind the dumpster just as Eric ducked back down behind the crate.

  She had them off guard, their guns aimed away from her, both of them at point blank. But she hesitated. Maybe she should ask them to surrender? Could she just shoot them—kill them—like this?

  They made the decision for her when they swiveled, weapons swinging in her direction. Just like that, it became easy.

  She shot them both. Two bullets, one in each chest. One of them got a round off; Heidi felt chips of brick spray the left side of her neck as it struck the wall behind her. The sound of the three shots crashed together in the alleyway.

  Heidi stood frozen for a moment, but only a moment. Eric seized her arm as he ran past and dragged her along to the front of the alley and out into the street. He pulled her to the left. He muttered something she could barely hear, and it took her a second to work it out. “They had vests,” is what he said. Bulletproof vests? Heidi kicked herself. She should have noticed. But in truth, she was relieved. Her perfect record of not killing anyone remained unbroken. But those men would be up in seconds, pursuing.

  “Where are we going, Eric?” Heidi asked as she picked up her pace to meet his.

  Eric looked around before answering. He slowed to a stop at a street corner. “There,” he said, pointing to a stone building across the street and down the block. “Library.”

  Traffic had never looked heavy in this area, but now there was none. Everyone had pulled over to look at the cracked overcast sky; some had parked right in the middle of the street. Many people around them now cried out in response to the gunfire. Heidi scanned the area as they crossed the street on a “no walk” sign. No sign of police, but an orange and grey van lay in wait for them ahead.

  She noticed, in following Eric at a fast run, that he had somehow found the time to take a handgun from one of the men she had just shot. His backpack flopped against his back with every step.

  He threw himself against a concrete wall that blocked their view of the OI van.

  “Why the library?” asked Heidi as she came up beside him, panting. He was fast. She could barely keep up.

  “Can’t make noise in the library,” he said with a straight face, made worse by the broken sunglasses. “So they can’t shoot us.”

  Heidi bared her teeth and hissed at him. Immediately afterwards she felt embarrassed about doing this, but it had seemed the only response. Eric was making jokes? At a time like this?

  Eric didn’t seem to mind, or even notice, her reaction. “Wait…now.” He swung around the corner of the wall and sprinted to the library.

  They entered with no fuss. Nobody cared about two kids running into a library when the sky was breaking. Everyone they saw was heading the other way, outside.

  Heidi could guess at least one reason why Eric chose the library: he knew it well. He took them straight back to a little hideaway in the far corner of the first floor, a table and chairs between the last bookshelf and the back wall. Removing a few books from the shelf allowed them to see anyone coming their way.

  “We might not have much time,” said Eric. “They always seem to close in on us after only a minute.”

  “How long has it been?” asked Heidi.

  “Since what?”

  “Since…Kate.”

  “Seventeen minutes,” he said, without checking any clock.

  Heidi breathed deeply, trying to regulate her breathing, and looked out the gap in the bookcase. From here she had a view all the way to the open space in the center of the room. “Shouldn’t we be trying to…find our angels? Isn’t that what she said?”

  “First we’re getting Leah.”

  “Eric. What if she’s…”

  “Don’t you fucking say it.”

  Heidi turned to look at him. His jaw was clenched, his eyes narrowed in concentration.

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  “I just need to think,” he said. He put a hand to his head. “I can’t fucking think. I’m not Kate. I’m not Liz. Okay.” He looked up at Heidi. “I’ve tried calling my parents, no luck. Didn’t work with Isaac either. But I’ll try calling my place. Leah might still be there. Maybe the land line…?”

  Heidi steadied her breathing while Eric made the call. She tried to clear her head. What would Alan do in this situation? One thing at a time. Focus on whatever is next.

  “Leah?” Eric exclaimed, forgetting for a moment to keep his voice down. “Okay, wow, okay. Listen. Yeah. Yeah, I know. Don’t worry. Listen, I need you to just stay there, all right? Just don’t go anywhere. Unless it’s all on fire or something. Yeah, mom and dad are coming. Okay?”

