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

went through the door, and then I waited and waited and waited, but he didn’t come out, and so I didn’t know what to do, so I ran. I knew the man was hiding and had jumped on Munster when he went into the back room. That’s why I hadn’t heard a big bang from Munster’s gun, and that’s why he didn’t come back out. He was probably dead. And now the man was laughing and had Munster’s gun, and he would come after me.

In my head I saw Munster lying on the floor bleeding and dead and covered with the germy flies, and I was alone again. I cried and ran and the sky got darker and darker and it started raining again. I ran down the street. I was wet and I didn’t know if I could remember where my house was, or Munster’s, because it was a long way away, and I had never been this far away from home without my momma or my daddy or Munster. Except to school. I knew the man was chasing me, and I hoped I could run fast enough so that he couldn’t see me, but I wasn’t sure where to run, but I ran anyway.

All the houses I ran past looked strange. I didn’t remember coming past them when Munster and me walked to the mini-mart because we were talking and I didn’t pay any attention to which way we came. I saw lots of dead bodies, too. Some in the street by cars or lying on their front lawns or porches, and I didn’t remember seeing them either when we came. I kept looking behind me and splashed through water, but I didn’t see the man, and I kept running.

It took so long. I was wet and I was cold and I was so scared. I finally came to the street called Walnut. I remembered that name because I liked walnuts, and so I turned and went on it, and after a few blocks I saw our church on the corner, and I knew where I was because sometimes we walked to it if it wasn’t raining or too cold. Momma and Daddy and me. So I looked behind me again and didn’t see the man and I ran faster anyway. Munster’s house was left on Birch Street, and my old house was right a little ways on Birch Street. I turned right because I just wanted to go home. But then I stopped. I had to think.

I ran to some bushes and climbed under them to think. I was breathing very hard because I had run so fast and so far. I was wet, and so I sat down and thought. It got dark, and the rain came harder.

I wanted to go home, but I didn’t want to see my momma or my daddy because they were dead and I knew I’d cry even harder if I saw them, and it smelled because they were dead, and there were probably tons of germy flies all over them. I didn’t want to go back to Munster’s either, because maybe the man knew where he lived and would be waiting there for me. I was hungry because I didn’t take my bag of candy bars and Fritos and Cokes and the carton of Fruit Loops when I ran away.

I sat there all huddled up and shivering because I was wet, and I thought What can I do? If I stayed under the bush I knew I’d freeze to death, and I didn’t want to die, but mostly I didn’t want to be so cold anymore. I wanted to go inside somebody’s house and get dry, but I didn’t want to ever, ever see any more dead smelly people or germy flies, and so I said no to myself. I thought about Albertson’s supermarket because it was close. I remembered it and thought maybe I’d go there, but maybe the man was coming, and maybe he’d see me going there because it was on the way from where me and Munster had been. So I decided I wouldn’t go there. And then I thought about St. Andrew’s Church that I’d just passed. It was close, too, and I thought the man wouldn’t go there because if he was a murderer he wouldn’t go to a church. I could find a towel somewhere in it and dry off, and maybe there would be some food in the place where Father Kenney lived that was right behind the church. So, I decided to go there. I wanted to pray, too, and ask God what had happened to the world, and I could do that in the church after I dried myself off and found something to eat. There were always candles in the church because Momma used to light them and pray. So, I could light them and not be in the dark if I could find some matches or a lighter.

I looked out from under the bush, and I listened very hard to hear if there were footsteps, but there weren’t, so I crawled out and ran back the way I’d come. When I was almost in front of St. Andrew’s I tripped on a big crack in the sidewalk because it was dark, and I fell. I skinned my right knee and it hurt, and that made me cry more, but I got up and ran across the lawn, up to the big wood doors of the church. My jeans were torn and I could feel blood running down my leg. I’d have to fix my knee myself if I could find a Band-aid.

I remember coming to Saint Andrew’s on Sundays, to Mass with Momma and Daddy. I liked Saint Andrew’s a lot because of the tall, colorful windows on each side. They were made of blue and green and red pieces of glass, and showed saints doing things, or just looking out at all of us. I liked the statues in the church, too, because someone made them out of big rocks, and then put them over their very own altars up in the front. Saint Andrew had his own altar on the right, and Saint Therese had hers on the other side. Momma said Saint Therese was the little flower of Jesus, and I liked her, because I like flowers. Underneath both altars there were the stands that held lots of candles in red holders, and Momma sometimes went there after Mass and lit one, and then she would kneel down in front of Saint Andrew or Saint Therese and pray for something.

