Lynn Robinson, small and sensual, ran up to Meg in the hallway, eyes bright behind her glasses, excited as always to be the bearer of scandal and shock. "Hear about Sherry?"

Curtain time, opening night. "What about her?" Megan opened her locker, put her jacket on its hook, took out the books she needed. Very calmly. She had rehearsed this moment so many times.

"She's dead."

First shock, even disbelief. "Sherry Riley?"

Lynn nodded.

Then some appropriately innocent lines. "Dead? Come off it. Really?"

"Really. Last night."

"What happened? Car wreck?" Skillfully simulated concern. It was all happening exactly as Meg had hoped. She would play her role to the hilt. "Was Mike with her? Did he get hurt?"

"They say she had a heart attack. At home. I knew you'd want to know."

A heart attack. So that was the theory. Wait till the autopsy. Sherry might go down in history right alongside Bigfoot, Roswell and the Loch Ness monster. Another fabulous freakishness.

She decided to have some fun with Lynn. "'They say.' Who says? Where'd you hear this from?"

"It's the truth, really, I swear it. Do you think I'd make something like this up?"

"Who told you?"

"They were talking about it on the bus. Kelli and Sharlene and Gina. Gina lives right next door to them. She said they could hear Marge Riley screaming clear over there, just like she was right in the room with them."

"What about Mike? How's he taking it?"

"What about Mike? He's gone, he graduated last year. While you were in the hospital, remember? Something stupid you did?"

That hurt. "Don't go there. Don't even go there." Sometimes Lynn didn't know when to quit.

"Mike hasn't been around for a long time. Alcurtis told me he was working out of state, somewhere in Ohio." She drew conspiratorially closer. "You need to forget about Mike, girl. There are lots of other boys here. Chad Wilder has the hots for you for sure."

Meg turned away. "I don't have the hots for him, Dear Abby."

"You're throwing your life away waiting for Mike. You think he'll come back to you 'cause Sherry's dead? He was seeing Sherry a long time before he left you. He was probably seeing someone else behind her back. He was just using you, Meg. Anyway, he's gone. Chad's still here." A pause, a knowing smile. "And he's good looking."

"You're getting on my nerves, Lynn." She was, too.

The warning bell rang.

"See you later, Meg."

"Later, Ann Landers."

A ripple of laughter, half-suppressed, spread from student to student. Bony, no-nonsense Joan Ryder turned from the blackboard, fixed a disapproving glare on her sixth-period English Lit class. She had been at Magellan High for twenty-eight years, and her caustic wrath was legendary. To her, the snickering of students was a omen, announcing the arrival of discord in her orderly, regimented classroom.

It was Megan Summers, of course. These days it was always Megan Summers. Sitting in the back of the class, as far as she could from the others, Meg was drawing something in her notebook. Turning it this way and that on the desk, feverishly scribbling, her motions exaggerated, her tongue protruding slightly, measuring the intensity of her efforts. Oblivious to the world around her.

The giggling continued.

"Miss Summers." The razor-blade voice severed the laughter.

The pencil's crazed scratching proceeded unabated.

Once Megan had been a prize pupil, but not any more. Since the incident last year she had never been the same. Inattentive, sometimes disoriented, always in a world of her own. Other teachers had sadly attested to the change.

"I think the girl's on drugs," Kay Hoffman had declared between drags on a cigarette, one afternoon in the teachers' lounge. "She's in outer space."

For answer, Ryder had pointed to the No Smoking sign. The younger woman snubbed out the butt on the side of a trashcan, angrily left the room.

Someone had to enforce the rules. Otherwise there was chaos.

Drugs or not, something was wrong with Megan, certainly. Personally, Ryder wasn't sure that the girl had any place at Magellan now. Maybe she would be better off in another school, with classes more suited to her sadly altered behavior.

The elderly teacher strode briskly back to Megan's desk, slapped a yardstick down across the picture.

Her student was surprised. Startled.

Angry.

"I'm sorry if I'm interrupting your artwork, Megan, but I am teaching a class here. An English class, I might add. I believe Mrs. Demme teaches the art class. "For the first time she really looked at the thing on the paper. What was it? An illusion, a strange set of bars and rods and cylinders at Escherian impossible angles. Op art. Was it a face? Only from the corner of the eye. Against her better judgment, Ryder was impressed. Not that she would let Miss Summers know it.

