As a child, I was drawn to escapist fiction. I loved novels in which children stumbled upon other worlds, stepping innocently through some unexpected portal - a garden gate, a wardrobe - into an alternate universe.

They were removed from their humdrum existence into enchanted worlds where magic is real and nothing is ordinary, where rabbits can talk and small children can become kings and queens.

I suppose that's the lure - a chance to live an adventure on a slow summer Sunday afternoon.

Perhaps that's why, when I'm wandering about the woods, I sometimes step off the path and explore, and when I do, I sometimes make great discoveries - discoveries like the one I found today.

Today, I found the place where all the heroes in the stories I read as a child ended up when they first stepped through their mystical gateways to begin their adventures.

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I just finished reading a good book, the type whose last page makes me feel as if I've just learned of the death of a good friend.

I closed the book, spent a few minutes gazing contemplatively out the window, and then set the book on the coffee table. It was then that I noticed some shallow furrows scratched onto the back cover and realized that someone - presumably a person who had checked it out of the library previously - had used it to bear down upon while writing a note.

Curious and nosy, I picked up the book and tried to read what had been written, but couldn't make out anything more than a few stray recognizable letters here and there. I tried looking at it from different angles and with different lighting, but without success.

Finally, I tore a page from my journal and used the flat of a pencil to scribble on the page to "lift" the words. When I did, it became apparent that the note's unknown author had shifted the note around on the makeshift writing desk while penning the note. The result was an illegible jumble of barely discernable letters that looked to be a combination of Arabic and Chinese calligraphy.

There were, however, three legible words among the spaghetti scribbles, obviously not ordered in the same fashion in the original note, but through inadvertence, poignant nonetheless.

They said, "Everyone is gone."