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

all. Both of you were somewhere else. You thought you were in that dumpster dreaming, but you weren’t. They took you someplace so that they could talk to you.”

“I woke up in the dumpster!”

“The lady brought you back, and then she woke you up…just like she did with Lashawna.”

“Why” I asked.

“I’m not sure, but the fact is, she has been taking care of all of us in some way. Maybe she is sympathetic concerning us; maybe most of the others aren’t. The only way we’ll know for sure is to meet Mr. Baxter. He knows something we don’t. I don’t think he’s evil. I sense that somehow.”

“He locked that bedroom, Jerrick!” I shouted.

“Maybe for a good reason that has nothing to do with evil. Perhaps whatever killed everyone is locked up inside that room. Maybe whatever is inside that room is precious, and Munster getting at it might be its ruin. He sounds a little crazy to me. Undisciplined. Carrying a gun is crazy, right?”

“Mr. Baxter took it away from him…”

“And so, Mr. Baxter did something good. We should go to Munster’s house.”

“What!” It wasn’t Munster who was crazy, I thought after hearing Jerrick say that. It was Jerrick who was crazy.

“If they’re home, we’ll knock on the door and ask Mr. Baxter who he is. If he shoots us with your friend’s gun, then we’ll just get to heaven more quickly. If they’re not home, we’ll wait for them to get back, and then we’ll ask Mr. Baxter who he is, and what’s in that bedroom.”

“I’ll go,” Lashawna said. “I’m not afraid.”

We didn’t have to go. Just as Lashawna was busy agreeing with her brother, Munster’s voice came in through our bedroom window.

“Amelia! It’s me. Unlock the door. Me and Bax want to come in.”

 

FOURTEEN

I was so scared!           

I ran out of the bedroom, through Father’s front office, and then across the walkway into our church. I kept thinking about when I was hiding in Munster’s kitchen, and I thought, too, of Mr. Baxter talking to that cloud that was looking for me. For me! And now they were here at our house! If only Jerrick hadn’t turned the lights back on.

And then I was inside the church. I ran to Saint Therese and prayed to her to protect me, because no matter what Jerrick said, I didn’t believe Mr. Baxter was good. He might not have killed Munster, but only because he was one of them, and they were after us.

Only six or seven candles were burning, and so I took a match from the box and lit a new one and said more prayers.

“Please, please, Saint Therese. I’m so scared. What should I do? Where can I go…” And right in the middle of that prayer I started talking to myself, which made no sense, because when you talk to yourself you say crazy things sometimes.

I’ll run away. Right now! No. It’s dark. I’ll just hide…they won’t find me. Ohhh no, no, no! Please! Mr. Baxter will kill Lashawna and…I don’t care about Jerrick. I don’t! It’s all his fault. I know they’ll be here to find me in a minute. Stupid Jerrick! No, I don’t want him to die.

“Please help them, Saint Therese. Please. I have to go. I’m sorry. Help me. Help me.”

MR. BAXTER is a cloud person. He must be…

I made the sign of the cross as quick as I could, and then got up and turned to run down the big aisle to the front doors. That’s when I nearly fainted, and when I tripped on my feet. I saw them. They were everywhere! Spinning slowly. They’d found me, and there was nowhere to go, now. Nowhere to hide from them. I didn’t see them when I came in. I knew they hadn’t been there until after I ran in. Mr. Baxter had led them to me. To us.

Momma told me a long time ago about how churches used to be, back when knights and people like that still lived. They would always chase robbers and murderers. Knights had swords and big axes, but no guns because there weren’t guns then. But the knights would chase the bad men all over the hills and towns to kill them, but if the bad men could get to a church before they were killed, they could go in, and then they’d be safe. People who chased other people couldn’t chase them into a church because all churches were holy, and if you were chasing someone and wanted to kill him, it would be a mortal sin to do that inside God’s home.

I remembered that. But there they were, so many of them all around me. They had chased me into God’s home, and I was sure they didn’t care. They would finally get me and kill me, and it probably wouldn’t be a sin for them because they’d come from somewhere where no one even believed in God.

