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

whom, I thought. For all Jerrick knew, the real Mr. Baxter might have three eyes, or a body in the form of a glittering, nearly-transparent ogre.. Standing close to her brother, Lashawna implored Munster not to raise the gun again. Peter, of course, remained adamant that Mr. Baxter explain himself, although his threat was only a warning to the man I’m positive.

“And how would you know that?” Peter asked him.

“I just do. There’s a smell about him. The same one that hit me before we went out to look for Munster. It’s all around him.”

“I am,” Mr. Baxter said. “I saw them all perish. I’ve no idea how I escaped the same death, but I witnessed all of it. I was knocked unconscious when the light struck us in the classroom, but when I awoke…after I’d gone to every single child and checked their pulses…after I’d stumbled, absolutely stunned, to every other classroom; the office, the lavatories and gym. It was the same everywhere.”

He went on, relating the next series of distressing events in all their morbid details.

If we were to believe him, and back then listening to him I saw no reason why we shouldn’t, Mr. Charles Schultz Baxter was every bit the victim of the catastrophe that we were. In a way, maybe more. At least none of us had turned a corner and run into one of the evil invaders like he said he had.

“I touched it! This was the result,” he said bringing his arms straight out, palms turned toward Peter and the rest of us. “A natural reaction. I was inches from one of those monsters. I pushed myself away, but it was as if I’d come into contact with a searing piece of molten steel. They aren’t very swift, even in their reactions. Take that as some comfort. Somehow in my shock and pain, I managed to turn and race like the wind back down the street. It followed, but I escaped, thank God.”

By then the tension in the room had vanished. Even Peter let up on the man.

“But how did you come to be on the highway? How did you know we were here in this house?” he put to him.

Mr. Baxter hesitated, and then gestured toward the sofas in the living room to the left. “Can we sit, please? I mean none of you any harm. I never did. I am also very weary.”

Peter eyed him for a moment, and then shook his head. “I suppose so.

“Jack, take Ash and Mari and go upstairs to the bedroom. Keep a close watch outside. If you see anything suspicious, get back down here and sound the alarm.”

“I want to hear what happened,” she complained. Peter looked over at her with his brow furrowed and his eyes narrowed.

“Just do it. We’ll tell you later.”

When the three younger ones had gotten halfway up the stairs, Peter and the rest of us walked to the sofas facing one another and sat down, curious in the very least to hear what the once-schoolteacher had to say. The six of us squeezed together on the sofa facing the long bank of windows ablaze with the morning sunlight. Mr. Baxter sat alone across from us. He waited until we had gotten situated, and then dropped his gaze to his upturned palms resting in his lap. A few seconds passed, and then he continued with his tale.

“I ran, of course. To no place in particular, just away from whatever that thing was. “I didn’t know what to do. All I knew was that I had to get away from the death and carnage in Marysville, and so I headed south. I slept for a few hours in the last house at the edge of town. Considered staying there until I could figure out what to do next.”

Mr. Baxter glanced down at his blistered hands again. “My first order of business was to find the medicine cabinet in one of the bathrooms, and hope to find some salve. The inside of the home was as dark as a tomb, but after half an hour of bumping into furniture, doors—tripping over bodies—I managed to find one on the second floor. I emptied its contents into a small trash receptacle I’d kicked over when I entered the room, and then stumbled back down the stairs, and outside where the light was somewhat better. Polysporin. I emptied the tube onto my palms. After that, I went back into the living room, lay down behind a couch, and like I said, slept for a while. Sometime during my fitful sleep, I heard the roar of an engine outside. I woke with a start, ran out of the house, and followed the sound until it faded.”

The sound of Jack screaming broke the next, most important part of his story.

“They’re coming up the drive!”

Contact

 

Peter bolted off the couch and raced to the front door, the rest of us only half-seconds behind him.

“Get the kids to the cellar!” he yelled, throwing the curtains covering the window in its top half aside. Munster and Cynthia crowded on either side against him, pressing their faces to the glass. Charles and I rushed to an adjacent window, leaving Lashawna and Jerrick to begin the dreadfully slow journey back out of the living room toward the rear door ahead of Jack and the two children.

