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

hollow. Mari and Jack were at my side in a flash, warning me not to approach it. Ash was far back on the road, consumed with throwing small stones at something—or nothing in particular—in the trees bordering the road.

“Don’t do it,” Mari warned again. I touched her arm with shaking fingers, and for the first time in weeks felt an uncanny kinship with the girl, as though our fates were inexplicably connected. Turning back to the glistening tower, I took a step forward, but then hesitated.

“Wait. Stay here. You two keep an eye on Ash, I’ll be right back.”

I left them and ran to the house. Wherever the rest of our band was at that moment, something told me to fetch the walkie-talkie and tell them what I was about to do. I knew they would scream murder, but also that my intention would make them abandon their foray and return. Better to have Charles and Jerrick and Peter and Cynthia there in the aftermath, whatever that might be.

I found the phone on the coffee table where I’d left it earlier, grabbed it, and then began to return to Mari and Jack and the tower waiting for me.

“Charles, are you there?”

A moment of static and silence followed, and then Peter’s voice answered. “Yeah, we’re here, except for Cynthia and Munster. What’s up?”

“I’m going to touch the cylinder.”

He responded in a heartbeat. “No you’re not! You can’t be serious, Amelia. Stay away from that thing!”

“It’s already decided. I have to know what it does.”

Charles’ voice chimed. “Amelia, don’t. Stay where you are. We’re on our way back. Wait. Please do as Peter says.”

There was a crackling instant of astonishment and overlapping exclamations of confusion on the other end until I pressed the talk button again.

“I’ll be fine—I hope. It didn’t kill Mari. Didn’t really hurt her, but it did do something strange to her. All of you know that. I’m going to find out exactly what it was.”

I laid the walkie-talkie onto the boards of the porch, and then walked down the steps. Jack stood several feet behind Mari, and when she saw me lay the walkie-talkie down, she began to move toward me, a disturbing look covering her face. How odd, I thought looking over at Mari. She was on her knees in front of the tower, her fingertips spread near its surface. It appeared as if she was praying to it. I crossed the drive onto the grass, more determined than ever…and more frightened than ever. What kind of gods were inside that strange alien tabernacle?

“She’s saying something to it!” Jack said.

“I know, I know.”

“Amelia, don’t do it! Please don’t!”

When I arrived, Mari jumped to her feet. She turned to me and shoved her back against its surface. She spread her arms and hands out against it and shook her head.

“No, Amelia. They told me not to let you come in contact with it.”

Ha! She was pressed against it, alive, coherent. Like Jack had just said, she’d been talking to whomever, or whatever was inside, or somewhere listening to her. This time it didn’t make her collapse, and interdict or otherwise, I had to risk that it wouldn’t strike me down if I did the same.

“Go get the walkie-talkie, Mari. I left it on the porch. Everyone’s on the way home, just let them know straight off if something terrible happens to me. Now move out of the way.”

Mari remained locked to the surface defiantly, and then I saw her eyes shift to her right and narrow. She stepped forward suddenly, her full attention caught by something down the drive. I glanced over my shoulder, following her stare. Ash was still on the road throwing stones. A hundred feet farther down near the crippled Flamecar I caught sight of what had grabbed her attention. Five men, three in long overcoats, the other two in flashy, but soiled, suits that didn’t fit their appearance. All of them had unkempt shocks of hair and scruffy beginnings of beards. I recognized the first one—the attacker Munster had let go back at Saint Andrew’s. He turned and said something to the others, and then they began to move away from the car in our direction. Ash finally noticed them. He let the stone in his hand drop to the ground and stared as they scuffled forward.

“Ash! Jack! Run for the house. Now!” I screamed.

 

 

The Return

 

Mari said nothing. She moved toward them, her shoulders back and her hands balled into fists. Lashawna and I had told her many times during the first days at the house how two men had tried to smash into the rectory, and once they’d seen us, what their intentions probably were. The look on the first man’s face, the repulsive half-smile—the terror of that night was forever welded into my memory. Even at her young age I knew Mari had understood.

All of them disregarded Ash and Jack, who stood frozen and staring at them as they approached. I had no weapon, and even if I had, killing someone like Munster had done without blinking an eye was beyond my comprehension. I followed Mari anyway, praying that our men would miraculously appear before the gang of rapists and murderers laid their filthy hands on us.

The leader, dressed in one of the long overcoats stopped dead and motioned for the others to do the same. He’d gotten a good look at me when Munster threatened him weeks ago. I was sure the man had no idea that Munster was nowhere near, though. He took a small step and slowly raised his hands outward at us.

