Dreams of Light, Patrick Sean Lee [any book recommendations .txt] 📗

The Dragon and Saint Charles

Charles was our savior, the single most valuable member of our little family. It was he who took control early on and kept us from anarchy. Nurtured all of us equally. Loved us like a father when our natural tendencies were toward group and self-destruction. The adult among the children who didn’t have a clue. Even Mari and Jerrick before...

And now. Peter returned that morning with Charles lying in the back of the truck.

 

After the door to Mari's and Jerrick’s earthly retreat had opened, Peter had spit a series of half-intelligible comments into the walkie-talkie.

“She’s holding him up…Wait…Jerrick is…”

“Why did she just let him fall?”

“Jerrick!”

Denise stood, with all of us pressed in around her, holding the walkie-talkie nearly at arms’ length. Like it was a poisonous snake, or a live wire that she couldn’t let loose of. Her hands shook, and she stared hard at the communication device, waiting for what Peter would say next.

Munster didn’t wait for the drama to play out. He and Cynthia piled into his half-trashed Ferrari and roared down the drive toward the gate. When they hit the highway, they turned right in a high-pitched squeal of rubber. It felt as though we stood there for hours as the roar of the Ferrari’s engine faded into the distance. And then there was this strange silence.

“C’mon,” someone finally said—I think Jude, “let’s go inside and wait. It’ll be half an hour at least until Munster and Cynthia find them and get back here.”

I gently took the walkie-talkie from Denise, looking into her vacant eyes and shaking my head.

“Let’s go Denise. She’s right. Whatever happened, Charles will be okay. I know he will. We can’t do anything here anyway. Come on.”

I’d yet to see Denise so frightened and rattled, except when Peter and I had first stumbled on her hiding in the hotel down in San Diego. Then, she was a first-class mess. Skinny as a rail, eyes that bugged out, frightened out of her wits. Once Peter and I had gotten her back to the farm; once all of us had worked so hard at re-introducing her to sanity, she responded like we knew she would. Before the fall of our civilization she’d been a teacher back in Chicago. It was only natural that she would gravitate toward wonderful Charles. I mean, she was close to his age, and I think she re-discovered in him the link to her past. At first all of us thought it was pretty much simply the regimen of the morning classes alongside him that had awakened her, but the smiles grew during the intervening summer months. The knowledge that a deeper bond had taken root between them.

It was altogether evident that morning when Peter blurted his half-sensical outbursts into the walkie-talkie they’d taken with them. No doubt she would have been upset had it been Charles talking instead of Peter, but it hadn’t been, and her breakdown was very apparent.

As I led her up the steps and into the house, I heard Lashawna curse, the gravel rattle, and then the sound of a rock hitting the side of the tower with a clank.

Bernie was sitting nonchalantly beside Celia on the couch, grinning like the imbecile he was until we entered. The smile on his face faded immediately the moment he saw us. The hand that he’d had on Celia’s thigh fell to the side of his leg. Celia continued to stare into his face in her blind, lovingly excited way.

“What the fuck's goin' on out there?” he said to me.

“Shut up. Move down, or better yet, get up and go upstairs. Both of you. Charles and Peter are in trouble. Get out of the way, Denise needs to sit down.”

Celia shot her head around. “Huh?”

“Just leave, or help me get her onto the couch!”

Bernie certainly wouldn’t, but Celia jumped to her feet and ran across to us. She lifted Denise’s arm and draped it over her own thin shoulder.

“What happened, Amelia? What do you mean they’re in trouble?” she said.

“Just be quiet and help me get her to the couch.

“Bernie, get the fuck out of the way! Go find a bottle of water for her.”

“CHARLES!” Denise escaped her semi-stupor suddenly. She struggled against Celia and me, and said, “Oh God, I’ve got to go, Amelia. How long do you think? I have to go back out. I have to go back!”

“Shh. No, Denise. Just sit. Everything will be okay, I promise.”

The rest of the gang wandered slowly in behind us, chattering amongst themselves. Bernie managed to haul his fat self up by the time we reached the couch and shuffled toward the kitchen pantry where we stored the water we’d need each day.

The sheet white of Denise's face began to fade back to what it had been an hour ago, but she gulped heavy breaths of air as though she was a fish yanked out of the water. All of us except Bernie gathered around her.

“I don’t think he’s really hurt,” Jude said to her.

“Yeah, he’s probably just knocked out or something,” Lashawna agreed, although the words came out tentatively.

“I wonder what happened?” Sammie asked.

“We’ll find out pretty soon. It won’t be long before they get back. Just everyone relax until they do,” I said as confidently as I could.

We waited. Lashawna and Jude went back outside after trying to vainly comfort and assure Denise for a few minutes.

“Let us know the second you see them,” I called after the girls.