I groaned when I peered out and saw, not one, but four swirling opaline shapes moving erratically toward us, fifty feet in from the gate. The memory of first having seen one of them days ago in front of my house, and then on the street in front of the mini mart leapt into my head. Those faces that weren’t really faces, grotesque as they were without eyes. One of them had come to a stop by the Flamemobile, one strangely amorhous hand coursing across the side window as though the thing was searching for a way to open it. It twisted its shimmering head unnaturally to the side, elongating it as if—I swear—it was investigating the interior. If they had no eyes…but then suddenly that apparently incorrect assumption shattered. Like a pit of snakes awakened from slumber by a sudden noise above them, tentacle-like appendages emerged to writhe and poke at the glass, bouncing left, right, up and down along it.

Peter, Cynthia, and Munster wheeled around after only a second or two of watching the invaders’ progress forward and exited the living room.

“Move!” Peter shouted from the entry to the kitchen, but Charles and I remained glued to the vision beyond our station at the window, as if both of us were Lot’s wife, turned to stone by what was happening to Sodom down in the valley below.

The creature that was plowing over Munster’s car moved away a few seconds later to join the others, which jolted me back to my senses. I let the curtain fall closed and grabbed Charles’ arm.

“They’ll be here in a second, Mr. Baxter. Come on!” I tugged at him, but he remained where he stood, one purplish and blistered hand holding the curtain open. A look of sadness descended over his face.

“I’m sorry, Amelia. I didn’t mean to, but I brought them here. Go. Hide with the others.”

“But…”

“Go. I’m no longer frightened of them. When they discover me, perhaps they’ll just do me in and forget the rest of you. Run.”

“They saw you and Jerrick and Peter! Please come with me. We’ll be safe in the cellar until they get tired of looking and then leave!”

Charles might act brave, but I saw the fear in his eyes. Would they use some sort of death ray sent from their hideous fingers to strike him down, or more likely swarm over him and roast him to a cinder?

That look on his face; fear mixed with resignation and sorrow. His fate should have meant very little, or nothing, to me, and yet I couldn’t run away. I don’t know exactly why. I just couldn’t, and so I did something which in hindsight still baffles me. I hugged him and threw my face into his chest. How strange. I couldn’t let him die alone, but I prayed that when they fell on us my death wouldn’t hurt too much. Is that what soldiers used to do—is that what they used to think—when they were being overrun by the enemy?

Neither Peter nor Munster nor Cynthia returned to drag Charles and me away from the window. Peter told me much later that they’d assumed we fled to an upstairs bedroom, or somehow made it up into the attic. Far from that, Charles took hold of my hand with a grimace, and then smiled down at me. He released my hand, walked to the front door, and using both of his, turned the knob and pulled it open. They stood at the foot of the steps, two of them. Their friends languished several feet behind them, waiting, I imagined, for the leaders to dispense with us. There followed a long moment of stasis as we looked out at them, and I guessed they looked in at us.

Mr. Baxter did something that at first made me recoil. He stepped out and approached them, lifting his hands upward and out, shaking his head no.

No, don’t kill us, or, no, don’t burn me again?

He stopped not two feet away from them and lowered his hands to his side. I could see them turn their cloudy face toward one another, and I could hear them speak to each other in voices that resembled water being poured onto the burners of a stove. Neither of them, nor their companions, made a move to whisk forward and end our lives. Their tentacle eyes gazed up at us, back and forth at one another—this way and that—and then ceased to move, pointing straight ahead.

Should we cook them and eat them here? A hundred frighteningly crazy thoughts pummeled me. As the seconds ground onward, it struck me that perhaps they had no intention of doing us in. But why? Oh, I wished and prayed, peering down at them, that we could understand what they’d been saying to one another. That they could understand the cruel question I wanted to put to them: “Why did you do what you did to all those innocent people?”

We mean you no harm.

Really? Just everyone else?

Well, no. That was just an accident.

Some accident!

No Allstate any longer to file a claim with.

We’re sorry.

That’s rich. But okay, we forgive you. Won’t you come in and sit with us for a spell?

Obviously they didn’t want to do that. They turned and returned the way they’d come.

WHAT?

Crisis over. CRISIS OVER?

My knees knocked. I nearly fell over in relief shot through with disbelief and utter confusion. I sighed, but leaving my throat the sound of it was more truthfully a groaning cry.

Safe? For the moment at least. Now what?

“Go gather the others,” Charles said in an even voice. He watched them move away like strange shadows under a stormy sky.

“Why didn’t they…? They didn’t hurt us, Mr. Baxter! What do they want here? We’re alive!”

“We are. Go get the others, sweetheart. We have work to do.” He finally turned to me and smiled. “I’m proud of you, Amelia. I’m very proud of you. Go