“Good day to you, ladies,” he said in a saccharine tone. “We had no idea there were others alive! Do you have food? Are there others here with you at this…grand home?”

A lie. Could he possibly think I didn’t recognize him?

Mari said nothing and continued to stride toward them.

“Yes. They’re in the back.” I turned. “Ash, get in the house. Now!”

“Amelia?” he bleated.

Mari halted a few feet in front of the man and asked rhetorically, “What do you want?”

“I told ya’. Just some food and water. A place to rest for a while before we continue on our way.

“Who else is here?” he ended suspiciously.

“Just the four of us,” Mari admitted.

How stupid of her. How unthinking and fatal. We needed time. She had just destroyed that. Charles and the others would return soon, but not soon enough I was certain. Munster…God, I hoped Charles had called him! He’d be first in his Ferrari, and I knew he was armed. He always was. How far away were our men? Please God!

The man glared at me. Yes, he remembered.

“Well, ain’t that sweet.” He lowered his hands. “Your little friend ain’t here then? Nobody but the four of ya’?” He waited a second for a reply he knew wouldn’t come.

“Why don’t we just go inside for a spell? We’re…hungry as hell,” he laughed. With that he turned and motioned his grisly gang to surround Mari and me. They began to encircle us immediately, cackling and growling little obscenities. Jack left Ash and ran to my side, grabbing my elbow with both hands.

“Amelia, who are these men?”

“Run. Get Jack and get into the house. Hide,” I said as quietly as I could. She peered up at me with a frightened look, and then slowly began to back away.

The leader motioned with a quick flick of a hand for his companions to follow Jack, and then he moved on me with that look in his eyes. He withdrew a vicious looking knife from its scabbard at his waist beneath the overcoat at the same time.

Why didn’t you kill him when you had the chance, Munster!

He stepped beside Mari as if she didn’t exist, tossing the knife up and down in his right hand. Time for her later.

I stumbled backward, one step, then two, until my back met the body of one of the other men who had circled behind me. His rough hands shot around me. He lifted me as effortlessly as if I were a newborn baby, his fingers digging into the wool of the sweater and my stomach. I thrashed my legs uselessly. He merely laughed the more I struggled. I heard Jack scream, but there was nothing I could do, now, to help either her or Ash.

“Whoa, slow down there little girl!” he coughed into my ear. The man with the knife continued forward, a frozen, intense look in his eyes, a malicious smile of conquest on his lips. I watched in terror as he gripped the handle of the knife firmly and brought it slowly up to the neck of my sweater. He turned the blade sideways and slid it downward through the thick threads of material slowly until the tip of the razor sharp blade came to a halt at my stomach.

“Seventeen, I’m guessin’?” he growled lowly, lifting an eyebrow. And then he eased the blade farther down, forcing it between the button of my jean shorts and my stomach as his companion slid his hands upward and grabbed hold of the halves of my sweater and tee shirt. He yanked outward. I closed my eyes, screaming in my mind for God to rescue me; for the alien invaders to suddenly appear. For any help.

Nobody. Nothing.

Ash was screaming at the top of his lungs by then, somewhere close behind us. Jack was crying. The knife sheared the button loop of my jeans, and then a second later I heard it hit the gravel—the monster’s fingers ripping the denim open. Oh no, no, no. Please…

Mari? What was happening to her? I wanted to open my eyes to see, but couldn’t find the strength. She hadn’t made a sound.

I was half naked in a sea of roaring voices and gruesome laughter. Exposed in a nightmare, about to be raped, no doubt by all of them in turn. I wondered, after the horror and humiliation of that what greater horror of the knife entering me would feel like? Worse, being dragged off to their lair, chained to a filthy bed post for the remainder…

The man holding me let loose. I fell to the ground crying in terrible gulps, and the leader of those beasts followed me down. Behind me, a momentary scuffling of feet interrupted the maelstrom I was locked inside, and then the sound of a hand meeting a face with a loud whap! A cry, and then another sharp crack, this time a fist meeting…it was Ash’s face. The screaming instantly stopped, but the demon laughter, the hands, the unimaginable terror continued at an even higher volume. I heard the muffled sound of crying from poor Jack. Oh dear God, what was the young girl enduring?

Beyond me a sudden grunt. A spattering sound. A whoooosh! Quick exclamations of shock, and then a brief silence. The man atop me stopped and looked behind him to where the commotion had come from.

“What the…?”

It was the last thing he uttered in this life. I opened my eyes. Mari was striding forward from what could only be described as a swirling cloud of black dust and gravel, little shrapnel-pieces of it striking him like a thousand enraged hornets. He rolled over onto the road, raising his arms to