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

down the drive just inside the closed and locked gate, the Flamemobile sat cockeyed where we’d abandoned it back in late December. So forlorn-looking. Dusty and dull and neglected, unlike Peter’s and Munster’s flashy new cars. Our new cars. No one owned anything anymore, except, maybe, their thoughts.

As I absently let my eyes follow the already fading lines of orange and yellow flames that once shot with an angry attitude from the rear fender to the front, and up onto the hood, a sharp, tiny glint of morning sunlight reflected off the perfectly glistening black surface of the tower, and caught my eye. I shifted my gaze to its unchanged, starkly beautiful surface. Unlike Munster’s once-pride and joy that lay contemplating rust and decay, the tower seemed immune to the battering of rain, the bleaching action of sunlight, and the accumulation of dust, as though some unseen hand swept the effects of nature away, and lovingly polished it every day.

Near the top, the strange un-deciphered script lay at rest in the tiny shadows. For the hundredth time I wondered what message was contained in its graceful flow of lines? What the sentinel’s real purpose was? I felt it watching me, and I shivered.

Charles had long ago indicated that it identified the contents as a gift. Some gift. If you dared touch it, you risked death. Mari, I was certain, had in her childish ignorance done exactly that. Jerrick, though…? No one had actually seen him come into contact with it, but as with Mari, the old Jerrick passed away. I was certain in that moment sitting there that Lashawna—and maybe beside her, Jude—would be next.

Perhaps inside its sparkling surface there was nothing except solid alien metal, its power lying like an electric current on the outside. Had any of our community bothered to tap on it with a rod or a hammer to see if it was (as we all assumed) hollow-ish?

Would it eventually open, as we all secretly hoped, letting loose a cornucopia of knowledge; an explanation of why the new masters had come, and precisely what they had planned for our little group of selected survivors? A roadmap? An apology?

We didn’t mean to kill as many as we did…

Just a big mistake…but we’ll help you recover.

In our sweet time.

Or turn us all into zombies.

I left the porch, searching for a rod. There was nothing lying around, and so I walked to the garage, found a small crow bar, and then returned to the front of the house. From the kitchen a burst of laughter rang out. And then quiet again. Standing at the edge of the drive directly across from the tower, I stared over at its alien beauty, contemplating whether I should do it. If I were foolish enough to touch a high voltage line with a crowbar, the resulting deadly shock would be the same as if I’d touched it with my bare hands. I looked back at the house for a second, and then stepped through the flowers onto the dew-sprinkled grass. I’d know soon enough what its constitution was.

Maybe I’d be joining Mari and Jerrick sooner than I expected—wake up two or three weeks later, intent on leaving. Or not wake up at all.

I approached the tower slowly, standing for a moment looking up at it. Listening for any sound. Staring at it to see if by some crazy chance we’d all missed the tiny line that spelled the edge of a doorway. Nothing out of the ordinary.

I raised the crow bar, hesitated, and then struck the side of the encasement, cringing as the metal surface of the bar came into contact with the side of the tower.

No shock.

The clunking sound and electric-like sensation of solid traveling up the crow bar into my hands at first triggered the thought that, indeed, whatever this “gift” was, it had no open interior. If I hadn’t known any better I would have thought of it as a solid block of granite.

Intuitively I re-gripped the bar and swung again, this time striking it with more force. I heard the same sound, felt the same buzz of nerves shoot up my hands and arms. I could do this all day long, acting like a fly trapped inside a jar, banging its head against the glass. I glared at the shining surface for a moment, and then tossed the crowbar onto the grass in defeat. I began to turn and walk away—to go back inside and join the group.

Wait.

It was Mari’s voice. I wheeled around, and there she was, standing in a plain white gown in front of the tower. She looked ten years older, and she was smiling, her right hand extended toward me.

So, you really want to see what’s inside? Come with me then, her voice flowed softly across the space between us.

The shock of seeing her threw me for a second. No more so, though, than her smile. Today it seemed truly more genuine, and there was an aura about her now. Something like the halos around the heads of medieval saints in paintings, but the brightness extended around her shoulders, her torso, clear down to the ground she stood on.

Yes, I really wanted to see for myself what the tower contained—the tower that a second ago appeared to be solid alien steel. She stood there motionless as I weighed the consequences of trusting her. Days ago she hadn’t been exactly excited to see me and the others down the road at hers and Jerrick’s hideaway.

“Leave us. Go home,” she’d demanded. For whatever reason her demeanor, despite the glowing light surrounding her, had changed. I could only imagine a half dozen invaders standing invisibly beside her, instructing her to be overly civil, devilishly amiable for their purposes.

