Dreams of Shadows by Patrick Sean Lee (best life changing books txt) 📕

Sweetheart. My father used to use that word sometimes when he spoke to me. When I’d done something that made him smile. That one word Charles uttered gave me hope and comfort greater than I can possibly describe.

I turned and ran as fast as I could in the direction of the cellar.

 I nearly fell down the cellar steps after yanking with all my might to lift the heavy door. As I descended I could hear Mari and Ash crying far back in the dark interior. Jack and Cynthia trying to soothe them with words that were contrived and unconvincing.

Peter appeared from the back room when I hit the last step, Munster at his side brandishing the gun with one useless bullet.

“They’re gone! Come out, we’re finally, finally SAFE!” I screamed with joy.

Peter rushed toward me. Munster’s jaw dropped, and his shoulders slumped. I think. I think. It was so dark! He stayed where he was, anyway.

“What? What happened up there?” Peter sputtered.

Where to start?

“We met them!” I began to stammer and wave my hands senselessly about, as if the words I wanted to say were flying around like bees outside their hive, and I could capture them.

“You what?” Munster said bounding forward. Right behind him came beautiful Mother Goose Cynthia and her brood, Jerrick all alone, feeling his way out of the small antechamber, probably unassisted by anyone for only the second time in his life. And all within an hour's space of time. I knew he could hear my heart hammering, and see with those other eyes he possessed the sheer rapture that had overtaken me from head to toe.

“They were right outside. Mr. Baxter and I didn’t run away. He…and well, I…opened the door. The creatures didn’t kill us! They were talking to one another—I could hear sounds coming from them. But, they didn’t hurt us! They turned and left!”

The news report was somewhat condensed, but its impact visibly floored everyone except Ash and Mari, who had no way of understanding its importance. Cynthia began to cry openly. Lashawna ran forward and hugged me.

“Where’s Baxter?” Peter asked. I could see the gears in his head spinning. He didn’t even smile at the news.

“I…upstairs still, I guess.”

He stepped around me immediately, and rushed to the stairs leading out of the tomb. It didn’t hit me at first that Charles hadn’t followed me. In my excitement and rush to break the good news to everyone down there, that is.

I followed Peter, and everyone else followed me. We found Mr. Baxter outside on the lawn, standing beneath something so strange and out of place that it stopped us in our tracks. Whatever it was, it hadn’t been there ten minutes ago. A cylinder of gleaming black. Much, much taller than Mr. Baxter, and five times his width. Each of us, except Jerrick, ran to it. We knew they’d deposited it there, and as I walked slowly around its perimeter, I could see that there were no breaks in its polished surface anywhere. No instruction manual lying nearby to tell us what it was, or what it might do, or how to open it and see what lay inside.

When I arrived back around at its front—if where Charles stood might be its front—Peter was standing five feet away from our newest family member, frowning. Munster was nearby, and he’d withdrawn his gun. I think he was considering using the last bullet on it.

“This is their gift to us,” Charles finally said.

“Maybe it’s a fuckin’ bomb,” Munster replied.

“How would you know what it is, Baxter?” Peter shot at him. He stepped forward raising his hand to touch the surface of what might be a gift, or might in fact be a bomb or other device which purpose we had no idea of. I didn't believe it was placed there to harm us, though. If that was their intention, they could easily have wiped all of us out earlier.

“No, don’t touch it. They said not to,” Charles warned Peter.

Peter stopped immediately and turned with downturned eyebrows to face Charles. “What’s that supposed to mean? You can talk to them?”

Mr. Baxter replied in his soft voice. “No, not really. They…what, what, what?...they communicated with me I suppose is the best way to answer your question. Do you see the script etched into the surface? There at the top.”

I’d missed the bizarre-looking symbols, but just as he said, there they were. A few columns running vertically. Squiggles and curls, almost invisible unless you were looking for them.

By then Jerrick had gotten down the steps and was standing beside Mr. Baxter. His eyes showed no depth or comprehension, and yet…

“They’ve given us the key,” he said. “It’s the way in.”

“In to what?” Peter asked Jerrick.

“That we don’t know,” said Charles. “All I was told is that at a given time, one of us is to use it.”

“We?” Peter grabbed the gun from Munster and pointed it at Mr. Baxter. “You’re one of them, aren’t you? What are you up to, mister? We don’t know the first damn thing about you, and suddenly you’re telling us they’ve given only you instructions concerning this gift, as you call it.”

