The small demon's advice- ask for Katana at the Burgermeister- might have been helpful if it made any sense at all.
As the first vestiges of a humid evening set in, Deca trundled along the boardwalk and eyed the worn storefronts that stood between it and the city. 'Burgermeister' sounded like a burger shop. Despite their best efforts- and about three trips down the boardwalk and back- they were unable to locate anything of the sort. Reca pondered over the other possible meanings of 'Burger'.
The second question, which followed closely after the first, was, what was the Re-Oracle's apprentice doing at a burger shop? Then came a third: What if the Re-Oracle's instructions were outdated? That seemed plausible, and a sense of profound hopelessness suddenly infiltrated Reca's mindscape, pushing out the questions.
'This is useless," muttered Rivergal, half-asleep, head resting against the window bay, hand nervously clutching a jumbo plastic water bottle. "We should just ask for directions."
Most of the windows on the boardwalk were dark, and no one was on the acid beach. With bleary eyes, Reca scanned the boardwalk one more time... and her eyes fell upon a building that they had passed several times before. It had no elaborate signage; instead, the word 'ARCHIVE' was carved into the wood above the door, surrounded by a large rectangular discoloration where a sign might have once shielded that section of wood from the sun. It wasn't the sign that was significant, though. Through one of the tinted glass windows- perhaps tinted unintentionally by years of decay rather than intentionally by a craftsman- something was moving.
"Archive," hummed Reca, connecting the Re-Oracle's house to this little shack in her mind. It was out of place, sandwiched between a boarded-up jewelry shop and a hair salon. She had noticed it before, but it seemed altogether more significant now. Reca allowed herself to momentarily forget about the Burgermeister instructions and, driven by instinct, reached for the interior handle of her drivers' seat door- only to look down at her leg and remember her predicament.
"I wanna see inside the archive," Reca said, this time out loud. It would be a good place to ask for instructions. Deca turned around- the boardwalk was barely wide enough, and she spun up some sand with her tires- then moved over to the archive, parking uncomfortably close to its murky window. By pressing her face against the glass, Reca caught a glimpse of a demon's silhouette, scarcely distinguished from the dark backdrop by the light of a single candle.
It took a great degree of squinting, but Reca was eventually able to discern that the demon was rocking back and forth in a rocking chair.
"Whaddaya see?" Rivergal leaned over Reca's shoulder and peered through the window, startling her. The smaller girl flinched and smacked her cheek into the glass... alerting the demon inside to their presence! Despite their attempts to scramble back and save face, the ominous silhouette rose from its seat and vanished into the darkness beyond the candlelight. Reca didn't have the energy to say something snarky to Rivergal, but wished with all her heart that she had.
Moments later, the door to the archive swung open, grazing the corner of the van. A demon- faded red hair, bright red eyes- stood, restless and disgruntled, in the doorway.
"What gives?" cried the demon in a hoarse, grating voice. Rivergal rolled down the outer window.
"We're looking for instructions!"
The demon made her way to Rivergal and rested her elbows in the window bay, raising one eyebrow and stretching her skin so far it almost seemed like rubber.
"Tell me again how that explains why you were looking into my window."
"We were makin' sure someone was home!"
Clearly, the demon wasn't convinced, but she sighed and didn't ask any more questions regardless.
"The instructions were to talk to Katana at the Burgermeister. Sorry, I know that's confusing, but-"
Somehow the demon's eyebrow went even higher. Her pupils shrunk into little slits and her mouth hung open just a sliver.
"I'm Katana- Katana Johnson," she said in a voice so quiet it could hardly be heard over the nearby crashing of the waves. "Who gave you those instructions?"
Reca prepared to answer, but was cut off by a loud, unwelcome interjection from Rivergal.
"What's it to you?"
"This place-" Katana gestured to the nondescript building behind her- "hasn't been a Burgermeister in... I don't know how long."
The clock room flickered through Reca's head.
"...The Re-Oracle," said Rivergal, narrowing her eyes and furrowing her brow. "He told us where to find you."
With a grandiose sigh, Katana pinched her forehead, palm sitting comfortably on her nose.
"You have some guts, going to him." She said after several moments of silence. "I guess I shouldn't turn down people he sent."
"You're right," Rivergal quipped in her best attempt at wit, "you shouldn't."
Katana opened the door and beckoned the two girls into the dark archive, eyes momentarily widening as she noticed Reca's damaged leg. It was stuffy inside, but not as stuffy as the old house had been earlier- moreover, when the lights went up, it wasn't as crowded. The room itself looked vintage- booths lined the walls, clad in faded red and white. What once must have been a food counter was now occupied by a long bookshelf. The black-and-white checkered tile floor was all but obscured by a tattered rug.
On closer inspection, what had at first seemed to be a pile of blankets on the floor was a dingy mattress covered in comforters, flanked by four rocking chairs, two on each side. Was this a bedroom? Reca had never sen such an unconventional setup.
"Hey, is this a bedroom?" Rivergal asked, and for a moment Reca thought it was her subconscious given a voice.
"Use your eyes," huffed Katana.
The older girl seemed upset at the response, but said nothing more as Katana led the duo through the archive. There were a few more rooms- two restrooms, an office and a janitor's closet, as well as a door to what must have once been the kitchen but was now labeled simply 'ARCHIVE'. Wasn't this whole place the archive?
"Hey," said Rivergal, pointing at the door, "But I thought this whole place was the archive!"
Reca wondered if Rivergal was awakening some sort of psychic power.
"That's where most of the stuff is."
"Like, what kind of stuff?"
