ELIZABETH SPIEGELMAN

MAUREEN BIRNBAUM AT THE LOOMING AWFULNESS

Have you ever had your life fall apart like a condominium of cards? I have, God
knows. I know the feeling. One day I'm a happy wife and mother, married to my
Josh, a successful doctor in Queens, New York. We doted on our baby son, Malachi
Bret. Mums' aggravation I could keep to a minimum, and I couldn't have asked for
more.

We had just about everything a young, upwardly mobile family should have. We had
two cars, both sleek, one cream and one fire-engine red. Our condo was in a
predominantly non-ethnic neighborhood. We belonged to a very high-class health
club, and we went there at least twice a month -- we sat in the Jacuzzi, mostly.
Josh did tennis now and then, and sometimes when I felt like it I did Richard
Simmons. His video tapes, I mean. I had a glass-fronted cabinet stuffed with my
favorite Mikasa china pattern in a complete service for sixteen. Josh's practice
was growing so quickly that he had to take on a junior partner to handle the
boring stuff.

Life was like good.

For a while.

One day Josh came home from his office and sat down heavilyin a chair. There
wasn't anything unusual in that because he always sat down heavily. That's
because he's -- heavy. Quite a bit heavier than the slim and trim Josh I
married.

All right, I'm heavier, too. That's why we go to the health club every few
weeks. None of that is important, though. After Josh got comfortable enough, he
turned to me with an embarrassed smile. "Betsy," he goes, "there's something
we've got to talk about. "

Uh oh, I go. There are only a few times in your life when someone goes, "There's
something we've got to talk about." One time is when a cherished friend or
family mere bet has slipped into an irreversible coma. This happens on "Days of
Our Lives" all the time. Somehow, though, I didn't think that was the news that
Josh was waiting to tell me.

"What is it, Josh?" I go, my voice all weak and like trembling. There'd been a
lot of changes -- maybe too many-- in roy life lately. Like I'd been a militant
vegetarian for a while but I was cured by a bacon chili cheeseburger with
grilled onions from Bar's Mike and Grill not far from our house. And ray maroon
Renault had gone to car hell because no one in town would work on it, and Josh
had bought me a cream '77 Fiat 124 Spider 'cause I'd always wanted a little
European roadster. It wasn't running so well, either.

So l was all set to hear that the condo association had raised its quarterly
fee, or that Josh was being sued by someone allergic to cotton swabs, or some
damn weird thing. What Josh told me, though, I wasn't prepared for at all.

He gave me that puny smile again and goes, "Betsy, I'm desperately in love with
my receptionist, Candi Ann, and I can't live without her and I'm leaving you for
her and you and Malachi Bret have four weeks to find someplace else to live."

That was the moment I knew Mums' assessment of Josh had been right all along. He
was scum or even lower than scum, whatever that might be.

I smiled back at Josh and Igo, "No, huh."

I've learned a little bit about being a tough, '90s kind of gal from my friend,
Muffy. She, of course, was my long-ago-and-f ar-away best friend from high
school, Maureen Danielle Birnbaum. For sure, she absolutely hates being called
Muffy these days -- though she thought it was like pretty neat when those
Andover and Exeter guys called her that. I tell her, I go, "If you keep calling
me Bitsy when I want to be called Elizabeth, you just got to expect the same in
return." I just laid it out for her.

Actually, like the only important differences in our status is that my folks
have more money than hers, and Muffy has a broadsword and I don't, you know?

So you got to let me explain about the broadsword. See, a while back, for some
crazy reason I mostly fail to believe, Muffy like transported herself
spaceshipless to the Planet Mars, where she fought battles and won the undying
love and respect of a cashingly handsome prince and his benchlings.

Ever since, she's been trying to return to Mars and Prince Van, but although she
manages to transport just fine, it's like she has no control over the
destination. It seems to make no difference, because she always ends up
someplace exciting, and she has way rode adventures, and she always comes back
here to regale and annoy me with her stories.

Well, after Josh's lame announcement, I went over to stay with Mums and Daddy
for a while. I sure couldn't stay in the condo with my faithless former
ever-loving soulmate. And I took Malachi Bret with me. He was four years old
now, and he just loved to color in the wall space around Mums' electrical
outlets. I must admit that I thought he showed a certain de Chirico flair, but
the effect was totally lost on Mums.

Anyway, I was lying on the bed in my old room. I was watching a "Geraldo" show
about how blind people are struggling to deal with the designated driver
concept. For some reason I thought this was the most tragic thing I'd ever heard
of, and I couldn't stop crying. I had a box of Kleenex by one hand and a
half-pound bag of malted milk balls by the other. Mums' cat, Loathing, was
asleep on my feet. Her mate, Fear, was sitting on the TV, his fluffy tail
hanging down in front of Geraldo's face. Mums swears that both of them hate the
anthropocentrist word "cat," and prefer to be called "feline-Americans."

I heard a sound. It was a sort of whuffle.

"It could be Santa," I thought. I was dubious, because it was ordy September. I
turned toward the windows, and there was Muffy, still in her goddamn gold
brassiere and G-string, still toting all the spoils from her various conquests,
still dragging around Old Betsy, her broadsword. It's not named after me -- I
should be so honored -- but because that's what Davy Crockett called his rifle.

"Yo, where you at, B?" she goes.

See, first she called me Bitsy, and then she called me Bits, which I hated in an
ultimate sort of way, and now it was just B. I wondered what would be next --
just the Buh part, without the Ee.

"Aw, Muffy, "I go, "you practically promised you wouldn't come back here
anymore."

She grinned her warrior-woman grin. "Fortunately, things changed miraculously,
aren't you glad? And don't call me Muffy, okay?"

I took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. "So where did you end up this
time?"

