I never used to have nightmares. I had the occasional bad dream, but for the most part my sleeping hours were pretty good. But since I started looking in that notebook I've been having more and more restless nights. I don't have a nightmare every night, and sometimes when I have them they aren't even that bad, but its still often enough that I've spent less time sleeping than I'm used to. It probably doesn't help that when I can't sleep I read the notebook. I spent at least an hour going over the first picture in it when I looked at it a second time. The tree was so smooth, and all of the branches were so intricate. I followed each and every line checking to see where each branch led, looking for any extra or missing lines. I couldn't find any, the drawing was perfect, almost frighteningly beautiful.
I made sure not to pay any less attention to the pages with schoolwork on them, but after looking at how amazingly detailed the drawings were I was convinced that they had to have been made by someone other than Tommy. I began to think that whoever it was had written the strings of random numbers, as well. At the rate I was going it took me well over a week to get through most of the notebook. It would have been a chore, but all of the drawings were so well done, and even the ones that weren't as neat or detailing were still fascinating. While I was looking at them I truly forgot about how much time was passing.
One drawing was of a playground, and the details in it were so precise, it looked like the entire area was perfectly peaceful, they grass was untrampled, the see-saws were smooth and level, and the swings sat motionless. It was like staring at an exhibit in a museum, everything was too perfect, like no child had ever played there or had any reason to.
Then another picture was of the children looking at a man in the center of the frame. It was odd, because everything in drawing was drawn in sketchy jumbled lines, like the artist had been drinking too much coffee. But the head of the man who took of the center of the frame was perfectly smooth, like nothing was supposed to be certin except for that. The children were all stuck in diffrent poses, too. The two girls on the right looked like they had been haveing a conversation when they saw him, they were facing each other, but their heads were turned to look at the smooth sphere in the middle of the page. One boy stood a little furthur away from them, and was even blurrier, but seemed to be looking over his shoulder at the man. Then there was another child on the left side of the page, he was sitting down and looking up as if to see who had interupted one of his imaginary games. The body language of them was all so clear, but the faces were so blurry I could barely make out their features. For some reason I really wanted to see who they were looking at, and I was disapointed that I couldn't see his face.
There were several other drawings as well, and each of them captuered my intrest, but as I got closer and closer to the end of the notebook I felt more and more anticipation about the final page where the map had been in my dream. Then, last night, I finally reached the final few pages, there was one more drawing I didn't understand: a man with no face, wearing a suit, standing in the center of the page, and holding his arms out, as if to embrace to viewer. I finished looking over that page more quickly than usual, for some reason it creeped me out more than any of the pages before it. Then I flipped to the next page, expecting another drawing, only to find it and the two pages after it were completly blank. I sat staring at the second to last page, not sure if I wanted the final page to be blank as well. For some reason I was afraid to look. My alarm went of seconds later, but I ignored it, I was so close to finishing the notebook that I didn't even care. With the blaring from my clock in the background I turned the last page.
I'm not sure how long I stared at that page. It must have been a while, just sitting there, stareing at that one word, wondering what it meant. At first I didn't even notice the knocking on my door, I looked over in surprise just in time to see it open.
"What are you looking at, you'll be late for work!" John looked at me like he was about to yell some more, but then he noticed the notebook. "What is that, and why are you looking at it instead of turning off your alarm?"
I didn't know how to answer him.
