Forever Twilight, Patrick Sean Lee [christmas read aloud txt] 📗

truck alongside Jude and Lashawna. Off to the east the weird Aurora shone brilliantly. In the excitement last evening I’d forgotten to ask Charles if he knew what it was. I watched it shimmer as we drove along for a mile or so, and then picked up the walkie-talkie.

“Charles, are you there?”

“Yes. What’s wrong?” he answered immediately.

“Can you see those lights above the treetops off to the east?”

“Hang on.”

A minute or two passed, and then he replied.

“Yes, I see them. What do you make of them? Maybe you’d better return until we figure out what they are.”

“Don’t they remind you of the Northern Lights?”

“They do, but they’re in the wrong place. Come back.”

“No, we’re okay. Peter and I have seen them for weeks,” I said biting my tongue. “I just thought you might know. Talk to you later.”

“Amelia, I don’t like it. Come back, do you hear me?”

“Negative. We’ll be fine. I’ll keep an eye on them. They’re way east anyway. Over and out.” I could almost see him turning in circles, and hear Denise prodding him to somehow convince us to come back.

As the miles passed by, and the rising sun began to light up the sky in its first hazy blue, the lights slowly disappeared. I turned my attention to the sides of the highway, hoping that sooner, rather than later, I’d spot the grove of black fruit. I should have brought the Ouija Board.

This one?

Yes.

No.

Twenty miles with nothing but farm after farm, and their oranges begging for water. We had to stop once so that Sammie could hop out of the truck to relieve herself behind an overgrown bush. In the absence of the engines’ purring sounds, the absolute quiet hit me. Spooky silence. Within minutes, Sammie danced back into the truck, and we were off again.

I reached across the console and tapped the on button of the radio. A squelch of noise. A.M.

“You’re on radio,” Peter said. “Put a CD in.”

I disregarded his instruction—why, I wasn’t sure. Instead I turned the knob slowly clockwise, and then on a whim I pushed “Seek”. The digital readout whisked across the dead stations until it stopped at 670.

No music, which didn’t surprise me at all, and no voice. Yet I found it odd that the tuner had located some point of broadcast.

“Why did it stop there?” I asked Peter.

He shot a glance at the radio, and then lifted his eyes to the highway in front of us as quickly.

“You can ask genius Munster the next time we stop. Maybe the tuner cycles once, and if nothing comes up, it gets tired of searching and stops.”

Maybe.

“Hey, check that out!” he changed the subject almost without a breath. I abandoned the radio and followed the finger he pointed. A hundred yards or so ahead on my side the distinctly different leaves and dark, rotting fruit we were looking for were visible behind a leaning wire fence.

“Wow! Find the entrance in. We found them!”

“This could be only the first of a thousand Avocado farms…”

“No, no. This is it, Peter. I can feel it. There! There’s the road in!”

Peter reached out of the window and signaled with a jerking motion of his hand to Munster as we slowed and made the turn onto the dirt entrance road. This farm had no gate or other barrier, and so he crawled along the narrow road, and then stopped and cut the engine. In the bed behind us, the girls stood up and began to chatter excitedly.

The road wound left between the trees, unlike the straight shot in at our place thirty miles back. It was impossible to tell where the home sat, how big this farm was. Anything about it at all. But somewhere ahead we’d definitely find a building—large and sumptuous, or small and rundown—and inside our search would end. To exactly what end was anybody’s guess.

I was suddenly gripped by a feeling of angst.

I flung the door open and jumped out, scanning beneath and between the morose-looking trees. Peter remained seated for a moment, calling Charles back at the farm.

“We found the farm. Amelia is sure they’re here for some reason. We’re heading in.”

It took a second for Charles’ voice to answer. “Just be careful. Keep the walkie-talkie on, Peter. I want to hear everything, and if you come across…just keep the walkie-talkie open.”

“Right.”

Munster and Cynthia walked to the truck on Peter’s side where they stopped. Jude and Lashawna and Sammie climbed out and stretched their legs, waiting.

“I say we keep following the road until we find a house or a barn or something,” Peter said to Munster. “You let Cynthia drive, and keep your gun ready, just in case.”

“I can drive an’ shoot,” he answered.

“Why do you think he might have to shoot someone, Peter?” Cynthia said frowning.

“I don’t, but just in case, like I said.

“Girls, get back in. We’re heading out.”

“If it moves, I shoot it.”

“Give me that gun, Francis! You’re driving,” Cynthia spit at Munster. She snatched the pistol he brandished in a quick motion, continuing to scold him as she pushed him back toward the Ferrari. Standing in the back of the pickup, Sammie laughed at the entire scene.

“I’m never getting married!”

“Don’t worry, Sammie, there’s only one being in the universe as screwy as that guy. Besides, they’re not married. Just wait until that day comes, and then watch what she does with him,” Jude said.

That would be true.