Get her inside. We’ll do the rest.

A silly thought. If they’d wanted me captured or dead, they could easily have accomplished that anytime they’d wanted.

I threw caution and doubt to the wind, stepped forward and took hold of her hand. She placed a palm onto the surface of the tower, said something in a language that sounded like a thousand tiny bells ringing. The tower surface rippled. A fierce glow of fire-ish light streaked out from the interior that had begun to stretch open slowly. The intensity of it blinded me. I was forced to close my eyes, and I prayed that I wouldn’t be catapulted light years away again, this time at her side instead of Peter's.

The sensation of Mari stepping forward, urging me along behind her. I sensed through closed eyes the sheer power of the light diminish as we moved into the tower. I opened them tentatively, a few steps in, blinking twice, three times, unsure if the sun-bright light was waiting patiently for me to open them entirely; preparing to permanently blind me the second I did.

Assured for the moment that the harsh light was holding itself in abeyance, I opened them, having lost hold of Mari’s hand anyway. Finally inside. What would I find here?

Beyond my wildest imagination I saw a universe of stars and nebulae stretching into infinity, as if I’d stepped through a doorway into deep space. I gasped. Mari stood a few feet away, although in that place she might have been a hundred thousand miles away as easily, my sense of scale so shockingly disrupted. She was smiling broadly, studying my reaction.

“They said okay,” she said in a gentle, friendly voice. The tone of her voice alone surprised me.

The Instruction Manual

 

I stared dumbly at the vista above, around, and…below me. I was floating, suddenly feeling myself turning slowly sideways after a second or two, gravity left outside on the soil of the Earth I loved and feared for. My stomach heaved as the suns and galaxies moved in an arc, rising at my feet this second, disappearing over my head the next. Until once again the warm touch of a hand on my arm. Mari. I turned my head to her. She smiled at me again, and then waved her free hand, fingers extended and splayed. Waves of sparkling, blinking, multi-colored lights followed in their path. The universe melted. My stomach settled.

To say that my feet were firmly planted once again on solid ground, inside a narrow capsule no wider or deeper than a communal toilet at an outdoor concert, would be inaccurate. I saw walls, yes, but they were as far away as I could throw a rock, extending in the familiar circle of the tower’s shape viewed from outside. Misty white, though, as if they were clouds, or something having little substance. Still, standing there with Mari’s reassuring hand on my arm, I felt comforted. Wrapped in something other than the vastness of infinite space. I curled my toes across the smooth, but solid surface below me.

Thank you, Lord…or Mari.

Mari remained silent for a minute or two, just watching me turn my head left and right, gawking at the nothingness of that place. Finally she spoke.

“Please sit down, Amelia.”

I looked behind me. A plain wooden chair had materialized out of nowhere…or had it been there all along? I shot Mari a quizzical glance, receiving that same smile back, and then placed my hands on the seat and sat. Immediately a similar table emerged in front of me, sliding forward until it covered my legs and tucked itself nearly to my stomach. The surface was empty. I waited to see what would come next.

“Wave your hand over it.”

I did as she instructed. A host of strange, pulsating orbs that seemed to hover an inch or two above the surface of the table appeared immediately. Silverish. Hanging there as if waiting for me to beckon one forward. I surrendered my confusion and astonishment to the impossible direction this latest experience was taking me inside a new wonderland. Well, I’d asked for it. Or demanded it.

“Knowledge is power,” she said to me. “Choose one. Put your fingers on it. It will respond.”

The “Gift” Charles had spoken of months ago? Some sort of alien library? Why had I thought there would be tools, or objects of an alien nature, of an incredible technological advancement surpassing any earthly inventions I’d ever seen? A magic wand to wave and open a cornucopia of useful…things?

Just thoughts somehow written and recorded instead.

I placed a fingertip tentatively on one at random, the one that was closest to my hands. It turned golden the second my fingers came into contact with it. Embossed symbols instantly appeared, etched on it, similar to the nearly invisible script high at the top of the tower that we’d all seen and wondered at. That had brought innocent Mari, and then Jerrick, and finally me to this place. Only, I had been allowed to enter.

As I sat there blinking, the orb shimmered, and then began to grow outward, like a curtain unfolding, until it filled the entire room. An image that was all too familiar appeared.

I don’t need this. How many times have I seen it before? How many times do I have to see it again?

“A reminder,” Mari said low, as if she’d read my thoughts. I turned my eyes to her. Hers were closed. She shook her head up and down once or twice, and then returned her