'Your brother will die,'� a voice whispered in Megan's right ear. She knew the truth when she heard it.

Megan crushed the ten speed's hand brake. The bike skidded to a halt, the tires whining in protest as they rubbed against the concrete sidewalk. Megan snapped her head back and to the right, seeking for the voice's owner. Her red ponytail whipped around and into the side of her face. She saw no one.

Megan stood alone, straddling her Schwinn, on a deserted stretch of sidewalk in front of St. Mary's church. A stone faced, marble Jesus stared at her with unblinking, ever watchful eyes, his mouth an uncompromising hard line etched into his face, and he waved his hand in a promise of brotherhood. Behind her, a towering granite building stood, its oversized wooden doors and ornate stained glass windows failing to comfort the shaken girl.

She wore a solid white button down shirt, the only visible remnant of her prep school uniform, with its sleeves rolled up to the tops of her forearms and the first button undone, showing the subtle curves of a sixteen year old girl's developing bust line. Black mesh Nike gym shorts hung to her knees, leaving tanned calves exposed down to her socks and weathered tennis shoes. The rest of her uniform had been stuffed into her backpack, in preparation for the daily ride home. Megan loved the ride home, although she felt self conscious being the only girl her age who still biked home. She loved the wind whipping through her ponytail, the gentle tug of gravity upon every bump in the road, and the speed gained on the downhill slopes. Most of all, she loved the feeling of freedom, freedom to ride anywhere she desired, bound only by the endurance of her thighs and the memory banks of her internal compass.

'Your brother will die,'� the voice repeated, more insistent. A sharp pain hovered around the region of Meg's temples, accompanying the voice. She gritted her teeth against it and closed her eyes, suddenly aware of the salty sweat running into them, burning them. The mid afternoon sun shone on her back, shooting Meg's shadow across the sidewalk, merging her form with that of the bike, creating a hideous creature born of flesh and steel. Megan watched the knees of this creature buckle as her senses were once again assaulted by the voice. Megan unseated from the bike and lowered herself to the ground beside it, preoccupied with the thundering pain in her head and unmindful of the bike's clamor as it crashed to the ground. She bit her lip to stifle a cry as the pain tore through her head, keeping time with her pulse.

The sidewalk, heated all day by the May sun, burned Megan's bottom through her thin shorts, but Megan weathered the sensation in exchange for the reliable ground beneath her. Megan hugged her legs to her chest for stability. She glanced around the street once more, thankful that no one else could witness this scene. Megan lived in a time when it was common for families to own two, even three cars, and when the communal walk home from school was a sign of teenage solidarity. Whatever the reason, Megan was glad no one else could see this episode. What would they think if they saw Megan Longhorn, star of the Junior Varsity track team, sitting on the ground beside a toppled bicycle, drenched in sweat and hugging her knees to her chest like a mental patient?

They'd think she was experiencing more muscle cramps. At least, that's how Megan had explained it when a similar episode brought her to her knees in P.E. class. Even though Coach Lopez had given her one hell of a strange look as she hobbled off court, that's what they all believed. Megan wasn't so concerned with their opinions, anyway; that was more a concern of her father's. Theodore Longhorn, owner of the Longhorn Construction Company and public figure, always concerned with public approval and maintaining an appearance of an easy, satisfied life. She could hear his voice now, begging her to please get up in case a car rolled by. She heard his voice almost as clearly as she heard the other one in her head, the one prophesying her younger brother's death. An iron vise clenched her skull. Megan blinked back tears.

She lowered her head to her knees and shut her eyes to the pain. In removing the visual distraction, Megan's other senses were amplified. She felt the sun beating down on exposed arms and legs, her skin slowly toasting, and the uneven sidewalk's rough surface scraping against her quivering backside. She felt the hairs on her forearms bending in the breeze and heard her heard beating faster and faster. Most of all, she heard the voice, growing ever stronger. If, before, it was a single voice, now it was a chorus of voices, all of them screaming in unison as Megan retreated into the back rooms of her subconscious. Megan clapped her hands to her ears, but it was no use, because the voices were inside her, they only grew in strength, and Megan could feel her ears bleeding, they must be bleeding, the voices were too loud and the pain too intense. Her heart thumped in her chest and saliva caught in her throat, making breathing difficult. Now, Megan couldn't prevent herself from screaming; a long, mournful wail issued from her mouth as the horrific vision entered her consciousness, and, although her eyes were closed, the eyes of her mind couldn't shut out its images.



