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

the bedroom he shared with Charles and Munster to read the Braille books we’d gathered for him, sometimes to the music room with his waiting cello to practice. Lately, quite as often, we would see him sitting cross-legged a few feet away from the black tower, his arms stretched outward and up, as if he were praying. To it? To a dead God, or the hideous aliens watching him somehow by means of the “gift” they’d left?

“I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to ask him,” Charles sighed. “Can you go find him, Lashawna?”

“I’ll go,” Jude said, grabbing hold of Lashawna’s hand as she abandoned what was left of her dinner and rose.

“Me too!” said Sammie.

We all left the table to go in search of the quiet one.

That evening we found him in front of the tower, his head bent forward, his hands folded in his lap. He wasn’t moving a muscle. We assumed he was deep in thought.

“Well, it doesn’t look like he’s praying tonight,” Cynthia whispered. She, Charles, Munster and I had quietly gone out onto the front porch. We stood watching him for a minute or two, until Charles finally spoke in a loud enough voice for him to hear.

“Jerrick, we have a question for you.”

Jerrick seemed not to have heard. He remained sitting, motionless.

“Jerrick?” Charles said again, a little louder this time.

“Whatd’ya ‘spose he’s up to?” Munster asked Cynthia.

“Who knows. Hey Jerrick!”

Denise and Sammie joined us a second later. They stopped beside us with question marks on their faces. Jerrick finally woke from his reverie and turned, smiling over at us.

“Hello. Glad to see you could make it. I apologize. I didn’t mean to abandon you again,” he said.

“Sammie, I didn’t realize you were so pretty.” He stopped there. The impact of his remark to Sammie hit each of us like a hammer to the head. There could be no other interpretation of the statement other than somehow, some way, he’d actually…seen the young girl! I couldn’t move from the shock of it. Astounded, jaws slack, each of us shot dumbfounded glances at one another as Jerrick rose to his feet. He began to walk in our direction, as assuredly as if he’d navigated the distance from the tower to the porch steps a thousand times.

Lashawna and Jude at last came running out, unaware at first at what was going on. They halted at the left of us by the porch rail.

“What’s up?” Lashawna asked.

“Hi sis.” Everything went dead silent for several seconds.

It finally hit her. “Oh Jesus…Jerrick?” She raced down the steps, leaving her lover stranded and absolutely confused.

Reactions. My knees merely shook. Felt rubbery. Charles stammered, as did Cynthia. Munster raised his hands over his head and waved them wildly. Jerrick’s face turned toward him.

Lashawna hit him with a hug that sent him reeling backward, but I could plainly see that he’d expected her jarring arrival. He’d moved one foot backward preparing for her joyous assault, and raised his arms outward.

“You can see? You can SEE? How? How did it happen?” She released her bear hug on him and brought her hands to his cheeks, rubbing her fingers over them, and then gently onto his eyes. Eyes that no longer opened to darkness.

“It’s hard to explain. I’ve been thinking of Mari for weeks—what happened to her when she touched the tower…”

All of us gathered around them, anxiously waiting for his explanation of the miracle that had transpired.

“…I knew I couldn’t, mustn’t touch it, but the fact is, they placed this thing here for our benefit. I…I just started talking at it a week ago.”

“At it?”

Jerrick glanced at Cynthia. Such a strange sight to behold, the shifting of his dark brown eyes suddenly filled with life.

“Yes. I mean, it wouldn’t talk back.” He chuckled. “Something like talking to God. Does he ever say anything when you pray?”

“No, because he doesn’t exist. But they do,” she answered.

Jerrick shrugged. Lashawna stared up at him, and then after a brief moment took hold of his arm and urged him to follow her. “Come inside, Jerrick. You look so tired! Let’s sit in the living room. Tell us everything that happened!”

Denise rushed forward and took his free arm. Amidst a gaggle of astonished voices, we walked back toward the steps and the house beyond. I think Lashawna remained a little unconvinced, still in shock, and rightly so. As we approached the porch she stammered, “Step, Jerrick. Be care…oh, oh, I meant…Ohmagod…”

Habit ingrained subconsciously over the years? You rearrange the bedroom, and then wake up the next morning and bang into the wall in the darkness.

Beam Me Up, Captain

“So-what-happened!”

Jerrick had seated himself in the center of the sofa, running his long fingers over the material. Looking at it. As we gathered around him on the floor, and across the coffee table on the twin sofa, he shot his eyes around the room; the lifeless fireplace across the way, the end tables and lamps and curtained windows. At each of us, a smile the size of California on his face. Whatever transformation had occurred, it had to have taken place this evening. This morning, even at the beginning of dinner, his gaze was placid, non-existent. Locked unsurprisingly, or unnoticeably, away.

How many times had he seen his sister, or Cynthia, or Charles…or me, with fingers as sensitive in their touch as an eagle’s eyes were to vision, gliding majestically a thousand feet above a rocky, valley floor? But tonight his gaze was penetrating each time it hesitated on one of us. It was as though the sudden opening of the door of sight animated his smile, at long last making his handsome face a colorful and completed portrait.

