Closer To Heaven by Patrick Sean Lee (best free ebook reader for android .txt) 📕

            Lashawna told me she and Jerrick stayed at their aunt’s house for almost a week, but then they left because everyone’s bodies began to smell so bad, and I knew exactly what that smelled like. They walked and walked and were hungry, and finally they saw Saint Andrew’s Church, and that’s when they went in because the doors weren’t locked and it didn’t smell inside, and they were Baptists or something like that, but that it would be okay to go into a Catholic church.

            Both of them were hungry. There wasn’t anyone around. Father Kenney and Father Hiddick or Hendrick weren’t there, and nobody was, but they found Father Kenney’s house in the back and went in. That’s where they found the kitchen and the bedroom and the food. They felt relieved because it would be cold that night and they would be hungry if they left. So they stayed there.

            I asked Lashawna and Jerrick why they sat in the church and lit candles under Saint Therese’s altar instead of staying in Father’s house, and she told me they liked all the candles and she also liked the statue of Saint Therese because Saint Therese looked almost alive, and also because Lashawna had seen a lot of pictures in books of statues, and that at night it was easier to read because of all the candles. I said that I had seen those kinds of pictures, and also the real statue of Saint Therese and Saint Andrew in the church, and then we talked about books. I read sometimes, but I didn’t know what that book she was reading last night was, and I asked her too if she read lots of books and if she liked video games. She said she wasn’t allowed to play very many video games because her momma and daddy told her they would stunt her brain, or something like that, and if she wanted to grow up and be stupid, then she shouldn’t read books, but play lots of video games instead.

            “My mom and dad wanted us to go to college,” she said, “and if we were stupid because our brains were stunted because of video games, then we could never go to college like her and daddy did.”

            “I guess we don’t have to worry about growing up and going to college because there aren’t any teachers!” I laughed, and so did Lashawna and Jerrick.           

“But there are still books,” Jerrick said. He had a big grin on his face.

            “Curb,” Lashawna said suddenly.

            We got to the park. The grass was still very wet and very tall like the grass behind Father’s house. Our house, now. The sidewalk going in was dry almost, and so we walked over it to the playground way far away inside the park. There were slides that curled and went down, and a little room at the top with a roof, where all the slides started from. There were monkey bars and a merry-go-round and a ladder that went up to the little room with the roof. We played for a while, and I was so surprised when Jerrick found his way all by himself to the monkey bars, and also because he grabbed onto the first one and went all the way across all by himself. And then he turned and came back all by himself.

            I liked the park, especially the playground. I liked the slides and the merry-go-round, but after a while I didn’t want to play on them anymore. I wanted to go somewhere else and do something else. Lashawna had brought her black backpack. She’d found the backpack in Father’s things in his closet. She’d put a whole pack of Nabisco crackers and Skippy Peanut Butter in it, and some more dried up fruit in its own package, and after a while we all got tired and so we sat on a bench beside the playground and started to eat our lunch. She’d also brought a book. Not the same one she was reading last night, though. A different one, and Jerrick was very excited when she took it out and started reading the story. I liked it, too, and Lashawna read very well and it was like listening to someone just tell a story without reading. I closed my eyes and thought about all the things she was reading about in the story. We sat a long time.

I opened my eyes much later. Lashawna had the book opened on her lap and she was reading. That’s when I saw the cloud, or no, not a cloud exactly, because it didn’t look like a cloud except that it was gray. It was in the park and…Yes! In the park right on the grass, and it was round and tall and spinning. Not like a tornado, though, where things get ripped up, like buildings and cars, and get thrown out everywhere. This cloud was spinning slowly, and it didn’t move backward or forward, but it did move sideways onto the sidewalk.

            “Look!” I shouted. I pointed toward the strange cloud.

            Lashawna raised her head. Jerrick looked at me. Lashawna looked over at the cloud and said, “Oh my God.” Jerrick turned his head this way and that way, and I knew he was listening hard because he couldn’t see.

            “It’s buzzing,” he said, but I couldn’t hear that. I mean I did hear Jerrick, but I couldn’t hear any buzzing.