  Heidi noticed while Eric spoke that the teardrop-shaped pendant on her wrist was definitely glowing. She’d seen it while fleeing from October Industries, but hadn’t had time to worry about it. She untied it from her wrist and held it up for a closer look. The crystalline pendant shone with a faint light, but something dark and sinuous seemed to squirm within. It was a bit disturbing.

  “All right. Now I have to—” Eric dropped the phone, took up the 9mm on the table, and shot at Heidi. No, not at her, directly to her left. A man shouted something right behind her.

  “Shit!” she yelled as she spun and raised her weapon. She dropped the crystal teardrop; it clattered to the wooden floor. Four—no, five men stood in attack positions not forty feet away; she glimpsed them through the bookshelf. One was backing away, gripping his shoulder, shot by Eric.

  The men in front of her looked ready to fire; they had fanned out through the library. She lowered her weapon. She and Eric would die if they fought back here. They might die anyway. Something gleaming down at her feet caught her eye. The crystal. I think I have to break it. Okay, Kate.

  Heidi raised her foot and stomped on the crystal as hard as she could. She feared that since she wore only sandals it would not work and she would merely bruise the sole of her foot. But the crystal shattered under her stomp, and some rising force pushed her foot back up, threw her off-balance. She began to fall, but Eric caught her from behind. He immediately took them both to the ground behind the bookshelf. Someone opened fire.

  Heidi squeezed her eyes closed. There was nothing she could do here. Not against five armed men. Would they kill her? Judging by all the gunfire, she thought they were trying to kill her. She wanted Alan.

  She felt Eric get up into a crouch beside her. Men shouted amid the gunfire. No, they were screaming. In pain, in fear. And there was something else, a hissing sound.

  The noise faded in a matter of seconds. Eric said, “Holy shit.”

  Heidi rolled to her feet, dislodging a few books which had fallen onto her. She peeked around the corner of the bookshelf, her gun held in trembling hands.

  The five men lay on the floor, soaked in blood. Between them and Heidi, on the green carpet of the library, a black shape crouched. It was so black that its features were barely distinguishable within its dark outline. Heidi began to stand, but stumbled backward into Eric when the dark shape turned. She got the impression that it was looking at her.

  It crawled toward her, and she saw its shape. It was a sinuous eight-legged lizard, two meters long, its body as thick as a can of paint and capped by a triangular viper-like head.

  “Easy,” Eric whispered in her ear as the thing advanced. “No sudden moves.”

  The creature crawled right up to Heidi’s feet, in front of which it folded its legs up against its body and slithered snake-like into a coil. Its featureless head came to rest on Heidi’s foot. Its head was heavy.

  Wide-eyed, Heidi looked at Eric. Eric looked thoughtfully down at the pile of inky darkness by her feet. “I think it was protecting us,” he said. But he still watched it carefully, and held his gun as though ready to shoot.

  “What…” Heidi gestured out at the five dead men in front of her.

  “It killed them. Listen, we should keep moving. Need to get back to my apartment.”

  “Okay…” said Heidi. “Should I just…?” She tried moving her foot slightly under the head of the serpent. It responded by raising its head and looking up at her. It had no eyes, none that she could see. But she could still tell that it was watching her. It yawned. She saw ink-black teeth within ink-black jaws. After its yawn, the thing rubbed its head gently against her leg.

  “Aww, it likes you,” said Eric.

  “Let…let’s go,” she said.

  The thing, as if sensing their intentions, preceded them. It uncoiled and with lightning speed skittered ahead into the main part of the library, now deserted following the gunfire. Outside, people shouted, probably alarmed by the gunfire, their voiced muted. And she could still hear, or feel, something cracking overhead, breaking under pressure.

