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day, if he looked at the whole thing, he might be unconscious for twenty-five minutes. The laptop monitor was set to shut itself down after one minute, but he still wanted to be careful. The rice would be done in twenty.
    The image showed the big concrete wall next to the highway. Along the bottom, someone had used black spray paint to write, “BRO,” down the length. That paint was faded compared to what Tim cared about. Tim was interested in the big red symbols. They probably stretched down fifty yards of the wall and some of them were fifteen feet in the air.  
    Cedric dropped the ball at the side of Tim’s chair. He reached down and picked it up. He held it while he spoke.
    “They must have used a ladder, or maybe one of the those bucket trucks,” he said.  
    Cedric sat and panted, waiting for Tim to throw the ball. Tim stared at one of the big red symbols painted on the wall. It must have been four feet high. On his screen it was only a couple of inches. It looked like a spiral made of right angles. The line went up, took a right, went across, took a right. The lines weren’t exactly parallel as they spiraled in though. They were off by a few degrees so the thing looked like it twisted clockwise as the segments got smaller and smaller. The lines were thinner too, almost like they were getting farther away. The twisting lines could have been painted on a tunnel that went right into the wall. It was a place you could walk into and explore…
    Cedric barked.
    Tim shook his head and covered the symbol with his hand. He tossed the ball for the dog and scrolled the image so the spiral would move off the screen.
    “Powerful,” he muttered.
    At the edge of the mural, he saw something familiar. The red symbol almost looked like a rough representation of a person sitting in a chair. He’d seen it before. Tim had the other images named for the places where he’d found them. He pulled up an image he’d catalogued as “Roanoke: Edges.” This would be just the edges of a mural he’d photographed down in Virginia. There it was—on the right side of this image, a symbol matched the one he saw on the left side of his Dayton picture. A couple of smaller glyphs were a match as well.
    Cedric dropped the ball. He had mud on his front feet.
    “You’re filthy,” Tim said. “What do we do about your hair in the summer? Did they used to shave you or something? Does it need brushing?”
    The timer went off in the kitchen. Tim threw the ball again and closed his laptop.
    After dinner, Tim confirmed his find and verified the other edge of the photograph. He had his laptop on the round kitchen table.
    “That’s it,” he said to Cedric. The dog looked up and tilted his head. He was sitting on the braided rug in front of the stove—his favorite place. Tim noticed that the dog had brought his muddy tennis ball inside. “We’ve got pictures of the whole thing, I think.”
    On one of his maps, he had made notes of all the locations. Tim unfolded the map and spread it out.  
    “The closer the mural is to the burn zone, the bigger it is, generally. They make a semicircle that ends down in Wilmington. I wonder if there are any under the ocean.”
    Tim smiled at the idea of an underwater society with big red murals painted on coral reefs. His smile faded fast.  
    “What do you think would be at the center of the circle if we were to follow it inward?” he asked Cedric. The dog lowered his head back to the rug. “I bet there’s something. It’s either in the ocean, or it’s in Canada, or Maine, or maybe New Hampshire.” He ran his finger over the map.  
    “What do you think?” he asked the dog. “Now that we’ve finished the mural project, it seems like we should come up with something to do. Should we explore towards the center of the circle?”

 
    CHAPTER 4: NEW HAMPSHIRE
     

     
    T HEY PASSED BETWEEN THE dark buildings and began to climb the hill on foot. They didn’t use either sidewalk, but walked right up the