Merlin's Last Days

by Greg Krehbiel

  Merlin’s Last Days

  By Greg Krehbiel

  Part One

  Marianne’s stylus slipped from her fingers and clattered to the tiled floor of the lecture hall for the third time in ten minutes. She couldn’t keep her mind focused on the subject of the talk. No matter how hard she tried to concentrate, she found herself thinking surprisingly rude things about the guest speaker. And she wasn’t sure why.

  He wasn’t the most attractive man in the room. Not by a long shot. He looked like a man who had been adorable in middle school, had aged quickly in college, then suffered two or three decades of hard and careless living. There were lines in his face that made Marianne think of her uncle, who’d served three deployments in Iraq. And the look in his eyes was of a man who had faced down terrors.

  While she watched him pace across the room, he turned and looked in her direction. Their eyes met. He stopped pacing for just a moment and looked straight at her. His left eye arched slightly and his right eye did a half wink, then he looked away. Not the way so many men looked away from Marianne, as if they didn’t want to be caught staring. There was a knowing smirk in his gaze. His eyes had that deep look of a man who could see right through her. As if he’d read something in her face with that brief glance. He looked away with confidence, knowing she was interested.

  Marianne wasn’t the type to blush, but she could feel her face getting warm. She looked down at her lap and tried to hide it. Immediately the room began to blur and spin and she felt she might faint. She lost sight of her surroundings and she forgot who or what or where she was.

  The lecture hall was gone. She was standing on a plush carpet in a modest living room, watching a family scene around the dinner table. By the look of the furniture and the wallpaper, whatever she was seeing took place about 30 years ago, and she had a sense the décor was European. A very beautiful, raven-haired woman sat at one end of the table, and a very stern man sat at the other. Between them sat a desperately cute boy of about 12. As often happens in dreams, she instinctively knew that the boy at the table was the same man who was guest lecturing her class, although there was hardly any resemblance between the two.

  “How in the world did you get an A on this awful essay?” the man at the head of the table asked, brandishing two pages of hand-written note paper. Marianne felt a touch of nostalgia. She hadn’t seen note paper like that in years. Her mother had been a school teacher and had boxes of the stuff laying around the house. When Marianne was a girl she would color and draw on paper just like that.

  “This is the most awful garbage I have ever read,” the man continued, in the accent of the British upper class.

  The man held the paper at arm’s length, peering through the lower portion of his bifocals with disgust.

  “‘The Israelis and Palestinians have been at war for thousands of years,’” he read in a mocking tone. “Did you do any research on this, or did you make it all up? And what kind of an idiot teacher thought this was a passing grade? Much less an A. Do you have compromising pictures of her? Are you sleeping with her? Please tell me you’re sleeping with her, Merlin. At least then I’d be proud of you.”

  The boy just sat and stared at the chicken pie on his plate. The woman had a “don’t be too hard on the boy” look on her face, but she didn’t say anything.

  “Alright,” his father said. “This may be good enough for your teacher, but it’s not good enough for me. You’re going to spend the next hour reading the encyclopedia about the origins of the State of Israel, and then I’m going to quiz you on the topic. After that you’re going to write a decent paper. Not for your teacher. For me.”

  He got up from the table and tossed his napkin on top of his plate, leaving half his dinner unfinished.

  “And you still have to do the dishes,” he said, then drained his wine glass and stormed out of the room.

  The woman and the boy sat at the table in silence for a minute. They both had Hollywood looks, and Marianne was content to gaze at them. She studied the woman’s lovely, pale face. She ought to be upset, Marianne thought, or at least a little troubled by the man’s outburst. But the woman had an unnaturally serene expression, as if the world didn’t bother her.

  Marianne smiled despite herself. She knew things were going to be okay for the boy, and she had the feeling she’d been let in on a very personal joke.

  The boy cocked his ear to listen. The house was very quiet. He turned to look up at the woman and smiled the devilish smile of a trickster.

  “How did you do it?” the woman asked, her eyes big with delight.

  “I’m not sure,” the boy replied, taking his mother’s hand off the table and holding it in his. “I noticed something about the way she wrote on the chalkboard. There was a curl to some of the letters, and she favored certain words and sounds in a funny way. I pictured that in my mind and I tried to imitate the style in my writing. Here,” he said, holding up the paper. “Look at this b, and the way this ing slants a little more to the right than the rest of the letters.”

  The woman had the joyous look of a teacher watching as her student grasped an important concept.

  “I think I could have written nursery rhymes or song lyrics on that paper and she would have given me an A.”

  The woman squeezed his hand and smiled at him with a deep, knowing, peaceful smile.