  “This way,” said Eric. Instead of the main entrance, he led them up a staircase to the second floor. They emerged into a clear area full of computers. Bookshelves to the right, two hallways to the left. “They might have us surrounded,” said Eric. “I think that—” He stopped and carefully aimed at a corner five paces ahead. A second later a grey-coated woman appeared around the corner, carrying a pistol. She was tall, black, thoroughly tattooed and pierced. Heidi thought she had glimpsed this distinctive person before, sometime on the chaotic past half hour.

  The woman saw them; Eric fired. The woman dodged aside, then she was directly in front of them. Heidi fell backwards in surprise. Something struck her in the center of her chest like a sledgehammer, forcefully expelling all breath from her lungs. She was airborne for what seemed like several seconds, and then she was tumbling on the carpet, bruising her shoulder. Eric cried out in pain. Something crashed, something hissed.

  Heidi struggled to her feet, trying to breath. Spots danced before her eyes. Had she cracked a rib? Focus, she told herself. One thing at a time. Eric?

  Heidi raised her head just in time to see the black woman smash Eric through a beige-painted wall. A cloud of powdery drywall rained down. The woman had a gun. She raised it, took aim through the hole in the wall.

  The black serpent appeared in a blink of darkness, as though a camera shutter had momentarily darkened the world. The serpent was raised, cobra-like, standing on its back legs, and it struck at the woman with blinding speed. Somehow, incredibly, her speed matched it. Heidi could not visually process the next few seconds beyond a vague understanding that these two were battling each other. They fell to the floor, rolled about, stood again, flung each other violently. Neither woman nor serpent seemed even to register the walls enclosing them; to both combatants the library walls may as well have been made of thin papier-maché.

  Heidi scrambled to her feet, the spell broken. “Eric!”

  A groan greeted her from beyond the beige wall. Heidi leapt the gap, hoisted a dazed and dusty Eric to his feet, and dragged him by the hand in a frantic dash past rows of slumbering computers toward the target door. It was locked. Heidi planted her feet and slammed her shoulder into the door with every ounce of her strength. The lock was cheap; it flew open. They piled through and kept running.

  “What about…the snake?” Eric panted. He had lost those stupid single-lens shades.

  “It’ll be fine,” said Heidi. She wasn’t sure about that, but she had no attachment to it either way. If it died helping them escape, well…good job, creepy lizard-thing.

  Something about their flight through the back corridors of the library calmed Heidi. In a strange way, it made her…happy? Everything was horrible, Kate had died, but…here she was, with a friend. That brief time when they had been with Kate and Leah at the coffee place, not long ago, had already burned its way into her memory as one of the best moments of her life, despite the danger. And now she ran with Eric, their lives at stake, and doing so satisfied her on an instinctive level. She didn’t like feeling this way, especially when she should be sad that Kate had died. She was sad! It just—

  Eric pulled up suddenly at one junction, a hall intersecting to the right and a plain door ahead. Heidi tensed, but what emerged from around the corner was not an enemy, or at least not an obvious one, but the black serpent with legs. It appeared unharmed from its scuffle with the frightening tattooed woman.

  The three of them looked from one to the other as though in some kind of staredown. “Heidi,” said Eric without taking his eyes off the creature. “I think maybe this is your angel.”

  “I thought Kate said they were white.”

  “Liz said that. It doesn’t have eyes. Pretty sure it’s protecting you.”

  Heidi liked snakes and lizards, but this creature was clearly something else, something dangerous and a little spooky. She wasn’t sure what to think of it. If this was her angel, she thought she would have preferred something more like Callie. Something…huggable.

  “Okay,” said Eric. “They also said we need to get into the Museum. And that we need an angel to do it, right?”

  The serpent turned as if in response and approached the door behind it. The hallway dimmed as if the creature absorbed the light. Or rather, as though it projected darkness. Heidi saw that a false shadow stretched out behind Eric, a shadow of light.

