After she’d left the park, Everly had ventured to the nearest library, intent on finding answers. A clue, a relevant detail—something. Nothing about what the man told her made sense. And if anything, her trip to the library only left the whole ordeal murkier than before.
She’d searched for the building itself first. The Eschatorologic was a unique name; if it existed, surely it would have shown up.
Internet searches bore no fruit, so she’d turned to physical, paper accounts. Building records, maps of her town, receipts for past realty sales. Nothing. As far as proper records could indicate, the building didn’t exist.
Next, she’d tried searching for the man. Dr. Richard Dubose. He, at least, definitely existed. She found a microfiche for a scientific article, half a century old, stating briefly how Richard Dubose, PhD, had been given a grant of such and such amount for research in the field of molecular biology and cell research within the realm of abnormal genetic output. Whatever that meant. There was an even older clipping with a picture of him in a well-pressed suit, smiling broadly next to a woman in a vintage-style white dress. The caption on the image listed them as the newly married Dr. and Mrs. Richard and Miranda Dubose. Her grandparents, supposedly. She’d tried to look more closely at the faces in the picture. The man was definitely Richard—a much younger, much happier version of him, with a full head of dark hair and an almost boyish grin that stretched ear to ear. The woman was more subdued, but undeniably beautiful. In the black-and-white image, it was impossible to tell the shade of her hair, but it floated around her shoulders in stylish waves. Everly struggled to see any of herself in the faded image of the young married couple, any hint of a relation between them.
That was all Everly was able to find on Richard. She’d then hesitated before deciding to type in one more name. Mary Dubose Tertium. Her mother.
The only result for that search was an obituary, dated twenty years earlier, in which Mary Dubose Tertium was listed as having died at the age of twenty-five to unknown medical causes, leaving behind a husband and a daughter.
Twenty-five. A few more months, and Everly would have outlived her own mother.
If her trip to the library had shown Everly one thing, it was that pieces were missing from the story Dr. Richard Dubose had offered her in the park.
And then there was the matter of her dad.
Everly shook her head, dispelling phantom memories from the week before, from what her dad had been like leading up to . . .
There has to be more to it, a voice whispered in her head now. That voice had been whispering to her all week, only growing louder after her encounter in the park.
She knew, in her core, that it hadn’t been a car accident that killed him. It just didn’t line up, didn’t sit well with her. And so, if not that, then what?
Richard Dubose might know. Somehow, impossibly, he just might.
That nagging voice in her head told her it couldn’t be a coincidence: her dad dying, and then one week later Dr. Richard Dubose tracking her down in a park to tell her about a building that she couldn’t find any record of.
Maybe none of it was connected, and she was trying too hard to find an answer where there wasn’t one to be found. Maybe it really was all about a lonely old man seeking out family, trying to form a connection where he never had before.
Or maybe she was onto something and this man, this Richard Dubose, knew more about what happened to her dad than she did.
Whatever the case may be, Everly couldn’t put off anymore the one thing she did know: she had to go to that building.
Headache finally slipping away as she sipped her tea, Everly picked up the phone to call work, informing them that she’d be out a few days longer.
She was going to pay a visit to the Eschatorologic.
Chapter Nine
Everly Tertium entered the building for the first time fifty-three years ago (by some accounts). She didn’t know why—it wasn’t a very attractive or appealing building from the outside, by any means. Old, tall, decrepit. The kind of building you walk by on the fringes of city limits as a child and have adults quickly guide you away with furtive looks over their shoulders and a mumbled, “Let’s not go this way.” The kind of building you wouldn’t be surprised to find a smattering of spray paint adorning one side, perhaps a few shattered windows on another. The kind of building you didn’t willingly approach, at any rate. Certainly, the kind of building you didn’t enter.
Everly Tertium was walking, and at some point her mind and her feet weren’t synchronized any longer, and after a while she found herself there, standing before the glass front doors of the building.
A sign hung out front—large, tattered. Hand lettered? The Eschatorologic. Strange, Everly Tertium thought. What a strange name.
She put her face up against the glass panes that made up the doors and squinted her eyes, trying to peer through.
Nothing. Just her fogged-up breath, filling the space between her face and the door.
Everly Tertium would later like to tell herself that she considered walking away at that point. That she paused a moment before she made her decision. But this would be a lie. Here’s how it went instead: the squinting through the glass, peering, trying to make out anything. And then a shrug, so fast it was barely even there, and both hands braced on the glass where her face had been, pushing, and then she was inside.
Inside there was: nothing.
It was dark and empty. No desk yet, no benches, no chandelier. Just sprawling, barren space.
And then: a noise.
She thought it was a screech at first, until her nerves settled a tad and she realized that it had been a cough.
Not that that was much better. Where there was a cough there was a cougher.
Another moment passed when Everly Tertium did not pause, but rather she stepped farther into the open room—not exactly a lobby, yet—and walked in the direction of the cough.
What she found: a hallway, hidden on the other side of the wide-open room, that led back to an alcove with gray paint and gray carpets and gray doors.
And a man.
He was young in a wiry and mature way—wide glasses, knit vest, domed hat, wrinkled trousers. Dark hair, blue eyes. She had to squint to make out his eyes in the dimly lit hallway, but his machine helped.
It was small and boxy and covered in flashing lights that were either assessing with terrifying accuracy or completely for show. It also beeped, which she felt to coincide with the flashing in a way that the man holding the box probably understood, but she found just irritating enough to clamp a hand over one ear.
The man was fully absorbed in his flashy-beepy machine, so much so that Everly Tertium was watching him in the hallway for nearly a full minute before his eyes lifted, and froze, and widened.
Another ten to twenty seconds, and then the man spoke, in a soft and lyrical voice that Everly Tertium thought might be more suited for poetry than flashy machines. “You saw it?”
Her eyes leaped to the contraption in his hands. The man, noticing her expression, shook his head.
“The building. You saw the building.”