She grinned again. "I'll give you a hint. To quote Groucho Marx in 'A Night at
the Opera, '--boogie, boogie, boogie!"

You see what I mean? I cleverly hid the bag of malted milk balls under the
covers. She wasn't going to get even one. For what it's worth, here's her
stirring account.

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of my mind to
remember things from one day to the next. I have had some startling and
thrilling exploits--many more than you have recorded for the education of my
audience-- yet so often my adventure is made all the more arduous by what I have
come to call "inappropriate forgetfulness."

In the mirror I still appear young, as young as I did when I studied at the
Greenberg School; nevertheless, I sometimes wonder if I have developed an
unusually premature case of Alzheimer's Disease. I get lost in jungles more
easily than I care to admit, I sometimes forget the names of heroic people of
both sexes, and likewise, the villains, and I'm always leaving behind just those
items that would substantiate the oral history of my wonderful journeys, when I
tell them to you, my dear friend, Blitzy Bitsy Spiegelman. Or Spiegelman-Fein.
Or maybe it's just Spiegelman again these days. You've got to let me know which
you want me to use.

I have just returned from an exploit filled with occult evil, wizardry, and
terror beyond imagining. Alas, I -- and one other-- alone remain to tell the
tale, and once more, alas, I have nothing to support my words but a bit of
charred rope which I could have obtained anywhere.

Bitsy, have you noticed that my narrative style has become like you know, dated,
clumsy, and ornate? That I'm not talking in the airy colloquial phrases for
which I'm justly celebrated? That is one of the insidious effects of my brash
with . . . the horror. For now, that's the only way I can refer to it. I dare
not name it until I have made the setting clear. Later you will know all, and
you will wish that you did not. It will be my fault if your dreams are troubled
for weeks and months to come, but I know how eagerly you look forward to these
recitations of my courageous endeavors.

It all began in the Sterling Memorial Library at Yale University, like the
largest open-stack library in the Free World. I saw your eyes open wider when I
mentioned the college. I suppose as old as you get, you never lose the certainty
that New Haven, Connecticut and Yale University are pretty much Heaven as far as
we Greenberg School girls were concerned. Harvard was too stuffy, Princeton too
rural, but Yale-- and those gallant Yalies! -- was what our education and
training had prepared us for. We were to go forth and charm a Yalie into
marriage; or else, if we failed, we tried to be satisfied with entering
matrimony with, oh, like a family practitioner, as you did.

Be that as it may, in my final (and I do mean like final) attempt to reach the
boffable Prince Van on Mars, I stretched myself out toward Mars; instead, I hit
that library in that university on the north shore of Long Island Sound. I
realized that I was on Earth immediately, of course; I've had other exploits on
Earth, but they've all been with mythical figures or in historical times. Now,
however, I had dropped into the Sterling Memorial Library, and a newspaper there
informed me that it was March 1, 1966.

I worried for a moment. I had whooshed, all right, but I hadn't whooshed very
far in either time or space. This had been happening pretty often lately. The
next time I whoosh, who knows but I may end up only an hour in the past,
standing in my magnificent Amazonian regalia in Rabbi and Mrs. Gold's bedroom
four houses down the block.

Did this mean that my career as the premier female swordsperson and all-around
savior of men and women in distress had come to an end? Was I like stuck here,
in the recent past in New Haven, forever? Well, it could have been worse. I
could have journeyed back to Mars and discovered that Prince Van broke our dates
all the time and never called the next day. He might have been interested in One
Thing and One Thing only, something I wouldn't like give up easily even to him.
He might have wanted the two of us to go live with his mother, the queen, for
God's sake.

I guess that as the years passed, and as my failures to return to Mars became
embarrassingly numerous, my once-vivid memories of the glorious Prince Van began
to fade. Also, I'd begun to suspect that the handsome prince didn't want to be
found, and that I'd been put on some kind of interplanetary Hold or something.

Further, I might mention, I'd met another young man early in my adventures, a
stalwart and courageous person of great intellect and dating. I was to meet him
again during this shocking and unspeakable experience, although I did not know
it when I first arrived, dressed in my fighting harness of skimpy leather and
strands and strings of gold and jewels. I still wore my battle sword, Old Betsy,
in her scabbard at my side, and my tangled hair and grim, warrior-woman
expression left me pretty much out of place in the cool and quiet precincts of
the Sterling Memorial Library.

In fact, security personnel were already hurrying toward me, either to like
slaughter me where I stood or, at the very least, to eject me forcibly from the
premises. As a fighting woman proud of her accomplishments and possessing
superior combat skills, agility, and strength, I welcomed the challenge. It was
only later that I realized that I'm always causing unnecessary uproar when I
might fare better without making a scene at all.

This time, as usual, I did make a scene. Old Betsy sang as I whanged her from
her scabbard. Immediately, all the security guards stopped in their tracks and
pulled out their LFRs. LFRs are Little Radios; I don't need to tell you what the
F word is, because it's the F word, and I just don't use language like that.
People tell me that they're impressed that I can whoosh around the universe and
have strange encounters all the time and still remain the sweet and innocent
young lady I was years ago at the Greenberg School.

Discretion, as I've come to know, is somewhere between 56% and 64% of valor. I
responded in my new and highly regarded mature manner, and reassured the armed
guards that I Meant Them No Harm. "There, there," I go, smiling and patting the
air soothingly and behaving almost completely in a non-threatening way. Then I
simply turned my back on the uniformed security personnel and made my way
outdoors and into the late winter sunlight.

All right, I'd escaped from the world-renowned library, but my costume didn't
work very well on the Old Campus, either. Especially in New Haven during this
ancient era when even Carnaby Street was just too far-out for all of America
northeast of Time Square. Remember that reaction you got from Miss Schildkraut,
Silas Marner and Ninth Grade English, when you bought that too-grotty-for-words
transparent plastic handbag? She was sure you were listening to drug-crazed
moptop music and smoking banana peels yourself, too.