  The darkness flashed, and for a moment everything went black in Heidi’s vision. Then she saw the creature coiled up beside the door, watching them.

  “Whoa,” said Eric.

  They heard the voice of a woman shouting somewhere behind them. It could very well have belonged to the one from before, the unnervingly fast and strong one. “Don’t give up, do they?” said Eric. He gestured to the door in front of them. “I think the lizard wants us to go through there.”

  “Okay,” said Heidi. “Then let’s do it.” She walked up to the door and opened it without ceremony.

  A long hallway. Much longer than should have been possible inside of this library. The sounds of men shouting from outside lasted only until Eric swung the door shut behind them and leaned against it, panting. “Okay,” he said.

  Heidi checked the door for a lock. It had none. But when she experimentally tried to open it again, it did not move. Not even a little. The doorknob, the door—all of it was fixed as firmly in place as the wall around it. The hall was red-carpeted, wood-paneled, warm, with dim lights set into the ceiling marching away down to what looked like a door all the way down at the far end.

  She checked her clip. Four bullets left.

  She checked the giant black lizard at her feet. Maybe she wouldn’t need bullets anymore.

  Silence reigned in the hallway. All peaceful; all quiet. Heidi couldn’t say why, exactly, but she was somehow certain that she was in a very different place from where she had been just a moment before.

  “Heidi,” said Eric, “You’re bleeding.” He pointed at her arm. The sleeve of her jacket clung to her skin with wetness. When had that happened? It didn’t hurt nearly as much as the pain in her chest. She was pretty sure she had fractured a rib.

  Still holding the gun, Heidi slowly wrapped her arms around herself. She realized she was shaking. “That was scary,” she said softly. “I thought it was over.”

  Eric punched her in the shoulder (not the bleeding one). Hard. “Let’s keep moving,” he said. “I don’t know where we are now, but…” He looked down at the giant black lizard. Heidi followed his gaze, and together they stared at the enigma which had just saved their lives and brought them here.

  “So, Heidi,” said Eric with a forced nonchalance, “I’ve been meaning to ask for like the past few minutes or so, but…like, did you know that you had a big black lizard in your jewelry?”

  Heidi shook her head. She composed herself and after a moment of consideration stowed her firearm in her pocket. “No. But I think you’re right. I think this is my…angel.”

  Eric squinted his eyes at the creature. “Black though, huh? Whatever. He’s pretty badass, I guess. Saved our lives, maybe. You got a name for him?”

  “A name? How do you even know it’s a ‘he’?”

  Eric shrugged. “Do they even have genders? I don’t know. I mean, even if it were a real lizard I wouldn’t be able to tell. That sounds like a job for…Kate.” He gazed blankly into the distance.

  “You’re right,” said Heidi. “We should keep moving.” She started off down the hallway. The lizard slithered beside her, its legs folded up against its body. Its entire body was so black that when it held its legs like that they were hardly visible. Heidi had never been uncomfortable around snakes, but she had never been so close to a snake-like creature this large either. It turned its triangular eyeless head up to look at her as though it knew she was thinking about it.

  To be honest, this creature creeped her out a little. But it had also saved their lives. By ruthlessly killing a few people.

  Eric caught up to her and they silently continued down the hall. Nothing about the hall appeared out of the ordinary except for its length. Eric stopped once to try knocking on the walls. They felt solid.

  The hall eventually terminated in an arch that opened into a larger room. Heidi paused before it, but Eric pushed right on through. Heidi turned to take one last look at the long hallway behind her before joining them. It still seemed that no one had followed them through the door. It seemed safe. It seemed as though, for now, they were rid of October Industries.

  She joined Eric and the black creature.

  “Woah,” said Eric. “I don’t think we’re in Chicago anymore.”

  “Hmm,” said Heidi.

  They stood in an enormous red-and-gold room. It looked like the foyer of an expensive hotel. An elaborate fountain trickled down in front of them. A grand staircase rose to an upper level behind. Overhead hung an immense chandelier, and the ceiling above glittered with shapes of stained glass.

