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

Peter stopped the truck and left to open the gate. I rubbed my eyes and yawned, thankful. It’s funny that in those times, simply having survived a road trip alone gave me pause to take a deep breath and sigh in relief.

I turned when Peter approached the open cab door again, and gently shook Denise’s shoulder.

“We’re home,” I whispered twice. At first she merely blinked, gathering consciousness, and then flew bolt upright in fright, putting the unfamiliar vision around her in real-time sense. The harsh glare of the overhead cab lights in the front caused her to wince and look sideways through the windows, and then she whirled around and gazed intently through the rear window at the lonely highway and the orange trees across it. As Peter shut the door and began to pull in, I glanced at the clock on the dash console. 10:45. A very long day. Ahead, the lights upstairs shone brightly in two of the four bedrooms. Munster’s flamecar was still stranded in the ditch. The tall, black cylinder reflected moonlight eerily in the fog-free sky this far inland. Peter pulled to a stop directly in front of the porch steps, and cut the engine.

“Well, here we are,” he said to Denise. “Welcome to Eden.” She remained speechless, looking quickly around, first at the black cylinder, and then out the opposite window at the house.

“This…is…it,” she stammered, the palms of her hands pressed against the glass.

“Ready to meet the rest of us?”

“Yes. Yes.”

“Won’t they be surprised,” Peter kind of laughed triumphantly. He opened the door and jumped out, and I followed. For a moment, Denise remained locked on her knees motionless, entranced, but finally released the latch and pushed the rear door outward. Jack had been on watch, and noticed the headlights at the gate when we arrived. No sooner had the three of us gathered at the bottom of the steps, than Munster burst through the door, followed by Cynthia, Charles, Shawna, and Jerrick. Little Jack was the last out, crashing into Jerrick’s back.

Of course all of them gaped speechless at Denise in her ratty condition and appearance…except Munster. I might have known he would have something to say.

“What the hell! Where’d ya’ find her? In a trash can?” Cynthia pounded his stomach with a fist. “You moron, shut up.”

“Welcome.” Charles.

He stepped down to join us. One after another the rest of our family made their way down and stood in a tight half-circle in front of us. Everyone smiled and made little comments, all of which seemed to relax Denise immensely. I made the introductions, and then led her up the steps to the warm, inviting interior of her new home.

“What a day. We’re starving,” Peter said when we’d all gotten inside.

“Francis, you go back outside. You’re impossibly rude,” I heard Cynthia poke at Munster.

Francis. I grinned.

“Ah shit, Cyn, I’m sorry. I just meant…”

“Shuush!”

The questions began. The answers, sometimes short and clipped, other times recounting in greater detail what had transpired throughout our day, and Denise's existence in the hotel.

“Chicago, huh?”

“Yes.”

“My God, all those months alone!”

“Weren’t you scared?”

“Always.”

“You’re quite safe here…”

“How did you find this house? It’s so…wonderful. The lights!”

Cynthia took no time in yanking our obnoxious Munster by the shirtsleeve, leading him out to the kitchen.

“Just keep quiet, Francis. Help me make something for them to eat. The poor woman looks…” Her voice trailed off. A few seconds later she reappeared, poking her head around the corner.

“Give us five minutes. Francis will set the table. I think he can manage that. I’ll whip you up a feast. Like fried Spam?” And then she disappeared.

That night I loved the thought of it.

The tales of terror on Denise’s part continued. Jerrick took a seat beside her on the sofa, and explained in perfect detail how we’d lit up the house with the generator, connected the pump to the well. Left weekly to gather supplies. Planted the half-acre garden. No one mentioned Mari.

Charles said little, standing at Peter’s and my side. He mostly just stared at the ghost of a creature sitting in front of us. I couldn’t help but wonder what he was thinking. Midway in the exchanges, Lashawna quietly left and padded off to the kitchen. A twinge of sadness hit me as she left.

We have nothing but time. We’ll find someone, somewhere. Oh dear God, the thought of another journey.

Throughout the discourse my thoughts flashed back over and over to that moment outside the hotel. The shotgun rising. How the man took a halting step backward raising his pistol. How unthinking and easy it had been in that hundredth of a second that followed. My stomach turning afterward.

We ate ravenously a short time later amid laughter and more conversation. After Denise had consumed half of what Cynthia and Lashawna had cooked, Cynthia stood and went to her side. She put her face close to the woman’s ear and asked in a sweet voice, “If you’d like, I’ll show you the shower. When you finish, I’ll have a bed made up and ready for you. You can sleep in my room if you want. You must be exhausted.”

Denise looked up at her, and then burst into tears, the dam finally breaking. “Thank you.”

