Closer To Heaven - Patrick Sean Lee (rosie project .txt) 📗

Just as I expected, the grownup man came down from upstairs. What I didn’t expect, though, was that Munster would come with him! There was a teeney crack between the doors, and I wanted to scoot around somehow and look out into the kitchen where they were, but there was no room to move my head that way, so I just listened as hard as I could. Munster wasn’t screaming or crying. There was a buzzing, whirling noise, and I heard the grownup man say, “She’s here? I thought I heard a scream, but…Francis, you heard it too, right?”

“Yup. And I ain’t gonna’ tell you again. My name’s Munster, like in Gangstuh,” is what Munster said back to him.

“Yes, yes. I’m sorry. I forgot.”

The cloud said something then in that funny voice, although I couldn’t understand what it was because it was all windy-sounding. It reminded me, too, of sour notes on a piano. The grownup man answered right after that.

“The little girl would be hiding, then…”

“Amelia,” Munster said kind of angrily.

“Yes, Amelia. Francis, you…”

“Munster!”

“Munster, you look in the living room. I’ll scour the bedroom and bath.”

I heard feet shuffling, and Munster calling out from his living room, “Amelia! Where are you? It’s okay, come out. We wanna’ help you!”

The cloud thing didn’t move, though. I could hear the windy, soury noise, not the buzzy, whirling voice—this was just very low, but I still heard it—and I could see the gray still in the kitchen through the crack in the doors. I didn’t trust Munster, now. I didn’t know what that cloud, or any of the other ones, wanted. They had killed everyone almost, and even though it was true they didn’t kill Lashawna, maybe they just tried and it didn’t work. Maybe the man had captured Munster and brainwashed him, and now my friend was a zombie, and if I opened those doors, I would either be killed or turned into a zombie, too. The nice cloud-lady was only in my dreams. The real ones weren’t like her at all. Lashawna got well because of all the candles I’d lit at Saint Therese’s altar. I closed my eyes and prayed.

I lay there all curled up, and my legs hurt. So did my arms. I waited and waited, wondering when one of them would think to check the cabinet I was in, but they didn’t, and that meant my prayers had been answered. I don’t know how long I stayed like that, all bunched up. I didn’t have a watch or a clock or a sundial like Daddy’s, but the cloud left, finally, and I knew this because the light in the room came back.

Munster and the man were in the living room talking. They stayed there for a while, and then everything was quiet again later on. I waited some more, and then some more after that just to be sure I was safe. My legs hurt so bad, and so finally I opened the doors very quietly and had to fall out onto my tummy because I was all stiff and cramped and sore. I groaned when I got to my feet, but not too loud. Munster and the grownup were still in the house somewhere. Probably upstairs, wondering where I’d escaped to.

I tiptoed to the doorway leading to the dining room and peeked in. No one was there. I looked very carefully, then I went across it and had to be more careful because there was an empty can on the carpet by the big table and I didn’t want to step on it or kick it. The living room was empty, just like the dining room, except for a sofa and a chair with red and purple upholsteries and a TV on a stand and some pictures still on the wall and a coffee table like our old one at my house with some magazines spread out on the top. There was a half-empty bottle of water on the table, too, and another one that was all empty because it was lying on its side. Seeing the bottles made me thirsty, and I thought I could sneak over and drink from the one with some water still in it, but then I thought that would not be a good idea because of germs. Who knows, the grownup could have poisoned Munster by putting something in that bottle that made him go crazy. If I drank some of it I might go crazy too. I turned and went across the room to the hallway by the front door and the stairs. Suddenly I heard the grownup say something to Munster. They were upstairs in Munster’s bedroom, and I heard footsteps. I ran back down the hall and hid in the bedroom. The stairs creaked as they came down.

“I’ll only be gone for an hour or so, Francis. Get something to eat if I’m not home by dark. That girl is out there somewhere. She has to be found.”

“I’ll go with you, Bax. You can drive, and I don’t wanna’ stay here by myself.”

“No. And it’s Mr. Baxter. Try to remember that.”

The front door opened and then closed. Munster cussed. I can’t repeat what he cussed, but he said something else after that.

“I ain’t stayin’ here Mr. Ass. I’ll go look for her by myself.”

He must have been waiting until Mr. Baxter drove the flame car away because I didn’t hear him move, and I would have if he had gone back upstairs or opened the door again. Now was the time. I ran from my hiding place behind the door and called out.

“Munster! I’m right here! What happened?”

He turned.

