Dreams of Shadows - Patrick Sean Lee (ebook reader browser .TXT) 📗

water. Gathering up what pills and wound dressings we could find in the medicine cabinets upstairs, and lugging it all down to the kitchen table where Charles sat clumsily holding a pencil, a tablet of the kids’ paper lying on the table's surface

Cynthia relented after we began working, and let Mari and Ash go outside to play—but only in the front yard, and only with Jack watching over them. Someone had to remove the rotting bodies from the pool before they'd be allowed behind the house. I guessed either Peter or Munster would be elected to dig graves for Jack's mother and sister and the other child floating on the contaminated surface of the water. Maybe Charles would know some final prayers when we stood with our heads bowed over their graves.

Peter was quiet all this time, but he followed Charles’ suggestions with a glum look on his face. He seemed to draw a little closer to Munster, although I suspected that the reason was nearness of age, coupled with a resentment of authority, more so than a reversal of attitude toward my first friend in our new world. Passing by them as we carted boxes of pills and bandages down the stairs, their voices dropped. Munster chuckled once on one of those journeys, and I noticed him pat the gun tucked into the back of his waistband. What had they been talking about?

Much later, after we enjoyed a lunch of cold, stewed tomatoes and Spam on crackers, Munster stood up and rushed anxiously to the study near the south end of the house. Charles sat quietly for a moment, and then followed him down the back hall. The older members of our little community were close behind.

Inside the study stood a desk facing the entry door. A padded chair behind it under the front window. A few books scattered on the shelves of a bookcase to the left, and a large gun cabinet standing alone beneath a picture of a ship caught in a storm on some angry ocean. I knew without asking that Munster was digging through the drawers of the desk for the key to the glass-faced cabinet. We stood watching until he spoke, rifling through the papers and stapler and other odds and ends of no interest to him or any of the rest of us.

“Where’s Jack? Maybe she knows where her father hid the key to the cabinet.”

Peter was quick to reply. “Would you tell your eight year-old daughter where the key to the gun cabinet was?”

“Sure. What if a coyote or burglar broke in, and Pops was out pickin’ oranges or somethin’?”

“You’re an idiot, Munster,” Peter responded. It seemed his attitude reversal had vanished. Munster finally gave up, slamming the last of the drawers shut. He walked across the room to the cabinet, took the gun from his waistband, and then smashed it against the glass over and over until it finally broke. Stabbing the gun back into his waistband, he reached in and removed the shotgun.

“Won’t need my little cap gun anymore,” he quipped, inspecting the two gleaming barrels. Charles frowned.

“Peter, you’re in charge of weapons,” he said, and that startled Peter. Munster wheeled around in surprise, grasping the shotgun and lowering it, as if preparing to send Charles to his grave. I was certain he had no real intention of shooting either Charles or Peter, but having done away with that man at the rectory, who could say? After all, I'd heard from my father that after your first murder, the next, and then the next, become easier. I don't know how he knew this, because he never even owned a gun that I was aware of, and he certainly had never killed anyone. But there you are. Munster stood there defiantly holding the shotgun that could kill every one of us in a single blast if he decided to pull the trigger.

“No he ain’t. Me and Amelia are.”

Oh no, count me out.

“Munster, put the gun down,” Cynthia pleaded with him. She had quickly stepped half way behind Charles, and she was clearly frightened.

So much for our Garden of Eden all of the sudden.

The shriek of Jack’s voice out front put an end to the tense revolt. Every head snapped toward the window. Peter moved first, racing across the floor. Then Munster, grasping the shotgun. Cynthia and I left Jerrick and Lashawna and flew out the door, down the hall, and arrived at the open front door at the same time.

“Oh no,” she groaned.

Outside on the front lawn, Jack was bent over on her knees above Mari, stroking her face, shaking violently and crying. Mari lay motionless on her back, one leg bent unnaturally beneath the other outstretched limb.

“No, no, no! I told you not to touch it,” she wailed at the unconscious little girl. Cynthia and I raced down the steps. In a heartbeat we were on our hands and knees, peering up and down the length of Mari’s still form. Cynthia shot a hand onto little Mari’s chest.

“She’s alive.”

Ash stood a few feet away, his hands covering his mouth, his eyes the size of saucers. Jack turned her head instantly to Cynthia after the older girl’s announcement. I let out a long breath of relief. I saw no horrible burns anywhere—nothing out of the ordinary, save she had been knocked five feet backward onto her back, and her eyes were closed, almost peaceful-looking.

“I told her not to touch it or get near it, Cynthia, I swear. I turned away for just a second! She did what I told her not to do! It wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t, was it?”

