Insanity

Chapter Four

"Lee.... Lee!"
"What?"
"There's someone over there..."
"Well yeah Cas, it's a public library."
"He's staring at us, you nitwit!"

Lee looked up at that last statement. She blinked, somewhat stupidly. "Are you... Are you sure? Because, that's... not... good..." Cassie nodded fervently, and mimed zipping her lips. Lee gave a slight nod in response, and as discretely as she could, turned her head to look at the man watching them. His appearance was unsettling. He had a black, trench coat draped over black dress pants and a black dress shirt. Now that in itself wasn't abnormal, wearing black was perfectly normal, but his face and stature is what made Lee and Cassie very uncomfortable. He was tall and gaunt, and his face was heavily scarred, and his eyes appeared to be empty of all emotions, just empty gray orbs stuck in eye sockets. His hair was steel gray, cut military style. His mouth was a thin line, barely noticeable amongst the scars. As Lee and Cassie looked more closely at the stranger, they thought that somehow, he look blurry around the edges, and the coloring of him was somewhat...faded. Lee turned slowly back around. "You wanna move?" She whispered so quietly, Cassie almost didn't hear it. "I want to, but don't you think that he'll notice that we noticed that he was watching us? And what if it's just a coincidence, or a misunderstanding?" Lee stared at Cassie, stony and grim faced. "It's not a coincidence or a misunderstanding, Cassie, there is a man staring at two teenage girls, not saying anything, just standing there! We need to either move or leave!" She said all of this in a rushed, whispered scream. Cassie pursed her lips, and got up. At the exact same time, the stranger moved quickly, and something fell out of his pocket. He walked past the table they were sitting at, not looking at them, and walked between two shelves, and disappeared. Cassie was still standing, and she was staring at the thing that had fallen out of his pocket. She then looked around, and then swiftly darted over to the thing, picked it up, and walked back over to the table. "What. The. Fu-
You know what? You know what! You've impressed me you sneaky little-"
"Lee shut the hell up."
"Okay okay, I'm just sayin' that's the first time you've done something remotely wrong or-"
"Lee I swear to god if you don't-"
"I'm shutting up!"
Cassie shot a glare at Lee, who smirked and winked. Cassie snorted and then looked at the item she had picked up. It was a piece of paper, a very large piece of old, folded paper. She put it on the table, and started unfolding it. It took up a good portion of the table the girls were at, and once it was unfolded, Cassie stared at it. It was a map, a very old map at that. The year it was made was marked out with black ink. "I haven't seen this map before." said Lee, cocking her head. "Either it's been on hold and it's just been passed around a lot, or he's been holding it for a very long time." Cassie nodded and said, "Yeah but why would someone hold a map for a long time, and why would be put on hold anyways? Maybe it's just been added to the library, and we just haven't seen it yet." "You have a point... You wanna take a look at it?" Cassie smiled and shrugged. "Might as well, it's not like we'll find anything though." The two took opposite sides of the table and the map, and started investigating the map. As they searched the map, they noticed markings on the map in red ink. They pointed out these markings to each other, trying to hypothesize what these markings meant. They couldn't really come up with any serious ideas, and they continued to search it. After a while, Lee started to look tired and bored, and Cassie also starting feeling drowsy. It was another dead end, as usual. Cassie started to fold the map back up, when she noticed something.
There was another marking closer to the lower left corner of the map. It wasn't red however. It was blue. For some reason, that struck Cassie as odd. Very odd. She stopped her folding, and bent closer to the map to get a closer look at it. It was next to a building. A building called "Visionary's Care Center". Cassie had never heard of that building before. Cassie decided to write down the name of the building in Lee's sketchbook. When she went to grab it, Lee asked, "What are you doing? Have you gone insane again?"
"Of course I haven't gone insane Lee. I just want to write down a name of a building."
"Why? Have you found a new building?" Lee said this with a hint of excitement in her voice.
"I think so, I don't think I've ever read it anywhere else."
"This is great Cas! Good work! Can you show me where it is?"
Cassie laughed, and pointed to where she had found the building. Meanwhile, she tore a page out of Lee's notebook and wrote down the buildings name, and the name of the map, in case she needed it again later.
She hoped that this map would give them a good lead. She was so desperate for a lead.
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It was quite late when they left the library. They wanted to leave under the cover of darkness, in case they saw the strange man while they were walking to the orphanage. They didn't however, which was a relief to both of them. They didn't really want to ruin their good mood, as they were still very excited about finding a new building. Lee was humming a happy tune, which sounded a bit like Queen's "You're My Best Friend". . Cassie decided that she would hum her own song, so she started humming "Bennie and the Jets" by Elton John. Lee looked over and rolled her eyes, but she smiled nonetheless. When they got to the orphanage, dinner was already being served. They did their usual routine, eat, store food, and leave without arousing too much suspicion. They never did, since there were so many other kids causing mayhem.
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Once they got to their room, Lee flopped onto her bed and giggled. "We've been lucky lately, huh Cas? Oh so very, very lucky!" "Don't get your hopes up Lee, we don't know if this place is a lead yet."
"Oh don't be such a downer Cassie. Let me get my hopes up for once!"
"Fine, fine, but don't get grumpy once we find out that it's the deadest end we've ever hit."
"Yeah yeah whatever."
Cassie shook her head, and they both started getting ready for bed. "Now Lee, don't stay up super late again, okay? We'll need to be fully rested for tomorrow, since we'll be doing a lot of researching."
Lee sighed. "Okay... I wasn't planning to anyways, it's too cloudy tonight." Cassie turned off the light, and they both got into bed. They didn't speak, trying to fall into a slumber, but they were both haunted by the same two thoughts.

Who was that man, and what was he doing with that map?
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Hehehehe, hello readers~~
I had a stroke of genius (and positivity) today so I got a chapter done! I'm trying to get the story to be more mysterious, though I don't know how well that's working too be honest. Anyways, I don't have much to say, just have a wonderful day/night! Goodbye!
~~~~~~Abby