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

He stood alone, his hands to his mouth, blowing warm breaths into them.

“I thought I saw a quick flash of light over there,” I said to Charles, out of earshot from everyone. “It was weird. Can you focus the telescope just above those two trees?”

He looked at me quizzically. He didn’t ask for any further details, though, just followed my finger, and then walked the several steps to the telescope and interrupted Munster.

“Hey! I was lookin’ at some chick on Mars, Chuck!”

“Forgive my interruption. I'm sure she’ll still be there later, Munster. Move aside for a moment, please.” Charles shook his head as my friend stepped aside complaining. Munster turned to Cynthia.

“Naked as a Jay Bird. Different body parts than you have, though.”

“Shut up, Munster.”

I crowded close to Charles as he tapped in the instruction on the keypad remote. The giant tube rotated down and sideways until it came to a halt in the general vicinity I’d mentioned. Charles looked into the viewfinder, tapped the remote again, and then put his eye to the eyepiece as we all waited in silence.

“Oh-good-God…” he muttered. He remained stuck to the telescope for ten or more seconds, adjusting the focus with a thumb and finger, and then raised his head and looked back at us in astonishment, one after another.

“Amelia, have a look. How on earth did you know…?”

I rushed forward to his side, dying to see what was up there. Of course I had a pretty good clue.

“I just saw that flash of light. What is it, Charles?”

“See for yourself.”

Cynthia buried her disgust with Munster for the moment and ran to join us. I was dead certain she wasn’t imagining naked alien girls, and pretty certain that she knew what was hanging around up there in the night sky as well. Lashawna and Peter quickly crowded in beside us. I peered into the lens.

“Oh my God!”

There it was—or part of it anyway. Mari had asked me if I cared to see them. It. One of their craft. What I saw was shattering. I couldn’t be precisely certain what I was looking at, but it covered the entire field of the lens. I reasoned that the black amorphous-looking image must be part of the underside of their macabre vessel. Portions of it seemed to undulate, opening and closing, allowing quick white flashes of light to escape from the interior. Like scores of mini-mouths. Like fish heaved onto dry land, gasping for breath. Had I expected to see sleek, glistening metal, with windows and a single, massive laser turret and thousands of tiny metallic folds of skin? Independence Day Part Two?

As each of the weird apertures opened, something exited, and then flew like the wind out of view. I say something, because it was unlike anything pictured in a Hollywood movie where small attack ships leave the Mothership. Attack or otherwise, that’s what those things had to be. If I'd had to guess at the time, I would have said they were groups of the creatures we’d all seen, clumped together by the thousands. Coming down here.

Each of us, except poor sightless Jerrick, gazed at the ship, scared witless at the reality of its being. Each of us confused by its appearance. It reminded Peter, he said, of some huge nightmare blob pooping out smaller nightmare blobs. I guess the analogy was somewhat true. Munster’s turn to look came, and after a few seconds he stated, “What the hell. There’s gotta’ be more of it.” He lifted his head and asked Charles, “Can ya’ cut the power a little? You know, show it all, Chuck?”

“Yes, I suppose. Move aside, please.”

“Why, Munster,” Cynthia shot at Munster, “you think you’ll spot a naked alien cloud-girl?”

He didn’t respond. Unlike Munster.

Charles removed the high-powered lens at the end of the tube, and replaced it with a less powerful lens. He brought his eye to it, adjusted the focus again, and then gazed for several more seconds as we all waited.

“What do you see now?” Peter asked.

“It’s…uh.” He hesitated, fingers fine-tuning the lens. "All of it. I’ve no idea how big it really is, but…well, take a look.”

Peter stepped forward and edged Munster out of the way, and then he anxiously put his eye to the eyepiece. He stood peering for several seconds, hands on his knees, and then he raised himself upright, glancing first at Charles, and then at the rest of us gathered close by.

“It’s butt-ugly…well, what did we expect? And without some reference, I couldn’t begin to guess how big it is either.”

“Let me see!” Lashawna said. She replaced Peter at the instrument.

“There are more of them,” I said as Shawna gazed in grim astonishment.

“What? How do you know that?” Peter and Charles asked in unison.

“I just do.”

“Ohmagod! Something just came out of it! Wait! Something else is going in over there! It’s like alive! Tons of them…” her voice trailed off.

“That isn’t an answer, Amelia. What actually happened here while we were away?” He had paused and searched my face for a clue, or a reaction, before asking the question I didn’t want to answer. But then, why should I have cared about Mari’s command? Everyone, especially Peter and Charles, had a right to know the facts of the incident on the drive earlier that afternoon. Didn’t they? I asked myself.

Cynthia and Peter joined Charles at my side and grilled me with their eyes. Meanwhile, Lashawna was hopping up and down, trying to keep her eye on the lens holder, Jerrick beside her.