Katana threw open the door, sending a small cloud of dust into the air and yanking on a rusty chain to switch on an overhead light haphazardly tied to a hook on the ceiling. Rivergal and Reca peered in on a room that resembled the Re-Oracle's house on a smaller scale.
Of course, there were countless books lining the walls. The Burgermeister's old kitchen appliances had been gutted and repurposed as shelves, but they still failed to hold all of the books, and so new shelves had been set up, some of them blocking the old ones. The room's most confusing feature had nothing to do with the shelves or the books, though. There was a door to nowhere- free-standing, able to be walked around- in the center of the room, shut and locked with several padlocks. It served no purpose. If you walked through it, you'd just be in the same place.
"Hey," said Rivergal-
"What's that door?" Asked Reca.
"You read my mind," said Rivergal with a lighthearted chuckle. Katana leaned her forehead against the wall.
"It's hard to explain," she said. "Just don't open it."
"Not like we could break those locks anyways," Rivergal huffed.
"The keys are in the Janitor's Closet. Look, it's not a matter of whether you can. I just want your word that you won't."
"Is it like a Pandora's Box type thing?"
Reca thought, what's Pandora's Box?
"What's Pandora's Box?" asked Katana. 'Not you too', thought Reca.
"Forget it. We won't open the door."
Katana seemed far from satisfied with the answer, but she had no choice but to accept it, honor-bound to letting the duo stick around. It seemed callous to give them the boot. Katana was no stranger to being callous, but couldn't find the courage to summon her usual bravado anymore. As if moved by some force beyond herself, she led them to the rocking chairs in the bedroom and prepared to answer their questions. The questions came rapidly.
"Do you know anything the Re-Oracle doesn't?" asked Reca.
"How come he's not keeping all o' these books in his crowded house, huh?" asked Rivergal.
"How did someone like you become his apprentice?"
"What's up with the rocking chairs?"
Their voices melted together and gave Katana quite a headache. She put up one hand as if to silence the noise, and in an instant Reca and Rivergal were rendered speechless.
"One at a time," grumbled the demon. The two girls in front of her glanced at each other to determine who would speak first, and then, without any further deliberation, they asked questions at the same time.
"I didn't catch that."
This time, Reca spoke up alone.
"Do you have any information the Re-Oracle doesn't?"
Katana's gaze looked through them- in fact, it looked through the walls and perhaps through the fabric of reality itself. It seemed that her mind was elsewhere, and Reca was just about to ask the question again when it received an answer.
"Sure," mumbled Katana. "But nothing useful. All of those books are journals, and most of them are from after the apocalypse. The old man didn't see the value in keeping them at his place on account of they were just full of personal information."
"You have that many journals?" Rivergal's mouth hung open in awe. "Totally overkill for somebody living in a place like this."
"They're not mine."
For just one moment, the demon's eyes focused in on Rivergal like shotgun sights, and then they once again faded.
"Then-"
"They're my mother's and my grandmother's! I couldn't keep that kind of record. I remember stuff from a long time ago just fine, but a few hours ago is hazy. If I were to write that kind of thing it would be years behind!"
Her voice burned with an unusual sort of guttural fury that fizzled out in no time, just as all of her bursts of focus seemed to.
"Duplicates, too," she said in a half-yawn. "Of books the Re-Oracle already had. It's just duplicates and journals around here. Does that answer your question?"
Reca nodded and Rivergal shook her head, but as soon as the latter noticed the former's actions, she switched to nodding her head as well.
"Could we read the journals?" asked the younger girl. Katana thought for a moment and shrugged.
"No harm in that. Good luck organizing them, though- they're out of order. The Johnson family has never been the most organized bunch of demons, as you can see."
Neither Reca nor Rivergal had the nerve to try and reassure her, and so the duo parted wordlessly, shambling into the book room with the forbidden door and all of the dusty old journals. Reca would have normally gone out to sleep with Deca, but her injured leg took away most of her motivation, and so she pulled a book off of the wall and flipped it open- only for the darkness to close in around her with the screech of a rusty chain.
"Turn it back on. I'm trying to read."
Rivergal feigned a loud yawn.
"And I'm tryin' to sleep. You can read all ya want tomorrow."
There was no room left in Reca's heart to argue, and so she laid the book down as a sturdy makeshift pillow and closed her eyes. The ticking of a million clocks resounded in her mind- all of them out of time. She faded into the darkness before too long.
The hours went on and the stars rose gently higher. Deca realized that Reca wasn't coming out of the archive and attempted to pass the time by drifting off to sleep, but the not-so-distant hissing of the acid sea made that quite difficult. The situation was made altogether worse by the incessant battle between the two halves of Deca's mind- one was understanding, while the other was selfish, and they showed no signs of coming to an agreement anytime soon.
The halves came to an uneasy stalemate with the sound of footsteps from within the archive. Katana stepped out, taking an uneasy breath, and set down a boombox on Deca's hood with very little tact. 'Why? Deca couldn't ask, especially since Katana wasn't familiar with the headlight language she and Reca shared, but she had never wanted to ask anything more than she wanted to ask this now.
"You," said Katana as Reca caught a glimpse of her daggerlike teeth. "Occupant. I have something that might help you out. It'll be on loop."
On loop?
The demon hit a few buttons on the boombox and it sputtered to life. Before the tape spoke its first words, Katana had gone back inside, and a jaunty introductory jingle played, distorted by decay.
"Y-YOU'RE LISTENING TO THE AUDITORY GUIDE TO MORSE CODE, V-VOLUME ONE."
Deca could have reversed, could have knocked the boombox down and run it over, could have sought out silence... but she didn't.