Charles didn’t flinch. He’d been staring up at the writing, but then brought his eyes onto Peter. He raised his burnt hands.

“I touched one of them. Remember? This was the result.”

“Maybe that's how you got burned. Maybe. Anyway, if, IF that’s true, this thing isn’t one of them, and further, you’re the only one of us that stayed and talked to these monsters that wiped everyone except us out.”

“You left. I can understand why, of course, but Amelia and I stayed behind to confront them. I’m not sure precisely why she did—for my part, I was simply so tired of running and hiding. Still, they spoke to me. I didn’t say a word to them, and likely it wouldn’t have done any good had I done so.”

Peter lowered the gun, but I could see that he wasn’t convinced of anything Charles had said since he first joined us. Staring up at Charles, he bit his lower lip, and then contemplatively tapped the barrel of the gun on his free palm. Believe him, or no? Trust him, or no?

“Jerrick, what do you think?”

Jerrick didn’t hesitate in answering. “My sense is, he’s telling the truth.”

Uncharacteristically, Peter faltered. It seemed clear that he didn’t fully trust the man who, fact or otherwise, led the beings to our house. On the other hand, high-minded Peter had put credence in blind Jerrick’s opinion by even asking what his take on the matter was.

He handed the gun back to Munster. “So then, what do we do now?”

A moment of silence ensued as everyone let the question sink in. An hour ago we had all been living in a destroyed world, hiding, afraid, wondering if there was anything we could do to stay alive for another 24 hours. Suddenly that had all changed—or a lot of it. If Charles had somehow survived, so had others, like the two men who attacked us in the rectory. For all appearances, it struck me, we were safe from the cloudy beings and whatever their purpose here was—at least for the time being—but I feared we were far from being safe from our own kind, however many of them were alive and prowling around outside.

“To the business of living. What do you have to eat?” Charles said at last. “None of you appears to be starving.”

“There’s tons of dried and canned goods in the root cellar,” Cynthia answered.

“Food will become an issue in time. What about water?”

“Some, but there’s a well behind the house near the garage,” she said.

“Do you like Cream of Wheat?” asked Jack. “That’s what we have every morning for breakfast. Spam for lunch and dinner. I hate all of it.”

“Power? It’s down everywhere else,” he said, ignoring her comment, but smiling down at her.

Peter replied, “None.”

“We’ll need wholesome food, water, and it would be nice to power up the entire house. As far as food goes, all I’ve had is crackers and dried up cheese these past few days. We have plenty of arable land. All we’ll need is seed, water to irrigate the crops—and a lot of work on our part.” He stopped and looked at Munster.

“You have a pistol. What other weapons do we have?”

Munster shrugged his shoulders. One bullet. Not much help.

“There’s a shotgun and a few rifles locked up in the gun cabinet inside,” Peter said.

“Locked up? That won’t do us much good if someone surprises us. Ammunition?”

“I think there’s a few boxes in there.”

“All right then. I suggest we begin our new lives here in Eden by taking inventory of every ounce of non-perishable food stuffs we have available. See if the well is ok. Get the weapons unlocked and loaded, and then two of us will go back into town and find a generator large enough to provide adequate electricity for the house. Agreed?”

“And how do we get back to town?” Munster spit. “My car is stuck in the ditch.”

“I don’t want to ride in his horrible car ever again!” Lashwana said. “He’s a maniac behind the wheel.”

“I got you here didn’t I?”

“Barely. You ran over dozens of dead bodies on the way. You can barely reach the pedals or see over the steering wheel. I’m not getting into that car with you ever again.”

“No one asked you to. Anyway, we’ll be walking. Everyone but you and your blind slowpoke brother.”

“Enough!” Charles cut them off.

“Hey, who elected you leader anyway?” Peter shot at Charles.

Charles’ face dropped at Peter’s comment. A second or two passed as he looked at all of us gathered beneath the black cylinder. Glancing down at his burned hands, he finally replied, “And we’ll need medicine. Can we get to work now?”

Mr. Baxter’s plan, if that’s what it was, maybe wasn’t what some of us—Peter and Munster in particular—wanted, but it was all we had for the moment.

We left the gift standing steely and cold-looking, and began the task of turning the orchard farm and our house into a Garden of Eden. As Charles put it. The trouble with that was, there wasn’t a God anywhere close by to help us out that I could see, but there were serpents out there. I was pretty certain of that.

We spent the remainder of the morning counting boxes of food in the cellar; jars of fruits and tomatoes and potatoes that Mrs. Farnsworth had canned. Bottles of