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

I refused to let anyone, even Peter, touch my naked head. I stayed in our room for three days, sitting cross-legged, staring at the window on the far side of the room. I’d leave only to go to the bathroom, but each time the moving image of me walking in hit me like a scene from a horror movie, only I was the zombie. I couldn’t bear to bring my full gaze on the mirror.

Peter brought food for me, which I rarely even picked at. Twice, his hands bearing the platter shook as he set it on the table by the window, peering back at me. I knew why he was upset, though. By the middle of day two another clump of hair had fallen to the mattress cover. I cried looking down at it. When I ran my fingers over the latest spot on my head where once the hair had been I felt more raised ridges and valleys. Some new, horrible script. Why, why were whoever they were doing this!

By day three I had no hair left. My head felt like one of Jerrick’s Braille books. Maybe other than having seen my mom lying dead on the floor in our kitchen so many months ago, those days were the worst of my life.

Okay, okay. I’m going to be bald for the rest of my life, and a circus freak to all my friends…but whatever it is, it hasn’t tangled and squirmed down into my brain. Thank God for little positives in a play that has nothing but horrid scenes.

Or was I crazy and demented, just didn’t know it?

Peter, my only visitor, my staff during those terrible days, said very little whenever he came in. He slept beside me, an arm under my neck, but I couldn’t help but wonder what he was thinking. I was afraid to say anything to him at night.

I steeled myself, finally, when there was nothing but undulating flesh to run my hands and fingers over, and asked him to find a stocking cap. He did. I pulled it down over my ears. I had to get off the bed, out of our room. Walk with him outside through the orchard. Face the looks of pity from Charles and Denise and Cyn and Munster. Everyone. Get on with life, whatever it held in store for all of us.

They were all downstairs when I left the room. No one said a thing when I walked outside, across the porch, and down the steps. I felt their eyes locked on me and Peter, though. No, just me, the new horrible me.

I stopped at the bottom of the steps and looked with anger and near-rage over at the tower. It stood as it always had, tall and black as the midnight sky in space. Empty except for the library it contained, maybe waiting with a devilish smile for me to summon it to open again with a touch of my hand.

I walked on with Peter holding my hand. A hundred feet or so into the cradling warmth of the trees I stopped.

“Peter, do you still love me?”

“What! Of course I do. Why would you ask such a silly question, Amelia.”

I yanked the cap off and threw it down. Then I turned my face to him.

“Because…because…Peter, why did this happen to me?”

He threw his arms around me and held me tight for a moment. He kissed my temple, finally answering. “I don’t have a clue, Amelia. Maybe Jerrick or Mari knows. We could find them and ask.”

“I never want to see either of them ever again, especially Mari. She’s a witch, and serves her devils.”

“But they would know…especially Mari,” he said.

“I don’t care. I never want…”

“Then I’ll go find her,” he whispered in my ear.

“No!”

Peter and Charles left in the pickup the next morning after a solemn, quiet breakfast. Munster ran as fast as his short legs would carry him alongside the truck as they pulled away. When he caught up to them, he threw one of his rifles into the bed, and then stopped and waved at them.

I knew they’d find one or both of the traitors. Maybe Mari would tell them the reason the invaders did this to me. I was tempted to go along—they probably wouldn’t have let me even if I’d demanded it—especially since Munster had thrown the gun into the bed. I could stand off to the side when Mari finally appeared, and then shoot her.

Charles had taken a walkie-talkie. At least we’d be kept in the loop. The rest of us, except Bernie and Celia who were engaged somewhere else, probably upstairs in their little love nest, sat on the steps anxiously waiting for the walkie-talkie to come to life, or the pickup come racing back into the farm with its headlights flashing, and the horn blaring a warning.

We didn’t speak much, I mean, what further questions or comments could any of us ask or make?

“Listen for a gunshot,” Munster broke the monotony once.

“Shut it, Francis. They’re not going to shoot anyone,” Cynthia snapped. And then quiet again.

Cyn and Denise fixed lunch later, and toted it all outside to the rest of us sitting there on the steps.

“Any word yet?” Denise asked.

“Nuthin’,” Munster said.

“Nothing,” Cynthia corrected him uselessly.

“Call them,” Denise said. “Charles said they’d keep in touch.”

I yanked the walkie-talkie from Lashawna’s hand. Pressed the call button. “Charles? Peter? You there?”

Silence for several seconds.

Finally, “Yes, we’re here. Don’t freak, Denise, Charles is inside their..whatever this place is. He went in about an hour ago with…wait, the door is opening…”

Denise yanked the walkie-talkie from my hand.

“Peter! Peter, talk to us!”

We heard Peter very plainly when he finally spoke again a few seconds later. Denise freaked.

“Jee-zuz Jones! Oh my God…”

              End of Book 2

Publication Date: 12-09-2017

All Rights Reserved