Dreams of Shadows, Patrick Sean Lee [best historical fiction books of all time TXT] 📗

on color? Only humans. Thank you, Charles Baxter.

I handed Lashawna the dress as she finished the job of drying off. She took it without a word and slipped it over her head, working her thin arms through the short sleeves, and then she let the body of it fall. I couldn’t help but laugh. She did, too. Jack’s mother, lying face down in the pool—the woman didn’t appear to be that tall, but the short shift that probably would have hit her mid-thigh, hung nearly to Lashawna’s ankles. The short sleeves draped in an ungainly way far over her shoulders.

“Maybe scissors?” I offered, giggling. Jack turned, finally, and broke out in laughter.

“I’ll get them!” Jack said. “They’re over…”

“No. We have to go back to the cellar and give Jerrick a towel and fresh clothes first,” Lashawna said.

“I hope Daddy’s clothes fit him better than Mommy’s fit you!” So ebullient that little girl was under the dreadful circumstances.

We gathered up the towel and clothes, and then left the bedroom. I glanced back at the window just as I reached the doorway, thinking of the Flamecar stuck in the ditch for anyone happening by to see, or discover by whatever strange means those evil creatures possessed. Somehow we’d have to un-stick it, and then hide it.

Even in a downpour.

Settling in Oz

 

We arrived back at the cellar, half-soaked again, running from the rear kitchen door to the entrance. Laughing in a kind of three-part chorus at our bad luck. Somewhere in that house there must have been an umbrella or two, but none of us had thought to grab one.

Silly oversight.

The act of opening the door took several precious seconds, and had it not been for the overhang of the roof high above that somewhat protected us from the increasing downpour, it would have been…back to the bedroom for more dry clothes.

I'd carried Lashawna’s old wet clothes, and I dropped them near one of the wooden cases of wine where they landed with a splat. Hang them up somewhere to dry later. Not really that important, now.

Inside the underground pantry, Mari and Ashton giggled and poked one another when they saw Lashawna in her new dress. Peter, Munster, and Cynthia stood off to the side, talking in low voices to one another. Standing alone a few feet away, Jerrick’s head was turned in our direction when we entered, no doubt having heard or smelled our arrival long before we got to the entrance. Peter and Munster and Cynthia ended their exchange the second the children began to giggle, and turned to us.

“Real cool,” Munster said, eyeing Lashawna. She disregarded his approval (or disapproval, if that’s what it actually was) of her new gown and immediately took the towel and dry clothing to Jerrick.

“What’s it look like outside, Jack?” Peter asked.

“I didn’t look,” she replied with a tinge of apology in her tone.

“I did. I didn’t see anyone, or anything out of the ordinary. Just rain…and Munster’s car stuck in the ditch. Munster, don’t you think we should go move it?”

“In this weather? Yer nuts.”

“But there are four of us who could help push it now. If we wait until the rain stops, someone…”

“I ain’t goin’ out into that mess. And you don’t know how to drive, so yer stuck here until the rain stops.”

“It’s probably safe to go back upstairs,” Peter said, cutting the edge off Munster’s abrasive reply.

Meanwhile, Jerrick had begun to strip down to his boxers, Lashawna standing with her back to him as a kind of modesty shield to Cynthia. He dried himself, and then donned the new clothes, which oddly enough fit him fairly well, except for the waist. Apparently Jack’s father had eaten well. Obviously Jerrick never had.

“Belt?” I asked Jack.

“Forgot one,” she apologized once again. “He can just hold Daddy’s pants up with his hands until we get back upstairs.”

As he worked his fingers along the waistband, she burst out, “Look at his fingers! They’re so long!”

“He plays…or played…the piano,” Lashawna answered.

“That makes your fingers grow long and skinny?” Jack followed.

“I guess so,” said Lashawna.

“It’s a gene thing,” Jerrick said, settling the issue. If it was an issue, and not merely the answer to a child’s innocent observation.

Jack showed her utter confusion. She stepped closer to Jerrick and looked at his trousers carefully, his fingers tugging up on the waistband. Then she glanced up into eyes that could never see her.

“But…these aren’t jeans. Did you used to wear jeans? I don’t understand.”

“Later,” Munster said to her.

“He can tell you all about clothes and genes upstairs,” Peter added. “Let’s be on our way.”

Peter and Munster led the way, followed by Cynthia and the two children, Lashawna guiding Jerrick, with one hand on his new baggy pants, and then Jack and me behind them.

“I think Jerrick meant these things that are in your body—the genes. You inherit them from your parents, and they tell your body how to grow. They’re much different than clothes. Genes are inside the cells of your body,” I tried to explain to her. Walking beside me, I could see the gears inside her head spinning, trying to imagine the strange growth determiners.

“Maybe someday Jerrick or Peter will explain them better. Maybe Cynthia, if she knows. But not Munster. I’m positive he doesn’t know the difference.”

“Oh, okay.”

 

 

The rain continued to pound down. Peter stood outside against the wall of the house until we’d all gotten safely up, and then he closed the door over, sealing the cellar light in.