  “I know you could have,” she said. “So long as you follow the forms. But don’t try any tricks like that on your father,” she warned, becoming slightly stern. “You’d better go study for an hour before you talk to him. He’s not easily fooled.”

  “Why do you insist on calling him my father when we both know he’s not?”

  The woman looked at the boy sternly.

  “He didn’t sire you, but he is your father, and he deserves your respect. He told you to study, so study you will.”

  “I’ll study if you want me to, mother, but I’ve already memorized that entry in the encyclopedia. I know the topic better than this,” he said, pushing the paper away contemptuously. “Henry is …,” but then he noticed her disapproval. “Okay, ‘Father’ is right. The paper is drivel.”

  The woman laughed.

  “So you risked your grade on a theory you had about handwriting, just to try your powers,” she mused. “That was a risk, but you were wise to take it. You’ll never know what you can do unless you try. You’ll have to take risks, and sometimes you’ll fail. Be ready for that. Still, know that your tricks won’t work on everyone. And definitely not on that man down the hall.”

  “Is that why you married him?” the boy asked. “You’d have been bored if you’d married a man you could control.”

  “That’s part of it, but there’s much more to the love between a man and a woman, and I hope one day you’ll understand. But that’s enough for now. Go do the dishes if you’re done eating.”

  The vision began to fade and the college lecture hall came back into focus.

  Merlin? Marianne thought as she came to herself. Did they really say Merlin?

  The lecture was over and the rest of the students had left. Marianne was alone in a seat in the third row, and the professor was staring at her. As she came to herself she realized he was smiling, and she wasn’t sure if she liked it.

  “What just happened?” she asked.

  “You met my gaze while you were lusting for me,” he said with an evil grin. Marianne blushed again, but she didn’t deny what he said. She also noticed that he didn’t have a foreign accent, as the boy in the vision had.

  “What did you see?” he asked eagerly.

  “You were at dinner with … your parents, I guess, although they didn’t look like you. She was a very striking woman and he was a very imperious, demanding man. He didn’t
like a paper you’d written for school on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and you claimed that you’d been able to trick the teacher into giving you an A.”

  “Ah,” he said, nodding. “That would have been when I was about twelve.”

  “You mean that really happened?”

  “Yes. Almost 40 years ago in Bristol.”

  “How did you do it?”

  “Do what?” he asked. “Put the vision in your head, or get the A on the paper?”

  “Both, I guess,” she said.

  He looked at her as if he was sizing her up, then he smiled.

  “It’s best that I don’t tell you. At least not yet,” he said, and with that he picked up a well-polished leather bag and left the room without another word.

  Marianne hesitated for a moment, then she quickly gathered her things and hurried after him. She couldn’t tell if he’d turned left or right into the hallway, and after a few minutes of searching she gave up looking for him.

  How could a man do that to her – get into her mind like that – and then just walk away? He owed her an explanation!

  She leaned against a wall in one of the corridors and texted her friend from class.

  Marianne: Who was that?

  Amy: The cute guy in the first row?

  That’s Amy, Marianne thought.

  Marianne: No, the lecturer.

  Amy: Oh. Some professor from the history department. Forgot his name. I think it’s on the class schedule.

  Marianne: Thanks.

  And sure enough, there was the information she sought. He was Merrell Anthony, associate professor of history.

  But she was sure they’d said Merlin in the dream, not Merrell.

  She looked at her phone to check the time. There were still two and a half hours before her next class. She put her phone in her clutch and headed to the café for a latte and some intense research into this professor Anthony.

  * * *

  “Hey, watch it,” the male voice said angrily as she bumped into a smallish guy on the walkway across the mall. “Maybe get your head out of your phone,” he began sarcastically, but then he saw her face, and as most boys did, he changed his tune.

  “Sorry,” he said, and then fumbled with his things and walked awkwardly around her.

  Marianne shook her head and kept walking. And reading.

  * * *

  “Hey, Marianne,” a familiar male voice called as she took a seat in a quiet corner of the university cafe.

  She shook her head and started to feel that familiar anger return. This kind of behavior was exactly why she had broken up with Joe. He wouldn’t think of getting up from his seat and walking across the room to speak to her like a gentleman, in a polite tone of voice. No. He had to call her across the crowded room like he was calling a dog.

  She pretended she hadn’t heard him, but then she changed her mind and looked up, straight at him. He was sitting with his dorm mate and some other guy who lived down the hall. She stared at Joe with a cold, blank look. Joe made a “she’s not getting away with this” face to his friends and got up. He walked half way to where Marianne was sitting.

  “Come sit with us,” he commanded, standing in the middle of the room.