I had one immediate priority: a nice outfit from Ann Taylor Sportswear on Chapel
Street, hard by the notorious Hotel Taft where many of our consoeurs have been
overcome by passion and gin. I was thinking of a pale green, button-down collar
shirtdress that I could wear through the spring, a pair of matching Jacques
Cohen espadrilles, a Provencal print handbag from Pierre Deux, and like whatever
accessories happened to catch my eye.

If the saleshuman who served me thought the ready-to-rumble costume I wore into
the shop was even the least bit bizarre, she hid it well -particularly when I
took out the largish stash of cash I kept hidden in its sanctum in the left cup
of my golden bra. I'd sold some gold and jewels after the last time I saw you,
and I was going to need the folding money. My stepmother Pammy's gold card,
which was in my right cup, wouldn't do me any good in 1966. I don't know if they
even had BankAmericards back then.

Good old Pammy, I thought, how long it had been since I'd seen her. Oh my Gawd,
Bitsy, I just thought that she probably still hasn't finished paying off my
shopping duel with that hard-bitten bitch, Maid Marian.

I could only hope that my family was proud of me.

Well, I was now clothed appropriately for New Haven -- or I thought I was, until
I stepped out into the in-like-a-lion March wind. It was pretty damn cold,
Bitsy. Whatever my exploit was going to be, I was just about certain that I
could use a good Republican cloth coat. Not that I'm necessarily a Republican --
I am chiefly nonpartisan in my politics, preferring to remain available to come
to the aid of anyone in need regardless of race, ethnic origin, religion, or
creed. It's just that here I was, back in 1966, and like Nixon wasn't even
President yet, but he reminded me of that cloth coat comment and how he wouldn't
give the goddamn dog back. History was really redundant the second time around.

I decided to book it over to the Yale Co-op, like totally forgetting that I was
stuck temporarily in the dim, dark ages before Yale admitted female
undergraduates, and the selection of women's merchandise was going to be minimal
at best. Nevertheless, I got myself a mildly wildly colored ski jacket that I'd
just have to be satisfied with and a sterling silver circle pin, which I'd
forgotten to buy for my shirtdress at Ann Taylor's.

Then, it happened.

What was it, I hear you go in your shocked and like breathless voice. Yes, it
was eerie and dreadful in the most total extreme, a nightmarish confrontation
that made my blood run as cold as that time when I thought I'd gotten, you know,
PG from French-kissing that crispo dude from Waite Hoyt Junior High. Sure,
Bitsy, now you can look back on that and laugh, but what I witnessed in the Yale
Co-op near the vinyl record section was too demented and ichorous and fiendish
to ever pry a giggle from me.

It was that guy, that Rod Marquand.

Now don't go all ignorant on me. You remember him very well. He was the one who
appeared suddenly while I was being held captive by that talking ape-monster,
Yag-Nash. Rod had that submarine sort of thing that traveled through solid rock.
His problem was that he was more interested in like fighting crime than in
wrestling with me, and I guess I stormed out of his company in a well-rehearsed
huff.

So, the question immediately presents itself for asking, what was Rod Marquand,
boy-inventor extraordinaire, doing at the Yale Co-op twenty full years before
our encounter at the center of the Earth, and looking exactly the same as he had
then!

You see, there were only two possible answers. The first was that he drank the
blood of innocent virgins to maintain his hideous and dreadful youth -- but that
was like scarcely possible, because he'd never made move one toward any of my
arteries, and you know I'd given him plenty of opportunities.

The second answer was that he was immortal and ageless, as I myself seem to be.
That was another reason that like screamed that Rod Marquand and I were perfect
for each other, made for each other as few other couples have been through the
whole sad parade of history.

Yet this Rod was like twenty years younger than the one I'd known during the
Yag-Nash episode. He would be meeting me as if for the first time. That didn't
tell me why he didn't recognize me at the Earth's core, twenty years later. I
went to Dr. Bertram A. Waters of the Yale University of Plasmonics Department
for help in understanding what had happened. He gave me like this completely
murky explanation. Here it is, as best as I can recall it:

"My dear Miss Bimbaum --" he goes.

I go -- believe me -- "I'm not your dear anything, pal."

He got this look on his face like someone had slipped the head of a banana slug
into his bag of malted milk balls. See, Bitsy, I know you got them there under
the covers. He goes, "I doubt if I'm your 'pal,' either, but I suppose it's just
a figure of speech. In any event, Maureen -- may I call you Maureen?"

"If you must," I go, wishing that he'd like just get on with it.

"How does one understand time? There are various ways of imagining it. And yes,
time is mostly imaginary. Of course, events happen and they must have some
matrix to happen in, if you follow me. One instant the electron is all excited,
and the next instant it's emitted its photon and gone home." I swear, Bitsy, the
guy leered at me. Take it from me, sweetie, Mo knows leering for sure.

And don't ever call me "Mo."

Dr. Waters told me that he thought of time -- everyone's personal timeline -- as
a string that stretches from Point A to Point Z. Now, if sometime somebody
figures out how to travel back in time, the string goes from Point A to, say,
Point L, loops back to Point G, maybe, then turns back through Point L -- in a
different place -- and on again to Point Z. So if you meet a guy at Point G who
is or will be a time-traveler, there's no telling if this is like his first or
second pass through that moment. And there can be any number of trips into the
past by the same chrononaut, looping again and again at Point G or any other
point. Trust me on this, Bitsy, 'cause I took the trouble to consult experts.

No? Well, never mind, because I mean Dr. Waters wasn't completely sold on his
own theory, and neither was I.

