They all stumbled back into the living room. They collapsed onto the sofas: Selma kept her arm draped around Helena, and Ingrid had quickly moved to sit on Helena's other side. Alvin and Zack took seats facing each other in the middle. Nolan sat alone on the sofa directly across from all of them.
"Okay, so now what the hell do we do?" Zack demanded.
"We don't have a choice but to stay here, plain and simple... we literally can't go anywhere," Alvin replied.
"Helena, do you remember anything in this room?" Ingrid asked, trying to cut Selma out of the loop.
"Hey, what gives you the right to grill Helena like that?" Selma snapped.
"Ha! That's none of your damn business, is it? I'm talking to Helena. Stay out of it," Ingrid shot back.
"Hold up, break it up. This is exactly when we need to stick together, right, Helena?" Alvin said with his charming smile.
"Y-yeah," Helena replied, clearly not realizing what the hell was going on around her.
Helena then looked at Nolan, who was sitting casually and looking at a photo on the wall right above the fireplace.
"So what do we do now, Nolan?" Helena asked.
"Shreeg." Everyone instantly whipped their heads around to stare at Nolan. Of course, Nolan felt the intense gazes from all of them, even though their faces were neutral, or even slightly smiling at him.
"I don't know (he stood up). Sorry, I'm going to my room. I'm wiped," Nolan said.
"Are you sick?" Helena asked.
"No... I just didn't get enough sleep last night. Sorry, everyone, I'm gonna take off," Nolan replied.
Nolan walked out of the room, leaving Helena and the others behind. He headed toward the lobby, but suddenly stopped, then backed up toward the living room door and looked across the hall at the door directly opposite it. He immediately opened that door and stepped into the library. Once inside, he closed the door and leaned against it.
"Hmph... better off not being in there. They're probably going to be trying to kill each other any minute now," Nolan thought to himself.
Nolan looked around again, then walked toward the bookshelves to see what kind of books were there. They were nearly all vintage, old-school books on subjects like electrical engineering, business, economic calculation, history, and other stuff. These books were out of print, which made the collection seriously valuable. Nolan grabbed a few books that looked interesting, carried them over to a lounge chair, and set them down on the table. Then he started reading. After a while,
"Huaaaah,"
Nolan felt the lounge chair was so damn comfortable it made him sleepy. His arm started to drop, and his eyes drifted halfway shut, but he snapped awake immediately.
"Almost fell asleep," Nolan muttered, closing the book.
Reading the book was a bad idea, Nolan decided; he could easily fall asleep alone in the library. He finally stood up and started putting the books back on the shelves. When he got to the last shelf, a section about religion, and was about to put his book away, he noticed a book placed sideways behind the neat row of other books. He immediately put the book he was holding down and started taking out the books blocking the one lying flat.
Then, his hand reached inside to grab the wide, brown-covered book. With some effort, Nolan pulled the book out, knocking a few others down in the process. It turned out to be a large, not-too-thick sketchbook tied with string. Nolan untied the string, then opened the cover. There was some messy writing inside that looked like it had been done by a small child with crayon.
"Hmm... the writing says... 'Book owned by Nicole'... huh... Nicole? That name doesn't sound totally unfamiliar... but I don't think I've ever had a friend or known anyone named Nicole," Nolan mused.
He casually flipped through the pages. The first page showed a little girl smiling in a flower garden with the sun shining on her. The next showed the same little girl holding hands with a man who was also smiling, standing in front of a house.
The next showed the girl squatting with a cat in front of her. The following pages depicted the little girl doing various things, like reading, studying, and playing the piano. When he got to the middle and turned the page, Nolan's eyes went wide.
The picture of the little girl wasn't alone; she was hugging a little boy in a heavy rainstorm, with a drawing of lightning and them sitting at a bus stop.
"Huh," Nolan muttered, recognizing the drawing as something he'd seen in his dreams.
The drawings changed after that, all showing the little girl and the little boy doing things together at the same bus stop: eating together, listening to music together with earphones, playing on a smartphone, sleeping cuddled up together, and so on.
But then, when Nolan flipped the page, he saw that all the subsequent drawings had been aggressively colored over with black crayon so that the original pictures were completely invisible. Nolan kept turning until he reached the very last page.
The final page only had a message, written in what looked like red crayon:
"I waited for you every day, Nolan... where are you... why didn't you ever come back... I miss you Nolan... Nolan... Nolan... YOU BROKE YOUR PROMISE, YOU PROMISED YOU'D BE WITH ME EVERY DAY, LIAR, I HATE YOU, I HATE YOU, I HATE YOU,"
"Clatter!" Nolan dropped the book, gasping, and covering his mouth with both hands to keep from screaming. His face looked genuinely terrified. He glanced down and just now noticed that the girl's hair had been drawn with yellow crayon and her eyes with blue crayon—meaning the little girl had blonde hair and blue eyes—while the little boy had black hair and red eyes.
Without a second thought, Nolan bolted out of the library, then ran upstairs straight toward his room. The second he got in, he slammed and locked the door. He then walked into the bathroom, stepping up to the sink and staring at his pale face in the mirror. He ripped off his shirt and looked at the device on his chest; his heart rate was rapidly dropping because he'd been so panicked.
"Great... I lost a week off my life... looks like I'm gonna die here," he muttered, breathless and his heart pounding.
"Splash." Nolan turned on the faucet and splashed water on his face, trying to take deep breaths to steady his heartbeat and calm himself down. After repeated face-washing and deep breathing, Nolan's heart rate finally started to normalize, though his breathing was still ragged. He looked at his own reflection in the mirror.
"That girl in the dream... Nicole... what the hell was that dream? Is it my memory, or something else? But in that drawing... my eyes were red? My eyes are black. Is there another Nolan besides me? I don't understand any of this," he wondered to himself.
"Hooof." After a moment, Nolan left the bathroom and put his shirt back on. He walked to the bed and sat down on the edge. "Plop." His hand touched a pillow, and he glanced at it, then looked straight ahead, but then he snapped his head back, startled.
There were actually three pillows on his bed. Nolan instantly stood up and turned around to stare at the bed, blinking to confirm that yes, there were definitely three pillows—Helena's pillow from when she slept there last night.
"It's true, then. I wasn't dreaming and I wasn't hallucinating... someone really did come into my room and sleep in this bed last night... okay, I guess I'm sleeping on the couch starting now," Nolan concluded in his head.