  Marianne turned away from him, opened her tablet and intended to start looking for information on the professor. She only succeeded in tapping away somewhat aimlessly, and didn’t even manage to find the web browser.

  Two months ago she would have come at his call, and she hated herself for being so weak. He was such a jerk to her, but she was always craving his attention and affirmation. His strategy had worked for a while. She had followed him around like a puppy dog. No, more like she was an addict, desperate for another hit. Then after a long talk with Bethany one night in the dorm, she realized how stupid she was being and she broke up with him. He laughed and said she’d be back.

  A week later Joe hooked up with Bethany after a frat party. Unbelievable.

  But now she was cornered. She’d have to face him.

  Marianne remembered a breathing technique she’d learned from a Tai Chi instructor, and she focused all her energy on the simple pattern. She didn’t even notice that Joe had swaggered his way over to her table.

  “What is the deal with you?” he asked in a loud voice. Several heads turned to see what was up.

  She didn’t reply, she just looked at him blankly and focused on her breathing.

  “You’re so fucking spastic,” he said in an even louder voice, and then sat down heavily in an empty chair at her table.

  The fainting feeling she had in the lecture hall came over her again, and the café simply dissolved away like a mist in a strong breeze. The transition between realities was quicker and easier this time.

  She was watching a scene in a high school boys’ locker room. The skinny young kid from her previous vision – Merlin, apparently, or Merrell – was being pushed into a corner by a tall, muscular fellow with bad intentions.

  “That was funny, you know,” the big guy said. “And you can make fun of me all you want. You really can. I think it’s hilarious. But it’s going to cost you. Every time.”

  The skinny kid’s face took on a horrified expression. Not the expression of a one hundred pound kid who’s about to be beaten silly by a two hundred pound linebacker, but a face that said, “something else is horribly wrong here.”

  He sniffed slightly and said, “Is that you?” in a very quiet voice. The bully suddenly stopped, sniffed the air himself, and then had a change of heart and walked away hurriedly.

  The locker room faded away and Marianne found herself staring into Joe’s bossy, self-assured face. She concentrated for a moment, and then did her best to imitate the kid’s facial expression and tone of voice. Then she sniffed.

  “Is that you?” she asked. She said it so quietly she wasn’t sure Joe would hear her.

  Joe’s face immediately changed from arrogant confidence to self doubt, and then to anger. For a moment she was afraid she’d done the spell all wrong and had made matters worse. Joe looked like he might hit her. But then he stood up from the table, knocking his chair down backwards.

  “I’m done with you,” he said, loud enough for everyone to hear, and then he left in a huff. But he didn’t go back to his friends. He walked out of the café and towards his dorm.

  Probably to take a shower, Marianne thought, then smiled and turned back to her tablet.

  That was so cool.

  It took her a solid minute to get over the euphoria of that encounter. When she finally settled down, she took a sip of her drink and started searching. But she was still smiling.

  She didn’t take long to find the information she wanted, and her eyes went wide as she read page after page about Merrell Anthony and his spectacular career. Most of the articles discussed his archeological finds in England and western France, but some of them noted his unorthodox interpretations of other people’s finds.

  “He always has a good story to tell,” a Yale historian said. “You have to give him that. And I have to admit that he weaves a lot of different facts together into a very compelling narrative. But his ideas are too far outside the mainstream for my tastes.”

  “Somehow he knows exactly where to look,” a colleague had said to an AP reporter. “The precision of his digs is legendary. If we weren’t all convinced materialists we’d think he’d made a deal with the devil.”

  Marianne almost choked on that one, remembering from some fragment of legend she’d heard that Merlin was called the son of the devil.

  At one site, Dr. Anthony had found the burial mound of an Irish princess, perfectly preserved. His interpretation of the details clashed with the accepted chronology of the leading families of the time, and tended to confirm theories Anthony had proposed just months before. At another site they found a ritual ring of stones, which Anthony claimed was a druid holy place – exactly where he had said there would be one.

  Near as she could tell, he had made 13 trips from the Stat
es to Europe, and every time he set shovel to ground he hit pay dirt. His colleagues tried to hide their jealousy, and some speculated on how he might be cheating. But he always had top-notch associates on hand to verify his procedures and the authenticity of the find.

  How does he know? she wondered. And with this kind of record, what’s he doing at St. Andrew’s?

  The college was a small liberal arts school in the hills of western Pennsylvania. It was hardly the place for an archeologist with Anthony’s international reputation and record of achievement, she thought.

  She saved several articles to her Evernote to read later, then set aside her Merrell Anthony search and tried to put in a half hour of math homework before heading off for the lecture hall.