BTW -- that's "by the way," by the way -- I described what I'd seen in the Yale
Co-op a bunch of ways, including ichorous. I may have exaggerated un petit peu,
but Rod Marquand is on the far side of ichorous, and I should know.

Suddenly, when I saw him standing there, I wondered how I was going to meet him.
I understood without even really thinking about it that it wasn't just a
coincidence-- Rod was here and we were going to have an exploit together, like
before at the center of the Earth, only this time would technically be the
first.

So I grabbed the nearest object -- it happened to be the Beatles' newly released
album Rubber Soul-- and I walked right up to him. My God, Bitsy, you know I've
never been shy around boys. I think it's one of the things they admire most
about me. That and my broadsword.

Well, I go, "Have you heard this album yet?"

Rod blinked at me-- oh, he was T.C.T.L.! Too cute to live, honey, just try to
stay with me -- and he goes, "It's their best so far, I think It's fab and
groovy."

I smiled a little at his antique slang, on him it was like real, real sweet. I
go, "I've heard some of it on the radio. What do you think 'Norwegian Wood'
really means?"

"It could be a code, you know," Rod goes. "An encryption of some enigmatic
message known only to the Beatles themselves and their innermost circle."

I sighed. "I wish I could be in that circle. I wish I could be Jane Asher." I
remembered that in 1966 I had a crush on Paul, the cute one.

"Well," goes Rod, "their music is really neat, but at the moment there are more
important things competing for my time and attention." As buf and tuf as Rod
Marquand is, he's more of a party vegetable, if you get my drift. Sometimes I
think he'd have to ask a girl to give him lessons before he could even be a
wallflower.

"I'd like to know what those things are," I go, smiling my never-miss dreamy
smile, Number Five at 75 % power.

"If I'm not being too forward," Rod goes, completely conquered, "I'd like to
invite you to have dinner with me at my residential college."

"What college are you in?"

"Branford," he goes, with an unspoken "of course" appended at the end.

It wasn't like a very long walk from the Co-op to the High Street entrance to
Branford College, but I mean! The wind had picked up and now rain mixed with
sleet had begun falling. I was damn glad I'd had the foresightfulness to buy the
ski jacket. Rod put his hand under my elbow, evidently believing he was doing
the yo-ho manly thing and helping me walk on the slippery pavement.

I simply shrugged away and smiled prettily and I go, "I'm so sure I can walk
just fine by myself, thanks. Like I've only been doing this since I was a baby
and everything."

He got a wounded puppy look on his face and maybe it was good for him. I told
myself that I couldn't really expect a 90s kind of guy in 1966, but then I
decided that it was never too soon to put somebody in touch with his real self.

We passed through the ironwork gate of Branford College, beneath the vasty,
shadowed heights of Harkness Tower and The World's Most Illegible Clock. It was
dinner time and I was ravenous. I hadn't eaten since twenty-seven years in the
future.

"It looks like salisbury steak and two veg," Rod goes.

"Oh, we have that all the time at the Greenberg School," I go.

He smiled down at me and goes, "Not the way they make it here. We've got
Jonathan Edwards' own recipe."

"Jonathan Edwards?" I thought he might have been a disk jockey on WABC-AM in the
mid-60s.

"'Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God! That Jonathan Edwards. There's another
residential college named after him across the way."

Like nothing makes salisbury steak, two veg, and chocolate milk go down better
than contemplating "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." I remembered
something about spiders dangling on thin strands of web above the hellfire.

The evening proceeded to get ever more weird and romantic from that point on.

We'd finished eating and Rod put one hand on mine. He gazed into my eyes and
goes, "Want some dessert?"

"I've told you that I'm a warrior-woman," I go. We'd gone through all that
during the walk from the Co-op. I'd unwrapped Old Betsy and given him a hot look
at my auric underwear. "I have to guard constantly against putting on weight,
but I suppose a serving of bread pudding and some more chocolate milk wouldn't
hurt me too much."

"Bread pudding?" Rod goes. "Why, that's my favorite dessert!" We just had so
much in common.

That led to a discussion of the codification of all types of bread pudding,
according to the official Ivy League definition. The chart looked something like
this:
                               YES           NO
Hot
Cold
Whiskey Sauce
Rum Sauce
Firm
Fluffy
With Raisins
Without Raisins

In 1966, the sixteen possible combinations like totally described bread pudding
as science understood it at that point in time. Today, of course, with
high-speed computers and the other miracles given to us by the space program,
there are bread pudding types that were unimaginable during the Lyndon Johnson
administration. For example, the best bread pudding I've ever had is served in
the Palace Cafe on Canal Street in New Orleans, and it comes with a fantastic
white chocolate sauce. In the 60s, such a thing would've been as illegal as
beans in chili.

We found ourselves holding hands as we went back through the Branford cafeteria
line. We each got a serving of bread pudding (hot, rum, fluffy, with raisins,
and extremely good). When we returned to our table, Rod goes, "Hello! What's
this?"

It was a page of photocopy paper, the strange, stark copies they turned out in
the early days of the industry.

I tried to read the writing on the page, but it was in some strange occult
language. There were nightmarish drawings of nameless, hideous, tentacled
creatures. I shuddered and gave the paper back to Rod.

He stared at the writing for a few moments, and then began to murmur, "Dead is
not that which can through ages lie, to see in fell times how even death may
die."

Gave me the shivering creeps, know what I mean, Bitsy? Not so my Hot Rod. He
just shook his head. "Somebody's been playing some twisted joke on me lately,
Maureen," he goes. "This isn't the first time I've gotten a copy of what the
prankster wants me to think is some demented, malevolent manuscript."

"You can read it, though?" I go. I pretended to show interest in Rod's hobbies,
because Miss Kanon, the gym teacher, always told us that would make us popular
with the boys. It always worked for me.