For the first time since I’d met him, I wanted to close my eyes tightly for an hour or a day. Walk to the kitchen. Out the rear door and the step beyond. To the barn and outbuildings. Back to the house. Up the stairs to the second floor. I wanted to see if I could even do it without tripping over something, even having taken those steps without a thought a hundred times. I wanted to focus my hearing to a much higher intensity; my touch to match in some inadequate way, his. To experience the world he’d lived in for so long. To see in the mysterious way he had. But had I tried, my memory would have interfered. With each step, my mind would have seen images with form and color, unlike his.

“They’re here with us constantly, even if we are unaware of their presence,” Jerrick began. That was a distressing and frightening thought.

“I sensed it the moment the tower appeared…their presence. Not inside it exactly, but there nonetheless. Oh, it’s difficult to put into words. Liken it to closed circuit TV or the unseen eye in the old Smart TVs. Something like those things, but in a much stranger, more…alien personal way.”

“You touched it?” Cynthia asked.

“No. Remember they said no to. Mari didn’t listen, but I did.”

“Well then, what?”

Jerrick shifted his eyes to Cynthia. “They were there at every moment while Mari lay in the coma. They heard and saw everything, I’m certain.”

“But you don’t actually know that for a fact?”

“What about you?” Charles interjected. “What did they do to you, and how did they do it. Or perhaps more importantly, why?”

“Yeah, ya’ sat in front of that thing for weeks. What were ya’ talkin’ about all that time?” Munster said.

“I don’t understand,” Denise said.

“Why can’t any of the rest of us…”

“Quiet. Slow down. Let Jerrick speak,” Charles said raising his hands. Impetuous Munster couldn’t help himself.

“Where’s Mari? Is she alive?”

“Shh…later. Go on, Jerrick.”

“I sensed it. I sat beneath the tower and asked them. ‘Why can’t we touch your gift?’ No answer. ‘Why are you here, and why did you destroy our civilization?’ Again, no answer. ‘Why won’t you communicate with me?’ ‘They can see you. I can’t, but I know you’re listening. Talk to me! Explain all of this!’

“They remained silent, but I remained adamant in my quest to find answers.”

“Well, what did they finally say?” Lashawna asked her brother.

“Not a word. Not a thought transferred across the space dividing us. Nothing. But four nights ago I began to feel something happening. My head beginning to pound. Like that, yes. Not a painful pounding, more like cells and nerves flashing storm-like all of the sudden.

“And then it would stop. I’d rise and leave them, finally. Last night. I began to experience something new. Shadows. Light and darkness. I guessed that’s what they were. I’d only known the words before. How would I have known what they really were? Tonight…an entire world erupted in front of me!”

“But…but why? To what end did they do this?” Charles pushed onward with the most important question in all of our minds.

Jerrick remained silent for what seemed the longest time, looking down. At last he rose and walked to the fireplace. He ran his fingers over the edge of the mantle as we all looked at him, and then he turned.

“Tonight they spoke, moments before you came out.” He paused, gazing across the space dividing us. At each of us in turn. At last his eyes came to rest on his sister. He smiled at her almost sadly.

“They told me that I must leave. Tonight.”

“WHAT?”

“Why?”

“I am to take nothing other than what I’m wearing. Just go.”

“Oh, this is insane!”

“Go where?” Charles asked.

“I am to find Mari. They sent her away you know. You have to understand that she had little to say about it. But she’s safe. They also told me she was ‘different’ now. I am to join her.”

“Where? Where did they say she was?”

“They didn’t.”

Our jaws dropped. Lashawna was shaking her head, and I could see tears beginning to form at the corners of her eyes. Jude, who knew little about Mari, who hadn’t lived with us through the months, who had dealt with her own altogether different dramas, gently raised her arms and placed them around her sobbing mate’s shoulders. Lashawna pushed her away, shot to her feet, and ran to her brother.

“I won’t let you go! They’re evil! They massacred millions and millions, and now they’re taking us one by one and…and…I won’t let them take you!”

I grabbed hold of Peter’s hand, wondering at her statement. Something told me Mari was alive, but…what form or state of mind was she in? And after they ripped Jerrick from us, who would be next, if their intent actually was to tear us apart? Peter remained staring across the room at Lashawna and Jerrick, but lowered his head and softly kissed me. How could I not notice that Denise’s face was dressed in horror at Jerrick’s words? She reached across Charles’ lap, grabbed hold of his hands and squeezed them vice-like.

“I ain’t thinkin’ they mean us harm,” Munster shot. “If they did, they coulda’ killed us a long time ago. They’re up to somethin’ else. What is it, Jerrick? Spit it out.”

His arms enfolding his diminutive little sister in a comforting embrace, Jerrick looked upward to the ceiling, and after a second or two, closed his newly awakened eyes.

We waited.

Jerrick opened them at last, looked down at his sister, and then released himself from her slowly. He spoke to her as