***
I spent the next three days poring over the rest of Mike’s notebooks. I have to say, not much of it made sense. For the most part, I stood by my earlier assessment that Mike had apparently developed a fondness for fairytales. The notebooks were a very detailed story about a…a what? A made up land? The land was under the rule of—what else—an evil force of some sort. Neither Mike’s research nor the pages and pages about the legend mentioned anything further about princesses or good triumphing evil. For that I was immensely grateful. The whole thing sounded hokey enough. I closed the last book and sat back, propping one foot on the windowsill and enjoying the view. I would have twirled the pen around my hands, but my fingers were so badly cramped I didn’t think I would so much as hold a pen again anytime soon.
So the suit brigade thought Mike time traveled to this mythological land. Right. Try as I might, I still couldn’t wrap my head around that theory. That was probably because, well—it was crazy. Part of me kept expecting my brother to pop out of a closet, yell ‘surprise,’ and tell me this was all a big prank. Mike loved pranks and jokes more than most people I knew. There were only two things wrong with that idea. John wasn’t funny, and no one would go to this much trouble for a laugh.
I glanced down at the box of notebooks in the corner of the sitting room and shook my head, resigned. No, an entire box of notes written in code was not a joke. Whatever was going on and wherever Mike had taken off to was serious enough to him. So I would take it seriously as well. I couldn’t afford to forget, though, that my number one priority was tracking down Mike. Not for a second did I believe that he time traveled his way to far and distant lands. No, there had to be a more logical explanation than that…there just had to be. Actually, I wasn’t sure if time travel was even the right track. His notes hadn’t mentioned anything about that. In fact, he hadn’t mentioned anything at all about going to the land he described or about how one would even begin to go about it. His desire and his curiosity was clear enough, though.
I shook my head again, frowning as I sat back and tried to think about things that were more solid than alternate universes. I thought back once more to the last night I had seen my brother. His visit had been short and tense. No, I corrected, not so much tense as desperate. Mike had looked scared. I realized that for what it was now, although I didn’t think much of it at the time. He was cryptic, I recalled; said he was leaving on an expedition for an extended period of time; gave me the spare key to his apartment; looked over his shoulder again; smiled, and left. The key.
Actually, it was several keys on a thin silver ring. I dashed into my bedroom and yanked the drawer open to grab them. I wondered what the other keys were. I knew the largest medium sized key on the ring was to his apartment, but I never asked him what the other two were for. Under more ordinary circumstances, I wouldn’t have thought that detail was important. Now, however, I was beginning to realize that every bit of information counted. It all pointed to something. Like a trail of breadcrumbs through a forest, Mike had left clues for me to follow. I checked the clock on the nightstand. It was eleven o’clock at night. What the heck, I shrugged and grabbed my keys and jacket.