"Yes," Rod goes, "it's an old dialect of Arabic. I studied it one summer when my
uncle, Dr. Zach Marquand, took me to Egypt to help me solve the Mystery of the
Dismembered Murderers."

"And you think someone is sending you joke messages in an obscure, ancient
dialect? Why?"

Rod's adorable face suddenly went like all serious, you know? "I can't say for
sure. The first was just a scrap, with the words Cthulhu fhtagn written on it.
This 'Cthulhu' has been mentioned again and again. I don't know what it means."

I shuddered, even in the bright warmth of the Branford dining hall. "Cthulhu
fhtagn," I go, all thoughtful. "It sounds Gaelic to me, not Arabic."

"It's neither," Rod goes.

"Maybe," I go, shivering again, "maybe it's the long-dead language of those
scaly, unclean squid-headed creatures."

Rod didn't even respond to that notion. "Then there were all the references to
the Sunken City of R'lyeh, and some blasphemous, horrible fertility goddess
called Shub-Niggurath. And pages and pages of drawings and scraps of
incomprehensible poetry and . . . warnings."

I'll confess, Bitsy, my stomach started to hurt. "Listen, Rod," I go, "why don't
we forget about Cthulhu tonight and just go see Michael Caine in Alfie. It's
showing at the College for a buck and a half."

"Yes," he goes, folding the photocopy paper and tucking it into an inside pocket
of his sport coat. "I'm not going to let some minor-league mentality get the
better of me. I'm just going to ignore the entire business."

"Fine," I go. "Let's boogie."

"Let's . . . what?"

I stood up and he got up, too. "I'll let you carry my broadsword. I never let
just anybody do that, you know."

We had a nice time at the movie, although Michael Caine's character was like
this pig. Afterward, we went someplace for a light supper, and Rod installed me
in the Hotel Taft. I shuddered alone in my bed, imagining that I could hear the
helpless shrieks of my overpowered sisters as they were assaulted by tentacled
fiends from R'lyeh wearing blue J. Press blazers and gray slacks.

I had fallen fast asleep, and believe me, Bitsy, my dreams were populated by
obscene monsters that spoke in a Cockney accent. When my phone rang, I sat
upright, terrified. I didn't know where I was or what time it was or anything. I
answered the phone, sure that I was going to hear nothing but whistling,
blubbery monster noises.

Instead, Rod goes, "Maureen? I hope I didn't wake you up."

It was one-thirty in the morning. "No, don't worry about it. I was just like
sleeping."

"Good. Now, listen closely. When I returned to my rooms, I discovered several
strange and ominous signs. First, my roommate, Sandy, was nowhere to be found.
You have to understand that Sandy is terribly incompetent socially, and he
usually retires to his bedroom shortly after dinner. It's entirely unlike him to
be out so late."

I wasn't as upset about it as Rod was, but after all, I didn't know Sandy.
"Maybe he's fallen in love with a forgiving townie woman," I go. "Or maybe he
just really needed a burger or something."

Rod ignored my simple explanations. "Further," he goes, "the casement windows
were forced open from the inside. Upon closer inspection, I found traces of a
horrible, foul-smelling slime on the window sill, and it was dripping and oozing
down the outside wall to the ground."

"Slime," I go in a flat voice. I just knew we were going to run into slime
somewhere along the way. Greenberg School girls are, as you know, Bitsy,
antipathetic toward slime in general.

"The last dreadful clue was that the trail of slime led right to Harkness Tower.
The door had been burst open, and as I entered and looked up the stairwell that
led to the clocktower and carillon, I noted a diffuse and flickering greenish
light descending from the highest level."

"Calm down, Rod," I go. "Now tell me why you called me about all this."

"Well, Maureen," he goes -- and I could tell that he was like way embarrassed --
"I am inclined to take those notes, drawings, and warnings more seriously. My
theory is that one of those eldritch evils abducted Sandy with foul intent, and
has dragged him to the top of Harkness Tower. I called you because --"

"-- because I'm the one with the broadsword," I go. "Okay, I'll get dressed and
be right there."

Immediately I had like this gross image problem: The proper costume to accompany
Old Betsy was the metallic bra and G-string, of course. We're talking New
England winter, though, and if I got into my familiar barbarian drag, I'd freeze
my tush off. And the alternative -- wearing the Ann Taylor shirtdress with the
broadsword -- was too ludicrous even to consider.

I compromised. I wore the leather harness and gold bikini, and zipped up the ski
jacket over them. I hefted Old Betsy, made sure I had my hotel key and bus fare,
and headed out fearlessly into the night.

By the time I got to Branford and the entrance to the chapel in the base of
Harkness Tower, my legs had goosebumps the size of loquats, I'm telling you. My
Rod was waiting for me. He rushed to me and enclosed me in his arms. "Don't be
afraid, my dear," he goes. "I've picked up some spells along the way that I'm
confident will protect us against most of the perverse beings we may meet up
there."

"Most?" I go. I shuddered. I really wished he hadn't said "most."

"If you guard my back," he goes, "I'll lead the way." He was so brave! Finally
here was a man I could respect.

I also wasn't crazy about his use of the word "spells." He was introducing at
this late date a severely fantastic element into what had been-- except for the
Saint Graal business, which was no doubt just the nightmare effect of a
late-night pizza or something -- clearly a super-scientific series of
adventures. I explained my objection to Rod.

"I'm dead certain that there's a super-scientific explanation to this, too," he
goes. "We just have to find out what it is. Come on, now."

I wasn't crazy about his use of the term "dead certain," while we're at it.

"I've got a flashlight, Maureen," Rod goes bravely. "A lot of predatory animals
flee bright light."

"Oh yeah," I go. "How many slime-trailing sleepless, slimy, slobbering things do
you know that will run and hide from your Eveready?"