Once inside, Mari and Ashton shot about in the dark like little electrons freed from their nuclear orbits. They tagged one another and whooped it up, now free of the dank, crowded confines of their dungeon.

Peter went immediately to the stairs, hopping up them two at a time. I stayed close to Jack, Lashawna, Jerrick, and Cynthia. Munster turned right into the long, wide kitchen, and began rifling through the cabinet drawers. I knew without asking what he was searching for. Tape. Living in the dark each evening was simply out of the question in his simply-complicated mind.

A few moments later, after we‘d wandered through the hall into the living room, leaving Peter to do whatever he was up to on the second floor, and Munster to continue raiding the kitchen cabinets, Peter returned. The five of us had sat down on the sumptuous sofa. Cynthia was quizzing Lashawna and me about where we’d once lived when Peter swung off the curled handrail onto the floor.

“I don’t see anyone or anything outside, but I still think it would be a good idea for us to keep an eye stationed at the bedroom window tonight,” he said. “We can do it in shifts.”

Munster ambled into the living room as Cynthia and I stood.

“Can’t find any tape. You got any here?” he asked Peter.

“For what?”

“To tape somethin’ over all the windows. I don’t know about you, but if there's candles here, I’m gonna’ use ‘em.”

“No you’re not,” Peter shot back. The first butting of heads. I couldn’t see either of their faces clearly, but definitely one of the two intended on calling the shots. Unquestioned by the other.

“Cynthia, go upstairs to the bedroom. Take Jack if you like…she can sleep while you watch. The rest of you can take a bedroom at the back of the house. Cynthia will wake one of you when her two hours are up. Don’t light any candles.”

His tone, even to his sister, was sullen. The next statement he made had to have been directed once again at Munster.

“You hear that? Don’t light candles.” An uneasiness flowed like rushing water over the room and everyone in it.

“What about our car?” I asked.

“It stays where it is,” Munster said.

“He’s probably right…”

“I am,” Munster cut in.

“Okay, you’re right. We’ll leave it where it is for tonight. Maybe move it first thing in the morning if the rain lets up. Is that all right with you, buddy?”

Oh my God. The thought hit me that we should do as both of them ordered…and then get into the Flamecar, if it would start up again, and leave. Peter with his attitude; Munster with his gun and one bullet. Suddenly our bright new future had gotten clouded over. As if the creatures and a hoard of horrible men lurking outside somewhere weren't enough!

 

 

Cynthia woke me. I’d fallen asleep on the floor, curled inside a warm, heavy blanket, exhausted by the sheer tension of yesterday and last evening. Jerrick and Lashawna had taken the double bed. He was snoring softly. I didn’t know where Munster had gone to sleep. Perhaps right outside Peter and the kids’ bedroom, with his gun drawn.

“Amelia,” she whispered, poking at me with a finger, “wake up. Are you okay to stand next watch?”

“Huh…”

“I stayed up for three hours instead of two. Jack is asleep in the watch room. I’m really tired, now. Can you take my place?”

I blinked and stretched my arms and legs. “I think so. Is it morning?”

“No, no. Still night. Get up now. No one’s at the window, and you know what Peter said. Someone has to be there at all times.”

Peter. Why did he get to sleep, leaving the job of watching to the rest of us?

I crawled from beneath the warm cover and followed Cynthia out of the room, blanket dragging behind me. She led me to the watch bedroom, and then continued on down the hall to another bedroom. She waited, looking back at me until I opened the door as quietly as I could and entered.

Jack’s breathing was soft beneath the mounds of covers drawn to just below her neck. I padded past her to the window, wrapped the still-warm blanket around me, and sat in the hard wooden chair placed below the window. Outside nothing seemed to have changed. Darkness. The steady downpour. Flittering images of Munster’s Flamecar in the distance. I began to think of the evil, shimmering monsters. The man lying on his back with a hole in his head outside Father’s rectory. My parents…

Warm. Warm.

 

I woke with a start. The rain had stopped. The window glowed a hazy white that lit up the interior of the bedroom.

Peter was standing right behind me, and I knew I was in trouble.

“I’m sorry!”

His reaction startled me. He smiled.

“Tough job, eh girl? How long have you been asleep? See anything before you conked out?”

“I didn’t mean to fall asleep, Peter. I guess I was still tired after Cynthia…”

“It’s okay. No harm done, I suppose. We’re all still alive.” His smile waned, but there remained a warmth in his tone.

“I’ll take over for a while. Cynthia and the kids are awake. Downstairs. You can go to the kitchen and help them fix something for breakfast. She knows the routine. Just don’t let Mari and Ash go outside yet.”

I was so thankful. Maybe Peter wasn’t such a monster after all.

I left Jack and Peter to search for Cynthia. In the hall outside the room, I heard the soft sound of her voice in song rising from the first floor, as welcoming to my ears as the first glint of sunlight on a warm summer day always had been to my eyes. Intermixed were the squeaking, daybreak voices of Mari and Ash, peppering Cynthia with questions and