John Longhorn will die, it booms, not a voice but a thought forced into Megan's head.

This is what a voiceover would feel like to the actors in a movie, Megan thinks, as the non-voice seemed everywhere at once.

Megan finds herself no longer sitting in a pool of sunlight, in front of St. Mary's Church on Missouri Avenue, but immersed in an inky blackness too thick for her eyes to penetrate. The air is thick and difficult to breathe, like air on a humid summer day. She hears the muffled sounds of a struggle and could feel drywall behind her.

Her eyes grow adjusted to the dark. Megan stands in the corner of her younger brother's bedroom in the late, indeterminate hours of the night. Not unlike the bedrooms of countless four year olds in countless other families, John's haven is a haphazard assortment of games, books, and toys. A large poster of Superman hangs beside the open window on the wall to Megan's right. The poster depicts Superman flying towards the viewer, out of the poster and into John's bedroom; the windows open shutters only suggest that someone could, indeed, fly right in if they'd desired and had the ability to do so.

On the floor lay a colorful array of stuffed animals. John is not yet too old for these. A large red stuffed crab lay on its back while a menacing werewolf boy/cub looks on. The primary colors of these animals contrast with the navy blue carpet.

A wind whispers through the open window, sending the curtains billowing up in great gusts. The moon casts its cold gray light through the screen's grid framework, illuminating the bedroom while separating it into four neat panels. In one of these panels, Meagan could see the nightstand beside John's bed. On the nightstand, beside the NHL Ice Hockey alarm clock, sits a drinking glass containing several bright yellow dandelions. Water fills the glass to the halfway mark.

As Megan's gaze shifts to the bed, she perceives a form materializing there, starting as a fuzzy outline, a shimmer like a mirage in the distance. As the form gains depth and substance, Megan realizes that it is John. Her brother lays face down on his bed, wearing his customary nightclothes: a faded blue jumper with bright yellow and white constellations imprinted upon it. The back of the child's head is bathed in a blueish white aura, only hinting at the mane of curly yellow locks, blonde tresses that dazzle by day.

A large silhouette occupies the other two panels of light. It is certainly a woman's shape, although the moon does little but suggest at her gross form. She stands like a marble statue as she maintains constant pressure on the back of the boy's head, using her hand to drive his face into the pillow.

Megan's eyes bulge from their sockets, the lids peeled back, as the woman's arms tense. Her eyes now adjusted, Megan views the scene with perfect, horrific clarity, with all the flawless attention to detail only to be found in a dream. Megan attempts to move, wanting to avert this tragedy, but discovers she is paralyzed, a victim of the peculiar laws of her dream world. She is unable to move through the thick soup that composes the atmosphere.

John thrashes in his sleep, his breath coming in ragged gasps. The silhouette hovers over him, driving his face into the pillows. Not knowing what is happening, John fights for his life, fighting for every tortured lungful of air. His hands clench at the blanket on either side of him, and his legs kick up and down as if swimming. He opens his mouth in an unheard scream of terror, muffled by the pillow.

The wind howls as it races through the open window, accompanying the operatic tragedy a cappella and sending the curtains into a great, graceful flight that contrasts with the violent movements on the bed. A mobile hanging above John's head spins and dances, its chimes jingling and whipped into frenzy. Below this performance, John's actions reach a savage crescendo, and all of his four year old muscles surge in a combined effort to shrug off his unseen assailant.