"Okay," he goes, "you've put your finger on the major difficulty of our
expedition here. We're up against the unknown, and we can't predict how
successful our conventional fighting techniques will be. It may be that my
spells and your broadsword ability will avail us naught against the poisonous
entities from beyond the stars. But I ask you, what else can we do?"

I didn't hesitate long let me tell you. "We could wait for help in the morning.
We could consult more learned authorities on campus-- and surely there are a few
paraphysicists who could help us. We could give your roommate up for lost and go
have breakfast in a short while. We could hope that Cthulhu or whoever is
intruding on our peace might just decide to look around and go home. There are
any number of other courses of action beside going up this spiral stairwell."

"Let's climb, anyway," Rod goes. "There isn't much other choice."

"As long as you'll take the first attack from beyond the stars. That will give
me time to scramble back down the stairs. Just kidding, of course."

We did climb nearer and nearer the carillon bells, and nothing more disturbing
interrupted us for a time. After a while, however, the carillon began to sway a
bit in the non-existent breeze, clapping together and making strange, unearthly,
ancient-sounding bell melodies. At the same time, I noticed that pulsating
poisonous patterns were written out on the stone walls in nacreous, glowing
runes that neither Rod nor I could identify, as well as terrible, twisting
pictographs that moved of their own accord. They writhed before us, and we had
no way of knowing how to interpret them.

There were overwhelmingly strong hints of monsters, of gods or creatures from
beyond our time and space. I wondered how we could possibly understand them --
and if we couldn't understand them, then how could we battle them? Were we
doomed to become slaves to their will?

No. I'll let you know that right up front, Bitsy. At this point in the
investigation, the manifold forms of The Great Old Ones did not possess us. We
had a means of escape. Let me tell you about it.

Rod had apparently studied many of the subtexts that dealt with the rites of The
Great Old Ones, as well as others that involved the Outer Gods and other alien
races and monsters.

There were, unfortunately, many, many classes of ancient, unknown, inhuman,
mind-numbing gods. The one encountered by me and good old Rod was called a Dark
Young of Shub-Niggurath. Though less formidable than some of the other Outer
Gods, it still appeared in a horrible, unspeakable, repellent form.

It was a gigantic, grasping thing, a hideous animated "tree" with poisonous
tentacles for branches; the tentacles ended in black hooves, and the creature
could shamble clumsily across the ground. It had many puckered mouths, each
dripping the same gruesome green slime we'd seen in Rod's Branford suite. The
Dark Young reeked like an opened grave, and it towered over us some fifteen feet
tall. I'll tell you at once, dear, it was certainly not pleasant in any respect.

Rod was prepared, however; he knew a brief can trip that freed us from the
horror of the Dark Young. I didn't understand a word of the spell, as it was
spoken in some lost language that delighted in words ending in -- vowel-t-h and
other vocabulary that was so guttural that you could get gall stones just
listening to it. My Greenberg School dabbling into European dialects was hardly
enough to keep me informed of what was happening.

Anyway, the Dark Young seemed to freeze. It became absolutely motionless, and
then began to shrink. To me, it looked like it was disappearing down a dark,
featureless tunnel. We didn't wait around long enough to see what would happen
next. "Follow me, sweetheart," I cried, and I led the way down the staircase and
out of the tower. You must know by now that I have no problem being decisive
and, anyway, I didn't want that green goo all over my trusty broadsword.

I realized that I'd been holding my breath, and it was good to inhale deeply in
the fresh, cold air of the Branford courtyard. "I'll see you back to the Taft,"
Rod goes. "First thing in the morning, we'll pay a call on the Sterling Library.
I believe they have some texts that will help understand what's happening here."

I nodded. Of course, I yearned to get into battle, but I was also wise enough to
realize that we had some homework to take care of first. "What about Sandy, your
roommate?" I go.

Rod rubbed his strong, square chin. "I think Sandy is the prisoner of some
greater, more grotesque evil. The Dark Young was there merely to stall us, or to
frighten us into giving up the chase."

"Fear?" I go, laughing. "It's not even in my primary word-list. I'll meet you
here at nine-thirty tomorrow morning. I want to get myself a pair of jeans, a
sweatshirt, and some good sneakers. I don't want to go up against the Vast
Unclean from Dimension X in an Ann Taylor shirtdress."

"Whatever you say, Maureen," he goes. "The forces of the profane will be
patient."

That made me shudder despite myself.

Time passes. That's a quote, by the way, Bitsy, and a Snickers bar if you can
tell me where it comes from. Give up? Dylan Thomas, you remember. Time passes.
It's morning, I hopped by the Co-op again and got myself some horrible new stiff
blue jeans, a blue sweatshirt with "Yale University" printed in teeny tiny
letters-- reverse ostentation, I called it-- and some canvas gym shoes. This was
in the Nouveau Stone Age before Reeboks, you know. I'm wearing the ski jacket
and carrying the shirtdress in a bag with Old Betsy. I was ready to get down. As
it were.

Well, I trudged back to High Street and Branford College. I have to admit that I
suppressed another shudder as I passed beneath Harkness Tower, but it was
daytime now and bright and warm under the sun, and the Dark Young of
Shub-Niggurath might have been just some black-and-white monster from a movie
somewhere between Godzilla and Mothra.

Hey, did you ever wonder how, when a new monster appears in Japan, the people
immediately know its name? I figured it out. They have a list, like with
hurricanes. A new monster gets the next name on the list. The giant turtle
appears and everybody goes, "Ohhh, Gammera the Invincible!" It's simple if you
understand the Asian point of view. Well, of course I do, what do you know about
it?

Rod was waiting for me in the courtyard, fidgeting a little. "Good morning,
Maureen," he goes. He like gave me a chaste, heroic kiss on the cheek. Jeez, he
was almost perfect!