Denise kept stammering dreadful statements, none of which we hoped were near the mark. “He’s dead.” “Jerrick did it, I know he did.” “He’s dead, he’s dead, I know he is.”

“Shh…no he isn’t,” I kept answering, but she didn’t hear me.

Hurry guys, get him back here!

 

                                     *

 

“Here they are!” we all heard Lashawna scream.

Denise bolted upright, and then jumped to her feet. The others left at dead runs. Sammie in a burst of excitement was the first out the door. I stayed beside Denise, but she was right behind them, her arms flung out sideways in an effort to help her keep her balance and not keel over.

The pickup rumbled up the drive. The Ferrari was right behind it. They pulled up to the circle below the steps, and Peter cut the engine, then flew out and ran to the rear.

Charles In Neverland

 

Lashawna screamed with joy the minute she saw who was in the back. She leapt off the porch steps and was the first to arrive at the bed, leaping up onto the side panel and over. Jerrick was kneeling there, peering out at her as she ran. The second she clambered in, she hit him with her body, threw her arms around his neck, and kissed him as if she hadn’t seen him for years.

“What’s he doing here?” Jude asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe we should ask. C’mon,” I answered.

We ran. All of us, almost in mad unison. We circled the bed and stared in at Charles, lying with the top of his head facing the cab. A flurry of disjointed questions from everyone rang out, which, for whatever reason, Jerrick was not inclined at the moment to answer. Charles’ eyes were closed, almost peaceful-looking, his arms dangling onto the black rubber of the bed liner bottom.

“Do you think he’s…dead?” Jude whispered to me.

“No, he can’t be.

“Jerrick,” I called out over everyone else’s talking at once, “what did you do? Explain what happened! Is Charles alive or is he dead?”

Jerrick removed Lashawna’s hands form around his neck and then turned his head to me. He smiled sheepishly.

“Yes and no. Help me get him into the house. I’ll explain everything once we’re in and he’s settled.”

Denise leapt over the side of the truck, crawled quickly to Charles’ side, and then shoved Jerrick hard.

“Get away you psycho mutant! You traitor!”

“I didn’t…” he began to explain uselessly.

“I don’t care! Get away!”

Jude was close behind Denise. “Get out of the way, Jerrick. Go back to that place. Why did you even come back?”

Munster, who was standing beside me, waved his hands at Jude.

“No, no, Jude. He’s okay. Relax.” He then unlatched the tailgate and let it fall until the cables caught with a bang. “Let’s get him into the house. Jude, grab his arms, I’ll get his legs.”

“I can help,” Jerrick said.

“No-you-WON’T,” Denise screamed at him.

By that time Lashawna was beginning to totally freak. “Leave Jerrick alone, you witch! I hate you!” She laid into Denise. Jude flipped.

The rescue of Charles was suddenly turning into a nightmare circus, half of us pleading with everyone else to calm down, Lashawna pounding on Denise’s chest and screaming. Denise screaming back. Munster trying to tug Charles’ feet out by himself.

 

“Get him upstairs,” I said when Peter and Munster had managed to drag Charles’ body up the front steps and into the living room. They were forced to carry him up the long flight of stairs to the second floor, now, Munster at his legs and feet, Peter grasping his shoulders, grunting low with each step.

Denise followed them, crying and wringing her hands, but the rest of us stayed where we’d gathered. Celia had gone outside with the rest of us when Peter got home, and she stood beside her sister. Bernie, of course, hadn’t bothered to lift his rear off the couch. He offered nothing at all in the way of a shocked reaction as he sat staring when we all entered. I wanted to kill him all over again.

Peter had checked Charles’ vitals, assured Denise that he was at least still breathing, but without a doctor or nurse among us, there was no way of actually telling how bad off he might be. He seemed to be in a coma similar to the one that Mari dwelt in so long ago. That was just a little more than frightening. But there was little else we could do, other than let Denise stay with him, speaking in whispers, urging him to come back.

The burning question we all asked each other was, IF he snapped out of it and came back…what would he be? Mari had survived, of course, and so had Jerrick, even though he remained conscious when the change (whatever it truly constitued) hit him when their remake was finished. Such hadn’t been the case with Mari we all knew too well.

 

It was the ‘unwanted’ Jerrick who brought Charles back from the dead zone he had entered. Or maybe it was Charles himself. I never really found out.

Jerrick had changed. Or maybe he had never even actually left us mere mortals fully to begin with. I say mere mortals, and that fact became more and more apparent as the months rolled on. Peter, me, Munster and Cynthia—all of us—were caged in our small, often frightening, worlds. The same as every other human who had lived and died over the centuries. Our greatest asset was, and always had been, our imaginations. When you think of it, imagination is power, but the power has always, inevitably, stopped at an invisible wall. We could push the