She had been so certain that the moment she found her father everything would be all right…

They’ve found Mr. Murry, but are seemingly no closer to rescuing him.

“You must do as I have done, and go in to IT,” Charles said.

“No.”

“I can see you don’t really want to save Father.”

“How will my being a zombie save Father?”

“You will just have to take my word for it, Margaret,” came the cold, flat voice from Charles Wallace. “IT wants you and IT will get you. Don’t forget that I, too, am part of IT, now. You know I wouldn’t have done IT if IT weren’t the right thing to do.”

But while Meg’s despairing, Calvin has an idea.

He seemed to be concentrating all his power on Charles Wallace. He stared into the pale blue that was all that was left of Charles Wallace’s eyes. “And, for thou wast a spirit too delicate/ To act her earthy and abhorr’d commands … /she did confine thee … into a cloven pine-” he whispered, and Meg recognized Mrs Who’s words to him.

For a moment Charles Wallace seemed to listen. Then he shrugged and turned away. Calvin followed him, trying to keep his eyes focused on Charles’s. “If you want a witch, Charles,” he said, “IT’s the witch. Not our ladies. Good thing I had The Tempest at school this year, isn’t it, Charles? It was the witch who put Ariel in the cloven pine, wasn’t it?”

Charles Wallace’s voice seemed to come from a great distance. “Stop staring at me.”

Breathing quickly with excitement, Calvin continued to pin Charles Wallace with his stare. “You’re like Ariel in the cloven pine, Charles. And I can let you out. Look at me, Charles. Come back to us.”

Again the shudder went through Charles Wallace.

Calvin’s intense voice hit him. “Come back, Charles. Come back to us.”

Again Charles shuddered. And then it was as though an invisible hand had smacked against his chest and knocked him to the ground, and the stare with which Calvin had held him was broken. Charles sat there on the floor of the corridor whimpering, not a small boy’s sound, but a fearful, animal noise.

Meg asks Calvin to try reaching her father instead, but he’s too sore that he failed to reach Charles again. But the quote reminds her of Mrs Who’s gift for her. She puts on Mrs Who’s spectacles, which allow her to get into her father’s prison.

Meg kicked at Charles Wallace and ran at the column. She felt as though she were going through something dark and cold. But she was through. “Father!” she cried. And she was in his arms.

This was the moment for which she had been waiting, not only since Mrs Which whisked them off on their journeys, but during the long months and years before, when the letters had stopped coming, when people made remarks about Charles Wallace, when Mrs. Murry showed a rare flash of loneliness or grief. This was the moment that meant that now and forever everything would be all right.

Then she realizes that her father can’t see anything, so she gives him the spectacles (which naturally leaves her blind instead).

“Yes,” he said. “Yes. The wall is transparent, now. How extraordinary! I could almost see the atoms rearranging!” His voice had its old, familiar sound of excitement and discovery. It was the way he sounded sometimes when he came home from his laboratory after a good day and began to tell his wife about his work. Then he cried out, “Charles! Charles Wallace!” And then, “Meg, what’s happened to him? What’s wrong? That is Charles, isn’t it?”

“IT has him, Father,” she explained tensely. “He’s gone in to IT. Father, we have to help him.”

Then she explains that the spectacles allowed her to get into the column, so she figures he can use them to get out, so he manages to safely carry her out that way.

Mr. Murry released Meg and knelt in front of the little boy. “Charles,” his voice was tender. “Charles Wallace.”

“What do you want?”

“I’m your father, Charles. Look at me.”

The pale blue eyes seemed to focus on Mr. Murry’s face. “Hi, Pop,” came an insolent voice.

“That isn’t Charles!” Meg cried. “Oh, Father, Charles isn’t like that. IT has him.”

“Yes,” Mr. Murry sounded tired. “I see.” He held his arms out. “Charles. Come here.”

Father will make it all right, Meg thought. Everything will be all right now.

Charles did not move toward the outstretched arms. He stood a few feet away from his father, and he did not look at him.

Mr. Murry clearly doesn’t understand what Meg’s telling him about Charles, and he gets angry when Charles shows such flagrant disrespect to him, which only makes the situation worse.

“He was only a baby when I left,” Mr. Murry said heavily.

“Father, it’s IT talking through Charles. IT isn’t Charles. “He’s- he’s bewitched.”

“Fairy tales again,” Charles said.

“You know IT, Father?” Meg asked.

“Yes.”

“Have you seen IT?”

“Yes, Meg.” Again his voice sounded exhausted. “Yes, I have.” He turned to Charles. “You know she wouldn’t be able to hold out.”