"Let's do it," I go. My voice was deep and rumbly. I was fully in my
fighting-woman persona again.

We walked to the Sterling Memorial Library. This time when I went in, no one
made a fuss. I looked like Suzy Co-Ed, even though, as I've mentioned, Yale
hadn't yet got its act together about that. Maybe the librarians and security
guards all believed I was some Smith or Bennington talent down for a few days.

Rod murmured to me, "The texts we need to consult are in a special section, the
Omega Collection. They're generally not available to the public, but I'm a good
friend of the curator. I've used that material before, and I'll explain to Dr.
Christenson that this is an emergency. He'll understand."

About a quarter of an hour later, a very old, very fragile book came clown a
dumbwaiter for us. It was so ancient, it could've been like the first rough
draft of the Old Testament, you know? Rod treated it with caution and great
respect, and carried it over to a table where we could browse through its mystic
text.

"This is an English translation of the Necronomicon," Rod goes, "hand-copied
from Dr. John Dee's original manuscript sometime in the last two or three
centuries. It is extremely rare, and literally priceless in value. It's a very
great honor to be allowed to view this book."

"Well," I go, "I'm suitably impressed."

"This is also the source of the photocopied drawings and inscriptions that I've
received," he goes. He turned a few pages. "Hello! What's this?"

Another photocopy had been inserted between two of the book's crumbling pages.
It said, "R.M." -- that must have stood for "Rod Marquand," I guessed- and then
some numbers. "What does it mean?" I go.

"If I'm correct, this is a certain longitude and latitude. We'll need to consult
an accurate atlas next."

"Is it a warning?" I go. "Or a challenge?"

Rod gazed at me steadily. "Perhaps both," he goes. He didn't show the least hint
of fear.

A few minutes later, we'd established the location indicated on the photocopy.
The city of New Haven, Connecticut is hemmed in by two large ridges, West Rock
and East Rock. Both are easily climbed, with roads twisting back and forth from
their bases to their summits. They make for pleasant hiking in the spring and
fall.

The intersection of longitude and latitude fell right at the topmost point of
East Rock. "There," Rod goes, stabbing his finger down on the map, "that's where
we'll find It. And, I hope, my roommate, Sandy."

Rod had a bicycle and he borrowed another for me, and together we pedaled toward
our grim destination. I was completely lost, because I didn't know New Haven
very well beyond the immediate environs of the university. It was too early in
the season for the journey to be picturesque. No flowers bloomed, and the oaks
and elms loomed above us naked and black in their leaflessness.

It was good warrior-woman exercise, though, and I could feel the burn in my
mighty thews as I pushed the Italian ten-speed up the long slope of East Rock.
I've found that just as everyone in the universe miraculously speaks English,
and that I miraculously never seem to age, also miraculously I rarely put on too
much weight. Oh, there'll be a pound or two now and then around the holidays or
after some wanton barbarian feast, but my active life has toned me up much
better than your exclusive health club seems to have done for you. No offense,
Bitsy, of course I'm not being catty.

"Look, there !" Rod goes. He was like freaking out on me.

I stared where he was pointing and I couldn't see a goddamn thing. He dragged
his bike across the road, and I followed. When I got closer, I saw why he was so
excited. He'd discovered a small crack in the rock that proved to be the
entrance to a noxious, noisome, unspeakable cavern.

Lord only knows how many thousands of people had passed right by that place, but
it took the eagle eye of Rod Marquand to spot the significant opening. I knew
there was nothing in the Yale student guide to New Haven about noxious, noisome,
unspeakable caves. Unspeakable rival schools, maybe, but nothing about caves.

"We're getting close," he goes." I can feel it."

It was dark, and there were webby things hanging down in my face. "It sure is
unspeakable in here," I go. "Indescribable, too."

"Don't talk, Maureen," he goes. "Save your energy for It."

"What is this It we're going to be going up against?" I go. "Can you give me an
idea?"

Rod's voice came from further into the cavern, whose floor had begun to slope
upward. "Perhaps Great Cthulhu himself. There's no way of knowing. I hope you
have a tight grasp on your sanity."

"I've got a tight grasp on Old Betsy," I go. "She's always been enough for me so
far."

"You've never been confronted by one of the Slobbering Obscene before."

"Except last night," I go, reminding him. He did not answer. That bothered me,
too.

I could not see Rod, so I trudged along behind him. It had become stiflingly
warm inside the cave, and I unzipped the ski jacket. I wanted to drop the jacket
altogether, because I could better wield my sword without it, but I thought,
"Hey. What if we run into the Ice Abomination from the Moons of Pluto?" Better
safe than sorry is the motto of our wing of the Bimbaum clan, you know.

Ahead of me I heard Rod go "Courane? Is that you?" There was an awful moment of
silence, and then he goes, "My God, Sandy! What's happened to you?"

I go, "Oh boy, here we go. Get yourself ready for Interstellar Pudding
Monsters."

In a marvelous testimony to my innate courage and like sheer, overwhelming
gutsiness, I did not hesitate. I hurried along until I beheld the excruciating,
festering creature that Rod's friend had become.

"It must have been the contact with the Great Old Ones," Rod goes in a frantic,
fearful voice.

Sandy had become a gnarled, aged man, lurching and clutching blindly in the
flickering greenish glow emanating from some sort of well in the midst of the
cavern. His hair had turned white and most of it had kind of fallen out, you
know? And he drooled a weird substance that was truly, truly ichorous. He could
barely be called human anymore, and if it were up to me, I wouldn't have. Yet,
after all, he was still in some way connected to his elder self -Rod's companion
and roommate.