Facedown, he swings his arms and legs but is unable to connect with anything other than the lamp on his nightstand. The lamp, plugged into a socket behind the bedframe, topples forward and pitches toward the floor. Sufficient slack allows the lamp to contact the floor, smashing and making a loud crash that drowns out the muffled screams and the wind, but leaves the lamp's busted base dangling mid-air, swinging like a pendulum over the carpet. Dozens of glittering glass shards scatter all over the floor, each one reflecting a ray of moonlight.

The falling lamp shoves the alarm clock several inches towards the nightstand's edge, leaving it teetering on the brink of a fall. The drinking glass tips to its side and rolls across the nightstand's oak surface. A waterfall cascades from the glass's mouth, at first in a great loud torrent that the carpet soaks up and then diminishing to a steady, slow drip as the water supply diminishes. The daffodils cling to the glass, resisting by their sheer mass alone, then give up and follow the current to the floor.

The woman turns her head in both directions, made nervous by the sudden sound. For a fleeting instant, Megan glimpses her profile and recognizes her, although the diminished lighting has robbed the scene of all but the most vibrant of colors. Satisfied she would not be disturbed, the woman returns to the work at hand, increasing the pressure on John's head. The muscles in her meaty forearms stand out, lent further definition by the peculiar lighting. John flops about in desperation, a fish out of water struggling for its last breath, then he stops struggling altogether. He is dead.

The woman pulls John's bedsheet up and over his head, hiding the terrible truth of her actions. There is no remorse in her expression as she turns away from the body. For a moment, her eyes meet Megan's and Megan realizes that, although the circumstances possess a very distant, surreal quality, this must be real. This is the truth, in some time and place not far from her own.

Those eyes are terrible, Megan thinks as she sees her own image reflected back at her in their icy depths. Those could witness the most atrocious of crimes and still nothing will warm them. The gaze is empty, emotionless. The gaze is inhuman.

Megan breathes a sigh of relief as the eyes pass over her. Megan watches the beast shuffle from the room, never sparing a backwards look or suffering a moment of hesitation. Megan, breathing in shallow rasps, shifts to look at the four year old's corpse on the bed, the suspicious lumped tucked beneath the bedspread. The immensity of what has just transpired

(what will transpire)

suffocates Megan's consciousness. Megan wonders at the inevitability of this tragedy, and how she could avert it, as the vision is whisked from her head and Megan


awoke with a dying scream on her lips.

'Young miss, are you alright?'�

The nun's face was a mask of wrinkles, lines from a lifetime of someone else's worries. She cradled Megan's head in the crook of her right arm, and she knelt on the hard sidewalk in her black and white nun's habit, resting Megan's upper body on her bony thighs. The sky was a fiery red.

'I'm fine,'� she answered. 'I'll be fine, I think. How long was I out?'�

The nun held a glass of water to Megan's lips, forcing her to drink.

'Only a few minutes, far as I can tell. I don't know for sure, though. I was in the rectory''� she glanced up the hill, towards the humble abode not fifty feet from the church, 'doing the laundry, but I came running when I heard you screaming.'�

Megan choked on the water.

'Screaming?'�

'You were howling about something,'� the nun said.

Although she smiled, her eyes were sad, brilliant blue jewels that sparkled in the dying light. Her thin eyebrows slanted downward toward each other in an expression of worry. Megan looked from that face to her surroundings, suddenly ashamed of her compromised position on the ground and a trifle offended by the nun's humoring tone.

'Do you need any help, miss?'� the nun asked. The setting sun created a ring of light behind her head.

'Oh, no, it's nothing,'� Megan snapped, and got to her feet. A rush of dizziness overtook her, and she leaned over, placing her hands on her knees. She breathed several deep breaths before returning to standing.

'I've been around for a long time and I know it's not nothing,'� the nun spoke softly, as if to herself.

'All the same, I've got to go.'� Megan righted her Schwinn and lifted one leg over the seat. She turned back to the nun. 'But thanks.'�

The nun raised an open palm in farewell to Megan, as the girl sped off towards home, her ten speed wobbling and zig-zagging the whole way.

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