Dreams of Light by Patrick Sean Lee (i wanna iguana read aloud .txt) 📕

to leave her, Amelia. Half of them beat on her with their powerful thoughts. Constantly. Me as well, but the other half of them…I resisted. I don’t think she could. They’re sorry for the mess they made. Some of them.

“Mari is so young, even though she appears not to be. Despite what you all think, she’s just a little impressionable girl. A lot like Sammie. No matter how I tried to snap her out of it, no matter how the decent ones among them tried…well, we weren’t successful.” He hesitated and looked away. “Not yet.”

A sad, distant look grew on his face. In those deep ebony eyes that not long ago were wells of simple darkness. His fingers tightened on mine, and I felt in them an even stronger sadness.

“Jerrick, what are they doing? What are they planning to do?”

As I asked the questions, Sammie’s loud, girlish voice rang out from deep inside the orchard, calling Munster’s name.

“It’s a battle,” he said shifting his eyes toward the sound of her voice. “They aren’t killing one another, but the fight is in full swing. One or the other among the thousands that came here is going to win eventually. You really haven’t seen any of the dark ones yet.”

“Maybe I have. We…Peter and I…were inside one of those barriers they’re putting up everywhere. Did you know that?”

“No. Stay away from them, Amelia. What did you see?”

I told him how Peter and I broke through the cloud barrier; how we got separated. How frightened we were. How they appeared in the strange distance and came at us.

“You were lucky. Don’t go near those portals ever again. The next time…” His voiced trailed off.

“Amelia, Jerrick, what’s up?”

It was Peter. Thank God. I whipped my head around at the sound of his beautiful voice. Jerrick kept his hand locked on mine.

“Sit down, Peter.” I waited as Peter sat down beside me, a quizzical look on his face.

“The most important task we have right now,” I said turning my attention back to Jerrick, putting the grave danger facing us aside for the moment, “is to somehow bring Charles back. Jerrick, you said you could help him. Peter and I have a plan.”

“All I need is a go-ahead,” he said.

“Yes, but we have to get you past Denise…”

“She isn’t really a problem at all,” he said. “If you give me the word, I’ll just walk in and begin.”

“She’d scratch your eyes out,” Peter said.

“No she wouldn’t. Seriously, do you really believe I couldn’t just make her take a short nap?” He laughed.

“You mean like Charles…like…”

“Oh no. Just put her to sleep for a bit. She’d wake up later.”

I threw my arms around him.

“Well why didn’t you tell us that a few days ago!!!? We’ve wracked our brains, waiting for the right moment when we could get you in there!”

“I was waiting too. We could do it right now if you want. Just say the word. You realize, don’t you, that the two of you are the de-facto rulers, the final authorities of every living human thing? The king and queen of Marysville and the farm and the world,” he said all pleased with himself, laughing with a kind of relief.

I released my hold on Jerrick, then jumped on top of Peter, knocking him backward. I kissed him!

“Peter, we are such idiots! All we had to do was ask!”

“Well,” he said smiling his gorgeous smile up at me, “it seemed kind of…more complicated a few days ago.”

 

 

Sir Charles, Awaken

 

Lashawna and Jude were the first to join us. From their bedroom window facing the drive, Jude had seen Jerrick in the last few seconds of his and Sammie’s descent. She was incredulous, but continued to watch for a moment as Peter, oblivious of what had happened, wandered into the scene. Lashawna was outside the bedroom eavesdropping on Charles and Denise. Of course there was no conversation, she said, only murmuring by Denise beyond the door.

Jude finally awakened from her shock and raced out of the room screaming. She grabbed Lashawna’s hand, and yanked her to the stairs. I heard their frantic footsteps on the wood floor in the living room mixed up with Jude’s excited voice, and then looked up when the old screen door banged against the outside wall of the house. Out they flew. Down the steps in two leaps.

“He flew! I saw him flying!” Jude kept yelling.

Before the two of them reached us, Sammie came scampering up the rise from the edge of the orchard, Cynthia and Munster close on her heels.

“Here he is!” Sammie called back to Munster and Cynthia. “Jerrick, Jerrick, show them!”

It was all Bedlam of a different sort. An almost joyously cacophonous rush of bodies, so unlike the gathering a few feet away on the drive three days earlier.

Peter and I were on our feet by the time Munster and Cynthia arrived. Jude had come to a halt beside Peter, but Lashawna, her eyes stretched wide in confusion, had flown to her knees directly in front of Jerrick, who remained sitting. He was smiling at her.

Sammie whisked between the bodies that had by then surrounded him, and flew into him like a lost child who’d finally found her mother in a crowded shopping mall after frightening hours alone.

“Show them, Jerrick! Take me up again!”

I laughed. “Sammie, give him a break, girl! I saw what he did, so did Jude.”

“It’s so cool!” she said with a giggle.

“True?” Cynthia said.

“Entirely. But look, aside from the…I mean, Jerrick has a plan to help Charles. Right Jerrick?”

He eased Sammie off his lap. “Anytime you’re ready.”

“What plan?” Munster asked.