“What? What is it, Shawna? Tell me what you see.”

“It’s getting bigger! It’s coming this way!”

 

 

Casualties

Charles stood his ground, waiting for me to answer. Peter, however, snapped his head from Shawna to me, to Shawna again, and then left to see for himself what she was screaming about. Munster rushed over to join him, yanking the pistol out of his waistband as he ran. What on earth did he think he could do, other than accidently shoot one of us?

“Spit it out,” Cynthia said.

I found myself squished between the rock and a hard place. “I can’t. They told Mari…I mean she told me I wasn’t…” I’d opened the door with my big mouth a moment ago, and there was no going back now.

As I struggled for words, Cynthia looked up at Charles. “Mari…Where did she go?”

Charles glanced up at the window, and then back at me. “Start again, Amelia. This time tell us the truth. What exactly happened this afternoon?”

What exactly happened? All of it was a blur, thinking back. The men came. They attacked us. She murdered all of them somehow. Or made them disappear, or…

“I think she should explain what happened. Really happened, I mean. I don’t know how she did it. She made me promise not to tell anyone. Not yet, anyway.”

I felt like the world’s biggest snitch; the world’s worst betrayer. Laugh. Some world!

“Into the house.” Charles’ command to me wasn’t exactly fatherly. He took hold of my shoulder and turned me. Like I’d just thrown a rock through the front window, or killed the dog next door, and it was time for punishment for being so heartless and stupid.

“Cynthia, go get Mari and bring her to the living room.”

Cynthia gave me a dirty look. It was her, wasn’t it Amelia! We had a right to know was in her eyes. She left and ran up the steps into the house, calling out to Mari.

“Go,” Charles said again. I began to plod forward.

“What good would it have done to try telling you what I think happened, Charles?” I said in self-defense.

“Because it would have been the truth.”

 

Peter made Munster stay behind and watch. Jerrick stayed with him, asking constantly for updates. “Yell if the ship comes into view above us,” Peter had said.

“It ain’t the whole ship! I can see it in the background!”

“Just keep an eye on it. Let us know when you can see whatever it is with the naked eye.”

Cynthia had sat Mari down on the sofa, alone, and with a look of contempt for me in her blue eyes. I stood between him and Cynthia, feeling about six inches tall. Peter was beside his sister, his armed folded, and he stared down at Mari in her hotseat.

“From the beginning, Mari,” Charles said in an even voice. “But first, maybe you should tell us what happened to you while you were in the coma.”

“I DON’T KNOW! I told you that, Amelia. I told you. Nothing happened that I can remember! Why are you doing this to me?” She looked at me like a little puppydog. Like the little girl we’d all known before…

“Mari, that isn’t true, and you know it. Please. You told me that they’d taken you up there. Or away, or somewhere. Tell them what you told me, Mari. Something happened.”

Mari dropped her head, closing her eyes. I could see her squint, as though in deep concentration. Her small lips moved ever so slightly for a second or two. Our Fathers, who art in space…? All our eyes were locked on her, forgetting for the moment that the creatures from the ship hanging just beyond the earth’s atmosphere were on their way down. Mari at last opened her eyes and sighed.

“It was like a dream,” she began. “I don’t remember all of it, only that…” she stopped suddenly and shot a painful look directly at me. “Amelia, you promised me…” And then she caught the last of the words and buried them.

No, Mari. I promised nothing. You commanded me.

“I remember waking up—sitting on what felt like...like rumpled blankets. It was dark. I was confused, I remember that clearly, and they spoke to me, although I couldn’t see any of them at first.

“Charles, that day they first came, you spoke to them, and they answered,” she left the story and tried to draw him in.

“No, dear, they spoke to me. Try as I may, they didn’t seem to care about answering my questions, and the encounter lasted for only brief seconds. I dreamt nothing, nor was I taken anywhere, as you say you were. Did they tell you why they did what they did?”

Mari shook her head no.

“Go on, then. And please tell us why you didn’t want us to know that something changed inside you. What did they do to you, and what do they intend to do with us?”

Mari pointed toward the front door.

“Wait,” she said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Peter said.

She looked at him calmly and replied, “They said they mean us no harm. They left the gift as proof—out there on the front lawn. Charles,” she said looking up at him, “They told you the same thing, didn’t they?”

“Mean us no harm?” Cynthia shot. “That’s a good one! One of these days you have to go with us back into Marysville to see the ‘no harm’ they’re talking about.”

“Us, not the rest of civilization.”

“Explain the appearance of those men, then,” I said.

“I can’t. I don’t know why some humans weren’t extinguished along with…the unfortunate ones who were.”

Munster had crept in unnoticed at some point during our conversation with Mari, and he said, “Well why din’t you ASK 'em?”

“Munster! What are you doing in here?” Cynthia was first to verbally hit him. Peter dashed outside, cursing .