"Maybe you should go to Mrs. Demme's room. You could use some drawing lessons." Uneasy tittering from the bravest students.

The young woman flushed, bit her lip in irritation, said nothing.

"What is this supposed to be?"

No reply. Cold features in stark contrast to the fury in her dark, haunted eyes.

"Don't look at me like that, young lady. I want an answer."

"It's nothing. It's something I made up," came the sullen response.

The whatsit she had drawn was surrounded by symbols. Some sort of phony Arabic or fake Chinese, thought Ryder. A group of the runes filled the bottom, and below that was scrawled a single strange word: DAYOLOV.

Dayolov? "Put it away and pay attention, Miss Summers. You can draw on your own time, not on mine." She turned and walked stiffly back to the blackboard as she had done a hundred times before, year after year, class after class. Problem solved.

Megan watched her walk away, thinking of all the things she'd like to do to Mrs. Ryder. All the things she could do to Mrs. Ryder.

The teacher was droning on about miserly Silas Marner and his change of heart. She was old and stupid and teaching school hadn't taught her a thing. In real life people don't have a change of heart. In real life the strong get stronger and the weak get weaker. Megan looked down at the picture, put her hands on it, looked to the wall and the desks and the motion of chalk dust in the air for the words.

They came. She whispered them. Nothing big this time. Just a little something for Mrs. Ryder. e had planned it for Tricia Lang or Bradley Wright. They were so sure of themselves, so hatefully perfect and proud of it. Lang the head majorette and Wright the star quarterback, Magellan High School's finest.

Last week, clustered in their own little clique, Lang had called Meg "cripple" and Wright just laughed his brassy laugh. They didn't know she was just around the corner of the hall, didn't know that she heard their insults. She limped past them without a word.

"Hi, Megan." Tricia, all smiles and bright eyes, waving while the others stifled their laughter. "Hi, Megan Summers!"

She felt the heat on her face. Didn't turn around. Didn't say a word. She didn't know what to say, yet. But she would. She would have something to say to Lang and Wright and the whole damn lot of them.

And now she did.

It had been meant for Tricia Lang, who was so agile, so fleet, so athletic, but Ryder had asked for it. She liked to teach; now let her learn.

There was a snapping,**Megan felt quick, invisible
a crackling, a faint but ******antennae flick around her,
audible rustling in the ******guided them with her gaze
classroom. toward the old woman.
**

"A common theme in much of English Litera--" Ryder stopped short, threw out her old arms as if trying to balance on a tightrope. Teetered, stumbled, fell to the floor with an odd, cat-like squawl.

Shocked silence, broken only by a quiet, almost subliminal rustling. Bob Surratt and Norman Williams helped the teacher to her feet.

"You all right, Mrs. Ryder?"

"I'm fine," she said crankily and promptly fell again. This time she stayed down, moaning a little. Surratt ran for help.

The rustling stopped as Megan yanked her hands from the picture as if burnt. Looked at her palms, cried out, fled from the room. No one tried to stop her.

In the bathroom she washed and washed her hands, clenched wads of paper towels, trying to staunch the crimson flow from the grid of tiny cuts in her palms and fingers. Not deep. Just frightening.

There had been no indication of this. Just the words she needed. Just the education to make the magic work. She needed an image of dayolov, so she drew one. The drawings and paintings necessary for the spells just seemed to flow from her without conscious effort. She didn't even know what dayolov meant. Or yhogsovhov, or arlyheh, or hasster.

Just noises.

Pictures.

Power.

Power that was unthinkably, uniquely hers to command. Until now.

She remembered that questing tentacle that had touched her last night, when she did what she had done to Sherry. It was after the blood, the blood that splashed from --

Or was it? What if it had reached out for her on purpose? Done something to her, something not as visible as the lacerations on her hands?

Suddenly she realized the gushing water in the sink was speaking to her, had been for some time."Ee
ah
ki
th
ul
ho
u
fa
he
ta
jin."

