Zalinara

Cracked

The cracked walls are covered in writing. Names, dates, places, comments, obscene graffiti, drawings, nonsense words in half a dozen scripts and twice as many languages - all connected by lines that swoop and swirl and form dizzying patterns that seem to disappear into the flaking plaster if you look at them the wrong way. Or perhaps, if you look at them the right way.

The mad girl rocks herself, thin arms clasped around boney knees as she studies her handiwork. “It connects.” She mutters to herself, “It all connects. Just like last time.”

She tilts her head, listening. “No.” She says, “They don’t know. They don’t want to know.”

A pause, “They only know one name. Just one. They don’t know all the names.”

“No. Stop.” She rocks harder, her voice rising to a low, thin wail. “Stop, stop, stopstopstopstopit. Stop. Please stop.” She shakes her head, sending the stringy locks flying, “No. It hurts. I don’t want to. I didn’t mean to.”

She shudders once and opens eyes that stare through the blasphemous geometries of the wall into an infinite distance. “I didn’t mean to.” She whimpers.

One of the warped boards in the hallway creaks. She stops. Her ears twitch. It is the sound of the house warning her of intruders. She scuttles away from her flickering lamp to the dark corner where shadows writhe. Two men are in the hallway; two men who have heard rumours. The mad girl was seen buying food, the mad girl has money. Money will buy the men a fix, enough to stave off the pangs for another day. The men have not heard the other rumours.

The men peer through the doorway. They see the broken bed and the guttering lamp, the heap of tattered clothes and the mouldering stacks of books, they see the writing on the wall and it fills them with a nameless dread. They do not see the mad girl in the shadows. They do not see her hands move or hear the words she whispers.

A terrible fear precedes the mad girl when she steps forth from the shadows, her hands flickering with curses and chaos, her face set in a smile that is neither mad nor merciful. The men shrink from her, begging and pleading. She gestures and the cracked wall opens along the swirling lines she has so carefully inscribed.There is an overwhelming sensation of Presence, of too many eyes and too many mouths, of incredible age, and indescribable hunger.

The men are gone and through the gateway there is a momentary glimpse of tottering towers and ruined streets before it is only a cracked plaster wall again, decorated with the scribblings of a madwoman.

The mad girl nods to herself, her face hard with purpose, “I meant that. I remember now.”