There was an organ upstairs, and one of the Sisters sometimes played it. I liked that, too, even though the music was nothing like what me and my friends listened to. Father Kenney would say Mass and talk a little in the middle. Sometimes it was Father Hidick…Hedrickk…I don’t know how to spell his name, but he was old and had gray hair, and I was afraid of him because he looked mean and never smiled. But Father Kenney was always smiling, except when he said Mass because you’re not supposed to smile during Mass, and you’re not supposed to talk. Father Kenney could talk though. He was supposed to.

Lily and Harry Moul came with their mother and father, and sometimes I would giggle when Harry made faces at me if he sat nearby. Lily was always good and never got in trouble for making faces or whispering to me like Harry did.

I wondered if they were alive?

It was even darker inside than it was outside in the rain. That was okay. I knew where everything was, so I wouldn’t run into a big pillar or anything when I walked up the main aisle.

I walked very slowly, but then stopped because some of the candles were lit by the Saint Therese altar, and I knew they shouldn’t have been. Everyone except me and Munster and the man back at the store was dead. So, who lit the candles, I wondered? I almost turned around and ran back out until I heard a voice, but I didn’t see anyone. It was a small voice. It sounded like a little girl’s, which made me happy. Maybe Lily was here.

I crept forward as quiet as could be, and I stopped at the last pew. I peeked around the edge. Two kids sat cross-legged beneath the candles. A little black girl with her back to me, and very close, with his knees touching hers, a black boy. She held a book in her hands and was reading out loud, I guess to him. It must have been very hard for her to see the words because even though all of the candles were lit, the light was not very bright.

Neither of them noticed me. The boy sat quietly, and his head was bent forward, like he couldn’t hear well. His eyes, even in the dim light, were large and bright white. I listened from where I was crouching as the girl read, but I didn’t know the story. I could hear certain words she spoke, names. Meg and Charles and someone named Tesser, or Tessereck. Something. She kept reading, and every now and then the boy would turn his head sideways a little and smile.

After a while I sat back against the pew and just listened. I pulled my knees up to my chest and wrapped my arms around them. My knee hurt. I was still cold and I began to shiver, wondering who they were, and if I should say something to them. I was hungry, too, and so I decided to say something. I poked my head around the pew again.

“Hello,” I said.

The girl jumped. She turned her head quickly and slammed the book shut at the same time. The boy looked up, over at me, and that is when I noticed something strange about him. His eyes looked different, but I wasn’t sure why.

“Who are you?” she asked in a loud voice.

I wasn’t sure what to say, but something told me I was safe. So I answered her.

“Amelia. Who are you?”

She laid the book down beside her and crawled over to me. She seemed to be studying my face, deciding whether or not I had a knife, or a gun like Munster’s. I stared back at her. I was shaking, but not because I was afraid. My hair was still dripping rain. She looked warm, and that was because she had a winter jacket on and it had fur on the collar.

“I’m Lashawna Freeman. Where did you come from? You’re all wet! I thought Jerrick and I were the only people left alive!” Lashawna Freeman sat back and talked and talked and talked. She told me she was eight, the same age as me, and that her brother was thirteen, and that he was blind. That’s what caused his eyes to look funny. Because they couldn’t see anything. He could hear very well, though, much better than anyone else, she said.

“Why didn’t he hear me when I came in then?” I said.

“Because I was listening to Lashawna read. I wasn’t trying to hear anything else.”

“Oh.

“I used to live a few blocks from here, that way,” I said pointing toward Saint Andrew’s altar on the other side of the church. “My mother and father are dead. They’re still in my old house, and I think Munster is dead, too. He was my friend, and he lived that way, too. No, the other way. Why did everyone die except us?”

“Beats me,” Jerrick said, and he shrugged his shoulders. He kept staring straight ahead, and if I had moved somewhere else, and he didn’t hear me move, I think he would have kept looking straight in front of him. I stood up, then, and told Lashawna and Jerrick Freeman that I was freezing cold, and that I needed to go find a towel. Maybe in Father Kenney’s house behind the