“He’s going to march right into Charles’ and Denise’s bedroom, and then put Denise to sleep. Then…what will you do, Jerrick?”

“Asleep? Oh no,” Cynthia said.

“Shh,” Munster shot at her. ‘Let Jerrick…”

“Oh shush yourself!”

“I call on Mari. I’ll need her.”

“MARI? But Peter said she was about to hit you! Why would you bring her here?”

“Because…I just need her. She knows…she thinks differently than I do. They communicate with her…what? On a different level than they do with me. Don’t be frightened if some of them come with her. She’s NOT what you think, Amelia. Hopefully not what I think she is sometimes. I have to believe she’ll help. That they’ll help. If not, I think I can bring him back without her.”

“Well then, why not try alone first?”

“Thoughts. Suggestions to him on a quite different level than I might be capable of. I don’t know. Maybe I can do it.”

“You flew!” Sammie chimed. “You can do anything!”

Jerrick laughed. “Not everything, Sammie. Besides,” he said turning back to Peter, “I want to, I mean I have to believe that her condition isn’t permanent. Away from them…I don’t know. If we can convince her somehow to stay with us—to help in Charles’ recovery, and to just BE around those she once loved so much. You know?”

“But you’ll give it a shot without her, won’t you?” I pleaded with him. “Deal with Mari later. If you can bring him back alone…what is it that he’s in? Like a coma or something?”

“Oh no. He sees and hears, but Charles is far away. Just like Mari was when she first touched the tower. It’s like there are two of him. It’s hard to explain in human terms. Physical terms. The point is, the longer he’s away, the farther he’ll tend to drift, I think.”

“Well then, let’s get busy!” Peter said, ending the confusing conversation.

 

I don’t know if Jerrick called for Mari up in the bedroom, but they arrived. Mari wasn’t with them.

Let me back up.

We dashed up the stairs. It sounded like a herd of elephants. Munster and Cynthia and Sammie and Jude and Lashawna—all of them right on our heels, galloping and talking at once. In the hall, I saw Celia open hers and butthead’s door, poke her head out, then slam the door shut again. Jerrick, Peter and I reached Charles’ door first.

“Stay here,” Jerrick said.

“Oh no, I’m coming with you,” I shot back at him.

“You can’t!”

“I will whether you think I can or otherwise.”

“Me too,” Peter said.

Jerrick frowned. I wondered as he stood there staring at us if he might lift his hand, or glare with eyes turning fiery orange and put us to sleep? He gave in, though, and then turned and twisted the knob. Denise had locked the door, but he easily broke it, and then he pushed the door inward. I head Denise scream.

Jerrick walked forward. Denise bleated something as Jerrick neared her with one hand raised and extended. Peter and I dashed in.

“Close the door,” I told Peter.

“Why? The lock is…”

I turned back to the scene unfolding inside.  Denise took a step, then two, backward, raising her arm over her face, whimpering, “No, no, please.”

Jerrick continued on, and when he reached her he said in a calm and confident voice, “It’s okay, Denise. Just rest for a moment. I’ve come to help Charles.”

He touched her with one finger, and then placed the palm of his hand onto her forehead. She bolted, but there was nowhere for her to go to get away from him. Jerrick leaned close to her face, brought both hands to her temples, and whispered something softly into her ear. She shook her head no in his grasp. It took a moment, but finally she began to collapse. He broke her fall, and then lay her limp body down onto the carpet.

Charles lay in their bed covered to his chest with a sheet and light blanket. His face was expressionless. His eyes were closed. After laying Denise carefully down, Jerrick went to the bedside and stared down at Charles for several seconds. I wondered what he was thinking. Jerrick, that is. God only knows if Charles’ brain was firing images of anything.

Peter and I padded quietly to the far side of the bed very near the lone window looking out onto the side yard and driveway. We watched and wondered what Jerrick would do. Maybe what happened next was the reason Jerrick said that he needed to be alone with Charles? He pulled the sheet and blanket downward until Charles’ bare feet appeared. I looked up at Peter standing close at my side.

Okayyyy…

Jerrick disregarded our presence and climbed onto the mattress next to Charles. He took our beloved Charles into his arms, pulled his limp body tightly against his own, and began to run both long hands up and down Charles’ sides, his hips, his shoulders, his chest and stomach.

I pushed myself hard into Peter. My mouth dropped open at the sight of it. I heard Peter mutter, “What the hell?”

Had Denise been awake, she would have gone absolutely insane at seeing what Peter and I saw.

All the while, Jerrick was speaking strange words into Charles’ ear, in a language neither Peter nor I had ever heard before.

I had to remember.

I had to remember!

There was Lashawna and Jude. Okay. Alright…no one thought much of their pairing, and after the typically Munster-uttered little snide remarks—“Shut it, Munster.”-Cynthia—their no doubt physical and emotional relationship passed into acceptance, as something quite normal in our new world, bitterly contested and unenlightened in the old. Even the despicable orbiting of that horror, Bernie, and his obsequious Celia, was, at its worst, tolerated. Each