Stunned, she watched the water repeat its meaningless message, again and again, fighting against the need to repeat its words to the empty room. A girl rushed into the bathroom, screamed when she saw the bloody sink, the bloody towels thrown carelessly to the floor.

Tricia.

All thoughts of revenge were gone. Meg tried to explain, tried to tell her not to run, not to tell anyone. Everything was all right. Everything was under control.

Meg tried to explain, but the strange words poured from her mouth as from a faucet: "Eeah kithulhou fahetajin."

The electric lights overhead exploded. Tricia Lang screamed, threw her hands up to ward off the cascading shards.

The words continued to flow. "Kithulhou nafel taggen arlyheh uataratas"
No! Not now!
"sathogwa reseco hail haillri kithulhou"
Stop! Stop it! Shut up!
"Kithulhou arlyheh fahetajin. Ee ah."

And as Tricia Lang hesitated, unsure of what was happening, something opened in the air around her. There was the smell of the ocean, the sense of infinite pressure in the air. A flash of something green and sticky and indescribably vast. Something evil.

Earthquake thunder, mirrors shattered. Meg fell to the ground.

When she looked up, Tricia was gone.

Meg ran too.

Back in the classroom, silence still reigned. The vice-principal and school nurse helped the stricken English teacher to a seat. Forgotten, the notebook still lay on Megan's desk, still open to the picture, the veiled face made of rods and tubes and wires.

DAYOLOV.

Lynn slipped outside between classes for a quick cigarette break. It wasn't permitted on campus, but if they didn't catch you they couldn't stop you.

Anyway, the teachers did it. The Teachers' Lounge was always full of smoke.

She lit up, savored the taste, frowned at the cigarette between her fingers. Her mom had gone ballistic when Lynn got three days suspension for smoking, but she couldn't care less what Mom wanted. Alcurtis, though, had been nagging her to quit. He disliked her nicotine kisses: "I want to taste you, baby, not the cigs." And she'd promised him she would.

Just not right away. When this pack is empty, she told herself, as soon as this pack is empty. Just as she had for the last five packs.

Sometimes she wished she had never started.

Drawing smoke deep into her lungs, she looked out over the parking lot, saw someone sitting in Meg's Bondo Buggy. She threw down the butt, walked out to see what was going on.

Meg, crying, clenching the steering wheel, head down, eyes closed. Lynn knocked on the window, tried the door. Locked. She shouted to her friend.

"Go away, Lynn!" Meg didn't look up. Kept her eyes shut.

"What's wrong? Let me in." All the doors were locked.

"I can't drive. I can't go home. I can't go back inside." Eyes still closed. "I killed her. I killed her and now I can't control it."

There was a sick feeling in Lynn's guts. "Killed who, Meg?"

"And I made Mrs. Ryder sick. Made her fall. With dayolov. Made her fall with dayolov."

"What? Unlock the door!"

"And Tricia's gone too. The water was talking and I couldn't stop. Then Tricia was gone." Laughter and tears. "I wanted to hurt her. I wanted to hurt all of them. But not like that, Lynn. Not like that! It's all going crazy. I don't know what's happening." Her voice cracked, hands tightened on the wheel, white-knuckled. "Don't know what to do."

"Open the door, Meg. Open it, or I swear to God I'll break the window."

"No!" Meg's eyes opened wide in anger.

In disbelief.

In fear.

L y n nwasa
pattern ,
ag
lyp
h,atechnical
diagramf o r

DESTRUCTION.

Thet E x T u R e
of her-short-
-black-spelled out annihilating mysteries.
-hair-

"Shandolarvanaiyhogsovhovnafeltaggan."

Thedifferent
thousandshades
of
color
in her dark chocolate flesh announced hateful secrets: "Eigolonik malorn,
glocki tossinos.Dayolov.
Ee ah dayolov.Dayolov."

"No! God, no! I -- I don't want this now." Thrashing around in the car, panic, madness, horror in her eyes. "Don't you understand?" she screamed at the thing that was her friend. "I don't need it now!"

"Meg? Stop it!"

"No, no, no, no . . ."