I couldn’t see their faces because they didn’t HAVE faces! But I knew they were frowning and laughing like murderers would after they had got you. They had me.

I turned back around. One of them was right in front of Saint Therese’s altar, right where I’d been seconds ago. It was her—the nice cloud lady I’d met in my dream, and she had a face, now, except it wasn’t exactly like my face or Lashawna’s or Saint Therese’s, even. All that I could see were her eyes and parts of her cheeks and chin and mouth, like in a very old, worn out photograph in one of Momma’s picture albums. She was the rest a cloud, spinning very, very slowly, and she was smiling down at me. Not a big smile, but a smile. And then part of her—two parts of her—reached out. Like hands. Like she wanted me to come back to the altar.

There was no place to run to, no place to go except to her, and so I went back. As I got close, her hands turned up slowly, the way Momma’s did when…when… Something deep down told me not to touch them; that if I did, that would be the end of me. But the lady was smiling.

I reached up, and with my shaking fingers, touched hers. Oh Saint Therese, if you’re here…

I was no longer in my church, but I was. I felt my feet on the stone floor. I smelled the wax burning. There was candlelight everywhere suddenly, though. Bright and soft. Not at all like lights in our rectory home, or even the lights that used to be at Target or Albertson’s. Thousands of tiny flames that were warm…oh, it’s so hard to explain.

Momma read a book to me once. About fairies. About where they lived in a forest, and how at night they would all come out of the places they lived, and they would fly around, all glowing and tiny. When they all came together, though, the trees would wake up and look like they had bark that was soft and bluish. Yes! From the fairy lights! And the trees would have faces, and their branches became arms, and the fairies would land in them and talk and sing. The fairies in that book never wanted to hurt one another, and the trees would not hurt them either.

And that is how it felt as I stood there, kind of. The church was golden, though, not blue, and it was warm, and the clouds became like the trees in the story about fairies that Momma read to me a long time ago when I was a little girl.

And there was music, far away, that came closer and closer and closer. I felt as though I was in Heaven right then…so close. It was such beautiful music. Oh, so beautiful. I knew there were violins—I think that’s what they were—and some kind of horns that I didn’t know what they were, but they were beautiful, too, and all that music began to swirl around me in the soft lights.

I looked around as the music played. I saw many of the clouds surrounding me, and somehow the music was coming from them. Each time they moved, so did the violins and the horns. The music was their voices! It felt strange when the voices touched me, so very strange. One, two, three, four. One after another whisked around me like ribbons flying, mostly touching my head. How do I say…? I almost understood the notes, because they were like words, only musical words! They were talking to me!

I wasn’t afraid any longer. How could creatures with such beautiful voices want to hurt me? We were in my church, too. God’s home. No one could hurt me there, not even if they wanted, because I was protected. But I knew, I just knew they didn’t want to hurt me. That is what I knew, and that is what they told me.

High above me, way up in the top of the church where the big wooden beams that held up the roof were, some of the clouds and their musical voices floated in and out of the pieces that made up the beams. Maybe they were really angels, I thought. That is what I wanted them to be, anyway. Maybe the kind cloud lady who had my hand was really Saint Therese. Even if none of this was true, I wanted to believe it was. I turned back to the lady.

“Dear Lady, thank you. I’m not afraid anymore, but I have one question, please. You must answer it. Will you? Why did you kill my family and everyone else? What was the reason?”

She did not move her lips, but she spoke to me.

Go back, dear little one. Go back to your friends. You will find your answer there. We will not leave you just yet. Go back now.

I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to stay right where I was, holding her hand and hearing them sing to me. But I left after the lady let go of my hand. After the music that was voices went away, the clouds with it. And the lady, too. I stood for a minute, searching with my eyes to see if any of them had stayed behind. If way up in the ceiling any of the small, soft lights were there. But they were all gone, probably back to heaven.

I looked up at Saint Therese just before I left. She held lilies in her right hand, just like always, and she was smiling down at me.

I went away.

 

FIFTEEN