Who are the Broken-Jawed Ones? What is their genesis, their crisis, their intent? They are the minions of my adversary and, if they have no intent of their own—soulless, lifeless, godless monsters—then they are a shadow of his.

I know a little something about shadows. That much seems to be persistent. Though, it occurs to me that I've never really considered this question: what is the disease of shadows? When darkness becomes cancerous, does it become light?

Is the duality always maintained? One or the other, never a third.

Why are the numbers important? It isn't a religious fascination with a specific sequence. No. Just the numbers themselves. They have a symbolic importance that escapes me.

They aren't just for counting. I think they are part of the Key.

Who is my adversary? I have met him several times now, and, though his language is filled with riddles and allusions, he seems inclined to assist me. He isn't a Guide, nor is he a Guardian. He is a presence that seems to be aware of the nature of my dream. He would appear to be another oneironaut, but if he is, he is more aware of my Oneiroi than I.

While that's not entirely impossible--there are oneironauts more adept than I, certainly—the implication is that my skill level is so far below his that I cannot sense his shifts. But this isn't like a blind man failing to understand what a sighted man is talking about; it's more that I cannot comprehend his passage or his presence.

Like a magician who is so deft, you don't realize you have just seen magic. But you know something has happened, that some sleight of hand has taken place.

Why did you abandon me, Harry?

No, she's dead.

Her mother blamed me; she needed someone to take responsibility for taking her baby away. Her father, a man who—grudgingly—could understand what I had done for her during those last few months before she slipped into the coma, eventually told me that Nora left a note for the family—a note that exonerated me, that went so far as to say that I was the last true friend she had.

But I understood her mother's pain. Nora wanted to make things more real with her final words, but they didn't have the power to offset the grief of loss. I was a poor substitute for a child carried in the womb and nurtured for so many years. I was a shadow replacement.

They cremated her and scattered her ashes around the base of a lemon tree growing in the backyard of the family house. The following spring, I stole a handful of lemons from the tree. I pulped them into a mash and strained the juice into a concentrate. To make this entheogenic, I added enough cocaine to make it a 7% solution, as well as 50mg of 5-MeO-DMT and 23mg of GANESHA.

The trip was sweeter than I had anticipated, but there was no sense of Nora. She was gone.

Are you sure?

!