 

Morning came, bright and sunny. Denise left her bedroom, hair disheveled, but radiant and clean. The pallor of her face had disappeared. I thought, as I watched from the hall, two doors down, how incredibly different she looked. She was very pretty, in fact. Nothing at all like the creature Peter and I had stumbled upon twenty-four short hours earlier. The long white t-shirt she’d slept in draped to her thin, upper thighs, and she carried a fresh change of clothing and clean towel. Seeing me, she smiled and raised a hand in greeting, and then turned to enter the bath. Again. It would take weeks, but nutritious food would fill her out. Do wonders. Help her mind heal and dispel some of the agony of remembrance of the months we’d left behind.

Our wonderful Charles would fall in love with her. He had to. As his wounds had healed, so would Denise’s. As his painful rejection of Lashawna must have deeply pierced him, that wound would also heal as the days and weeks and months rolled on in her presence. Or so I thought at first.

He was kind to her; showed her the grounds in Peter’s company, the silent black gift left for our benefit some day in the future, but even in his smiles, I couldn’t help but see a wall having been erected. A distance. How he’d abruptly wander off, leaving her in Peter’s or someone else’s company. I didn’t understand, and so I went to him one night three weeks later.

“What is it?” I asked.

That evening he’d started a fire, and sat in deep thought in front of it. Jerrick and the rest of the group were in the study where he entertained them on his cello. Glum Munster sat alone in the upstairs bedroom on watch.

Charles started when he heard my voice.

“Oh. Amelia. I didn’t hear you come in. What do you mean?” He smiled languidly. “I’m fine. Just thinking. We’ll have to…”

“Charles, something is bothering you. What is it?”

He understood the statement and the question very clearly. The smile fell away. He dropped his eyes almost guiltily.

“You shouldn’t have done that, my dear.”

“We did it for you. And besides, if we’d found someone else…another man, or a child, or even an old lady, we would have brought them back.”

“Yes, I’m sure you would have. But you didn’t. You brought back someone you thought I needed. When did you bother to consult me before doing what you did? That wasn’t right, no matter the motive.”

What?

“But Charles…Lashawna. You. I mean, we went in search of others for both…”

“Do you really think I’m unhappy? Unfulfilled in my own life?

“And Lashawna. I love the girl, but that’s what she is. A young woman like yourself. Still a child.”

“I’m not a child.”

“You are! She is. Look, Amelia, we’re still in danger here. There are others outside our home who’ve descended into savagery. God almighty, you’ve seen it! Someone has to have their wits about them. One of us has to be an adult."

I looked at him. His words were curt, yet not angry. I still failed to comprehend, though. I knew, certainly, the precariousness of our situation; that we’d have to remain vigilant, but…

“I’m sleeping with Peter. Did you know that, Charles? We’re together, but we’re both constantly aware of danger. We’re not adult?”

“I’m not saying that you aren’t aware of the danger, and it isn’t my place to interfere in either of your lives—that isn’t the point. Sleep with whomever…”

“Charles!”

“You misunderstand me, Amelia. You’ve complicated our lives here. You’ve sent Lashawna deeper into the pit I helped dig by what you did. Did that ever enter your mind?”

Yes. More than he knew, and more than I cared to wrestle with at the moment. But there was time. We’d go again despite whatever objections he might have. We'd fix it.

I was an adult!

Life could be so frustratingly complicated.

That’s how…adolescents thought, right?

I left the room and went upstairs to relieve Munster, and to try to figure at least some of it out, sitting beneath the window.

 

Dreams of Shadows

Days turned into weeks. Weeks turned into months.

The comings and goings of the invaders from the mothership took on a metronomic flow. At least at night as we watched—mostly with indifference. They hadn’t reappeared anywhere near the farm. Even though we wondered where they’d gone, and what they were up to, it seemed apparent there was no way of finding out—short of setting off on another, longer expedition. For all we knew, they were zipping off to Denver, or Kansas City or Chicago.

Peter felt my stomach almost every morning, a hopeful look on his face. Was I maybe feeling the effects of morning sickness every time I scowled or frowned or raided the refrigerator? I was either put off by some event, unhappy on occasion as we all were at times, or simply hungry. Maybe I was incapable of conceiving…or perhaps he was impotent. Maybe without our even knowing it the aliens had sterilized us.

Throughout these days our education continued, reaching new heights, and growing from a few hours each morning to half the day. The reason was Denise. She was lovely by June, fully recovered—at least bodily—and she took her place beside Charles in front of us there in the “classroom”; the shotgun propped against the wall, always loaded. We learned that she’d graduated with high honors from NYU. An English major, of all things. She developed a strong and motherly affection for, yes, Munster. He responded by paying attention whenever she spoke of this great book, or that one. It was she who stressed the importance of writing clearly, concisely, and the benefit of mastering the art of translating thoughts into words. Both on paper and in our daily conversations. As a family, we would want to leave a legible, coherent record of those days for posterity, after all. Munster never balked, and I was certain the reason was Cynthia, more so, even, than mother Denise. Slowly, but surely, he began to bloom, and slowly but surely he