  “She said we needed to get to a museum,” said Eric. “But this does not look like any museum I’ve seen.”

  “What else did she say?”

  “Check the pockets,” said Eric.

  “What?”

  “No, she didn’t say that. It was someone else. Me, maybe?”

  “What?”

  “Think we’re safe now? I think we’re safe now.” Eric dropped to his knees, pressed his palms against the carpet, and looked like he was about to vomit. He took a few deep, ragged breaths, blinked a lot, and then slung his backpack to the floor.

  Heidi glanced behind them again. “Probably safe,” she said. “It didn’t look like anyone was following us down the hall.”

  “Yeah…yeah, it looked pretty much like they were gonna have their own problems in…uh…Heidi?”

  Heidi turned from her inspection of their new surroundings. Eric was wiping his eyes and gazing in amazement down into his open backpack. Heidi came up beside him and took a look. “Oh…” she said.

  In the bottom of the backpack, wrapped up in Kate’s bloody scarf as though snuggling with it, lay a tiny white dragon, the very shape and size of Leah’s stuffed toy. It was white as snow, breathing tiny, rapid breaths. The golden light from the chandeliers overhead diffracted off of the texture of its miniature scales.

  “What the hell,” said Eric.

  “Guess that’s your angel,” said Heidi.

  Eric shook his head. “I don’t get any of this shit. And the only person who does is…dead. She’s dead.”

  “What did you mean, ‘check the pockets?’ Is that why you checked Kate’s pockets when she fell? Did you know she was going to fall?”

  Eric carefully closed the backpack and set it aside awkwardly like he had no idea what to do with it. It made Heidi smile. “Yeah, I think I did,” he said. “Sort of. Maybe another version of me.”

  A mysterious message from oneself. She remembered him saying that in the group chat. That sounded familiar. Heidi tried to recall all the contents of her own strange email from months ago.

  Eric held up a piece of paper and a notebook. Heidi looked over his shoulder as he began to flip through the notebook. He said, “This is…definitely her handwriting.” Heidi had never seen Kate’s handwriting, but she was pretty sure she would have recognized it regardless. It was swirly and loopy, the i’s were dotted with hearts and smiley faces and sometimes butterflies, and cute little doodles adorned the borders.

  “You know,” said Eric quietly, “I never met her before today. But I still feel like I knew her. I mean…” He breathed deeply.

  Heidi didn’t know what to do. She reached out, hesitated, then steeled herself and put a hand on his shoulder.

  They read the first page of the notebook:

  Museum notes!!

  It is big . Infinite?

  looks like museum/hotel maybe? (central part. Hub?)

  doors!! (don’t open)

  spooky creeper guy—Dark Man (official title?)(owns the place? caretaker? custodian?)

  doors to dreams (can be dangerous?!)

  music art = important (creative energy?)

  quantum characteristics! (all possible states until observed?)

  observation collapses possibilities?

  There was more, an assortment of random notes, thoughts, theories and ideas. Eric flipped the page, and they saw an attempt at a map, various parts of which had been erased and re-done until it had all been scribbled out. The next several pages contained more attempts at maps, but each looked different and each was scribbled out. Places on the maps had names, like “Theater,” “Port,” “Library,” “Station.”

  “Huh,” said Eric as he flipped through it. The notebook had more notes, some sketches, some equations, and a lot of different kinds of butterflies. The last page had a whole row of exclamation points across the top; they were circled and triple-underlined. This page displayed a drawing of a hexagon, divided neatly into six equilateral triangles. Each triangle had a picture in it: a snowflake, a flower, a paintbrush, a cube, a heart, and a question mark. The heart had an arrow pointing away from it to a rough drawing of a metronome.

  “Eric,” said Heidi. “The other paper?”

  “Right.” He unfolded it.