Closer To Heaven, Patrick Sean Lee [best sales books of all time .txt] 📗

When I got back into the rectory and closed the front door quietly, I could hear two things. The chug, chug, chug of the generator outside, and a voice coming from the bedroom. The voice was Mr. Baxter’s, but I couldn’t make out what he was saying. I walked down the hall like a kitty cat, and then stopped before I reached the door to listen.

“It’s true, Jerrick. Very sad, but true. There are pockets of survivors just like us scattered about across the globe. There must be. In time we shall want to search them out. Those we can get to at least.”

Munster, my good friend, my crazy friend answered. “I can get to ‘em, Bax. I’ll just load up my car with cans o’ gas…”

“Patience, Francis. As I’ve said over and over, we must plan well. Remember what I told you about Rome. It wasn’t built in a day.”

Munster must have known he couldn’t win. “Who cares about that dumb…” and his voice went all lower, drowned out by the chug, chug, chugging outside. I stood up. I don’t know what I expected to see, really. You see I had never really SEEN Mr. Baxter, except little parts of his pant legs and his shoes when I was hiding. And his voice at the Mini-mart. Just the back of him when him and Munster were a block away that afternoon when I was coming home from the hospital. That’s all.

I peeked around the corner. It wasn’t a corner, not really. The door was half-opened and I was behind the half part, so it was sort of like a corner, and I peeked. Mr. Baxter was sitting on the edge of our bed with his hands folded in his lap. Jerrick and Lashawna were sitting right in front of him on the floor. I didn’t see Munster. Mr. Baxter noticed me when I peeked, and he sat up straighter, with a funny look on his face. A smile, but he looked like he was very surprised, too.

I wasn’t afraid, though. The clouds didn’t kill me, and so I knew he probably wouldn’t either. I wasn’t thinking that, but I knew it all the same. I was just embarrassed.

Momma and Daddy were in their bedroom a long time ago, sitting very close on the edge of their bed. Daddy was kissing her, which was okay because I knew Daddy kissed Momma sometimes when he wasn’t angry over something that had exploded or broken when he was working on it in the garage. I had come to ask Momma something. I can’t remember what it was, but I stopped at their door and peeked around it when I heard Momma giggle. I saw them, and then they saw me, and Daddy jumped. He turned very red, and Momma smiled. I don’t remember if she turned all red like Daddy, but I was embarrassed. Diane Fairmore had told me all about what parents do when they’re in their bedroom like Momma and Daddy were.

Mr. Baxter in our bedroom wasn’t like that, but I felt like I did that time when I saw Momma and Daddy kissing and giggling.

“Well, well,” Mr. Baxter said. “This must be our little Amelia! Do come in. Don’t be afraid.”

I knew Munster and Jerrick and Lashawna had told him I was afraid. That I’d run away when he and Munster came to our house. I wasn’t afraid now, though, and part of the reason was that the kind cloud lady had told me he would tell me all about what had happened. That’s what I wanted to hear from him. What happened, and would anything ever be the same as it once was. So I walked in.

Munster came out of the kitchen with a handful of crackers and a jar of Welch’s Grape Jelly.

“Amelia!”

I looked at him standing there with the food, and all I could do was smile at first. We’d all have to go back to Albertson’s with big shopping baskets if HE stayed for very long.

“Hi Munster.”            He looked at me for a minute. Maybe it was only a second. Anyway, after that he looked over at Mr. Baxter.

“You don’t have to worry about Bax. I told ya’ he’s trying to help us. That’s why he came with me. Heck, I knew you were stayin’ here. I was gonna’ come sooner, like days ago, but Bax said they told him to tell me to wait. He can understand ‘em. I sure can’t. But anyway, I waited…and then YOU came bustin’ into my place! Why’d you run off?”

“I told you, Munster. I already told you! But that’s okay now. I understand them too,” I said to him, and I think that last part surprised Mr. Baxter because he sat up even straighter, and his eyes opened wide. “I ran because I didn’t trust him. I think there are bad clouds, Munster, and they want to kill us all. But there are good clouds, too, and they told me that Mr. Baxter…I think she said he would help us. She said he could tell me what happened. Well, she said “they”, but that means him.

“They sang, Munster. They flew around the church like hundreds of angels, and when they sang, I understood every note, just like if they were words! I don’t know really how to describe it better, but she told me Mr. Baxter was waiting, and that he’d help us. So here I am.”

Mr. Baxter smiled, shaking his head at me.

“What happened Mr. Baxter? Why is the world all dead except for us? Why did they kill my parents, and Lashawna’s and Jerrick’s, and Munster’s. Why did they leave us alone? Why didn’t they kill us too?”

Mr. Baxter smiled at me, but it was a sad smile.