"I can't stand it!" Rod goes. "Maureen, beware! That which caused this change in
Courane lies nearby, and you risk the soundness of your mind should you chance
to make contact with it!" I thought Rod's speech had taken a sharp turn into the
melodramatic, but I didn't say anything about that.

Around Sandy floated odd shapes -- illusions, lesser monsters, or
thought-projected weapons I could not tell. They looked like . . . well, apart
from being indescribable, they looked like drab-colored, hovering paisleys.

"Paisleys, Rod!" I go. "Sandy is trying to tell us something!"

"Tell us something? How? And what is he trying to say?"

"I don't know!" I go. Like I was putting most of my attention on what had once
been your average college student. I didn't want to hurt Sandy, but I knew that
I might have to, in order to like save our lives. I concentrated my attack on
the paisleys. There were red paisleys, blue ones, and green ones. That cavern
looked like an explosion in the Land's End tie factory.

I learned very quickly that when I whacked a floating paisley, it became two
small floating paisleys. Something told me that it would be like ever so harmful
to let one of them touch us. I backed away a little more. The Sandy-creature
took a step forward, and the paisleys advanced with him.

"Be careful!" Rod goes helpfully. "He's trying to cut us off from the way out!"

I'd already noticed that, but then, of course, I'm a fierce fighting-person,
well-schooled in hand-to-hand combat, and therefore much better informed than
Rod in such warlike mysteries as strategy and tactics. Instead of slashing at
the nearest paisley, I just poked it a little. Just to see what happened.

It exploded. Into about a thousand micro-paisleys. "Jeez," I go. I was starting
to be troubled.

"He's humming!" Rod goes, all excited. "He's humming some spell!"

"What is it? What's it mean? You got a counter-spell?"

I couldn't see Rod, but his voice was sad. "No," he goes. "Unfortunately, it's
in the one Aramaic dialect I neglected in my studies. Wouldn't you just know
it?"

"Great," I muttered through my clenched teeth.

Onward Sandy came. Further back the floating paisleys pressed us. I could feel
the low wall of the gruesome well against my legs. Rod and I retreated further.
"Help me, Rod!" I go.

At about this very moment, Rod decided he'd had enough, and he de-invited
himself from the remainder of this confrontation. I did not hold it against the
dear young man. This may have been his first meeting with such an onslaught of
demonic activity, and he did not have either the experience or the fierce
determination that I had.

Further into the gloom we stumbled. I felt a single moment of despair, and then
suddenly I knew just what to do, as usual. I understood that I had to capture
Courane's attention, and I had to appeal to the small crumb of human
intelligence that still remained to him, unsullied by the dire alien influences.

"Sandy," I go, "paisley! Think paisley! I know what you're trying to tell us. If
you concentrate, I know I can pull you out of this horrible mind-control."

"Yeah?" goes Rod.

I ignored him for the moment. "Sandy, think about your paisley ties! Think Ivy
League, think crocodiles, think Lacoste shirts! Think Branford! Above all, think
Yale!"

Courane roared and staggered back. He brought his twisted, knotted hands to his
face, and he fell to one knee.

"I think you're on the right track, Maureen," goes Rod.

"You bet." I swung Old Betsy low, and she whanged off the fetid stone of the
glowing green well. Sandy's eyes opened a little wider, and he crawled back
another short distance.

"Remember the Clock at the Biltmore!" It still existed in this time, I knew.
"Think L.L. Bean, Sandy! And will Great Cthulhu supply you with gin and tonics?
I think not!" He was on both knees now, clawing at me either in supplication or
in a fevered, fiendish attempt to rip open my throat. I wish you'd seen me,
Bitsy. I was like stupendous.

"You think you'll get into a super-secret senior society like Skull and Bones
like this, Sandy?" I go. Well, maybe he could.

Finally, unable to withstand the fury of my psychological attack any longer, he
scrambled to his feet, uttered a long, ululating, despairing cry, and hurled
himself over the brink of the demonically gleaming well. I heard his shriek echo
from the walls for what seemed many minutes. With his last ounce of humanity,
Sandy had sacrificed himself for us.

Then there was like this silence, okay?

The floating paisleys had disappeared. The sense of foreboding gave way to,
well, boding. The permeating atmosphere of absolute evil lifted. Rod got to his
feet, shaking his head. "What . . . what happened?" he goes.

I took him by the hand. "Come along, dear," I go. "We have a long bike ride
home."

And that, pretty simply, is how I overcame the worst that the ancient,
amorphous, deathless, eldritch, gibbering gods of Elsewhere and Elsewhen threw
at me. I guess I'm just too solidly centered in Real Life to be driven crazy by
a bulbous and youldering octopoid. I figured I chased them all back to
Massachusetts, where they belonged.

So," she goes, "what do you think?"

"What do I think?" I go. "I think my life is over. I think my husband has left
me for his receptionist, I think my baby son doesn't have a father anymore, I
think I may have to move in with Mums and Daddy practically forever, and I think
I don't give a good goddamn what you do with your sword."

Muffy just stared at me for a moment. "Do you mean it?" she goes.

"Yeah, I mean it."

"I mean, like you've been testy before, God knows, but I could always count on
you, Bitsy."

"Elizabeth, please. Call me Elizabeth."

Muffy looked like a shelf of books had dumped on her head. "You'll get over it,"
she goes. "Sure, you will."

I dabbed at my nose with a tissue. "Go haunt somebody else for a while," I go.

She smiled sadly and shook her head. "I'm going to go find Rod Marquand and
we're going to continue our everlasting romance, and we're going to get married
and be happy forever, and I'm going to want you to be my matron of honor, so
you've got to get over this depression, Bitsy. C'mon, just cheer up!"

I almost threw a shoe at her, except I didn't have a shoe. She blew me a kiss,
walked out of my bedroom, and I haven't seen or heard from her since.

Thank you, Lord.