The way forward soon became nearly lost for the weeds that had crept like serpents onto the dirt over the rainy season and long summer. We climbed at a snail’s pace up a long, winding hill, and though I saw nothing out of the ordinary as we crept along, I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were being watched. After a mile, perhaps a little farther, the truck reached the crown of the hill, and there Peter stopped. We stared out at a long, wide, sunken meadow devoid of the straggly trees. Peter’s tan face went pale, and his jaw drooped open. From the bed behind us I heard Jude’s voice mutter lowly, “What-the-hell is that?”

That would be true.

The way forward soon became nearly lost for the weeds that had crept like serpents onto the dirt over the rainy season and long summer. We climbed at a snail’s pace up a long, winding hill, and though at first I saw nothing out of the ordinary as we crept along, I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were being watched. After a mile, perhaps a little farther, the truck reached the crown of the hill, and there Peter stopped. We stared out at a long, barren, sunken meadow devoid of the straggly trees. Peter’s tan face went pale, and his jaw drooped open. From the bed behind us I heard Jude’s voice mutter lowly, “What-the-hell is that?”

A tall spire-like object hovered motionless a few feet off the ground. Black, like the tower at the farm, but unlike it, roughly arrowhead shaped, and seventy, maybe eighty feet in height; thirty in width. Unlike the tower, too, this thing’s surface near the top had a long, elliptically shaped window that glared in the brilliance of the sunlight striking it at an angle.

“Jesus, they’re in there?” Peter asked, beginning to open the door.

“Call Charles. Let him know…”

A scream from the girls in the back; the sudden roar of Munster’s motor, and the tires spinning on the rough earth beneath them. I turned my head and looked out the rear window, and I saw what had scared the girls and caused Munster and Cynthia to rocket up beside us.

The shapes of monsters I was all too familiar with whirling silently across the road behind us. From both sides, changing direction erratically, but moving toward us relentlessly.

“Turn around!” Cynthia, shouting from the Ferrari, waving her hands.

“Oh God, oh God!” Jude.

Sammie and Lashawna screaming non-stop. One of them banging on the roof. Maybe both of them.

“Peter, get us out of here!”

“Out of here where? We can’t go back…”

Munster gunned the engine again and made a u-turn around the front of the truck. Off the road into the weeds. Over the rocks and clumps of dirt, directly toward the aliens, Cynthia’s head bouncing with every obstacle the car encountered.

The sound of gunshots. Bedlam in the bed of the truck. Did Cynthia think that she could possibly kill one of the invaders? They moved like white shadows. Bodies without substance!

Peter slammed the door closed, started the engine again, and then ripped the wheel hard in a clockwise movement as he rammed his foot down on the accelerator.

“God help us,” he yelled over the roar of the engine.

Another chorus of high-pitched screams from the bed, and the sound of a body slamming into the dirt beside the truck.

“Stop! Stop!”

The force of the truck suddenly turning, and the weight of Jude’s and Sammie’s bodies being hurled sideways against her, had sent Lashawna flying helplessly out. Peter cursed and hit the brakes.

We were sunk.

Game over.

You Shouldn't Have Come

 

Peter arrived at Lashawna’s side first, strangely ignoring the gathering of the creatures all around us as he carefully placed his hands on her head, gently turning it sideways. They finally swooshed to a halt twenty feet away, like wolves who’ve encircled their prey, their horrid tentacles beginning to snake up and out toward their comrades. A near-total silence fell, save Sammie’s low whimpering—the sound of Peter’s voice begging Lashawna to open her eyes—the roar of the Ferrari’s engine now only a steady purr.

Without thinking, I grabbed the walkie-talkie and flew out the door to join Peter at Lashawna’s prostrate body. Rounding the front of the truck I nearly fainted when I glanced down the road. Fifty feet away the Ferrari had been stopped, and two of the creatures had enveloped it, holding the sportscar, tipped sideways, five feet off the ground as though it were a toy. From the interior, the muffled voice of Munster cursing, “Where are you, Cyn? Can’t see! The gun! The gu…”

Cynthia had somehow escaped, and was clawing backward on her rear, gasping, gaping up at them, scratching against the earth at her sides, kicking violently against the dirt with her feet to get away. Wondering, surely, when the host of other creatures nearby would descend on her like tornados.

I took it all in, frozen at the front of the truck. I couldn’t possibly get to Cynthia. But what could I have done had I been able? Comfort her? Drag her terrified body backward until the creatures overwhelmed both of us?

I shifted my eyes to Peter, hovering over unconscious Lashawna, images erupting in my head of Mari lying on the grass beneath the black tower last winter. The encounter with the unwanted visitors that morning on the front porch when they’d spoken to Charles. At any time they could have killed all of us…but they hadn’t. They could have left Mari in her comatose state…but they didn’t.

I took a tentative step toward Peter. None of them moved on me. They remained standing without a sound, merely swirling those gross tentacles slowly, no doubt talking to one another now that they had us. Another step, watching them. And then I ran to Peter’s side.

“Is she breathing?” I asked him. I shot my eyes up at the creatures