In the night room Page 0,85

any significant success. She leaned over, put her face an inch from the complex, colorful map, and scoured it with her eyes.

Willy looked back around at me and pulled down the corners of her mouth. “This is nuts. Give me another one of those books.”

I slid the National Geographic in front of her.

“That first atlas was stupid. It’ll be in here.” Her eyes skittered over my face, looking for clues. “Won’t it?”

“Do you think I’d ask you to look if I thought it would be?”

She pulled back her head and frowned. With the same expression on her face, she opened the book at the index and flipped pages until she came to the H’s. The frown increased as she once again had the experience of moving from Henderson to Hendersonville with no stop at a place called Hendersonia.

“This is impossible,” she said, without modulating her voice. “It’s absurd. They erased an entire town from these atlases.”

Back in the general part of the library, Willy looked at the computers and said, “Hold on.” She went up to the desk. “May I use one of those computers?”

“Be my guest,” said the librarian. “By law I am required to inform you that using the Internet to violate any state or federal laws is prohibited. Now that I’ve done that, I’ll have to see a driver’s license and have you sign this form.”

It was a limitation of liability form, and I signed it as soon as I produced my driver’s license.

Willy pulled me toward the seat beside the teenaged boy. When she sat down, he gave her a classic double take. Then he noticed me and turned back to the images of severed limbs on his monitor. Willy motioned me closer and whispered, “I know it’s on MapQuest, because I’ve looked at it a couple of times since I moved there.”

“Give it a whirl,” I said.

Willy quickly reached MapQuest.com and typed “Hendersonia” and “NJ” into the address boxes. She clicked on Search. In seconds, the screen displayed a message reading, “Your search for Hendersonia in NJ didn’t match any locations.”

While she was busy being frustrated, I sat down at the computer next to the old man, logged on, and waited only a second before a blue rectangle appeared on my screen. As I’d feared, Cyrax wanted to let me know what was on his mind.

u must tell her what she is & speed to yr Byzantium, 4 u must pay the dredful price in sacrifice of the being u made. CO-RECK yr error & yr crime. it will b terrible & yet it must b done & U MUST DO IT! as I luv u, buttsecks, I cannot ignor the CHAOS u brought to our REALM and yrs & for this U MUST PAY IN KIND—U OPENED THE WEDGE, NOW U MUST CLOSE IT!

oh, what does gentle Cyrax demand of u?

FIND the real Lily Kalendar! See what she is! Understand the deep complexity of her self & her position, so u know what u got WRONG! payment must be made!

I logged off and slumped in the chair. Payment must be made, he said. Wasn’t it being made, in full measure, by the heartbreaking woman at my side?

“No, that’s wrong,” Willy said. I heard real distress in her voice. The boy risked another peek at her. “It was there before!” She shook her head. “What’s happening to me?” She stared at the screen for a moment, then said, “Hold on, hold on, I’m going to try one more thing.”

This time, she typed in “Stockwell” and “MA.” The same “Your search” message appeared on the monitor. “It isn’t there? There’s no Stockwell? Okay, I’m trying one more thing, and then I quit.”

She went to Google and typed in “Charles Bollis, MD,” and told the service to search the Web. What came back was the question “Do you mean Charles Boli’s, MD?” and a link to a site that provided oncology information from somewhere called Charles County.

Her face had turned white.

“Let’s get out of here, Willy,” I said. “You need about three candy bars and a bag of M&M’s, and both of us should have lunch.”

“What were you looking at?” she asked me.

I told her I was checking my messages.

When we got back into the car, Willy dove into the bag and pulled out a handful of candy bars. After she wolfed the first one down and had gone through half of the second, she said, “I’m learning how to handle this condition, whatever you call it,