The Weirdos

77

Jasper awoke in his bed. He sat up and stared out the window for a long while, thoughts swirling around in his head. These dreams meant something. Possibly something extremely important. He just had to figure them out. The next time he had one, he had to see it through. He had to go through it all. No matter how scary. No matter where it took him. He'd tell the others later. He sighed and got up, got dressed, then went down to breakfast. Afterwards, they went to the training room and he ran through the motions. Exercising, running obstacle courses that were easy and not frightening like the last one had been. When the training was done for the day, Jasper went to see Roderick and found him sitting on the floor, staring at the fish.
"Do you have another note for me, Roderick? Your last one was destroyed on accident... Or possibly on purpose..."
Roderick looked at him, then stood and went to the desk. He got a drawing out from one of the drawers and handed it to him.
"Strangers are near... Strangers are near. Everything to fear."
Jasper gulped and left with the drawing. He went and found Narcolepse in the library. He was browsing the shelves but looked up when he heard Jasper come in.
"New note?"
Jasper held up the paper to answer the question.
"Find anything on Morse code?"
He asked, coming to stand next to Narcolepse.
"Unfortunately not. I think he's hiding it somewhere. Or he destroyed it..."
"Why wouldn't he want us to read the note? What does he have to hide? What doesn't he want us to know?"
"We'll find out, Snowflake, calm down."
Jasper looked down at the drawing. Where was the note in this? It was of trees and a tire swing, birdhouses and birds and a grassy yard with a slide. It looked like a little kid drawing, of course. He turned it over and looked at the back, but there was nothing there, either.
"Shit, I think we have a problem."
"What?"
"This isn't a note. It's just a drawing."
"Let me see it."
Jasper handed it over and Narcolepse's eyes scanned over it silently. Things fell quiet for several minutes as he stared at it like it was a masterpiece he was trying to decipher. Jasper shifted uncomfortably at the silence and jumped out of his skin when Narcolepse went,
"Ah! Found it."
"What?"
Narcolepse put his finger to the page.
"He hid it. There's dots and dashes hidden in the trees and the birdhouses. Look, see?"
He ran his finger along one of the branches and then stopped his finger at a knot in the tree branch. He showed another dash as the top of the birdhouse and a dot in the shape of a birdhouse opening. It went on all the way down the page.
"Wow."
"I wonder if he's done this to other drawings."
Narcolepse said, admiring the art. He handed it back to Jasper and said,
"Hide this. I'll find us a translator somehow."
Jasper folded up the drawing and put it in his pocket just as Books came into the library.
"Ready for class already, then?"