“Exactly,” Charles said.

And to make things worse, “Charles” refuses to allow Meg any time to talk with her father about anything besides IT. And he immediately takes them all to see IT.

“There hasn’t been time for anything. Everything’s awful.” Despair settled like a stone in the pit of Meg’s stomach. She had been so certain that the moment she found her father everything would be all right. Everything would be settled. All the problems would be taken out of her hands. She would no longer be responsible for anything.

And instead of this happy and expected outcome, they seemed to be encountering all kinds of new troubles.

She childishly believed that her father would have all the answers, all the solutions to her problems, but he’s just a fallible human being like the rest of us, and to top it all off, he’s exhausted from fighting IT all alone for so long. But this turn of events certainly doesn’t do Meg any favors, either. She’s terrified of facing IT, and almost despairs of their whole mission.

“We can’t leave Charles,” Calvin said. “They wouldn’t like it.”

“Who wouldn’t?”

“Mrs Whatsit & Co.”

“But they’ve betrayed us! They brought us here to this terrible place and abandoned us!”

Calvin looked at her in surprise. “You sit down and give up if you like,” he said. “I’m sticking with Charles.” He ran to keep up with Charles and Mr. Murry.

Obviously she’s just experiencing a (very understandable) crisis of faith, because by now she has a better understanding of what they’re up against, and it rightfully terrifies her!

They moved down the street, more slowly now, and as they came closer to the domed building the violet flickering seemed to reach out, to envelop them, to suck them in: they were inside.

Meg could feel a rhythmic pulsing. It was a pulsing not only about her, but in her as well, as though the rhythm of her heart and lungs was no longer her own but she was being worked by some outside force. The closest she had come to the feeling before was when she had been practicing artificial respiration with Girl Scouts, and the leader, an immensely powerful woman, had been working on Meg, intoning OUT goes the bad air, IN comes the good! while her heavy hands pressed, released, pressed, released.

[…]

Then things began to clear, and she could breathe without gasping like a beached fish, and she could look about the great, circular, domed building. It was completely empty except for the pulse, which seemed a tangible thing, and a round dais exactly in the center. On the dais lay – what? Meg could not tell, and yet she knew that it was from that the rhythm came. She felt that she was beyond fear now. Charles Wallace was no longer Charles Wallace. Her father had been found but he had not made everything all right, Instead everything was worse than ever, and her adored father was bearded and thin and white and not omnipotent after all. No matter what happened next, things could be no more terrible or frightening than they already were.

Oh, couldn’t they?

As she continued to step slowly forward, at last she realized what the Thing on the dais was.

IT was a brain.

A disembodied brain. An oversized brain, just enough larger than normal to be completely revolting and terrifying. A living brain. A brain that pulsed and quivered, that seized and commanded. No wonder the brain was called IT. IT was the most horrible, the most repellant thing she had ever seen, far more nauseating than anything she had ever imagined with her conscious mind, or that had ever tormented her in her most terrible nightmares.

But as she had felt that she was beyond fear, so now she was beyond screaming.

Once more, they’re forced to fight against influence of IT, and shouting nursery rhymes isn’t working for her, she’s reminded that Calvin recited the Gettysburg Address last time, so she recites the Declaration of Independance.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident!” she shouted, “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

As she cried out the words she felt a mind moving in on her own, squeezing her brain. Then she realized that Charles Wallace was speaking, or being spoken through by IT.

“But that’s exactly what we have on Camazotz. Complete equality. Everybody exactly alike.”

For a moment her brain reeled with confusion. Then came a moment of blazing truth. “No!” she cried triumphantly. “Like and equal are not the same thing at all.”

“Good girl, Meg!” her father shouted at her.

But Charles Wallace continued as though there had been no interruption. “In Camazotz all are equal. In Camazotz everybody is the same as everyone else,” but he gave no argument, provided no answer, and she held on to her moment of revelation.

Like and equal are two entirely different things.

For the moment she had escaped from the power of IT.

But how?

She turns her thoughts toward the possibility of killing IT, at which point IT reminds her that if IT dies, so does everyone under its power, including Charles and the whole planet. She attempts to ward IT off by reciting the Periodic Table of Elements, then by doing math, but she’s still losing the battle.

“Tesser, sir!” she heard Calvin’s voice through the red darkness. “Tesser!”

She felt her father grab her by the wrist, there was a terrible jerk that seemed to break every bone in her body, then the dark nothing of tessering.

Until next time…