            So it just stood there spinning very slowly, but I wasn’t very afraid, and neither was Lashawna because it wasn’t moving toward us. If it had moved toward us, I would have run as fast as I could have away from it, but then I would have felt very bad because Jerrick probably couldn’t run fast enough, and even if he could have, he might have run into a tree, or tripped on the sidewalk. And that’s what worried me before we ever went outside that morning. I didn’t think, though, that a cloud might appear and chase us. Anyway, it didn’t chase us.

I wondered what it was. It hadn’t been there when we came in because it was right over the sidewalk, and we would have seen it, except Jerrick. But he would have heard it at least.

Lashawna put the book down, and then she stood up.

“Jerrick, you stay here.”

She started to walk over to it, and that very much worried me because we didn’t know what it was, and maybe it was some kind of evil creature that just looked like a cloud that was spinning slowly, and when she got near it, it would suck her in or grab her with hands that we couldn’t see. And I remembered seeing something like that in a movie when the TV still worked, but I can’t remember the name of the movie.

Lawshawna walked to the cloud. Jerrick turned and made his ear point in the direction she walked.

“What is it?” he asked me.

“I don’t know, Jerrick, but I don’t think it’s bad. It’s a cloud, kind of. It’s tall. She’s almost there.”

Lashawna got very close to the cloud and then stopped. The cloud didn’t do anything except spin slowly. She stood in front of it and she looked so small. But it just spinned. After looking up at it for a while, Lashawna finally raised a hand. I bit my lip so hard it bled. Then she touched the cloud, and then she fell down. I screamed. Jerrick started running all by himself. I warned him to stop because we’d been wrong. I knew the cloud had killed her. I shook my head back and forth and cried, and ran after him.

“Stop, Jerrick! Stop!” But he ran fast and didn’t trip and fall. I caught him just before he got to Lashawna. If I hadn’t, I know he would have tripped right over her, and then he would have fallen into the cloud, and he would have been dead! But, I caught him and made him fall with me just before we reached Lashawna. His arms landed on top of his sister. He started to yell, but I knew she didn’t hear him.

“Jerrick! Pull her back. Get her away before it grabs her up! Help me!”

We pulled her back. I kept looking up to see when the cloud would get arms or a big suction mouth and pull all of us inside it where we’d all be dead then. But it didn’t reach out. It just spinned. Jerrick was so strong, and his long fingers had her arms and he kept getting Lashawna farther and farther back with me until we were almost back to the playground.

I cried even more because I’d lost another friend, and I loved Lashawna, but Jerrick didn’t cry. He touched her face all over, and he said, “What’s the cloud doing?”

I wiped my eyes and looked. It was still spinning, but it wasn’t spinning toward us. Just spinning there where it was before.

“Nothing. It’s not doing a thing.”

“Help me. We have to get her back to the church. You be my eyes. I’ll carry her,” he said very softly.

“We can’t go back on the sidewalk! It’s still there.”

“Then we go through the grass. Let’s go,” he told me.

Jerrick picked Lashawna up. I took his arm and we began to go home, but we went through the tall, wet grass, and went very wide around the cloud. It didn’t move, and I prayed that it wouldn’t see us.

When we got home my feet were wet and they were cold, but I didn’t care. All I cared about was Lashawna, and Jerrick said she wasn’t dead at all because he could hear her breathing and feel her lungs working. He carried her into our bedroom and laid Lashawna on the bed, and then he helped me cover her up with blankets. Her eyes were closed.

“What do we do, Jerrick?” I asked when she was covered and would stay warm.

“We’ll wait. She’ll get better. We won’t let her die.”

I wasn’t so sure, though. I think that cloud she touched was what killed everyone else, but I didn’t know why me and Munster and Lashawna and the murderer weren’t killed. Why it didn’t come after us, only Lashawna who went to it. But, we would wait, and I wouldn’t leave her alone, not even to go eat.

            I sat in a chair beside Lashawna for two whole days and two whole nights. She didn’t move, not even a finger. But I knew she wasn’t dead like Munster and everyone else except that murderer man, and Jerrick. Her face was warm. That’s how you know someone isn’t dead. If they were dead they would get cold, and then they would start to smell. Also, their eyes would be closed.

I burned another candle when the old one went out. I hoped God would listen this time. He hadn’t listened to the last one for Momma and Daddy because they hadn’t come to find me, so