“Sit down, honey, this is what I know. What they told me. What happened is more than just sad, it’s tragic…and after it happened all of them realized it. There was little they could do, though. Even they have no power to raise the dead. That belongs to another set of hands.

“But “they” call themselves Crinians—translated roughly into our English language. Their home planet is far, far away in another galaxy, one a lot like ours. Theirs is an old race of beings, much older than ours. Many centuries ago, at about the time our ancestors were trying to stay warm during the last ice age, the Crinians reached out and began to explore the planets, and then the planets of stars nearby their home. That is exactly what we began to do fifty-odd years ago—and we would have reached out as far as they, had time allowed us.

“The universe is big, Amelia. Very, very big. In our small galaxy alone there are billions and billions of stars. Can you imagine exploring all the planets in our galaxy alone? More billions on top of the billions of stars! But so they did, slowly. A handful of Crinians at first, and then a thousand, a hundred thousand, a million as the centuries rolled on. Large groups of them going out in every direction, the same as we seemed destined to do.

“Out they went, landing on so many habitable planets, observing the native life on each. They loved it. There are many, many different forms of life scattered across the heavens. Interesting beings. Insect-like creatures, they say—huge, but quite friendly, unlike our spiders! Big blobby creatures that eat the mud of their planet, which is rained on continuously. Worlds composed entirely of water. Oceans. Filled with creatures that swim, and often eat one another. So many different kinds of creatures. So many stars and galaxies.

“The Crinian explorers spotted earth—heard the messages we broadcast, sometimes inadvertently from our TV sets and radios, long, long before you were even born. Before your parents were born. They decided to visit us. Stop here for a rest, as space travel is a long and wearisome job. But their eyes were not on us, particularly, rather a planet the size of Jupiter, roughly, circling a star in a system much farther inside our Milky Way galaxy. That is where they were headed.”

I had sat beside Lashawna, holding her hand tight, trying to imagine a spaceship so big, SO BIG that it could carry all those tall clouds. I listened closely as he told me about them.

“They arrived at the outskirts of our solar system, millions and millions of miles away three months ago, just before our Christmas. Because their ships were capable of traveling at nearly light speed, it took them only a matter of hours to reach their “resting place.” Thousands of their craft went into orbit around us. They told me that messages flew out from our scientists and politicians. Messages filled with excitement; those of our governments demanding to know who they were and what their intentions were. Their leaders sent a message around the world saying they merely wished to visit, to speak to us if we could understand them, and that they also wished to disembark and “stretch their legs.” I know that’s a funny way of putting it. They have no legs—or arms, or feet, even heads as we know heads! But that was their message, broadcast in their musical language, and it seems no one here could decipher it!

“Isn’t it funny, Amelia, that creatures we see as rather ugly and menacing sing to communicate?”

I didn’t think it was funny at all. I thought it was beautiful, but I wondered why they just didn’t keep singing to us more and more until we did understand, instead of…well, I wondered; did they just give up and come down to kill us all because we wouldn’t sing back to them?

“We did not understand evidently. Our leaders sent message after message to them, ordering them to tell us who they were, and what they wanted. If they did not tell us, our leaders threatened to shoot missiles at them! The Crinians understood us, though. Their leaders raised their eyebrows, although they really have no eyebrows. The idea of a missile or two or a thousand to them was much like us being threatened with pebbles by tiny little monkeys who jump up and down and scream whenever someone not in their tribe comes near!”

“Monkeys don’t throw rocks,” I said to Mr. Baxter.

“You get the idea, though. Whatever we might throw at them would not, could not harm them in any way.

“They were tired. The journey had been long. Our earth was warm, covered with vast oceans, and our air seemed pleasing to them. So they decided to land all across our globe, travel to our cities, over our mountains, across our seas…and hopefully find someone, or someones, who could understand them. They simply wanted to rest, as our civilization was very primitive compared to theirs.

“They landed. Hundreds of thousands of them everywhere. I’m sure you remember that day. It was day here in the United States. Everyone, or nearly everyone, was fast asleep in Europe, Asia, Africa. When they came, they came swiftly, and flew out by the hundreds and thousands to see us. To spin and breathe in our air. To feel the cool waters in our oceans. To whisk across California, Alaska, Missouri, New York. Everywhere! We looked much like an anthill to them, running around with seemingly no purpose or direction. Many of us dashing out of their way. Covering their heads. Kneeling to pray—which act they had no knowledge of. They found us curious. They also found us rather disinteresting.

“In our big cities, like New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles—many others—our tanks and soldiers and planes swarmed around them. Like ants would if you stepped on their pile. Like bees would if you shook their hive.

“What happened next took only a matter of hours. It saddened many of them when they saw the bodies falling lifeless all around them, when they understood too late what they had caused. On no