“No Jack. I’m sure she’ll be fine, honey. Let’s get her inside. Forget it. It’s done. Help me.”

I wondered. They had left instructions not to touch whatever this terrible gift was. What kind of gift will kill you if you disobey? What kind of being would leave such a thing? Well, they’d thought it okay to wipe out the inhabitants of our planet, maybe this latest round of alien brutality was just a last parting game of some kind to them. A bet amongst themselves to see how long it would take for the rest of us to disobey them and place our hands on it.

But that was illogical even to my young mind. Mari hadn’t perished.

Where were the invaders? Would they come swooping in to compassionately rescue the unfortunate little girl?

Before Cynthia and Jack had time to lift Mari’s shoulders, the rest of our band arrived, one after another in a mad rush. Peter pushed Jack aside and easily took little Mari into his arms. A narrow semicircle of distraught family moved sideways to allow Peter to carry Mari back into the house. Lashawna, Jerrick, Cynthia, and Charles followed in a close knot, everyone except Munster and me a cord inside it. He remained standing, facing the long road in, shotgun pointing straight forward, ready to be raised if one of them showed itself. After a few steps, Cynthia turned her head back, and then returned to our side.

“Munster, come on. That thing won’t do us a bit of good if they come back,” she said calmly, but with authority.

“We’ll see about that,” he replied in a low voice.

She moved closer to him and placed a palm onto the spot where the wooden stock met the black, gleaming barrel, and pushed downward. “Let it go. Let’s get inside. The damage is done. You can’t make it go away. Come on.”

I could see Munster’s eyes shooting back and forth from her to the road, unsure of just what to do. Finally he sighed loudly, let the gun lower under the pressure of her hand, and then he turned and began walking toward the house ahead of us. I looked up at Cynthia and smiled weakly, and then we left.

 

Grapes of Wrath

 

Peter took Mari directly upstairs to the front bedroom where I first met Jack, and there he laid her gently down onto the covers. The burning question in all of our minds was, how badly had she been hurt? We crowded around the bed and gazed down at her little body. Strangely, I thought, Munster abandoned his new weapon, setting it against the wall inside the door the moment he scuffled in, and joined us unarmed.

“What do you think?” Cynthia asked Charles. He curled his lips and slowly shook his head.

“Anyone here a doctor?” he answered uselessly.

Jerrick eased past Lashawna’s shoulder and reached forward toward Mari with his long fingers. With Lashawna’s quick assistance he found her.

“I wanted to be,” he said. “I know the thought of that is crazy, but I’ve read a lot about the human body and how it works.”

“How could ya’ read anything? You’re blind!” Munster scoffed.

“Haven’t you heard of Braille?” Charles corrected my ill-mannered friend.

“Oh. Yeah, guess so. But readin’ a lot don’t help us much here.”

“Having read a lot,” Charles once again corrected him.

“What?”

“Never mind,” he said. As Jerrick checked her pulse, Charles turned to me and said, “Watch the window, Amelia. God knows, they might return.”

Before I’d taken a step, Peter chimed in with authority. “Keep an eye peeled, Amelia. God knows they might return.”

Really? He had to say that? I went to the window and watched intently to see if any snakes were creeping-crawling into the house. I believed a few had already made it.

The orchard spilled off to the right and left under the hazy-blue sky. Far down the main drive in I could see the Flamecar still stuck like some short-legged creature high-centered on a log or a rock. At some point soon we’d have to go out there and muscle it back onto the gravel road, or else stay stranded. Or walk the long highway back to town, which didn’t appeal at all to me.

I brought my gaze to the tall, black cylinder left by the invaders down on the lawn, and wondered again what it was set to do when the proper command was given sometime in the distant—or not-too-distant—future. It cast a long grey shadow under the weak sunlight. A sleek alien sculpture; their version of David, only this work was more the sentinel rather than a work of enduring art? You remain suspicious, you know. Charles had said it was a gift that would open, or sing, or speak to us when the time was right, but maybe that was a lie they'd fabricated. Or else he had. Maybe it was set there simply to watch us and report back to its creators, wherever they’d gone, and whatever it was they were doing.

Low voices rising and falling behind me. I turned to see them gathered like baffled doctors and nurses and grieving family all round peaceful little Mari. Cynthia was on her knees at the bedside holding Mari’s limp hand. Peter was saying something to Charles about hospitals. Real doctors—who were no doubt all lying dead on the various floors. “Wake up, honey,” Cynthia murmuring over and over. Jack and Ash standing at the end of the bed, staring across the space, totally shaken and mute.

I turned back to the job of watching, although in the deadness outside it seemed useless. Something struck me as I scanned the scene of quiet. Something