Zombies don’t move very fast. I knew that because I’d seen them in movies on TV, so if he was one of them I thought I could run very fast back out the kitchen door and get away. Munster ran toward me very fast, and I prayed he wasn’t a zombie that could run. He was smiling, though, and so I knew he wasn’t a dead person because they never smile.

“Amelia! Where in hell were you hidin’? We looked everywhere!” he said, and he looked fine. His eyes were wide open, and his shaggy hair was all messy.

“Don’t CUSS, Munster! I told you that before you disappeared. You didn’t look under the sink in the kitchen, did you? Who is that man? Were you talking to that cloud? They’re evil, Munster. What did that man do to you? Are you okay?” That was too many questions, but that’s what I said. He laughed at me, but I wasn’t mad because of it. He looked fine, and I was so glad to see him, even if he cussed.

Munster answered me. “Slow down. Bax is cool. He weren’t no murderer at all, and so I didn’t shoot him. He was just real sick. I talked to him for a while in the store, and then got him up on his feet an’ took him home after. Why’d you run away?”

“I was scared because you didn’t come out. That’s why I ran.”

“Where you been all this time?”

“I’ve been…” I stopped and thought about that question. Maybe Munster was okay, not a zombie that just looked fine, but he was here with that grownup, and they were talking to that cloud. Those things killed my parents, and Jerrick’s and Lashawna’s, and Muntser’s, even. They were bad. The clouds didn’t know where we lived anymore, and if I told Munster…? Still, I had to say something.

“I found two friends. I’ve been with them.”

He looked at me funny, like he had a big question mark in his head. “Where?”

So, now I was stuck. He wouldn’t let me go unless I told him, I thought. But if I did tell him, and if he and the grownup were bad like the clouds, they’d all come after us like that cloud did a little while ago when it chased me into the kitchen.

“I don’t want to tell you, Munster.”

“Why?”

Once, a long time ago, me and Debra Sassone had a secret. She stoled a Milky Way from Albertson’s when she and I went there after school one afternoon. I didn’t have any money that day, and neither did she, and we were both hungry for a candy bar. She took it, and we ate it outside by the place they kept the shopping baskets. Afterward, when I went home, I felt bad. I wanted to tell Mommy, but I was afraid, because she would punish me and then make me go back to the store and tell the manager what I’d done. Or what Debra had done. Debra wasn’t my best friend, but we were friends.

At school the next day I was sitting at the picnic table by the playground with Diane Fairmore, who was my best friend. I told her, and I felt a lot better. Diane Fairmore was very surprised, and her mouth opened wide after I told her. I asked her not to tell anyone, and she promised she wouldn’t. She did though, because, I think, she didn’t like Debra at all.

Mommy told me a long time later that she was not angry with me anymore, and that Diane Fairmore’s mother had called her the day after I told Diane what we’d done. That’s how my mother found out. She was angry for what Debra and I had done, because it was wrong and it was a sin, but she was angrier that I hadn’t come to her and told her.

Me and my friend did have to go back to the store and tell the manager that Debra Sassone had stolen a candy bar after all. We didn’t get thrown in jail, but Debra hated me after that, and I hated Diane Fairmore for a whole year.

So, I’d thought Diane Fairmore was my best friend, like Munster sort of was now, but she really wasn’t. If I told Munster where we lived, he would tell Mr. Baxter, and Mr. Baxter would tell the clouds, and then bring them with him.

“Because…I don’t want that man, Mr. Baxter, to know.” That’s all I could think of to say.

“Huh? I don’t get it. Bax is our friend, Amelia. Why don’t you want him to know? He’s got this thing all figured out, and he’ll help us!”

“Because he was talking to that cloud in the kitchen…and so were you!”

Munster took a step backward, and his face got that “Oh-My-God!” look on it. He came back to where he’d been standing a second ago and grabbed my hands, which made me very nervous, but he was smiling.

“You got it all wrong, Amelia. I can’t understand them clouds…I guess he can, but I can’t. C’mere,” he said, and he pulled me into the living room and told me to sit down beside him on the couch. “This is what happened.”

Munster told me how he’d gone back into the mini-mart. Mr. Baxter was still lying on the floor behind that big shelf, and so Munster went around it and pointed his gun at him.

“I was gonna’ shoot him, an’ I woulda’ except he asked me not to, that he was sick an’ was prob’ly gonna’ die anyway. I could see he was real sick ‘cuz he was layin’ on his side, an’ he was reachin’ up at me with his fingers. But I knew he couldn’t move to get up.”

“And so you helped him?”

“Well, yeah.”

 “Munster! I don’t trust him, and I don’t trust the clouds. Don’t you see? He wasn’t really