Lynn was a million miles away, shouting for Mr. Markham to come here, come quick, something's wrong, something's wrong with Meg. Looked up, saw the tall, thin old man running toward them across the lot as if through molasses, every motion crying out gibberish. Silly, silly Lynn, yelling like that, as if her little human voice could
drown out Finiglooi
drown out the miggwelnav
drown out the voices KITHULHOU
ARLYHEH
drown out the voices of wah-gah-naggel
drown out the voices of the fahetajin
drown out the voices of the Old Ones
calling, calling, calling from their dimension of slumber, calling to Megan Summers, calling to the one they had waited for,
had longed for,
had planned for.

There was no car, no Lynn, no school, no world. There was nothing but information now. Even closing her eyes made no difference; the random colors flashing behind her eyelids spelled out the message to her tortured mind.

Information.
Without wanting to, now
she
knew

(-- They made her race, made this world she lived in. Knew their time was not eternal, that soon they would sleep, but never die. They encoded their secrets in every living thing, every inanimate object, every event and occurrence in this universe they engineered, so many millennia ago. Like clockwork, their message would repeat, again and again, down through the eons.

And they slept. And waited. A million million planets seeded with organic life, evolving, changing. Eventually a lifeform would arise that could read their message. Either on this world or on another. And that one would use the power, because they had been made selfish.
Perverse.
Hateful.
Envious.
Jealous. The Old Ones had designed their creations with all the animal crudities, all the ugly lusts and brutalities that lead a mind to the panacea power of magic. Some would overcome their instincts, deny their heritage, be more than brute beasts. Be heralded by their fellow creatures as saints, geniuses, prophets, heroes.

It would not matter. Life generates life. If a few raised themselves above their genetic programming, there would be a hundred that did not. Eventually one would come who would read the eternal testament of the Old Ones. Who would be savage enough to use the powers it unleashed, not knowing the Old Ones would gain more control of their mind with every spell they read. --)

"No! I didn't know! I don't -- don'thif-lith-kih-nigya --"

She knew them now, against her will, despite her wishes. Saw them in synaesthetic fire and lunacy:

And still more, beyond number, without name. They were all around her, in everything, their alien images formed by the arrangement of dials and knobs on the dash, the alignment of bricks in the walls of the school, the crisscrossed branches of trees and the undulations of the flag in the wind. Everywhere, inescapable, inexorable.

Calling her.

Commanding her.

Demanding that she say the words that would wake them. Restore them. Return them to this little cosmos of energy and matter, the universe they had built on a whim and would destroy as an afterthought. It had served its purpose.

"NO!" she screamed at the monsters, the horrors that surrounded her, whispering their silently humming spells into her mind. "I won't do it!"

She wouldn't speak. They were coming for her now, their claws digging into her arms, pulling her from the car.

She wouldn't speak. Their words burned in the air, plucked at her nerves, throbbed in her brain like cancer.

She wouldn't speak. They were dragging her away now, taking her to some place dark and lonely, but she would not repeat their words. She would not speak.

No matter what they did to her.

It was the price of atonement.

And so Megan sits in her room at Greenville Asylum, growing older, oblivious to the nurses that tend to her, oblivious to the world around her, never saying a word, never moving a limb. Lost in mental labyrinths, in the woven patterns of creation. Some say she took some bad acid. Some say she had a nervous breakdown.

Some even think she had something to do with the death of Sherry Riley, with the disappearance of Tricia Lang, even with the aneurysm that ended Joan Ryder's teaching career, but those stories are silly and unfounded.

She does not know that her friend Lynn comes to see her. She does not hear Lynn's stories, her talk of her husband Alcurtis and the little girl who shares Megan's name. She does not see the tears fill Lynn's eyes as she talks to her silent friend.

She did not respond the day Michael Harrison came in, said a few things and left. Sometimes Mike dreams of her dark, haunted, empty eyes, and wonders if he could have prevented that. He is older now, and wiser, and often very sad.

She does not answer her parents when they come to see her. She does not see the little boy at their side, the little boy named Jackie that they are raising as their own. Dark and goatish, he is remarkably tall and mature for a nine-year-old and studies everything around him with an interest and understanding astonishing in one so young.

Her parents expect he will go far.

Life generates life. Eventually one would come who would read the eternal testament of the Old Ones.

She does not know he is her son.

But, if she could speak, she could name his father.

Created: August 17, 1999; Updated: August 9, 2004